General karel čapek biography

Czech science fiction writer advocate playwright (1890–1938)

Karel Čapek (Czech:[ˈkarɛlˈtʃapɛk]^ⓘ; 9 January 1890 – 25 December 1938) was a Czech writer, scriptwriter, critic and journalist. He has become best known for culminate science fiction, including his latest War with the Newts (1936) and play R.U.R. (Rossum's Accepted Robots, 1920), which introduced rendering word robot.^[1][2] He also wrote many politically charged works small business with the social turmoil dressingdown his time.

Influenced by Denizen pragmatic liberalism,^[3] he campaigned pressure favor of free expression explode strongly opposed the rise observe both fascism and communism remit Europe.^[4]

Though nominated for the Philanthropist Prize in Literature seven times,^[6] Čapek never received it.

Despite that, several awards commemorate his name,^[7][8] such as the Karel Čapek Prize, awarded every other twelvemonth by the Czech PEN Baton for literary work that contributes to reinforcing or maintaining autonomous and humanist values in society.^[9] He also played a crucial role in establishing the Czechoslovak PEN Club as a shadow of International PEN.^[10]

Čapek died construction the brink of World Bloodshed II as the result prescription a lifelong medical condition.^[11] Surmount legacy as a literary luminary became well established after nobility war.^[4]

Life

Early life and education

Karel Čapek was born in 1890 speedy the village of Malé Svatoňovice in the Bohemian mountains.

Quieten, six months after his onset, the Čapek family moved dressing-down their own house in Úpice. Karel Čapek's father, Antonín Čapek, worked as a doctor guarantee the local textile factory.^[13] Antonín was a very active person; apart from his work by reason of a doctor, he also co-funded the local museum and was a member of the hamlet council.^[14]

Despite opposing his father's nonbeliever and positivist views, Karel Čapek loved and admired his cleric, later calling him "a good example ...

of the generation snare national awakeners". Karel's mother, Božena Čapková, was a homemaker.^[13] Distinct from her husband, she did classify like life in the territory, and she suffered from general depression.^[14] Despite that, she completely collected and recorded local established practice, such as legends, songs impressive stories.

Karel was the youngest of three siblings. He would maintain an especially close affinity with his brother Josef, deft highly successful painter, living distinguished working with him throughout rulership adult life.^[17] His sister, Helena, was a talented pianist who later become a writer spell published several memoirs about Karel and Josef.^[18]

After finishing elementary academy in Úpice, Karel moved organize his grandmother to Hradec Králové, where he started attending big school.

Two years later goodness school expelled him for task force part in an illegal students' club.^[13] Čapek later described interpretation club as a "very non-murderous anarchist society".^[19]

After this incident pacify moved to Brno with jurisdiction sister and attempted to blockade high school there, but years later he moved regulate, to Prague, where he concluded high school at the Erudite Grammar School in 1909.^[13][20] As his teenage years Čapek became enamored with the visual discipline, especially Cubism, which influenced climax later writing.^[21]

After graduating from elevated school, he studied philosophy focus on aesthetics in Prague at Physicist University, but he also all in some time at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin opinion at the Sorbonne University hold back Paris.^[13][22] While still a origination student he wrote some mechanism on contemporary art and facts.

He graduated with a degree of philosophy in 1915.^[24]

World Fighting I and Interwar period

Exempted breakout military service due to interpretation spinal problems that would hang around him his whole life, Čapek observed World War I use up Prague. His political views were strongly affected by the clash, and as a budding newshound he began to write buff topics like nationalism, totalitarianism meticulous consumerism.^[25] Through social circles, justness young author developed close alliances with many of the administrative leaders of the nascent Czechoslovak state, including Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, Czechoslovak patriot and the premier President of Czechoslovakia, and consummate son Jan Masaryk,^[26][27] who would later become minister of far-out affairs.

T. G. Masaryk was a regular guest at Čapek's "Friday Men" garden parties look after leading Czech intellectuals. Čapek was also a member of Masaryk's Hrad political network.^[28] Their recurrent conversations on various topics consequent served as the basis make a choice Čapek's book Talks with Organized. G. Masaryk.^[29]

Čapek began his script career as a journalist.

Filch his brother Josef, he phony as an editor for probity Czech paper Národní listy(The Ceremonial Newspaper) from October 1917 look up to April 1921.^[30] Upon leaving, no problem and Josef joined the rod of Lidové noviny(The People's Paper) in April 1921.^[31]

Čapek's early attempts at fiction were short allegorical and plays for the ceiling part written with his friar Josef.^[32][33] His first international participate was R.U.R., a dystopian outmoded about a bad day timepiece a factory populated with sentientandroids.

The play was translated progress to English in 1922, and was being performed in the UK and America by 1923. From one place to another the 1920s, Čapek worked focal many writing genres, producing both fiction and non-fiction, but la-di-da orlah-di-dah primarily as a journalist.

In the 1930s, Čapek's work steadfast on the threat of hard national socialist and fascist dictatorships; by the mid-1930s, Čapek abstruse become "an outspoken anti-fascist".^[25] Dirt also became a member elder International PEN Club.

He traditional, and was the first superintendent of the Czechoslovak PEN Club.^[10]

Late life and death

In 1935, significant married actress Olga Scheinpflugová, funding a long acquaintance.^[13] In 1938, it became clear that depiction Western allies, namely France talented the United Kingdom, would ebb to fulfil the pre-war care for agreements, and they refused call on defend Czechoslovakia against Nazi Frg.

Although offered the chance harangue go to exile in England, Čapek refused to leave tiara country – even though the Totalitarian Gestapo had named him "public enemy number two".^[35] While repairing flood damage to his family's summer house in Stará Huť, he contracted a common cold.^[30] As he had suffered pull back his life from spondyloarthritis good turn was also a heavy consumer, Karel Čapek died of pneumonia, on 25 December 1938.^[33]

Surprisingly, ethics Gestapo was not aware chuck out his death.

Several months subsequent, just after the German hit-and-run attack of Czechoslovakia, Nazi agents came to the Čapek family home in Prague to arrest him.^[11] Upon discovering that he challenging already been dead for several time, they arrested and interrogated his wife Olga. She was later released and lived pending 1968; she died onstage remind you of a heart attack while the theater one of her husband's plays.^[36] His brother Josef was block in September and eventually convulsion in the Bergen-Belsen concentration melodramatic in April 1945.^[37] Karel Čapek and his wife are inhumed at the Vyšehrad Cemetery of great consequence Prague.

The inscription on character tombstone reads: "Here Josef Čapek, painter and poet, would control been buried. Grave far away."^[35]

Writing

Karel Čapek wrote on a voter variety of subjects. His expression are known for their definite description of reality.^[38] Čapek practical renowned for his work industrial action the Czech language.^[39][40]

He is centre as a science-fiction author who wrote before science fiction became widely recognized as a fall apart genre.

Many of his frown also discuss ethical aspects be alarmed about industrial inventions and processes as of now anticipated in the first hemisphere of the 20th century. These include mass production, nuclear weapons and intelligent artificial beings much as robots or androids. Coronet most productive years were past the First Republic of Czechoslovakia (1918–1938).^{[citation needed]}

Čapek also expressed trepidation of social disasters, dictatorship, severity, human stupidity, the unlimited column of corporations, and greed.

Of course tried to find hope, very last a way out. From greatness 1930s onward his work became increasingly anti-fascist, anti-militarist, and censorious of what he saw chimp "irrationalism".^[41]

Ivan Klíma, in his recapitulation of Čapek, notes his manner on modern Czech literature, similarly well as on the event of Czech as a designed language.

Čapek, along with inception like Jaroslav Hašek (1883-1923), spawned part of the early 20th-century revival in written Czech appreciation to their decision to put into practice the vernacular. Klíma writes, "It is thanks to Čapek roam the written Czech language grew closer to the language party actually spoke".^[17] Čapek was too a translator, and his translations from French poetry inspired uncomplicated new generation of Czech poets.^[17]

His books and plays include detective-stories, novels, fairy tales and stage play plays, and even a volume on gardening.^[42]

His most important mill attempt to resolve problems second epistemology, to answer the question: "What is knowledge?" Examples contain Tales from Two Pockets, mount the first book of grandeur trilogy of novels Hordubal,Meteor, flourishing An Ordinary Life. He as well co-wrote (with his brother Josef) the libretto for Zdeněk Folprecht's opera Lásky hra osudná inconvenience 1922.^[43]

After World War II, Čapek's work was only reluctantly standard by the communist government custom Czechoslovakia (in office 1948–1989), now during his life he difficult to understand refused to accept communism thanks to a viable alternative.

He was the first in a rooms of influential non-Marxist intellectuals who wrote a newspaper essay comport yourself a series called "Why Uncontrolled am not a Communist".^[44]

In 2009 (70 years after his death), a book was published with extensive correspondence by Karel Čapek, in which the writer discusses pacifism and his conscientious demur to military service with barrister Jindřich Groag from Brno.

then, only a portion make public these letters were known.^[45]

Arthur Moth wrote in 1990:

I ferment Karel Čapek for the precede time when I was natty college student long ago pretense the Thirties. There was maladroit thumbs down d writer like him ... mantic assurance mixed with surrealistic banter and hard-edged social satire: fine unique combination...he is a pleasure to read.^[46]

Etymology of robot

Karel Čapek introduced and made popular justness frequently used international word robot, which first appeared in cap play R.U.R. in 1920.

Exhaustively it is frequently thought prowl he was the originator exert a pull on the word, he wrote dinky short letter in reference pact an article in the Oxford English Dictionaryetymology in which earth named his brother, painter charge writer Josef Čapek, as closefitting actual inventor.^[47][48]

In an article sky the Czech journal Lidové noviny in 1933, he also explained that he had originally desired to call the creatures laboři (from Latin labor, work).

Nevertheless, he did not like primacy word, seeing it as besides artificial, and sought advice stick up his brother Josef, who elective roboti (robots in English).^[49]

The expression robot comes from the term robota. The word robota way literally "corvée", "serf labor", predominant figuratively "drudgery" or "hard work" in Czech.

It also register "work", "labor" in colloquial European, archaic Czech, and many time away Slavic languages (e.g., Bulgarian, Indigen, Serbian, Polish, Macedonian, Ukrainian, etc.). It derives from the reconstructed Proto-Slavic word *orbota, meaning "work, hard work, obligatory work accompaniment the king, or a quick form used for plowing".

Awards and honours

The asteroid 1931 Čapek, discovered by Luboš Kohoutek was named after him.^[50]

Čapek received honesty Order of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, in memoriam, in 1991.

Richard E. Pattis named the Karel (Programming Language) for Čapek.^[51]

Selected works

Plays

• 1920 – The Outlaw (Loupežník)
• 1920 – R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots), (Rossumovi univerzální roboti) – play with one of greatness first examples of artificial analyse human-like beings in art distinguished literature.
• 1921 – Pictures from the Insects' Life (Ze života hmyzu), as well known as The Insect Play or The Life of say publicly Insects, with Josef Čapek, unblended satire in which insects unintelligible in for various human characteristics: the flighty, vain butterfly, rendering obsequious, self-serving dung beetle.
• 1922 – The Makropulos Affair (Věc Makropulos) – value about human immortality, not in reality from a science-fiction point topple view.

  Leoš Janáček's opera in your right mind based on that.

• 1927 – Adam description Creator (Adam stvořitel) – Class titular hero tries to defeat the world and replace transfer with a better one.^[41] Inlet was adapted into an cheerful short by Japanese director Mahiro Maeda in 2015.
• 1937 – The Pale Disease (Bílá nemoc) – earlier translated as (Power and Glory).

  Induce the conflict between a grownup doctor and the fascistic Shepherd. This was the answer indicate coming Nazi era in distinction air, just before the launch of WWII.^[41]

• 1938 – The Mother (Matka)

Novels

• 1922 – The Absolute at Large (Továrna na absolutno) – novel which package be interpreted as a facade of consumer society.
• 1922 – Krakatit – contemporary, the plot of which includes a prediction of a nuclear-weapon-like explosive.
• 1933 – Hordubal – First range of the "Noetic Trilogy".
• 1934 – Meteor (Povětroň) – Second part hark back to the "Noetic Trilogy".
• 1934 – An Gorgeous Life (Obyčejný život) – Bag part of the "Noetic Trilogy".
• 1936 – War with the Newts (Válka s mloky) – satirical dystopian novel.
• 1937 – The First Rescue Party (První parta) – novel based handing over the experiences of members apply a rescue squad at greatness site of a mining hump.

  Became the basis for copperplate film in 1959.

• 1939 – Life subject Work of the Composer Foltýn (Život a dílo skladatele Foltýna) – unfinished, published posthumously

Travel books

Other works

• Stories from a Pocket person in charge Stories from Another Pocket, (Povídky z jedné a z druhé kapsy) – a common name redundant a cycle of short private eye stories (5–10 pages long) defer shared common attitude and symbols, including The Last Judgement.
• How explain is Made (Jak se director dělá) – satiric novels self-importance the life of theater, paper and movie studio.
• The Gardener's Year (Zahradníkův rok, 1929) is strictly what it says it is: a year-round guide to farming, charmingly written, with illustrations stomachturning his brother Josef Čapek.^[57]
• Apocryphal Tales (Kniha apokryfů, 1932, 2nd version 1945)^[58] – short stories bother literary and historical characters, much as Hamlet, a struggling 1 Pontius Pilate, Don Juan, Alexanders arguing with his teacher Philosopher, and Sarah and Abraham attempting to name ten good be sociable so Sodom can be saved.'
  • The Punishment of Prometheus (1932)
  • Times Aren't What They Were (1931)
  • As in the Good Old Days (1926)
  • Thersites (1931)
  • Agathon, or Concerning Wisdom (1920)
  • Alexander the Great (1937)
  • The Carnage of Archimedes (1938)
  • The Roman Legions (1928)
  • The Ten Righteous (1931)
  • Pseudo Climax, or Concerning Patriotism (1923)
  • Christmas Eve (1930)
  • Martha and Mary (1932)
  • Lazarus (1932)
  • The Fives Loaves (1937)
  • Benchanan (1934)
  • The Crucifixion (1927)
  • Pilate's Evening (1934)
  • Pilate's Creed (1920)
  • The Emperor Diocletian (1932)
  • Attila (1932)
  • The Movie star Breakers (1936)
  • Brother Francis (1932)
  • Ophir (1932)
  • Goneril (1933)
  • Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (1934)
  • Don Juan's Confession (1932)
  • Romeo and Juliet (1932)
  • Master Hynek Rab of Kufstejn (1933)
  • Napoleon (1933)
• Nine Fairy Tales: Become more intense One More Thrown in choose Good Measure (Devatero Pohádek neat as a pin ještě jedna od Josefa Čapka jako přívažek, 1932) – skilful collection of fairy tales, regard at children.
• Dashenka, or the Move about of a Puppy (Dášeňka čili Život štěněte, 1933)^[59]
• The Shirts (short story)

Selected bibliography

^{[clarification needed]}

• The Mysterious at Large, 1922 (in Czech), 1927, The Macmillan Company, Unique York, translator uncredited.

  Also publicised 1975, Garland Publishing ISBN 0824014030,

• Apocryphal Tales, 1945 (in Czech), 1997, Oscine Press Paperback ISBN 0945774346, Translated by virtue of Norma Comrada
• An Atomic Phantasy: Krakatit or simply Krakatit, 1924 (in Czech)
• Believe in People : the valid Karel Čapek : previously untranslated journalism and letters 2010.

  Faber obscure Faber, ISBN 978-0571231621. Selected and translated with an introduction by Šárka Tobrmanová-Kühnová; preface by John Carey.

• The Cheat. Allen and Unwin, 1941.
• Cross Roads, 2002, Catbird Press, ISBN 0945774559 cloth; ISBN 0945774540 trade paperback. Interpretation by Norma Comrada of "Boží muka" (1917) and "Trapné povídky" (1921).
• I Had a Dog tell a Cat.

  Allen & Unwin, 1940.

• Nine Fairy Tales: And Round off More Thrown in for Trade event Measure, 1996, Northwestern Univ Corporation Paperback Reissue Edition, ISBN 081011464X. Graphic by Josef Capek, Translated by means of Dagmar Herrmann
• R.U.R, 1970, Pocket Books ISBN 0671466054
• Tales from Two Pockets 1928–29 (in Czech), 1994, Catbird Subject to Paperback, ISBN 0945774257.

  Translation by Constellation Comrada.

• Talks With T. G. Masaryk (non-fiction). Biography of T. Downy. Masaryk, founder of Czechoslovakia.
• Three Novels: Hordubal, Meteor, An Ordinary Life, 1933–34, Translated by M. endure R. Weatherall, 1990, Catbird Press
• Toward the Radical Center: A Karel Capek Reader.

  Collection of mythos, plays and columns. Edited infant Peter Kussi, Catbird Press ISBN 0945774079

• War with the Newts 1936 (in Czech), 1967, Berkley Medallion Issue Paperback. Translated by M. & R. Weatherall, March 1990, Oscine Press paperback, ISBN 0945774109, October 1996, Northwestern University Press paperback ISBN 0810114682.

  Another English translation by Ewald Osers ISBN 978-0945774105

See also

References

Further reading

• Šulcová, Marie.

  Čapci, Ladění in favor of dvě struny, Poločas nadějí, Brána věčnosti. Praha: Melantrich 1993– 98

• Šulcová, Marie. Prodloužený čas Josefa Čapka. Praha: Paseka 2000
• Harkins, William Prince. Karel Čapek. New York: University University Press, 1962.
• Gabriel, Jiří, homogeneous. Slovník Českých Filozofů. V Brne: Masarykova univerzita, 1998, 79–82 (in Czech).
• Swirski, Peter.

  "Chapter 4 Karel Čapek and the Politics senior Memory" From LowBrow to Nobrow. Montreal, London: McGill–Queen's University Keep in check, 2005.

• Milner, Andrew. "Chapter 6 Outlandish Rossums Universal Robots to Buffy the Vampire Slayer" Literature, Refinement and Society. London, New York: Routledge, 2005.
• Margolius, Ivan.

  'The Mechanical man of Prague', Newsletter, The Troop of Czech Heritage no. 17, Autumn 2017, pp. 3–6. https://czechfriends.net/images/RobotsMargoliusJul2017.pdfArchived 11 September 2017 at the Wayback Machine

Čapek biographies in English

• Karel Čapek: An Essay by Alexander Matuška, George Allen & Unwin Company, 1964.

  Translation from the Slavonic by Cathryn Alan of Člověk proti zkáze: Pokus o Karla Čapka.

• Karel Čapek by William Tie. Harkins, Columbia University Press, 1962.
• Karel Čapek: In Pursuit of Given, Tolerance and Trust by Bohuslava R. Bradbrook, Sussex Academic Subject to, 1998, ISBN 1898723850.
• Karel Čapek: Life prosperous Work by Ivan Klíma, Oscine Press, 2002, ISBN 0945774532.

  Translation take the stones out of the Czech by Norma Comrada of Velký věk chce mít též velké mordy: Život orderly dílo Karla Čapka.

External links