Karel Čapek

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Karel Čapek

Karel Čapek (pronounced KARel CHAP-ek (help·info)) (IPA: [ˈkarɛl ˈʧapɛk]) (January 9, 1890 – December 25, 1938) was one of the most influential Czech writers of the 20th century. He introduced and made popular the frequently used international word robot, which first appeared in his play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) in 1921. Karel named his brother Josef Čapek as the true inventor of the word robot.

Čapek was born in Malé Svatoňovice, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary (now Czech Republic).

1 Life and work
2 Etymology of robot
3 Čapek in popular culture
4 An outline of Čapek's works
5 Selected bibliography
6 External links

[edit] Life and work

Karel Čapek wrote with intelligence and humor on a wide variety of subjects. His works are known not only for interesting and exact descriptions of reality, but also for his excellent work with the Czech language. He is perhaps best known as a science fiction author, who wrote long before science fiction became established as a separate genre. He can be counted as one of the founders of classical non-hardcore European science fiction, which focuses on possible future (or alternative) social and human evolution on Earth, rather than technically advanced stories of space travel. However, it is best to class him with Aldous Huxley and George Orwell as a mainstream literary figure who used science-fiction motifs.

Many of his works discuss ethical and other aspects of the revolutionary inventions and processes that were already expected in the first half of 20th century. These included mass production, atomic weapons, and post-human intelligent beings such as robots or intelligent salamanders.

In this, Čapek was also expressing fear of upcoming social disasters, dictatorship, violence, and unlimited power of corporations, and trying to find some hope for human beings. Čapek's literary heirs include Ray Bradbury, Salman Rushdie, Brian Aldiss and Dan Simmons.

His other books and plays include detective stories, novels, fairy tales and theatre plays, and even a book on gardening. The most important works try to resolve the problem of epistemology, or "What is knowledge?": The Tales from Two Pockets, and first of all the trilogy of novels Hordubal, Meteor and An Ordinary Life.

Later, in the 1930s, Čapek's work focused on the threat of brutal Nazi and fascist dictatorships. His most productive years corresponded with the existence of the first republic of Czechoslovakia (1918-1938). He wrote Talks with T.G. Masaryk, a Czech patriot and first President of Czechoslovakia and a regular guest at Čapek's Friday garden parties for Czech patriots. This extraordinary relationship between the great author and the great political leader is perhaps unique, and is known to have been an inspiration to Václav Havel. He also became a member of International PEN.

Karel Čapek died in the December preceding the outbreak of World War II and was interred in the Vyšehrad cemetery in Prague. Soon after it became clear that the Western allies had refused to help defend Czechoslovakia against Hitler, he refused to eat or leave his country and died of double pneumonia. The Gestapo had ranked him as "public enemy number 2" in Czechoslovakia. His brother Josef Čapek, a painter and also a writer, died in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

After the war, Čapek's work was only reluctantly accepted by the Communist regime of Czechoslovakia, since during his life he had refused to believe in a communist utopia as a viable alternative to the threat of Nazi domination.

[edit] Etymology of robot

The word robot comes from the word robota meaning "drudgery", "forced labor" in literary Czech and "work", "labor" in literary Slovak.

While Karel Čapek is frequently stated to have been the originator of the word, he wrote a short letter in reference to the Oxford English Dictionary etymology in which he named his brother, painter and writer Josef Čapek as its true inventor. [1] In an article in the Czech journal Lidové noviny in 1930, he also explains that he originally wanted to call the creature dělňas (a substantive derived from the Czech verb dělat- to work, to do).

However, Josef did not like dělňas and advised Karel, who was writing the play R.U.R. in Trenčianske Teplice in Slovakia, to use a word from the local Slovak language, in which "work" is robota, (as it is also known in the Czech language). The origin of both the Czech and the Slovak word is the Old Church Slavonic rabota "servitude", which in turn comes from the Indo-European root *orbh-. Robot is cognate with the German word arbeiter (worker).

[edit] Čapek in popular culture

On the science fiction cartoon show Futurama, a planet inhabited entirely by robots was named "Čapek 9", as a reference to Karel Čapek's coining of the term "robot".

In an episode of the science fiction programme Doctor Who entitled "The Robots Of Death" (1977), the crazed leader of a group of murderous robots is named "Taren Capel", which is deliberately similar to Čapek's own name.

[edit] An outline of Čapek's works

Works which can be considered early science fiction:

Anti-Nazi plays from the 1930s:

The Mother
The White Disease (earlier translated as Power and Glory)

Some other works:

Stories from a Pocket and Stories from Another Pocket (Povídky z jedné a z druhé kapsy) - a common name for a cycle of short detective stories (5-10 pages long) that shared common attitude and characters, including The Last Judgement.
How it is Made - satiric novels on the life of theatre, newspaper and film studio.
The Gardener's Year (Zahradníkův Rok, 1929) is exactly what it says, a year-round guide to gardening, charmingly written, with illustrations by his brother Josef Čapek.
Pictures from the Insects' Life, also known as Insect Play, with Josef Čapek, a satire in which insects stand in for various human characteristics: the flighty, vain butterfly, the obsequious, self serving dung beetle.
Apocryphal Stories (Kniha apokryfů), short stories about literary and historical characters, such as Hamlet, a struggling playwright, Pontius Pilate, Don Juan, Alexander arguing with his teacher Aristotle, and Sarah and Abraham attempting to name ten good people so Sodom can be saved: "What do you have against Namuel? He's stupid but he's pious."
Nine Fairy Tales: And One More Thrown in for Good Measure (Devatero Pohádek a ještě jedna od Josefa Čapka jako přívažek, 1932)
Dashenka, or the Life of a Puppy (Dášenka čili Život štěněte, 1933)

[edit] Selected bibliography

The Absolute at Large, 1922 (in Czech), June 1975, Garland Publishing ISBN 0-8240-1403-0
Apocryphal Tales, 1945 (in Czech), May 1997, Catbird Press Paperback ISBN 0-945774-34-6, Translated by Norma Comrada
An Atomic Phantasy: Krakatit or simply Krakatit, 1924 (in Czech)
Nine Fairy Tales: And One More Thrown in for Good Measure, October 1996, Northwestern Univ Press Paperback Reissue Edition, ISBN 0-8101-1464-X. Illustrated by Josef Capek, Translated by Dagmar Herrmann
R.U.R, March 1970, Pocket Books ISBN 0-671-46605-4
Tales from Two Pockets
Short story collection, Mystery (nsf) Translated by Norma Comrada June 194, Catbird Press Paperback ISBN 0-945774-25-7
Talks With T.G. Masaryk Non-fiction. Biography of Masaryk, founder of Czechoslovakia.
Three Novels: Hordubal, Meteor, An Ordinary Lifes NSF? Translated by M. and R. Weatherall
Toward the Radical Center: A Karel Capek Reader. Collection of stories, plays and columns. Edited by Peter Kussi, Catbird Press ISBN 0-945774-07-9
War With the Newts 1936 (in Czech), May 1967, Berkley Medallion Edition Paperback. Translated by M. & R. Weatherall, March 1990, Catbird Press paperback, ISBN 0-945774-10-9, October 1996, Northwestern University Press paperback ISBN 0-8101-1468-2