Karel Capek: Life and Work [Hardcover]

Ivan Klima (Author), Norma Comrada (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2002

Contemporary Czech novelist and playwright Ivan Klíma has transformed his lifelong admiration for the work of the great Czech novelist and playwright Karel Capek into an extended personal essay on Capek's life and work. Written with letters and other material not available to earlier biographers and critics, Klíma reflects on the effects of the author’s personal relationships and scrutinizes his artistic and philosophical influences. This is not merely a biography or a critical work covering all of Capek's writings; it is a wide-ranging study of the life and work of a great artist as examined from the perspective of another eminent writer who grew up in Capek's shadow.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Internationally acclaimed Czech writer Karel Capek (1890-1938) may have played second fiddle to his Prague colleague and contemporary Franz Kafka, but he gets treated to a fond biography with Ivan Klima's (No Saints or Angels) Karel Capek: Life and Work. Primary sources and occasional literary exegesis add to the detailed, thoughtful account of a man whose plays, novels and journalism made him a "symbol of anti-ideological thought... of art that was free and unfettered by any doctrine." Norma Conrada translates from the Czech. For true Capek fans, Catbird Press will simultaneously publish Cross Roads, two Capek story collections in a single volume.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Capek (1890-1938) is among the greatest figures of modern Czech literature, along with contemporaries Franz Kafka and Jaroslav Hasek. A prolific journalist and writer, he is best known for the fictions War with the Newts and Tales from Two Pockets and the play R.U.R., which introduced the word robot (coined by his brother). Catbird Press, the leading publisher of Czech literature in English translation, commissioned this critical biography from noted novelist and scholar Kl¡ma, a survivor of the Prague Spring (1967); the translator is the leading American authority on Capek. Kl¡ma's study is organized chronologically, relating the details of Capek's life to the thematic concerns of his works. Himself a Czech, Kl¡ma appreciates Capek's struggle against both Marxism-Leninism and Nazism, capturing his despair and resolution after Munich, even as he was dying of pneumonia. He also brings a novelist's perspective to the proceedings, allowing readers to appreciate the depth and thematic complexity of Capek's writing. The result is a valuable introduction to one of the little-appreciated but significant figures of modern world literature. Recommended for both public and academic libraries. T.L. Cooksey, Armstrong Atlantic State Univ., Savannah, GA
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 266 pages
• Publisher: Catbird Press; 1 edition (July 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0945774532
• ISBN-13: 978-0945774532
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,010,308 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars PROHIBITED AUTHOR - ANTI-FASCIST, PRO FREEDOM/ANTI-WAR WRITER, May 1, 2010

By 

G. Charles Steiner - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Karel Capek: Life and Work (Hardcover)

One of the three Czech geniuses of the early twentieth century (the other two being Franz Kafka and Jaroslav Hasek), Karel Capek still has writings that have yet to be translated from Czech into English. Not only is most of Capek's journalistic writings still untranslated, but his last great novel "The Life and Works of the Composer Foltyn" as well as all of his correspondence remains untranslated to this day, to say nothing of the memoirs written about him by people who were close to him, such as his wife, his brother, and his sister, all of whom wrote separate accounts.

Karel Capek was a mama's boy and his relationship with his mother affected his adult relationships with women all his life, although he eventually did marry, however late in his life. Capek was very important to Czechoslovakia and its people politically in that he, along with many others, of course, worked tirelessly to create a new state in 1918, the Czechoslovak Republic: a free country but a country that would eventually lose its freedom entirely and fall to Hitler's Nazi regime in 1938 with the Munich Agreement, a state of collapse that coincided with Capek's own collapse and death despite his efforts to keep Czechoslovakia free while keeping up with his artistic goals to his very last breath at the age of 49.

Although popular wisdom has it that Karel Capek invented the word "robot" and was the first to use it in a book, Norma Comrada, the excellent translator of this critical literary biography (and wonderful translator of many stories and poems by Karel Capek available for the general readership), has publically contested the record by stating in an interview (found online) that it was Karel's brother, Josef Capek, who gave Karel the word "robot" when they were discussion Karel's now-famous science fiction work, "R.U.R.: Rossum's Universal Robots."

In this book, Ivan Klima discusses every published work by Karel Capek (and even some newspaper writings that have never been published outside of Czechoslovakia), summarizing the plots as well as assessing and interpreting each work in light of Karel Capek's philosophy, politics, geographical location in addition to his artistic goals and his life. This was an tremendous undertaking and it's all done with great concision (not a wasted word anywhere), clarity (thanks to Norma Comrada's efforts), compression (Ivan Klima is an artist himself after all) as well as nuance and discrimination in 30 short chapters generally only five to seven pages long.

Reading this critical literary biography is a great joy in that the book is meant to be read more than once, like any great work of literature itself. There is a beautiful, slow narrative arc to the entire structure that ends (with Capek's death and the collapse of a free republic) on a very high note as if the whole work were meant to be understood as a literary symphony and the last notes meant to resound in the memory for a very long time.

Ivan Klima, the author of this beautifully focused and clear work, is himself a Czech who survived the concentration camps that tried to kill him and his family after Capek's death. Ivan Klima writes about this near-Nobel prize-winning author with a natural fondness and appreciation that is at once neither fanatical nor envious, fully appreciative, flaws as well as virtues, discriminating and instructive.

This review cannot possibly recapitulate the rich and full warehouse of refinements and insights that lie in store for the reader who wants to acquaint himself or herself with the man and writer known as Karel Capek. Karel Capek deserves a wide, even universal readership, particularly in this "age of transitions" (Newt Gingrich-speak)(see Capek's "War of the Newts," ha!) to a so-called "post-democratic world" where totalitarian regimes now are led by (foundation) men in suits with smiling faces rather than by men in military uniforms as in Karel Capek's day. Karel Capek believed in the heart, humor and intelligence of ordinary people; he believed in critical thinking; and he believed in freedom to his very last breath. He wrote fairy tales, plays, literary novels as well as science fiction and journalism. He was every inch a man and writer existing to warn the people about the dangers of technology, dogmatism, propaganda, authoritarianism, and war while showing what fun and kindness and beauty there is in the world and in people, too. This world, now, needs his writings more than ever as what Karel Capek warned his readers about is escalating and is more pervasive (and "persuasive") than was true in his own day.