In the town of Small Svatonevice, Czech Republic.
In 1907 he entered the Faculty of Philosophy at Charles University in Prague. He spent more than a year in Paris, attending lectures at the Sorbonne. In 1915 he received a bachelor's degree, having defended a dissertation in Prague on the topic "The objective method in aesthetics in relation to fine arts".
During his studies, his first literary experiments first in poetry, then in prose. In 1912, Karel and his brother Josef (later famous writer and avant-garde artist) published the first book of short stories - "Garden of the Giant Mountains".
During the First World War, Karel Capek worked as an educator in the house of Count Lazhansky, then worked as a journalist in the newspapers Narodni listy and Lidove noviny.
All-Czech fame for Karel Capek was brought by a masterful translation in 1919 of Guillaume Apollinaire's poem "The Zone" - a kind of manifesto for a new generation of poets.
In 1920 he completed his first play, The Robber, and offered it to the National Theatre. The play was accepted, and she went on stage for several years. In the same year, the fantasy play "R.U.R." premiered on the stage of the National Theatre, in which Capek made robots for the first time in world literature. The word "robot" invented by him entered the lexicon of the century and became the international name for a mechanical man.
In 1921, Chapek went on a trip to England, during which he met the leading English writers H. G. Wells and Bernard Shaw. Returning to Prague, Capek completed the plays From the Life of Insects (1921) and The Makropulos Remedy (1922). They have been translated into foreign languages, European fame came to the writer.
In 1922-1923, Capek made big Adventure Europe, visited France and Italy. Returning to Prague, he published collections of essays Italian Letters (1923) and English letters" (1924).
In 1924, the novel "The Factory of the Absolute" was published, in which the writer, in the form of a utopia, spoke about the life of a paramilitary society.
In his second novel, Krakatit (1925), Capek reflected on the consequences of excessive militarization.
In the early thirties, Capek released a trilogy consisting of the novels "Gordubal" (1933), "Meteor" (1934) and " Usual life" (1935).
The writer continued to travel around Europe, bringing material for new essays from each trip. In the genre of humorous travel diaries, Postcards from Holland (1932) and Journey to the North (1936) were published.
After the release of the novel "The War with the Salamanders" (1935), Karel Capek became the most widely read Czech writer in the world. The success of the book was due to the fact that in the fantasy genre, Capek spoke about the danger that war, nationalism and irresponsible attitude to the ecology of the planet bring to people. Following the "War with the Salamanders" the writer created several plays on anti-war themes - "White Disease" (1937), "Mother" (1938).
In addition to plays and novels, Chapek owns cycles ironic detectives Tales from One Pocket and Tales from Another Pocket (both 1929), a collection of humorously reimagined Bible and literary plots"Apocrypha" (1932), cycles of comic miniatures "The Year of the Gardener" (1929), "Dashenka" (1932), "How It's Done" (1938).
Capek became a biographer of the first president of Czechoslovakia, Tomas Masaryk, who was his personal friend and interlocutor for many years (books "Conversations with TGM" and "Silence with TGM").
The writer was a staunch anti-fascist. In 1935 he took part in the International Anti-Fascist Congress of Writers in Paris.
Capek was the founder and first chairman of the Czechoslovak PEN Club (1925-1933), a member of the League of Nations Committee on Literature and Art (since 1931). In 1935 he was nominated for President of International PEN by HG Wells, its then President, but resigned due to illness.
Karel Capek died on December 25, 1938 in Prague. Buried at memorial cemetery in Vysehrad.
The material was prepared on the basis of information from open sources
Karel Capek(Czech Karel Čapek; January 9, 1890, Male Svatonevice - December 25, 1938, Prague) - Czech writer, prose writer and playwright, translator, science fiction. A classic of Czech literature of the 20th century.
Author of the famous plays "Makropoulos' Remedy" ( Vec Makropulos, 1922), "Mother" ( matka, 1938), R.U.R. ( Rossumovi Univerzalni Roboti, 1920), novels "Absolute Factory" ( Tovarna na absolutno, 1922), "Krakatit" ( Krakatit, 1922), Gordubal ( Hordubal, 1933), "Meteor" ( Povetron, 1934), " Ordinary life» ( Obyčejny život, 1934; the last three form the so-called. "Philosophical Trilogy"), "The War with the Salamanders" ( Valka s mloky, 1936), "First rescue" ( Prvni parta, 1937), "The life and work of the composer Foltyn" ( Zivot a dilo skladatele Foltyna, 1939, not completed), as well as many stories, essays, feuilletons, fairy tales, essays and travel notes. Translator of modern French poetry.
Karel Capek was born on January 9, 1890 in Male Svatoniovice near Trutnov, Austria-Hungary (now the Czech Republic), the son of a physician Antonin Capek (1855-1929); he came third and last child in family. It was a resort town in which the mining industry was also developed. Here Karel's father worked as a doctor at resorts and mountain mines. His mother Bozena Chapkova (1866-1924) collected Slovak folklore. Čapek's older brother, Josef (1887-1945) was an artist and writer. Chapkov's elder sister, Gelena (1886-1961) - writer, memoirist.
In July of the same year, the family moved to Upice, where Antonin Capek opened his own practice. Upice was a rapidly expanding artisan town; The Chapeks lived surrounded by shoemakers, blacksmiths and masons, often visiting their grandparents Karel, who were farmers. Childhood memories were reflected in the work of Chapek: he often depicted in his works ordinary, ordinary people.
Capek began writing at the age of fourteen. His early works such as "Simple Motifs", "Fairy Stories" were published in the local newspaper weeks. In 1908-1913 he wrote in collaboration with his brother Joseph. Later, these stories were included in the collections The Garden of Krakonos (1918) and Shining Depths (1916). As a student, he took an active part in the publication of a literary almanac ( Almanac 1914). At the same time, Chapek is interested in painting, especially cubism. His brother introduced him to many representatives of Czech modernism, Karel was imbued with their ideas and devoted a number of articles to modernism in painting.
He studied at the gymnasium in Hradec Kralove (1901-1905), then moved to Brno to his sister, where he lived for two years. From here he moved to Prague, where he continued his studies. In 1915 he received his Ph.D. from the Charles University with a thesis on "The Objective Method in Aesthetics as Applied to the Fine Arts." He also studied philosophy at the universities of Berlin and Paris.
Due to health reasons, he was not drafted into the army and a short time worked as a tutor in the family of Count Lazhansky. In the autumn of 1917 he began working as a journalist and critic in a newspaper. National list("National newspaper"), from 1921 until his death he worked as a journalist and cultural and political editor in the newspaper Lidove new("People's newspaper"). In 1921-1923 he was a playwright at the Prague Theater in Vinohrady ( Divadlo na Vinohradech). The writer and actress of the same theater, Olga Shainpflyugova, was his acquaintance and close friend from 1920 (they married in 1935).
Actively engaged in literature since 1916 (collection of stories "Shining Depths", co-authored with brother Josef). very different in nature prose works demonstrate a brilliant mastery of the art of realistic description, subtle humor and the gift of artistic foresight (typical examples are the dystopias "Factory of the Absolute", "Krakatit" and "War with the Salamanders"). Even during his lifetime, he received wide recognition both in Czechoslovakia and abroad: he was a nominee Nobel Prize in Literature in 1936, founder and first chairman of the Czechoslovak PEN Club (in 1925-1933), member of the League of Nations Committee on Literature and Art (since 1931); in 1935 he was nominated for the position of President of the International PEN Club by G. Wells, its then president (resigned due to illness). In addition to literature and journalism, he gained fame as an amateur photographer (his book of photographs "Dashenka, or the Life of a Puppy" was the most published in interwar Czechoslovakia).
Envelope from the series "Workers of World Culture" with a portrait of the writer. Russian Post, 2015, (CFA [ITC "Marka"] No. 267)
Capek, a staunch anti-fascist whose poor health was undermined by the events of 1938 (the Munich Pact), died of bilateral pneumonia on December 25, 1938, resulting from work to eliminate the flood shortly before the complete German occupation of Czechoslovakia.
Before that, he found himself in virtual complete political and personal isolation, after he refused to leave the country after the resignation and emigration of its then president, Edvard Beneš. He was buried at the memorial cemetery in Vysehrad. After his death, the Gestapo came for the writer. His archive was hidden by his widow, Olga Shainpflugova, in the garden of the Strzh estate in the village of Stara Gut (near the town of Dobrish, 35 km south of Prague), where the writer spent the last three years of his life, and was discovered after the war.
Creativity Chapek, who was a personal friend and long-term interlocutor of T. G. Masaryk, promoted many of his ideas (the books "Conversations with T. G. Masaryk" and "Silence with T. G. Masaryk") and did not show much sympathy for socialism ( the well-known article “Why I am not a communist”), in communist Czechoslovakia at first it was banned, but from the 1950s and 1960s it began to be actively published and studied again.
Karl Capek's brother Josef (died of typhus in the German concentration camp Bergen-Belsen) is the inventor of the word "robot". Karel, on the other hand, put into action the plays "R.U.R." artificially created people and called them "laboratories", from Latin word labor ("work"). But the author did not like this name, and, after conferring with his brother, the artist who designed the scenery for the performance, he decided to name these artificial people Slovak word with the same meaning (in Czech "work" - price, A robota means "penal servitude", "hard work", "corvée").
Unlike numerous science fiction writers, who then used the word "robot" to refer to humanoid inanimate mechanisms, Karel Capek called this word not machines, but living people made of flesh and blood, only created in a special factory.
Music
- In motion picture Loupežnik(1931, directed by Josef Kodicek, songs by the composer Otakar Jeremias with lyrics by Karel Capek are heard.
- Based on the play by Karel Capek "The Makropulos Affair", the Czech composer Leoš Janáček composed opera of the same name, which premiered on December 18, 1926 in National theater in the city of Brno.
- Composer Georgy Garanyan composed the music for the musical film "The Recipe for Her Youth" (dir. Evgeny Ginzburg, screenplay Alexander Adabashyan) based on Karel Capek's play "The Makropulos Remedy"; The premiere of the tape took place on October 10, 1983.
- Composer Vladimir Baskin composed music for the musical "The Secret of Her Youth" (libretto and lyrics by Konstantin Rubinsky), based on play of the same name staged under the direction of director Susanna Tsiryuk on the stage of the Irkutsk musical theater named after N. M. Zagursky; premiered on April 6, 2015.
When we are talking about Czech literature, the first thing that comes to mind is the name of such an author as Karel Capek. Readers all over the world know his fantasy stories, philosophical and psychological works. short biography Czech writer - the topic of the article.
Life and art
Karel Capek was born into a doctor's family in 1890. The writer's childhood passed not in a bohemian environment, but in an ordinary one. The Chapek family was surrounded by artisans and farmers. The prose writer and playwright reflected the children's impression in his work, which mainly depicts the life of ordinary people. However, the work of this author is quite multifaceted. Karel Capek wrote short stories, novels, travel notes, and fantastic works. And it is with his light hand science fiction writers began to use in literary creativity the word "robot", denoting a mechanism created in human likeness.
After graduating from high school, Karel Capek entered the capital's university. And in 1915 he received a Ph.D. For many years he worked as a journalist, and in 1921-1923. - playwright in the Prague theater.
Chapek began composing as a teenager. But the early creations were published much later. Fame brought to the writer dramatic works. The most famous of them is the comedy "From the Life of Insects".
Philosopher and prose writer
The formation of Chapek's worldview took place under the influence of significant historical events. When he graduated from the university, the First World War. The young writer thought about the causes of bloody conflicts. He was not indifferent to the development of human civilization.
Čapek's work developed especially rapidly in the thirties of the last century. The economic crisis and the threat of new bloodshed were the problems that most occupied the writer's thoughts. Chapek became a member of the anti-fascist movement. A special place in his works was occupied by the theme of war.
The writer did not live to see the liberation of Czechoslovakia from the Nazis. He died in 1938. In those years, according to eyewitnesses, few believed in the overthrow of the fascist dictatorship. One of the writers and public figures who had no doubts about the defeat of the policy of violence was Karel Capek.
Books
Famous works of the Czech writer - "Krakatit", "Mother", "Factory of the Absolute". The pinnacle of Čapek's work is considered to be the novel Wars with the Newts. This work belongs to the most powerful anti-fascist books of the pre-war period. Capek wrote "War with the Salamanders" two years before his death. According to critics, the novel combines all the best that is in the work of the Czech author. The work has an original idea, satirical grotesqueness, deep philosophical overtones.
A lot of stories, feuilletons, essays were written by Karel Capek. Fairy tales belonging to his pen - "The Postman's Tale", "About Fox", "Bird's Tale" and many others. According to the memoirs of friends and relatives, Capek repeatedly said that he would die at the age of sixty. The prediction didn't come true. The writer passed away at the age of forty-eight. But during his relatively short life, he created an incredible number of works, subsequently translated into all European languages. Most of from his books was filmed.
Karel Capek was born on January 9, 1890 in Male Svatonovice near Trutnov, Austria-Hungary (now the Czech Republic), in the family of a factory doctor Antonin Capek. He studied at the gymnasium in Hradec-Králové, then in Prague, in 1915 he received a doctorate in philosophy from Charles University, and also studied philosophy at universities in Berlin and Paris. For health reasons, he was not drafted into the army and for a short time worked as a tutor in the family of Count Lazhansky. In the autumn of 1917 he began working as a journalist and critic in the newspaper Narodni listy ("National Newspaper"), from 1921 until his death he worked as a journalist and cultural and political editor in the newspaper Lidove noviny ("People's Newspaper"). In 1921-1923 he was a playwright at the Prague Theater in Vinohrady (Divadlo na Vinohradech). The writer and actress of the same theater, Olga Shainpflugova, was his acquaintance and close friend from 1920 (they married in 1935).
Actively engaged in literature since 1916 (collection of stories "Shining Depths", co-authored with brother Josef). Very different in character, prose works demonstrate a brilliant mastery of the art of realistic description, subtle humor and the gift of artistic foresight (a typical example is the anti-utopia "Factory of the Absolute", "Krakatit" and "War with Salamanders"). During his lifetime, he received wide recognition both in Czechoslovakia and abroad: he was a nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1936, the founder and first chairman of the Czechoslovak PEN Club (in 1925-1933), a member of the League of Nations Committee on Literature and Art ( since 1931); in 1935 he was nominated for the position of President of the International PEN Club by G. Wells, its then president (resigned due to illness). In addition to literature and journalism, he gained fame as an amateur photographer (his book of photographs "Dashenka, or the Life of a Puppy" was the most published in interwar Czechoslovakia).
Capek, a staunch anti-fascist whose poor health was undermined by the events of 1938 (the Munich Pact), died of bilateral pneumonia on December 25, 1938, resulting from work to eliminate the flood shortly before the complete German occupation of Czechoslovakia.
Before that, he found himself in virtual complete political and personal isolation, after he refused to leave the country after the resignation and emigration of its then president, Edvard Beneš. He was buried at the memorial cemetery in Vysehrad. His archive was hidden by his widow, Olga Shainpflugova, in the garden of the Strzh estate in the village of Stara Gut (near the town of Dobrish, 35 km south of Prague), where the writer spent the last three years of his life, and was discovered after the war. Creativity Chapek, who was a personal friend and long-term interlocutor of T. G. Masaryk, promoted many of his ideas (the books "Conversations with TGM" and "Silence with TGM") and did not show much sympathy for socialism (the well-known article "Why I'm not a communist" ), in communist Czechoslovakia at first it was banned, but since the 1950s and 1960s it has again been actively published and studied.
Karel Capek and his brother and co-author artist Josef (died of typhus in the German concentration camp Bergen-Belsen) are the inventors of the word "robot". Karel put into action the plays "R.U.R." humanoid mechanisms and called them "laboratories", from the Latin word labor ("work"). But the author did not like this name, and, after conferring with his brother, an artist who designed the scenery for the performance, he decided to call these mechanisms a Slovak word that has the same meaning (in Czech, “work” is prace, and robota means “hard labor”, “heavy work", "corvée").
Karel Capek (Czech. Karel Čapek). Born January 9, 1890 in Male Svatoniovice - died December 25, 1938 in Prague. One of the most famous Czech writers of the 20th century, prose writer and playwright, science fiction writer.
Author of famous plays The Makropulos Remedy (Věc Makropulos, 1922), Mother (Matka, 1938), R.U.R. (Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti, 1920), the novels Factory of the Absolute (Továrna na absolutno, 1922), Krakatit (Krakatit, 1922), Gordubal (Hordubal, 1933), Meteor (Povětroň, 1934), Ordinary life” (Obyčejný život, 1934; the last three form the so-called “philosophical trilogy”), “The War with the Salamanders” (Válka s mloky, 1936), “The First Rescue” (První parta, 1937), “The Life and Work of the Composer Foltyn” (Život a dílo skladatele Foltýna, 1939, not completed), as well as many stories, essays, feuilletons, fairy tales, essays and travel notes. Translator of modern French poetry.
Karel Capek was born on January 9, 1890 in Male Svatonewice near Trutnov, Austria-Hungary (now the Czech Republic), the son of Antonin Capek (1855-1929), a physician. He became the third and last child in the family. It was a resort town in which the mining industry was also developed. Here Karel's father worked as a doctor at resorts and mountain mines.
His mother Bozena Chapkova (1866-1924) collected Slovak folklore during her lifetime.
In July of the same year, the family moved to Upice, where Antonin Capek opened his own practice. Upice was a rapidly expanding town of craftsmen. The Chapeks lived surrounded by shoemakers, blacksmiths and masons, often visiting their grandparents Karel, who were farmers. Childhood memories were reflected in the work of Chapek: he often depicted ordinary, ordinary people in his works.
Capek began writing at the age of fourteen. His early works such as "Simple Motifs", "Fairy Stories" were published in the local newspaper Nedele.
In 1908-1913 he wrote in collaboration with his brother Joseph. Later, these stories were included in the collections The Garden of Krakonos (1918) and Shining Depths (1916). As a student, he took an active part in the publication of a literary almanac (Almanac 1914). At the same time, Chapek is interested in painting, especially cubism. His brother introduced him to many representatives of Czech modernism, Karel was imbued with their ideas and devoted a number of articles to modernism in painting.
He studied at the gymnasium in Hradec Kralove (1901-1905), then moved to Brno to his sister, where he lived for two years. From here he moved to Prague, where he continued his studies. In 1915 he received a bachelor's degree from Charles University with a thesis on "The objective method in aesthetics as applied to the fine arts." He also studied philosophy at the universities in Berlin and Paris.
For health reasons, he was not drafted into the army and for a short time worked as a tutor in the family of Count Lazhansky.
In the autumn of 1917 he began working as a journalist and critic for the newspaper Národní listy ("National Newspaper"), from 1921 until his death he worked as a journalist and cultural and political editor for the newspaper Lidové noviny ("People's Newspaper").
In 1921-1923 he was a playwright at the Prague Theater in Vinohrady (Divadlo na Vinohradech). The writer and actress of the same theater, Olga Shainpflyugova, was his acquaintance and close friend from 1920 (they married in 1935).
Actively engaged in literature since 1916 (collection of stories "Shining Depths", co-authored with brother Josef). Very different in character, prose works demonstrate a brilliant mastery of the art of realistic description, subtle humor and the gift of artistic foresight (a typical example is the anti-utopia "Factory of the Absolute", "Krakatit" and "War with Salamanders").
Even during his lifetime, he received wide recognition both in Czechoslovakia and abroad: was a nominee for the 1936 Nobel Prize in Literature, founder and first chairman of the Czechoslovak PEN Club (in 1925-1933), member of the League of Nations Committee on Literature and Art (since 1931); in 1935 he was nominated for the position of president of the International PEN Club, his then president (resigned due to illness). In addition to literature and journalism, he gained fame as an amateur photographer (his book of photographs "Dashenka, or the Life of a Puppy" was the most published in interwar Czechoslovakia).
Capek, a staunch anti-fascist whose poor health was undermined by the events of 1938 (the Munich Pact), died of bilateral pneumonia on December 25, 1938, resulting from work to eliminate the flood shortly before the complete German occupation of Czechoslovakia. Before that, he found himself in virtual complete political and personal isolation, after he refused to leave the country after the resignation and emigration of its then president, Edvard Beneš. He was buried at the memorial cemetery in Vysehrad.
After his death, the Gestapo came for the writer. His archive was hidden by his widow, Olga Shainpflugova, in the garden of the Strzh estate in the village of Stara Gut (near the town of Dobrish, 35 km south of Prague), where the writer spent the last three years of his life, and was discovered after the war.
Creativity Chapek, who was a personal friend and long-term interlocutor of T. G. Masaryk, promoted many of his ideas (the books "Conversations with T. G. Masaryk" and "Silence with T. G. Masaryk") and did not show much sympathy for socialism ( the well-known article “Why I am not a communist”), in communist Czechoslovakia at first it was banned, but from the 1950s and 1960s it began to be actively published and studied again.
Karel Capek and his brother and co-artist Josef(died of typhus in the German concentration camp Bergen-Belsen) are the inventors of the word "robot". Karel put into action the plays "R.U.R." artificially created people and called them "laboratories", from the Latin word labor ("work"). But the author did not like this name, and, after conferring with his brother, the artist who designed the scenery for the performance, he decided to call these artificial people a Slovak word that has the same meaning (in Czech, “work” is práce, and robota means “hard labor”, “ hard work", "corvée").
Unlike numerous science fiction writers, who then used the word "robot" to refer to humanoid inanimate mechanisms, Karel Capek called this word not machines, but living people made of flesh and blood, only created in a special factory.
