Translating Karel Capek's lesser-known works into English
Link (Thanks, Andrew!)His Final Affairs
The tram clanks and rattles its way uphill towards the Olšanský cemetery.
"Look," a short little man says to a younger chap in a rabbit-fur coat, "Something's being built there; it will be a school or maybe a cinema. You know, I'm really glad I got to see him one last time. 'It's you,' he said. I don't think it really helped him much, but a man must show his friendship. 'I've come again,' I told him, 'but you'll be running off already,' I say, and meanwhile--"
The young chap in the fur coat nodded his head mournfully.
"I took the medal with me, so he would be happy," the little man continued, "and he said, 'My God, is it you?' You see, he recognized me. And I told him, 'Jozef, it will pass.' And he says: "Maňička, give me some of those giblets.' So she gave them to him, and he only took two bites, just pecked at them, but he didn't eat a thing. 'Maňička, give me some of those giblets," the man repeated, touched.
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For a class I was taking a little over a year ago I had to real Capek's The Gardener's Year, which is also illustrated with cartoons by his brother Josef. As I have little interest in gardening I thought it would be a snooze, but thankfully it's written with such humor that it won me over. It's obvious that Capek loved his subject matter, and was able to both do it justice and also savage it mercilessly. As amusing as I found it, I imagine that anyone who actually puts themselves through such trials will find it infinitely more so.
Sad afternote: When the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia in 1938, Capek contracted a fatal bout of double pneumonia, and his brother later died in a concentration camp. There's a certain irony there considering his fame for the modernism and issues of human value in R.U.R., but it's a very black irony.
Thanks, Cory!
LicenseFarm, Capek's great. There's a short piece at the beginning of the book (Philemon...) that approaches The Gardener's Year in style and subject matter. I'd love to do my own take on it. Or any of a number of other works of his.
So little time, so much to do....
But the sadness is present too. One of his columns was posted in the months before his death, ripping into the Great Powers for leaving Czechoslovakia at the mercy of the Nazis, but he's still trying to be optimistic and up for the challenges ahead.
I just walked by the Olšanský cemetery today. Until recently, I too thought that Karel Capek came up with the word robot. According to the following site, it is his brother Josef that should be credited.
http://capek.misto.cz/english/robot.html
I believe, but am not certain, that Alexander Malec is/was also Czech. I _am_ certain that a collection of his short stories, "Extrapolasis", contains the story "10:01 AM", which made such an impression on me 40 years ago that I can cite author and anthology without looking it up.
I suppose I should re-read that story from an adult's viewpoint (rather than a 10-year-old's) to see if I still have the same reaction. But at the time, having fed myself on a diet of Bradbury and Asimov and Clarke and Heinlein, that story was one of the first that exposed me to a little bit of the darker side of SF. Of course, a few years later I found Harlan Ellison's "Dangerous Visions" anthology and then it was all over.