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Biography of Karel Capek
Name: Karel Capek
Birth Date: January 9, 1890
Death Date: December 25, 1938
Place of Birth: Bohemia, Czechoslovakia
Nationality: Czech
Gender: Male
Occupations: novelist, playwright, essayist
Karel Capek
The Czech author Karel Capek (1890-1938) was a noted novelist, playwright, and essayist. He was perhaps the best-known Czech literary figure of the 1920s and 1930s.Born in northeastern Bohemia on Jan. 9, 1890, Karel Capek was the son of a physician. He studied philosophy at the Czech University of Prague, where he was influenced in his thinking by Henri Bergson and by modern American philosophy. In 1914 he earned a doctorate. He remained, except for numerous travels abroad, in Prague until the end of his life. In 1935 he married the well-known actress Olga Scheinpflugóva.Literary WorksCapek's first creative phase (1908-1921) was marked by close collaboration with his brother, Joseph, who later became a distinguished painter. This period in his writing career culminated in two collections of short stories. The central motif of Wayside Crosses (1917) is the mechanism of modern civilization--"Everything that we touch becomes a tool. Even man." The second collection, …showed first 150 words…
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…showed last 150 words…told as far as possible in Masaryk's own words. The first two volumes of this popular work were translated into English as President Masaryk Tells His Story (1934) and Masaryk's Thought and Life (1938).Capek proved to be a bitter foe of dictatorship, attacking it forcefully in his last works written for the stage: Power and Glory (1937; Eng. trans. The White Scourge ) and his last play, The Mother, written under the impact of the Spanish Civil War and the threat of Hitler against Capek's own country. A few weeks after the occupation of Czechoslovakia, Capek died in Prague on Dec. 25, 1938. Further Reading Two monographs on Capek are available in English: William Edward Harkins, Karel Capek (1962), a critical study; and Alexander Matuska, Karel Capek: An Essay (1964; trans. 1964), a biographical and critical survey. A comprehensive source of information is Ivan Klima, The Life and Work of Karel Capek, (2002).Zador, Andras, Karel Capek, Budapest: Gondolat, 1984.
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