Marafet

Karel Chapek. Biography. Karel Capek - biography, information, personal life Karel Capek biography for children

Karel Capek is an outstanding Czech writer, journalist and translator. Born in Male Svatoniovice in the foothills of the Krkonoš Mountains, in the family of a village doctor. Studied philosophy at the universities of Prague, Berlin, Paris. He received his Ph.D. in 1915 with his thesis "Practicism or the Philosophy of Practical Life". From 1917 he worked as a reporter in the newspaper Narodni Listy, from 1921 until the end of his life in the newspaper Lidove Novyny. Chapek constantly communicated with leading European intellectuals, in 1925-1933. was the first chairman of the Czechoslovak Penklub. He translated the works of G.Apollinaire and G.K.Chesterton. He entered literature together with his brother - artist Joseph with joint collections of stories "Shining Depths and Other Prose" (1916), "Krkonoshe Garden" (1918), written in the style of neoclassicism. The books "God's Punishment" (1917) and "Unpleasant Stories" (1921) are already the fruit of the writer's independent work. Readers' interest was aroused by humorous stories and a number of witty travel essays by Čapek "Letters from Italy" (1923), "Letters from England" (1924), "Excursion to Spain" (1929), "Pictures of Holland" (1932), etc. From the beginning 1920s Chapek acts as a playwright, briefly working at the Vinohrady Theater, where his plays The Robber and From the Life of Insects (1921) were staged. Drama "RrU.R." (1920), in which the word "robot" was first used. In socio-fiction works written in the spirit of dystopia: the play "Makropulos' Remedy" (1924), the novels "Absolute Factory" (1922), "Krakatit" (1924), the writer warned of the catastrophic danger of anti-humanistic tendencies in the development of civilization, even if they are connected with technical progress. The grotesque fantasy novel The War with the Salamanders (1936), the play The White Disease (1937), and others present a satirical denunciation of militarism and fascist racial theories. The drama "Mother" (1938) is imbued with anxiety for the fate of the motherland in connection with the advancing fascism. Chapek has always acted as a defender of democratic ideals and values from the point of view of a "little" person (the story "Gordubal" 1933). On this basis, he struck up friendly relations with the President of the Chechen Republic, T.G. Masaryk. He wrote his memoirs “Conversations with T.G. Masaryk” (1928-1935) about their conversations. He died in Prague, on the eve of the tragic fall of Czechoslovakia, captured by the Nazis.

Used materials of the book: Russian-Slavic calendar for 2005. Authors-compilers: M.Yu. Dostal, V.D. Malyugin, I.V. Churkin. M., 2005.

CHAPEK (Capek) Karel (January 9, 1890, m. Small Svatonevice, Czech Republic - December 25, 1938, Prague) - Czech writer, playwright, public figure and philosopher. 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 his dissertation in Prague on the topic "The Objective Method in Aesthetics as Applied to the Fine Arts", in which he tried to find a way out of the "crisis of aesthetics" by asserting the objectivity of the subject of aesthetic perception. Chapek's work is an attempt to wrest the aesthetic as an object of scientific knowledge from the sphere of influence of subjective irrational philosophy, without encroaching on its epistemological foundations. In general, his philosophical views underwent a turn from neo-Kantianism to Bergsonism (in which he primarily saw a protest against a soulless civilization) and pragmatism. Czapek's desire to philosophically substantiate the possibility of changing the world was also explained by his sympathy for relativism, which he considered "not only skepticism, but also a gratifying prospect." In Čapek's stories (the collections The Crucifixion, 1917, Painful Stories, 1917-18), the metaphysical problem of finding the meaning of life is intertwined with the roughly concrete realities of reality. The writer comes to the idea of a plurality of truths (“everyone is right in his own way”) as a way to universal reconciliation, but reality pushes him to recognize the social determinism of human feelings and actions - the optimistic philosophy of pragmatism recedes before real life. In the drama "R. U.R." (1920) Czapek depicts the conflict between a man and a machine he has designed (“a robot”, a concept coined by the writer), which inevitably leads to the degeneration of people who have stopped working. The play The Makropulos Remedy (Vёс Makropulos, 1922) is dedicated to the eternal struggle of life with death, the search for a recipe for immortality. At this time, defined by Chapek as a period of "criticism of social values", his attention is focused on the contradictions of technological progress (the novels "The Factory of the Absolute" (Tovarna pa absolution, 1922), "Krakatit" (Krakatit, 1924)).

Rejecting strife and violence, Capek argues that any attempt to rebuild society will lead to even worse results. The contradiction between the feeling of the need for change and the fear of them pervaded all his work. The collections Stories from One Pocket and Stories from Another Pocket (1923) carry echoes of relativistic moral ideas. In the 1930s Capek tries to find support in the mind, protecting it from the hegemony of the irrational, speaking out against the cult of the subconscious (the novels "Gordubal" - Hordubal, 1932, "Meteor" - Povetron, 1934 and "Ordinary Life" - Obycejny zivot, 1934). The writer actively participates in the philosophical discussions of those years: at congresses in Prague (1934), Nice (1936), Budapest (1937), PEN club meetings in Paris (1937), defends the idea of universal philosophy and freedom of criticism, calls on peoples to unite against fascism. The pamphlet novel "War with the Salamanders" (Valka z mloky, 1935) is the pinnacle of Čapek's work and a masterpiece of European anti-fascist literature.

Literature: Bernstein I. A. Karel Chapek. Creative way. M., 1969; Nikolsky S. V. Karel Capek - science fiction writer and satirist. M., 1973; Malevich O. M. Karel Chapek: a critical biographical essay. M., 1989.

M. N. Arkhipova

New Philosophical Encyclopedia. In four volumes. / Institute of Philosophy RAS. Scientific ed. advice: V.S. Stepin, A.A. Huseynov, G.Yu. Semigin. M., Thought, 2010, vol. IV, p. 341-342.

Karel Capek (01/09/1890, Male Svatoniovice - 12/25/1938, Prague), Czech writer. He graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Prague (1915). Published since 1907. Most of the early stories of 1908-1913 (included in the collections "Krakonos' Garden", 1918; "Shining Depths", 1916) were written jointly with his brother J. Capek.

The tragic events of the First World War of 1914-1918 determined Chapek's intense search for a criterion of truth, his reflections on philosophical problems and his desire to discover the source of the contradictions of life: the collections of short stories The Crucifixion (1917), Painful Stories (1921), close to expressionism. However, these searches coincided with the influence on the writer of the philosophy of pragmatism and relativism, ideas about the "plurality" of truths ("everyone is right in his own way"). Not accepting the revolutionary struggle, Capek leaned towards moral and ethical humanism. Many of his works, including the lyrical comedy The Robber (1920), are constructed as a juxtaposition of several "truths"; Chapek thinks, as it were, simultaneously with several options, retaining, however, his ethical ideal.

Chapek became world-famous for social fiction works (the dramas "R.U.R.", 1920, about the uprising of robots; the word "robot" was coined by Chapek; "The Makropulos Remedy", 1922; novels "Absolute Factory", 1922, and "Krakatit", 1924) . The science-fiction assumption about a discovery or invention that can quickly change the conditions of human life serves to build a kind of mental socio-philosophical experiment, the creation of artificial circumstances in which certain philosophical problems and trends of modern life appear with particular clarity. This means that criticism of inhumanity, militarism, and the church takes its place, but the spontaneous nature of bourgeois socio-economic processes is absolutized by Chapek as a feature of the development of mankind in general. Dramas and novels by Čapek are in the nature of ironic and satirical utopias - warnings about the catastrophic potential contained in the social and international conflict of modern life, and about the danger of dehumanizing tendencies. Along with the realistic tendency in Čapek, the predeterminedness of philosophical theses sometimes affects.

In the early 1920s, Chapek created the travel essays Letters from Italy (1923) and Letters from England (1924), etc.

In the second half of the 1920s - early 1930s, Chapek became close to T.G. Masaryk; with the strengthening of bourgeois-democratic illusions in the mind of the writer, crisis phenomena are growing in his work (the play by the Chapekov brothers "Adam the Creator", 1927). Capek temporarily retreats from the big social and political problems and conflicts; writes mainly humorous works of small genres (collections "Stories from one pocket", "Stories from another pocket", both - 1929). Philosophical and humorous rethinking of famous biblical stories is the book "Apocrypha" (1932).

The exacerbation of social contradictions and the "animal doctrine" of fascism revealed to Chapek the inconsistency of the thesis "everyone is right in his own way." The philosophical overcoming of relativism was reflected in the trilogy "Gordubal" (1933), "Meteor", "Ordinary Life" (both - 1934). Faced with the threat of a new military danger, Chapek comes to active anti-fascist speeches, to criticism of the ruling circles of Czechoslovakia: he openly expresses sympathy for the USSR. The pinnacle of Chapek's work is the novel War with the Salamanders (1936), in which his traditional protest against the dehumanization of human relations translates into a satire on the life of bourgeois society, militarism, racial theory and the politics of fascism. The novel combines the features of a mystified science fiction genre, a zoological parable, a social utopia, a political pamphlet and is full of parodic forms. The anti-fascist and anti-war orientation and the search for the ideal of a "whole person" capable of fighting determined the content of the drama "White Disease" (1937), the story "The First Rescue" (1937), the last play by Chapek "Mother" (1938).

Chapek's experiences in connection with the Munich Agreement of 1938 and the harassment to which he was subjected by fascist and pro-fascist elements during the period of the "second republic" aggravated the writer's illness, hastening his death. Čapek's work has had a significant impact on the development of modern social fiction and has been a significant contribution to the world of classical literature. In Czechoslovakia, there are two Čapek museums: the country house-museum "On Strzhi" and the memorial museum in the writer's homeland.

Karel Capek(Karel Čapek; January 9, 1890 - December 25, 1938) - one of the most famous Czech writers of the XX century, prose writer and playwright.

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"), "War with 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.

Biography

Karel Capek was born on January 9, 1890 in Male Svatonewice near Trutnov, Austria-Hungary (now the Czech Republic), to Antonin Capek; 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.

In July of the same year, the family moved to Upice, where Antonín 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 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 paper. 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) about The 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 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 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 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-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" - price, A robota means "penal servitude", "hard work", "corvée").

Czech writer, prose writer and playwright, translator, science fiction writer

short biography

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 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. 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 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 paper. 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.

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 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).

Envelope from the series "Workers of World Culture" with a portrait of the writer. Russian Post, 2015, (CFA [ITC "Marka"] No. 267)

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 manor 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 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 artificial people a Slovak word that has 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 Karel Capek's play The Makropulos Affair, the Czech composer Leoš Janáček composed an opera of the same name, which premiered on December 18, 1926 at the National Theater in 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 the 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.

Categories: Tags:

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, defending a dissertation in Prague on the topic "The Objective Method in Aesthetics as Applied to the Fine Arts."

By the time of his studies are his first literary experiments - first in poetry, then in prose. In 1912, Karel and his brother Josef (later a well-known writer and avant-garde artist) published the first book of short stories - "Garden of the Krkonoš".

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 HG Wells and Bernard Shaw. Returning to Prague, Capek completed the plays "From the Life of Insects" (1921) and "The Makropulos Remedy" (1922). They were translated into foreign languages, European fame came to the writer.

In 1922-1923, Chapek made a great trip to 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 Ordinary 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 of ironic detective stories "Stories from one pocket" and "Stories from another pocket" (both - 1929), a collection of humorously rethought biblical 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").

(1890-1938) Czech writer

Karel Capek was born in the small town of Malé Svatonevice in the northwest of the Czech Republic. His father served as a village doctor, the writer's mother, Bozena Chapkova, received a good education, knew several foreign languages, and played the piano.

Karel was the youngest child. All the children were distinguished by some kind of talent: sister Elena inherited her mother's musical abilities, brother Joseph turned out to be a gifted artist, and Karel began writing poetry in the second grade.

In order to educate the children, the father moved the family to Hradec Kralove, where Karel entered the gymnasium and soon became the best student. In the sixth grade, together with his brother, he organized a secret student society, they wrote patriotic appeals and scattered them on the street. When the conspiratorial circle was discovered, Karel was expelled from the gymnasium with a wolf ticket. But the father managed to get the boy to complete his education in Brno, where his aunt lived. Karel lived with her for two years, graduated from high school and decided to become a journalist.

In the summer of 1907, the Čapek family moved to Prague, as the father got a job as a city doctor there. Karel and his brother entered the Charles University. From the second year, Karel begins to collaborate in newspapers, publishes reviews and essays on city life. He wrote them together with his brother, and they came out signed "Brothers Cape". Often Joseph illustrated his brother's stories.

Every summer, the brothers traveled around the Czech Republic or Germany, describing their experiences in essays and stories. Having published essays in a separate book, they went to Paris, where Joseph talked with artists, and Karel Capek listened to lectures at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Sorbonne. To earn a living, the brothers regularly sent their essays and stories to the Prague newspapers. Subsequently, they published their works in the collection "Gardens of the Giant Mountains". It was a collection of lyrical prose, aphorisms and epigrams.

Returning to Prague, Karel completes his education with a bachelor's degree in journalism. But he could not find a job in his specialty, so he had to change many professions: a librarian, tutor, traveling correspondent. Only in 1917 Karel Capek became the editor of the largest Czech newspaper Narodny Listy. Having received a permanent job, he gains financial independence and gets the opportunity to quietly engage in literary work.

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 premiere of the fantastic play "Rur" took place on the stage of the National Theater, the characters of which Karel 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 the mechanical man. The play "Rur" was translated into English, it successfully went on the stage of one of the London theaters.

While working for the theatre, Karel Capek met a young actress O. Shenplugova. Soon he proposed to her, but the wedding did not take place, because the doctors discovered that the writer had pulmonary tuberculosis. By that time, his mother had died, and Karel settled with his father.

In 1921, Karel Capek went to England. During the trip, he met the leading English writers HG Wells and Bernard Shaw. Returning to Prague, Capek completes the plays The Makropulos Remedy and From the Life of Insects. They are translated into foreign languages, and European fame finally comes to him.

In 1922-1923, Karel Capek made a great trip around Europe, visiting France and Italy. Returning to Prague, he publishes new collections of essays "Italian Letters" and "English Letters". In them, in an easy ironic manner, he talks with the reader about the current problems of our time.

In 1924, a major work of the writer was published - the novel "The Factory of the Absolute", in which he tells in the form of a utopia about the life of a paramilitary society, in a hidden form exposing the processes that took place in pre-war Europe. In his second novel, Krakatit (1925), Karel Capek reflects on the consequences of excessive militarization.

In 1932, doctors concluded that the writer had completely recovered from tuberculosis. A few months later he married O. Shenplugova.

Gradually, Karel Capek is recognized as a leading Czech writer, he enters the inner circle of President T. Masaryk, and becomes the unspoken leader of the anti-fascist Czech intelligentsia.

In the early thirties, Capek released a trilogy consisting of the novels Gordubal, Meteor and Ordinary Life. At the same time, he publishes the essays "Conversations with Masaryk" in two volumes, where he acts as a passionate supporter of a democratic society and a staunch opponent of nationalism and fascism. The books were almost immediately translated into the main European languages, however, the German authorities put them on the list of banned books and officially banned Capek from entering the country. However, the writer continues to travel around Europe, he walks all over Spain and Holland. Karel Capek also visited the Scandinavian countries. From each trip, he brings material for new essays that appear on the pages of the Narodny Listy newspaper.

1936 saw the peak of Čapek's popularity. After the release of the novel "The War with the Salamanders" he becomes the most widely read Czech writer in the world. The success of the book was due to the fact that in the genre of fiction, Karel Capek spoke about the danger that wars, nationalism and irresponsible attitude towards the ecology of the planet bring to people. Following the "War with the Salamanders", the writer creates several plays on anti-war themes: "White Disease", "Mother".

Intensive work exacerbated the disease, Čapek re-discovers pulmonary tuberculosis. But he still continues to write and engage in social activities. In 1935, he convenes a congress of anti-fascist writers. In 1937, he left his job in the newspaper, continuing to publish stories, essays and feuilletons about contemporary events.

The disease inexorably drains his strength, but the writer begins work on a new novel, The Life and Works of the Composer Foltyn. Karel Capek wanted to show the tragedy of an artist who gave his talent to the service of fascism. However, he did not have time to complete the work: on Christmas Eve 1938, Karel Capek suddenly died of a heart attack.