PRAGUE, Dec 25 - Karel Capek, one of Czecho-Slovakia's most prominent authors, died of influenza here today at the age of 48. Mr. Capek was an exponent of the modern Czech literature and politically he adhered to the Benes camp and thus fell in disgrace with the new regime. Extremist newspapers attacked him for his alleged subversive activities. He was particularly famous for his brilliant descriptive tales as well as his short stories.
Mr. Capek was known as the man who put the word "robot" into the popular language of the Western World. His play "R. U. R." (Rossum's Universal Robots), finished in 1920, at the beginning of his career as a dramatist, first produced on the New York stage in 1922, won him instant recognition in America and introduced him also to a British public which likewise never forsook him.
He wrote "R. U. R." as a genial satire of the mechanical man. The play revolved around the theme that one day the automaton representing the techical perfection of the Western civilization would arise and annihilate its creators. Paradoxically, Mr. Capek wrote it as a protest against the progress of Americanization and its technological culture in Europe, although he himself had played a leading part in introducing Anglo-American philosophy of pragmatism and American literature, together with French poetry, to the literary world of the old Austro-Hungarian Empire.
But if Mr. Capek appealed to the post-war misgivings of American audiences, he also kindled their hopes of progress by mechanization in a day when the airplane and the radio were at the threshold of conquest of the popular imagination and when the silent movies were yet to give way to the sound film - the latter, strangely, the medium in which "R. U. R." scored its wildest success in the 1934-1935 season.
People seemed so ready to welcome the robots whose appearance he feared so much that Mr. Capek found it necessary to publish, in 1926, a vigorous indictment of Americanization in The New York Times Magazine. Post-war Europe had not yet lost its new consciousness of America and things American, which were still a fad in that late day. To Mr. Capek's charge that Americans seemed more interested in the size of things than in the soul of things, Dr. Glenn Frank replied in a subsequent article that Americans believed they will gain leisure for spiritual things by developing their machine civilization, and the controversy ended without resolving the issue.
"R. U. R." was the play Mr. Capek cared least for and it was a fact that its popularity tended to obscure the playwright's other work which, since he was one of Europe's most prolific men of letters and not the least versatile among his collegues, was voluminous.
He was born in Male Syatonovice, Bohemia, on Jan. 9, 1890, the son of a physician. He was educated at the Caroline University, Prague, Berlin and the Sorbonne, Paris, taking his doctorate in philosophy. The war was underway before he completed his studies in 1915, but he had already started writing as a student.
With his brother, Joseph - they worked in collaboration then - Mr. Capek turned to short stories, collections of which appeared in his Giant's Garden and his Radiant Depths, and in a volume entirely his own, Crossways. They found a circle of readers, justifying publication of the collections in 1918, but it was not a large one. By that time he had become better known as the translator of an Anthology of French Poetry and as the author of Pragmatism.
During that period - "the time of national persecution in Austria," as he put it - he embraced journalism and became known as an editor of the Lidova Noviny of Brno, a leading Czech provincial newspaper. A friend of Thomas G. Masaryk, President of the republic, he was an important publicist for the group which attempted to entrench republican federalism in Czecho-Slovakia.
He had written "The Robber," a comedy, in 1918, but it was not until after the war that he devoted himself seriously to the drama. Then he became producer at the Municipal Theatre in Prague and began his series of plays, which were interspersed with novels that were less popular. As a producer he presented Shelley's "Cenci" for the first time.
Mr. Capek followed "R. U. R." with "Insect Play" which he retitle "The World We Live in." In 1922 he wrote a novel, Manufacturing the Absolute and a comedy "The Macropulos Affair." The comedy, produced in New York in 1926 with Helen Menken and Fritz Williams in the featured roles, served as the text for Janacek's opera of that name, which scored an immediate success and was played at the Prague National Opera House and the Berlin State Opera.
In 1925 and 1926 he published a group of novels and collections of essays. Adam the Creator, written in collaboration with his brother, appeared in 1929, together with two collections of short stories and a two-volume political work, published here as President Masaryk Tells His Story, a biography of the statesman, and Masaryk on Thought and Life.
During his later years, he published thirteen books, two of them collections of his stories, four collections of his essays, three novels - one was War With the Newts - and three plays. Of the latter, two, "Power and Glory" and "White Malady," anti-war dramas, appeared last year, and the other, "The Mother," made its appearance this year.
Mr. Capek married the former Olga Sheinfugova, Czech actress, in 1935.
Publication Date: Dec 27, 1938
Source: The New York Times editorial
Page: 16
Sixteen years ago the Theatre Guild produced Karel Capek's "R. U. R." and added the word "robot" to American language. Now Capek is dead of influenza in Prague at the age of 48. Holding with former President Benes and with the democratic ideals which were permitted to prevail in Czecho-Slovakia prior to last October, he died, as the dispatch says, "in disgrace with the new regime." "R. U. R." was not his favorite among his plays, but whether he willed it or not he will be remembered for it.
One thumbs the text of the old melo-drama (for sixteen years is a great age in the modern theatre) and one find that it stands the test of application to new conditions. At the end of Capek's second act a dangerous revolt has broken out among the robots. The manager of the robot factory announces a new policy:
"There won't be Universal Robots any more. We'll establish a factory in every country, in every State... Each of these factories will produce Robots of a different color, a different language. They'll be complete starngers to each other. They'll never be able to understand each other. Then we'll egg them on a little in the matter of misunderstanding and the result will be that for ages to come every Robot will hate every other Robot of a different factory make."
One could interpret these words in the hackneyed Marxian sense. But one may also see in them the more up-to-date picture of modern dictators manufacturing soldiers in their own various robot factories. The experiment in the play did not succeed - a moral which may or may not have a meaning.
Publication Date: Dec 30, 1938
Source: The New York Times
Page: 16
PRAGUE, Dec 29 - Karel Capek's funeral today in Sts. Peter and Paul Church, situated within the precincts of the old fortress Vysehrad, was attended by representatives of the government, both houses of Parliament, the army and persons prominent in literature, art and the theatre.
M. Hacha sent a large wreath and a deputation of miners brought flowers. A miner from Klando pronounced the funeral oration.
The robot play "R. U. R.," written by Capek in 1921, is being produced in his memory by the National Theatre, from which mourning banners were flown today.