Čapek, Josef
Entry updated 16 January 2021. Tagged: Author.
(1887-1945) author and artist born in the former Austria-Hungary of Czech parentage, older brother of Karel Čapek; his pre-World War One career was almost entirely conducted in collaboration with his ultimately more fluent brother, with whom he remained on exceedingly good terms until Karel died in 1938; they often published as Bratří Čapkové ["The Brothers Čapek"], and are warmly portrayed together by David Herter in The Luminous Depths (2008), the second volume of his First Republic Trilogy, where Josef is seen as a significant figure in his own right. After 1920, their collaborative work was restricted to plays: Že života hmyzu (1921; adapted by Nigel Playfair and Clifford Bax from Paul Selver's unpublished trans as And So Ad Infinitum (The Life of the Insects): An Entomological Review 1923 chap UK) [for details see Checklist below and see Karel Čapek]; and Adam stvořitel (1927; trans Dora Round as Adam the Creator: A Comedy in Six Scenes and an Epilogue 1929), a Satire in which God permits Adam – whose totalizing hatred of compromise satirizes contemporary forms of "enlightenment" like Communism – to destroy the world with his "cannon of negation" and to start again. The new world is as "bad" as the old. Josef Čapek died in Belsen. [JC]
Josef Čapek
born Hronov, Kingdom of Bohemia, Austro-Hungarian Empire [now Czech Republic]: 23 March 1887
died Bergen-Belsen, Germany: April 1945
works
- Že života hmyzu (Prague, Czechoslovakia: Aventinum, 1921) with Karel Čapek, writing together as Bratří Čapkové ["The Brothers Čapek"] [play: hb/]
- And So Ad Infinitum: (The Life of the Insects): An Entomological Review, in Three Acts and Prologue and an Epilogue (London: Oxford University Press/Humphrey Milford, 1923) with Karel Čapek [play: chap: adapted by Nigel Playfair and Clifford Bax from Paul Selver's unpublished trans of the above: pb/nonpictorial]
- The World We Live In (New York: Samuel French, 1933) with Karel Čapek [play: chap: vt: trans by Owen Davis of the above (one of several further trans): pb/]
- Adam stvořitel (Prague, Czechoslovakia: Aventinum, 1927) with Karel Čapek, writing together as Bratří Čapkové ["The Brothers Čapek"] [play: hb/]
- Adam the Creator: A Comedy in Six Scenes and an Epilogue (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1929) with Karel Čapek [play: trans by Dora Round of the above: pb/]
links
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