Hostname: page-component-7bb8b95d7b-qxsvm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-09-18T18:12:19.946Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Karel Čapek's Apocrypha and Franz Kafka's Parables

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2019

George Gibian
George Gibian*
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Russian and English, Smith College
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Franz Kafka (1883-1924), who wrote in German, left the vast majority of his works unpublished, many of them even unfinished, and was known only to a narrow literary circle when he died. Karel Capek (1890-1938), writing in Czech, published numerous works and was famous both in Czechoslovakia and abroad during his lifetime. Kafka's reputation has grown since his death, however, as his works continued to be published posthumously, and the world in the era of Hitler and World War II found them engrossing and relevant.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Slavic and East European Review , Volume 18 , Issue 2 , April 1959 , pp. 238 - 247
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1959

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Johannes Urzidil wrote in a personal letter to me: “I met Kafka often and Čapek repeatedly but I do not recall any statement of the two writers about each other. I certainly would if they had made any. In Kafka's diaries no mention occurs of any of the contemporary Czech writers or artists although I remember having had occasional small conversations with Kafka about some of them who were my acquaintances. And often enough at our coffeehouse table, in the presence of Kafka, Czech modern writers were dis- cussed, especially by their translators Otto Pick, Pavel Eisner, and Rudolf Fuchs. These conversations, however, were focused mostly upon Peter Bezruc and Otokar Bfezina. A sort of a glass-wall existed even between the most liberal Czechs and Germans. But, to tell the truth, I have to say that this glass-wall was kept up more by the Czech authors who separated themselves rather eagerly and did very rarely take notice of their German colleagues. The Germans, on the other hand, very fervently and with real love translated the Czechs and wrote about them, for ex. the above mentioned three translators and in addition Max Brod, Franz Werfel, and myself.” Kafka read, wrote, and spoke Czech fairly well.

2 All quotations are my translations from Karel Čapek, Kniha apokryju (Prague, 1947), and Ratolest a vavřín (Prague, 1947), and Franz Kafka, Beschreibung eines Kampjes (Gesammelte Schriften, vol. V) (Prague, 1936). Page references in the text are to the appropriate one of these three volumes.

3 The hundreds of brief “fables” in Čapek's Bajky a podpovídky (Prague, 1946) exploit the same idea. They are the reflections of insects, plants, minerals, etc., each of which is quite certain of the correctness of his own opinions, which are being satirized by Čapek as narrow and self-centered. Čapek's own reaction is delight in the variety of the phenomena of life. In “Weeds,” for example, he lists dozens of different kinds of plants’ roots and concludes: “You see, there is as great riches underground as on earth” (p. 16).

4 Ratolest a vavřín, pp. 270-71.

5 Ibid., p. 342.

6 Janouch, Gustav, Gesprache mit Kafka (Frankfurt a.M., 1951), p. 25Google Scholar.

7 Masaryk on Thought and Life (London, 1938), p. 11.Google Scholar

8 Brod, Max, Franz Kqfkas Glauben und Lehre (Winterthur, 1948), p. 99 Google Scholar.