(listen to episode on Spotify)
(music: ominous floaty synth)
Karel Čapek biography/non-spoiler discussion
JM:
Hello, this is Chrononauts and we are back. This is part two of our second installment on artificial intelligence and machine life, I suppose you could say. And if you want to listen to some really cool background on EM Forster as well as the really awesome story "The Machine Stops", go to part one of this episode block.
But now we're going to talk about first, and I don't know, I don't know if we'll be doing any other writers from the Czech Republic, but this is our first Czech writer anyway.
Nate:
Yeah, I would like to. I found some paper on the history of Czech and Slovak science fiction, and it really starts to get going after World War II. So I'm not sure how much stuff there is out there from this era, but it would be cool to find more for sure.
JM:
Well, there isn't much, I don't think anyway, but there is, of course, argument to be made for some of Kafka stories, maybe.
Nate:
Right.
JM:
But Kafka did not actually write in Czech, so I guess I'll proceed this by saying, although I am somebody who believes that when you, I guess, speak names that are derived from tongues that you don't know, you at least do your best to try to pronounce everything correctly. I will probably be butchering some of the Czech things here, but I'm also deliberately going to avoid saying too much because, yeah, I just, I don't want to butcher everything. So we'll do our best here when I get into a little bit of the background of our man today.
Karel Čapek, and according to Čapek's biographer Ivan Klíma, there really wasn't any significant prose literature in Czech until the mid-19th century, and very little poetry until the 1830s. Klíma argues that the most significant three early 20th century writers after Jan Neruda in the Czech lands were Jaroslav Hašek, author of "The Good Soldier Švejk", Franz Kafka, who wrote most of his stuff in colloquial German, and Karel Čapek.
Karel Čapek was born in 1890 in a northeastern mining town in Bohemia, Malé Svatoňovice. Apparently, the town was also home to a health spa, a rest cure and all that, nothing like the odors of a vine to bring out the good health in people. Karel was the youngest of three siblings, all of whom were creative individuals in their own right. Their father was the physician for both miners and health seekers alike, and while he may not have been around as much as he could have been, and seems to have neglected his wife somewhat, Karel respected him greatly.
The senior Čapek, being a country doctor, was privy to and exposed his children to all walks of life available to them, from the homes of rich barons to impoverished slaving of workers huts, and Karel and his siblings saw it all. At this time, the nation of Czechoslovakia did not exist, Bohemia being part of Austria-Hungary, but Karel was brought up steeped in Czech folklore and traditions, much of which was fed to him from his father and maternal grandmother.
Čapek suffered from ankylosing spondylitis his entire life. It's a progressive spinal arthritic condition that makes walking extremely difficult, and it prevented him from fully turning his head, and he suffered from debilitating back and joint pains and was generally weakened by this condition, and doctors told him it would only grow worse as he aged. He used a cane, which some thought an affectation, because that wasn't an uncommon one among gentlemen at the time, but it was actually a mobility aid.
Josef was the elder brother, a painter considered to be part of the avant-garde school, and his ideas about art influenced Karel. Josef was also an author in his own right, and composed a few novels of an apparently experimental style, but I don't really know anything about those, but Karel and Josef remained close throughout the former's life, and the two of them collaborated on some early writing projects, as well as studying at the Sorbonne in Paris in the early 1910s together and working on the same newspapers.
Karel had been expelled from high school, reportedly for being part of an underground patriotic society, though later in life he would repudiate most nationalistic sentiments, even in his homeland. And from that point on, he moved all over the place, relocating to Brno, where his sister lived for a time before moving to Prague, where he finished his high school education, and he went to Charles University, the same university as Karl Hans Strobl, probably around the same time, where he majored in philosophy. And he was very influenced by his brothers, and the idea of, I guess, the modern art style, and I'm just going to, for my first quote, because I think it's kind of cool, this is what Čapek wrote in an essay about modern art, when he was a young student, probably in Paris.
"But one day the art lover will come to understand the new art, and then that moment something better and more valuable will fall into his lap. The new art will appeal to him as naturally and inevitably as what he holds dear today, for modern art is not here to be understood, but to be appealing, to be beautiful. Never was art capable of so many nuances and kinds of beauty as now, when the most robust refined beauty fits into the frame of a single point of view. It is as if we were deciphering a system of signs, suddenly what till now were letters turns out to be a personal confession, points of view, and experience."
Karel did illustrate some of his own books later, specifically many of his works, recording his travel experiences in Europe, and his grand work on horticulture, The Gardeners' Year, with drawings described as being witty and fun. Like many of our writers, Karel Čapek was involved with newspapers, getting his first job on a paper in 1917, and continuing to be involved in journalism for the rest of his all too short life, sometimes so say some critics at the expense of his artistic career. Čapek believed strongly in journalism, saying that it helped him polish his writing, and also kept him in touch with the development of the times.
Josef and Karel's first collaborative play was "The Faithful Game of Love." Not considered a masterpiece, but they worked on many together, and Karel worked fast. And all things considered, I think he was actually quite prolific in his 48 years of life, but the First World War changed everything. Karel wrote, "shipwrecked and swept away was the world of the young pre-war Europeans. Swept away was trust, civilized optimism, naive activism, the joyful feeling of cooperation and being part of a community."
Both brothers were saved from the front by physical conditions, Josef by poor eyesight, and Karel by his progressive spinal condition. His dissertation in 1915 marked the official end of his studies and was entitled something like, "The Objective Method in Aesthetics in Relation to the Creative Arts", for which he earned considerable praise. He was always considered an exemplary student, unlike his brother, Josef, who really did seem more the artist type. But Karel didn't really go in much for writing verse, but after the war one of the first tasks he sent himself was the translation of some modern French poetry into Czech. He considered this to be important work.
Čapek's translation was considered hugely successful and trend-setting, with many modern Czech poets writing of the influence of his translation, and it's even considered the spark that began the modern Czech poetry movement. Vítězslav Nezval, a noted surrealist, praised his, "encroachment into poetry as if acknowledging that it wasn't his place, but that he had somehow earned it anyway."
During this time, and just before the end of the war, he was working on his own stories and newspaper items. His first book of short stories was "Wayside Crossings". Čapek considered himself a pragmatist, or was to a point an adherent of pragmatism in the American vein, and he wrote about it at some length and sort of used its tenets for most of his life.
And I thought this was sort of interesting just because I think pragmatism is something that's been a little bit misapprehended and misunderstood in the last several decades. I don't know, maybe the actual philosophical side of it sort of has decreased over time and people just think it's like some form of utilitarianism, I guess, or something like that. But the way Čapek and people of his time describe it wasn't like that at all. It's more like ultimate tolerance and believing only the consequences of people's actions really matter and that you shouldn't be arguing over the stuff that people believe because everybody has their own personal truth. And the only important thing is whether the consequences of those beliefs are harmful or not. I don't know, I can get behind that. I think perhaps even Čapek would admit had he lived a little longer that maybe there's a certain time when the beliefs become really important. But I think he was certainly acknowledging that kind of thing as Europe tore itself apart, which was very significant to him as we'll get into as we continue.
But on October 18, 1918, a new state was created, the Czechoslovak Republic. Karel had spent the end of the war years as a tutor at a Czech duke's castle and writing columns for a nationalist newspaper, and I just have to say the castle thing sounds really cool like apparently he was just staying at this Baron's castle and this guy was like this crazy Czech patriot and he was like I guess tutoring his children or something like that and it just sounds like something out of Master's Hammer like the Jilemnice Occultist or something like that, just like set around the same time.
Nate:
There's certainly no shortage of gorgeous castles in the Czech Republic, I would say.
JM:
Yeah, yeah, that's really cool. But the Czechs and Slovaks gained their independence from Austro-Hungary with understandable jubilation but were soon faced with the reality of the post-war situation, bitter economic hardships, food shortages and endless ideological fighting. There were incursions from the nearby Hungarians and ideological inroads made by the Soviets.
In 1921, Josef was fired from the paper and they moved to Brno and Karel began working for the People's Newspaper or whatever that is in Czech. He stayed till his death a mere 17 years later. So things seemed to calm a little in the young nation in the mid-20s and the Čapek brothers built a large house together and moved in with Josef's family in tow. Karel became a devoted gardener and started writing about that too. Many articles, gardening with a humorous bent, along with his illustrations were published.
He started collecting, he was a fan of folk and ethnic music from all over the world, and bought up many records. He took up photography and also began observing and raising dogs and cats, maybe a source for some of his many animalistic fables and tales. Čapek was a welcoming fellow and hosted regular Friday gatherings of intellectuals, writers and such at his home. These salons were quite simulating and popular, and this is where he cultivated a relationship with first president of the Republic, Tomáš G. Masaryk.
While he wrote significant novels in the early 20s, he began devoting much of his time to journalism and a certain didacticism, a desire to educate the nation was in him, he said. It was not everyone's opinion that Masaryk was a good influence on him. His niece, in her memoirs, said the two men were too much alike and fortified one another's opinions. Perhaps his brother Josef thought the same thing. Masaryk encouraged Čapek away from literature and more towards journalism, a worthy goal, but perhaps less permanent and artistic. And very concerned with the social and political problems of the young nation was our man, Karel.
His three-volume work conversations with Masaryk was an important landmark. He sat with the political leader and they had hours and hours of discussion, with Čapek meticulously taking notes about philosophy and politics and the responsibility of a new democratic state. His relationship with Masaryk can be considered as something of a mixed blessing. He really admired the older man and found him to be an inspiration. His earlier skepticism was reduced somewhat and not everyone was without cynicism. He became known as the castle writer to some, and some attacked him like the critic Václavek, who in 1926 wrote, "He wants to have calm, balance, happiness, and primarily peace and quiet. He gets most angry with those who disturb his peace, no matter how serious their motives. Basically, however, he has taken a positive attitude only toward the meaningless, trivial lives of the bourgeoisie. In his pessimism about civilization, Čapek demonstrates his kinship with the dying bourgeois culture and its feeble vitality, which cannot keep pace with modern times. Čapek's relativism stands in diametrical opposition to the effort of our generation to attain a supra-individual, but nonetheless humane order."
Increasingly, over the next decade, Karel Čapek would face considerable backlash and criticism from both the left and the right, even though he had many admirers whose praise he gratefully cultivated. And it said that he did not take criticism particularly well, and some that was leveled against him was particularly vicious. It was a very political time with extreme ideologies on either side becoming loud and insistent, and Čapek was sort of caught in the middle kind of pleading for tolerance and understanding, and some his stance of disliking revolution and extremity seemed weak and complacent.
He was also a bit of a hypochondriac, often talking of his ill health, putting ill health into his characters. Although no doubt his all-too-real illness and chronic pain played a part in this, Ivan Klíma traces some of this back to his relationship with his mother, who tended to coddle him in childhood and practice what might be termed suffocating love. But this wasn't a random observation on Klíma's part, and mother's perhaps pathological qualities were commented on by other members of the family, like their sister Helena and the wife of Josef, other observers, and Karel himself. And this is possible that she was compensating for the lack of romantic love in her life, although this was probably unconscious.
All three siblings have strong and positive memories of their father which they recount despite his frequent long absences, but mother was often silent and depressed, and would communicate with no one but her youngest Karel. She lived in constant fear for her young son's health and grew wild at the slightest sign of illness. She didn't believe in her husband's medical advice, nor in that of any of his colleagues. Helena wrote in her memoirs, "The only one of us she tolerated near her and would have preferred to imprison within her body once again was Karel. She went to great lengths to tear him away from the rest of the family so that she might have him all to herself. The hysteria of her immoderate love for him made us shudder, and all our lives long we used a self-invented, restrained but at the same time wholesomely racy secret language only the three of us understood. We loved our mother wholeheartedly, but there emanated from her a certain unhealthiness, a hidden world of good permeated by evil, an instinctual propensity for believing more in evil than in good, in the worst of any two things. It was no wonder that in our childish way we searched ruthlessly for a countermeasure and tore Karel away from her quarrelous, unreasonable love."
Čapek's particular family dynamic is often reflected in his work, especially some of his novels. Father figures are strong, big-hearted, good-naturedly grumpy, mothers are cloying, hysterical, or in some other ways problematic. Even romantic love is strangely absent from much of his work, except in a herodic or idealized fashion as we will see shortly. It can certainly be argued that the attitude towards Božena Čapek heaping the blame for so much upon her is a little unfair. Nevertheless, it seems significant that so many had something to say about it. Josef Čapek's wife, Jarmila, wrote, "her lack of emotional fulfillment and her excitability often caused the mother to lash out and hurt the family members in their routine everyday life, and perhaps she was to blame for certain biases, phobias, and misogyny in both brothers. She was immensely gifted and perceptive, and I heard the doctor say that women like her often have sons who are geniuses."
So, moving on from the mother talk, though, he also, that is, Karel, traveled throughout Europe and wrote travel books, detailing adventures with drawings he made himself. There was some indication, though, that the cosmopolitan adventure was a kind of act. While he wrote excited and cheerful letters to his publisher and his public, his letters home to his wife and friends often told of loneliness and sadness. Then again, Karel may have had a tendency toward melodrama. Speaking of his wife, Olga Scheinpflugová, she was an actress and Karel knew her for many years before their marriage when they spent much time together. He seemed to prevaricate on marrying her, blaming his medical condition. During his time, they remained friends, though, and she had several affairs with other men, none of which she had from him. Karel, on the other hand, only ever had one other woman in his life. Again, in the early 20s, and it seems to have broken off quite quickly after she got married.
Anyway, the two, Olga and Karel, were almost best friends, and she was an uncritical admirer of his work. Alas, they were only married in 1935 and had a mere three years of domestic happiness together before Karel's untimely death in 38.
So the 20s were a very fertile time for Čapek. RUR was his second play, attributed solely to him, and the first to meet with dramatic success. And indeed, it was quite successful, being staged internationally and spreading some time on Broadway, even where some of our American science fiction writers, like Sprague, were able to see it.
So the same year, though, RUR was published in 1921, Čapek became the director of the Prague Municipal Theatre and produced many other plays, like "The Life of the Insects", which was another collaboration. "The Metropolis Secret", and "Adam the Creator". All the plays of this era seem to have fantastic or weird elements to them.
After the 20s, Čapek didn't write much drama, although he did do a couple more fantastic ones towards the end of his life, like "The White Plague", which is supposed to be quite political. So I'll talk a bit more about some of his novels, because I think they're kind of of an interest. So we mentioned "War of the Newts" before. I've mentioned it on the podcast, so it's one of his last works. I think the last completed novel that he published, although there was one that his wife completed afterwards. But this one is basically a story about underwater salamander creatures that humans first loitered to exploit, and then they kind of end up mastering us. So it seems, again, to be a theme here.
"War of the Newts" is really awesome. It's really cool the way he writes it with a very broad point of view. And it gets kind of experimental sometimes with a lot of excerpts from scientific journals and papers and different writing styles and all of the reactions to the newts and learning that they have a culture and how some people think that's not a big deal and how others think it's like everything. And it's a very interesting, all-encompassing work. And I would say, although R.U.R. does seem to be the work he's more well known for all over the world, probably that novel is probably a better novel than this is a play. Although I do really like this.
Nate:
Yeah, I like it too. And I mean, I'm glad we got a chance to cover this not only because of its historical significance with the word "robot", but because it is a play. It is drama. And science fiction and drama don't really cross as often as maybe other certain genres do.
JM:
I mean, I guess arguably, I don't know. I see what you mean, though. It does seem like we certainly haven't done too many plays on the podcast yet. And I really enjoyed doing this. I do want to go through a bit more background first before returning to it. But I think that I was really happy doing a play. I think this was felt really nice. And I don't know, there was something different about it, which, again, we'll talk more about in a few minutes.
Gretchen:
It is a different format. It's something that we don't usually cover. There doesn't seem to be that many science fiction works in this format, at least obviously compared to prose.
Nate:
Or film. I mean, even by this time 1920, there's not like a huge amount of science fiction films, but probably more science fiction films than science fiction plays, maybe. I'm not entirely sure. At least I can't think of any other science fiction plays off the top of my head.
JM:
Yeah, I mean, there's the other works by Gaspar, I guess. Yeah. Some of them maybe count. But yeah, like he's pretty unknown. So I'm trying to think. I'm sure there are more. But nothing is really coming to mind. But I'm also not really that much of a theater person. So I did read the modernist chapter in the Cambridge history of science fiction. And it does actually mention a few. What's that guy's name? Wyndham Lewis and maybe something by Shaw. I don't know. But yeah, there's not a lot that I can think of either. So.
But I really think it's a shame that Čapek is not more known for his novels, probably outside of the Czech lands. His first novel was called "The Absolute at Large" in English and was published in 1922. And it has a science fiction concept also of machines that produce an infinite quantity of goods without expending energy. And this basically causes an apocalypse. And his second, "Krakatit" involves the invention of an atomic weapon, which is pretty cool. Apparently it's also kind of a romance. So, but it's like one of the few books that he wrote where he actually describes a real love situation. He also has this trilogy of novels written in the 30s. "Hordubal", "Meteor", and "An Ordinary Life". And these stories played with perspective, presenting the same events through different points of view or perceiving in different events in different periods of time to produce an effect that's supposed to be similar to that described by the film Rashomon.
Čapek was an Anglophile who loved and respected English culture. And he was friends with G.K. Chesterton and George Bernard Shaw and was an admirer of H.G. Wells. The two of them were both members of the PEN Club and Wells had nominated him.
Karel was very much concerned with the situation in Europe as I mentioned before. And Czechoslovakia was certainly caught between two warring beasts as it were. His book on public matters in 1932 in which he gathered eight years of political and socially oriented articles he considered to be important. And these included essays like "Why I'm Not a Communist" "On Relativism" and some cautionary articles about rapid technological progress. He characterized the politics of the time thus. And I'm going to quote him because this kind of reflects how he was going towards the end here,
"mutual mistrust, disloyalty, uncooperativeness, blind partisan selfishness, and fury, connivance for personal gain, lack of interest in big ideas, and inability to conceive larger solutions and an unwillingness to take personal responsibility. Political twilight."
Elsewhere he said, "take note, opposition to democracy is usually coupled with chronic name calling, with passive pessimism. The opinion that democracy has become outdated usually arises from the gloomy insistence that it's all a lot of dirty dealing. If so, how do you want to improve it? A pile of garbage remains garbage even if you turn it upside down."
He goes on to attack the communists and also Czech nationalists who possess strong anti-Germanic sentiments. Thus alienating large segments of the population who did not wish to be displaced and would end up aligning with Hitler's Nazis. Later in the book he speaks more positively about how things could be improved in a general sense, what he would like to see for the good of all and his beloved democracy.
"First of all, to make sure that people experience neither material nor ethical injustice. To increase the value of everyone's life by striving for a better social and world order. And to tackle it practically, without any messianism and without blinders on our eyes. To not take away faith from people, rather their pain, ennui, despondency and isolation. To see that people maintain a state of cordiality, mutual loyalty and goodwill, joy and respect. In a word, morality. In a word, optimism. In a few more words, clear-headed and powered human life."
Mere months after the book on public matters was published, Hitler rose to power in Germany. Karel Čapek was not, unlike many intellectuals, too concerned with class struggles or with political and economic causes of totalitarianism. For him, totalitarianism signified a failure of intellectuals. About the rise of Nazism, he had a great deal to say.
"One entire nation, one whole Reich, has come around spiritually to believing in animism, racism and similar nonsense. An entire nation, if you please, with university professors, priests, writers, physicians and lawyers. What happened there was nothing less than an immense betrayal by educated Germans. It gives you a frightening idea what educated people are capable of. I could give you more examples and not only from that one country. Whereever violence is used against civilized humanity, you will find intellectuals by the dozens collaborating and furthermore brandishing their ideological reasons for doing so. This is not about a crisis or helplessness on the part of the intelligentsia, rather it is about a silent or else extremely active complicity in the moral and political shambles of Europe today."
In the early 30s, he'd been nominated for the Nobel Prize, but "War With the Newts" was deemed too aggressive and was pretty pointed about attacking Hitler and Nazism in particular.
The Nobel representative said, while Karel and Olga were traveling in Scandinavia in 1936, "write a book of 300 pages or so, attacking nothing and no one", and Karel said, "I thank you for your kindness, but I finished my dissertation long ago."
1938 was obviously a bad year for Czechoslovakia. There were 3 million Germans living in the new nation and through the support of a political party directed from Berlin, it seemed that a majority of them wanted to live in the Reich. The so-called Munich Agreement between Germany, Italy, Great Britain and France basically ceded all of the borderlands to Hitler, destroying the Republic. In particular, Karel Čapek was crushed by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's capitulation to Nazi Germany, something that he seemed to take as an almost personal betrayal. Chamberlain famously said in a 1938 broadcast, "this is a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing."
Karel Čapek was politically active during this period, delivering speeches to PEN and elsewhere, writing dozens of newspaper articles in what he must have seen as an attempt to bolster the spirits of the people. But as the year went on, things only got worse and worse. There was no place in this land for adherence of democracy. Čapek was attacked in the papers and false accusations were made against him. Many of his friends tried to encourage him to emigrate while he still could, just as the then President of the Republic had, but he refused.
His last work was, well, this was the posthumous novel actually, was "The Life and Work of the Composer Fulton," a novel about an egotistical, uncreative thief whose only goal was to become a famous composer. He never finished that one. His last newspaper piece was an article entitled "Greetings", which came out on Christmas Day. In it he reminisced about all the places in Europe he had visited and the interactions he had had with its everyday down-to-earth people. But at the last he said, "What can one do? It is terribly far from one nation to another. We are all increasingly alone. Better now never to set foot outside one's home. Better to lock the doors and close the shutters and let them all do as they please. I no longer care. And now you can close your eyes. And softly, so softly say, How do you do, old gentleman in Kent? Grüß Gott, meine Herren! Grazia, signor! À votre santé!"
Čapek died that very day, quite suddenly, of complications related to bronchial pneumonia. While there was little in the way of antibiotics or drugs available in the land at that time, many of his friends and associates believed that Karel Čapek, so overcome by the perceived treachery of the Munich Agreement and the personal attacks in the papers, simply lost his will to go on. He would possibly have been a victim of Nazi persecution had he survived, but most likely in fact. Supposedly he was high up on the Gestapo's list and they showed up at his house in March 1939 only to find he'd been dead for three months.
His brother Josef was not so lucky. Josef spent the rest of his life in Nazi concentration camps. He died in Bergen-Belsen in 1945, possibly hours before the camp was liberated. Olga kept going and wrote her fictionalized account of their life together.
And yeah, that was my rabbit hole for this episode, was getting into Čapek and his life.
Nate:
Yeah, another fascinating figure, and certainly a cool body of work. I'm sure we'll cover "War of the Newts" at some point.
Gretchen:
Yeah, I'm looking forward to reading that at some point.
JM:
Yeah, I have my eyes on "War with the Newts" for a host choice someday, so. But the one we're talking about now is, of course, RUR, and that stands for Rossum's Universal Robots, and that's not a translation. This is a multinational with an English face. Although Rossum may be derived from rozum, the Czech word for mind or reason. Robota was Czech for heavy labor or drudgery. This is supposedly one of only two Czech words that more or less made it into English usage. The other is pistol, if you're curious.
Now, perhaps a reflection of his general self-effacing nature, but Karel does not credit himself with the term robot. He says this was a suggestion of Josef's. The world premiere was on January 3rd, 1921, in some town, his name I can't pronounce. Sorry. But it was done amateur group, and the play was hugely successful, and even though it was an early work by him and arguably eclipsed artistically by some of his novels, it's the work he's most recognized for all over the world, like I was mentioning. By 1923, it had been translated into 30 languages and performed all over Europe and North America. Many artists and performers that would later become notorious had a hand in early productions of this play.
The Berlin production of 1923 is supposed to have been particularly noteworthy, as it's commemorated in the Centennial exhibition in the Karel Čapek Memorial Museum, which was called A Journey into the Depths of the Robot's Soul, the 1923 Berlin production had stage design by Frederick Kiesler and was considered quite avant-garde and included some kind of voice distortion effect used on the robot's voices. I wonder what that sounded like.
Nate:
Yeah, it's too bad that so much of this stuff wasn't recorded just due to the technology not being available at that time, because it would really be fascinating to see one of these 1920s performances like a recording of it.
JM:
Yeah, that would have been really interesting, for sure. There are a lot of adaptations, but we do have a few, but then there were projection of images onto canvas and flowing water. In New York, a young acting student, Spencer Tracy, had his debut on Broadway playing one of the robots. Over in London, Michael Cain also had a very early role in the play.
So I had read this a long time ago, but I didn't remember a lot about it. So it felt kind of new to me, but at the same time, it was just such an easy read. It's so nice to do a play like this, I think.
Gretchen:
Yeah, it was very easy to get through. It speeds right through.
Nate:
Yeah, I mean, it's not that long to begin with, but the dialogue is fun, it's snappy. While it deals with some heavy themes, it kind of deals with them in a somewhat lighthearted way, which makes it a little bit easier to get through.
JM:
Yeah, and I think that was kind of Čapek's thing. I did read a lot of his short stories in preparation, I guess, sort of to get myself in his mood. I didn't really crack any of the other novels, but I just kind of wanted to. So I read some of the stories in "Tales in Two Pockets" and the Čapek Reader, and it definitely seems like, yes, he does kind of get heavy, but he does it with a light touch, like a lot of the time. And even his melancholy is sort of tinted with this good-spiritedness, I think, a lot of the tongue. And "War with the Newts", for sure, is really funny at times, but it's also like an apocalyptic dystopia, right? But at times, it's pretty hilarious, and definitely the first half is like really upbeat, almost in a way, and I found a musical production of that one too recently. Yeah.
Nate:
Yeah, I guess we'll talk about some of the adaptations we've listened to later.
JM:
Yeah, yeah, but this was "War with the Newts", so it seems like doing musical theater of Čapek is not that it has a basis. And I actually remember there being a little music in the play. There isn't really much, just they burst into song at one point, which one of the adaptations did in an amusing way, but yeah, there's not really any songs in it, per se.
Nate:
Right.
JM:
But Gretchen, you had read this before, right?
Gretchen:
Yes. And it had also been quite a few years for me, so I also didn't remember much of the specifics about it. It was nice to revisit it, and I think it's pretty... It is like we were saying a very speedy, breezy play to read through. The dialogue is quite fun to read, even though it is describing something that's very... That's pretty heavy and sort of a serious topic. But yeah, I enjoyed rereading it.
JM:
It's certainly possible to... I mean, this another cool thing about a play is that a lot of it is down to interpretation, right? So this could be performed in a way that could be pretty heavy, like there's a couple of scenes. Things get kind of violent. And then, yeah, at the end there's some vivisection going on and stuff. But in general, yeah, it has this fun tone to it that makes it a really pleasant read.
Gretchen:
Yeah, I mean, it is like it starts out very lighthearted and it does get darker as it goes along, but I think it still sort of maintains that energy from the first part.
JM:
Nate, this was your first read?
Nate:
Yeah, I haven't read this before. I've heard about it for a really long time, and mainly due to the fact that it's the first use of the word robot in this context. So I've been looking forward to reading it for the historical context, but like I was saying before, it's just cool to read drama for the podcast, and it's not something we get a chance to do that often. I like the short stories and the novels, but branching out to other forms like drama and poetry and things like that is always cool to do.
JM:
Yeah, I mean, we've only done... I think we talked about this not that long ago, like the Sigov, little Sigov plays and Star Psi, maybe like it has, I mean, it has sort of play excerpts in it, which are really cool, but yeah. That's something I'd like to reread one day, actually, maybe not for the podcast, but just generally to go back to Star Psi.
But yeah, I like the fact that everything is out in the open, like everything is in the dialogue, and really interpretation can make a huge difference, but a lot of that is, you know, even when you're reading a play, right? You're probably hearing and seeing it being almost performed on a stage in your mind, right? And so certain lines might be significant. I mean, I remember listening to one of the adaptations of this and thinking, yeah, that's really good, but I wouldn't have thought to say that like that, like in that way, right? And it's kind of interesting.
So yeah, obviously very influential. I think a lot of people probably know the story without knowing it kind of thing. You know, they haven't read it, but they know it's a story of Robot Rebellion more or less. And that for sure is something you see a lot of, right? I can't remember the first time I came across a robot rebellion story, but...
Nate:
Yeah, maybe "Terminator" is the first one that I encountered, the whole Skynet thing, that idea, it's, I mean, it plays out similar to here.
JM:
I think "Power of the Daleks" is pretty influenced by this.
Nate:
Yeah, definitely.
JM:
The first Patrick Troughton Doctor Who story is like, they want to exploit them for worker, you know, make them into workers, right? Of course, not knowing, but of course, being Daleks, they have an evil scheme behind everything. It's obviously a little different because they're like malevolent. What was it? What was it Pertwee said, bubbling lumps of hate. And these robots are not that.
And I have a quote from Čapek because I'm not going to read it till the end, but like, it kind of talks about what's going to happen. But Čapek was one person, one author, unlike some of our authors, who definitely had a lot to say about everything. I guess one similar would be Wells, I suppose, but even looks just commenting on his own work, especially RUR because it caused a considerable stir and everybody was talking about it. Like, this play was very popular. And afterwards, I'll read the quote, but it kind of explains how he thought of this work. And it definitely fits in with his philosophy and what we talked about in the background, I think, quite well.
So there's one thing like you can tell he was getting more upset and pessimistic about the fate of Europe as he went on, but Čapek was pretty consistent in his outlook pretty much from the time when he started writing. So I don't know, it's a lot of fun. You can tell it's influential, but it's hard to even pinpoint just the fact that it's the origin of robots, right? And I don't know, I think automatically, a lot of the time when we think of robots, we think, oh, they go wrong at some point and smash stuff and kill their creator or something like that. This is just what happens, right? Even last episode with the automatic house maids.
Interestingly, though, these are not what we now consider robots. These would be androids because they're not made of metal and plastic, but in fact, synthetic flesh. And one thing this work gets into is that nebulous concept of the soul and what the soul actually is. Čapek doesn't really have an answer for that, but apparently there's a formula for it somewhere. So, yeah, actually, this is a really easy thing to summarize because it's just three, well, four, really, four long scenes.
Nate:
Yeah, I did think it was kind of funny that the prologue is by far the longest of the scenes.
JM:
Is it?
Nate:
Because the rest of the scenes are named Act 1, 2, and 3, but the prologue is significantly longer than any of the individual acts.
JM:
I felt like, really? Okay, interesting. I didn't really realize that. I kind of thought maybe Act 2 was the longest, but I didn't do a word count or anything, so a page count. But, yeah, that takes place, like, well before everything else.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
And apparently there had to be a break after the prologue so that the actors could get, like, painted up to look older.
Gretchen:
Perhaps the prologue was longer so that it was worth it to not suddenly come out with the makeup.
JM:
Yeah, true. That's probably why it was longer then. Because, you know, you don't want to give people time out too early, right?
Gretchen:
Yeah.
JM:
I mean, it's basically just a bunch of long scenes of people talking, and some stuff happens, for sure, especially towards the end. I don't know, it was very easy when it's all dialogue sometimes, and it's, I don't know, that easy to summarize for sure, so I'll begin.
(music: echoey crashing)
spoiler plot summary/discussion
JM:
So, the posters of the play said this was somewhere around the year 2000, but that's never stated anywhere in the actual production. Which takes place on a quiet island where there's a factory. And this factory manufactures labor machines, or robots.
The Rossum's Universal Robots Cooperation staff all seems to live on the island, and their general director, Domin, is pumped up with propaganda about his machines. There are times when it seems like he's reeling off advertising copy. Helena, the daughter of the president, nation unknown, is visiting the island, and has an interview with Domin. First she thinks Domin's two attendant robots, Marius and Sulla, are people. Then, when he introduces her to her actual staff, Hallemeier, Gall, Alquist, Fabry, she thinks they are robots.
And there's some fun misunderstandings which basically make up the majority of this prologue. Typical dramatic misunderstandings. This is pretty funny. And there's a lot of funny mannerisms, like all the men sort of milling around Helena, and they're always telling her to take a seat. And it's like, it never says that she stands up, but I kind of picture like she must be getting up and pacing around the room or something. It never says that. But the characters are always, the men are always telling her to take a seat. She's restless, she's always moving around, and maybe that makes them nervous.
But before the misunderstandings wholly cleared up, she reveals that she's actually here on behalf of the League of Humanity, which is interested in fighting for the rights of robots. Domin insists that they have no souls. Everyone just seems so excited by having a real-life woman on the island, and they can't do anything but be happy. And all the men, except Domin, go off to make lunch. Apparently, the robots' artificial creations mixed from batter have no sense of taste, and so aren't the great cooks that they could be. They have a project to introduce pain to robots, though, since at times they overdo things and injure themselves. They also go crazy sometimes and have to be melted down or recycled. Otherwise, though, they're near perfect. Domin briefly explains how the old Rossum had the idea of creating life from scratch, and his idea was to create actual humans. He wasn't successful at this, though, and his son didn't think it was an awesome idea anyway.
So his son was more practical and used the synthesis to make soulless machines who would work for nothing and could be produced very cheaply. Helena feels sorry for the robots, who are designated male and female, but have no sense of attraction to each other. But she's also confused by her sensations, conflicted about whether she should loathe them, envy them, or feel bad for them.
Domin, though, despite his enthusiasm for robot tales, insists that he's very human. He does this by abruptly asking Helena to marry him. If she won't have her, he says, at least let her take one of the others, and she thinks he's gone a bit crazy, and he says yes, and that's how a man should be. And she's saved from having to give an immediate answer by the arrival of the staff with lunch.
But this is where it goes 10 years into the future, from the day of the preceding scene, and in the play, the makeup's been altered accordingly. So Helena has stayed on the island after all, and she has nice chambers, and all the men bring her nice things, like Hallemeier, who's been spending time growing new species of flowering plants. She seems closest to Domin because she married him. Domin now carries a gun in his pocket, and they are all concealing from Helena the fact that something has gone wrong. It's eerily quiet on the island, and in fact there have been no ships or mail for quite some time.
Helena's servant, Nana grumps and complains about the robots, who still lose their cool regularly. Helena knows them by name, and still feels sorry for them, but Nana thinks they're basically monsters. A lot has happened in the world. Workers revolted and tried to destroy the robots. Governments started using robots as soldiers. There were a ton of wars, and in a way, RUR should take responsibility.
Helena feels frightened, and thinks they should all leave the island. Domin warns her not to go outside, as he leaves to meet Fabry, and Helena, knowing something is definitely up, obtains the latest newspaper from Domin's room. Sure enough, robot soldiers have run amok, and have been slaughtering hundreds of thousands of civilians. Or did the commander just order them to do that?
In Le Havre, there is a robot union, but in very troubling news, humans appear to have stopped giving birth. The race has become sterile, possibly? A week without new babies is a scary thing. Helena herself has been depressed about not having a child. She's sad to learn even Hallemeier's artificially cultivated and speed-grown flowers are infertile.
Nana spouts claptrap about blasphemy and satanic pride, and Helena is just annoyed and sad. She calls in Alquist, the chief of construction, who is always getting his hands dirty, laying bricks, and has from the beginning expressed doubts about the type of progress the company is making. He loves work and thinks there's greater honor and satisfaction in laying bricks than making plans that are too great.
He won't outright admit anything, but he shares Helena's unease and desires to leave the island. He says the human race is sterile because they now live in paradise, tended by robots, and the labor of birth, like all other labor, is unnecessary.
Helena speaks to Radius, a specially designed robot who has recently had what they call a fit. He refuses to work and has been smashing up stuff in a rage. Radius would rather be put to death than accept a master. He has an incredible brain designed by Dr. Gall. Gall has been steadily improving on robot brains and the new ones are both smarter and seem to exhibit emotions. He has created a few of them, one of which was sold to Le Havre. Another is a duplicate of Helena, who wanders about in a daze and is, as Gall describes, good for nothing, though incredibly beautiful.
Radius can do everything, has been working in the library, presumably reading everything, and desires to rule over humans. The men are excited because after over a week of silence, a boat is finally coming their way. Domin wants to know who incited the robot revolution. He assumes it was human. Speaking of boats, all the men have given presents to Helena on her anniversary day and Domin's is a boat, a gunboat called the Ultimus.
They had plans to leave the island on the boat, but Domin hopes now it won't be necessary. They await news. The men without Helena's knowledge had a plan to hang out on the ocean and wait for the robots to come to them, since Harry Domin had been keeping Rossum's production method secret. Unfortunately, Helena has just burned them.
They see the boat, the Amelia, unloading parcels of mail and such, and Domin is too ecstatic. Rather than going away, which Helena still insists they should do, he wants to step up production and build more factories. The plan is to have every nation build its own robots and have them speak their own tongues and look different and everything. The theory is that now the robots won't be able to globally conspire.
Nate:
Brilliant idea.
JM:
Yeah, more "Brave New World" reminiscences in this part, I think. I was reminded of the part that stood out to me most when I was reading this for the first time, not this. "Brave New World" for the first time when I was really young was the conditioning of the babies and the infants. They would sit in this room or when they would be sleeping, listening to broadcasts, telling them about how they should be happy that they're are betas and the gammas. Those gammas are really terrible, aren't they? They're very stupid. Yeah, so they want to build prejudice into the robots so that they hate each other. It's too late. The male is in fact nothing but pamphlets from the first Union of Universal Robots decreeing that the human race should be exterminated. All machines and railroads and mines and factories are to be preserved. The Ultimus is cut off. They're already robots aboard. They're surrounded, in fact, and they hear the factory whistle signaling for the attack to begin.
So the men barricade themselves in and are still trying to keep Helena unaware of the truth, but she's read the proclamation, she knows. Fabry wants to electrify the fence and keep the robots outside. They're depending on there still being men in the power plant. Each of them is coping in their own way. They notice the Ultimus has its cannons trained on the house and their debate over what went wrong. They hear the crime lay, and with whom?
Alquist thinks it was making robots in the first place. Domin still stands by what the company did, talking of how hateful work and drudgery is. He wanted to make all men equal and not have to slave away for someone else. And he's very passionate about all this, and we've no doubt that he believes it all and isn't a terrible person, but of course he would have enslaved the robots. Alquist points out that neither of the Rossums cared about any of that. Rossum the Elder was just into creation for its own sake, and Rossum the Younger wanted to make loads of money.
Speaking of which, all Busman can do during all this time is fiddle with his account ledgers. I forgot to mention him earlier, but he's like the accounts guy. He's kind of a nobody character, but... We hear him mumbling some to himself as the other men debate. And Helena is playing the piano in the next room. Some robots attempt to breach the fence, and the men turn the current on. And we get a repeat of Connecticut Yankee with a whole bunch of robot corpses.
The other of the men are elated, but Domin oddly expresses a supernatural feeling. Like they've already been dead for 100 years, and they're just experiencing something as ghosts that's already happened. Alquist is raving angry and blaming them all, and it turns out that Dr. Gall altered the robots at the request of Helena, changing their physiological correlates to make them more human.
Helena thought this would help them understand humans better and be less inclined to hate, but the effect was quite the opposite, it seems. It's the opinion of Busman that Gall or Helena will need a lawyer ed fast. The reason they still have a bargaining chip, the production documentation. They all vote to sell it with Domin playing devil's advocate somewhat. And Helena keeps trying to interrupt, but they won't listen, and even Domin tells her it's not her business, and too serious for her. And they treat her like a child. And of course, she's already destroyed the thing.
Hallemeier and Gall remember a lot of it, but the formulation and special biologies and enzymes created by the Elder Rossum are too complicated, and no one knows how to do it. So once again, we have this problem. Busman is the first to crack up, and thinks the robots will be interested in the half billion in whatever currency they have stowed away. And he goes out with a big packet of cash and runs straight into the electric fence. Zap! Bye-bye, Busman!
They start exhorting and kind of praying to the light, a shining beacon of ingenuity. Children, it's time to go to bed, Helena says, and with perfect timing, the lamp goes out. Nana comes in, she's been hanging out somewhere the whole time and starts spouting her religious claptrap again. And there's noise from outside, gunfire, explosions. The men and Helena scatter, each holding grimly to their own attitudes. Hallemeier gets stabbed by a robot who climbs through the window, and looks like Domin's prophecy is coming true.
The robots are led by Radius, and they come in and execute everyone, except for Alquist, whom they call a robot because he works with his hands. And they tell him he will work for them. Radius declares robot supremacy and exalts and plans a robot expansion.
Alquist, now an old man in Act 3, has a lab in one of the factories where he toils fruitlessly to find the secret of the factory, the key to robotic creation, which the Central Committee, again, desperately needs.
There are apparently no people left in the world, and soon there won't be any robots either, not even the reflections of man. This whole thing actually reminded me a ton of "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep"/"Blade Runner". Because the robots are short-lived, the replicants and androids are short-lived too, and they're kind of trying to go back to the nature of their creation, especially in the "Blade Runner" version. That's kind of interesting.
The committee talks to Alquist trying to negotiate, but he's got nothing to give. Damon, the world leader of robots, one of the early special robot models, says that historical precedent among humans is to kill and rule, and that they had no alternative if they wanted to be like people.
The committee says Alquist needs to experiment and dissect live robot subjects. He's horrified by this, never having killed anything in his life. Damon, the leader of the robots, is chosen to be dissected. He doesn't seem too happy about this at first, but soon demands that Alquist keep cutting in as he screams on the dissecting table. It's brutal, but it's also kind of funny the way it's done.
Nate:
Yeah. It's really over the top in like an almost Evil Dead type way of the splatstick.
JM:
Yeah, yeah. Staggering around, bleeding liquid screaming, CUT! CUT!
Alquist runs away and straight into robot Helena. She and robot Primus examine Alquist's notes. Helena is more interested in the birds outside. She doesn't feel well like she's dying. Primus asks if sometimes she too feels that that might be better than living. She says she knows a secret place nearby, a house with an overgrown garden and a family of dogs, which she says is the most beautiful thing in the world, especially the puppies. Robot Helena and Primus flirt sweetly and laugh like young kids.
Alquist awakes from a fitful doze and hears this. He's totally convinced that the couple are both people until they disabuse him. They are both among Gall's special robots. Only a few hundred were ever made and those are the ones who must be experimented on.
Alquist is ready to dissect Helena, but Primus says he should take him instead. Of course Helena won't have that and the two determine that they belong to each other. Alquist is touched despite himself and tells them to leave, to go where they will. He calls them Adam and Eve.
Alquist reads from the Book of Genesis. On the sixth day, the day of grace, now, Lord, let thy servant, thy most superfluous servant, Alquist, depart. Rossum, Fabry, Gall, great inventors. What did you ever invent that was great when compared to that girl, to that boy, to this first couple who have discovered love? Tears, beloved laughter, the love of husband and wife. Oh, nature, nature, life will not perish. Friends, Helena, life will not perish. It will begin anew with love. It will start out naked and tiny. It will take root in the wilderness and to it all that we did and built will mean nothing. Our towns and factories, our art, our ideas will all mean nothing. And yet life will not perish. Only we have perish. Our houses and machines will be in ruins. Our systems will collapse and the names of our great will fall away. Like autumn leaves. Only you, love, will blossom on this rubbish heap and commit the seed of life to the winds. Now let thy servant depart in peace, O Lord, for my eyes have beheld, beheld thy deliverance through love and life shall not perish. It shall not perish.
And so ends RUR in a similar way, I think, to "The Machine Stops", really.
Nate:
Yeah. The Adam and Eve thing is definitely a theme that plays out in not just these stories, but in a lot of stuff we've covered on the podcast previously.
JM:
Yeah.
Nate:
I wouldn't say he belabors the point here, but it definitely takes a turn at the end here towards that.
JM:
Yeah.
Nate:
It's not a religiosity, but the idea of rebirth in an almost divine way.
JM:
Yeah. It does seem like the beauty of that and the message of that is the most important thing. There's no indication that robot Helena and robot Primus will be able to reproduce. It may very well be that them going out into the world for a few years might happen, but after that there won't be any robots either. It's sort of left up in the air, right?
Nate:
Again, like the whole "Blade Runner" thing at the end there.
JM:
Yeah. I do think that last moment is quite beautiful, though, despite the fact that it seems uncertain. Alquist seems... He's had this almost religious... Well, it is a religious revelation, I guess, but there's no... I mean, I guess I am not necessarily convinced of the truth of that, but that's not important. I feel like just being convinced that Alquist believes it is enough.
Gretchen:
Yeah. I think that it kind of helps that there's an ambiguity to it, you know? It's like... It seems like Čapek was very interested in, like, belief and how people perceive things, so if Alquist believes it, I think there's... That is enough.
JM:
Yeah, I agree. So, I'm going to read this now. This was published in the Saturday Review, which was an English newspaper. It was actually a debate that took place in the paper between George Bernard Shaw and G.K. Chesterton after seeing RUR. Čapek apparently had been... reading along with this, and he eventually felt the need to chime in, and he felt that both the atheist and the Catholic thinkers had missed something in his work, so he does seem less dodgy. His ideas also may be similar to Butler's here, but he also says,
"I wish to write a comedy, partly of science, partly of truth. The old inventor, Mr. Rossum, whose name means Mr. Intellect or Mr. Brain, is no more or less than a typical representative of the scientific materialism of the last century. His desire to create an artificial man in the chemical and biological, not the mechanical sense, is inspired by a foolish and obstinate wish to prove God unnecessary and meaningless. Young Rossum is the modern scientist, untroubled by metaphysical ideas. For him, scientific experiment is the road to industrial production. He's not concerned about proving, but rather manufacturing. To create a homunculus is a medieval idea. To bring it in line with the present century, this creation must be undertaken on the principle of mass production. We are in the grip of industrialism. This terrible machinery must not stop, for if it does, it would destroy the lives of thousands. It must, on the contrary, go on, faster and faster, even though in the process it destroys thousands and thousands of other lives. A product of the human brain has at last escaped from the control of human hands. This is the comedy of science. Now for my other idea, the comedy of truth. In the play, the factory director, Domin, establishes that technical progress emancipates man from hard manual labour, and he is quite right. The Tolstoyan Alquist, to the contrary, believes that technological progress demoralizes him, and I think he is right too. How is it is right? Busman, even the robots, are right. All are right in the moral sense of the word, and they advocate their truths on the basis of ideals. I ask whether it is not possible to see in the present societal conflict an analogous struggle between two, three, five equally serious traits and equally noble ideals. I think it is possible. And this is the most dramatic element of modern civilisation. That one human truth is opposed to another truth, no less human, ideal against ideal. Positive value against value, no less positive, instead of the struggle being, as we are so often told it is, one between exalted truth and vile selfish wickedness. These are the things I should like to have said in my comedy of truth, but it seems that I failed. For none of the distinguished speakers who took part in the discussion have discovered this simple aspect in RUR."
So, again, we have a lot of his moral relativism on this play, and I guess, like, that doesn't really come through in the play. I think even Klíma, like, seems to be under the impression that he very, very definitively sides with Alquist. So, I don't know, like, I can see why somebody might think that, but he's, you know, kind of trying to deflect that kind of one-sidedness in everything that he talks about. And it's definitely a theme of his work.
Gretchen:
Yeah, I think it is easy to walk away from the play thinking that Alquist is, quote-unquote, the right viewpoint. But it does seem like, when reading the play and thinking about it through Čapek ideals, you can kind of see that there is sympathy for each party.
Nate:
Yeah, there is. There definitely is.
JM:
Yeah, definitely, like, it just, it really does seem like this really runs through so much of everything that he wrote, which is really interesting. It kind of, one of his nicer qualities, I guess, like, it does seem like sometimes he could get a bit heavy-handed with the messaging and stuff like that, but he always had this open-mindedness, I think, that's pretty cool to see.
Nate:
Yeah, I certainly enjoyed this one a lot. Like we said, it covers some pretty heavy themes, but in a light-hearted and quick way. And it certainly gets really tense during act two there when they're all holed up in the house and the robots are storming them.
The epilogue, I think, was an interesting touch. I didn't really know where he was going to go with it.
JM:
Yeah.
Nate:
And I'm not sure if that's the best place you could have taken it, but I think overall enjoyed it, and I think it worked for what it is.
JM:
Yeah, I mean, it is kind of silly for sure, but I think it knows, like, that he's trying to be light-hearted in his way, right? He's almost similar to Twain in a lot of ways, I think. A different feeling, but it's kind of a similar approach of tackling serious issues in a way that kind of seems humorous and amusing and mass-appealing in a way.
Gretchen:
He did refer to it himself as a comedy, so...
Nate:
Yeah, right, yeah.
JM:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
And even the whole comedy of errors from the prologue does feel similar to, like, the other comedies that I've read, different plays where there's that sort of misunderstanding going on.
JM:
Yeah, and a whole... You could have made a whole play based around that, you know? It's kind of misunderstandings. Yeah.
Nate:
Yeah, so I guess regarding the plays and performances, I listened to two of the BBC versions, one from 1989 and one from 2022. Did you guys listen to both of them or...?
JM:
I did listen to both of those.
Gretchen:
I only listened to the 1989 one.
Nate:
Okay, yeah.
JM:
Yeah, that's the better of the two, honestly.
Nate:
It is, yeah. The 1989 one is very close to the Čapek text. There's only some very minor changes here and there. We don't get the robot dissection seen, unfortunately. And some of the dialogue is just a bit different, you know, localized to be British people.
JM:
Yeah, for some reason they made Helena the daughter of a professor instead of a president. Yeah. But I don't know. But to see, here's another thing too. We read... I should mention, we didn't mention this, but we read the Claudia Novak translation. I think we all read the same one.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
Yeah, so it's apparently different than some of the earlier ones. And some of the meanings of things were changed. They go a little bit of that into the introduction explaining some of the well-meaning, but not quite right things from some of the early English translations.
Nate:
Yeah, I mean, stuff is hard to translate even under the best of circumstances with like these easy, Amazing Stories type Soviet things that I've been doing. But translating drama when a lot of it is how the actors play off one another, the rhythm of the words, the wordplay and things like that. It sounds like it would be one of the most difficult things to accurately translate and to bring over in a way that fits and makes sense with what's actually going on in the stage.
And just seeing two people interact with one another in a way that feels natural in a way that feels like it's actually a conversation being held and not just words on a piece of paper.
JM:
Yeah, for sure.
Gretchen:
It seems like it's got a similar difficulty with like poetry rather than prose.
Nate:
Absolutely. Right, for sure.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
Yeah, I can definitely see that too.
Nate:
But I have to say, even with the localization issues and possible translation things in mind, the 1989 BBC one does a really good job with the adaptation of it. It's very faithful to the source material. And the sound design is really good too. I mean, it's not over the top and it's not....
JM:
Yeah, it's not flashy at all.
Nate:
Right.
JM:
But it does what it needs to do.
Nate:
Yeah. So I could definitely recommend that one quite a bit.
The 2022 one, I don't know. I'm not like a musical theater fan and I know some people are, but it definitely takes that approach with it, both in terms of adding a whole bunch of songs to it as well as humor.
JM:
It's kind of catchy. I don't know. I didn't mind it. But I think the, it was too different. Like not just the songs, but just even like nothing played out. This is like, I almost, it's the kind of situation where I almost think, why did they even put Čapek name to it? Right. I don't know. I appreciate that they wanted to do something different with it because there's actually the BBC has a long history with this play.
The first full play performed on BBC radio in 1926 was in fact, RUR and BBC TV in 1938 did the first broadcast on television and it's considered the first science fiction broadcast on television.
So I don't know if that's necessarily 100% true, but it's that's, that's what the museum, the Memorial Čapek Museum claims anyway. So, and if there was anything before, I don't know who would have done it. Like, despite the fact that people say that the BBC has a kind of a dismissive attitude about science fiction, they definitely seem to have a long and pretty respected history.
Nate:
Oh, absolutely. I mean, yeah, especially compared to any of the other major TV studios at the time. I mean, Quatermass and Doctor Who alone, I think is...
JM:
Yeah. And in the fifties, there was Journey into Space. Right. Yeah, what is that Into the Unknown TV series, which did a lot of American sci-fi magazine classics, actually. So, and then, yeah, like the fact that RUR seems to have been important. There was another TV production in 1948. I imagine all these, a lot of these early ones are lost because they're live. Like they were done live and not recorded.
Nate:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
Yeah. And we know that even some of the productions of things that weren't live don't necessarily survive with the BBC.
Nate:
Sure. I mean, the 60s, 70s stuff. I mean, Doctor Who kinda-sorta survives in this entirety. I mean, you have the reconstructions based on the surviving audio, but I think there's some stuff of the Avengers that's like totally lost altogether.
JM:
Yeah. Season one. Most of season one is missing.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
There's like four episodes or something. And of course, Big Finish have redone the whole series in audio format with different actors. But yeah, the whole first, almost the whole first season is gone. Yeah.
Nate:
Likewise, the first Quatermass, a whole bunch of stuff.
Gretchen:
I know that in the beginning, we were thinking of mentioning Peter Cushing's birthday a few days ago.
JM:
Oh, yeah.
Gretchen:
I know that his run of Sherlock Holmes, several of the serials he did for the BBC have been lost.
Nate:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
And also a production of "Pride and Prejudice" where he played Mr. Darcy.
Nate:
Oh, really?
Gretchen:
Which is kind of disappointing. I'd like to see that.
Nate:
Yeah, I'd like to see that too.
JM:
Cool. Yeah.
Nate:
But yeah, I don't know. The 2022 version of this, like the, I guess robot apocalypse with all the humans being dead in the Čapek play happens at like the very end. So you're probably at like the last 15% or so of the play when that happens, where as this, that's like the entire second half is post humanity. And I don't know that just, they do a lot different with it. And I wouldn't necessarily say I enjoyed it. I guess if you're into the musical theater thing, you might have a easier time with it than I did.
JM:
Yeah. I mean, it's already kind of a silly play. So it feels weird to say it's too silly, but yeah, I don't know. Yeah.
Nate:
It is very silly.
Gretchen:
Did they include the dissection scene?
Nate:
No, they didn't. Yeah.
Gretchen:
Oh no. I'd like to see a whole musical number based on that.
Nate:
No, they added a definitely an opportunity to do something ridiculous with it. They both hint at the fact that it's going to happen, but yeah, you don't actually go through with it.
JM:
I'll conclude this by making a nice segueway here. But the basis for some of the plot was already worked out by Karel and Josef as early as 1908 in a story called "The System", which was published somewhere. And here we had an executive named John Andrew Rip Ratten who seeks to alter the system of work to ones that's completely geared toward corporate power. And he states his philosophy thus, "exploit the entire world. The world is nothing but raw material. The world is no more than unexploited matter. The sky and the earth, people, time and space and infinity, everything is just raw material. Gentlemen, the task of industry is to exploit the entire world. Everything must be speeded up. The worker's question is holding us back. The worker must become a machine so that he can simply rotate like a wheel. Every thought is insubordination, gentlemen. Taylorism is systematically incorrect because it disregards the question of a soul. A worker's soul is not a machine, therefore it must be removed. This is my system. I have sterilized the worker, purified him, I have destroyed in him, all feelings of altruism and camaraderie, all familial, poetic and transcendental feelings, seems almost more like the story that's to come."
Nate:
I would say so, yeah.
Gretchen:
Yes.
Bibliography:
Klíma - Ivan - "Karel Čapek: Life and Work" (2002)
Kussi, Peter (ed.) - "Toward the Radical Center: A Karel Čapek Reader" (1990)
No comments:
Post a Comment