Tales from two papers

Believe in People is full of surprises, beginning on the very first page, which lists no fewer than 30 volumes of Karel Čapek's work published in English translation: his deservedly famous plays, including R.U.R., in which he coined the word "robot," as well as lesser-known story collections, novels and nearly a dozen books of letters and memoir.

The subtitle of this collection, The Essential Karel Čapek, is a bold claim that is almost justified. More than most collections of Čapek's work, Believe in People - with insightful introductions by John Carey and translator Šárka Tobrmanová-Kühnová - centers Čapek's life and work in history and brings his daily occupation as a journalist into focus.

Throughout his life, Čapek regularly contributed to The People's Paper and The Present, Czech-language newspapers based in Prague. Most of the texts collected in Believe in People are taken from these newspapers, and show the author's innovation with otherwise static journalistic forms.

The prevailing creative editorial forum of Čapek's day was the feuilleton, an often satirical, short, topical article perfected by Czech writer Jan Neruda in the late 19th century. Čapek created a form slightly shorter than the feuilleton, printed in italics on the right side of the page.

Believe in People
By Karel Čapek
Selected and translated by Šárka Tobrmanová-Kühnová
Faber and Faber 2010
358 pages

Čapek could fit anything into these columns: political commentary, season's greetings, acerbic wit, poetic language, poignant observations, word games, literary criticism and, above all, style. Therein lies the pleasure of reading Believe in People; the range of the book makes it the perfect companion to Čapek's other works, and lends itself to leisurely reading at random. The book could also serve as an ideal guide to Čapek's opinions on specific topics, but unfortunately an editorial choice negates this possibility and renders the collection nearly unnavigable.

The book is divided into six conceptual chapters: Culture, Words, England, Noticing People and Things, Letters to Olga (Čapek's wife), and Common Things. Each of these contains as many as 70 individual articles, each titled, dated and organized chronologically. Unfortunately, the titles of individual articles are listed nowhere in the book. The index provides some guide, but scholars searching for specific articles must thumb through the entire book - a task more time-consuming than painstaking.

Despite such organizational shortcomings, it is delightful how many of Čapek's observations and pronouncements remain relevant, especially his writings regarding literature, culture and criticism. In a piece titled, appropriately, "Criticism," published in The People's Paper on April 16, 1921, Čapek writes about "an eternal conflict between artist and critic."

"True art wins recognition slowly. [?] But what is truly valuable astonishes as soon as it appears, and then it's useless either to hype it or run it down. Evil criticism is as helpless against good work as good, creative criticism is against pseudo-art."

The Karel Čapek portrayed by the book's title - which is taken from his 1922 novel A Factory to Manufacture the Absolute - preface and introduction is a hopeful humanist. A quote from his wife's housekeeper casts Čapek in the romantic light of the ultra-sensitive artist.

"[Čapek] had much more out of his short life than those who live perhaps twice as long. He saw and felt a hundred times stronger than us, as if he had a completely different heart and eyes."

In Olga's words, "His life was a thank-you for enchantment, a smile for illness, and a conscious sense of responsibility. Everyday hours were more generous to him than festive moments are to others."

Such beatification seems to ignore that much of Čapek's writing is disturbingly dramatic and dark, concerned with difficult questions of statehood, responsibility, war and creation, as even the most cursory reading of texts such as R.U.R., War With the Newts and Talks With T.G. Masaryk will attest. This is not to say that Čapek wasn't a sensitive soul, but above all he was a writer imbued with a sense of responsibility toward his art and the Czechoslovak nation.

The texts that reveal the most about Čapek are questionnaires he filled out for different newspaper surveys. "Karel Čapek About Himself," written Sept. 15, 1925, states that the author works "fairly often and with effort. I may write whatever comes into my head, but I try to say it lucidly. I don't write with pleasure, but somewhat irascibly, obdurately, while gnawing my pen."

It is rather this portrait of Čapek, as first and finally a man of letters who worked at his craft day in and day out, that emerges over the course of Believe in People. Čapek took his role of writer seriously, and throughout this collection, one finds him questioning himself and his nation, urging both to live better, to think more and, as he phrases it in a letter to Olga, to "undergo the torture of being a great human being."

Would that more writers - and people - took those words to heart.

Stephan Delbos can be reached at
sdelbos@praguepost.com