Čapek, Karel
- John Tyrrell
Extract
(b Malé Svatoňovice, nr Trutnov, Jan 9, 1890; d Prague, Dec 25, 1938). Czech writer and dramatist. He was the best-known Czech writer between the two world wars, with works widely published in many languages. Although his final novel, incomplete at his death, was about a charlatan composer, and his detective story about the conductor Kalina may have had Janáček in mind (Fischmann, 146), he had no close relationship to music and took no hand in the adaptation of his works into operas apart from Zdeněk Folprecht’s one-act opera Lásky hra osudná (‘The Fatal Game of Love’), for which he wrote the libretto (1922) with his brother Josef.
Ze života hmyzu [From the Life of the Insects] (play, with J. Čapek, 1922): Kalmanoff, 1977, as Insect Comedy; Cikker, 1987 Věc Makropulos [The Makropulos Affair] (play, 1922): Janáček, 1926 Krakatit [invented word, from ‘Krakatoa’] (novel, 1924): Berkovec, 1961; Kašlík, 1961...