Čapek, Karel (kä`rĕl chä`pĕk) 1890–1938, Czech playwright, novelist, and essayist. He is best known as the author of two brilliant satirical plays—R. U. R. (Rossum's Universal Robots, 1921, tr. 1923), which introduced the word robot into the English language, and The Insect Play, written with his brother Josef Čapek, Josef (yô`sĕfchä`pĕk), 1887–1945, Czech writer and painter.
..... Click the link for more information. (1921, tr., 1923). These plays embody Čapek's criticism of technological and materialistic excesses. Of his other plays The Makropoulos Secret (1923, tr. 1925) satirizes the human search for immortality and yearning for titanistic greatness. Janáček used it as the basis for his opera The Makropoulos Affair (1925). Čapek's Power and Glory (1937, tr. 1938), condemns totalitarianism and war. He also wrote travel sketches, romances (e.g., Krakatit, 1924, tr. 1925), essays, and short stories. His three volumes of conversations with Thomas G. Masaryk Masaryk, Thomas Garrigue (gərēg`)
..... Click the link for more information. (1928–35, tr. 1934, 1938) form a political biography. Čapek's three philosophical novels, Hordubal (1934, tr. 1934), Meteor (1934, tr. 1935), and An Ordinary Life (1935, tr. 1936) are profound and even mystical in tone. Distinct from his other works, they constitute Čapek's masterpiece.

Bibliography

See biography by I. Klima (2002); studies by W. E. Harkins (1962) and B. R. Bradbrook (1998).

Capek, Karel

(born Jan. 9, 1890, Malé Svatonovice, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary—died Dec. 25, 1938, Prague, Czech.) Czech novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. Capek's “black utopias,” works showing the dangers of technological progress, include the cautionary play R.U.R.: Rossum's Universal Robots (1920), a depiction of a society dependent on mechanical workers called robots (a term he coined from a Czech word for forced labour). The comic fantasy The Insect Play (1921; with his brother Josef) satirizes human greed. The Makropoulos Affair (1922) was made into an opera by Leoš Janácek. Capek explored aspects of knowledge in the novel trilogy Hordubal (1933), Meteor (1934), and An Ordinary Life (1934).