Apocryphal Tales

Other Books by and about Karel apek
from Catbird Press

Toward the Radical Center: A Karel apek Reader
edited by Peter Kussi, foreword by Arthur Miller

War with the Newts translated by Ewald Osers

Cross Roads translated by Norma Comrada

Three Novels translated by M. & R. Weatherall

Tales from Two Pockets translated by Norma Comrada

Talks with T. G. Masaryk translated by Michael Henry Heim

Karel apek – Life and Work by Ivan Klíma
translated by Norma Comrada

Translation and Introduction © 1997 Norma Comrada

CATBIRD PRESS
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Sony ISBN 978-1-936053-09-8
Kindle ISBN 978-1-936053-10-1
Adobe ISBN 978-1-936053-11-X

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

apek, Karel, 1890-1938
[Kniha apokryf. English]
Apocryphal tales / by Karel apek ; translated from the Czech and with an introduction
by Norma Comrada
“A Garrigue book.”

ISBN 0-945774-34-6 (trade pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Short stories, Czech--Translations into English. I. Comrada, Norma. II. Title
PG5038.C3K613 1997
891.8’6352--dc21 96-54505 CIP

Table of Contents

Also by
Title Page
Copyright Page
Introduction
Acknowledgments
The Moving Business
APOCRYPHAL TALES
WOULD-BE TALES
Other Books by Karel apek

Introduction

During his relatively short lifetime (1890-1938), the Czech writer Karel apek became internationally known for his plays, novels, and stories, most notably for his 1920 drama R.U.R.: Rossum’s Universal Robots, which introduced the word “robot” to the world. His astonishing output also included essays, literary criticism, children’s books, books on pets and gardening and travel and getting out a daily newspaper, and numerous other works on a wide range of topics, in a variety of styles. Many of these first appeared in Lidové noviny, the principal newspaper for which apek wrote, and were published afterwards in book form. This is true of the Apocryphal Tales as well, except that, in this case, the book did not appear until 1945, seven years after apek had died.

The primary reason for the delay was the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia shortly after apek’s death, and the immediate ban on all his work. It also appears that apek had not thought of his Apocryphal Tales as a discrete collection until late in life: they had been written intermittently over an eighteen-year period, in no particular order, and many were responses to internal and external political issues of the moment. When World War II ended, apek’s editor and bibliographer Miroslav Halík, explaining that he had found the Apocryphal Tales in a separate envelope among apek’s posthumous papers, selected and arranged twenty-nine of them in the order of when the tales occur rather than when they were written. Despite official disapproval of apek under the country’s subsequent communist regime, the Tales were republished whenever circumstances permitted and continue to be printed today.

The Apocryphal Tales can be read in several ways: as parable, as allegory, and as apek’s imaginative, innovative use of these literary devices to raise ethical questions and to address social and political concerns. There is more than a hint of apek as “myth-tamer,” reworking the past for precise purposes: broadly, to enlarge our understanding of our own and others’ perceptions and interpretations of the world around us; more narrowly, to help forge the young First Republic of Czechoslovakia into a sustainable, participatory democratic society. At the same time, in a good many of the Tales apek is playing with our “of course” assumptions about familiar historical personalities and events, and turning them upside down.

When read in the order in which they were written (see the list at the back of the book), the Apocryphal Tales also become a window through which to view apek’s personal and literary development over the years. Taken in any order, the Tales remain characteristically apek: probing the nature of truth, justice, and human experience, all the while providing a good read.

This new translation of the Apocryphal Tales differs from the previous version (Apocryphal Stories, translated by Dora Round (London: Allen & Unwin; New York: Macmillan, 1949) in its use of updated language, in its corrections of errors, and in its entire approach to the Tales and to apek’s narrative voice. Also, I have added to the collection other stories which appeared first in apek’s newspaper and have never before appeared in English translation. These are the “Fables” and the “Would-Be Tales.”

Fables. This sampling of apek’s original use of the aphorism represents no more than a small portion of the whole. apek occasionally devoted his weekly newspaper column to these terse satirical observations, sometimes on life and times in general, sometimes as commentary on some specific issue or event. The single criterion for inclusion here is direct affinity with the Apocryphal Tales.

Would-Be Tales. The stories rounding out this book are taken from yet another category of apek’s literary journalism. In Czech they share the same volume as the Fables, being too few in number to constitute an entity of their own. Unconnected thematically to the Apocryphal Tales, these short narratives nonetheless exhibit certain threads woven throughout all of apek’s writing: his deep concern for human life, his humanistic outlook, and his fascination with human psychology, motivation, and reaction. apek scholar B.