Trzy pozornie nie związane ze sobą opowieści o całkiem innych protagonistach. Nie powiązane pozornie jedynie, bo każdorazowo łączy je wielość spojrzenia na dany wątek, osoby i ich motywacje. Okazuje się, że nie ma jednej prawdy o człowieku. Trylogię rozpoczyna kryminalny ‘case’ chłopa Hordubala. Początkowo czytanie jest nieco męczące, ale namawiam do wytrwania. W ostatniej części ‘Zwyczajne życie’ porządny i niezwykle ustabilizowany obywatel stojąc nad grobem opisuje swoje jakże zwyczajne życie. Do głosu dochodzą jednak jego liczne alter ego, wyjawiając jego prawdziwe motywacje i niespełnione pragnienia. Stawia to pod znakiem zapytania pierwotnie tak jednoznaczną ocenę moralną tego życia. Dowiadujemy się ponadto w jak wielkim stopniu całe to życie zostało zdeterminowane przez miejsce urodzenia, rodziców i wszystkich innych przodków wreszcie. Powieść stanowi klucz do autorefleksji. Każdy z nas jest całym tłumem rzeczywistych i możliwych istot. Teraz możemy szanować człowieka, dlatego że jest od nas odmienny i możemy go rozumieć, ponieważ jest nam równy.

Smekám klobouk před Čapkem. Tímto se stává oficiálně mým oblíbeným českým autorem.
Hordubal byl jedno velké překvapení. Na styl psaní Čapkova jsem si zvykla rychle a hned se do něj zamilovala! Je neuvěřitelné, jak je český jazyk tak pestrý.
Povětroň nebyl tak dobrý, trochu jsem se v ději ztrácela. Bylo to více postavami, a každá z nich vyprávěla jiný příběh o té samé osobě. Ale nakonec to nebylo zase tak špatné.
Obyčejný život to ale zase vylepšil. Životopis obyčejného člověka, který nakonec neměl tak obyčejný život, jaký očekával.
Všechny tři příběhy spojuje téma samoty a hledání smyslu života. Silné příběhy napsané velmi krásným stylem.
Tuto četbu doporučuji! :)

Hordubal 3,5*
Povětroň 1* (kdyby to bylo samostatně, tak to vzdám)
Obyčejný život 1,5* (kdyby to bylo samostatně, tak to vzdám taky - i když začátek vypadal zajímavě)

Pôsobivá trilógia. Hordubal výborný, Povětroň trochu pritiahnutý za vlasy, Obyčejný život skvelý.

Ziemlich gut, alle drei - die ja auch zusammen gehören. Ganz viele Blickwinkel auf die im Endeffekt gleichbleibende Frage, was Wahrheit ist und was das für das tatsächliche Leben eines Menschen bedeutet. Das ganze war allerdings am Ende etwas zu lang und zu deutlich.

The travesty that is "The English Patient" is a rip-off of the excellent Capek story "Meteor."

I actually only read Hordbul, but it was great.

Hordubal 5*
Povětroň 2*
Obyčejný život 4*, nebýt příliš filozofujícího konce, dal bych pět hvězd taky.

Three novels packaged together from 1933 and 1934 by the Czech science fiction writer (those these, not so much!).



Hordubal – 1933

When Juraj Hordubal goes off to the United State, he didn’t realize it would ruin him for the world. It’s no so much that America was so amazing that he could hardly stand to be back in his old life, nor is America so ruinous that it chewed him up and spit him out. Instead, it had a disrupting influence all told. That the world is this big and this different in other parts creates in him a broken existence. How could someone possibly return to a life of mundane farm work and an increasingly stressful and loveless marriage? Lucky for him he’s about to be murdered.

In this novel, we have a kind of send up of mystery novels, which generally start with the crime and focus on the killer, their means, motives, and opportunities, and investigate and pursue them as a consequence. In this book, we begin with the life of the victim, who doesn’t even become the victim until 2/3 thirds the way through, and once is the victim, never returns to narrative centerplace for the rest of the novel, and of course in the final cynical moment, is completely erased from existence.

This novel shares some similarities to a poem like “Miniver Cheevey” or like the novel Amerika by Franz Kafka. It also has some of the same disruptions of form and genre as Trent’s Last Case or The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, but than any of these it’s an existential novel at its heart.



Meteor – 1934

A truly bizarre novel in its own way, this is a kind of reversal of The Bridge of San Luis Rey. Four different people witness what they originally believe to a meter landing nearby and when they investigate, they find a crashed plane and a dying pilot whose fever racked body and head leads him to explain his story to each of the three primary witnesses, each who interpret his story through their own lens. The novel then proceeds to give each of their accounts of the pilot’s backstory written as a document for an official inquest of the crash.

The three stories are: a Sister of Mercy who hears in the ravings of the dying pilot a witness to sin and salvation; a Clairvoyant who uses the sparse information supplied by the pilot to craft a series of signs and portents; a Poet who takes the pilot’s ravings and writes an entire short novella of international intrigue of sex and smuggling and adventure and theories about novels!

At the end, the doctor, a mere scientist merely constructs the report.

The book is again a kind of satire of the different ways of capturing human condition and putting into different forms of writing and language. Whether that form privileges spirituality, metaphysics, language and ontology, or simply the bare existence of life, the story attempts to piece it together. None of them get it right, or maybe they do, like them, we also cannot pull naked truth from the different forms any better than they can.



An Ordinary Life – 1934

In this third novel in the collection, we meet a reluctant memoirist looking back on his life. His reluctance comes in two distinct varities: a reluctance to tell what he considers to be too boring and too mundane a life to worry too much about and two, a reluctance to tell of a life that he might end up regretting for any numbers of reasons. And of course, both can true and can spiral back on one another in various ways.

He has had an ordinary life. He wanted to be a teacher, having gone to college and developed a love of learning, and even when speaking with his father found love and support for the idea. But something happened along the way and he instead became involved a regular sort of business. The resulting choice created that kind of destiny for him and left him out of sorts.

This memory opens up for him further elements of the choices he made along the way and how those choices did and didn’t allow for other choices.

As these digressions and iterations in his choice become more and more clear from a retrospective sensibility, his current writing begins to spiral more and more out of control.

This is a book about choices, the longview, reflection, but also about the difference between descriptive and prescriptive language.

Hordubal – 6*
Povětroň – nápad 4*, provedení 2*
Obyčejný život – 4*

Capek is one of the most under appreciated authors of the 20th century. He wrote, literally (pun intended), in almost every single genre. Also, Capek was a candidate for the noble prize in literature, but was not awarded because he refused to write less critical Nazi and Communist literature. Being born in what was then Czechoslovakia, Capek's sentiment uncannily predicted Czechoslovakia's history for the next 50 years after his death.

"Three novels" is an entertaining and thought provoking collection of Capek's series of novels defending the inefficient, the simple, and the pragmatic.

The narration swoops in and out of 3rd, 1st, and 2nd in a very fluid and revealing way. It's very difficult to describe, however if you appreciate Czech literature this is a good and fun read. These novels reflect the mindset of Czechoslovakia during the interwar period quite well: The simple life.

Výborné čítanie odporúčam.