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THE ROBBER of Karel Čapek From the Introduction and Translation Notes to the new English translation of the two plays by Čapek - R.U.R (Rossum's Universal Robots) and The Robber, translated by Voyen Koreis and issued in 2008 by Booksplendour Publishing) The Robber is a comedy, or so
the author says. In fact it moves between romantic comedy and tragedy,
with a pinch of melodrama and even farce thrown in here and there. On top
of all this, some passages are in verse.
The play’s development probably has a great deal to do with this.
Čapek
began to work on it as early as 1911, when he was only twenty one. It went
through several metamorphoses, which were all cast away by the author as
unsatisfactory. Čapek
returned to the theme again by the time he was nearing thirty. The Czech
word used in the title is “Loupežník”,
which literally translates as robber, brigand, bandit, outlaw, or
similar. The real meaning though could be more like “untamable or
indomitable man”, or perhaps even “a young man in a hurry”. The
translation in the book closely follows the original, except for short
passages in which the birds of the forest communicate and offer insight to
the play’s characters. Though highly poetical, they are far too reliant
on the sound of the Czech language, and had to be left out in the English
translation, as they would lose much of their charm. Some cuts were also
made in the Second Act love scene, which many more recent productions have
also done. The Robber gives the audience a distinct impression
of being a lament over the exuberance of youth that is rapidly
disappearing, if not gone altogether. In the note he wrote for the first
night programme, Čapek says something to the effect that had he
postponed completing the play any longer, it would have had to be called
The Professor, instead of The Robber. The former is a rather tragic figure
of an elderly man, who in the course of 24 hours has taken away from him
everything he believes to have gained in his life, including his daughter,
his wife, even his house. The robber, who imposes himself on the
professor’s life in such intrusive manner, is a young man, who simply
wonders in from the forest. A confrontation of the spontaneously acting,
but thoroughly arrogant and irresponsible youth, with the conservative
attitudes and set principles of the elderly academic, soon develops. It
reaches its climax when the robber locks himself inside the house with the
professor’s younger daughter, who became hopelessly infatuated with the
youthful hero. In the farcical scenes that follow, the professor calls for
help from the local villagers and dignitaries, some of whom would rather
side with the young outlaw, as it turns out. To every character in the
play, the robber resembles some kind of a hero they have worshipped in
their youth, but in the end the protagonist himself is forced into a
somewhat ignoble exit, making only a hollow sounding promise that he will
be back. Though certainly far less
successful internationally, the play has proven a big hit with the
audiences on the domestic scene. Even in the 21st century, nearly a
hundred years after Čapek had begun to work on the first version, a
year would hardly roll by without at least one important Czech company
coming up with a new production. Čapek
himself thought of The Robber as his only “true Czech” play, and
apparently he valued it more than his other, technically perhaps more
advanced, and on the world stage certainly much more successful plays. He was naturally present at the first performance of
The Robber in March 1920, and he saw it for the last time in September
1938, when a new production was staged, again at the Prague National
Theatre. This coincidentally happened on the same night when the
representatives of the four superpowers had met in Munich, to sign and
seal the infamous agreement, which eventually lead to the occupation of
Czechoslovakia by Germany, in a prelude to the Second World War. |
