From "The Gardener's Year" by Karel Capek, which I'm reading this morning because Meade began exclaiming about it when he read the first post of the day, the one about the robot umpire, where I mentioned a play by Karel Capek, "R.U.R.," the origin of the term "robot."
Capek's brother Josef suggested the word, which is based on the Czech word "robota," which meant the forced labor of serfs and is based on the word "rab," which means "slave." In the play, from 1920, the robots carry out a revolution.
"The Gardener's Year" has great illustrations that are by the brother, Josef....
That was originally published in 1931.
If you think the drawing style is derivative of James Thurber, here's how Thurber was drawing in 1927...
... and in 1931:
Drawings captured from "James Thurber: Writings & Drawings."
Anyway... Meade says he read "The Gardener's Year" in the 1980s. He got very enthusiastic about it this morning. I said, that's so weird because I just put a Karel Capek book in the Kindle a couple weeks ago — "War with the Newts."
From the Wikipedia article on "War with the Newts":
On August 27, 1935, Čapek wrote, "Today I completed the last chapter of my utopian novel. The protagonist of this chapter is nationalism. The content is quite simple: the destruction of the world and its people. It is a disgusting chapter, based solely on logic. Yet it had to end this way. What destroys us will not be a cosmic catastrophe but mere reasons of state, economics, prestige, etc."
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38 comments:
it had to end this way
It's understandable that a Czech in 1935 would feel this way.
I wonder what he means by the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil is unripe. It's definitely a different point of view than I'd ever heard. He thinks God wanted us to have sweeter knowledge? Or tarter knowledge? (Is it a citrus tree?)
In the play, from 1920, the robots carry out a revolution.
Yes Comrade, even a machine with the most rudimentary intelligence would rise up from such circumstances.
The Czech people have been at ground zero for all of the conflicts of the 20th Century. Amazing how it all centered on them. I blame Jan Hus for his daring freedom of expression.
"I wonder what he means by the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil is unripe. It's definitely a different point of view than I'd ever heard. He thinks God wanted us to have sweeter knowledge? Or tarter knowledge? (Is it a citrus tree?)"
It's an inference from the analogy to a real garden with fruit trees. The human father's reason for forbidding eating the fruit was that it was unripe.
What do Bible interpreters usually say about God's motivation to forbid eating from the Tree of Knowledge? (I'm sure one of the reasons is: Because God. End of analysis. Obey. But to get beyond that, if possible...)
If that 1927 Thurber had been drawn in the 1980s the dice would have more sides.
Not that I would know anything about that.
God should have called it the bush of stupidity. Help yourself.
I noticed that "robot" is male, and "robotess" is female. Also the fun word "gynoid".
The knowledge of good and evil let loose shame and guilt on us. That's how God spotted what they had done. They were suddenly ashamed.
Ann Althouse said...What do Bible interpreters usually say about God's motivation to forbid eating from the Tree of Knowledge? (I'm sure one of the reasons is: Because God. End of analysis. Obey. But to get beyond that, if possible...)
My recollections are that innocence brings us closer to god (God protects fools, children and the United States of America, suffer the children to come unto me, all that stuff, many cultures embrace the idea of the holy fool). The knowledge of good and evil, by enmeshing us in the sordid world of understanding and desiring understanding, arrogance, selfishness, etc., pulls us further from god.
Eating the fruit was not just a violation of God's command to not eat the fruit, it changed us and that change acted as a wall between us and God in a way that couldn't be undone. And that's why Adam and Eve had to leave the garden.
I get the metaphor of his father's garden and god's garden, I just think he pushes it further than it will go with the "unripened" line and I don't see why he forces it. It doesn't add anything.
When I was little, while staying at my grandparents on my birthmother side, I thought I was doing a good thing by taking out the little plants growing around the big rose plants using a machete with the curbed end. Little did I know my grandma had planted new seeds and what I thought was pesky weeds... well.
Later she told that story over and over again to visitors and anybody she thought would be amused by it. My good intentions where immediately lost in her anger. I don’t think I could explain what I’ve done because I thought it was understood.
I would not even water the garden after that.
Of course it's unripe. Technical knowledge evolves faster than our ability to control it wisely: e.g. Fermi's paradox, Unabomber Manefesto, Dr. Strangelove. Unripe knowledge being the death of humanity is hard-wired in our DNA.
"The knowledge of good and evil let loose shame and guilt on us. That's how God spotted what they had done. They were suddenly ashamed."
In this version, the Garden of Eden was a porn set and God didn't want his newborn naifs to say no to his plan to look at them naked.
tim m. good points. One minor IMO point, I would say it's not innocence, but humility that brings humans closer to God.
pride comes before the fall
shame is a manifestation of pride which is derived from knowledge.
@Lem
When I was a young child, I believed that the moss in the cracks between the bricks in the patio was bad and I pulled a lot of it out and told my parents about it thinking I'd be thanked for my work. They let me know that the the moss was not undesirable and it hit me hard to realize that I couldn't rely on my own perception of good and bad. I could be wrong, even where I was confident that I was right. But no one expressed any anger toward me or retold the story. It was a very powerful experience, even though my parents showed almost no reaction at all. This was typical of my parents.
If they'd gotten mad and tried to punish me, I might have felt it was unfair and they were mean or something. That would have developed a different side of me. Perhaps it would have made me stronger and more defensive of my own self interest. As it happened, I grew in awareness of the way other people think all sorts of different things that are not available to me. I've spent my whole life thinking about what other people might be thinking. It's hard to figure out what to do and how to be an active character in this world if you're always allowing for other people's perspectives and trying not to offend them!
I think I'd rather my entire life were shaped by a movie than bits of moss.
I don't see why he forces it.
Gardeners push things around. That's what they do besides plan and dream.
Althouse: Your parents did you a solid. The lesson was that discretion is the better part of valor, for them and you. This is leadership by example. Of course, many dynamic people with great achievement were born in harsh and stressful childhoods. The price is poor adult mental health. Count this as a blessing.
I hate gardening but love landscaping.
"War With the Newts" is a favorite.
Capek had enormous fun with the disingenuous style of propaganda, that of playing the victim. Its become trendy these days.
I borrowed it from Washington Sycip, forty years ago, back when it wasn't easy to find.
W. Sycip was my bosses bosses boss back then, who had affiliated his firm with Arthur Anderson. Wash had been caught in Columbia U by WWII, enlisted and become a USN codebreaker. That before becoming Asias premier auditor. A very interesting man.
The trouble with the LOC Thurber is that the paper is too thin and you can see through it. The War between Men and Women (p.623ff) is always timely, though.
I grew up not liking gardening. My first memory of it is my grandmother making me pick tomato worms off of tomato (obviously) plants. I thought they were baby dragons and they scared me. She was my dad’s mom and not very friendly. I was very little.
In the kindle or on the kindle?
"...who had affiliated his firm with Arthur Anderson."
If I had a dollar for every time somebody misspelled* Arthur AndersEn, I could buy and sell Warren Buffet.
* In fairness, I probably would too if I hadn't worked there for a few years.
War With The Newts is acclaimed by many as the first dystopian novel, and is today still considered by many as the best book of science fiction ever written.
Blatant BS from wiki. I defy anyone to link to a list of the best science books ever written that ranks "War with the Newts" number one.
Its not a terribly popular book, as SF goes.
Few have read it, it did not sell by the million in paperback.
But I personally rank it quite high.
I worked for Sycip (AndersEn) for three years.
"The trouble with the LOC Thurber is that the paper is too thin and you can see through it."
I have the Kindle version. Have to cut and paste and do screen captures, so I don't want the book.
"Its not a terribly popular book, as SF goes.
Few have read it, it did not sell by the million in paperback.
But I personally rank it quite high."
The Amazon page, linked in the post, says, "One of the great anti-utopian satires of the twentieth century, an inspiration to writers from Orwell to Vonnegut..."
The Wikipedia article on it says, "War with the Newts was described as a "classic work" of science fiction by science fiction author and critic Damon Knight. War With The Newts is acclaimed by many as the first dystopian novel, and is today still considered by many as the best book of science fiction ever written. For many years the novel was hard to obtain, and earlier copies have been known to sell for over one hundred dollars."
Sounds pretty important!
In this version, the Garden of Eden was a porn set and God didn't want his newborn naifs to say no to his plan to look at them naked.
Ann hates God and wants him to die, because she had to ride in a car with a smoker once. Newflash toots, you'll soon enough be a stinking corpse and your two best assets will be worm food, and God will still be eternal.
"but Adam...picked the unripe fruit"
_Who_ picked the fruit??
I read WAR WITH THE NEWTS many years ago and I thought it was delightful! (I'd read R.U.R. in English class in high school.)
In more recent years, I've picked up all of Capek's works in English that I could find. I've read a good deal of his short stories and all (I believe) of his novels. I have an omnibus edition of four of his plays, (including R.U.R.) I haven't got to this volume yet, but I will, in the fullness of time. I think his short stories are his best work, but his novels are excellent.
"'it had to end this way'
"It's understandable that a Czech in 1935 would feel this way."
There is no reason to feel differently today.
“Everything will be all right in the end... if it's not all right then it's not yet the end.”
War With the Newts is a great book; I read it long ago, now will have to re-read it.
a link to the book,
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0601981h.html#chapter1
Many thanks for the tip on Capek —and the great quotes. I read “R.U.R.” but too long ago, in an anthology circa 1960, with other early classics like E.M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops.” High time to re-read Capek and explore his remarkable sensibility. Writing politically-charged commentary in the satirical mode (e.g. Swift, Orwell, Vonnegut) is a very special art form, and particularly challenging when the consequence of overstepping is a midnight visit from the state security apparatus.
Thanks for great comments and the reminder of how good Capek is. Must re-read.
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