Karel Čapek met the actress and writer Olga Scheinpflugová (1902–68) sometime in 1920, possibly before the first night of his lyrical drama The Robber on 2 March. In her near-autobiographical Czech Novel, published in 1946, she describes how he waited for her after one of her performances and used his allegedly unfinished play as a pretext for arranging a private rehearsal with her. However, their earliest surviving correspondence dates from the summer of the same year. From Čapek’s letters that autumn it is clear that Olga’s initial response was reluctant or wavering, whether because of youthful carelessness, or a pretence at mature indifference, or a fear of fatal attraction. The relationship gained intensity at the end of 1920, and by the summer of 1921 Olga found herself pregnant. Karel’s letters in the critical August of 1921 offer comfort, but no clear proposal of marriage, and even though he vehemently disagreed with the idea of an abortion, by the time she got his letter (Letter 11), it was obviously too late. It seems that Olga, aged eighteen, and afraid of her father and her future, took the advice of her elder colleagues.
Never in her reminiscences of Karel did she touch on this subject. Protectively, she always explained his subsequent reluctance to marry her by reference to his illness or the opposition of his family. It is true that his spinal disease was at its worst during the First World War and in the early 1920s. His father feared that if it continued to progress as it had done he would end up in a wheelchair. That he was often in severe pain, and could not then even think of physical love and marital life (see Letter 18), is beyond doubt. But his mother also had much to answer for. She is known to have said that he could marry anyone apart from a gypsy or an actress. That his mother, sister and brother disliked Olga is evident from the memoir The Brothers Čapek through the Eyes of their Family (Hamburg 1961–2, Prague 1994), which his niece Helena, his sister’s younger daughter, wrote in reaction to Olga’s novel. (His sister’s book, My Dear Brothers, published posthumously in 1962, is mostly silent, or polite, about Olga.)
Karel was attracted by Olga’s impulsive emotions, yet longed for peace for his writing (he compared himself to ‘a sheet of water that mirrors everything but is static’, characterising her as too ‘glowingly, stirringly sensitive’). His letters describe vividly the fear and reclusiveness that sprang from his illness. They are understandably silent about another woman, Věra Hrůzová (1901–79), whom he met briefly at the end of 1920 and who renewed contact with him in the critical months of 1922–3 when Olga most pressed him for commitment. Though this relationship seems to have remained in the hinterland of his imagination, it may have contributed to his frequently voiced need for purification. He felt very guilty about Olga. Her trauma obviously did not help her oversensitive nerves, and she suffered from a congenital heart condition. Besides, as a result of the termination she could not have children. Her dramatic reactions must have made life difficult for him. Though they eventually seem to have agreed on very close friendship, and he, as an invalid nearly thirteen years older than her, did not expect her to confine herself to him, he could never give her up, and was possibly even jealous (see Letter 26).
She became a distinguished actress, performing in Čapek’s plays among others, and an author in her own right, though she self-critically characterised herself as mediocre. Sometimes she used to say to him: ‘Stand a bit further away from me so that I don’t catch your greatness.’ But their literary minds were in constant fruitful dialogue. She gave him, for example, the subject for his last play The Mother. Contrary to medical expectations, Karel’s disease did not deteriorate but stabilised by the 1930s. In 1935, after fifteen years of an eventful relationship, and sadly only three years before his death, he decided to marry her.
*
We will never be able to unveil the full story, not least because we do not have Olga’s side of it. She is said to have buried her letters in his coffin. For some reason Čapek, though he collected cacti, Persian carpets, African music and other artefacts, burnt most of his correspondence (see Letter 5), including letters from world-famous personalities – though he later gave some of these to his sister’s second husband, the poet Josef Palivec, and to other collectors of such rarities. However, Olga recalls that when in the distressing months after Munich she wanted to burn his letters, he joked that they did not have anything to feel ashamed of, and that her brother, his literary agent, should keep them so that future literary critics could dissect them.
It has been suggested that his love letters to Olga read like a novel. They certainly have a unique place in his writings, and for both these reasons a small selection (twenty-eight out of 361 surviving letters) is included in this collection. However warm or passionate he sounds in his journalism and fiction, he remains a brainy writer, with a fondness for logic and the disentanglement of enigmas. Though his correspondence with friends shows his delight in nicknames and wordplay, nowhere else but in his letters to Olga does he reveal such spontaneous playfulness and intensity of feeling, or speak about his personal problems. What also gives them a special value is that he frequently discusses his art (e.g. Letters 9, 10 and 21). Olga used extracts, often unsystematically, in A Czech Novel, and writing it helped her to overcome bereavement and survive the war. When she was accused of faking the quoted passages, she pointed out that many publishers, including one based in England, had offered to publish her private correspondence, but that she had refused for emotional reasons. As long as she was alive she did not want to publicise what belonged only to her. It was not until 1963 that she gave way to pressure from Čapek’s editor, as well as from scholars and friends of his generation, who feared that they would not live to see this part of his oeuvre. The letters, which, as Olga put it, bear the stamp of ‘the poet’s heart, co-feeling, and relation to life and man’, finally came out in 1971, three years after her death.
[November 1920]
Forgive me, Olga, it’s a weakness to be writing to you again; you owe me so many replies and all that, that I feel ashamed before both myself and you that I don’t have enough patience to wait until you find a free moment or the good will to write me a few words or call me. But to write is my only means of talking to you today, even if it’s without a response, I’m talking and so am able to bear at least one difficult hour. Once I’ve finished writing, I’ll feel worse still.
So, I had the pleasure of seeing you on Friday, then, and the lesser pleasure of waiting for you on Saturday at Smíchov Station! Poor bunch of violets, which I laid on the tram rails so that nothing should be left of it! And then four more days; for four days my soul was freezing in an overheated room. And this night I dreamt of you; it was such a beautiful dream that I can’t and mustn’t tell you about it. And I saw you lunchtime; you offered me some tiny strange hand and were altogether like a stranger; I hardly recognised you, it seemed to me you got fat or something, and that perhaps you no longer existed and some other little girl, who didn’t know about anything, had come instead of you. This afternoon I got back from Prof. Syllaba;1 I wanted sleeping pills, he was fussing over me for half an hour and then said: There is no physicalreason for insomnia, you’ve been tormenting yourself with something difficult; I can’t help you with that. Yes, of course he can’t help me with that. I can’t help myself either; the proof of this is that against my better judgement I’m writing a futile letter and watching dusk fall. Another day has passed; when I was waiting for it yesterday I thought it would perhaps bring me something.
Little one, who treat me as you’re used to treating others, do you know what I wish terribly? That you were just a typist or a shop-girl; a little girl who runs to her grey work the same time every day and back home at noon, and after lunch again, and again in the evening; that I could wait somewhere round the corner and catch you and have you a short while for myself, and please you and please myself. You’d have cold little hands that would move me; you wouldn’t have anything else to think about than your workaday bloke and festive Sunday; you would need me as you do your little mirror, your thread gloves, your bed.
But you are an actress and think about art. Great art. Ah, if you want to be a great artist, you must undergo the torture of being a great human being. Little bird, little bird, that’s not a merry thing. It doesn’t mean to frown and be tragic. It means to sacrifice a lot for life; to give generously and give the best; to give your life without end and not crave anything so much as sacrifice. Little bird, your twitter is beautiful, why do you want to be a human being? It’s not an easy thing; it binds you to give your blood and soul, not to be endlessly free, not to be beautifully irresponsible, but to drink humiliation zestfully, to yearn to feel your way into the weight and anguish and awfulness of life which hasn’t yet caught you, little bird.
I have never been so lonely as I am now. I was far less lonely when I didn’t know you. Only now am I getting to know what loneliness is. The one person who used to be closest to me sees my anguish and looks on it with impatience, almost with hostility, because he notices how it takes away and weakens the potential success of shared work.2 My God, as if any success whatever mattered! All my books are dead; I write and don’t care what I’m writing; it’s enough when I manage to push it a smidge above mediocrity. Nothing in the world can make me concentrate; nothing can entice me. I used to like my work and it is a stranger to me; I used to like it that I had become somebody so early, and now I’d like to chuck everything, abandon everything and leave for somewhere where I’d be a nobody. I used to like my pictures on the walls, they were near to my soul; I’d like someone to take them down so that there would be only cobwebby traces left. I used to like people; ah, what a nuisance they are! They even used to like me; now their closeness suffocates me. I’d like to leave but not so as to travel, rather to erase myself, to stop somehow being. I’d like to make a sacrifice to something, but don’t have anything to make it to, and that’s the worst thing about loneliness.
And yet, I too could be happy, even the happiest. The very immensity of my loneliness shows me how much sociability and love have been wasted in me. So much love that it would be enough for a whole district. And now so much loneliness that I even have to give it an extension of my nights. Yes, Syllaba is right; the patient can’t be helped.
For God’s sake, enough about that! How could this theme entertain you? Forgive me, I’m writing out of weakness, and weakness is everything I’m writing. I have such a heavy feeling between my eyes, in my throat and on my chest; you don’t know about that, but when you are thirty, you will also start to feel that anxiety when some hope will be slipping away from you. By then you will surely have become a great actress; then you will not think about success, or a wig, or togs, or this and that, or at least not in the first place; you will think more about the day or the hour that’s vanishing and adding the whole of its weight to your forlornness. Besides, prophesying is a weakness too. I’ve actually wanted to write about something else. At times I’m overcome by anxiety and pity that I didn’t want to accept the friendship you once offered me. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps you would have enjoyed to call a friend and twitter with him. He would have sat next to you asking nothing; nothing would have been taken away from him. Ah, Olga, if only I knew what strange thing has fallen between us!
Well then, here is another letter, I suspect the eleventh; one of seventy or seven hundred that you will have counted by the end of the month. You are used to getting letters; it’s not an unpleasant thing if it’s not necessary to answer them, to answer not only the letters but also your own self. I want imploringly and inordinately that there should be something between us, anything, but not my weakness. I don’t deserve to be driven into it; and yet, my God, what can I do? Where, how, by what means shall I get my way? Oh, if only the means were for once in my hands! You’d goggle at what a turn it would be.
[5 December 1920]
Olga, my great darling,
I must tell you something. I can’t turn it into the most beautiful story in the world, but it is the most beautiful reality in the world. He found her for himself, a bud, a half-open flower, and reached out for it with his hand. The hand was timorous and weak and clumsy with love, pious with love, ruthless with love; the hand was love itself. Yet all of a sudden the undefiled flower breathed out a cry of tenderness and horror: ‘You’ll destroy me!’
And he felt as if he was tumbling down on his knees, and was weeping and praying and wringing his hands: ‘Oh, sweet flower, how could I destroy you? I’d rather cut both my hands off, I’d rather perish, I’d torture myself to death with desire and love rather than destroy you! No, no, never, sweet flower. I would curse myself if I ever caused you the least pain. I’m not worthy of you. I am a burning, wretched man, and my breath will not bring you happiness.’
The undefiled flower is silent and fragrant; it is bending over and trembling. And its silence softly, with devotion, with immense shyness, breathes out: ‘Pluck me!’
And now, something else, Ola. Today I realise very powerfully that something changed between us yesterday. At least in me. It was during the performance of A Little Girl.1 There is more ahead of us than there has been so far. We must work together. Olga, I feel that that’s the reason why we’ve met. I’d like to be able to say that I order it. Ola, starting with today you must give me your every role, even if it is a negligible one, so that I can think with you and work with you. You must understand me. I don’t want to, and cannot, teach you anything, and you don’t need that, but I want to be a mirror to you before which you grow into greatness, and an encouragement, and a comrade in work; I want to be a director to you; I want to co-create your career. Ola, you must become someone. You are such super-precious material that I now suffer terribly knowing that hands so unintelligent, and so without love, as those which are right now leading you through your acting career, interfere in it. Ola, you must let me work on you and with you. You are young, and I dread that you might be formed by those who don’t love you and don’t even understand you. You must grow, you must be something extraordinary. Ola, I love you too much. I’m not content with your present – I want to and must get deeply engraved in your future. From today on, Ola, I’m talking to you about nothing but this thirsty ‘want’. I want to be a rung on which you will walk up. That’s my task.
Ola, I miss you endlessly today. Be so good and write me at least one sweet word, will you, right now. Little girl, make my evening happy. I’ll wait for you at a quarter to ten. Please don’t slip away. I must see you – I must see you, love – I miss you with the whole of my body and soul.
I shall bring you that fairy tale of mine. It’s poor, but the intention was good.2
24 December 1920
Bathed like a baby and alone for a while at last, I have nothing else and better to do but write to you: how I was glad when you came in the morning, what an event it was for me, and how I regretted that I couldn’t have conjured Jizinka1 into the left pocket of my grey waistcoat and kept her there locked in my wardrobe for half an hour. Or why didn’t Jizinka die for half an hour? I’d have laid her on the sofa with piety, and above all, most of all, I’d have closed her eyes, and then, Ola, we’d have prayed together, and comforted each other because of that sudden loss, and when we’d comforted ourselves entirely, Jizinka would have suddenly sneezed, we’d have flown apart and she’d have said: Children, I talked to my Lord God; it was awfully beautiful. – And we, Ola, we wouldn’t have said anything, not even agreed that it had been awfully beautiful. – But Jizinka’s good for nothing – she was unable to die in time. May her Lord God punish her for that! May she get fat! May she attain ninety-seven kilos and ninety-seven years! – But I’m not grumbling, even as it was, it was a Christmas present for me, and you won’t give me a better one, Ola.
Ola, I’m terribly ashamed that I haven’t really given you anything. When I give you my books, it’s as if a peasant had given you a basket of his own potatoes. When I walked from the office at one, I saw so many lovely, alluring things in shop windows, and my eyes, my hands, and money too, turned all itchy: no Ola, forbid me what you like, but you mustn’t forbid me to bring you something occasionally.
About that room, you must decide quickly before the housing department gets involved; once again: a view over the Vltava, the Shooting Island, Žofín,2 beautiful old Biedermeier furniture, a respectable aunt – a spinster, who once used to love Fibich.3 Decide by tomorrow.
My God, Ola, I didn’t give you anything, me who’d like to shower you with gifts as Aladdin did his Badroulbadour! Tonight I’d like to bring you all this (in a military lorry):
(1) A sports suit made of English cloth, a little knee-length skirt, leather knee-high boots, a cap for the mop of sweet curls, and besides, a complete set of knitted underwear in khaki colour, endlessly long stockings and lamb’s wool gloves – enough. (2) A batik ‘tea-gown’, as colourful as a parrot and as light as a morning love-thought; in addition, nice little slippers, fluorescent stockings et le reste – a dream, Olga, a pure dream! (3) A fur coat made of ‘seacalf’ (an English way of saying ‘seal’), as shiny as fantasy, resembling dark grey silver. (4) A ball dress of your own choice (a chap mustn’t meddle with that), and with it – for the neckline would presumably be rather low – a string of pearls. (4) A box of wigs – black, fiery and golden. (5) Fifty pairs of gloves. (6) Twelve pairs of shoes and high heels straight from England. (7) A box of sardines. (8) A jumper with a collar that can be rolled up to the forehead. (9) A packet of invitations for guest appearances from directors of theatres in America, Australia and even far-off Prague. (10) Furniture for a little blue room (designed by architect Janák4 – damn it, it’s a bit cubistic). (1) A train ticket to Africa (Oran, the Continental Hotel). (12) The latest model of a hat from Paris (notice the gorgeous white bird-of-paradise plume! A gem, isn’t it?). (13) A ring that makes the person who wears it invisible. (14) The complete works of K.Č. in fifty-six volumes. (15) A beautifully dressed tree, all hung with candles, male scalps, rubies and diamonds, wigs, costumes of all eras and chocolates. (16) A drawer with charming love letters, sorted out in neat compartments and provided with dates, from 122 men head-over-heels in love and ready to lay down their lives for you. (17) A free first-class ticket for all rails of life. (18) (Because eighteen is your number) a longish chest, which two servants in perfect liveries (white breeches, white chamois leather gloves) would carry to your room, which you would (only after opening everything else) open, and in which you’d find the beneficent giver of all those treasures winking at you and saying: ‘Ola, all of this is still too little; I must also give you a bit of myself, at least for this evening; pop me quickly into your room and don’t tell anyone that I’m here. And if a smidgen of sadness comes over you at dinner, come and have a look at me; don’t forget at dinner that I am with you, very, very near you, that I don’t even breathe, and no one knows that I’m at your place.’ – Ola, if all this is too little, forgive me; we must save something for next Christmas.
Strejda has just come with your present. Ola, it’s so beautiful, thank you, I could have given her a kiss straight away; sweet girl, you’ve made me incredibly happy. And that fairy tale, my God – we must create and live through more of them. There will be fairy tales, Ola, you can be sure about that. It’s beautiful, fabulous, your gift. I’m all the more ashamed for the nothing I’ve given you. Ola, I’m kissing your generous little hands that made me so happy. Goodbye tomorrow. And tonight, don’t forget that I’m in your room.
Your devoted K.Č.
25 December [1920]
Ola, I wouldn’t feel rested tonight if I didn’t write you a few words. Good Lord, I made you cry! After an evening which we were allowed to spend so … so free of worries! Ola, I’m a brute and a fool; I shouldn’t have talked about a thing which concerns only me, with which I have come to terms and which, after all, perhaps, probably, surely is not and will never be true. I don’t know what your hot little tears were directed at; I only know that I brought them about, and I’m awfully ashamed, I feel like beating myself up. The moment I sat down to dinner, Jarmila told me:1 Karel, something happened to you. No, nothing happened, but I did something terrible. For the second time already I’ve made my little one cry – I who want to set her peepers in the gold of an eternal smile! Ola, I talked utternonsense. Sweet girl, you are my life, and if you love me, I have so much strength, both physical and mental, that I could give it away, that I’d like to pour half of it into you, who so often suffer more than I do, who are frequently more tired, who are a thousand times weaker. Ola, I say it’s just the other way round: you need (at least sometimes) a little wheelchair, and I’m here to pull you; and you are right even in that – this is just the most beautiful thing. Ola, and forgive me one more thing – those eighteen years of yours. For a lot of the time you are older than me; so many times I’m a boy by your side; Ola, for God’s sake, the years do not make any distance between us! Still, I want you to be eighteen permanently because it’s just what I like so terribly! You are my life. I never want to make you cry again. If you only knew how much those lit le tears are smarting!
I’m writing to you with your sweet stockings on my lap. Forgive me, I’ve unwrapped them and keep kissing them after every sentence. My big-hearted, impulsive, crying little darling, I’m a brute, a savage donkey and an irksome raven, but I’m so much in love, you see! And besides, sometimes when I can’t sleep, and still can’t sleep, I think of so many things – mostly incredibly beautiful ones but sometimes horribly sad ones, and what happened yesterday was I involuntarily blabbed some of those sad ones. It was a thought from one of those bad nights – a phantom of insomnia, an illusion, nothing serious. Let’s never talk about it again! – Ola, I must see you the moment you’ve finished singing the start of The Flower.2 I must, infinitely must. I’m waiting in front of the theatre so that no one else can snatch you away. You are my life.
[The end of February 1921]
Dearest little one,1 Karel2 has just caught me tidying my room like a diligent Martha, that is, after three years I’ve once again been combing through my old papers, ties, and the general debris that a slightly untidy bloke manages to litter his pad with. This is the third day I’ve been doing it; three cartloads of the stuff have already been taken away, and I haven’t even dared to look into the more tucked-away drawers. The result is dust, tiredness and very strong melancholy. Every trifling thing brings back the time when it was still alive for me. I’ll have it all burnt in the afternoon, and I’ll watch the fire with gusto.
My appetite for writing is growing almost incessantly. Little one, I’ll soon plunge into work, but first we must write that summer film.3
This morning I had a brainwave, which would be nice if it were feasible; it’s that the proceeds of the performance of The Robber4 in which you’ll be a guest actress should go to charity, I mean, I’d donate my royalty, say, to the building of a student colony. But only if it were announced ‘For the benefit of’ etc. The point would be that a lot of people would come then, especially if it were for some really popular purpose. So this is the morning idea; I haven’t had another one yet.
Little one, sweetheart, think about the film, we’ll talk about it this afternoon. I miss you, my voice is sad with catarrh; yesterday I looked forward to how much I’d be missing you all evening and thought that I’d write you a poem, and instead I got two new sheets of Embarrassing Tales5 and had to be doing the proofs. Sweetheart, my O-darlin-ka, you made me very happy when you dropped me a few lines; you saved my morning. I’m looking forward to the afternoon – I’ll come at four. A thousand kisses for each letter of the alphabet you wrote; when will you collect them? You are good and so, so sweet, darling Olinka, and I’m already completely and incorrigibly your
Káča6
[March 1921]
God, if I wanted to be anything,
I would want to be nothing but her hunger.
I’d never have to wait, she’d never linger,
I’d just happen to her three times a day
And she’d always, always without delay
Have to satisfy me.
And if I were her big and busy comb,
I’d pluck her hair for myself in the morning,
And hold it between my teeth all day long,
And softly hum a never-ending song.
And if I were, and if I were her heel
I’d be so cheeky and I’d be so proud
That I would grow very tall like a tree,
And she’d no longer be a little girl.
Lord, if you want me to bow to your might,
Make me a porter in Thunovská Street,
I’d open the door for her every night
Good God, I don’t know what would happen then.
If I were a poet with a true gift,
I’d find a word to rhyme with the name Olga,
Mind you, that would be really something.
And if I were the moon, oh, I would dive
Straight into the house number twenty-five;
I’d sit on her bed quietly and listen
To her breathing, and I’d make her teeth glisten
With silvery light, on her half-parted lips.
If I weren’t mad, I’d know what to do.
(To be repeated eight times, each time with a different expression.)
Who hasn’t got a wench,
He has no thought to quench;
But I have got an actress,
Which is a sort of madness,
A smarting fever.
If I weren’t writing nonsense to her,
I’d want to be walking under her windows;
If I were now walking under her windows
I’d want to be writing nonsense at home.
If I were the police president Bienert,
I would have all constables play guitars
And two French horns in Chotek’s park at night.
Prague would then quiver and begin to heave,
Swing, toss and float, enchanted, it would weave
Through the dark waves of night weeping with love.
If I were this minute condemned to death,
I would die gladly;
I would say to myself: It’s good to die
Being in love.
If I were Olga Scheinpflugová reading
All these crazy words, I couldn’t help thinking
And saying to myself: I’ve found a man
Who has a screw loose, which means that he can
Count on his lucky stars in the first place.
What shall I do with this blithe silly fool?
It’s hard to know. Blithe and silly and fool
Equal, when added up, one word – blissful,
Blissful thanks to my darling girl’s grace.
[April 1921]
Ola, sweetheart, it’s half past twelve and I’ve just got back from the Castle;1 it’s just the hour you’re dancing, and perhaps, perhaps you are in a way happy. See, little one, I miss you: tonight people have flattered me so much, but I can’t be proud now; amid that splendid society I kept drawing the picture of my sweet girl in a little skirt, with her mouth tucked into her collar and her glistering eyes; she threw me a look with those eyes, and I didn’t know what I was saying or to whom. Little one, God knows, we don’t belong among those people, oh God, tuck us away into a dark-black corner.
No, you’re dancing now, little flame; I don’t know who you’re dazzling and who you’re burning, but I’m looking at your pictures and am jealous, you see, I’m jealous of all actorkind, since as early as ten o’clock I’ve had a piece of ice in my heart.
But, no, you enjoy yourself; I want you to be madly happy and not to forget me at the same time. Sweetie, it’s one o’clock and I’m thinking of you; I fear I won’t sleep much, and that there’s a lot of yearning ahead of me. I feel your mouth on my hand, and would like to shout how much I miss you. Ola, Ola, tomor ow at six, come rain or shine, we’ll go somewhere; we owe it to each other, you know, Ola – tonight both of us belonged to too many people; next evening must be only ours. Ola, it’s one; perhaps you’re not thinking of me now, and I – a fool – had vowed to say Ola ten times when I was talking to Miss Alice,2 and I did fulfil it, twice over; but you’re not thinking of me; if you were thinking of me, I couldn’t be so jealous.
Your K.
[The beginning of April 1921]
I’d feel restless if I didn’t so much as greet my little one. So last night it wasn’t filming, but a police raid across the worst slums in Košíře – I’ll never forget what I saw.1 Some time I’ll tell you about it, my little one, so that you learn more about real poverty. There’s no possibility you’d have been able to come along; it’s good you’d gone to bed. We were walking for five hours; I didn’t get back home until three. Yesterday I thought I’d go to see darling Olinka this afternoon, but I’ll sleep instead, darling, because I’m as weak as a kitten and tired and utterly sad. But at six I’ll look for you in the theatre, at six sharp; perhaps the little one could stand outside so that I don’t have to call her, and then I’ll wait for her at nine to take her home. My sweet, how horribly people live! I’m ashamed of how much luckier I am than them. Please me tonight.
Káča
[Trenčianské Teplice, 16 August 1921]1
My dearest little one,
Yet again I’m opening today’s letter with a nice thank-you: two letters have come at once. Sad little letters they are, like tattered butterflies. My sweet, I repeat once and for all: be cheerful and trustful; ‘all’s well that ends well’; there’s nothing to fear. Calmness, calmness!
I’m writing very late at night; we played cards in the family circle till well after eleven. Even in cards I find a fate that fills me – my whole life – with tranquil resignation: neither to lose nor win, to remain in balance, to give life as much as it gives me.
And before that – a gorgeous autumnal walk. As if the sky itself wanted to show its stunts – the sun shone, it rained, two rainbows stood over the mountains, and the beloved moon at twilight; quaint vistas among the mountains, the mountains all around – light-green forests, indigo shades, brown pastures with big herds of white and black sheep, all in perfect tune with early autumn. It was so beautiful that I thought of you countless times with parching regret that you couldn’t see it with me.
It’s Tuesday, so you played in Pussycat2 today as well; from this distance, from this rough, broad-chested nature it seems to me almost painful. Oh, little one, the greatness of life doesn’t lie in a feverish swirling, ambition, a strenuous chase after success or whatever else. Anyone who looks at these big, strong, peaceful things almost ceases to understand the restlessness of us burned-out, hurt people. I, too, don’t see a path to success or fame in my literature; in the most beautiful case all art is as matter-of-course as a mountain or a juniper tree; it grows, lives, simply is, and what people add to it is something as revolting as tourist signs in the countryside. To be an artist, yes, there is nothing better than that. But to be an artist in life, an artist in harmony and in the greatness of life itself, that’s the most beautiful, most modest and purest thing.
Ola, my precious, I’m experiencing so much that a memory of your anguish is a thousand times more tormenting for me, because that anguish wouldn’t weather the strict trial of this mature autumnal beauty and the chilly heavens. Everything seems to be telling me something, and I’m passing it on to you faithfully: ‘Let what must happen, happen in peace. What is necessary is good. Bear what you are destined to bear. There is a deeper, useful sense in everything you can’t escape.’ Sweetheart, believe in the wisdom of those autumnal, heavenly powers; I, too, have come to believe them and have learnt two things: to accept what must be, and to fulfil bravely what is good and beautiful to do. I have inner strength for more than two; what good is it when I can’t share it with you? Sweetheart, be strong; it counts more than ‘be beautiful’ or whatever else. If you can’t be as strong as a silvery beech, be as strong as a juniper or hardy wild thyme, as everything that accepts, without grumbling and swirling, drought and cold, fertility and hurt. To be able to do it like nature! Be strong!
Enough, enough said, little one; I’m afraid that I won’t be able to please you today either. You can see at least one thing – how my autumn has given me a lift. If you are afraid that it means a summer after a too short spring for you, OK then: be strong and content – your autumn awaits you too, and if you are wise, it will be beautiful, more beautiful than everything you’ve had before. Whatever is sad about it?
And so farewell for now, Olga; again I’m waiting for another letter. My health has much improved. Good night, darling Olinka, midnight is just striking.
A thousand times your Čáča
[Trenčianské Teplice] 17 [August], Wednesday [1921]
My sweet poppet,
I really don’t have anything to write about today. Not only because I have toothache and have dulled myself through and through playing cards (and had annoying luck and won a lot of money), but because nothing happened all day, nothing, absolutely nothing that would have provided me with a single little farthing-worth of thought. I started writing chapter IX,1 and frittered the rest of the day away on such small change that now in the evening I have nothing to hold on to. I dislike days like this. In the evening, when they are over, I don’t feel the peace I long for. The only good day, or valuable day, is one that has made me feel or learn something good, and at least a bit great. I don’t even say: a day that has allowed me to do a good piece of work. Work isn’t what makes a man either. I can imagine years when I wouldn’t take a pen in my hand and would only look and grow a little wiser day by day; perhaps such years would be less lost than those prolific and diligent years surrounded by so-called success. I know, little one, it’s all resignation in a way, but believe me I feel almost sick when I imagine that I’ll start taking all those personal, as well as public, affairs, theatre, scandals, the talk of the town and heaven knows what, seriously. To be strong and wise in the first place, to be a master, to live one’s life deeply and quietly – anything else is a useless fever, an intemperance and a distraction.
You can see I haven’t got any letter from you today, so I’m writing only about myself, but during, or precisely during my writing I’m thinking so much about you. If it were possible, I’d like to divide you into atoms, and warm each atom with my own breath, make love to it and then reassemble them all. I’ve always said I’d like best to be your Pygmalion. Because I don’t have you here, I’m working on myself, and that’s why I keep finding old ridiculous qualities in me that I’d like to get rid of. The whole alleged importance (Wichtigtuerei is what the Germans call it) of the so-called artistic mission, the personal touchiness, the ferocious effort to find one’s useful place, the ostentatiousness, and in fact the immodesty, of an artistic nature now seem to me to be the first undignified and comic thing I want to get rid of. And other and other things. About that another time. Today I am a poor man who has undignified, comic toothache.
Sweet girl, are you still tormenting yourself? Be quiet, stop it; I’ve thought up a lot of things for the future that are completely satisfactory, you will see. No fantastic plans; very realistic details. And again another day’s over. I’m definitely expecting a letter tomorrow, a more cheerful and happier one.
And now good night. I’m kind of physically out of sorts. Poor pussycat, when will the Pussycat end? Farewell for now, and write, and if you can instruct me in something, or if you want to change me in some ways, start with it straight away while I’m experiencing my days of good resolutions.
Kissing you, Čáča
[Trenčianské Teplice, 18 August 1921]
Dearest little one,
Your two express letters of the 15th and 17th have just arrived. I don’t consent to your doing anything, do you hear? I – if you care for me! – forbid you to do any such attempt, and you’ll cause me horrible pain if you don’t listen to me. I hoped you understood when I wrote: be calm and content. It meant that I myself took the whole thing on, and that you were to trust me absolutely. I didn’t write more, I didn’t want to write more, but I thought about everything, and am absolutely clear about what I am supposed to do and what you are supposed to do. I beg you urgently and supremely seriously: leave it to me, wait, be calm and don’t be afraid. Live as if nothing at all has happened. All is well, I’ll accept everything gladly, with hope, yes, with looking forward to it. I look forward to it, my sweet, and I beg you to look forward to it with me. I look forward to the responsibility and worry I’ll take on. I look forward to the fact that only now I’ll duly be your mum. I terribly look forward to what I don’t name in my letters. I’ve thought through the enormous difficulties that are in the way, and I know how to triumph over them. Just rely on me. I’d travel to Prague right off to tell you everything, but it’s dangerous to interrupt my treatment now; it could result in deterioration, and I’m afraid of that for both myself and you. That’s why I beg you: wait patiently. I can see, and feel all but palpably, a completely smooth solution; I only ask you to trust me, wipe your darling eyes and look forward to it as I do. It’s an awful nonsense that you’re tormenting yourself; quite the contrary, quite the contrary, be happy. My present happiness, that turns bit er only by the terrible sympathy with you, is in great part based on the image I see before me. That’s what it is, dearest Olga, and now be calm. Above all, don’t do anything! Don’t meddle with fate. Be happy about what is to be and must be! I’m only endlessly distressed lest you have done something I would regret terribly. God, how repugnant it is that I have to be so far away from you! I feel an itch to jump on the nearest train and not stop until Thunovská, but then I’d have to lie down and you’d be even more worried.1 I want to be healthy, very healthy – you know why.
Child, child, now I’m asking you again – neither for heroism nor for self-restraint, but for one tiny thing: trust me absolutely. Everything will turn out as I wish: well for both of us. Promise that you’ll leave it all to me. Promise that you won’t lift a finger and will do only what I’ll ask, but everything that I’ll ask, you to do. Now farewell; I want to take the letter to the post office before noon so that you can get it tomorrow morning. Dearest Olga, I am by your side, I am fully with you; believe me, wait and be happy with me.
Love, Karel
[Trenčianské Teplice] 20 [August 1921]
My sweet poppet,
I meant courage and strength in a different sense – but what can be done, it happened. I don’t want to reprimand you now, as you’d perhaps deserve. At present it’s a big event in itself that you are at least a little bit happy. I feel tremendously weak – not physically, but morally and spiritually; weak for gladness, weak for blame, not entitled to either; both relief and pain are all one to me, somehow. Only wish you to be healthy now. That you start doing better. That you be happier than you’ve been so far. Better equipped. More capable of resignation. You’ve been through great pain. My sweet, it can be enormously useful. Perhaps you are richer now. Not from one experience – it wouldn’t be worth living if all you bought were experiences of this kind. But richer from a few lives, other than those you have had. I’m seeking something good about all that happened, but somehow there is just emptiness around me. I’m afraid to think about it lest I have to blame myself too heavily. Oh God, if only I could atone for it! I, I, I, who keep gabbing about harmony and wisdom and happiness, have played a nasty trick on a nice young life! You don’t know how bitter I feel. Because of that, yes, mainly because of that I wanted everything to be different, so that I alone could bear the weight of the thing and responsibility, and could force fate to turn a heavy mistake into some good. Now the good has eluded me. I have done nothing but a chunk of suffering. It’s horrible, really. Now I’m standing over the debris of my good resolutions that were meant to make up for my guilt. And meantime only you were paying. Me nothing, nothing at all. I feel terribly bitter about myself. What have you done? What have I done? The latter question lies on me like a cloud. I will never make up for it. For me, too, some kind of childhood ends here. I’ve done evil – in fact I had never done anything evil until now. I’m still too stunned by it to be able to grasp it fully. It’s been a few days since I wrote to you no less than unashamedly that I felt as if I had my life bang in my hands. And meanwhile, chance decides for me. Had I been in Prague, everything would have been different. I’m not saying better, and I don’t believe worse, but completely different.
At the same time, an unbearable, anguished tenderness towards your suffering bursts out of me. There, you suffered, and I wasn’t with you! I’d like to cause myself some severe pain to know what it is like. Last night, as a result of too much tiredness and exertion (I wanted to tire myself out to sleep like a log), I got a terribly painful bout of sciatica; I didn’t sleep al night for the pain. I’ll sacrifice that pain to you; it’s little, but at least something. Even that pain came from love. I’d like to shower you with the most tender words, not because of what you did but because you suffered. Meanwhile I feel sad and bitter; I am ashamed of myself; I’d like not to be. Be at least healthy now. For God’s sake, please do everything for your health – eat, live sensibly and carefully so that I am spared at least that worry. I don’t know what I should be like, and what I could now gild your life with. I thought about so many things, but it all turned out differently. I now have different duties even towards you; even towards myself I now stand beyond excuse, somehow. Oh, little one, love remains even beneath shame and self-torment, and grows with compassion. I’m writing nothing but sad things, but at least this is clear to me – that I love you more than ever before. Please be healthy now.
Tonight little Helenka pressed me again for the picture of Eddy Pollo.1 Please be so good as to send it to her – even that is a little bit of love.
Good night, my sweet girl; I am sad and in love, but perhaps I, too, will come out of this woeful bath better. Good night, good night, Olga!
All your letters have arrived.
Brno, 16 December [1921]
Dearest little one,
I just have a little free moment in the office, so am writing. I arrived after noon, half the journey I was freezing and half boiling, and since then I’ve been to the conservator to pick up my dear old pictures – they are beautifully cleaned-up, and I am very happy about them; I’ll give them to myself for Christmas as I’ve been good for the whole year, except for some wickednesses for which may the earth consume me and one good girl tear off my ears and legs, but apart from that I’ve been diligent and will give myself these pictures as Christmas presents. Well, and then I went to Freda Stránský1 and commissioned him to publish my Factory to Manufacture the Absolute; I thought he had been shamelessly robbed by my conditions (fifteen per cent of the retail price, that is a record fee for Czechoslovakia), but as he thanked me rather than anything else, presumably it wasn’t so bad. I’m in the office now, where I have handed in the twenty-third to the thirtieth chapters of The Absolute, and am also waiting for chief editor Heinrich to put in a good word for Štorch-Marien.2 He was given immediate notice, you see, and was hellish unhappy because he’s unemployed after a doctorate, so I’m doing my best to save him here in some ways. Well, hopefully this will work out as well, while my inner voice is telling me a little scornfully: ‘You want to help others and can’t help yourself.’ Yes, you are right, wretched voice, I can’t help myself, but what’s a hundred or a thousand times worse is that I can’t shake any help out of my sleeve for the good, unhappy girl so that she will never be unhappy again, and so on. And that’s as damned and bitter a helplessness as you please, and nothing perturbs me as much, but I don’t want to write about it any more – as I’m done in and sleepy after such a taxing day; I dread that I’ll still have to crunch my way through a mountain of pork (you see, I’m at a feast that has been specially prepared for me) before I can get to my den and close my tired eyes.
For the whole journey I watched how icy flowers formed on the windows of the carriage. It was terribly interesting, you know, when the train stood at the station, the flowers thawed every bit, and when we moved, they began to bloom and grow remarkably fast; one almost doesn’t manage to follow the way the flowering fern expands, spreads and intertwines, the way it develops into palms and jungly brakes – well, something fantastic. In fact, it was the strongest impression of the entire day, and that’s why my eyes are tired, and I’d like to close them to be able to see the icy flowers again. Compared to that, people are stupid and primitive.3
I shan’t write tomorrow for sure, little one, because in the morning I’m looking for a box for my pictures and going to Štech’s4 and Mahen’s,5 and in the afternoon I’m seeing my sick friend Trýb,6 and will have to keep an eye on the packing of the pictures and also go to the editorial office, and in the evening to the theatre for an opening night of some sort, and on Sunday morning I’ll have to go to a concert, apparently a particularly big and beautiful one, and on Sunday I’ll get back to Prague (or, Christ!, not until Monday afternoon, because it’s just transpired they want to keep me here for a Sunday meeting of the whole editorial office, but I’d rather come on Sunday morning or afternoon), but I’ll certainly come to the square on Monday at four and will wait for you, and now good night. Have a good time, and don’t let anyone or anything torment you.
Čáča
[Tatranská Lomnica, after 20 June 1922]1
My dear Olga!
For quite a few days now I’ve wanted to write to you, but there has been something between us that I couldn’t let pass – and still can’t let pass. It’s your letter from Prague. My dear girl, there are things that shouldn’t be written to a person who is alone from morning to evening, alone with himself, with his thoughts, and has nothing to divert himself with, and nothing to deafen him to them. Such a person gnaws his way, nastily and bitterly, down to the bottom of all that he has been told …
Oh, you have never ever known how hurtable I am. – And now let’s leave this sad chapter. Every day I wait for you to write me something about Your life, Your joys, if you have any. For my part, I can’t tell you much of anything that would interest you. Yes, I devote mornings to my Great Work you’re so ironic about – with head bowed I trail my furrow behind, not caring if it’s good for anything or not. In the afternoon I sometimes go for a short walk with Mrs Calma Veselá, who has also come here to write (poetry).2 All the other things – longer walks and hikes, aimless roaming or rests – are solitude. More than solitude: forlornness. I see and meet inexpressible beauties; I often think if only Olga saw this, but I know all the while that these paths, these forests are nothing for her poor, clumsy, sprainable little feet; she wouldn’t walk for longer than five minutes and would have to limp back home. The whole Giant Mountains3 are a stroll in the park compared to these paths that are half bog, half stream or gorge, and the rest naked rock. It’s a wilderness, but there are sublime places and moments; it’s strange that great beauty always has something sad about it. A human feels he cannot appropriate it, that he is only a stranger in its presence. So in this great solitude I’ve made a discovery – that I am in fact a very sad person. All my feverish work, my activism, my enterprising spirit in life is just a way of deafening myself to it, of dispersing and diffusing myself. Oh, I’d be able not to work and ‘live innerly’, but then all my feeling would be such a sorrowful, horrible complaint that I’d be another Job. An infinite sea of bitterness has accumulated in me; I can disperse, but not overcome myself; I will never empty my bitterness, I can only not think about it.
My everyday life, that so much absorbs me in Prague, feels terribly far away. If the theatre burnt down, if Prague sank, if everything I have so much exhausted myself with disappeared, perhaps I wouldn’t even think about it. It doesn’t seem to me I should ever come back; perhaps I’d be able to leave for years and start a completely different life elsewhere; after all, everything one lives by, everything one does, is all one.
Right now the mountain peaks are being dimmed by cloud, and down there the entire Spišská plain is breathing with such subtle colours that one would like to dissolve. If only dying meant dissolving, simply evaporating! I’d finish writing this letter and the address, and would go to the balcony and evaporate for ever! I wouldn’t even regret that my Great Work hadn’t been brought to an end.
Well, farewell for today. My wish for us is that we were better.
Karel
[22 November 1922]
Dearest Olinka,
It’s not for the first time, but surely and certainly not the last time that I’m thanking you not only for thousands of big reasons, but also as an author. I kiss your lovely hands for everything, but kissing hands is too little, I should kiss the whole path you daily walk along, but even that is not enough – for all you have done.
Thank you, thank you, my dear.
Your Čáča for always.
[24 December 1922]
Dearest little one,
My skin is crude and pays little attention to everyone’s dreamy and better feelings, but as you can see, today I feel regretful about all sorts of things. Once again I’ve stroked the rascal wolf pelt that you will wear (and wear it gladly, for my joy), and thought that ultimately it would be better to come just empty-handed and give you nothing but joy. Even that is selfish, you know; I’d wish for myself that you walked by my side cheerful, jocund, clinking ‘with glassy little voice’, free of worries, healthy, nicely looking ahead – oh God, God, surely I’m an awful egoist: I wish you were happy!
And I’m also this old grey wolf that you wear and will wear on your young nape; sometimes I have red wolfish eyes, and sometimes I do lots of damage – I mean, I’m wicked, grumpy, biting and, in a word, a beast, even though I show an affable front to people. But if only, if only I felt light to wear! If only I kept you warm and stroked you and didn’t weigh you down, and were always warm and gentle to you; and when I’ve finally grown shabby by moulting and am of no use, if only you could still cut me into pieces and make a muff out of me for your restless, light, pretty little hands! And perhaps also cuffs around your sleeves! And a little collar! What a wolf I am, I want to be useful to you for everything.
Today your clock will already be ticking for me. It will be talking quietly – fancy how much it will tell me, fancy what a prattler you’ll become to me, you, who are sometimes so bitterly and painfully silent! I look forward to it; I’ll have company even while working, you’ll be so to speak tinkling over my shoulder when I – a diligent little craftsman – will be gluing, polishing and carving what I can do on my writing desk. That’s why I wanted the clock so much. It’s the most loyal gift.
Oh, but you won’t give me the best thing, miserly you, you niggard, you won’t give me your joy. Even though you don’t have it yourself, you should seek it all over the world, in all earthly and heavenly shops, so that you can bring it to me. We don’t usually have what we want to give; we must seek it. And so, I beg you, for God’s sake, seek joy so that you can give a bit of it to me: just by being yours, it will be mine too. And if you love that black scoundrel a little, give it to him. As you can see, he is choosy – he wants the most beautiful in the world. But to want the most beautiful – a lot can be forgiven to the sinner just for that.
Dear little kissable mouth, I feel now as if I’m talking to you. Well, it’s me talking, you are silent (because I don’t yet have your clock here), and are hiding your chin and mouth in the fluffy old wolf, and you’re just looking. If only I’m not mistaken! At this moment it seems to me that your eyes are somewhat brighter, starrier, and that somewhere behind them you are thinking about something nice. If only I were not mistaken! Something nice! Lord, in whom I’m beginning to believe in my stale heart, give to my poppet, my golden little one, something nice! You can try me (you know that, Lord) as much as you like, and inflict any cross on me; I’m a chap, I can bear a lot, accommodate myself to many things and deny myself much. But to her, Lord, to her, give something nice. She is not made so fit for life, she is not so firm and hard, so coarse-grained and waterproof as others. She is woven out of sensitive and fragile fabrics, and terribly needs life to treat her if not with velvety hands, then at least with humanly decent ones. Lord, I’d enter into any contract with you if you promised me this!
But it can’t be helped: the Lord God is playing the Baby Jesus today, and is giving out little sculptures, wolfies and other silly things so that he doesn’t have to give people anything proper.
It’s quite hard to turn from the Lord God to earthly things; I’m lacking in transition, so be, then, my footbridge from heaven to earth (or better from earth to heaven, or best both at once). So come on, lass, lassie, you tangle of a hirsute creature, you crazy moppet, my Christmas tree, my Baby Jesus, I beg you, for all the saints’ sake, to think well of me when you read this letter, only well, and cheerfully. I want to write you words that will shine like a gazelle’s pelt, and will be as silvery as a silver fox, as soft as a mole’s fur coat, as warm as a beaver and as weightless as a chinchilla, as dear as a sable and as familiar as a goat under a little bed, and not grey, coarse-haired and matted like this particular wretched wolf skin; I’d like my words to warm you, stroke you, please you more than all the world’s bristles, skins, furs and hides. What else? I shall see you in half an hour, and shall be again that irritating, clumsy Čáča, who sometimes wounds without meaning to, unintentionally hurts, and not knowing gives a chilling pang. But now, at this sacred moment, when I’m talking nineteen to the dozen, and your sparklers are so bright (if only I’m not mistaken), I feel immensely lovely: now I’m just very quietly stroking you with love, with infinite tenderness, and would like to – well, better not for now, even a letter, like the little wolf fur coat, has its end. So one more kiss on the cute nozzle (the wolf’s, I mean), a kiss on your every finger (including the one that used to be chilblained), and a smile on your every sweet eyelash, and I can wish a happy Christmas.
Kissing you, dearest little one, a hundred thousand times,
Love, Čáča
[Palermo] 9 May [19]23
Dearest Olinka,
I wrote from Naples the day before yesterday,1 but I know that this letter from where I am – as far away as Sicily – will take longer than a week to arrive, so I’m writing instead of going to bed.
I’m not in a good mood. It was in this region – the most beautiful of all I’ve seen so far, so beautiful that my head honestly swirled at the wondrous sight – that I experienced the most annoying afternoon. I made a mistake, as often happens, and got on the tram going in the opposite direction. Instead of arriving at the magical garden of Villa Giulia, I found myself in the factory outskirts of Arevella, and then for almost an hour I was trudging along the smelliest, dustiest street in the world to get to the sea. OK, I had a nice moment there, and returned to Arevella – then I get on the tram and something goes wrong with it; it won’t start, so I have to walk among the stupid factories in staggering dust and heat for an hour and a half. Not a single cab, not a single car with free space, no loo, no decent pub. I got to Palermo splenetic, dead-beat, dusty and sweaty, at which point the problem was fixed and the trams started running. Imagine my rage!
Well, at least I had a nice moment at the seaside. It smelled of wild thyme there, and I looked towards the north where Bohemia lies, and said to myself: So you see, Karel, somewhere up there, there are your successes, your name, every reason why you’ve toiled away so hard, and here you are nothing and nobody, just a dusty little human creature sitting on a milestone, and it works – your heart isn’t heavy, you could give up everything, and first of all everything that others find enviable. I recalled that once I wrote these lines: ‘... I sat on a rock, heavy with my own weight, And the sea was soughing at me, grim and graceful, And I said: Don’t call me yet, leave me alone for now; One day I, too, will stop, not caring where, Strange, unknown and dumb to all people, Having neither an interest in, nor a word or reproach for anyone.’ That’s roughly how the lines were murmuring in my ears. I could see that my greatest bliss was peace, that’s why I like sea and silence. I’m no longer young; perhaps the whole of my ‘nervous illness’ was just a transition from seeming, somewhat undermined youth to this state … I can’t yet say of maturity, but definitely not youth. I’ll probably never be exuberantly cheerful as I used to be, but I want to be calm, quiet and concentrated. I haven’t enjoyed myself much, and I won’t probably indulge in enjoying life, but I’m not sorry; I’m neither sad nor disappointed – it’s good like this. If only I could find peace of mind so that I didn’t have to torment myself. And if only I weren’t wicked and glum! Didn’t weigh anyone down and didn’t suffocate anyone! You, Karel, must want a lot from yourself. You must make yourself better and purer, deeper and calmer. Oh, how much I still need to purify myself! My sweet, only I know and feel how much mire, badness and weakness there is in me. I know that I won’t find peace until I find inner purity. Just because I’ve grown up somehow, I’ve started looking at myself more strictly. I must, I must reform a lot in me.
Other than that, I live intensely, strongly through my eyes, as you can imagine. I look and see, and that means a lot. I’d write you about everything I like, but there is so much that I’d rather tell you. And sometimes, as in Monreale, my senses weren’t sufficient – it was as if I were drunk.
I’m still worried whether you’re well. Please be careful, don’t do anything so silly as running around with something as serious as lesions on the lungs. Perhaps now you’ve already played The Romantics.2 I expect to have a letter from you in Naples or Rome to see how it turned out. Tomorrow I’m going to Agrigento where there are Greek ruins. My brother wrote to me in Naples to say that they had just had a healthy baby daughter.3 I don’t know about the Khols,4 where they are going in the end; he wrote that he wanted to go to a seaside spa.
God, I almost forgot to tell you how much I liked the ferry. I was afraid of being seasick, but the sea was as calm as a pond. Now I regret that I won’t be coming across again.
It’s almost midnight and as warm as our summer. Strawberries and cherries, oranges, lemons and fruits yet unknown to me are ripening here already; in places, it’s a paradise on earth, in other places, the dirtiest gutter, for the most part, it’s a desert.
I mustn’t forget to say that I am well, taking it easy, so all in all I’m fine – you mustn’t worry about me at all.
Best wishes and kisses, Čáča
Naples 15 May [19]23
Dearest Olga,
I got your long beautiful letter this morning; I was particularly pleased that you were a bit better again and were thinking of me so much, but then my head started aching from it all, so terribly that I hadn’t yet had it so badly before. It has eased a bit now, but you mustn’t take any notice if this letter is a bit distorted.
Dearest Olina, there are a few painful and awfully agonising misunderstandings in your letter. The first, and the greatest, one is that you beg me, that you put me in the false, tormenting situation of someone who cares only about himself and who needs to be begged not to think only about himself. Now I’m begging you – for the sake of the merciful God who I bear in my heart – I beg you to believe me this one thing: in everything I have done and do I think more (and most in the world) of you, and not of myself; I have more regard (and most of all things) for you, and not me, as I love you more than you in a way understand. This must be clear in the first place. Don’t beg any more, my girl, for it is such a pain and shame for me that it makes me want to cry; when you do, I feel base, selfish and brutal, and then have to defend myself before my own conscience until it gives me a headache.
But there is one thing about which I must ask you to have consideration for me. You’ve told me so many times that you would like to nurse me, make me gruel, give me compresses and nearly change nappies. Honestly, my girl, where did you get this from? One isn’t exactly the master of one’s taste, but this image of life is precisely the desperate opposite of my own taste. I’m astonished how much you don’t know me; forgive me – my notion of life is more manly, and perhaps harder too, and the moment I was confined to such humiliating care, I’d simply take my own life. My life – that’s discipline, work, serious search for truth, love and other strong and strict relationships. I detest effeminacy and weakness. I even shrink from tender indulgence! May everything around me be hard, clear and calm; no moral cushions, no slipping into comfort, no pampering and nursing and growing infantile, for all that fills me with sheer horror. So never talk about these things in my presence. You really don’t understand how intolerably repulsive I find it.
And now, to turn straight to the main point – without shilly-shallying and weakness – you write about our marriage and obviously expect a direct answer from me. Alas, three times alas: I don’t have it. Not yet, I don’t yet know what to do; there is no purity and clarity in my soul yet. God, help me! Above all I want to say that I don’t doubt you the least bit; I don’t doubt your love – I don’t deserve it, but I don’t doubt it – neither do I doubt your magnanimity and self-sacrifice, nor your fidelity. What I doubt is me, but I don’t doubt my love for you either, but – God, how shall I put it? Imagine someone were to take on a job or create an artistic work, and before he got around to doing it, a terrible doubt as to whether he would be up to it, whether he had the required mental faculty and competence for it, stirred in him; he felt anxious that he would, in some irreversible, desperate way, spoil, destroy, devalue and splinter everything instead of making it. But these are just silly similes. The thing is simply that I am torn, feeling deep inner disquiet; you must have sensed that my journey was just a flight from this nasty state. It’s called neurasthenia, but it’s something terribly nasty. For example, there are days when one can’t bear the voice and closeness of someone else, when he just wants to shout in aversion when someone comes near him. I’ve so far managed to overcome this, but you can’t imagine with how much tension; you can’t imagine how I sometimes suffered when you blamed me, for instance, that I didn’t have anything to tell you, that I didn’t love you any longer and this, that and the other, while it was just torment to me that I had to speak at all. I don’t know if you can imagine these states of mind. Other times it’s just the need for silence, just silence and solitude, and yet other times the need for love and quiet talk, and always, always the need for peace. My girl, it’s not moods; it’s suffering – it’s a disease that must be cured, else … else one is just unable to be in human company. And then, after such crises one has difficult moments of self-doubt – that he’s simply unbearable, that he causes pain, that he hurts the dearest one and that he should disappear somewhere or whatever. There are moments when I feel condemnable, utterly heartless, without relation to other people. I don’t know if you understand me; I’m seeking to write it more simply than it is, and am still afraid it’s not clear at all. I didn’t tell you this because you were so sore, and might at times interpret it that you were a nuisance to me. No, a thousand times no; it’s me who is a nuisance, a disgruntled person who torments others. But then I hate allowances, attention and excuses; I feel embarrassed when I sense that people make allowances for me because of my condition. The only possibility is to remove myself, to withdraw into myself – that’s the only way. The only possibility is to find balance again. That’s what I keep writing about – peace, purity and the solidity of life. Oh child, if only you could understand me! That’s why I’ve excommunicated myself so strictly, so that I can become stronger mentally and morally. Perhaps this whole state is just a transition to ageing, I don’t know; I only know that now, in this crisis, I must live the life of a hermit. Just today, after having got your letter, I couldn’t stand eating among people; I had the meal brought to my room and then I locked myself up, lay staring at the ceiling and defended myself before you, since my conscience has been tormenting me again. It’s bound to torment me if you suffer, and my greatest dread is that I think that you’d suffer more by my closeness. Much more and much harder. God, if only these anxieties stopped distressing me! And don’t think any longer that my worries concern the physical that is, or is not, or cannot be between us. God, that’s the least I think about now, from far off. I think about it, and it distresses me, when I am by your side and see you so young and richly beautiful. But here it’s somewhat remote to me, I can’t even imagine it; here I’m only listening to the voices of my inner self and am waiting until I can breathe more calmly and more humanly, as it were. Today everything is unpleasantly on edge; I detest Naples with its sun, crowdedness, contented and noisy people; I dream of a frosty reclusive place somewhere in the mountains where there is infinite silence. Only the sea does me good; I’ll get away from these madding cities, for I haven’t found here what I was looking for. If there were a monastery without religion I’d go there straight away. But please don’t treat me like a patient; you know that I hate it. Just today I moaned and cried, surely next time I’ll write you a calmer, healthier letter. And if you want to have the greatest, most beautiful consideration for me, then do just one thing – never torment yourself again; you really can’t imagine how desperately it always stirs my pain. I love you, that’s my weakness; I am to blame if you suffer. And I must, now I must lead a pure, unstirred life. If only I came back with a clear soul! My sweet, be cheerful! Write to Florence. I can’t stand it here; it’s beautiful, but too noisy. I feel lighter now; the headache is better.
Best wishes and kisses, bad Čáča.
[Florence] 26 May [19]23
Dearest Olina,
I picked up your letter today (arrived in Florence last night), and I’m replying straight away. First of all, my deepest sympathy with your bereavement. I know how much you loved your Grandad, how movingly lovely he was and how sad it feels at your home now. I felt sorry about him. I became so strangely sad, and couldn’t go to see anything. I went to the nearest church and was sitting there through the whole morning.
My girl, my sweet, how sorry I am about your pain! It wrung my heart when you kept repeating that you bowed your head. I bowed mine ages ago when no one yet knew about it, but you shouldn’t. You are beautiful, you can joy in your success, you are right at the start of your career. And if you want to make me particularly happy, if I am to feel a great and unflagging happiness, be bright, trust yourself, grow, retain everything that’s in you. You are the most precious and the most self-sacrificing person I have ever met, and perhaps you don’t really know how much I love you even though I’ve caused you so much pain. Don’t pity me. I am a weak person, but there is strength in my weakness. My sadness doesn’t hurt; my fatigue is at once my thoughtfulness; my self-denial also my purity. I’m a bit different, a bit strange, not a bad chap, for I love, I love you, people and the whole world more than myself, and I still want to do lots of good. I want to do something good wherever I go, and you don’t know how much it distresses me to see that I’m doing harm. I only lack inner peace – peace with myself and my conscience.
I want to be poor, simple and quiet, work as much and as best I can, and love as purely as I can. It is a sort of monasticism or something, people are either born with it or grow up to it. But don’t pity me, there is no bitterness or envy in me. Oh, I shall be so happy when I see that I’m not hurting anyone! I adjure you, sweetie, my dearest soul, you must not suffer, or perhaps I shan’t come back. My love – that’s the most terribly sensitive spot in me. Believe me, believe me now, that many times I’ve felt like killing myself when I’ve seen you suffer so horribly. And I torture myself when you are ill, I despair when you cry, I want to sink into the ground for shame when you blame me. I’m happy when I see you calm and bright; it’s music to me if you are pleased about anything; I revive when you revive. Do at last understand this delicate, faithful life-alliance; my God, it’s all I can give you now with a clear conscience, without anxiety and disintegration, and I beg you, for God’s sake, please don’t say that it’s little and worthless – that, as you can guess, would humiliate me horribly. I give you the whole of me in that alliance, but without my bad sides, without my reclusiveness, without my instability, which then imposes the humiliating task of a nurse on you, without my sensitive touchiness that drives me away from every human closeness. And I take from you endlessly more than I give, above all your dazzling self-sacrificing nature, and then your youth, an occasional flash of joy, and a lot of joy from your art, and even more from being with you, for you are wonderful and big-hearted, even though you’re a madcap. Oh dear, I feel almost like crying, but out of pure tenderness. Don’t think that I’m sentimental; I’m cruelly critical of myself, and even of you. Anyway, what I’m writing now is again, after a long time, a love letter and a declaration of love. There has been so much misunderstanding between us, my sweet. And now I’m humbly begging you, let there be peace between us! Don’t be cruel to me any longer, don’t cry, don’t suffer, don’t complain, don’t blame – in this respect I’m coming back even more sensitive than I was before I left, for I have purified myself and kind of peeled. In many places I’m covered in a sort of new, tenuous and sensitive skin. And now I feel lighter again. Somehow I feel that you’ll have a cry over this letter but with a kind of more moderate and less bitter tears, because at this moment you believe that I love you very much and that you can do a lot of good for me. Oh, you can! But you must be bright, darling Olinka, like that bright, splendid day that is now outside after a sultry storm – bright, erect, reviving so that I can, even at a distance, think of you with pride and delight. Sadness does not kill, only lowness kills, and between the two of us there must never be anything low. I shall then also revive, I shan’t be young, but shall be happy. I think I’m babbling on in a muddled way. I beg you, for God’s sake, I’m worried about your health again. Go to see Syllaba or someone, I have a feeling that today you’re unwell again. I’m now on my way back, one more brief diversion through Genoa and Lombardy and I’ll be finished. Please write me a letter to Verona immediately, ferma in posta. I’ll then write to you again as soon as I stay somewhere a little bit longer.
Wishing all the best and kissing your hands,
Your faithful Karel.
Prague, 6 July [19]23
Dearest girl,
I’m writing these lines with a heavy heart. I’ve just this moment got your letter; there are words I should kiss with gratitude, but that have touched the wound that has now been opened. You write with all your simple and sincere love: ‘When we get married, we shall go, and so on.’ Well, yesterday I wrote you that Mrs Téver1 was here and that I committed a certain foolishness; now I must confess it all. She saw – apparently before I’d gone to Italy – some tension. She talked to me like a mother, about you and me; I don’t know why, but I couldn’t refrain from telling her the words I had written to you before: ‘Nature has drawn a circle around me that I can’t step over.’ She got the point and was taken aback, then she was near tears about you as well as me, for she likes you very much. What she proceeded to tell me was the same as I keep telling myself in my self-accusations: what I can do and mustn’t do, what my duty towards you and my conscience is. She was stricter with me than I am; she said that I was spoiling your life, and would destroy it, and other horrible things in which she was far too right. She wanted to write to you straight away; I begged her not to, not to mention it to you at all that I had said that. I was struck by her ability to guess what torments me – that it’s not the disease of my body, but the disease of conscience, fear, distrust, escape into solitude, hermit-like reclusiveness and all that; just like you (and perhaps like all delicate women), she doesn’t see a big hindrance in the weakness of the body but in what grows from it – the illness of the will, the sore and touchy love of seclusion, agonising doubts, the dread of closeness, the thirst for silence and escape from the world – she nodded and said she knew why I was suffering so much. I told her that I hadn’t told you, she said I must, else we would both go mad. I won’t repeat everything she told me; it was cruel wisdom; I came out of that talk with sensitivities intensely heightened, but also a bit comforted because she is the first person who understands me entirely, and she talked to me like a mother. I like her very much for the few good words of comfort she gave me, and for speaking about you so well and with love. I think that she is the best friend you have in the world.
You must decide if I did a silly thing in confiding in a good, wise person at a weak moment. But I’m asking for just one thing: When you sometimes talk about our future, and I respond by drooping my head and by silence, and then you cry and pour bitter reproaches on me, and torment yourself and me with images of what everything could be like if I had more good will. Well, I beg you earnestly to ask that rare woman if my weakness deserves condemnation, and if my will is unmanly or irresponsible. I beg you earnestly, if you are tormented by doubts about my behaviour, to ask her if it isn’t beyond my power and my conscience to act differently …
And now, please go to the seaside, let yourself be soothed by its singing and lulled by the waves, and then write to me that you aren’t angry with me.
Your devoted Karel.
So far I haven’t had any news about Mum; the last is: a considerable improvement in the lungs, a certain relapse in the bladder.2
Saturday morning [Jindřichův Hradec, Rudolfov, 4 August 1923]1
My dear Olina,
Yesterday I didn’t take my pen in my hand; I didn’t feel up to anything, most probably I got light sunstroke when I went mushroom-picking the day before yesterday. One always pays dearly for what one likes. Today I feel all right, just the stomach is a bit funny. Yesterday I lived on pap all day.
I’ve already reached chapter 36.2 About five more chapters and it will be all done; so in the end I’ll bring it to you finished. It’s becoming more and more romantic; it keeps me in suspense like mad; in the evening I can’t wait to see what I’ll be writing the following day. Writing is the most beautiful thing in the world. I don’t think that what I write has any particular value, but I give – I give life and the world what I can, and as seriously and conscientiously as I can, and perhaps that’s why other times I am a selfish wretch who doesn’t think of human duties and thinks he’s excluded from life’s responsibility. I am happiest when I sit over my papers and feel it unfolding from me like a fabric, I don’t know where it comes from. Where does it come from? It’s so enigmatic that I sometimes marvel at it. Surely the person who writes is an instrument of something unknown.
And do you know that a whole shower of meteors is falling at the moment, during this month? I sit in front of the house late into the night and watch the sky; it’s simply fabulous. Yesterday I saw a big green meteor flying; it drew a line crossing out the whole sky and was so wonderful that I forgot to make a wish. Anyway, I take a bit of a theoretical interest in astronomy as well; I can see how little I know, and how splendid it is to be getting to know more. From now on I’ll study – piece by piece – everything, all the sciences and theories; I’d like to know the whole world. And then, as an Irish proverb says: ‘The man who knows everything dies.’ Amen. To die of knowledge would be a beautiful death!
Otherwise, I’m very much OK. I’ve put on weight, I sunbathe daily, I watch the stars every night; only everyone chivvies me about writing too much. You, too, would chivvy me, but I can’t be helped. I keep writing, writing; it’s my joy.
Best wishes and kisses, Karel.
[Jindřichův Hradec, Rudolfov] 17 [August 1923], Friday
My dear Olina,
I’ve just this moment got your letter – with great relief and joy. So you see how much futile bitterness there was on your part. I wish to God that your calm and joy, your trust without exaggeration, your love without storms and swirlings, your mutual consideration and the peace in your soul, have truly returned. I’d write more, but I’m already on my way to the post office with this crumb. No, I didn’t run away from you, but I sought peace with my own self; I’ve found it a bit, but it’s fragile and sensitive, please don’t expose it to any trial. My Prokop is dying,1 I must get him out of it; I’m moved as if it were a real living person, but since my sister is just coming, I won’t have any chance of curing him today. But please be calm and cheerful.
You have written such a nice word – friendship. Any older love acquires this undertone – please value it and don’t underestimate it. Friendship is such a calm, solid and self-denying feeling, one of the best given to man.
My pen is squeaky and I don’t have another one at home. To write with a squeaky pen is like playing a piano that’s out of tune; it simply doesn’t work; one can’t say what one wants to.
Friendship, the effort to be pleased by the other’s joy; I don’t know what joy ranks above that. I’m a bit sceptical about love; you hold it against me, but it’s unquestionably natural. To use a geological analogy, an extensive drift of terrestrial strata is going on in me. It is maturing and coming to terms with things: you make a mistake if you can’t see that I’m changing, or if you compare me just one-sidedly – love-wise, for instance – with the person I was in the past. There is a little more prudence, and hence more coolness in me; you make a mistake if you relate that coolness just to yourself, and don’t realise that I’m a planet that shifts from a glowing state to a state of inhabitability by all living things. Imagine that you don’t really know me, but will start getting to know me; then you’ll definitely look at everything with quite different, clearer eyes.
It can’t be helped, I’ve been wittering on while I should have gone to the post office. Come to that, I’m curious, you know, if your brightening-up will last till my return. If only it does! And forever!
Best wishes and kisses, your KČ
[London, Notting Hill] 9 June [19]24
Dearest Olina,
Today, on All Souls’ Monday, I have a quiet morning, what I mean is that I can sit and write. However, in three quarters of an hour I’m going to lunch at Seton-Watson’s,1 then I’ll pop on tails and am going to dinner at Nigel Playfair’s,2 and then to a theatre of some sort, I don’t even know where. Tomorrow I’m lunching with some journalist or another, and am dining at Rebecca West’s, a good writer. The day after tomorrow I’m going to the country to see the editor of the Manchester Guardian, coming back on Thursday morning, at which point I’m again invited to lunch and dinner. So you can see what my life here is like, and I can’t get out of it. Everyone is so terribly good and polite to me. The day before yesterday I lunched at Bernard Shaw’s; he was incredibly kind and so great when he talked. I still have Wells to meet. I’ve seen virtually nothing of London so far, on the other hand, I’m getting to know what hardly any Czech has done, that is posh English households, the best clubs and high society. But at the same time I feel somehow sad. I don’t know, last year, in Italy, I was much happier. And at home – I’d love to be at home. I often close my eyes and imagine that, say, tomorrow I’ll be going home. Instead, maybe on Friday or Saturday, I shall travel further into England – let me see her while I’m here. I think that I shall never come back over here. I’ll travel without excitement, but still I’m glad to be leaving London behind. The whole of last week I was all over the papers here, there was something there every day. Hopefully I shall eventually start having a peaceful time now.
Physically I feel, by and large, all right as I did at home, but I’m depressed. I feel uneasy, I should tell you something, but it’s hard to open my mouth. My sweet, before my departure Prof. Syllaba told me things that are a blow to me as well as to you.3 I beg you, for God’s sake, please don’t ask me to repeat them to you, because it hurts dreadfully. It concerns certain very bad nervous (just nervous, I assure you) strains for which no one is responsible. It is, you see, such a strange type of neurasthenia, such nasty phobias – but I have determined that I shall never describe them to you, because you are such a sensitive person. I think that I must suffer something because of my mother – it’s inherited. Syllaba comforted me that perhaps this mental frailty (please let’s call it just that) gave me the gift for creating – maybe. I only ardently wish someone else didn’t suffer because of my mental inadequacy. And now, my dear noble sweet girl, if you love me, don’t touch on these sore points. Please tell your Dad to go to see Prof. Syllaba and ask him himself. I wouldn’t like him to take me for a bad person. That you understand me and will be merciful to me, I know, and I kiss your hands for it as passionately and gratefully as you deserve.
And now away, away from these pains. I still joyfully think of the success your Dad enjoyed – tell him that I press his hand. Surely I shall still be able to see the piece after I have come back.4 I wish you could see the theatre here. I saw Miss Evans and Miss Thorndike – they are wonderful, very simple in their expressive means, but, mind you, what a refinement of nuances! I think it’s the kind of acting that you in particular would like – little stylisation, cultivated and refined realism. And it’s purely the actor’s doing in the first place, the director retreats into the background. You wouldn’t, however, like London, little one, not a whit. It’s without charm, only parks are spectacular here, so Rusalka-like. Heavens, I’d love to have a letter from you, but then I still can’t give you a proper address. In Italy I had a plan of the journey, I could see at least a week ahead, but here, nothing, I know nothing of what I’ll do, where I’ll go and where not. Do you know what? Send me your next letter to the following address:
*
Dr K.Č. c/o Dr O. Vočadlo5
33 Adelaide Road
Surbiton (Surrey)
England
*
He’s my good friend, and he’ll immediately forward the letter to where I tell him on my card.
I don’t have any news whatsoever from home; your letter has been the only one so far. How’s Hilar doing?6 I feel awfully sorry for him. Christ, I’d love to sit with you, say, in that garden in the Lesser Town, and talk, talk, talk about everything I’ve seen here. But I wouldn’t like to have you here, not that, you’d be unhappy, and everyone speaks nothing but English here. When you write to me, remember that you’re writing to a person who is full of anxiety, and distressed. Cheer me up, cheer me up, as you did so many times in Prague. Send me one of your good-hearted and non-weepy cards. Keep well, my girl – I’m trying to do so too. I implore you to send me a nice letter. Please apologise for me in the theatre, that I haven’t yet had a single minute to be able to send so much as cards to my friends and the people I know.
With best wishes, movingly kissing your hands. K.Č.
[April 1927]
Dearest Olina,
Some things shouldn’t be uttered at all or at least not too often. Even the bruised flesh grows calloused, you know, if it’s touched too often. I won’t react to your letter now; my nerves are more rattled than they’ve ever been before, and I’m so gripped by bouts of impatience that I have to stop myself from breaking something.
Now it’s The Killed Man’s turn.1 I’d like to know how it’s going, and I’d like to help you a bit so that you don’t have to bear it all alone. I know I don’t offer you much, but let me blow on your hot porridge and be at least a little crutch for you when you’ve got too much to carry. Don’t let anything upset you now, for God’s sake. Tomorrow (Thursday) I’ll come round to ask you again; you can turn me away from your doorstep, but you can’t forbid my need to be near you and bear your worries. If you don’t have time for me, at least give a more detailed description of how The Killed Man is going, and what worries you, to Božka.2 So you see, Smolík won’t be so bad – I hoped so.3 I’ll come fiveish again.
See you.
Kissing hands, K.
Topoľčanky1 [the first half of September 1927]
Dearest Olina,
The only thing I can write at this moment, the only thing I’m allowed to write and to which I’m entitled before my own self is the longing wish for you to be happy. Not even death would force me to say ‘farewell’, but instead I am telling you and adjuring you to be happy. Unhappy creature, you have such a desperate gift for suffering that I can’t think of anything else for me or you but this only prayer that you should be happy. I got your letter this morning, Olga, I can’t even say that it hurt – I knew too many unuttered things beforehand, and it fell on me so, as if I had already experienced it some earlier time – I ran out into the rain to a park and was praying for you there. Only then could I torture myself and start settling my accounts with the past. By the time you read this letter a night and a day will have passed. Within that time I will have counted the tally of all I am guilty of, as well as of what is not wittingly my fault, I will have accepted all the pain that is still awaiting me, and will have taken as much human suffering as possible on me in order to pay my account. I no longer want to be happy, only reconciled. Darling, I don’t have a bitter word to say to you. I’d like to beg you for forgiveness, but forgiveness is not as easy as you are willing to give it. I am afraid of you terribly. I am afraid that you will find even in these lines something that you will want to torment yourself with and that you will want to cry over. I beg you then, Olina, I beg you on my knees not to weigh me down by taking any of my words or deeds as the cause of your pain. I beseech you to believe me for once that I desperately want to write or do something that won’t cause you a shred of pain. I cannot bear any of your pains any more. You have never seen that bearing them has been harder for me than bearing anything I have suffered myself. The only sweet thing I’m capable of telling myself now is what I’m saying to myself while running around the park: let you be happy, let you be happy, let you be happy. You can’t imagine what comfort there is in those words.
Darling Olinka, I don’t have a word for my apology. If I was harsh on you, I was also harsh on myself, and now I am ten times harsher – you no longer have to tell me by what and when I have hurt you. But to you, my girl, I want to say, I want to shout at you, be happy. I don’t know what it is to be happy, indeed, I don’t know how it is done, but I at least want to be able not to cause you any pain. Perhaps I’ve never been capable of love; the only thing I have been capable of has been a terrible pain from your every pain. Perhaps it’s not love, what you call love, I can’t clarify it for myself, but I know that it’s been the strongest feeling that I have been capable of. Maybe you other people are capable of some other feelings, but my love of you, of people, of God, of everything that exists and that I know, is a passionate co-feeling. Christ, Olga, if you could see, if you knew how much my heart is overburdened by it all! And perhaps it’s necessary for the salvation of my soul that I don’t live my own life. I think that this talk with myself will have a great influence on the whole of my life, but that’s not the point now – the point is not about me, but only, only about you. Darling, make an effort to be happy. It’s your great duty. Please, Olga, make darling Olinka happy. For the sake of your love of me let her be happier. They say about me that I am selfish. Well then, at this decisive moment I’m asking for a relief for myself: let her be happy. If a day comes and you smile at me, I shall stop being haunted by the most difficult thing that clutches my heart. I know, I know, I know very well that by everything I can write today I’m only getting around what I should say, but there is a dread in me that I might press some of the sore spots of your heart, a terrible dread, darling. I don’t want you to suffer. I can’t bear it any longer. I beg you, please, for God’s sake, do not torment yourself.
Kissing your hands. Karel
In the middle of the night: Darling Olinka, you have decided. I accept. I’m beginning to see the light, not in my heart, but in my head. Be happy. God, how much I’d like to make your decision easier for you! Oli, you deserve it, be happy.2
23 June [1928]
Dearest Olina,
I have a strong feeling that this letter isn’t intended for me, but for some of the numerous other Karels, most probably for that obstetrician;1 I’d have sent it straight to him, but I can’t for the life of me think of his name – I have a bad memory for names. Simultaneously, I got another letter that is certainly meant for me; thank you for the remembrances from Kotlina.2 But you are wrong to think that I’m somehow exasperated and that ‘I’m weary of the world’ just like the girl in that song. I’ll fight a bit, and mostly because I haven’t yet lost all sense of humour. And then again, we can’t live prettily in this world if, helplessly and once and for all, we sell out to all those wheeler-dealers, windbags and slanderers. But I’ll save it for the autumn – everyone is lazy now in the summer and public opinion has gone on holiday. Tomorrow I’m going to Brno, I’ll be there for three days; it will probably be rather tiring because I’ll have to write something about that exhibition. Other than that, I don’t know anything new, not since yesterday; I’m just coming back to the admonition that this year you should really devote the entire vacation to that calcification. Go to the Tatras again and lie in ultraviolet radiation there; they won’t cure your neglected catarrhs in two weeks, you need at least eight for that. You can go to Paris any time during the season, but use the long vacation like a sensible person. I’ll be really angry if you don’t listen; I’ll write to your father and you’ll get it in the neck. Tell me, would you let Boženka3 go to Berlin or Vienna or somewhere instead of having treatment? You’d jaw and jaw at her and pontificate until poor Boženka obeyed. You won’t have such a bad time in the Tatras, but if that doctor is also called Karel, woe unto him – you’ll add him to your collection as well, then. What a pity Maxíček isn’t called Karel too.4 But wait, our chair Marek is also Karel,5 then there is Dr Kramář,6 Havlíček Borovský,7 Toman,8 composer Rudolf Karel,9 our Poláček10 and many other Karels.
No paper has reprimanded me for as long as three days – well, that’s what they call the silly season.
But now I must write an article – I only wanted to return this precious little letter, that isn’t intended for me, to you; and be careful, if you go on like this I’ll learn all the secrets about A.S., Haas, Mary, Štěpánek and other Prague citizens.11 Remember, one must never write an address on the sealed envelope, but put down the address first, then read the letter to remind yourself who it is written for, and then put it all together in a suitable manner.
Give my fond regards to Boženka, look after yourself and heal; health belongs to physical culture just like having a bath, clean underwear and a permanent wave.
Kissing both hands, K.
August 1935 (but even earlier)1
In Lorenzago I was at an inn,
To tell you where it is would be a sin,
Best you don’t know, else you would go there straight
To see it, and you wouldn’t think it great,
And in your disappointment you would state:
That K.Č. cannot but exaggerate.
A buxom hostess with maternal breasts
Brought frills to deck the windows for her guests,
The curtains were like little starchy crimps,
Or like an altar-cloth with lacy trims,
And Mary’s picture up above the bed
Just like a little chapel overhead,
Why is it all so peaceful and so white?
All things in order, I must put things right,
Get into line, be good, and then at night
Won’t look into the gaping pit of night,
With hands clasped I will lie in peace, unhurried.
Old fellow, why aren’t you married? Married?
Monday [Osov, 24 October 1938]1
Dearest Olinka,
I wanted to come back to Prague today, mainly because of you, so that I could be with you, but I now seriously fear that people might say that I disappeared from Prague just when bombs, to say the least, were hovering over her.2 It makes me feel awkward. I think it will be better for me to stay in the country for a while and do my work from here. If you can’t come to see me today or tomorrow, please give me your advice by letter.
I’d awfully like to go to Strž.3 I’d feel a deeper relief there. Please ask Karel, as soon as he manages to get a couple of litres of petrol, or Dvořák or someone,4 to give you a lift, and come to collect me and take me to Strž – we must finish all the works there so that we have somewhere to write in peace. Arrange it with Karel or Dvořák, and collect me please. Else I shall come to you to Prague tomorrow or the day after tomorrow– in short, write to me or telegraph.
Dearest little one, please don’t get angry now and avoid angry people. Nothing can be done. To put up with the way things are is a sin because we have fallen victim to a great historic brutality, and to rail at those who led us into it is a sin too, because it could do us harm internally as well as abroad, and we cannot afford that now. We can’t even curse the one with whom we were prepared to fight; there is no way out; we have no outlet for our frustration that might give us some relief. That’s why I beseech you, I beg you with my hands clasped to clench your teeth, like many others, and leave all passions aside. If everyone does it, we shall come out of it at least in such a way that we pull together. Do it, little one, for my sake, and also for yours – you’d destroy yourself physically as well if you kept rending your heart by that anger. I’d love to have you here. I hate the theatre for separating you from me in such a distressing time.
Be calm, then, even if you are sad, my dear, forget all vain talk and shrink from it. Rely on me to still be seeking, as long as it depends on me, right words and right deeds, or little deeds, that might at least help at a particular moment. So don’t be upset by anything any longer. Truly, we shall all need a great deal of strength and wisdom, and we must keep them for later. You and Boženka5 hug each other tight, and as soon as you can, come to see me. For the time being don’t puzzle your head over plans for the future. And write a poem again – everyone profoundly liked the Sunday one. To go among people is only a torment. I’m being reclusive here among most lovely people because I can’t stand hearing the same talk and reactions all the time.
Dearest Olinka, the important thing is to see you again soon. Do everything to make it as soon as possible. I’m looking calmly into the future – it will be possible, it will not be so bad as one sees it coloured by emotional perturbation. And as for the two of us, I just thirst for us being able to snuggle up together and live more for ourselves than we’ve done so far.
Kissing you many times and as warmly as I can.
Love, K.
Let Růžena6 stay at Strž! I must go there!
1 Čapek’s doctor Ladislav Syllaba (1868–1930).
2 His brother and co-author, Josef.
1 A Little Girl (1905), a play by the feminist writer and playwright Božena Viková-Kunětická (1862–1934), in which Olga acted.
2 Karel edited the Sunday supplement for children and wrote a fairy tale for it, and so did Olga at his request.
1 Jiřina Schubertová-Tůmová (1890–1968), Olga’s fellow actress, later translator and secretary of PEN.
2 Shooting Island, on the river Vltava, so named for its fifteenth-century shooting range. Žofín, a building on the Vltava’s Slavonic Island used for balls and cultural gatherings.
3 Zdeněk Fibich (1850–1900), compose.
4 Pavel Janák (1882–1956), cubist architect.
1 Jarmila Čapková (1889–1962), his brother’s wife. At the time she, her husband and Karel shared a flat.
2 The Little Flower of the Prairie, a play by Antonín Fencl.
1 The use of diminutives is frequent and richly varied in Czech; diminutives are the most natural way of expressing affection. Karel’s choice of ‘little one’ (literally ‘little girl’) partly reflects the title of the now forgotten play in which Olga acted (see Letter 2, note 1).
2 Karel Scheinpflug (1899–1987), Olga’s brother, lawyer and author of the memoir My Brother-In-Law Karel Čapek (1991).
3 Čapek planned a film of Rusalka (the naiad in Dvořák’s opera) with Olga in the leading role, but it was never made. His manuscript got lost.
4 The Robber (1920), Čapek’s poetic play.
5 Embarrassing Tales (1921), Čapek’s second book of short stories; in English Money and Other Stories (1929) and Painful Tales, in Cross Roads (2002).
6 Káča (or Čáča): Olga’s nickname for Karel.
1 Prague Castle, the official seat of the republic’s president.
2 Alice Masaryková (1879–1966), President of the Czechoslovak Red Cross and social worker, President Masaryk’s daughter.
1 Košíře: a quarter in south Prague. Čapek reported on what he saw in three articles, published in The People’s Paper in April 1921, urging the government to take action to rescue children from poverty, which he called worse than any disease.
1 Trenčianské Teplice, a spa in Slovakia, where Čapek’s father worked. Čapek spent summers with his parents, undergoing treatment for his spinal disease.
2 Pussycat, a farce by Walter D. Ellis.
1 Čapek’s dystopian novel A Factory to Manufacture the Absolute (1922).
1 Čapek’s family’s dislike of Olga complicated his situation. In his next letter to her (19 August 1921) he writes: ‘Mum clings to me more than ever, or at least she shows it more than she’s ever done. It’s near tormenting and horrible; I know that if I left, she’d hate you for a long time. I feel terrible because of her love, her kisses, her serving me; I don’t belong to her, that love doesn’t pertain to me, my mind is elsewhere. And then there’s the duty to pretend, not to show my anxiety; the moment I think about my own business and you for a second, there’re four women around me: that I’m sad, that something must have happened to me, perhaps that letter, and so on.’
1 Little Helenka – Helena Koželuhová (1907–67) – Čapek’s niece, the younger daughter of his sister Helena. Eddy Pollo: popular film actor.
1 Alfréd Stránský, brother of the founder and owner of The People’s Paper, and publisher.
2 Otakar Štorch-Marien, Čapek’s first publisher, wrote film reviews for The People’s Paper.
3 Čapek’s column called ‘Icy Flowers’ appeared in The People’s Paper on 13 December 1925.
4 Václav Štech (1859–1947), head of the Brno National Theatre.
5 Jiří Mahen (1882–1939), playwright, director and dramaturge at the Brno National Theatre.
6 Antonín Trýb (1884–1960), poet and novelist.
1 Tatranská Lomnica, a tourist centre in the High Tatras mountains in Slovakia.
2 Marie Calma (Veselá) (1883–1966), opera singer and writer.
3 The Giant Mountains (the highest in the Czech lands) in north Bohemia, where in July 1921 Karel and Olga, chaperoned by his sister and a woman friend, were on holiday together.
1 Čapek’s trip to Italy was primarily an escape from the emotional crisis. Still, he sent reportage to the paper and subsequently combined his feuilletons into a book (Letters from Italy, 1923).
2 The Romantics, a play by the French playwright Edmond Rostand (1868–1918).
3 Josef Čapek’s daughter: Alena Čapková.
4 František Khol (1887–1930), dramaturge and owner of a drama agency (which promoted Čapek’s plays abroad), and his wife Bohumila.
1 Anna Laue4.rmannová (1852–1932), pseudonym Felix Téver, writer and hostess of Prague literary society. Both Karel and Olga attended her salons and at one he met Věra Hrůzová.
2 Čapek’s mother fell ill and, after a period in a sanatorium, died the following spring. His father came to live with him in Prague until his death in 1929.
1 Rudolfov: a small country hotel near Jindřichův Hradec (Henry’s Castle) in south Bohemia, where Čapek spent the summer with his brother’s family.
2 Of the dystopian novel Krakatit (1924), with its two interweaving romances, which seem to reflect Čapek’s complicated relationships with Olga and Věra Hrůzová. He met Věra in December 1920, and, possibly frustrated by Olga’s unstable response, arranged a couple of meetings with her and invited her to the first night of RUR in January 1921. After that she disappeared from his life until she wrote to him in the summer of 1922. Her reappearance certainly did not facilitate his crisis with Olga. After a year of occasional letters and meetings, during which his family made it clear they preferred her to Olga, she married a mine-owner, by whom she had three children. Čapek kept up a witty correspondence with her until 1931.
1 The main character of a scientist in Čapek’s novel Krakatit (1924).
1 Professor R.W.Seton-Watson (1879–1951) was a historian of Central Europe who influenced Allied policy towards the region at the end of the First World War.
2 Nigel Playfair (1874–1934), actor and director, introduced the Čapeks’ plays on the English stage.
3 Prompted by Čapek’s sister Helena, Prof. Syllaba wrote to Olga about Čapek’s neurasthenic tendencies in July 1924, and advised her that she could do more for him as his girlfriend, offering inspiration and comfort, than as his wife and nurse.
4 Olga’s father, Karel Scheinpflug (1869–1948), writer, poet, playwright and journalist, worked for the same two papers as Čapek. The reference here is to his play The Second Youth.
5 Otakar Vočadlo, senior lecturer in Czech literature at the Institute of Slavic Studies, University of London (1922–8), arranged Čapek’s visit to England.
6 Karel Hugo Hilar (1885–1935), playwright, director and head of drama at the National Theatre. In 1924 he had a stroke.
1 The Killed Man, a play (comedy) by Olga; the first night was on 26 April 1927.
2 Božka: Olga lived with her sister Božena Scheinpflugová (1901–84).
3 František Smolík (1891–1972), distinguished actor.
1 In September and October 1927 Čapek spent six weeks in Topoľčanky, a small town in southwest Slovakia where Czechoslovak presidents had their summer residence, working with President Masaryk on his memoirs Talks with T.G.M. The first volume was published in 1928.
2 It seems to have been this letter that prompted Olga to attempt suicide, which almost proved fatal. From one of his letters to Mrs Téver in July 1923 we know that Karel dreaded Olga’s threatening him ‘with a white pill’.
1 Dr Karel Steinbach (1894–1991), Olga’s close friend and admirer. He proposed marriage to her in the spring of 1935, and this seems to have spurred Čapek to marry her in August 1935. He became Čapek’s close friend and one of the doctors who attended him in his last illness. He emigrated to the USA and wrote the memoir A Nearly Hundred-Year-Old Witness (1988). In the early 1930s Olga was also close to the President’s son, Jan Masaryk (1886–1948).
2 Kotlina: in the Slovakian High Tatras mountains.
3 Boženka: Olga’s sister.
4 Maxmilian Schwarz, farmer in Slovakia, Čapek’s friend and host.
5 Karel Marek, chairman of the co-operative of the National Theatre.
6 Karel Kramář (1860–1937), chief representative of the home resistance movement during the First World War and politician.
7 Karel Havlíček Borovský (1821–56), classic poet and journalist.
8 Karel Toman (1877–1946), lyric poet.
9 Rudolf Karel (1880–1945), composer, the last pupil of Antonín Dvořák; tortured to death in the concentration camp at Terezín.
10 Karel Poláček, distinguished writer, Čapek’s close friend and colleague.
11 Anna Sedláčková (1887–1967), actress, the first Czech film star. Hugo Haas (1901–68), actor, director and celebrated comic film star. Zdeněk Štěpánek (1896–1968), acclaimed actor.
1 Alarmed by the prospect of losing Olga to Karel Steinbach, Čapek offered to join her on holiday in the Austrian Alps and the Dolomites in the summer of 1935. Apparently he slipped this poem into her hand at breakfast one morning, and woke her up at 5 a.m. the following morning to propose. They married on their return to Prague on 26 August 1935.
1 Seeking peace from the political persecution, Karel stayed at the little Osov chateau in central Bohemia, which belonged to his sister’s brother-in-law, Václav Palivec. He could not have used his and Olga’s country house, because the telephone line was requisitioned by the army.
2 As part of its libellous campaign, the fascist and clerical press denigrated Čapek’s autumnal visits to the country as cowardice precipitated by the late September general mobilisation. He defended himself in an article called ‘What Truly Happened’, published in The People’s Paper on 26 November 1938.
3 Strž: a solitary old country house in central Bohemia, south of Prague. In 1935 Karel and Olga were given the right to use it as a wedding present from Václav Palivec. Karel planned the reconstruction of the house and cultivated the garden. In the Communist era Olga saved the house by helping to turn it into the Karel Čapek Museum, opened in 1963.
4 Karel Scheinpflug, Olga’s brother; Karel Dvořák (1893–1950), sculptor, who had a house near Strž.
5 Boženka: Olga’s sister.
6 Růžena: Olga’s housekeeper.