#4 Knjiga apokrifa / Apocryphal tales, Karel Čapek
čapek is a man whose name is remembered for one reason, and that is the invention of the term "robot" in the 1920 play "R.U.R". the place where i learned this fact is, of course, shikkoku no sharnoth, where his brother josef (who is a collaborator on karels stories, and is the one who came up with the term robot for the play) is featured as the antagonist of the first story arc.
so, of course, instead of reading r.u.r. for my visual novel cred i decided to randomly buy a completely unrelated book of short stories that were originally published as newspaper columns. the collection was created posthumously, but nonetheless feels thematically consistent.
the stories are generally imagined vignettes placed between events of important literary works or lives of historical figures. the scope is wide, featuring biblical stories, shakespeare, napoleon, prometheus, but the primary angle is the same - picturing them not as men above all others, but imagining how they too mustve been insecure and selfish like all human beings. hamlet wishes to become an actor to reveal the depth of his uncles evil to all, but realizes it is a role he would enjoy playing most of all. the soldiers sieging troy complain about how its all just an excuse for achilles to become famous. a baker complains that he would support jesus but the fact he can create bread out of thin air will put him out of business. history is recontextualized from the perspective of ordinary people, and the absurdity of hating those who have sacrificed themselves for the better of everyone feels like čapeks attempt to make modern people reconsider their own fear of change and trusting others.
the croatian translation is quite nice, theres a certain lyrical playfulness thats quite easily lost. i bought a few translations from the same publisher and they all seem very polished which is something i always found lacking in translations of more mainstream works