The war with the newts
The war with the newts (original title: Válka s mloky ) is a satirical science fiction novel by the Czech writer Karel Čapek from 1936. The novel is part of the UNESCO collection of representative works .
content
By chance the crew of a colonial ship off Sumatra finds a species of previously unknown newts that live in the shallow water off the coast. These seem intelligent, and Captain Van Toch starts bartering the newts by giving them shark-fighting knives in exchange for pearls. Together with his childhood friend GH Bondy, he runs a large trading company. With the help of the captain, the newts colonize other islands, since they cannot cross deeper waters themselves.
The newts multiply rapidly and will soon spread across the world. Although they are only exploited as cheap workhorses after the captain's death, the question of their social status arises, since they can be granted a right to education and development just as much as people. By living in captivity, the newts learn the language of their environment, so that national differences arise between them.
In the course of their civilization, the newts recognize the interdependency between their kind and the kind of people with whom they are connected through economic and political cooperation. Both “peoples” are now forced to live in a symbiosis. When the newts begin to erode more and more areas of the mainland in order to create new living space for themselves by expanding the coasts, a war breaks out between the people and the newts.
interpretation
Čapek's novel from 1936 depicts in a parable the state of the international community on the eve of the Second World War . The newts are superficially the opponents of humans, but they behave exactly as humans have always done. Due to the economic networking between the two forms of life, a direct confrontation is impossible. The author's criticism is primarily aimed at the supposed practical constraints of a nation to have to submit to the course of events. Only by becoming aware of themselves does it enable the newts to perceive their existence as a factor of power, thus becoming a threat to the people who first exploited them as workers.
It is the people themselves who, through their upbringing and their role as buyers of goods, have provided the newts with a model of their society that corrupts them and ultimately turns them into calculable profiteers. According to Rousseau's dictum , newts are naturally peaceable and know no insidiousness . Just the proximity to human society and the associated rapid increase promotes them to a higher level of evolution, which also forces the newts to enter the hitherto only human power struggle.
Čapek's black satire, written in a very entertaining way, warns of the hubris of mankind to perceive everything for the purpose of personal enrichment. At the same time one can read this as well as the earlier published novel Das Absolutum or the Gottesfabrik as utopia on how humanity is working on its own downfall, although it always has the best of intentions.
“The theme is not unlike Frankenstein's : the pursuit of knowledge, however admirable it may be in itself, is destructive when it is accompanied by indifference to the consequences of that knowledge. The newts are not just the Nazis, but the dark side of our own being. "
The criticism of the spreading fascism around the world becomes clear in the last chapter "The author speaks to himself": Two "newt kingdoms" are developing, in Europe under the "Chief Salamander", in Asia under the "King Salamander". This one is a clear allegory of Tennō Hirohito , although it exaggerates his power , that of Hitler ("The Chief Salamander is a person. His real name is Andreas Schulze and was a sergeant somewhere during the war [meaning the First World War ]."). Ultimately, people do not win the war with the newts, they just survive it: the newts assassinate each other when their plans to conquer (because of Africa) collide.
History and reception
In the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia , the novel gave the German authorities an opportunity to outlaw Čapek's work because he had denigrated the Nordic race. In 1940 it was included in the annual list of harmful and undesirable literature . The novel influenced the philosopher Vilém Flusser , who refers to him several times in his works - especially in Vampyroteuthis infernalis . At the 8th International Slavist Congress in 1978, the novel was recognized as one of the most important literary works against National Socialism .
expenditure
Translations into German:
- The war with the newts. Translated from the Czech by Julius Mader. Passer, Vienna 1937.
- This translation was taken over in 1954 by the Aufbau-Verlag in East Berlin . In West Germany, a translation by Eliška Glaserová was published by Blüchert in Hamburg in 1964. Their translation was thoroughly revised by Mirek Ort based on the Czech original. Translated in part, published 1985 by Heyne in Munich, ISBN 3-453-31155-8 .
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The war with the newts. Novel. Translated from the Czech by Eliška Glaserová, illustrated by Hans Ticha . (= Construction paperbacks. 6109). Construction paperback, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-7466-6109-4 .
- Licensed edition for the Gutenberg Book Guild, Frankfurt am Main, Vienna and Zurich 2016, ISBN 978-3-7632-6896-2 .
literature
- Válka s mloky. In: Kindlers Literatur Lexikon , Volume 22 Tral-Vim. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1974, pp. 9809–9810.
- Antonín Brousek : Karel Čapek and the Czech scientific fantasy. Epilogue to the Heyne issue 06/46. Heyne, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-453-31155-8 , pp. 281-299.
- Andreas Ohme: Karel Čapek's novel “The War with the Newts”. Procedure, intention, reception (= Slavic literatures. Volume 27). Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 2002, ISBN 3-631-37477-1 , at the same time dissertation at the University of Jena 1999 udT: Karel Čapek's Roman Válka s mloky, on the connection between artificial processes and the formation of meaning in literature .
- Darko Suvin: Karel Čapek or the strangers in our midst. In: ders .: Poetics of Science Fiction (= Suhrkamp Taschenbuch 539). Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1979, ISBN 3-518-37039-1 , pp. 305-319.
Web links
- Slippery waddlers . In: Der Spiegel . No. 41 , 1966 ( online - October 3, 1966 , The War of the Reptiles is Kohout's second success in Germany. Review of the production of “The War with the Newts” by the Czech playwright Pavel Kohout in Dortmund).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Entry on the UNESCO list
- ^ Brian W. Aldiss: The Billion Years Dream. The history of science fiction. Bastei-Lübbe, Bergisch-Gladbach 1987, ISBN 3-404-28160-8 , p. 225
- ↑ Alexander Eilers: "Brothers in the flesh and in the spirit", epilogue to: Written in the clouds. Aphorisms - Fables - Parables , edited and translated from the Czech by Hans-Horst Skupy, Edition Töpfl, Tiefenbach 2019, ISBN 978-3-942592-37-6 , pp. 113–116, here p. 114.
- ↑ See Tim Fauth: German cultural policy in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia 1939 to 1941 , V and R Unipress, Göttingen 2004, ISBN 3-89971-181-5 , p. 43.
- ↑ 1940 annual list of harmful and undesirable literature. Leipzig 1940, p. 6.
- ↑ Cf. Gustavo Bernando Krause: Brazilian Philosophy? Philosophizing “in situ” . In: Susanne Klengel, Holger Siever (ed.): The third bank. Vilém Flusser and Brazil. Contexts - Migration - Translations . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-8260-3687-3 , pp. 39-50
- ↑ Hans-Horst Skupy: “A book full of stars”, preface to: Written in the clouds. Aphorisms - Fables - Parables , edited and translated from the Czech by the same, Edition Töpfl, Tiefenbach 2019, ISBN 978-3-942592-37-6 , pp. 3–5, here p. 5.
- ↑ Bettina Kaibach: Uprising of the slaves. Karel Capek's “War with the Newts”: A classic anticipates the climate catastrophe. In: Der Tagesspiegel from February 1, 2009. Retrieved July 15, 2013.