Prove You’re Not a Robot: On Karel Čapek’s “R.U.R.”
Jonathan Bolton uses the occasion of a new edition and translation of Karel Čapek’s play “R.U.R.,” first published in Prague in 1920, to revisit the...
Jonathan Bolton is a professor of Slavic languages and literatures at Harvard University, where he teaches Czech and Central European literature, history, and culture. He is the author of Worlds of Dissent: Charter 77, the Plastic People of the Universe, and Czech Culture Under Communism (2012). His translations of Czech poetry and prose have appeared in Circumference, B O D Y, Best European Fiction, Modern Poetry in Translation, and elsewhere; he has edited and translated book-length collections by Ivan Wernisch (In the Puppet Gardens: Selected Poems, 1963–2005, 2007) and Petr Hruška (Everything Indicates: Selected Poems, 2023).
Jonathan Bolton uses the occasion of a new edition and translation of Karel Čapek’s play “R.U.R.,” first published in Prague in 1920, to revisit the...