Letters from Holland
By Karel Capek
()
About this ebook
Karel Capek
Karel Capek was born in 1890 in Czechoslovakia. He was interested in visual art as a teenager and studied philosophy and aesthetics in Prague. During WWI he was exempt from military service because of spinal problems and became a journalist. He campaigned against the rise of communism and in the 1930s his writing became increasingly anti-fascist. He started writing fiction with his brother Josef, a successful painter, and went on to publish science-fiction novels, for which he is best known, as well as detective stories, plays and a singular book on gardening, The Gardener’s Year. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize for Literature several times and the Czech PEN Club created a literary award in his name. He died of pneumonia in 1938.
Read more from Karel Capek
The Gardener's Year - Illustrated by Josef Capek Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5R. U. R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tales from Two Pockets Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5R.U.R. - Rossum's Universal Robots Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Absolute at Large Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5R.U.R. Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPresident Masaryk Tells His Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Mother - A Play in Three Acts Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDashenka Or, The Life of a Puppy Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I Had a Dog and a Cat - Pictures Drawn by Josef and Karel Capek Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Gardener's Year Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Travels in the North - Exemplified by the Author's Drawings Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Cheat Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Absolute at Large Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsKarel Capek Fairy Tales - With One Extra as a Makeweight and Illustrated by Joseph Capek Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Literature & Tolerance: Views from Prague Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Letters from Holland
Related ebooks
Letters from England Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Cheat Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsI Had a Dog and a Cat - Pictures Drawn by Josef and Karel Capek Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLiterature & Tolerance: Views from Prague Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsR.U.R. Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEssential Novelists - Karel Capek: czech science fiction Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings'And So Ad Infinitum' (The Life of the Insects): An Entomological Review, in Three Acts, a Prologue and an Epilogue Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFranz Kafka: The Complete Novels Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGeorge Orwell Biography: Policeman, Second Lieutenant, The Freedom Fighter in Literature Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Karel Capek Fairy Tales - With One Extra as a Makeweight and Illustrated by Joseph Capek Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Master and Man Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Of Human Bondage Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGargantua and Pantagruel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsR.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Don Quixote Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIn Ballast to the White Sea Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Prometheus Bound and Other Plays Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Wanton Troopers Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTravels in the North - Exemplified by the Author's Drawings Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSwann’s Way by Marcel Proust - Delphi Classics (Illustrated) Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRecovery: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Crime and Punishment Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Earthly Paradise - Part 1: "The reward of labour is life. Is that not enough?" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Sentimental Journey Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Essays of Michel de Montaigne: Bestsellers and famous Books Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This Side of Paradise Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5JAMES JOYCE Premium Collection: Ulysses, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Dubliners, Chamber Music & Exiles Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Modern History For You
The Story of Christianity: Volume 2: The Reformation to the Present Day Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The God Delusion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World's Greatest Nuclear Disaster Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Devil's Notebook Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fall and Rise: The Story of 9/11 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Night to Remember: The Sinking of the Titanic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Story of the Trapp Family Singers Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Principles for Dealing with the Changing World Order: Why Nations Succeed and Fail Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Plot to Kill King: The Truth Behind the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Bible With and Without Jesus: How Jews and Christians Read the Same Stories Differently Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Little Red Book Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Gaza: An Inquest into Its Martyrdom Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Disunited Nations: The Scramble for Power in an Ungoverned World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/577 Days of February: Living and Dying in Ukraine, Told by the Nation’s Own Journalists Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Shakespeare: The World as Stage Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Voices from Chernobyl Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Israel: A Concise History of a Nation Reborn Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Hope, Deception, and Survival at Jonestown Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/518 Tiny Deaths: The Untold Story of Frances Glessner Lee and the Invention of Modern Forensics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Letters from Holland
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Letters from Holland - Karel Capek
National Types
It is, of course, only fit and proper if the first thing I do on returning from the Netherlands is to describe and draw for you some typical Dutch faces. Now as regards the burgomasters, councillors, pundits and other bigwigs, I must refer you to Flinck, de Keyser, Troost, Elias, Rembrandt, Sandrart and other Dutch masters of the seventeenth century, for since then the Dutch have not changed markedly in appearance, except that they no longer wear ruffs, bandoliers, cuirasses and other martial paraphernalia. But if you are more anxious to see some typical faces of old Dutch sailors, Calvinists and farmers, I beg to inform you that they can still be met with here and there; I myself saw one specimen of each at Utrecht, in the railway station at Gouda and in a tram at Leiden respectively, and I was delighted to come across that freak of nature which is known as a national type.
On Becoming Acquainted with Foreign Countries
In the majority of cases the modern traveller traverses foreign countries in a direction which, so to speak, runs counter to the course of history. Usually it is the chief railway station of the chief city which forms the starting-point of his investigations; not until later, and then slowly and little by little, does he arrive at the more and more ancient features of a place, such as cathedrals, ancient works of art and the Jews of Amsterdam, until right at the very end of his trip he discovers the actual voice of the earth, as represented by the mooing of piebald cows or the creaking wheels of a windmill. Accordingly, as a rule his first impression is that, on the whole, all regions of the world are alike (except for the confounded currencies), and then his final impression is apt to be that the regions of the world are infinitely various and lovely; but usually he does not arrive at this conclusion until it is too late, when he is getting back into the train at the chief railway station of the chief city and is slowly beginning to forget what he has seen.
Dutch Towns
Well now, to take things in their proper order, I must record that the first purely Dutch impression (apart from the green railway engines with brass helmets on their backs) consists of bricks. And windows. And bicycles in particular. And bricks and windows in particular. These bricks form the local colour of Holland: a green landscape containing cottages built of tiny red bricks with white seams, cottages with large bright windows, and a landscape with brick pathways along which bicycles scorch from one cottage to another, and these cottages, apart from the bricks, consist largely of windows, just windows, clean and large, with white frames, and most varied subdivisions and dimensions. For let me tell you that Dutch builders attach the greatest importance to windows; a wall’s a wall, but a window is an aperture, a plastic affair which can be larger or smaller or broader or higher, and this, apparently, almost satisfies the individualistic needs of this country.
And then those bicycles. I have seen various things in my time, but never have I seen so many bicycles as for instance, in Amsterdam; they are no mere bicycles, but a sort of collective entity; shoals, droves, colonies of bicycles, which rather suggest the teeming of bacteria or the swarming of infusoria or the eddying of flies. The best part of it is when a policeman holds up the stream of bicycles to let pedestrians