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Oregon, United States
loves: you win if you guessed "pets" and "museums". Also books, art history, travel, British punk, Korean kimchi, bindis, martinis, and other things TBD. I will always make it very clear if a post is sponsored in any way. Drop me a line at thepetmuseum AT gmail.com !

Sunday, April 11, 2010

dashenka's dad

Karel Capek, the Czechoslovokian best known for popularizing the word "robot" in his 1921 play Rossum's Universal Robots, was a wide-ranging writer with a great many interests. Among these were his pet dogs and cats, about whom he wrote with a philosophical yet warm and sympathetic pen. The best known of those works, if you can call it that on this side of the pond, is Dashenka, or the Life of a Puppy (1933). A biography of his wire-haired terrier, it is written in most attentive detail and with the same proud humor we all use in tales of what our beasts have done now - or so I gather from the very few English excerpts I have been able to glean.

That very scarcity of translation makes me extra thrilled to have found a blog offering Capek's Fables and Understories in English. Read Capek on a proud and naughty cat, on a small dog with a big attitude even after getting whomped by a bigger foe, or on a horse of dignity and mission - right here, you will enjoy it.

Do take a moment to surf the rest of the blog, for I'm positive you will find Capek a supremely likeable writer.

5 comments:

parlance said...

Thanks. I'l follow this interesting link.

Cliff and Olivia said...

The Humans tell us that Capek is an absolute favourite and that they'll take a look at the link.

curator said...

Oh, I do hope you all enjoy. I did.

Elaine Pritchard said...

I could be a whizz at the next pub quiz (if my family would take me and the pub would let me in)....

Yet more fascinating facts. We all love your blog because you find the most interesting stuff ever!

Love and licks Winnie

curator said...

Winnie, what nice words! I love to hunt down the fascinating ways pets have impacted our lives and made us do all sorts of special things.