SOURCE: "The Pocket-Stories of Karel Čapek," in Studia Slavica, Vol. XXII, Nos. 3-4, 1976, pp. 401-14.

In the following essay, Heé examines the techniques Čapek employed in his "pocket" stories to convey his philosophical ideas, discusses the success of these works as short stories, and considers their relation to the genre of detective fiction.

The whole literary career of Karel Čapek is characterized by a restless search for human values that could act as ideals for man in the 20th century. In his literary works different phases of this searching process can be distinguished from the formation of an ideal through loosing faith in it to the creation of a new one. This process is very distinct especially in Čapek's early works, while from the late twenties to the end of his life we can trace certain ideological changes within the new ideal of "littleness" which was reshaped by...