Jiří Mucha's Peculiar Loves and Miroslav Barvik's “At Tři Studně”

Jiři Mucha's documentary novel Peculiar Loves (1988) did much to promote the composers Vitězslava Kápralová and Bohuslav Martinů. Set in the Czech artists’ colony in Paris during the late 1930s, the book brought to light, for example, what an astonishing musical personality Kaprálová had been: Kaprálová had been revered as an exceptionally gifted composer during her time, and Mucha leaves us to wonder about the kind of brilliant career she might have had—if her life had not been cut short by illness and misfortune. And with respect to Martinů, Mucha offers several recollections of a composer who—during the 1940s—would become famous in America: here, in somewhat comical terms, Martinů is shown as taciturn and unpredictable, or as someone lost in his own world with little effort to respond to the people around him.

Underscoring Kaprálová's achievements and promise, or providing a reading of Martinů's artistic personality, are not, however, the threads that hold Mucha's book together. Instead, Mucha focuses on Kaprálová's multiple and simultaneous trysts, which included one with Martinů, who had been her composition teacher in Paris. Mucha himself plays a central role in the story in that he, too, had become involved with Kaprálová and married her just before the German invasion of France; tragically, for reasons that are still unclear, Kaprálová died some eight weeks later during the days of the French capitulation. For his novel, Mucha relied on Kaprálová's extant correspondence, which he had kept for many years before finally examining its contents; this led him to realize what a complex figure she had been. The publication of Peculiar Loves brought shock waves to the Czech musical community, as Kaprálová's aff airs—and her affair with Martinů in particular—would no longer be a subject of mere gossip and speculation. Indeed, until that time, biographers had largely suppressed the intimate details of the Kaprálová–Martinů relationship, not only out of respect for Kaprálová and her family, but also out of respect for Martinů and his wife, Charlotte, who lived on until 1978.

The fact that Mucha quotes extensively from Kaprálova's correspondence brings a sense of credibility to the book.