Die Schweizer Heulsuse

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Die Schweizer Heulsuse (the “Swiss Milquetoast”) is the legendary, possibly apocryphal, unfinished last opera of Otto Büchstein, composed on his deathbed in an opium den in Mandalay, delirious with malaria.

Devil quote

Mainly famous for a misquote in Gräfin Schümli Pflümli’s final aria, Der Teufel mag im Detail stecken, aber Gott steckt in den Lücken often misquoted as “the devil is not in the detail. The devil is the detail”.

Otto’s razor

Die Schweizer Heulsuse is also famous for its articulation of “Otto’s razor”:

Herculio: ’Tis neither malice, spite, nor virtue
Whose ledger swells, or plucks, the seedy fruits of progress —
But mainly accident.
Lest thee with surety know aught else —
Withhold thy assignations.

Triago: Pish upon thee, Nuncle. Pish!
Dost thou mean to say
Things peel this way
Through doughty misadventure?

Herculio: Peradventure —

Triago: Pish abeam!
Has thou no more to say than that?
Wouldst thou on this shaky surmise
Withhold rebuke?

Herculio: Perchance, per case, mayhap dear Triago
’Twas but a fluke?

Triago: O! This nuisant planet weighs upon my soul!

Herculio: If ’tis this and nought beside
That flies you to a vernal rage
Our fickle globe in its manifold confound’ry
Lies prettily indeed
For thy alignment.

Special pleading

Queen: This covenant is well-drafted, but yegads! ’Tis lengthy.

Triago: (bowing unctuously): The writer shall be deemed hereinbefore obliged.

Herculio: My liege and madam, to expostulate
What brevity should be, what clarity is —
Why “day” is business day, and “time” is closing time.
’Tis buried — lost — among the cluttered syntax of this deed.

Queen: ’Twas no compliment, good Herculio, rest assured.
A crafty phrase to propitiate that noisome clerk, no more.

Herculio: Madam, I do concur!
Since brevity is the soul of wit,
And boilerplate the crutch of wretched tedium
I will be brief, where Triago, in all his trite facility, cannot.

Triago: Milady! With all due and payable respect, and interest accrued thereon
I wouldst be inclined to be supportive of dissent —

Queen: O, exasperating vapours! Whatever doth he mean?

Herculio: Triago disagrees.
“Inclined”, Triago?
“Supportive”?
As straight as that?
No deemery to wrap it round?

Triago: Aye, deemèd, perchance — I pray just such indulgence
To vouchsafe avoidance of some doubt.

Queen: Doubt, Triago?

Triago: I’ll think of something, Majesty.

Herculio: How now, good lady: doth thou now understand?

Queen: I fear I do, in that I do not.
Speak, Triago — but pray, be quick.

Triago: Celerity shall herein be mutually agreed to be — and shall be deemed to be — the watchword Madam!

Herculio: There goeth that wretched deemery —

Triago: Was it not ever not unlike a thing unsuch as this?

Queen: Damn and blast your eyes, Triago!
Have at you now!

QUEEN runs TRIAGO through with a rapier and exits

Herculio: We fold our patron’s righteous sleep in word pollution
By the chaff and shucks and hulls of convolution
And whoever buys these minty lines: understand
Lexical complexity doth, pro rata with thy budget, soon expand.

CURTAIN

Conference calls

Triago: Good colleagues: there are but twenty minutes left.
Wouldst you thy precious time reclaim;
Or may we keep afoot our infinite game —
With more, or any other, business? Search anew,
What items canst be tabled without ado?

Gloucester: Nothing sire.

Kent: Nor from I.

A period of silence around the table.

Queen: (Aside) That irksome twerp.
A world of richness awaits this piffling parley.

Triago: How say you, brave Herculio?
What agenda fodder doth the gods portend?

Herculio: The gods? The gods? Methinks you jest.
Th’almighty has no use for paltry conference.

Triago: I think he does, sirrah!

Queen: Oh, ho! How so?
What matters lie upon thy parchèd record
That be yet unbeknownst to sacred mind?
Whose cogs and toothèd gears
Whose immaculate escapements
All history — gone and yet to come — defined?
What need hath she, or he
Who bid the lion lay with lamb
For this dismal convention?

Nuncle: Thou maketh me to meet —
Therefore I am.

Triago: How should I know, my Queen?
How should I know?

Queen: Quite so, good sir, quite so. I must away.
Maketh thou the time-ball drop.

Exit Queen

Herculio: With all my heart, my Liege —
One has to hop.

Exeunt

See also

• Otto’s razor
• Stupidity
• Org chart
• Büchstein