Die Schweizer Heulsuse: Difference between revisions
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Revision as of 19:26, 8 April 2022
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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.[1]
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[2] 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
References
- ↑ Other reports have it as dengue fever.
- ↑ The Devil may be in the detail, but God is in the gaps.
- ↑ Büchstein, Die Schweizer Heulsuse III, i.