INTRODUCTION
The Makropoulos Secret was first played in the National Theater of Prague in November of 1922, and it was then that Karel Capek wrote to his audience:
“I make these statements because Bernard Shaw’s new play, ‘Back to Methuselah,’ which I have seen in synopsis only, appeared this winter. In actual measure, it is very impressive. It, too, has the motif of longevity. This likeness in theme is entirely accidental, and, it seems to me from the synopsis, that while Bernard Shaw comes to the same conclusion as I do, it is in quite the opposite manner. Mr. Shaw believes that it is possible for an ideal community of people to live several hundred years in a sort of paradise. As the play-goer perceives, long life in my play is treated quite differently; I think that such a condition is neither ideal nor desirable. Both ideas are purely hypothetical since neither has the proof of experience. Yet perhaps I may say this much: Mr. Shaw’s play is a classic example of optimism, and my own—a hopeless instance of pessimism.
“Whether I am called an optimist or a pessimist, will make me neither happier nor sadder; yet, ‘to be a pessimist’ implies, it would seem, a silent rebuke from the world for bad behavior. In this comedy I have striven to present something delightful and optimistic. Does the optimist believe that it is bad to live sixty years but good to live three hundred? I merely think that when I proclaim a life of the ordinary span of sixty years as good enough in this world. I am not guilty of criminal pessimism. If we say that, at some future time, there will be no disease, misery, or poverty—that certainly is optimism. If we say that this daily life of ours, full of deprivation and sorrow, is not really so irreconcilable, but has in it something of immense value—is that pessimism? I think not. One turns from bad to higher things: the other searches for something better and higher in ordinary existence. The one looks for paradise—there is not a loftier vision for the human soul—the other strives for recompense in life itself. Is this pessimism?”
In that Europe which is old and wise and patient and exacting, a man does not set to a task in the arts until he has learned how to use his medium and his tools. Therefore is Karel Capek expert craftsman of the theater. Two years and a half ago. Americans were discovering him in “R. U. R.” as produced in New York by the Theater Guild, and great was their joy of him. Soon they knew him and his brother both in “The Insect Comedy,” and substantial and stimulating were the satisfactions. By that time “The Makropoulos Secret” had been acted in Budapest, and producing managers in America were making speed to scan a rough draft of the play. Perhaps the managers failed to visualize it in actual representation—an outlook sometimes denied them. Possibly, like good Americans, they believed that all things go in spasms and that “the Capek boom” in our theater was nearly past. More singularly, none of our leading actresses seems to have known or sought the piece. Yet for them it contains the high-pitched, the all-pervading, the virtuosa part of a generation.
The technician and the layman sit alike in admiration before a playwright who can arrest attention and kindle interest in the very first speeches of his play; who can coördinate the introduction of the personages into the progress of the narrative; who from the interaction of both can quicken premises into curiosity aroused and suspense set a-vibrating. Of such a Capek is the first act of “The Makropoulos Secret.” Before it is done we are engrossed in the suit of Gregor against Prus—a hundred years old; in Emilia Marty, singing-woman, mysterious intervener and informer; in the spell she lays with nearly every contact; in the fulfilment forthwith of her sayings. Prus, Gregor, Vitek, Kolonaty have all come, as well, into individual human and theatric being.
A second act that apparently begins in decoration, only deepens the mystery and intensifies the fascination hanging about Elina-Emilia. Incidents that pass as the embroidery, almost the digression of the moment—say the interchanges between the young lovers—speedily contribute to the main course of the dramatic narrative, the rising current of dramatic suspense. For the while. Capek seems to be taking the permissible privilege of the playwright to amusing conversation—and lo! almost every sentence is contributing to the riddle of Emilia. Quick, hard, terse and tense come the two strokes at the end. At the blow and aim unmissed, the playwright hammers home.
“The toils are laid, the stakes are set.” A—third act ensues—of the steeled Emilia caught, in a press that may crush even steel; of Emilia spent, desperate, menaced, disclosing at last the mystery that has haunted the play. Again there are interludes—Prus’s discovery of the suicide of his son because the father had won the woman that the youth also craved; the foolish interventions of old Hauk-Sendorf. Yet the one is as the red bolt to pierce these darkening clouds; the other as the irony attending nearly every human crisis. “The melodrama, the staginess, the superfluity of the mock medieval inquisition!” the reader is quick to say, as he cons the manuscript. Capek, however, writes for the stage, not for the easy-chair. In the theater these trappings retort with spell against spell upon the wavering Emilia. Nay, with them as well as with his hands, the justiciar clutches her by the throat and bids her exude the secret.
The woman reveals it and the suspense of the play seems ended—only to renew itself. For what shall be done with life everlasting? And in the next room Elena-Emilia waits. There is debate, in which the debaters speak also in character and with emotion. There is human decision. For Elena-Emilia there is also human release. So does the masterful Capek, abound, ing round a play that emotionally and suspensively seemed already full-circled.
Such work of the theater stirs the pride, quickens the zest of those who still love it, unashamed and unflagging, as seat—from time to time—of the arts. Yet Capek and “The Makropoulos Secret” would not so prevail unless they carried freight of matter to engage the mind, quicken the imagination, stir the spirit—matter, moreover, intrinsically human in content and implication, by the playwright and the stage vitalized. “The Makropoulos Secret” is the secret of life unending. The mystery of Emilia Marty, born Elena Makropoulos, is the mystery of endless existence dovetailing into the daily lives of men and women that are mortal. Her spell is the spell of a woman persisting and all-knowing, case-hardened in the virtue and vice, the experience and the sensation, of a life that has ceased to begin and wax, to waver and decline—a life that is perpetual. The secret once disclosed, the mystery once dispelled, it is as though a flood of light were bathing every facet of Elena-Emilia, pouring into every devious nook and dark corner of her courses before and within the play; beating upon every reaction in those about her.
Matter of fantasy, it is true, but matter that weaves these imaginings into the actualities of human experience. Matter of the theater, it is also true, but matter impregnated with human content and choice, speculation and even philosophy. Matter indeed of substance and vitality for the mind, the imagination and the spirit. And it is these things that Capek sums in the epilogue of debate and decision. For the while Emilia has quit the scene. The lawyer, the clerk, the nobleman, the suitor, youth in the girl, Kristina, senility in doddering Sendorf, hold in their hands the formula of everlasting life. With it they might lengthen, ripen and fill to brimming human days; breed an aristocracy of supermen; alter the whole course and custom of terrestrial existence. Emilia, who was Elena, slips through the door. From mind and heart upon her lips is the tale, the burden, the penalty of this life everlasting, wherein all sensations, emotions, impulses, experiences, numb into an eternal monotony of repetition. She is as mirror to the woman unperturbed by the suicide of the boy, undismayed when the trap closes upon her.
Bearing testimony. Elena-Emilia gives also verdict. Youth in Kristina; age in Sendorf; perception, understanding, sympathy and release in the others—affirm it. In the candle, the formula burns to ashes. From the window those ashes are scattered to the winds. Humanity as well as Elena Makropoulos is released from the eternities, rebound in the mortalities. It has its will; it is content, though the ironies try to laugh upon the woman’s lips. “And what deterred you,” the others have asked her, “from finding your own means of escape?” She answers: “I was afraid of death.” In Sæcula Sæculorum.
May 7, 1924
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1934, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 89 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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