Author’s note: “Weekend Short” is a weekly profile of a short story. Analysis from the readership is encouraged in the comments section.
Welcome to the weekend!
It has been a week: two ambulance rides, five ER visits, and a gobsmacking amount of time talking to insurance, pharmacies, and doctors. It would seem my wife is suffering hemiplegic migraines that imitate the symptoms of seizures and strokes. We’ve seen some progress, but it’s too early to tell if the meds we finally finagled will do the job. I tell you this not for sympathy; rather, you deserve to know why I haven’t been writing — there are half-finished drafts from every day that ended in the hospital. Sleep and writing success are hard to come by from hospital beds and chairs, respectively. But there’ll always be more news to comment on.
This week’s short is Czech writer, playwright, and journalist Karel Čapek’s “Romeo and Juliet,” translated and edited by Norma Comrada. The story is a small part of the collected Apocryphal Tales, inventive short stories about the stories — Čapek’s work is comic marginalia on the pages of biblical accounts, ancient myths, and the broader Western canon.
“Romeo and Juliet” compares a Brit’s Shakespearean account to what a Franciscan monk heard on the grapevine in Italy. The story has it all, from Catholic–Protestant ribbing to wondering whether becoming English is an affliction.
Karel Čapek writes:
A young English nobleman, Oliver Mendeville, on a leisurely tour of Italy to broaden his education, received news in Florence that his father, Sir William, had departed this world. Sir Oliver therefore bade farewell with a heavy heart and copious tears to Signorina Maddalena, swore that he would return as soon as possible, and set out with his servant on the road to Genoa. On the third day of their journey, a heavy rainstorm overtook them just as they came to a remote hamlet. Sir Oliver reined in his horse under an ancient elm. “Paolo,” he said to his servant, “see if there is some sort of albergo here where we might wait out this torrential downpour.” “As for your servant and horses,” came a voice from above, “there’s an albergo right around the bend in the road; but you, cavaliere, would do great honor to my parish if you would take shelter under my modest roof.”
You can read the rest here (pg. 143) or listen to it here.
For those of you familiar with your Italian writers, you may recall that our priest shares the same name as the esteemed Italian Odyssey translator Ippolito Pindemonte, with both men calling Verona home . . . coincidence, I’m sure.
Čapek’s timeline and setting are surreal, with arguably the most romantic drama ever devised reduced to a small footnote in the life of a woman who took a “tiny drop of poison” but quickly recovered her senses to marry the more deserving man.
I’m confident the author’s journalism informed these tales, as we see the same myth-making in our own time as he did in the heady days of nationalistic and collectivist fervor preceding the First World War.
In our time, take for example the purple ink spilled in favor of the transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg by Virginia Heffernan. Were a historian to someday take seriously her vapors, he might think Buttigieg the most underappreciated statesman since Harding — not every man has a cathedral for a mind, y’know.
Then that same historian would use Charles C. W. Cooke’s equally sober support for the master transporter “who is white but makes up for it by being gay” as a second citation in favor of that best, beautiful man.
Journalism is 95 percent bloviating, and Čapek assumes the same ratio of the canon — but unlike some, the tone suggests the author is capable of laughing at himself before chuckling at others. After all, he knows the stories well enough to be a snob. But the best comics, those like Norm MacDonald, play the lovable rube and know how to tease intelligence without becoming loathsome.
Thanks to Kenneth for the suggestion.
Here’s Blues Traveler letting the audience in on the joke in “Hook”:
Author’s note: If there’s a short story you’d like to see discussed in the coming weeks, please send your suggestion to label@nationalreview.com.