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''The Memorandum'' is the common name in English for the 1965 play ''Vyrozumění'', by Czech playwright
Václav Havel Václav Havel (; 5 October 193618 December 2011) was a Czech statesman, author, poet, playwright, and former dissident. Havel served as the last president of Czechoslovakia from 1989 until the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1992 and then ...
. The first English translation, by Vera Blackwell in 1967, used this title. In 2006, Canadian translator Paul Wilson published a new translation, titled ''The Memo'' at Havel's request. The play is a
black comedy Black comedy, also known as dark comedy, morbid humor, or gallows humor, is a style of comedy that makes light of subject matter that is generally considered taboo, particularly subjects that are normally considered serious or painful to discu ...
that parodies bureaucracy and conformity. Havel wrote it prior to the Prague Spring of 1968 as an ironic satire dissenting against communist rule. Despite its veiled themes, the play was approved by government censors and published. ''The Memorandum'' centers on the introduction of a new language, "Ptydepe", that is meant to make work more efficient despite having the opposite effect. Sam Walters considers ''The Memorandum'' to be Havel’s masterpiece.


Plot

Josef Gross (Andrew Gross in the Wilson translation), a director of an unnamed organization, receives a memorandum written in Ptydepe, a
constructed language A constructed language (sometimes called a conlang) is a language whose phonology, grammar, and vocabulary, instead of having developed naturally, are consciously devised for some purpose, which may include being devised for a work of fiction ...
, about an audit. He finds out that Ptydepe was created to eliminate emotional connotations and similarities between unrelated words (such as "fox" and "ox"). Gross tries to get someone to translate the memorandum for him, and gradually becomes opposed to the use of Ptydepe. He finally finds a reluctant
secretary A secretary, administrative professional, administrative assistant, executive assistant, administrative officer, administrative support specialist, clerk, military assistant, management assistant, office secretary, or personal assistant is a ...
named Maria (Alice in the Wilson translation) who explains that, while she can translate the memorandum, she does not yet have a permit to do so. The next day, Gross's deputy Jan Ballas (Max Balas in the Wilson translation) takes over his job. Gross becomes a "staff watcher", someone who spies on the workers of the unnamed organization. Meanwhile, Maria gets fired for translating Gross's memorandum. The last few Ptydepe learners in the organization give up on the language. After a while, Ballas gives his job back to Gross. Ptydepe is replaced with another language, Chorukor, one with very extreme similarities between words so as to make learning it easier, but finally it is decided to get back to the ''mother language''. The play ends with most of the characters going to lunch.


Characters

*Josef Gross (Andrew Gross) *Jan Ballas (Max Balas) *Pillar (Victor Kubs) *Maria (Alice) *Hana *Helena (Talaura) *Stroll (Ken Masat) *Savant (Sid Maher) *George (Josh) *Thumb (Ms. Kalous) *Lear (J. V. Brown) *Column


Invented languages

The play's two fictional
artificial language Artificial languages are languages of a typically very limited size which emerge either in computer simulations between artificial agents, robot interactions or controlled psychological experiments with humans. They are different from both constr ...
s, Ptydepe and Chorukor, are at the heart of the play's satire.


Ptydepe

According to the characters of the play, Ptydepe was constructed along strictly scientific lines, with none of the messiness and ambiguity of natural languages. In order to be able to express precisely all the subtle and easily misunderstood nuances of natural language, Ptydepe has a large, non-expandable vocabulary. Another problem of natural language that Ptydepe was intended to eliminate is the frequent similarity of unrelated words, or
homonyms In linguistics, homonyms are words which are homographs (words that share the same spelling, regardless of pronunciation), or homophones ( equivocal words, that share the same pronunciation, regardless of spelling), or both. Using this definition ...
. To entirely avoid the possibilities for confusion that arise with homonyms and similar unrelated words, Ptydepe was created according to the postulate that all words must be formed from the least probable combinations of letters. Specifically, it makes use of the so-called "sixty percent dissimilarity" rule; which states that any Ptydepe word must differ by at least sixty percent of its letters from any other word consisting of the same number of letters. This led to the necessity of creating some very long words. The inevitable problem of pronounceability is solved by breaking very long words up into smaller clusters of letters called "subwords", which nonetheless have no meaning outside of the word they belong to and are not interchangeable. Length of words, like everything else in Ptydepe, is determined scientifically. The vocabulary of Ptydepe uses
entropy encoding In information theory, an entropy coding (or entropy encoding) is any lossless data compression method that attempts to approach the lower bound declared by Shannon's source coding theorem, which states that any lossless data compression method ...
: shorter words have more common meanings. Therefore, the shortest word in Ptydepe, , corresponds to what is so far known to be the most general term in natural language, ''whatever''. (The longest word in Ptydepe, which contains 319 letters, is the word for "
wombat Wombats are short-legged, muscular quadrupedal marsupials that are native to Australia. They are about in length with small, stubby tails and weigh between . All three of the extant species are members of the family Vombatidae. They are ada ...
" in an English translation. However in the Czech original it is a name for a nonexistent member of the genus Apus, .) Theoretically an even shorter word than exists in Ptydepe, namely , but it has no meaning assigned and is held in reserve in case a more general term than "whatever" is discovered. Havel's younger brother, computer scientist Ivan M. Havel, helped in its formulation. In Czech, the word has been used to mean incomprehensible
bureaucrat A bureaucrat is a member of a bureaucracy and can compose the administration of any organization of any size, although the term usually connotes someone within an institution of government. The term ''bureaucrat'' derives from "bureaucracy", w ...
ic
jargon Jargon is the specialized terminology associated with a particular field or area of activity. Jargon is normally employed in a particular communicative context and may not be well understood outside that context. The context is usually a partic ...
, or
newspeak Newspeak is the fictional language of Oceania, a totalitarian superstate that is the setting of the 1949 dystopian novel ''Nineteen Eighty-Four'', by George Orwell. In the novel, the Party created Newspeak to meet the ideological requirements ...
intending to hide its true meaning.


Example

From the memorandum discovered in the office in Scene 1:


Chorukor

Chorukor serves as the tentative replacement for Ptydepe at the end of ''The Memorandum''.


Example

From Scene 11:
''PERINA: Of course. In Chorukor, Monday is , Tuesday , Wednesday , Thursday , Friday , Saturday . How do you think Sunday is in Chorukor? Hmm?''
''(Only Kalous moves)So Kalous!''
''KALOUS: (standing up) . (he sits down)''
''PERINA: Correct, Kalous! Good point! Isn't it easy?''HAVEL, Václav, ''Vyrozumění, Hra o dvanácti obrazech'', Praha, 1965


References

* Havel, Václav. ''The Memorandum''. Faber and Faber, 1989. * Havel, Václav. ''The Memo''. Theater 61 Press, 2012.


External links


"The Memorandum , Introduction"
Theater 61 Press website *
"Thoughts on Vaclav Havel’s – The Memorandum"
Elizabeth Doty, March 18, 2008
"The Memorandum"
''enotes'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Memorandum, The Plays by Václav Havel 1965 plays Bureaucracy in fiction