David Hogan
Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Karel Čapek (1890–1938) was an eminent Czech author, playwright, and journalist active during the First Czechoslovak Republic (1918–1938).¹ The son of a physician, Čapek suffered from ankylosing spondylitis (during the 1930s it was known as Čapek’s disease in Prague).² This excused him from military service during the First World War but led to chronic back pain and use of a cane from his early twenties. Čapek was advised not to marry and told that he might die early.¹

Čapek’s philosophical background (he received a doctorate in the discipline) is evident in his fictional works, where the practical implications of a central conceit are carefully considered from different perspectives. He explored “the various roads that lead to the knowledge of the truth.”³ Čapek was also skeptical about the benefits of scientific progress.⁴ For example, in his science fiction play R.U.R. (which stands for Rossumovi Univerzální Roboti or Rossum’s Universal Robots in English), Čapek wanted to show how a “conception of the human brain [robots] … escaped from the control of human hands [they rebel and eliminate the human race].”⁵ Nominated seven times for a Nobel Prize in literature, he never received one reportedly because of his outspoken opposition to fascism.¹ A heavy smoker, Čapek died of pneumonia when only forty-eight. This saved him from arrest by the Gestapo, who turned up at his home shortly after Germany invaded the Czech provinces of Bohemia and Moravia in March of 1939.

Věc Makropulos (or The Makropulos Secret, Čapek’s preferred English translation) is a three-act play that he wrote. It is set in contemporary Prague where it premiered in November 1922 under Čapek’s direction.⁶ There are eight main characters: Emilia Marty (beautiful opera diva who appears to be in her thirties), Dr. Kolenaty (lawyer), Jaroslav and Janek Prus (Janek is Jaroslav’s eighteen-year-old son), Albert Gregor, Vitek (Kolenaty’s assistant and expert on the French Revolution), Krista (Vitek’s young daughter, an aspiring singer, and Janek’s romantic interest), and the elderly Count Max Hauk-Sendorf, a former diplomat.

Marty inserts herself into a multi-generational legal dispute that is just concluding between the Gregor and Prus families over the ownership of valuable property. She shows inexplicable knowledge about people and events that occurred close to a hundred years ago. Her motivation for becoming involved is to obtain a document tied up in the proceedings. Meeting the charismatic Marty has an unsettling impact on the other characters. Albert, Max, Jaroslav, and Janek all desire her. Janek kills himself off-stage between the second and third act after his father spends a night with Marty in exchange for the document she is seeking. His loss is the second one for Krista, who had previously threatened to quit singing after hearing the daunting technical brilliance of Marty’s voice.

Eventually it is revealed that Marty is in fact Elina Makropulos. Due to an elixir of life (a mythical potion that grants the drinker eternal youth) created by her physician-alchemist father for Emperor Rudolph II (1552–1612), she has lived for over three hundred years as a healthy young adult, unlike Swift’s Struldbruggs.⁷ When sixteen she was forced to take the potion in order to prove its safety to Rudolph. Though made very ill (she was unconscious for a week), Elina survived and escaped with a parchment describing the steps that must be followed to create the elixir. Over the centuries Elina assumed different identities but always as a singer with the initials EM. This included Eugenia Montez, the Spanish lover of Max fifty years previously. Elina gave the document to her lover Pepi Prus so he could try it. An ancestor of Jaroslav and Janek, he died from taking it. Albert is the great-grandson of Elina and Pepi. The effect of the elixir is wearing off, and to avoid dying, Elina must take it again.

During the play, the negative impact of living so long becomes increasingly evident to all, including Elina. She is lonely and bored and views life as meaningless, but is afraid of dying. Her behavior is immoral, ungracious, deceitful, self-centered, and uncaring even towards her own descendants like Albert. A core concept of the play is that mortality gives urgency, meaning, and value to our lives. For Krista, Elina evolves from an object of envy to one of pity.

Partway through the third act as the drama crescendos towards a climax, Elina conveniently faints and is taken off-stage so the other characters can debate who should control the potion. Though described as a “boring” interlude,⁸ this scene is one of the most interesting parts of the play for those intrigued with the implications of radically extending life. Table 1 summarizes the differing viewpoints expressed. Two alternatives to prolonged corporal existence are also briefly mentioned. The immortality of the soul is described by Vitek as “only a desperate protest against the shortness of life.” Near the end of the play, Jaroslav asserts that “Life is not short, so long as we can be the cause of new life,” an ironic statement, as the suicide of his son Janek has left him with “no heirs, no descendants.”

Elina eventually revives and joins the others for the ending. Though the document has been retrieved, Elina and the other characters decline it one by one. The play ends with the parchment being set on fire by Krista. Vitek, Kolenaty, and Max (“Let me have just a little piece!”) object mildly but are easily held back. Though stated that “only youth [Krista] could burn such a thing so fearlessly,” presumably from not yet feeling the bite of aging, it is also youth personified by Janek and Krista, who suffer the most from Elina.

Věc Makropulos was initially seen as a response to Back to Methuselah, a series of five plays by George Bernard Shaw published in 1921 that dealt with the necessity of increasing our lifespan, through the process of creative evolution, to three centuries in order to deal with the complexities of modern life.⁹ Čapek denied this link. Other suggested influences include Gulliver’s Travels (Jonathan Swift), The Mortal Immortal (Mary Shelley), The Food of Gods (H.G. Wells), and Eternal Youth (František Langer).^10,11 Čapek wrote that the Nobel laureate Élie Metchnikoff’s proposal that “old age is autointoxication of the organism”¹² was his inspiration. The logical consequence of this is that aging could be prevented by an antidote.¹⁰

The document outlining the steps to create the elixir was a MacGuffin (a term used for any plot device, object, or event required to drive the narrative forward, but whose specific details are unimportant). Čapek never intended to explain how the elixir kept Elina alive through centuries of pestilence, war, and general mayhem—his interest was in presenting a contrary view on the benefits of radical life extension at both the level of the individual and society as a whole.

Not as popular as R.U.R.,¹³ two developments have kept Věc Makropulos from being of just historical interest. A fellow Czech, Leoš Janáček (1854–1928), created a popular opera of the same name based on Čapek’s work that, unlike the play, is still performed.^10,11 Appropriately, the inspiration for the Emilia Marty character (and possibly the repeating EM initials) is held to be the famous Czech soprano Ema Destinnová (1878–1930).¹⁴ The main narrative differences between the two are the omission of the debate and the effort to make Elina a more sympathetic character in the opera, leading to more drama and less philosophy.^10,11 Second was a 1972 lecture titled “The Makropulos case: reflections on the tedium of immortality” by the philosopher Bernard Williams. In it he argued that immortality would become intolerable if we retained our identity. As Williams phrased it, we would “eventually have had altogether too much” of ourselves.¹⁵ A debate on the theoretical merits of his position is still ongoing in philosophical circles.¹⁶

In his preface to Věc Makropulos, Čapek argued that “a life of sixty years … is adequate and good enough”¹²; life expectancy at birth in 1920 Czechoslovakia was about 48 years. In the play, Elina indicates that at “100, 130 years, one can go on,” but beyond that point, life loses meaning. This contrasted with Shaw’s optimistic perspective on the merits of living three hundred years. Čapek observed it is impossible to determine which of the two views is correct, as “on both sides, unfortunately, actual experience is lacking.”¹²

A novel and still pertinent contribution of Věc Makropulos is the speculation regarding who should benefit from radical life extension. The possibility that it might be limited to a few Übermenschen or purchased by the rich causes pause. Arthur Miller in his foreword of Towards a Radical Center wrote that the world Čapek described in his speculative fiction has become “far less outrageous or even improbable. We have evolved into his nightmare.”⁶ During the last century, we experienced a large and rapid increase in life expectancy that appears to have run its course.¹⁷ The promise of geroscience suggests we might be at the cusp of a second longevity revolution. It would be irresponsible to not try and think through issues like the impact of inequitable access,¹⁸ retention of power,¹⁹ and inter-generational equity associated with this.¹⁹ In the play, Albert states, “Only the poor ever have enough money, Miss Marty—the rich, never.” The same might be said of time and power.

References

1. Klíma I (Translated by Norma Comrada). Karel Čapek: Life and Work. Catbird Press (North Haven, CT), 2002.
2. Trnavský K, Sabová L. Karel Capek–Czech writer, sufferer from ankylosing spondylitis. Clin Rheumatol. 1992 Sep;11(3):337-40. doi: 10.1007/BF02207189. PMID: 1458780.
3. Čapek K. Tales from Two Pockets: Translated from the Czech and with an introduction by Norma Comrada. Catbird Press (New Haven, CT), 1994, page 8.
4. Sparks JA. Shaw for Utopians, Čapek for the Anti-Utopians. Shaw. 1997;17:165-183.
5. Čapek K. The Meaning of R.U.R. The Saturday Review (London, UK). 1923, July 21;136(3534):79.
6. Čapek K. The Makropulos Secret (Translated by Yveta Synek Graff and Robert T. Jones). In: Toward the Radical Center: A Karel Čapek Reader (edited by P. Kussl). Catbird Press (Highland Park, N.J.), 1990, pp. 131-215.
7. Wyrick DB. Life Interminable: Swift’s Struldbruggs and Čapek’s Elina Makropoulos. The Comparatist. 1983 May;7:48-56.
8. Manning CA. Karel Capek. South Atlantic Quarterly. 1941;40(3):236-42.
9. Shaw B. Back to Methuselah: A Metabiological Pentateuch. Constable and Company Ltd. (London, UK), 1929.
10. Emerson C. Čapek, Janáček, that Makropulos Thing, and a Word about Sacrificed Women in 20^th-Century Slavic Opera. In: Between Texts, Languages, and Cultures: A Festschrift for Michael Henry Heim (edited by Craig Cravens, Masako U. Fidler, and Susan C. Kresin). Slavica (Bloomington, Indiana), 2008, pp. 189-198.
11. Katz D. Many Modernisms, Two Makropulos Cases: Čapek, Janáček, and the Shifting Avant-Gardes of Interwar Prague. In: Modernism and Opera (Richard Begam and Matthew Wilson Smith, editors). Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore, Maryland), 2016, pp. 186-205.
12. Harkins WE. Karel Čapek. Columbia University Press (New York, New York), 1962, pp. 111-112.
13. Bradbrook BR. Karel Čapek: In Pursuit of Truth, Tolerance, and Trust. Sussex Academic Press (Brighton, UK), 1998, pp. 57-61.
14. Bradbrook B. Karel Čapek and English Writers. In: Literature and Politics in Eastern Europe (edited by C Hawkesworth). Palgrave Macmillan (Camden, UK), 1992, pp. 149-165.
15. Williams B. The Makropulos case: reflections on the tedium of immortality. In: Problems of the Self: Philosophical Papers 1956-1972. Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, UK), 1973, pp 82-100.
16. Fiorello, A. Terminal Boredom, Longevity, and Narrative. Acta Anal (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-026-00696-0
17. Olshansky SJ, Willcox BJ, Demetrius L, Beltrán-Sánchez H. Implausibility of radical life extension in humans in the twenty-first century. Nat Aging. 2024;4:1635-42.
18. Blake M. Life Extension and Civic Virtue. AMA J Ethics. 2025 Dec 1;27(12):E853-858. doi: 10.1001/amajethics.2025.853. PMID: 41411400.
19. Gems D.Is More Life Always Better? The New Biology of Aging and the Meaning of Life. The Hastings Center Report. 2003 Jul-Aug;33(4):31-39.
20. Callahan D. Visions of Eternity. First Things 2003 May 1. Accessed May 1, 2026 at – https://firstthings.com/visions-of-eternity-49/

Table 1. Summary of the Věc Makropulos debate regarding who should benefit from the elixir of life

Beneficiaries/Advocate	Points in Favor	Reservations (Primarily Raised by Kolenaty)
Elina Makropulos, her heirs and descendants, and those they choose to share it with/Albert Gregor	Original owner.	Questionable provenance—Elina stole the formula and “never bothered much” with her “twenty or so” children; possession could fall to the undeserving.
Everyone/Vitek	“Everybody … has the same right to life … Fifty years to be a child & a student, fifty years to understand the world, a hundred years to work & be useful, then a hundred years to be wise & understanding, to rule, to teach & give example! … [this would eliminate] wars, that dreadful hunt for bread, no fear, no selfishness” (Vitek).	For most it would be a life of drudgery—“300 years to be a filing clerk. 300 years to knit stockings!” (Gregor); prolongation to this extent would disrupt our social system and lead to anarchy; “Would the world be happier if everyone lived such a long time?” (Krista) as one may suffer from prolonged grief for those who have been lost.
Those willing and able to purchase incremental extensions of life/Max Hauk-Sendorf	“300 years is a little too much … But ten years, everyone would buy that, wouldn’t they?” (Hauk-Sendorf).	Inequitable access if it can be bought & sold; prolongation would solely be for pleasure; with less longevity benefit, there would be greater concern about risk—Hauk-Sendorf would only take the formula “if it did not hurt.”
Restricted to an elite: “… only for the strong”/Jaroslav Prus	“Only strength & talent die, because they cannot be replaced … [the goal should be to create] an aristocracy of the everlasting … [and] breed ten or twenty thousand supermen, leaders and creators” (Prus).	They would be self-selected—“From hand to hand they would pass on life, the strongest to the strongest … [leading to a] despotism of the chosen”; only men would be considered.