Bertolt Brecht: Short Stories, 1921-1946

by Bertolt Brecht, John Willett (Editor), Ralph Manheim (Editor)

A collection of stories exploring political and social conditions is accompanied by a brief portrait of the life of the distinguished German author

Genres: Short Stories, German Literature, Fiction

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1967

About the author

Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director. A seminal theatre practitioner of the twentieth century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the Berliner Ensemble—the post-war theatre company operated by Brecht and his wife and long-time collaborator, the actress Helene Weigel—with its internationally acclaimed productions.

From his late twenties Brecht remained a life-long committed Marxist who, in developing the combined theory and practice of his 'epic theatre', synthesized and extended the experiments of Piscator and Meyerhold to explore the theatre as a forum for political ideas and the creation of a critical aesthetics of dialectical materialism. Brecht's modernist concern with drama-as-a-medium led to his refinement of the 'epic form' of the drama (which constitutes that medium's rendering of 'autonomization' or the 'non-organic work of art'—related in kind to the strategy of divergent chapters in Joyce's novel Ulysses, to Eisenstein's evolution of a constructivist 'montage' in the cinema, and to Picasso's introduction of cubist 'collage' in the visual arts). In contrast to many other avant-garde approaches, however, Brecht had no desire to destroy art as an institution; rather, he hoped to 're-function' the apparatus of theatrical production to a new social use. In this regard he was a vital participant in the aesthetic debates of his era—particularly over the 'high art/popular culture' dichotomy—vying with the likes of Adorno, Lukács, Bloch, and developing a close friendship with Benjamin. Brechtian theatre articulated popular themes and forms with avant-garde formal experimentation to create a modernist realism that stood in sharp contrast both to its psychological and socialist varieties. "Brecht's work is the most important and original in European drama since Ibsen and Strindberg," Raymond Williams argues, while Peter Bürger insists that he is "the most important materialist writer of our time."

As Jameson among others has stressed, "Brecht is also ‘Brecht’"—collective and collaborative working methods were inherent to his approach. This 'Brecht' was a collective subject that "certainly seemed to have a distinctive style (the one we now call 'Brechtian') but was no longer personal in the bourgeois or individualistic sense." During the course of his career, Brecht sustained many long-lasting creative relationships with other writers, composers, scenographers, directors, dramaturgs and actors; the list includes: Elisabeth Hauptmann, Margarete Steffin, Ruth Berlau, Slatan Dudow, Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler, Paul Dessau, Caspar Neher, Teo Otto, Karl von Appen, Ernst Busch, Lotte Lenya, Peter Lorre, Therese Giehse, Angelika Hurwicz, and Helene Weigel herself. This is "theatre as collective experiment [...] as something radically different from theatre as expression or as experience."

There are few areas of modern theatrical culture that have not felt the impact or influence of Brecht's ideas and practices; dramatists and directors in whom one may trace a clear Brechtian legacy include: Dario Fo, Augusto Boal, Joan Littlewood, Peter Brook, Peter Weiss, Heiner Müller, Pina Bausch, Tony Kushner and Caryl Churchill. In addition to the theatre, Brechtian theories and techniques have exerted considerable sway over certain strands of film theory and cinematic practice; Brecht's influence may be detected in the films of Joseph Losey, Jean-Luc Godard, Lindsay Anderson, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Nagisa Oshima, Ritwik Ghatak, Lars von Trier, Jan Bucquoy and Hal Hartley.

During the war years, Brecht became a prominent writer of the Exilliteratur. He expressed his opposition to the National Socialist and Fascist movements in his most famous plays.

Reviews

[Shawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nice collection of short fiction from an artist not normally thought of as a fiction writer. Most of these pieces appeared in German newspapers just before or during Brecht's rise to fame.

Standouts include:
"Bargan Gives Up" (a pirate story)
"The Revelation"
"A Mean Bastard" (a cruel story about male and female relations, dominance and submission)
"Letter About A Mastiff" (about a man's troubled relationship with his neighbor's dog)
"North Sea Shrimps" (about class and the newly rich)
"A Little Tale Of Insurance" (which reads like an O. Henry story)
"Four Men And A Poker Game" (about luck and the lack of it on an ocean liner)
"Barbara" (about the limits to which love can drive a man)
"The Monster" (about the fiction and reality of history)
"Safety First" (about cowardice and perception)
"Gaumer and Irk" (a surreal masterpiece and, in a way, unlike anything else in the book. Should be read by all fans of Franz Kafka and dark fantasy)
"Lucullus's Trophies" (a very touching story about what you leave behind with your name)
"The Unseemly Old Lady" (about the inability of children to understand that their mother is still a human being)
"A Question Of Taste" (a story that has quite a bit of a connection to Roald Dahl's "Lamb To The Slaughter")

There's also the unfinished, ghost-written start to "Life Story of Samson-Korner", a famous boxer of the time, which is interesting both as a slice of life of the time and place and of a certain view of life.

Excellent reading for all!

[Rhys · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read this collection when I was 19 or 20 years old. Almost without exception, I disliked the stories. Yet there must have been some quality in the writing that kept me going because I finished the book.

It was several decades before I went back to Brecht. I was left with the erroneous impression he wasn't a good writer. A few years ago I began reading some of his plays and I finally realised my mistake.

Last year I acquired this volume again and re-read the stories. This time I was struck by their power. This is a superb collection. All the stories have a special quality, but the best of them are tremendous. They range in tone from Kafkaesque nightmare ('Gaumer and Irk') to picaresque realism ('Life Story of the Boxer Samson-Korner'). There are tragedies, comedies and tragicomedies, historical stories, detective stories and contemporary yarns. 'Socrates is Wounded' was one of my favourites, as was 'Bargan Gives up', 'Letter About a Mastiff', 'The Heretic's Coat', 'Muller's Natural Attitude' and 'Safety First'. The brilliant 'A Question of Taste' anticipates the famous Roald Dahl story 'Lamb to the Slaughter'. But really it's unjust to pick out individual tales. The real beauty and magnificence of this collection derives from the sum of all the parts.

Brecht's prose is strong, reliable, clear, and his social conscience was immense. A very important writer.

[Arvind · Rating 4 out of 5]

His short stories are an undeservedly obscure part of the master playwright’s oeuvre. Brothers Grimm meet Turgenev.

[Herlo]

The Monster,
Socrates Wounded,
The Experiment,
Safety First,
The Soldier of la Ciotat
Gaumer and Irk

[Kunjila Mascillamani · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bad collection. Not worth reading. Life is the same without having read it too.