Collected Plays 8: The Antigone of Sophocles / The Days of the Commune / Turandot or the Whitewasher's Congress

Brecht Collected Plays #8

by Bertolt Brecht, Tom Kuhn (Editor), David Constantine (Editor)

Includes the first English translation of two plays.

Volume 8 contains his last completed plays, from the eight years between his return from America to Europe after the war and his death in 1956. Brecht's ANTIGONE (1948) is a bold adaptation of Hölderlin's classic German translation of Sophocles' play. A reflection on resistance and dictatorship in the aftermath of Nazism, it was a radical new experiment in epic theatre. THE DAYS OF THE COMMUNE (1949) is a semi-documentary account of the Paris Commune, and Brecht's most serious and ambitious historical play. TURANDOT is Brecht's version of the classic Chinese story is a satire on the intelligentsia of the Weimar Republic, Nazi bureaucracy, and other targets.

Genres: Plays, Fiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

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

[sologdin · Rating 3 out of 5]

The post-war writings, after his return to East Germany. Some have suggested he is just a Stalinist ideologue at this point; that reading strikes me as beyond facile.

Antigone

A prologue here situates this in Germany under the NSDAP, and the play proper (an adaptation of Holderlin’s version) changes the mythological civil war into a Theban invasion of Argos for the purpose of mineral extraction (Creon proclaims at one point “there is / No Argos any more”—the Argives have been “laid to rest […] on a hard place. Now without town or tomb”). In the invasion, the brothers do not kill each other for the sake of office, as in the original Seven Against Thebes, but rather one refuses to fight in the unlawful invasion and is not to be buried. The sisters embody the tragic dilemma of being “caught in lawlessness” either way, whether burying both brothers per ancient religious rule or by declining to bury the non-combatant brother pursuant to post-war edict. (This sort of dilemma is perhaps not disabled by a religious exception for ‘rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.”) Standard fascist doctrine in “For who rates higher than his native city / His life, I count him nothing.” Creon very specifically is “fuhrer” and has "stormtroops." He complains, regarding Antigone, “at odds she wants us under the roof of Thebes,” to which she replies “Screaming for unity you live on discord,” the standard fascist governance idea, as noted in Neumann and Lemkin, inter alia. Agamben’s ideas on the stasis are ratified by the boule’s advice to Creon that “Of all a ruler’s virtue / The healthiest, they say, is: know how to forget,” a reference to the basic amnestia rule, not so much a forgetting, recall, but an intentional declination to use memory of the civil discord against political opponents—it is a necessity for democratic operativity; for fascism, the contrary is true. Creon’s thesis is that “war makes new rights,” which does not work out so well for him.

Days of the Commune

A historical text, based on the brief candle of the Paris Commune in 1871, presenting sympathetically members of that polity in its fight for survival. The introductory notes for Volume 9 of the collected plays mentions that this text is technically an adaptation, but is so contradictory to the original as to become a "counter-play," which is totally brechtian. French prime minister Thiers is represented as thug: “we must exterminate them. We must smash their unwashed faces on the cobbles, in the name of culture. Our civilization is founded on property. Property must be protected at all costs.” Bismarck in Germany regards the Commune as a “bad example for the rest of Europe, wants exterminating with fire and brimstone like Sodom and Gomorrah.” When Bismarck demands five billion francs as reparations for the Franco-Prussian war, the Commune conceives that “the Commune will demand that the deputies, senators, generals, factory owners, estate owners and of course the church, who are to blame for the war, will now be the ones who pay the Prussians.” There's some focus on parliamentary procedure, highlighting the desire in the Commune to proceed properly, but also to protect the rights of people without unnecessary violence. When violent measures are proposed, they are often refuted—until the end, when the city is under siege, a time when lethal self-defense is authorized. One character asks “And total, immediate freedom, that’s an illusion?” and is answered with “In politics.” We recall that “a communarde doesn’t get jealous.” Some of the action is personal, some abstractly legislative—some contemplative, some street fighting at barricades. It’s a cool mix, perhaps with a bit of Brecht’s critique of being too nice to the reactionaries at times: “the people only ever have one hour. Woe betide them if they are not ready when it strikes.” Little use of epic technique in the script, that I’m noticing. Hard to disagree with their principles: “Whereas the purpose of life consists in the boundless development of our physical, intellectual, and moral being, property must be nothing other than the right of every individual to share, proportionately to his contribution, in the collective result of the work for all.” Bourgeois civil servants are said to have a “chief interest [that] consists in making themselves irreplaceable,” whereas “the great workers of the future will be the simplifiers of work.” Plenty more. A great recitation of the history of “the people,” from storming the Bastille through the 1860s. Nice characterization of the lumpenized antisocial nihilist: “owning nothing, he defends ownership, even that of the thief who has robbed him.” Elections understood as difficult conceptually: “do we permit the election of deceivers? By a people confused by their schools, their church, their press, and their politicians?” The ultimate issue: “but our bourgeoisie without a second thought allied itself with the enemy of France to wage a civil war against us.” The Commune’s response to barbarity: “we decided that we do not wish to do what the enemies of humanity are doing. They are monsters, we are not.” This is all in the state of exception, of course, wherein some want “terror against terror.”

Turandot

The narrative opens with an overproduction crisis in the Chinese textile industry: “there’s too much of everything, so nothing’s worth anything anymore.” This causes the emperor to sequestrate all cottons in order to protect the profitability of the owners, which perhaps 'corrects' too far, causing an even worse crisis. This setting features a literal marketplace of ideas, wherein intellectuals sell opinions for a fee: “yesterday I sold a cat-gut dealer an opinion about atonal music.” It is less classical sophism than intellectuals manufacturing ideas for delivery at specified prices. (“How dare you solicit me, in the presence of a child, too.” “It’s a perfectly natural urge, to have an opinion.” “If you don’t leave us alone, I’ll call the police. You should be ashamed of yourself. Is this what thinking has come to? The most noble of human activities, and you turn it into a dirty business transaction.”) Because of the textile crisis, one person complains that “soon the little folk won’t be able to afford opinions,” as though the marketplace were the only source for ideas. The state is governed by means of opinions purchased on the open market, incidentally. As the textile sequestration exacerbates crisis, the emperor calls for a great conference, wherein all the intellectuals will propose theories about the crisis, with the winner offered the emperor’s daughter as a fee (she has her own ideas, and is attracted to a thug, who may be a useful enforcer for the emperor); losers get killed (the absolute best scene involves severed heads continuing their discourse, sans fee; the conference itself is lively). Against this there is a revolutionary actively organizing the countryside: “Kai Ho is distributing land in Hu Nan to poor peasants.” Regarding this radical, “in cotton country we only hear what the landowners say. He’s a bad man, not on the side of freedom.” The emperor’s daughter’s thug’s solution (“his intellectual property”) is to declare the question of the textile overproduction crisis to be unlawful. “Intellectual arsonists” (old Roman incendiarii, in the figurative sense) are to be exterminated. Good times.

On the strength of this showing, I’d suggest that late Brecht is underrated.

[Illiterate · Rating 3 out of 5]

Antigone: critique of militarism and dictatorship. Commune: for revolutionary discipline and violence. Turandot: satire on rent-a-gob intellectuals.

[Skylar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Complex and difficult-to-stage plays comprise the final three of Brecht's plays (besides the Berliner Ensemble adaptations and fragmentary works, but I have little interest in those at the moment) with Antigone as a strong rational version of the Greek play under a Nazi framework, The Days of the Commune as a historical work of total tragedy under the wrong social conditions, and Turandot as a wide-ranging mockery of intellectualism under several authorities within Europe from the '20s onward. The Days of the Commune is likely the "best" of the bunch, but value resides in all three in determining distinct aspects of Brecht's writing and adaptation throughout his life.

[Keith · Rating 3 out of 5]

With this volume, Brecht is back in Europe and back in Germany (albeit East Germany) after the war. In these final years, he was not very productive. Behind him were his great exile plays: Galileo, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, The Good Person, Schweyk, etc. He was to complete only three full-length, original plays until his death.

In the exile plays he seemingly turned from arcane communist lessons to touch on great human themes. But with his return to Germany, his focus on communism is renewed. He seems bent on illuminating or revealing how the bourgeois intellectuals/capitalists explicitly or implicitly supported the rise of the Nazi regime.

The irony is thick here. While berating the Weimar intellectuals who were supposedly in the pay of the capitalist manipulators, Brecht supported the USSR takeover of East Germany and the loss of individual liberties. His support reached a high point (low point?) when he endorsed a brutal crackdown of a worker’s strike (workers!) in 1953. He thought mistakes were made, but he supported the Soviet system. Oh my.

I’ve always thought that the farther Brecht got from his communist philosophy (fantasy? delusion?), the better were his plays. In his set, he’s up to his eyeballs in communism.

The Days of the Commune – *** This is a rather bland, episodic telling of a spirited uprising of people of Paris in the 1870s. The historical complexities and impact of this revolution are beyond the scope of this review. And it’s not a topic I know much about.

As a play, this could have been a rousing story of a people standing up for their rights and battling injustice. But Brecht’s portrait is rather cool and deliberate, seemingly more interested in making points than telling an emotionally compelling story. But that’s Brecht’s epic theater.

This is only for the Brecht completists like myself. Start with the exile plays first and, if you are still interested, read this.

[Sophia · Rating 3 out of 5]

(Just read Antigone)