Journals 1934-1955

by Bertolt Brecht

This book contains selected poems, plays, and prose by Bertolt Brecht taken from various points throughout his career. It includes translations of two prose works and provides some background information on Brecht's life and career.

Genres: Germany

580 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

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

[Derek · Rating 5 out of 5]

The journals are almost as good as the poems which are almost as good as the plays.

[Nathan Albright · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wish I had read this book first among the Brecht books I have read (seven in all so far) instead of last.  Seeing what Brecht had to say about politics and literature and his personal life, all of which are included here, would have put his writings in a sort of framework that would have been easier to appreciate and enjoy, and would have led to a bit less harshness on my part on the way that I viewed Brecht as a writer.  To be sure, the author's rather stridently leftist views are in full evidence here, and there is plenty of hypocritical feeling on Brecht's part about the lack of loyalty of some of the women in his life given his own distinct lack of loyalty and faithfulness to them.  Even so, these journals reveal Brecht to be a concerned friend and father, someone who had worthwhile thoughts about theater (including Shakespeare's likely collaboration with others), and someone who had deep concerns about the violence in the Soviet Union and decidedly ambivalent feelings towards Communist regimes despite his leftist political sympathies.  All of this suggests that Brecht was far more complex than he is often portrayed by those who wish to make him a leftist hero, and thus far more of interest to everyone else.

This volume of more than 450 pages begins with a discussion of Brecht's position as a leftist with critical views of two world systems, and some notes on the editing.  After that the book is divided into six sections, beginning in Denmark from 1934 to 15 March 1939, then continuing in Sweden from 23 April 1939 to 19 March 1940, moving on to Finland from 17 April 1940 to 13 July 1941, then moving on to America from 21 July 1941 to 5 November 1947.  After that the author moves on to Switzerland from 16 December 1940 to 20 October 1948 and closes in East Berlin from 22 October 1948 to 18 July 1955.  The various journal entries, which range from gossipy personal affairs to discussions of politics and especially theater and literature and the author's various personal writing projects, many of them abortive, are interspersed with photos and small articles that place the author's writing in their proper historical context.  There are some revelations here, including just how little the author was concerned with the House Committee on Un-American Activities, before whom he spoke shortly before leaving the United States and heading back to Europe, and just how concerned he was with the state of Western theater as well as his own personal drama and the staging of his plays.

How does understanding the author's writing better help one to understand Brecht as a man?  For one, they reveal that Brecht had a sense of self-awareness that is not always appreciated by those who lionize him today.  While he was undoubtedly aware of his own leftist perspective, he also was aware of his own middle class background and the fact that as a result he wrote about workers and classes from a point of view that was distinct from those who had lived in those circumstances, an awareness of the distance between outsiders with certain sympathies and insiders with personal knowledge that is certainly not always shared by leftists.  And it is the author's self-awareness and reflection that raise the author in the eyes of those who would be disinclined to view him with favor as a leftist but certainly can find something to respect him for as a man, despite his many and fairly obvious failings.  And even if it is quite possible that this journal was written with an eye towards future publication, it is also true that Brecht was one of those writers who wrote a great deal, little of which has received a lot of attention either then or now, and as someone who is a similarly personal and prolific writer, there is certainly a great deal about Brecht that I can understand better seeing him without the perspective of those who have agendas to push in what they write about him.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bertolt Brecht is, of course, an outstanding playwright—one of the finest of the 20th century—but his journals collected here, which cover the period of time from Hitler's rise to power through World War II into the post-war era in Europe and the United States, present a man who is also a great informal historian. So much is included here, from Brecht's own observations on writing, fellow artists, Germany, his plays, and the world around him to a good collection of newspaper clippings, photos, and other items Brecht apparently collected and retained with his journals. Since his adolescence, Brecht was a steadfast journal-writer and the results show here in one of the most personal yet deep and vast portraits of wartime Europe I've yet read. The overall format of the book also makes it easy to read and to just jump in at any given point and read for a few pages and then walk away with a pithy, useful, impression.

[Tracy · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book is the reason that i studied brecht for so many years. not because he's a marxist or a ladies' man or controversial but because he just drips creativity and energy and his brain is always going. these are his work journals and they contain more ideas than a whole team of workhorses could ever achieve. i especially like the clipping he saved, writing his thoughts as captions. a guide to his brain and one my biggest influences.