Kyle’s Reviews > Bertolt Brecht's Me-ti: Book of Interventions in the Flow of Things > Status Update
Kyle
is on page 71 of 200
Hard to believe how many months this library book sat on my shelf and the moment I start reading it someone recalls it! With less than two weeks to absorb all of “Me-ti” and Brecht’s aphorisms, I am impressed with the playwright’s concern over perception and reality, yet notice how some parts drop all the orientalist pretense and directly address Germany’s political issues between wars and its house painter problems.
— Dec 03, 2017 10:06PM
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Kyle’s Previous Updates
Kyle
is on page 174 of 200
A selection of poems and other musings are presented in this last section as “the Third Thing”, an account of the extramarital affair Brecht had with Ruth Berlau, both of them disguised with various pinyin names and even changing her gender. Kien-jeh tried to rationalize this love as serving some greater purpose, for all the theatrical insight into the human condition he remain equivocal over the fate of his Shen Te.
— Dec 10, 2017 06:03PM
Kyle
is on page 159 of 200
The fabulous land of Su that Kin-jeh escaped to had become a totalitarian state under the control of an increasingly despotic Ni-en, Brecht’s support for the communist revolution seems to waiver as he may have frantically been searching for a Vladivostok travel agent. His final thoughts as he closes out this section is on the usefulness of art, what beautiful machines Weimar society had and his own gestural language.
— Dec 10, 2017 10:47AM
Kyle
is on page 133 of 200
Very pertinent selection of sayings in a randomly assembled text, especially as I started reading Me-ti's advice to stop teaching in a classroom I didn't really feel comfortable being in! Other parts of these readings, apart from the overwrought comparison to ploughers and smithmasters, was the finishing sections on Heraclitus (He-leh) and Heisenberg's (Hi-sen?) uncertainty principle, revealing Brecht's quantumeracy!
— Dec 06, 2017 10:42PM
Kyle
is on page 97 of 200
Continuing to write about the resistible rise of the housepainter Hui-jeh, the philosopher Mei-ti looks wistfully to the east and contemplates his banishment. In addition to considering the foible empires of the Soviet Union and Japan, Me-ti writes about farther flung topics like Zen Buddhism’s one is and is not one, Einstein’s theory of relativity and Julius Caesar’s memoirs as Brecht randomly connects to my thesis.
— Dec 04, 2017 04:54PM
Kyle
is on page 43 of 200
Presented as a mock-Classical Chinese philosophical treatise, cleverly disguising Brecht’s contempt for his fascist Fatherland and the communist confusion in a splintering Soviet Union, there are many layers to peel back. The most challenging part, however, may have already been partially revealed in his play The Good Person of Szechuan that was a thinly veiled account for his affair with helper Ruth Berlau.
— Dec 02, 2017 01:51PM
