Bertolt Brecht
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.
“Das Schicksal des Menschen ist der Mensch.”
“unhappily, my wife is expecting me in connection with a fish”
“people are taken much too seriously. one equals no one. anything less than two hundred at a time is not worth mentioning. of course, anybody can be of a different opinion. an opinion is of no consequence whatever. any level-headed man can level headedly adopt two or three different opinions.”
“We attacked a foreign people and treated them like rebels. As you know, it's all right to treat barbarians barbarically. It's the desire to be barbaric that makes governments call their enemies barbarians.”
“The human race tends to remember the abuses to which it has been subjected rather than the endearments. What's left of kisses? Wounds, however, leave scars.”
“Corpses sour you. They are bad for objectivity.”
“People who understand everything get no stories.”
“We're not responsible, he thought. This planet is a temporary affair. It's whizzing with all kinds of other ones, a whole range of planetary stuff, toward a star in the Milky Way. On that kind of a planet we're not responsible, he thought.”
“For what's the use of talking with a man who has a disease and thinks about the stars?”
“He was weak on philosophy and an excellent driver, but his driving was a lot more dangerous than his philosophy.”
“Im Zustand der gefüllten Samenblase sieht der Mann in jedem Weib Aphrodite.”
“Pada malam ketika Tembok Tiongkok jadi, ke manakah para tukang batu pergi? ”
“PleasuresFirst look from morning's windowThe rediscovered bookFascinated facesSnow, the change of the seasonsThe newspaperThe dogDialecticsShowering, swimmingOld musicComfortable shoesComprehensionNew musicWriting, plantingTravelingSingingBeing friendly”
“What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a bank?”
“VergnügungenDer erste Blickaus dem Fenster am MorgenDas wiedergefundene alte BuchBegeisterte GesichterSchnee, der Wechsel der JahreszeitenDie ZeitungDer HundDie DialektikDuschen, SchwimmenAlte MusikBequeme SchuheBegreifenNeue MusikSchreiben, PflanzenReisenSingenFreundlich sein”
“What happens to the hole when the cheese is gone?”
“Unglücklich das Land, das Helden nötig hat”
“When something seems ‘the most obvious thing in the world’ it means that any attempt to understand the world has been given up.”
“The war which is comingIs not the first one. There wereOther wars before it.When the last one came to an endThere were conquerors and conquered.Among the conquered the common peopleStarved. Among the conquerorsThe common people starved too.”
“He who laughs last has not yet heard the bad news. ”
“The shrill voices of those who give ordersAre full of fear like the squeakings ofPiglets awaiting the butcher's knife, as their fat arsesSweat with anxiety in their office chairs....Fear rules not only those who are ruled, butThe rulers too.”
“Hungry man, reach for the book: it is a weapon.”
“For time flows on, and if it did not, it would be a bad prospect for those who do not sit at golden tables. Methods become exhausted; stimuli no longer work. New problems appear and demand new methods. Reality changes; in order to represent it, modes of representation must also change. Nothing comes from nothing; the new comes from the old, but that is why it is new.”
“All artforms are in the service of the greatest of all arts: the art of living.”
“Motto"In the dark times Will there also be singing? Yes, there will also be singing.About the dark times.”
“Hay hombres que luchan un dia y son buenos. Hay otros que luchan un año y son mejores. Hay quienes luchan muchos años y son muy buenos. Pero hay los que luchan toda la vida: esos son los imprescindibles.”
“Nowadays, anyone who wishes to combat lies and ignorance and to write the truth must overcome at least five difficulties. He must have the courage to write the truth when truth is everywhere opposed; the keenness to recognize it, although it is everywhere concealed; the skill to manipulate it as a weapon; the judgment to select those in whose hands it will be effective; and the running to spread the truth among such persons.”
“Sitting and sedition don't mix.”
“He thought in other heads, and in his own, others besides himself thought”
“The first time it was reported that our friends were being butchered there was a cry of horror. Then a hundred were butchered. But when a thousand were butchered and there was no end to the butchery, a blanket of silence spread. When evil-doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out "stop!"When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable the cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer.”
“Sometimes it's more important to be human, than to have good taste. ”
“Art is not a mirror held up to realitybut a hammer with which to shape it.”
“Do not fear death so much, but rather the inadequate life”
“The aim of science is not to open the door to infinite wisdom, but to set a limit to infinite error.”