By Dave Riley
We should thank Eric Singh (GLW #313) for reminding us that this year is the 100th anniversary of the birth of the German playwright Bertolt Brecht. No doubt, as the drama industry cranks up, we are sure to be treated to a fact feast of seminars and conferences dedicated to the work, life and times of "BB".
But for those of us who aren't registered as Brecht scholars or who don't officiate over the dinner table as bona fide "Brechtians", the fuss may all seem a bit much. I mean, you're sure to be thinking: why bother?
What's the attraction in Brecht? Unfortunately, Brechtians are like British Trotskyists — put two of them in a room together, and you are sure to end up with three factions.
A Brecht discussion soon gravitates toward a debate as each side lays claim to their Bertolt Brecht — the playwright, poet, theatre theorist, Marxist or human being. Shakespeare should be so lucky to have his love life or politics attended to so keenly by so many.
Who today argues about the "ethics" of Will Shakespeare's ready purchase of enclosed common land thanks to patronage at the Elizabethan court? We accept Richard III or King Lear on its merits despite the hard-working playwright being a paid propagandist of the House of Tudor.
Poor BB cannot hide so easily in far-off history. Indeed, rather than being tucked away in some corner of the 20th century churning out poetry and plays, Brecht was buffeted by it. He engaged it in ideological combat. This arrogant upstart from Bavaria strutted the world's stages not merely as the new Shakespeare but a Marxist one at that!
This has annoyed so many so much since it first became evident in the late 1920s, that Brecht has been cast as a major controversial figure in this century's culture: the quintessential modernist who went all the way.
The furore that surrounds Brecht rests on one question, a question that Eric Singh fails to address: how much of Brecht's artistic achievement is due to his Marxism?
Rather than deal with the "Marxist" quality of his plays and poems, scholars emphasise the pragmatic opportunism of his life, often in order to contrast this with the revolutionary ideals he supposedly subscribed to. Thus suitably judged — and found wanting as a concerned intellectual — Brecht is then dealt with merely on the basis of his talent for writing drama and promulgating theories.
For my part, I find Brecht's life fascinating. He is one of the few cultural icons of this century who remained a Marxist despite the immense difficulties in doing so. To do this and later to die quietly in your own bed is quite an achievement. Neither Hitler's concentration camps nor Stalin's gulag could lay claim to Bertolt Brecht.
Perhaps he is now finally being undone, this time by scholars keen to deconstruct him. But then he guessed what his fate might be when he once wrote: "I fled the tigers, I fled the fleas; What got me at last — mediocracies."
If it's worth something among all the din, Brecht was not only a bearer of the label "Marxist", but a darn good one. I say this humbly but it needs to be stated — I base my statement on this: it takes one to know one. And my fellow Marxist, Brecht, recognised and explained how bourgeois our culture is.
But then, if you yourself aren't Marxist, you're unlikely to recognise what he was on about or how great his achievement was in this regard.
So if you are one of those poor souls bemused by all the fuss about Brecht, I'm not going to ask you to read plays about Galileo or chalk circles, or to look up all the rude bits in The Threepenny Opera and ponder interminable quotations ("a fart has no nose" being my favourite).
Accessing Brecht is easy: read his poems, and read about what Brecht did and how he did it. It should then be self-evident.
[The poems of Bertolt Brecht are published in English by Methuen: Bertolt Brecht: Poems 1913-1956, and Bertolt Brecht: Poems and Songs from the Plays.]