Some notes on Bertolt Brecht:

A blend of old and the new

K S SIVAKUMARAN

As we know the German playwright Bertolt Brecht was an important figure in the world of theatre. He was one of the greatest dramatists in the last century. Well informed audiences in Sri Lanka are familiar with his name, as well as some of his plays. They were staged in our country both in Sinhala and English. An attempt was made to produce his Chalk Circle in Tamil as well, but it didn't materialize.

To my knowledge what had been translated and produced here include: The Good Woman of Setzuan, Caucasian Chalk Circle, Mother Courage and Galileo. Brecht's Exception and the Rule and Uneasy lies the Head - two of his other contributions too have been translated in local languages. For some reason or other I didn't fancy much his plays then as I was more interested in the Absurd Theatre for its novelty and the bent on Existentialism at that time. But now I am no more fascinated by western arts.

Eric Bentley has translated Brecht's plays into English and so did W H Auden and Stern. Their translations are more readable than Bentley's. Some critics have said that Brecht was a greater poet than T S Eliot.

Brecht saw large scale misery all round him. He was interested in the poor and the humble. But he tried not to romanticize the poor. He observed that even the poor exploit under an oppressive system. He felt that the poor people are not all kind. In his plays he interprets justice in a plausible manner. He is deeply humane. Conventionality is represented with an understanding of human situation. He explored human nature in a political situation and sought for fundamental justice.

Critics point out the idea of Epic Theatre in Brecht's plays was essentially Shakespearean and the restoration of the sense of history and geography play a significant part.

He used all sorts of dramatic devices like music, dance, stylization, soliloquy, chorus and narrator, verse and naturalism. Anything that was dramatically viable was used.

A practitioner of the Street Theatre in our country, the late G K Haththottuwegama once told me that Brecht's plays had a nobility of intention and that helped as a great dynamic principle, revitalizing the Western Theatre.

From Brecht's biography we learn that he had a lusty life, after 1917. He was a desolate wanderer living with women, wine and song and enjoyed life to the full. He sang his own songs with a guitar accompaniment. It would be interesting to note that once Brecht related theatre to the Boxing Ring and Circus. His vitality was close to the impulsive feeling of ordinary people. Some critics observe that anarchism, nihilism, utopianism and the like entered his vision. While accepting the natural world, he also accepted the idea of 'Enfant Terrible'. He wore half proletarian clothes, he grew beard and cut his hair short. Later he embraced Marxism. However, Marxists point out that he was never an intellectual Marxist and he never compromised his critical realism and sensitive humanity.

He exiled himself from Hitler's Germany and returned to his fatherland after the end of the war. He created the Berliner Ensemble. Political and Social conscious theatre was Brecht's.

Theatre critics have said that Brecht attacked the central Naturalistic thesis of the illusion of reality 'in which an action is created that is so life like that the verisimilitude absorbs the whole attention of both dramatist and the audience.'

At the same time Haththottuwegama argued that Brecht saw the exclusion of all direct commentary, alternate consciousness, and alternate points of view as a result of particular conventions of verisimilitude (exactness). He called for the restoration of these conventions.

"Historically the chorus, the narrator, the soliloquy - in a more complicated sense called for restoration of dramatic design which more than suited the design of thematic action," Haththottuwegama explained.

Young readers could consult Raymond Williams' books to understand Brecht and the 'alienation effect' better. We could find the blend of the old and the new in Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle. If we look for the theme of the play, we could see what the Prologue has got to say. Eric Bentley, another well-known drama critic says that the Prologue was not essential for the play. However it is essential for the structure of the play.

The Prologue deals with the settlement of a land dispute. There are two groups of farmers. Both have the common memory of the war that ended.

These wine and dairy farmers were victims of Hitler's Nazism. Both claim a piece of land. After an argument the main play is performed. Both sides are given a hearing. After a dialectical conflict between the old and the new, a resolution is found. It implies a fundamental coming together of the old and the new and this is the main body of the play.

It is better that young people studying literature read the texts themselves and make an effort to understand them in their own way and interpret based on contemporary sensibilities.