Word: brecht
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...Brecht was an atheist who believed not in the truth, but in probability. In contrast to the agnostic, he did not doubt for the sake of doubting; he weighed alternative courses of action for the sake of choosing one, and he chose Communism not because it struck him as infallible, but because he saw it as the most likely instrument of anti-Fascism and social justice. Thus, in a poetic attack on revisionism, he wrote...
...Brecht's Communism was uncceptable to the Communist critics, and his satire of capitalist society lacked applicability within the Soviet Union, where audiences were confronted with entirely different sets of problems. Unforgiven on the left for his bourgeois origins and preoccupations, this son of a wealthy Bavarian paper manufacturer was simultaneously feared on the right. A self-made Marxist, Brecht was left an ideological orphan...
...temptation to discuss a great theorist abstractly, and to capitalize on the jargon which has grown up around him, has proved fatal to many critics. Any thoughtful discussion of Brecht must actually concern itself with the practicing playwright, and I will attempt to discuss The Caucasian Chalk Circle in relation to Brecht's broader accomplishment. This play enjoyed a successful run at the University last fall, and in the volume under discussion, represents to Bentley a peak of the author's accomplishment...
...Caucasian Chalk Circle was written during Brecht's exile during the early '40s, and was based upon Klabund's adaptation of a Chinese folk tale (The Chalk Circle), well known to the Berlin theater public twenty years before. Drifting gradually from the original version, Brecht crafted an original story of his own, by creating Azdak, a village scribe, who as an exradical retains a blend of disenchantment and idealism...
Half the play is devoted to Grusha, and Grusha winds up as half a character. When Director John Hancock was analyzing her during the Loeb production, he charted fourteen "good" traits, which read like the Boy Scout Oath, and one fault (she lost he temper readily). Brecht's failure to elevate Grusha above generic goodness is particularly telling since he conceived the play in order to write a special part for Luisa Rainer, an expatriate German actress. His failure exemplifies the weakness invariably cited by the Communist critics: Brecht could create noble agitators and good proletarians, but never a flesh...