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Guest Author: Dimitrios Thanasoulas |
by Dimitrios Thanasoulas
BA (English Literature and Linguistics, Athens University)]
His conversion to Marxism in the late 1920s exerted a tremendous influence on his life and work. Discarding, even deriding, emotion in accord with Gebrauchslyrik, i.e., the view he held that poetry and theatre should not be an outlet of emotion or larmoyant sentiment but a forum of ideas, Brecht formulated his theory of “epic” or “non-aristotelian” theatre, perhaps as a token of recalcitrance against the essay “On Epic and Dramatic Poetry” written by Schiller and Goethe. As Martin Esslin notes in his critical essay, “Brecht, A Choice of Evils,” according to Brecht’s lights, “the theatre must become a tool of social engineering, a laboratory of social change.” To this end, Brecht, an assertive rationalist through and through, expounded his theory of “epic theatre,” running counter to Aristotle’s age-old tradition of “dramatic theatre.” One of the principles underlying this theory is what he dubbed as Verfremdungseffekt, that is, “alienation effect” or distantiation in French. In other words, the audience should eschew identification with the play and the actors and be enjoined to think, to ruminate on what is transpiring on stage. For Brecht, the Aristotelian concept of drama, which pivoted on catharsis by terror and pity, was to be deprecated and dispensed with. He was derisive of a kind of theatre that created illusions and, in suspension of disbelief, beguiled the audience into believing that what is happening before their very eyes is true. It was by virtue of these elements that Bertolt Brecht scoffed at “aristotelian drama,” calling it culinary theatre.
Another major difference between dramatic and epic theatre is that, while the former has a predilection for creating a spurious present, by dint of presenting events that are happening at this very moment, the latter always furnishes an account of events that happened in the past. In this way, the audience does not labour under the misconception or illusion that it actually bears witness to abominable crimes or the heroes’ agitation; it is constantly reminded that it is confronted with incontestable evidence that is supposed to stir up a hornet’s nest: indignation and abomination at the status quo and all the forms of injustice and oppression that this embraces.
As is evident in many of his plays, such as Baal, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, Mother Courage, The Exception and the Rule […], Brecht, like J. P. Sartre, Kafka and Camus, to name but a few, viewed human beings as helpless animals who were battling against the vicissitudes of life, at the mercy of ineluctable fate; determined by society and relentless, pernicious circumstances. This is why he endeavoured to arouse people from their inactivity and listlessness. He envisaged a world where people would stand up for their rights. He was not interested in illusions; he relished mental and intellectual stimulation that might lead to the kind of revolution that Marx himself had contemplated. His sole concern lay in making a different world, where everyone would be given a fair crack of the whip. Whether he achieved this is debatable; what is undeniable, though, is his inimitable skill and immense wit permeating his theory and his plays. It is this same man who, in Baal, “…[sees] the world in a mellow light: it is God’s excrement,” while declaring that “[it] was very beautiful… Everything.”
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