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Enlightenment or Entanglement: History and Aesthetics in Bertolt Brecht and Heiner Muller

1976; Duke University Press; Issue: 8 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/487723

1558-1462

Helen Fehervary,

Art, Politics, and Modernism

In third year of fascist hegemony in Germany and of his own exile from Germany, Bertolt Brecht formulated programmatically his thoughts on an anti-fascist art and politics to which he remained firmly committed throughout his exile years: great of our time is that our continent is giving way to barbarism because private ownership of means of production is being maintained by violence. Merely to recognize this is not sufficient, but should it not be recognized, no other of importance can be discovered. Of what use is it to write something courageous which shows that condition into which we are falling is barbarous (which is true) if it is not clear why we are falling into this condition?... We must tell about barbarous conditions in our country in order that thing should be done which will put an end to them thing, namely, which will change property relations.l Brecht's most fitting testament to the great truth quoted above and its most accurate dramatic rendering was his play Fear and Misery of Third Reich, a series of 27 scenes written from 1935 to 1938.2 With fascism, Brecht maintained, advanced capitalism had realized itself to its fullest potential and thus had laid bare its inherent contradictions in their most extreme and, concomitantly, their most basic, form: what under capitalism is generally experienced as alienation and subtle oppression takes form of open terror and brutality under fascism. The relatively simple and linear composition of Brecht's Fear and Misery and, concomitantly, its openly didactic political intent thus correspond respectively to crude and