Brecht: 'You have to stand up, if you don't want to go under....'

 

 

General, your tank is a powerful vehicle

It smashes down forests and crushes a hundred men.

But it has one defect:

It needs a driver.

By Bertolt Brecht

Brecht is convinced: "The worst illiterate is the political illiterate, he doesn't hear, doesn't speak, nor participates in the political events. He doesn't know the cost of life, the price of the bean, of the fish, of the flour, of the rent, of the shoes and of the medicine, all depends on political decisions. The political illiterate is so stupid that he is proud and swells his chest saying that he hates politics. The imbecile doesn't know that, from his political ignorance, is born the prostitute, the abandoned child, and the worst thieves of all, the bad politician, corrupted and flunky of the national and multinational companies."

• "Then the man, in cheerful disposition asked again: 'How did he make out, pray?' Said the boy: 'He learnt how quite soft water, by attrition over the years, will grind strong rocks away. In other words, that hardness must lose the day.'"

• Brecht's unshakable optimistic and anticipatory conviction was that Hitler's regime will fall. Peaceful and persistent cooperative popular movements can overcome the most brutal 'elite' in the long run. Those in power now will not have the last say. Things are not going to be as they are. Fascism will not prevail. At the same time Brecht was neither naive nor an illusionist. He wrote elsewhere: "Where there is violence only violence can provide the remedy". It is all about the historical context.

• "No help will come from the Gods who are leaving the solution to mankind."

His understanding of an educator was to raise questions, to make suggestions, to encourage debate. Brecht remains a writer who believes in reason and the values of enlightenment as much as in poetry. All his late dramatic art is characterized by his belief that "You have to stand up, if you don't want to go under, surely you will understand that."

The Great Disorder

We see the curtain closed, the plot un-ended.

In your opinion then what's to be done?

Change human nature or the world?

Well which?

Believe in bigger, better gods or none?

The right way out of the calamity

 

You must find for yourselves.

Ponder my friends.

How men with men may live in amity

And good men - women also

reach good ends.

There must, there must be some end

That would fit.

Ladies and gentlemen, help us

look for it.

~ All of this was extracted from a recent lengthy paper on Brecht by Irene Eckert who lives in Potsdam, Germany in January 1923. All editorial comments in this piece belong to Irene.