Bertolt Brecht

( Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht)

B. Brecht was born on February 10, 1898 in the small Bavarian town of Ausburg in the family of a factory director. In 1908, Brecht entered the Ausburg gymnasium. The years of study at the gymnasium (and especially in 1913-1917) occurred during a period when calls for a fratricidal war were intensifying in Germany, when a militaristic psychosis gripped not only the Prussian military, but also the excessively loyal Bavarian teachers. In this regard, we should recall the incident that happened to Brecht in 1915: seventeen-year-old Berthold was asked to write an essay on the words of Horace “it is sweet and honorable to die for the fatherland.” In that work, when Brecht was still young, we find significant words that testified to his hostility not only to the Kaiser’s (German kaiser - ruler) loyal patriotism, but also to the pharisaical morality of society as a whole. “The expression that dying for the fatherland is sweet and honorable,” wrote Brecht, “can be regarded as tendentious propaganda. Farewell to life is always difficult, in bed as well as on the battlefield, and especially, of course, for young people at the dawn of their years. Only empty-headed fools can go so far in their eloquence as to talk about an easy leap through the dark gate.” 1

Brecht, who was taught the art of command, broke out of his class and was imbued with compassion for the humiliated and insulted.

After graduating from high school, B. Brecht begins to study natural sciences at the universities of Munich and Berlin. But the war demanded more and more new soldiers: Brecht was drafted into the army and served as an orderly at the Ausburg military hospital. The ongoing chauvinistic blow in Germany causes Brecht not only indignation, but also an outright rebellion against the power of violence. It is with the First World War that Brecht’s early literary works are connected: at this time (1918) his satire on the militaristic machine of the Kaiser’s Germany, “The Legend of the Dead Soldier,” appeared.

The battle lasted four years,

But peace did not come.

The soldier gave up on everything

And fell the death of a hero

However, the war was still going on

The Kaiser was upset:

The soldier violated the entire calculation,

He died at the wrong time.

There was darkness over the cemetery,

He slept in the shadows of the nights

But one day I came to him

“The Legend of the Dead Soldier” recorded in Brecht’s poetics not only the affirmation of social problems, but also the innovative principles of reality. Incredible from the point of view of elementary logic, the “resurrection from the dead” helps to comprehend the absurdity of the world where the ideas of capital dominate. Is this why the very concept of “heroic” is perceived by Brecht as violence against human nature? Thanks to the reproduction of the ALOGISM of the everyday (a draft board tests a dead man for his fitness for military service!), Brecht not only shows the anti-humanity, the unnaturalness of war, but also the absurdity of a world with militant anti-Germanism. It is therefore natural that in 1939 the fascists who came to power pointed to “The Legend of the Dead Soldier” as the reason for depriving Brecht of German citizenship: the fascist dictatorship in Germany saw in the poem, written back in 1918, a direct challenge to its own ideological and political guidelines.

In the poem “The Legend of the Dead Soldier,” the satirical techniques are reminiscent of the techniques of romanticism: a soldier going into battle against the enemy has long been just a ghost, the people accompanying him are philistines, whom German literature has long depicted in the guise of animals. And at the same time, Brecht’s poem is still topical today - it contains intonations, pictures and hatred of war in general (although it was about the time of the First World War). Brecht condemned German militarism and war, and in his 1924 poem “The Ballad of Mother and Soldier,” the poet understands that the Weimar Republic (he took part in the military events of 1918 in Germany) was far from eradicating the warlike PANGERMANISM.

During the years of the Weimar Republic, Brecht's poetic world expanded. Reality appears in the most acute class upheavals. But Brecht recreates not only pictures of oppression: “Song of the United Front”, “The Faded Glory of New York”, “Song of the Class Enemy” - these are poems - revolutionary calls. Brecht's lyrics are very wide in their range, the poet can capture a real picture of German life in all its historical and psychological specificity, but he can also create a poem-meditation, where the poetic effect is achieved not by description, but by the accuracy and depth of thought, combined with the refined, by no means not a far-fetched allegory.

In 1919 Brecht resumes his studies at the University of Munich, but he is increasingly attracted to the art of theater, he writes theatrical reviews of productions of the Auburg Theater, and tries his hand at drama. Brecht the lyricist helped Brecht the playwright. In Munich he became a director and then a playwright at the city theater.

In 1924 Brecht moved to Berlin, where he worked in the theater. He acts simultaneously both as a playwright and as a theater theorist-reformer. Already during these years, Brecht’s aesthetics and his innovative view of art took shape in their decisive features. Brecht outlined this in the 1920s in separate articles and speeches, later combined into the collection “Against Theater Routine” and “Towards a Modern Theatre”. Later, in the 30s, Brecht systematized his theatrical theory, clarifying and developing it, in the famous treatises “On Non-Aristotelian Drama”, “New Principles of Acting Art”, “Small Organon of the Theatre”, “Buying Copper” and some others.

Brecht's epic dramaturgy, born in the era of socialism. shocks and revolutions, demanded to comprehend the destinies not of individual, albeit tragically great loners (King Lear, Hamlet), but of human destinies in the 20th century.

That's why subject of dramatic conflict in Brecht it becomes not a clash of separate individuals, but a STRUGGLE of IDEOLOGY, different social. systems, classes. It is because of this, as Brecht himself repeatedly emphasized, that the drama began to tell the story of the stock exchange, inflation, crises and wars. The nature of emotions also changes most decisively in epic theater. The main thing for Brecht is the impact on the mind of the viewer, and not on his feelings. It activates the rational, analytical principle, which is capable of growing the self-awareness of a person perceiving an act of art.

In Brecht's epic drama, what is important is not the action, but the story; interest is awakened not in the denouement, but in the course of the events depicted; Each scene in Brecht's plays is a complete whole in terms of plot and composition. For example, the drama “Fear and Poverty in the Third Empire” - the play consists of 24 scenes. This circumstance has given rise to some researchers to interpret Brecht's play as a collection of one-act dramas. Moreover, all the scenes were never staged as part of one performance. And yet, “Fear and Poverty in the Third Empire” is a dramatic whole, consisting of 24 compositionally and meaningfully completed scenes.

Brecht in the said play talks either about the fate of people of non-Aryan origin in Germany during the time of Hitler (“The Jewish Wife”), then about the breakdown of family ties and relationships, then about the corruption of German justice (“Justice”), then about the system of espionage and betrayal that received widespread during the years of the fascist dictatorship (“Chalk Cross”), then about the falsity of the thesis of “class peace” under the conditions of the fascist dictatorship (“Labor Conscription”), etc. At the same time, none of the named episodes in terms of plot continues the previous one, but taken together they form an impressive picture of the collapse of the fascist state long before its actual death. In this case, Brecht resorts to the technique of mosaic panels, where every stroke is significant to reveal the essence of each. “Unlike a dramatic work, an epic can, relatively speaking, be cut into pieces, with each piece retaining its vitality,” Brecht argued. Epic drama differs from traditional drama in that, due to its compositional completeness, each scene, taken separately, can exist separately, but can receive its most complete embodiment only in the system of all the provided dramatic scenes. As already mentioned, an epic drama involves awakening the viewer’s interest not in the outcome of the action, but in its course. The fact is that interest in the denouement enhances the emotional perception of the performance, while interest in the course of action stimulates the analytical position of the viewer.

Brecht's aesthetics grew out of the needs of a new culture, from the desire to strengthen the ideological impact of art, to establish a new attitude of the viewer to the theater, to give the theater features that would make it similar to the significance of a political meeting, with the deep seriousness of a university audience. Brecht's dramatic system is a direct reflection of the extraordinary activity of artistic thought caused by the October Revolution in Russia and the November Revolution in Germany. The playwright is characterized by a careful and subtle attitude towards the world experience of theater and art, but he believed that the true flourishing of theater was yet to come - in a society of liberated people. Brecht carefully read and revered ancient literature and drama, Shakespeare, French classicists, Ibsen and Chekhov. But this did not prevent him from understanding that even Shakespeare’s legacy is associated with a certain stage in the development of mankind and cannot be an absolute example.

Brecht calls his aesthetics and dramaturgy non-Aristotelian theater; With this name he emphasizes his disagreement with the most important, according to Aristotle, principle of ancient tragedy, which was subsequently adopted to a greater or lesser extent by the entire world theatrical tradition. The playwright opposes the Aristotelian doctrine of catharsis (extraordinary, highest emotional intensity that purifies the “state of mind of the viewer”). Pathos, emotional strength, open manifestation of passions we see in his landscapes. But the purification of feelings in catharsis, according to Brecht, led to reconciliation with tragedy, life's horror becomes theatrical and therefore attractive, the viewer would not even mind experiencing something similar. To the humanist Brecht, the idea of ​​the beauty and uncertainty of suffering seemed blasphemous. With the insight of an artist who created his theater for the future, he constantly tried to dispel the legends about the beauty of suffering and patience. In “The Life of Galileo” he writes that a hungry person has no right to endure hunger, that “to starve is simply not eating, and not showing patience, pleasing to heaven.” Brecht wanted tragedy to provoke thinking about ways to prevent tragedy. Therefore, he considered Shakespeare’s shortcoming to be that at performances of his tragedies, for example, “a discussion about the behavior of King Lear” is not conceivable and the impression is created that Lear’s grief is inevitable.

A striking phenomenon of theatrical art of the 20th century. became "epic theater" German playwright Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956). From the arsenal of epic art, he used many methods - commenting on the event from the outside, slowing down the progress of the action and its unexpectedly fast new turn. At the same time, Brecht expanded the drama with lyricism. The performance included choir performances, zong songs, and original insert numbers, most often unrelated to the plot of the play. Zongs to the music of Kurt Weill for the play “The Threepenny Opera” (1928) and Paul Dessau for the production of the play were especially popular "Mother Courage and Her Children" (1939).

In Brecht's performances, inscriptions and posters were widely used, which served as a kind of commentary on the action of the play. Inscriptions could also be projected onto the screen, “alienating” viewers from the immediate content of the scenes (for example, “Don’t stare so romantically!”). Every now and then the author switched the consciousness of the audience from one reality to another. The viewer was presented with a singer or narrator commenting on what was happening in a completely different way than the heroes could have done. This effect in Brecht's theatrical system was called “alienation effect” (people and phenomena appeared

in front of the viewer from the most unexpected side). In place of the heavy curtains, only a small piece of fabric was left to emphasize that the stage is not a special magical place, but only part of the everyday world. Brecht wrote:

“...The theater is not intended to create the illusion of life-likeness, but, on the contrary, to destroy it, to “detach”, “alienate” the viewer from what is depicted, thereby creating a new, fresh perception.”

Brecht's theatrical system took shape over thirty years, constantly being refined and improved. Its main provisions can be presented in the following diagram:

Drama Theater	Epic Theater
1. An event is presented on stage, evoking empathy in the viewer	1. They talk about the event on stage
2. Involves the viewer into the action, reducing his activity to a minimum	2. Puts the viewer in the position of an observer, stimulates his activity
3. Arouses emotions in the viewer	3. Forces the viewer to make independent decisions
4. Puts the viewer at the center of events and evokes empathy in him	4. Contrastes the viewer with events and forces him to study them
5. Arouses the viewer’s interest in the outcome of the performance	5. Arouses interest in the development of the action, in the very course of the performance
6. Appeals to the viewer's senses	6. Appeals to the viewer's mind

Questions for self-control

1. What aesthetic principles underlie the “Stanislavsky system”?

2. What famous performances were staged at the Moscow Art Theater?

3. What does the concept of “super task” mean?

4. How do you understand the term “art of transformation”?

5. What role does the director play in Stanislavsky’s “system”?

6. What principles underlie B. Brecht’s theater?

7. How do you understand the main principle of B. Brecht’s theater - the “alienation effect”?

8. What is the difference between Stanislavsky’s “system” and B. Brecht’s theatrical principles?

"Epic Theater"

Brecht dramatic epic theater

In his works “On the Way to the Modern Theatre”, “Dialectics in the Theatre”, “On Non-Aristotelian Drama” and others, published in the late 20s and early 20s, Brecht criticized contemporary modernist art and outlined the main provisions of his theory of “epic theater” . Certain provisions relate to acting, dramatic construction, theatrical music, scenery, use of cinema, etc. Brecht called his dramaturgy “non-Aristotelian”, “epic”. This name is due to the fact that traditional drama is built according to the laws formulated by Aristotle in his work “Poetics”. They required the actor to become emotionally involved in the character.

Brecht based his theory on reason. “Epic theater appeals not so much to the senses as to the reason of the spectator,” wrote Bertolt Brecht. In his opinion, the theater was supposed to become a school of thought, show life from a truly scientific position, in a broad historical perspective, promote advanced ideas, help the viewer understand the changing world and change themselves. Brecht emphasized that his theater should become a theater “for people who have decided to take their destiny into their own hands,” that it should not only reflect events, but also actively influence them, stimulate, awaken the activity of the viewer, force him not to empathize, but to argue , take a critical position, take an active part. At the same time, the writer himself did not at all shy away from the desire to influence both feelings and emotions.

If drama presupposes active action and a passive viewer, then epic, on the contrary, presupposes an active listener or reader. It was precisely from this understanding of theater that Brecht’s idea of ​​an active spectator, ready to think, emerged. And thinking, as Brecht said, is something that precedes action.

However, it was impossible to create an existing theater using aesthetics alone. Brecht wrote: “In order to eliminate this theater, that is, in order to abolish it, remove it, sell it off, it is already necessary to involve science, just as to eliminate all kinds of superstitions we also involved science” B. Brecht “Conversation on Cologne Radio.” And such a science, according to the writer, should have become sociology, that is, the doctrine of the relationship of man to man. She had to prove that Shakespearean drama, which is the basis of all drama, no longer has the right to exist. This is explained by the fact that those relationships that made it possible for the drama to appear have historically outlived their usefulness. In the article “Shouldn’t we eliminate aesthetics?” Brecht directly pointed out that capitalism itself destroys drama and thereby creates the preconditions for a new theater. “The theater must be revised as a whole - not only the texts, not only the actors, or even the entire character of the production, this restructuring must involve the viewer, must change his position,” writes Brecht in the article “Dialectical Dramaturgy.” In epic theater, the individual ceases to be the center of the performance, so groups of people appear on stage, within which an individual takes a certain position. At the same time, Brecht emphasizes that not only the theater, but also the viewer himself must become collectivist. In other words, epic theater must involve whole masses of people in its action. “This means,” Brecht continues, “the individual, even as a spectator, ceases to be the center of the theater. He is no longer a private citizen who “honors” the theater with his visit, allowing the actors to act out something before him, consuming the work of the theater; he is no longer a consumer, no, he must produce himself.”

To implement the provisions of the “epic theater,” Brecht used in his work the “alienation effect,” that is, an artistic technique whose purpose is to show the phenomena of life from an unusual side, to force one to look at them differently, to critically evaluate everything that happens on stage. To this end, Brecht often introduces choruses and solo songs into his plays, which explain and evaluate the events of the play, revealing the ordinary from an unexpected side. The “alienation effect” is also achieved by the acting system. With the help of this effect, the actor presents the so-called “social gesture” in an “alienated” form. By “social gesture” Brecht understands the expression in facial expressions and gestures of social relations that exist between people of a certain era. To do this, it is necessary to depict every event as historical. “A historical event is a transitory, unique event associated with a certain era. In the course of it, relationships between people are formed, and these relationships are not just universal, eternal in nature, they are distinguished by their specificity, and they are criticized from the point of view of the subsequent era. Continuous development alienates us from the actions of people who lived before us.”B. Brecht “A brief description of a new acting technique that causes the so-called “alienation effect.” This effect, according to Brecht, makes it possible to make striking those events of everyday life that seem natural and familiar to the viewer.

According to Brecht's theory, epic theater should tell the viewer about certain life situations and problems, while maintaining conditions under which the viewer would maintain, if not calm, then control over his feelings. So that the viewer would not succumb to the illusions of stage action, would observe, think, determine his principled position and make decisions.

In 1936, Brecht formulated a comparative characteristic of dramatic and epic theater: “The spectator of a dramatic theater say: yes, I already felt it too. That's how I am. This is quite natural. It'll be this way forever. The suffering of this man shocks me, because there is no way out for him. This is great art: everything in it goes without saying. I cry with those who cry, I laugh with those who laugh. The spectator of the epic theater says this I would never have thought. This should not be done. This is extremely amazing, almost incredible. This must end. The suffering of this man shocks me, because a way out is still possible for him. This is great art: nothing in it goes without saying. I laugh at those who cry, I cry at those who laugh” B. Brecht “The Theory of Epic Theater”. To create such theater requires the joint efforts of a playwright, director and actor. Moreover, for an actor this requirement is of a special nature. An actor must show a certain person in certain circumstances, and not just be him. At some moments of his stay on stage, he must stand next to the image he creates, that is, be not only its embodiment, but also its judge.

This does not mean that Bertolt Brecht completely denied feelings in theatrical practice, that is, the merging of the actor with the image. However, he believed that such a state could occur only momentarily and, in general, should be subordinated to a reasonably thought-out and consciously determined interpretation of the role.

Bertolt Brecht paid great attention to scenery. He demanded that the stage builder thoroughly study the plays, take into account the wishes of the actors and constantly experiment. All this served as the key to creative success. “The stage builder should not put anything in a once and for all fixed place,” Brecht believes, “but he should not change or move anything for no reason, for he gives a reflection of the world, and the world changes according to laws that are far from completely open” B. Brecht "On the design of the stage in the non-Aristotelian theater." At the same time, the stage builder must remember the critical gaze of the viewer. And if the viewer does not have such a look, then the task of the stage builder is to endow the viewer with it.

Music is also important in the theater. Brecht believed that in the era of the struggle for socialism, its social significance increases significantly: “Whoever believes that the masses who have risen to fight unbridled violence, oppression and exploitation are alien to serious and at the same time pleasant and rational music as a means of promoting social ideas, he I did not understand one very important aspect of this struggle. However, it is clear that the impact of such music depends largely on how it is performed” B. Brecht “On the use of music in the “epic theater”. Therefore, the performer must comprehend the social meaning of the music, which will make it possible to evoke in the viewer an appropriate attitude towards the action on stage.

Another feature of Brecht's works is that they have rather overt subtext. Thus, one of the most famous plays, “Mother Courage and Her Children,” was created at the time when Hitler unleashed the Second World War. And although the historical basis of this work was the events of the Thirty Years' War, the play itself, and especially the image of its main character, acquires a timeless sound. Essentially, this is a work about life and death, about the influence of historical events on human life.

At the center of the play is Anna Fierling, who is better known as Mother Courage. For her, war is a way of existence: she pulls her van after the army, where everyone can purchase the necessary goods. The war brought her three children, who were born from different soldiers from different armies, the war became the norm for Mother Courage. For her, the reasons for the war are indifferent. She doesn't care who the winner is. However, the same war takes everything away from Mother Courage: one by one, her three children die, and she herself is left alone. Brecht's play ends with a scene in which Mother Courage herself is pulling her wagon after the army. But even in the finale, mother did not change her thoughts about the war. What is important for Brecht is that the epiphany came not to the hero, but to the viewer. This is the meaning of “epic theater”: the viewer himself must condemn or support the hero. Thus, in the play “Mother Courage and Her Children,” the author makes the main character condemn the war and ultimately understand that war is destructive and merciless to everyone and everything. But Courage never receives an “epiphany.” Moreover, the very business of Mother Courage cannot exist without war. And therefore, despite the fact that the war took her children, Mother Courage needs war, war is the only way for her to exist.

The works of B. Brecht. Brecht's epic theater. "Mother Courage"

Bertolt Brecht(1898-1956) was born in Augsburg, in the family of a factory director, studied at a gymnasium, practiced medicine in Munich and was drafted into the army as an orderly. The songs and poems of the young orderly attracted attention with the spirit of hatred of the war, the Prussian military, and German imperialism. In the revolutionary days of November 1918, Brecht was elected a member of the Augsburg Soldiers' Council, which testified to the authority of a very young poet.

Already in Brecht's earliest poems we see a combination of catchy, catchy slogans and complex imagery that evokes associations with classical German literature. These associations are not imitations, but unexpected rethinking of old situations and techniques. Brecht seems to move them into modern life, makes them look at them in a new, “alienated” way. Thus, already in his earliest lyrics, Brecht groped for his famous (*224) dramatic technique of “alienation.” In the poem “The Legend of the Dead Soldier,” the satirical techniques are reminiscent of the techniques of romanticism: a soldier going into battle against the enemy has long been just a ghost, the people accompanying him are philistines, whom German literature has long depicted in the guise of animals. And at the same time, Brecht’s poem is topical - it contains intonations, pictures, and hatred from the times of the First World War. Brecht denounces German militarism and war, and in his 1924 poem “The Ballad of Mother and Soldier,” the poet understands that the Weimar Republic was far from eradicating militant pan-Germanism.

During the years of the Weimar Republic, Brecht's poetic world expanded. Reality appears in the most acute class upheavals. But Brecht is not content with merely recreating images of oppression. His poems are always a revolutionary call: such are “Song of the United Front”, “The Faded Glory of New York, the Giant City”, “Song of the Class Enemy”. These poems clearly show how at the end of the 20s Brecht came to a communist worldview, how his spontaneous youthful rebellion grew into proletarian revolutionism.

Brecht's lyrics are very wide in their range, the poet can capture the real picture of German life in all its historical and psychological specificity, but he can also create a meditation poem, where the poetic effect is achieved not by description, but by the accuracy and depth of philosophical thought, combined with refined, not a far-fetched allegory. For Brecht, poetry is, first of all, the accuracy of philosophical and civil thought. Brecht considered even philosophical treatises or paragraphs of proletarian newspapers filled with civic pathos to be poetry (for example, the style of the poem “Message to Comrade Dimitrov, who fought the fascist tribunal in Leipzig” is an attempt to bring together the language of poetry and newspapers). But these experiments ultimately convinced Brecht that art should speak about everyday life in far from everyday language. In this sense, Brecht the lyricist helped Brecht the playwright.

In the 20s, Brecht turned to the theater. In Munich, he became a director and then a playwright at the city theater. In 1924, Brecht moved to Berlin, where he worked in the theater. He acts both as a playwright and as a theorist - a theater reformer. Already in these years, Brecht’s aesthetics, his innovative view on the tasks of drama and theater, took shape in its decisive features. Brecht outlined his theoretical views on art in the 1920s in separate articles and speeches, later combined into the collection “Against Theater Routine” and “Towards a Modern Theater.” Later, in the 30s, Brecht systematized his theatrical theory, clarifying and developing (*225) it, in the treatises “On Non-Aristotelian Drama”, “New Principles of Acting Art”, “Small Organon for the Theater”, “Buying Copper” and some others.

Brecht calls his aesthetics and dramaturgy “epic,” “non-Aristotelian” theater; by this name he emphasizes his disagreement with the most important, according to Aristotle, principle of ancient tragedy, which was subsequently adopted to a greater or lesser extent by the entire world theatrical tradition. The playwright opposes the Aristotelian doctrine of catharsis. Catharsis is extraordinary, highest emotional intensity. Brecht recognized this side of catharsis and preserved it for his theater; We see emotional strength, pathos, and open manifestation of passions in his plays. But the purification of feelings in catharsis, according to Brecht, led to reconciliation with tragedy, life's horror became theatrical and therefore attractive, the viewer would not even mind experiencing something similar. Brecht constantly tried to dispel the legends about the beauty of suffering and patience. In “The Life of Galileo” he writes that a hungry person has no right to endure hunger, that “to starve” is simply not to eat, and not to exercise the patience pleasing to heaven." Brecht wanted tragedy to provoke reflection on ways to prevent tragedy. Therefore He considered Shakespeare’s shortcoming to be that at performances of his tragedies, for example, “a discussion about the behavior of King Lear” is unthinkable and it creates the impression that Lear’s grief is inevitable: “it has always been this way, it is natural.”

The idea of ​​catharsis, generated by ancient drama, was closely related to the concept of the fatal predetermination of human destiny. Playwrights, with the power of their talent, revealed all the motivations for human behavior; in moments of catharsis, like lightning, they illuminated all the reasons for human actions, and the power of these reasons turned out to be absolute. That is why Brecht called Aristotelian theater fatalistic.

Brecht saw a contradiction between the principle of reincarnation in the theater, the principle of the author’s dissolution in the characters and the need for a direct, agitation-visual identification of the writer’s philosophical and political position. Even in the most successful and tendentious traditional dramas, in the best sense of the word, the position of the author, in Brecht's opinion, was associated with the figures of reasoners. This was the case in the dramas of Schiller, whom Brecht highly valued for his citizenship and ethical pathos. The playwright rightly believed that the characters of the characters should not be “mouthpieces of ideas”, that this reduces the artistic effectiveness of the play: “... on the stage of a realistic theater there is a place only for living people, people in flesh and blood, with all their contradictions, passions and actions. The stage is not a herbarium or a museum where stuffed animals are displayed..."

Brecht finds his own solution to this controversial issue: the theatrical performance and the stage action do not coincide with the plot of the play. The plot, the story of the characters, is interrupted by direct author's comments, lyrical digressions, and sometimes even demonstrations of physical experiments, reading newspapers and a unique, always relevant entertainer. Brecht breaks the illusion of continuous development of events in the theater, destroys the magic of scrupulous reproduction of reality. Theater is genuine creativity, far beyond mere verisimilitude. For Brecht, creativity and acting, for which only “natural behavior in the given circumstances” is completely insufficient. Developing his aesthetics, Brecht uses traditions consigned to oblivion in the everyday, psychological theater of the late 19th - early 20th centuries; he introduces choruses and zongs of contemporary political cabarets, lyrical digressions characteristic of poems, and philosophical treatises. Brecht allows a change in the commentary principle when reviving his plays: he sometimes has two versions of zongs and choruses for the same plot (for example, the zongs in the productions of The Threepenny Opera in 1928 and 1946 are different).

Brecht considered the art of impersonation to be obligatory, but completely insufficient for an actor. He believed that much more important was the ability to express and demonstrate one’s personality on stage - both civilly and creatively. In the game, reincarnation must necessarily alternate and be combined with a demonstration of artistic skills (recitation, movement, singing), which are interesting precisely because of their uniqueness, and, most importantly, with a demonstration of the actor’s personal civic position, his human credo.

Brecht believed that a person retains the ability of free choice and responsible decision in the most difficult circumstances. This conviction of the playwright manifested faith in man, a deep conviction that bourgeois society, with all the power of its corrupting influence, cannot reshape humanity in the spirit of its principles. Brecht writes that the task of “epic theater” is to force the audience “to give up ... the illusion that everyone in the place of the hero portrayed would act in the same way.” The playwright deeply comprehends the dialectics of social development and therefore crushes the vulgar sociology associated with positivism. Brecht always chooses complex, “non-ideal” ways to expose capitalist society. “Political primitiveness,” according to the playwright, is unacceptable on stage. Brecht wanted the life and actions of the characters in plays from the life (*227) of a proprietary society to always give the impression of unnaturalness. He sets a very difficult task for the theatrical performance: he compares the viewer to a hydraulic engineer who is “able to see the river simultaneously both in its actual channel and in the imaginary one along which it could flow if the slope of the plateau and the water level were different.” .

Brecht believed that a truthful depiction of reality is not limited only to the reproduction of social circumstances of life, that there are universal human categories that social determinism cannot fully explain (the love of the heroine of the “Caucasian Chalk Circle” Grusha for a defenseless abandoned child, Shen De’s irresistible impulse to goodness) . Their depiction is possible in the form of a myth, a symbol, in the genre of parable plays or parabolic plays. But in terms of socio-psychological realism, Brecht's dramaturgy can be placed on a par with the greatest achievements of world theater. The playwright carefully observed the basic law of realism of the 19th century. - historical specificity of social and psychological motivations. Comprehension of the qualitative diversity of the world has always been a primary task for him. Summing up his path as a playwright, Brecht wrote: “We must strive for an ever more accurate description of reality, and this, from an aesthetic point of view, is an ever more subtle and ever more effective understanding of description.”

Brecht's innovation was also manifested in the fact that he was able to fuse traditional, indirect methods of revealing aesthetic content (characters, conflicts, plot) with an abstract reflective principle into an indissoluble harmonious whole. What gives amazing artistic integrity to the seemingly contradictory combination of plot and commentary? The famous Brechtian principle of “alienation” - it permeates not only the commentary itself, but also the entire plot. Brecht's "alienation" is both a tool of logic and poetry itself, full of surprises and brilliance. Brecht makes “alienation” the most important principle of philosophical knowledge of the world, the most important condition for realistic creativity. Getting used to the role, to the circumstances does not break through the “objective appearance” and therefore serves realism less than “alienation”. Brecht did not agree that adaptation and transformation are the path to truth. K. S. Stanislavsky, who asserted this, was, in his opinion, “impatient.” For experience does not distinguish between truth and “objective appearance.”

Epic theater - presents a story, puts the viewer in the position of an observer, stimulates the viewer's activity, forces the viewer to make decisions, shows the viewer another stop, arouses the viewer's interest in the progress of the action, appeals to the viewer's mind, and not to the heart and feelings!!!

In emigration, in the struggle against fascism, Brecht's dramatic creativity flourished. It was extremely rich in content and varied in form. Among the most famous plays of the emigration is “Mother Courage and Her Children” (1939). The more acute and tragic the conflict, the more critical, according to Brecht, a person’s thought should be. In the conditions of the 30s, “Mother Courage” sounded, of course, as a protest against the demagogic propaganda of war by the Nazis and was addressed to that part of the German population that succumbed to this demagoguery. War is depicted in the play as an element organically hostile to human existence.

The essence of "epic theater" becomes especially clear in connection with Mother Courage. Theoretical commentary is combined in the play with a realistic manner that is merciless in its consistency. Brecht believes that realism is the most reliable way of influence. That is why in “Mother Courage” the “true” face of life is so consistent and consistent even in small details. But one should keep in mind the two-dimensionality of this play - the aesthetic content of the characters, that is, the reproduction of life, where good and evil are mixed regardless of our desires, and the voice of Brecht himself, not satisfied with such a picture, trying to affirm good. Brecht's position is directly manifested in the zongs. In addition, as follows from Brecht’s director’s instructions for the play, the playwright provides theaters with ample opportunities to demonstrate the author’s thoughts with the help of various “alienations” (photography, film projection, direct address of actors to the audience).

The characters of the heroes in Mother Courage are depicted in all their complex contradictions. The most interesting is the image of Anna Fierling, nicknamed Mother Courage. The versatility of this character evokes various feelings in the audience. The heroine attracts with her sober understanding of life. But she is a product of the mercantile, cruel and cynical spirit of the Thirty Years' War. Courage is indifferent to the causes of this war. Depending on the vicissitudes of fate, she hoists either a Lutheran or a Catholic banner over her wagon. Courage goes to war in the hope of big profits.

Brecht's disturbing conflict between practical wisdom and ethical impulses infects the entire play with the passion of argument and the energy of preaching. In the image of Catherine, the playwright painted the antipode of Mother Courage. Neither threats, nor promises, nor death forced Catherine to abandon her decision, dictated by her desire to help people in some way. The talkative Courage is opposed by the mute Catherine, the girl’s silent feat seems to cancel out all the lengthy reasoning of her mother.

Brecht's realism is manifested in the play not only in the depiction of the main characters and in the historicism of the conflict, but also in the life-like authenticity of episodic characters, in Shakespearean multicoloredness, reminiscent of a “Falstaffian background.” Each character, drawn into the dramatic conflict of the play, lives his own life, we guess about his fate, about his past and future life and seem to hear every voice in the discordant chorus of war.

In addition to revealing the conflict through the clash of characters, Brecht complements the picture of life in the play with zongs, which provide a direct understanding of the conflict. The most significant zong is “Song of Great Humility”. This is a complex type of “alienation,” when the author speaks as if on behalf of his heroine, sharpens her erroneous positions and thereby argues with her, instilling in the reader doubts about the wisdom of “great humility.” Brecht responds to the cynical irony of Mother Courage with his own irony. And Brecht’s irony leads the viewer, who has already succumbed to the philosophy of accepting life as it is, to a completely different view of the world, to an understanding of the vulnerability and fatality of compromises. The song about humility is a kind of foreign counterpart that allows us to understand the true, opposite wisdom of Brecht. The entire play, which critically portrays the practical, compromising “wisdom” of the heroine, is a continuous debate with the “Song of Great Humility.” Mother Courage does not see the light in the play, having survived the shock, she learns “no more about its nature than a guinea pig about the law of biology.” The tragic (personal and historical) experience, while enriching the viewer, taught Mother Courage nothing and did not enrich her at all. The catharsis she experienced turned out to be completely fruitless. Thus, Brecht argues that the perception of the tragedy of reality only at the level of emotional reactions in itself is not knowledge of the world, and is not much different from complete ignorance.

“...at the heart of stage theory and practice Brecht lies the “alienation effect” (Verfremdungseffekt), which is easily confused with the etymologically similar “alienation” (Entfremdung) Marx.

To avoid confusion, it is most convenient to illustrate the alienation effect using the example of a theatrical production, where it occurs on several levels at once:

1) The plot of the play contains two stories, one of which is a parabola (allegory) of the same text with a deeper or “modernized” meaning; Brecht often takes well-known plots, pitting “form” and “content” in irreconcilable conflict.

3) Plasticity informs about the stage character and his social appearance, his attitude to the world of work (gestus, “social gesture”).

4) Diction does not psychologize the text, but recreates its rhythm and theatrical texture.

5) In acting, the performer does not transform into a character in the play, he shows him as if from a distance, distancing himself.

6) Refusal of division into acts in favor of a “montage” of episodes and scenes and the central figure (hero), around which classical drama was built (decentred structure).

7) Addresses to the audience, zongs, changing the scenery in full view of the viewer, introducing newsreels, titles and other “comments on the action” are also techniques that undermine the stage illusion. Patrice Pavy, Dictionary of theatre, M., “Progress”, 1991, p. 211.

Separately, these techniques are found in ancient Greek, Chinese, Shakespearean, Chekhov’s theater, not to mention the contemporary productions of Brecht by Piscator (with whom he collaborated), Meyerhold, Vakhtangov, Eisenstein(which he knew about) and agitprop. Brecht's innovation lay in the fact that he gave them systematicity and turned them into the dominant aesthetic principle. Generally speaking, this principle is valid for any artistic self-reflective language, a language that has achieved “self-consciousness.” In relation to the theater we are talking about the purposeful “exposure of the technique”, “showing the show”.

Brecht did not immediately come to the political implications of “alienation,” as well as to the term itself. It required acquaintance (through Karl Korsch) with Marxist theory and (through Sergei Tretyakov) with the “defamiliarization” of Russian formalists. But already in the early 1920s, he took an irreconcilable position in relation to the bourgeois theater, which had a soporific, hypnotic effect on the public, turning it into a passive object (in Munich, where Brecht began, then National Socialism with its hysteria and magical passes towards Shambhala). He called such theater “cooking,” “a branch of the bourgeois drug trade.”

The search for an antidote leads Brecht to understand the fundamental difference between two types of theater, dramatic (Aristotelian) and epic.

Drama theater strives to conquer the emotions of the viewer so that he surrenders “with his whole being” to what is happening on stage, losing the sense of the boundary between theatrical performance and reality. The result is purification from affects (as under hypnosis), reconciliation (with fate, fate, “human destiny,” eternal and unchanging).

Epic theater, on the contrary, must appeal to the analytical abilities of the viewer, awaken doubt and curiosity in him, pushing him to realize the historically determined social relations behind this or that conflict. The result is critical catharsis, awareness of unconsciousness (“the audience must realize the unconsciousness reigning on stage”), the desire to change the course of events (no longer on stage, but in reality). Brecht’s art absorbs a critical function, the function of a metalanguage, which is usually assigned to philosophy, art criticism or critical theory, and becomes a self-criticism of art - the means of art itself.”

Skidan A., Prigov as Brecht and Warhol rolled into one, or Golem-Sovietikus, in Collection: Non-canonical classic: Dmitry Aleksandrovich Prigov (1940-2007) / Ed. E. Dobrenko et al., M., “New Literary Review”, p. 2010, p. 137-138.