Product Description
This volume offers a major selection of Bertolt Brecht's groundbreaking critical writing. Here, arranged in chronological order, are essays from 1918 to 1956, in which Brecht explores his definition of the Epic Theatre and his theory of alienation-effects in directing, acting, and writing, and discusses, among other works, The Threepenny Opera, Mahagonny, Mother Courage, Puntila, and Galileo. Also included is "A Short Organum for the Theatre," Brecht's most complete exposition of his revolutionary philosophy of drama.

Translated and edited by John Willett, Brecht on Theater is essential to an understanding of one of the twentieth century's most influential dramatists.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

In Brecht's own words
An invaluable primary source for the study of Brecht and Political Theater. Brecht explains the fundamentals of his aesthetics, influences, theories, as well as the development of a rehearsal system. Essential for students of theater.

A Behemoth of Brecht
First of all, it should be mentioned that there is no theatre untouched by Bertolt Brecht's theories and practices on theatre. In the 21st century, the way we look at theatre has its roots in Brecht's Aesthetic.

Now, this book is like the Brecht Bible essentially. Packed with all his views and opinions on the theatre, society and culture around theatre, acting, etc. Its big, dense and the type set is small enough to make you cry sometimes because he just never seems to stop.

I had a hard time following and understanding it, but that is no fault of this edition, but more so the long winded thoughts of Brecht. The core of his ideas and points are there, they just need to be searched for. Sometimes he makes it very clear what point he is trying to make, but sometimes you have to wade through his thoughts until he nails it for you. I think for having never read it before, I wasn't sure what was the most important part of some of the arguments he was making, but overall I know this is a valuable book to own. I think it requires guidance from someone who has studied Brecht a lot, which I fortunately had. There is a Brecht for Beginners I think out there that is a GOOD COMPANION to this book.

A must have for Theatre majors
This is a huge selection of essays written over many years. This not necessarily something you may want to just sit down and read straight through. If you do, you will find many contradictions over the years. At any rate, it is a very formative collection of Brecht's work, and certainly a must have for anyone who studies theatre or the arts in general.

Required Reading
Classic Text.Feel free to jump around chapters as you read this.It's a compilation of Brecht's ideas andis best read in random order.

Useful Toolkit for Theorists and Dramatists
Brecht's theater is a blast, a genuine attempt to do something unique and productive with the heretofore conservative and corporate medium of the stage.It represents the first wave of revolution in European theater since the English stage was closed in the mid-17th century. Brecht successfully constructs an antifascist, anti-exploitative theater without being didactic or heavyhanded about it. (As I mentioned, it's actually a blast.) Much of his success came from surrounding himself with brilliant and dedicated people, and much of the success of this collection of Brecht's writings comes from Brecht's polishing his ideas in the tumbler of real practice with those people.For me, Brecht's passing comments on Aristotle and Shakespeare are worth the price of admission. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

I wish I could Say I Like Brecht
This play was read for a Woman in Drama course I took last Fall in order to introduce the class to Brechtian drama. I wish I could say I enjoy this; however, I find Brecht to be too in your face with his socio-political ideals. If you are a bigger fan of the forth wall convention in drama, then this is not a play for you. He presents some interesting ideas but I never like characters speaking to the audience in a drama - BLECH!

Brecht's Chinese hooker with a heart of gold
Brecht used to a very big name, one of the biggest in world theater.His writing makes for lively and entertaining theater, but I am afraid I must put myself in the category of not really knowing what the fuss is about.This play was entertaining, and I could see its roots in classic theatrical themes and approaches, but it did not strike me as being a great piece of writing.Certainly in today's politico-artistic environment it would be hard to see an inauthentic work like this being hailed and loved.Brecht's Chinese heroine Shen Te is a hooker with a heart of gold, a kind but foolish young woman who manages to get along by charming everyone.She eventually falls for a loutish young aviator, and their tribulations become the basis for the second half of the plot.The plot has some nice twists and moves along at a very brisk clip.Numerous characters appear and get their due - a couple of unidentifiable gods, a poor water seller, an older shop owner, some freeloaders, etc.There are all sorts of manipulations going on, everyone keeps trying to get an edge on each other.Money changes hands quickly and this becomes the engine of the narrative - Shen Te gets some, opens a shop, does well, then gives it away to the unworthy flyer.Her sweet, happy-go-lucky character is balanced by the presence of her supposed cousin, Shui Ta, a shrewd and tough negotiator who appears at key moments to bail out his relative.How one would effectively pull this off on stage is a bit of a mystery to me, and for that reason alone I would like to see a production of it.Overall, an entertaining play with a humanistic heart, but not a work of genius.

Very Recommendable!
"The Good Woman of Sezuan" is my favourite play of Brecht's and I really recommend it to anyone who is interested in german literature and plays. It's also a good one to start if this is your first contact with Bertolt Brecht!

Good book
Well written, talented authors!I really liked it! ... Read more

Product Description
Straight from London's National Theatre to L.A. Theatre Works! Unrelenting in his search for ""simple truth"" Galileo Galilei shatters beliefs held sacred for two thousand years. But, under threat of torture by the Holy Inquisition, his scientific and personal integrity are put to the test as he argues for his very life in a passionate debate over science, politics, religion and ethics that resonates to this day. This American premier, translated by David Hare and directed by Martin Jarvis, stars Stacy Keach and features an interview with Dr. E.C. Krupp, Director of the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles.

A L.A. Theatre Works full-cast performance featuring: Neil Dickson, Roy Dotrice, Jeannie Elias, Jill Gascoine, Stacy Keach, Peter Lavin, Robert Machray, Christopher Neame, Moira Quirk, Darren Richardson, Alan Shearman, Simon Templeman, Joanne Whalley, Matthew Wolf ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

Great Play, Timely and Scary
Just like Brecht to have his finger so on the pulse of the historic past, his present and his future which has arrived as our present. Could probably benefit from some judicious cutting for modern audiences, but filled with challenging ideas. Worth the read, surely worth a production.

A great Social/Political Satire...
Bertolt Brecht's "the Life of Galileo" is perhaps one of his best known plays which came to define the Epic Drama genre of the 20th century.Written in America after Brecht fled the Nazi uprising in Germany, "the Life of Galileo" takes a bold stance about science and scientific discovery in a time when Atomic Theory and the development of an Atomic Bomb were making people consider what may happen when something good (atomic energy) are made into something bad (atomic bombs).

Though this version is the revised edition to the play (Brecht had written two previous versions that he changed) it still captures the spirit of Epic drama and the social/political issues can be deduced by Brecht's portrayl of Galileo.

Putting it on...
It's a fascinating play, but it's important to take into consideration that it takes up to 4 hours to produce in its entirety, requires a cast of up to 40 people plus orchestra and tech crew.The carnival scene (10) alsorequires many props, and setting it during the renaissance can be demandingfor a costumier! We performed it outside in winter at night. Brrrr...

Eating the apple from the tree of knowledge.
In a pleasant and intertaining discription of the life of Galileo, Bertolt Brecht explores not only the advancement of our knowledge of the earth but more important the role of the church during the time period. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (11)

Interesting Drama
This was an interesting historical play that educated as well as dramatized.Though, for this reader, it fizzled toward the end.

"Any man who does what I have done must not be tolerated in the ranks of science" *
Recently, the American Psychological Association discovered, to its general embarrassment, that a good number its members had collaborated with Pentagon- and CIA-sponsored torturers--or practitioners of "enhanced interrogation."The psychologists had provided expert advice about levels of endurance, psychological techniques for cracking resistance, and so on.

To its credit, the APA formally condemned such collaboration.But the whole sordid incident reminds us (as if we need reminding) that when men and women of science allow their knowledge to be misused, either out of cowardice or misguided patriotism, science can become a horrible tool for exploitation and destruction.This, in a nutshell, is the central theme of Brecht's second version of "Galileo."

The play is one of Brecht's best.Written with a nondidactic hand, the play is anything but dreary socialist realism.At times funny and at other times incredibly sad, the sober message that it is the scientist's responsibility to make sure that his or her discoveries are used properly runs throughout.In abjuring his physics under threats from the Inquisition, Brecht's Galileo displays moral cowardice:first, because he allows established power to usurp his discoveries, and second because he lets down the people who could most profit from his specific discoveries as well as the spirit of unfettered inquiry that generated them.As Galileo says at one point in the play, "The practice of science would seem to call for valor."

Several reviewers have remarked that the introduction by Eric Bentley is long-winded and have accordingly reduced their rating for the book.This strikes me as odd for two reasons.First, presumably one purchases "Galileo" to read Brecht, not attached commentary.If the commentary is good, that's just a bonus.But the center of attention surely is the play itself.Second, for all his long-windedness, Bentley's thesis is cogent and, I think, important:that historical drama properly seeks to shed light on its own time by appealing to past events.It's not important that Brecht reinvents Galileo for his play.After all, he isn't writing history.What's significant is the way in which Galileo becomes a symbol that can shed light on our own understanding of science and moral responsibility.Truth ought never to be reduced simply to fact.
_________
* Galileo's final self-judgment, Scene 13 (p. 124).

The frailty of man
This book shows the scientific insights of Galileo and his stand againt the religious authorities, along with his collapse in the face of personal threat.

IN DEFENCE OF SCIENCE
The pressures that the established order can bring to bear on those who want to move outside the status quo are enormous. In the end those in charge can grind down the best of men with the most worthy knowledge to disseminate.That is the story that the master communist playwright Bertolt Brecht brings here about the pressures to recant brought on Galileo by the Catholic Church in the 1500's.And for what crime? For merely bringing out facts about the nature of the world and its place in the universe that are taken as commonplaces, even by children, today.

Brecht himself certainly knew about such pressures. Although in public, at least, Brecht was a fairly orthodox Stalinist he had his private moments of doubt. Certainly some of the themes in his plays stretch the limits of the orthodox `socialist realist' cultural program. Thus the strongest part of the play is the struggle between an individual who is onto something new about the world and an institution that saw that such a discovery would wreak havoc on its claims to centrality. Every once in a while a section of humankind turns inward on itself like that and here the Church was no exception. Damn, the fight against such obscurantism is the price that we pay for some sense of human progress. Except, as in the case of the Catholic Church, it should not have taken 300 years to admit the error. Know this. We have to defend the Galileos of the world against the rise of obscurantism. And in this play Brecht has done his part to honor that commitment.

** 1/2 (**** for the play, zero for Bentley's comments)
Galileo is presented from the time of his first findings with which Mother Church took offense until twenty years after his recantation. While the play mainly focuses on Galileo and how his own views toward his work affect him and those around him, we're not allowed to go away without understanding how those views also affected the Italian society around him; as with all things, the subversion to be found in Galileo's discovery that the Earth revolves around the Sun instead of vice-versa seeps into the public mind, much to the Church's dismay. But at its heart, the play is about the man himself and those around him. Galileo himself, historically accurate or not, is a convincing character, and his family, friends, and supporters are also very well-drawn (with the arguable exception of his daughter, who never seems to really flesh out and become a believable human being; her actions and reactions are predictable and wooden). Whatever the message underlying, and whether the reader agrees with it or not, Galileo is first and foremost a decent piece of drama. Leave Bentley's preface until after you've drawn your own conclusions. ... Read more

Product Description
A billingual collection showing the range of Brecht's poetry, from the early Manual of Piety to the late Songs, Poems, and Choruses, including songs from his theater works. Translated and introduced by H.R. Hays.
... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Baal is Brilliance
Brecht's language is melting. The plot resembles that of Chekhov'sPlatonov, only more poetic. Is one of Brecht's best plays, oftenunderrated. Highly recommended by this reader. ... Read more

Product Description
Mother Courage and Her Children is a classic in the repertory of Western theater. Written in response to the outbreak of World War II, this "chronicle play" of the Thirty Years War follows one of Brecht's most enduring characters, Courage, as she trails the armies across Europe, selling provisions from her canteen wagon. However, Courage pays the highest price of all. One by one, her children are devoured by violence, but she will not give up her livelihood-the wagon and the war. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

An appalling translation
What were Penguin thinking? "Mother Courage and her Children" is a German-language play set in the 1600s. There is therefore no excuse for having one character turn to another to say "Bob's your uncle" within the opening lines. When reading this play, we are supposed to be hearing the voices of German peasants and soldiers. However, I found myself listening to what sounded like north-of-England coal-miners. (Perhaps this was translator John Willett's clever rendering of the 'Verfremdungseffekt'. If so, it has certainly succeeded in alienating this reader.) Within the first two scenes, we hear Mother Courage herself using such choice verbiage as:

"Talk proper to me, do you mind, and don't you dare say I'm pulling your leg in front of my unsullied children, 'taint decent, I got no time for you. My honest face, that's me licence with the Second Regiment, and if it's too difficult to read there's nowt I can do about it."

Talk proper, indeed. It gets worse. Here is another dollop of Yorkshire pudding for the reader to chew on:

"My eldest boy. It's two years since I lost sight of him, they pinched him from me on the road, must think well of him if the general's asking him to dinner, and what kind of a dinner can you offer? Nowt."

The dinner, it seems, is a dog's dinner. So awful was this translation that I soon wound up buying the Eyre Methuen edition (with Eric Bentley translating). Compare-and-contrast the two translations:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

--Scene 1:--
EYRE METHUEN:
"Stay here. You're never happy till you're in a fight. He has a knife in his boot and he knows how to use it."

PENGUIN:
"Stop there! You varmint! I know you, nowt but fights. There's a knife down his boot. A slasher, that's what he is."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

--Scene 2:--
EYRE METHUEN:
"Dear God, it's my Eilif!"

PENGUIN:
"Jesus Christ, it's my Eilif."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

--Scene 2:--
EYRE METHUEN:
"Listen. When a general or a king is stupid and leads his soldiers into a trap. they need the virtue of courage."

PENGUIN:
"Look, s'pose some general or king is bone stupid and leads his men up shit creek, then those men've got to be fearless, there's another virtue for you."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So it was obvious by the end of Scene 2 that the cause was lost. I skipped to the end to see did it get any better. Nope:

--Scene 12:--
EYRE METHUEN:
"I hope I can pull the wagon by myself. Yes, I can manage. There's not much inside it now."

PENGUIN:
"Hope I can pull the cart along by meself. Be all right, nowt much inside it."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

But why should we expect any better from this edition? No less than four different writers contribute three prefatory essays before the play has even started. They contain such aeroboard passages as:

"... perhaps no other literary or performative work has so relentlessly and ruthlessly engaged in such a critical-aesthetic experiment on war."

"Brecht understood, well before Anthony Swofford in his 2003 Gulf War I chronicle 'Jarhead', that all performative discourse on war, even the most antiwar, never rises above 'pornography' - hence the dangerous high-wire act Brecht performs with Mother Courage and its setting within the Thirty Years war."

And in case the clanking prose of the first quote didn't make enough of an impression on you, the next page reminds the reader that:
"For such a relentless and ruthlessly intellectual and emotional piece, it is a stunningly simple story."

Leaving aside the fact that Swofford wrote a memoir - which was therefore nothing to do with the 'performative' world, Brecht's "aesthetic and critical enterprise" was clearly about as dangerous as the consumption of a low-fat yoghurt. But the central problem here is the translation. We all know that verisimilitude was hardly Brecht's number one priority: that's no excuse, however, for Willett's trashing of the German language. The most important question facing any reader is how much value they will get from this translation. The answer is: nowt.
... Read more

Product Description
Brutal, scandalous, perverted, yet humorous, hummable, and with a happy ending- Bertolt Brecht's revolutionary masterpiece The Threepenny Opera is a landmark of modern drama that has become embedded in the Western cultural imagination. Through the love story of Polly Peachum and "Mack the Knife" Macheath, the play satirizes the bourgeois of the Weimar Republic, revealing a society at the height of decadence and on the verge of chaos. Complemented with music by Kurt Weill, it was one of the earliest and most successful attempts to introduce jazz into the theater, and the song "Mack the Knife" became one of the most popular and widely recorded songs of the twentieth century. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Just Say No to Mac the Knife
Reading the German playwright Bertolt Brecht today is like reading some medieval theologian whose works were once considered inspired and were an authentic reflection of his times but whose world-view has become so outdated that to comprehend him now requires an effort of will prefaced by extensive historical analysis. The music and the dialogue may still amuse, but the message has become stale and barely comprehensible.

Macheath, more commonly known as "Mac the Knife," made famous by Louis Armstrong's rendition, is not merely the chief protagonist of this "beggar's opera," and the vicious leader of a criminal gang, but is intended by Brecht to be the pre-eminent "bourgeois phenomenon." Reliable only in his duplicity, wealthy only in his criminal reputation and police connections, Macheath is the inevitable result of the workings of the ideological "superstructure" of capitalism, which, in Brecht's Marxian view, causes people to objectify human relations in the quest for short-term profit.

Like most Marxists, Brecht's Marxism is as deep and unquestioned as that of any religious zealot. His goal is to transform the theater from a mere medium of passive amusement for well-endowed bourgeois patrons into a field of action where the players act upon the theater-goers and engage them in the acting process, forcing them to gaze into a mirror and confront their own flawed participation in the "capitalist" economic system. Brecht even shows the elitism of classic Marxists, convinced despite all evidence to the contrary that they alone held the keys to the secrets of history and the salvation of Mankind, by stating that his technique of projecting scene-titles onto well-lit boards to introduce the play's songs is an attempt at "literarization of the theater," as if the average middle-class theater-goer in Berlin in 1928 had yet to learn to read.

In the end, Brecht's Three-Penny Opera is not about art, or the theater, and much less about the London lower-classes where the Opera ostensibly takes place, but about semi-religious proselytizing. He wishes to convert, not educate or entertain. Unfortunately, the Marxian faith of simple economic determinism that he propounds was already fading by the time of the Weimar Republic, having been superseded by successive waves of philosophical innovation that explicitly rejected (Friedrich Nietzsche) or implicitly undermined (Martin Heidegger) the Marxist view, and was replaced among most Marxists by Lenin's conspiratorial Communism during the 1890's. Reading the Three-Penny Opera today is like opening one's door to a wandering Jehovah's Witness. One may have a rousing conversation, but the topic and the purpose of the exchange are pre-determined, and the conversants will soon be reduced to fruitless attempts to refute each other's arguments with snippets of scriptural dogma.

On The Threepenny Opera
Bawdy, facetious, and unapologetically bleeding hearted, The Threepenny Opera is Bertolt Brecht's most playful and accessible critique of Western society.

AN IMPORTANT LESSON IN OUR AGE OF CORRUPT GLOBALIZATION AND "FREE TRADE AGREEMENTS"
and our local crime as well.

The Threepenny Opera is so well known and sought after (without many taking the time seriously to study it) that it can be pricey here on the open amazonian market. Don't go for the collector's editions; go for the one you can throw into a pocket and pull out and read. Get the book you will read.

Grove once more, like Beckett, comes to the rescue. Grove (and its Black Cat Evergreen extension) over forty years ago was noted for alone publishing what others would not. Over forty years later Grove's mass market editions still make available to us what otherwise might be out of reach. Bertolt Brecht, the banned playwright, remains here easily acquired, and read.

Certainly this is a bare bones edition. Other critical editions and essays are avaialble, but this is something very portable and readable. For instance for critical essays you might find Bertolt Brecht and Critical Theory: Marxism, Modernity and the Threepenny Lawsuit of interest. The Threepenny Opera (Penguin Classics) may contain more supplementary materials (I do not know). But I find what is supplied here adequate for now, and for reading.

We find here the lyrics to the songs at the proper place in the play, but not Kurt Weil's music. We do have a deeply moving (in the end) and eloquently written Foreword by Lotte Lenya who created her career here, and whose definitive presentation may yet be seen in The Threepenny Opera - Criterion Collection.

We also have included here the excellent stage notes to the actors by the author, Bertolt Brecht, who after general political and philosophical comments about the dramatic arts, gives precise suggestions for staging his play, including never to cut the horse in the end.

In fact, he gives some very good direction for our only surviving widespread and popular form of live dramatic entertainment - the local karaoke: "The actor must not only sing but show a man who is singing. He does not attempt so much to project the emotional content of the song (can one offer others food which one has already eaten?) as to display gestures which are, so to speak, the customs and usages of the body. To this end, he would do well, when studying his part, to use not the words of the text, but common current forms of speech which express similar meanings in the everyday idiom. So as far as the melody is concerned, he need not follow it blindly; there is a way of speaking-against-the-music which can be very effective just because of an obstinate matter-of-factness, independent of and incorruptible by the music and rhythm. If he drops into the melody, this must be an event; to emphasize this, the actor can show clearly his own delight in the melody (pp. 106-107)." SO next time you are forced at a wedding, etc., to sing Karaoke, just read it, against the music, until discovering a section you enjoy singing, and make it show!

I avoid the story for now, as it should be well known to everyone. As Lenya's foreword recounts well, Brecht based this play on an excellent and popular work from the early 1700's by John Gay which mocked the official extortion and theft by the London aristocracy. These well sanctioned thieves and immoral organized crime was thinly disguised with the trade of much poorer (as less royally favored) thieves who were liable for the courts for not having received royal license and monopolies (at a price). That earlier play is called The Beggar's Opera, By John Gay; To Which Is Added the Music To Each Song, available now in several editions, and also a DVD production starring the Who's Roger Daltrey at John Gay - The Beggar's Opera / Jonathan Miller · John Eliot Gardiner · Roger Daltrey · English Baroque Soloists. Yale's ubiquitous Harold Bloom also offers a critical edition at John Gay's the Beggar's Opera (Bloom's Modern Critical Interpretations).

Please read this book, as being the most easily available, and open yourself for further study of this work and related works, including the interesting remarks on the evils of corporate capitalist globalization which close Sacramentum Caritatis: el Sacramento de la Caridad: una Exhortacion Apostolica Postsinodal. This present work available in a variety of translations (of varying literalness or free translation and interpretation) and formats, including Die Dreigroschenoper: Berlin 1930 and The Threepenny Opera (1954 New York Cast) (Blitzstein Adaptation).

The Truest transaltion
It is also the best, gutteral and earthy, this transaltion had audiences and critics cheering in 1977. So why is the recording re-release on CD being blocked by the Weill Estate?

IN THE MATTER OF ONE MAC THE KNIFE
I have reviewed some of the Communist master playwright Bertolt Brecht's later more consciously political and didactic plays elsewhere in this space. The play under review is an earlier work, before he fully committed himself to communism, and is an adaptation of John Gay's 18th century Beggar's Opera to the modern theater. The subject at hand is a look at the way those in the lower depths of society survive under emergent capitalist conditions, especially the main character, one MacHealth a.k.a. Mac the Knife. As such Brecht's adaptation has given no end of problems for those critics who want to claim it for the communist cause. It is far too universal in it sentiment about human nature in the capitalist era and therefore properly is a transitional to his later more consciously partisan works like The Measures Taken and The Mother. Thus one should take it for is own worth as a look at survival in a seemingly Hobbesian world.

The plot line is rather simply-MacHealth, a former British imperial soldier, has struck out on his own in dog-eat dog London and has created a name for himself as a master criminal and seducer of the ladies. Other forces including the constabulary, a small disreputable but conniving businessman and, let us be politically correct here, some sexual workers combine in an attempt to deprive Mac of life and limb. However luck and a royal coronation combine to thwart those best laid plans. All of this is performed in a light operatic format that allows Brecht to wax poetic at humanity's plight through a series of sharply-etched songs in which he collaborated with the legendary Kurt Weill.

Above I referred to some controversy about Brecht's intention in this work. That the roguish, incipient capitalist MacHealth is saved in the end through royal intervention has caused some commentators to argue for the organic connection between the rising capitalist class and the monarchy in England. Others have noted the similarities in appetite between the lumpenproletariat element as represented by MacHealth and his criminal crew and the developing capitalism of the time. I think that both views overdraw what one can take out of Gay's story or Brecht's adaptation. This story line is much more conducive to a generalized treatment on the nature of survival in a world that has broken from its agrarian past and has not yet stabilized it bourgeois norms of propriety. Some of these same characteristics were played out in the development of American capitalism, especially in the Wild West. But as presented here this is only a rudimentary outline of where things could go. I stand by my comment in the first paragraph about the unmediated nature of Brecht's take on Gay's little work. He most definitely got more focused on the nature of the human plight under capitalism latter as he developed as a Marxist.
... Read more

Product Description
Galileo Ranks alongside Mother Courage and Mr. Puntila as one of Brecht’s most intensely alive, human, and complex characters. In Life of Galileo, the great Renaissance scientist is in a brutal struggle for freedom from authoritarian dogma. Unable to satisfy his appetite for scientific investigation, he comes into conflict with the Inquisition and must publicly renounce his theories, though in private he goes on working on his revolutionary ideas. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

A Very Good Hands-On Dramatic Exercise for AP Students
The "Life of Galileo" made an excellent dramatic presentation for my AP Modern Euro History course to read.I would only advise that students take several roles (but be careful their multiple personas don't appear together in the same scene) because of the large cast of characters and that a teacher select only certain scenes from the play due to its length.The scenes with Cardinal Barberini make especially good read-aloud dramatizations.

Galileo - Science vs. the Vatican circa 1600
The plot, though fictionalized, resembles the basic outline of Galileo's life - Galileo used a new invention, the telescope, to empirically validate the Copernican model of the solar system. The universe doesn't actually revolve around the Earth, the Earth is just another planet that revolves around the Sun. Members of the clericy object to this. Some don't accept it since it contradicts their reading of the bible, others accept it but don't want the people to know because it will undermine their understanding of the world.

If the basic structure of the universe isn't they way they've been told, what else might be different? Could people live differently? Is the rule of the Church, Kings, not divinely ruled either? These are just a couple of the conundrums the play gives you to think about and always with both sides making very strong cases.

It sounds a little didactic put this way but it's an entertaining play. Galileo is portrayed as an Earthy character. He likes good food and being able to do as he pleases.

Aside from Galileo the other characters are also very well drawn, his daughter Virginia, his pupil Andrea, Cosimo De Medici, Cardinal Barberini.

All in all it's a interesting read with a lot of food for thought. Brecht gives you both drama and ideas and he does so quite suavely. Highly recommended.

Can a "Historical" Play Be Dated?
So it seems with Brecht's "Life of Galileo", a thoroughly fictionalized portrayal of events in the 1600s that sounds, in the English translation, like a TV dramatization from the 1950s. But the translation is fair to the original, which sounds like German of the 1930s. I have trouble imagining how this play could be staged. If it were in early Baroque costumes, the language would sound utterly anachronistic. Perhaps modern dress would work better - a setting in Somerville, moving to Cambridge, and then to Deerfield, all in Massachusetts with appropriate Bay State accents. Brecht's political/philosophical message in this play may also seem dated, but I don't intend to explicate it here.

Yes, I am aware of Brecht's celebrated "Verfremdungseffekt" and I'm willing to concede that the anachronistic nature of this play is intended. But there are some catches. Brecht himself worked on the English version which was staged by the actor Charles Laughton as a 'realistic' drama. The alienation-effect couldn't have been prominent in that production. This is a richly annotated and comparative edition in English, with two complete versions of the play and with ample notes, including comments by Brecht that disclaim the tragic nature of Galileo's recantation and house-imprisonment.

Any play about Galileo is bound to be a play about Free Speech. Brecht's play is also about the responsibility of scientists - or the irresponsibility perhaps. It seems clear that Brecht understood that Galileo's persecutors were right, that new knowledge is inherently dangerous to old accomodations of society, that astronomy and Christian beliefs are incompatible. My 17th C avatar, Giordano Bruno, doesn't strut the boards in this drama, but his execution by the Roman Inquisition is a frequent topic. Bruno was possibly the first human to grasp infinity, to understand that an infinite universe can't have begun and can't end. Even Galileo, the real man with his telescope, fell short of Bruno's intuition. The core of Brecht's play is the battle-to-the-death between comforts of established religious customs and the potential of a future without religion.

If I were a stage director or a dramaturge, I'd take huge liberties with this play. I'd switch "heroes" from Galileo to Charles Darwin, with a contrafactual persecution of Darwin by an American HUAC. Brecht would understand; anything that forces an audience to react is good drama. ... Read more

Product Description

"...this impressive selection of Bertolt Brecht's poetry...roughly 500 poems...shows convincingly that his ouevre is one of the major poetic achievements of the present century. The editing, with excellent notes, excerpts from Brecht's own views about poetry and Mr. Willett's concise introduction is exemplary. Most important, the translations by 35 poets, among them H.R. Hayes, Peter Levi, Christopher Middleton, and Naomi Replansky, maintain a high standard of accuracy and often convey a very clear idea of the texture and feeling of the German." --Stephen Spender,The New York Times Book Review

Customer Reviews (2)

Brilliant poems
These poems are brilliant and inspiring because they were written by a socialist.They were written to make you think about the system.

Questions by a Worker Who Reads is one of my favourite poems.Thefreeways, offices, electricity system and everything else in ourcivilization were not built by politicians or company executives - theywere built by workers.

Brecht's poetry may be greater than his plays.
Bertolt Brecht has acquired the same status as those other artists whose work is known, but not appreciated.Like Faulkner, Joyce and Proust, he has become transmuted into an adjective; even worse, he has followers who describe themselves as "Brechtian" and who are happy to discuss his theories of drama instead of the dramas themselves. But things get even worse when you get closer to the man himself, for there is a wealth of evidence that "der arme B.B." was, in fact, a conscienceless thief who stole credit from everyone with whom he worked and, in particular, from the women he charmed into professional and emotional liaisons.Add to this his craven attitude towards Stalin, and his theories of epic theater seem to be, at the very least, a gross exercise in self-deception. All very off-putting.But his poetry is a different matter.Brecht approaches the reader without the arrogance of a theorist interested in instructing the audience how to think.He is more candid, both personally and politically, willing to condemn his own weaknesses and, in his later years, those of the movement that he had defended at any cost.And, most importantly, his poetry is fresh, direct, cutting and beautiful, even in translation.This is a volume that those who are interested in writing poetry should have. ... Read more

Product Description
Radical Thinkers Classic Editions is a selection of Verso’s leadingtitles, celebrating forty years of New Left Books and Verso. Hardbackand embossed with foil, these are essential new editions of thehighlights from four decades of uncompromising, radical publishing.The most remarkable aesthetic debatesin European cultural history, with anafterword by Fredric Jameson.No other country and no other period has produced a tradition of major aesthetic debate to compare with that which unfolded in German culture from the 1930s to the 1950s. In Aesthetics and Politics the key texts of the great Marxist controversies over literature and art during these years are assembled in a single volume. They do not form a disparate collection but a continuous, interlinked debate between thinkers who have become giants of twentieth-century intellectual history. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

an invaluable volume
This is a well arranged volume of the essays essential to Marxist criticism from the 1930's to the 1950's.The essayists are all criticalcontributions are summed-up, and their current relevance traced, in abrilliant conclusion by Frederic Jameson, perhaps the most importantMarxist critic writing today.I like this volume because the choice ofessays is great and the selections are placed in a chronological,point-counterpoint format so that the 'conversation' is easy to follow. The essays are mainly concerned with the realism/modernism dialectic. Lukacs lauds the realism of Balzac and Mann as the exemplary approach tohistoricism in the novel.Adorno posits that high modernism, though itseems apolitical, provides the most ominous image of capitalism, and thatit is thus the more viable revolutionary aesthetic.The other essayistschart the space between these (seemingly) polarized perspectives andprovide important insights into the more mystical (Benjamin) and pragmatic(Brecht) applications of Marxist theory.Adorno takes Benjamin to task fornot thinking dialectically.And, between Brecht and Adorno, Lukacs takes abeating for his reactionary attachment to the bourgeois realist novel.ButBenjamin and Lukacs are both vindicated in Jameson's balanced conclusion. This is a short but invaluable volume for anyone interested in Marxistaesthetic theory. ... Read more

Product Description
Bertolt Brecht's work journals trace his years of exile (the period from 1934 to 1955) in Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and America, as well as his return, via Switzerland, to East Berlin. These journals include his perceptive and at times polemical critiques of other writers and intellectuals, but the accounts of his own writing practice provide the greatest insights into the creation of his dramatic work as well as the development of his politics and theories about epic theatre.

There are memorable and revealing passages: about D'Annunzio and Ezra Pond, about the bombing of Germany, about the Greek epigrams, about the Battle of Britain, about the death of Margarete Steffin, about Mrs. Wriggles the family dog, and about the precariousness of life in Los Angeles.

Now available in paperback, and illustrated by photographs and press cuttings collected by Brecht, the Journals offer frequently surprising and revelatory perspectives on the life and thought of one of the most influential writers of the century. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The Frankfurt Scholarsand Bertolt Brecht.
A very short observation: Every one that wants to explore the reasons of why Adorno and Brecht were water and oil, why Brecht was very interested in dialectical relationships between wave and matter or why Brecht never endedat Frankfurt receiving three naked students meanwhile a director, can'tmiss this book. ... Read more

Product Description
Highly acclaimed when it was first published in 1967, Frederic Ewen's monumental biographical study of Bertolt Brecht has long been out of print. In response to national demand, Citadel Press is proud to reissue this complete and unabridged text.

Of "Bertolt Brecht: His Life, His Art, His Times, the critics wrote:

"The finest critical study of Brecht to date. This book is at least a worthy appreciation of a towering, poetic and dramatic genius." -Los Angeles Times

"What is particularly striking about Frederic Ewen's biography is that it conveys the excitement, the turmoil and triumph of Brecht's career." -The New York Times

"The great thing about Frederic Ewen's luminous biography is that it gently frees Brecht from the bear hugs of the bigots and restores him to us as a whole man, his youth contained in his age." -The Nation ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

From the Publisher-

FROM THE PUBLISHER
Highly acclaimed when it was first published in 1967, Ewen's monumental biographical study of Bertolt Brecht is "the finest critical study of Brecht to date. . . . a worthy appreciation of a towering, poetic and dramatic genius" ("Los Angeles Times").

BERTOLT BRECHT BY EVEN IN SPANISH
I am peruvian and I read the book in Spanish, thanks to a friend who bought it in Buenos Aires.
I am a Bertolt Brecht's researching friend. This is the way I considered him: like a living one working for the theater.
I found the book nearly excellent...but too much condescending at the "human valorization" of our beloved friend. Ewen looks throught his appreciations too much "innocent" in that respect.
And I have a big question. Ewen says that Brecht "got a Medicin degree".
I do not know if this are translation problems but it is the first time (and I search about living Brecht since 1968)I heard about it.... ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

The other facet of Brecht
The author is best known for his theatrical work and poems, while his narrative prose has been underestimated.This collection of 37 short stories (reprinted for Brecht's centenary) shows another facet of Brecht's literatry gift.This is writing with an unpretentious tone and reporting style.The composition of the stories falls into three distinct periods.The Bavarian stories written between 1920 and 1924 treat mainly autobiographical problems of a young man in his early twenties.The Berlin stories written between 1924 and 1933 marks his most intense period in this genre.These stories have a sober and realistic style, thematically dominated by topical issues of the 1920's, aiming to reveal the social behavior of individuals.The third group refers to stories written during Brecht's exile (1937-1940), the first pieces serve as ammunition in the struggle against fascism, and the later ones have a strong socially critical orientation.The reader familiarized with the work of Brecht (poems and plays) will certainly recognize the author's style stamped in these short stories, his determination to represent reality accurately, lack of affectation, anecdotal but with a sense of dread.Quite a treat for a lover of short stories!

Another facet of Bertolt Brecht
The author is best known for his theatrical work and poems, while his narrative prose has been underestimated.This collection of 37 short stories (reprinted for Brecht's centenary) shows another facet of Brecht's literary gift.This is writing with an unpretentious tone and reporting style.The composition of the stories falls into three distinct periods.The Bavarian stories written between 1920 and 1024 treat mainly autobiographical problems of a young man in his early twenties.The Berlin stories written between 1924 and 1933 marks his most intense period in this genre.These stories have a sober and realistic style, thematically dominated by topical issues of the 1920's, aiming to reveal the social behavior of individuals.The third group refers to stories written during Brecht's exile (1937-1940), the first pieces serve as ammunition in the struggle against fascism, and the later ones have a strong socially critical orientation.The reader familiarized with the work of Brecht (poems and plays) will certainly recognize the author's style in these short stories, his determination to represent reality accurately, lack of affectation, anecdotal but with a sense of dread.Quite a treat for a lover of short stories! ... Read more

Product Description

This second volume of Brecht's Collected Plays brings together his two most glittering Berlin successes, The Threepenny Opera and The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny; another of his collaborations with Kurt Weill, the supremely ironic ballet libretto The Seven Deadly Sins; his witty exploration of the malleability of human personality, Man equals Man, and its "interlude for the foyer," The Elephant Calf.

Product Description
Sophocles, Holderlin, Brecht, Malina - four major figures in the world's theatre - have all left their imprint on this remarkable dramatic text. Friedrich Holderlin translated Sophocles into German, Brecht adapted Holderlin, and now Judith Malina has rendered Brecht's version into a stunning English incarnation. Available for the first time in English. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

is this too deep?
i think this book is too deep and meaningful.. it enters too deep into the morals and values of man....

Get it
One in a trilogy, the cat fights in this book between Antigone and her sister should keep you interested for the hour it take to read.for a better understanding of Sophocles wisdom, get the whole trilogy. ... Read more