‘Daring, Unusual Things’

Bertolt Brecht’s Photo-Epigrams as Poetic Inventions

Datos Bibliográficos

ID20249200
AutoresAli Alizadeh (0000-0002-7640-6301, Monash University, autor de correspondencia)
Año2019
Volumen8
Número2
Páginas73
Fecha de publicación2019-04-10
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaHumanities (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 2076-0787 • E-ISSN: 2076-0787
EditorialMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/h8020073
OpenAlexW2939772744
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas2
Referencias citadas6

This essay explores the aesthetics of Bertolt Brecht’s compositions of poetry with photography in the so-called photo-epigrams of his 1955 book War Primer. The photo-epigrams have mostly been viewed and appreciated as interventions in photography; but in this essay I aim to show their novelty and efficacy as poetic inventions. To do so, I draw on Karl Marx’s and Walter Benjamin’s views apropos the decline of poetry under modern, industrial capitalism to argue that Brecht, in his photo-epigrams, is responding to—and attempting to counter—a specific problem at the heart of modern poetry: the crisis in perceptibility and accessibility. By coupling poems with photographs—in unique and uniquely politicised ways—Brecht provides a resonant critique of the deadly ideologies of the ruling classes engaged in World War II, as well as a method for addressing the decline in the readability of poetry in the modern era

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Capitalism · Ideology · Linguistics · Literature · Narrative · Novelty · Photography · Poetry · Political science · Politics · Readability · Spoken word · Theology · Visual arts · Art, Politics, and Modernism · Cinema and Media Studies · Law · Philosophy · Walter Benjamin Studies Compilation

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