‘Daring, Unusual Things’
Bertolt Brecht’s Photo-Epigrams as Poetic Inventions
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20249200 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ali Alizadeh (0000-0002-7640-6301, Monash University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 8 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 73 |
| Publication date | 2019-04-10 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Humanities (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2076-0787 • E-ISSN: 2076-0787 |
| Publisher | MDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT) |
| DOI | 10.3390/h8020073 |
| OpenAlex | W2939772744 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 6 |
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
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2024 - 2026 (3) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |