Brecht Today

In 1946, Brecht wrote this four-line poem entitled Epitaph for M in memory of the Soviet writer Vladimir Mayakovsky, who committed suicide following political attacks his two comedies The Bug and The Steam Bath. These plays provide a bitter and ironic critique of the assimilation of the revolution by the middle class and serve as a warning against a facile belief in progress. Mayakovsky, like Brecht, was a communist without a party card. Although both writers could write only on commission from the party, their precarious status did not hinder them from criticizing the policies of the party as well as praising its goals. Their critiques were never simply blunt attacks, but were handled lightly with wit and satire. However, the party officials did not appreciate their critical irony, but preferred instead the sympathetic tracts of bourgeois authors. Thus, the grotesque historical situation developed in which Brecht and Mayakovsky were criticized by the party for pointing out its mistakes and discussing its social contradictions, while their middle-class colleagues were rewarded for passively bowing to its dictates

Aesthetics · Art · Critical Theory and Philosophy · History · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society · Theatre and Performance Studies

• Notes on the German Theatre Crisis

  David Hughes, David Ashley Hughes•TDR/The Drama Review•2007

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• A feminist reconsideration of the Brecht/Lukács debates

  Janelle Reinelt•Women & Performance a journal of…•1994

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