Bertolt Brecht's Dramatic Theory

PREPARATIONS FOR EAST BERLIN ♦ 235
aesthetic experience to the politics of the real world: “Die Abbildungen
müssen nämlich zurücktreten vor dem Abgebildeten, dem Zusammenleben
der Menschen, und das Vergnügen an ihrer Vollkommenheit soll in das
höhere Vergnügen gesteigert werden, daß die zutage getretenen Regeln in
diesem Zusammenleben als vorläufige und unvollkommene behandelt sind.”
The highest pleasure comes not from any myopic pleasurable contemplation
of theater’s depictions of the world, but from the audience’s awareness, a
result of the process of “Historisierung,” of the provisional and imperfect
nature of what the Organon refers to as “the rules” of the world itself. The
implication is that the laws of a Marxist-Leninist conception of history, “Ge-
setze” that had been or still will be repeatedly invoked in the Messingkauf
complex, dictate that the rules governing specific societies are but provi-
sional. In the Scientific Age, the greatest pleasure, emotional as well as intel-
lectual, is said to come from the recognition of the dialectical nature of social
phenomena. Yet theater is still for Brecht to some considerable extent the in-
strument of that recognition and the final words of the Organon return the
theater to the realm of a new form of “heiteres Betrachten” (“heiter” and
“leicht” are key words in this part of the argument), a form of observation
that is nevertheless part of a process of intervention in the affairs of the
world: “In seinem Theater mag [der Zuschauer] seine schrecklichen und nie
endenden Arbeiten, die ihm den Unterhalt geben sollen, genießen als
Unterhaltung, samt den Schrecken seiner unaufhörlichen Verwandlung.
Hier produziere er sich in der leichtesten Weise; denn die leichteste Weise
der Existenz ist in der Kunst.”
Two paragraphs earlier, the Organon had reminded us “daß es ihre
Aufgabe ist [i.e. the task of all the arts that contribute to the theater], die
Kinder des wissenschaftlichen Zeitalters zu unterhalten, und zwar in
sinnlicher Weise und heiter” (§75). In light of this statement, one might in-
quire of Brecht’s theoretical work whether it also successfully responds to a
comparable imperative to give pleasure, above all “in sinnlicher Weise,”
which in this context means the blending of pleasure with instruction. If the
paragraphs of Kleines Organon are intended as prolegomena to an “Ästhetik
des wissenschaftlichen Zeitalters,” then arguably they too should communi-
cate the sensuous pleasure of learning through discovery that epitomizes the
best of Brechtian theater. Certainly, some passages do seek to convey the
spirit of “lustvolles Lernen” combined with a sense of newfound power
brought about by knowledge and the awareness that conditions are imper-
manent and hence changeable. In §56, a short postscript to the argument
that “ohne Ansichten und Absichten kann man keine Abbildungen
machen,” Brecht conveys just such a mood of elation when describing the
triumphant sense of potential that the actor’s “Wahl des Standpunkts,” his
adoption of the right political stance towards the material, brings with it:
“Wie die Umgestaltung der Natur, so ist die Umgestaltung der Gesellschaft