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1962 BOOK REvIEWS 109 SEVEN PLAYS, by Bertolt Brecht, edited with an introduction by Eric Bentley, Grove Press, New York, 1961, 587 pp. Price $8.50. PLAYS, VOL. I, by Bertolt Brecht. Methuen Company, Ltd., London, 1961, 345 pp. Price $4.50. A visitor to the Theater am Schiffbauerdam, better known as the Brecht Theater, in East Berlin will be at the same time impressed by the opulence of his surroundings (the interior of the theater is built in a highly ornate gingerbread style best described as late nineteenth century rococo), gratified by the proficiency of the performances, and edified ,by the assurance that he is watching productions the definitive quality of which is guaranteed by the carefully preserved imprint of Brecht's personal touch. If he ventures into the snack bar on the mezzanine he will also be either gladdened or saddened, depending upon his personal political opinions, by the spectacle of a large red banner on which Brecht's signature is embroidered un9-er the following lege~d: PRAISE OF COMMUNISM It is rational-anyone can understand it. It is easy. You're not one of the slave-drivers, you can grasp it. It is good for you; inquire about it. The fools call it foolish, and the dirt-grubbers call it dirty. But it is against dirt, and against foolishness. The slave-drivers call it criminal. But we know: It is the end of all crime. It is not madness, but The end of madness. It is not the riddle, It is the solution. It is the simple thing, That is difficult to bring about. Without the-to us--damning title this could be a description of any humanitarian and egalitarian philosophy. The characteristic thing about Brecht's work is that plot and structure are always primary: the ideological slant is always an external addition which has nothing to do with the basic dramatic conflict. A good example of this is The Caucasian Chalk Circle. Essentially the play is a parable about human goodness. Brecht's point is the same as that of the anonymous ancient Chinese author from whom he adapted it: that possession is not by abstract right but by merit. To those who have earned the right to possess by love and by work, and not to those who have inherited or legally acquired should the possessions go. In both versions presented here (the American one by Eric Bentley and Maja Apelman and the English by James and Tania Stem with W. H. Auden) an opening scene is added to point the moral in the direction of Communist ideology. Instead of opening straight into the ancient parable, as a previous translation by Bentley and Apelman also published by Grove Press does, these versions open with a prologue in which two groups of Russian peasants discuss, with the mawkish brotherliness typical of works of social idealism "written down" to the common man, which collective· farm shall have a valuable piece of land which has been recaptured from the Nazis. The wise old government-sponsored storyteller then recites the parable of the Caucasian Chalk Circle to show that the land should go to the group that can do the most with it rather than to the 110 MODERN DRAMA May group that formerly owned it. By adding this scene Brecht has changed the play from a universally applicable parable to a specifically beamed polemic. The play then loses its interest by being put into a different frame of reference, since the situation on which it is based no longer exists or has lost the immediate interest granted to it by its topicality. What all this is leading up to is the problem a translator of an author such as Brecht faces. The translator has to decide which of the many versions of the play to use. Usually this is quite simple: one uses the author's latest version. But Brecht was not simply a reviser always seeking to improve his plays from the artistic standpoint with each successive revision. He was not, strictly speaking, a reviser at all, but rather a master builder who inserted and took out bricks, blocks, and struts whenever the spirit or...

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