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  • The Concept of Man in Bertolt Brecht
  • Humphrey Milnes (bio)
Humphrey Milnes

Associate Professor of German, University College, University of Toronto

notes

1. This poem is dated New York, autumn 1946, and is printed in the second special volume of the the periodical Sinn und Form that was dedicated to Brecht, vol. 9 (Rütten & Loening, Berlin, 1957), 123. The translation, like all others in the article, is by the author of the article.

2. Literary and Philosophical Criticism, ed. John Cairncross (London, 1909), 131; quoted by John Willett, The Theatre of Bertolt Brecht (London, 1959), 179.

3. Gespräch auf der Probe, in Bertolt Brecht, Schriften zum Theater (Bibliothek Suhrkamp, Bd. 41, Berlin & Frankfurt a.M., 1957), 286.

4. For a summary treatment of some of these earnest systematizers, see Ronald Gray, Brecht (Edinburgh and London, 1961), 23–7. Later, however, Gray himself points out self-contradictions (71) and “inconsistencies of his theory” (74) as if Brecht’s aesthetics formed a unified but imperfect whole.

5. Schriften zum Theater, 284.

6. Versuche 1–12 (Suhrkamp, Berlin & Frankfurt a.M., 1939), 174 f.

7. Ibid., 195 f.

8. Versuche, Heft 10 (Suhrkamp, Berlin & Frankfurt a.M., 1950), 76 f.

9. Ibid., 20.

10. This poem appears on the back of the dust cover of the Berlin edition, Versuche, Heft 12 (Aufbau Verlag, Berlin, 1953).

11. Some of Brecht’s critics unfortunately fail to qualify as “normally alert audience.” Martin Esslin, for example, breaks down completely when not grappling with a theatre of the absurd, and perversely stands Brecht on his head, inverting normal common sense in the process. He is properly taken to task for his unsubstantiated claim that “the ‘real meaning’ of Brecht’s plays runs counter to the author’s expressed intentions” by Gray, Brecht, 23, 99.

12. Versuche, Heft 9 (Aufbau Verlag, Berlin, 1949), 78 f.

13. Versuche, Heft 14 (Aufbau Verlag, Berlin, 1955), 74.

14. Ronald Gray gives a full and sensitive critique of the ambivalence of the Galileo character in his Brecht, 83–8.

15. Hundert Gedichte (Aufbau Verlag, Berlin, 1951), 303 ff.

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