The Form of The Caucasian Chalk Circle

THE FORM OF THE CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE THE POPULARITY OF Weill's music to The Threepenny OPera~ together with the exaggerated claims made for Brecht's work in general , obscured for some time the quality of his two or three finest plays. One of these clearly is The Caucasian Chalk Circle and, although productions are now frequent, we still seem not to have recognized quite where its strength lies. Grusha, of course, has plenty of vitality, and the anarchic humour of Azdak takes to the stage like a seal to water; but beyond this, discussion seldom goes further than surprise at the banality of the prologue or a tribute to the realism of the peasant wedding. Now certainly the play is realistic. Money is needed, almost everything has its price, and Brecht, as always, delights in irony and contradiction. He has a grasp not only of the world of the peasant-what we can touch and smell and taste-but of emotions uncorrupted by sentiment or romantic idealism. This much, however, could be claimed for a very much weaker comedy like Puntila. The distinction of The Caucasian Chalk Circle is the energy with which Brecht's realism has shaped the whole play. It is a vision personal to Brecht, nowhere explicit yet everywhere implied in the dramatic form. The purpose of this essay is to indicate those ways in which the form of The Chalk Circle (structure, characterisation , speech, etc.) expresses and defines Brecht's vision. The text is divided into sections forming a prologue and five Acts.1 (The prologue, though written at the same time as the play, has no organic connexion with it). In production the five Acts fall into two parts, with fifteen or sixteen scenes in the first part and seven or eight in the second. This is not to say that the Act divisions are arbitrary. Most of Urecht's plays are divided only by scenes, and their weakness is often that no larger span is envisaged. In The Chalk Circle the scenes are assembled in significant groups: the Noble Child, the Flight into the Northern Mountains, In the Northern Mountains; the Story of the Judge, the Chalk Circle. Doubtless the stories of Grusha and Azdak could have been presented together rather than consecutively, the action being laid out as a pattern of relationships developing from beginning to end. Nothing, however, would have 1 I have used the text printed in StUcke X (Berlin, 1957). Quotations are from Eric Bentley's revised version (New York, 1966). 195 196 MODERN DRAMA September been further from Brecht's purpose, since development encourages in the audience that absorption in illusion which he steadily sought to avoid. (Emotions should not be used up in the theater when they might be conserved and strengthened for the struggle to change the world.) With rare exceptions he plans the action of a play loosely, arranging it as narrative rather than plot, breaking it down into scenes of a few minutes, and preventing the scenes from gliding into each other. The episodes, he writes in the Little Organum for the Theatre~ 'have to be knotted together in such a way that the knots are easily noticed. The episodes must not succeed one another indistinguishably but must give us a chance to interpose our judgment .'2 Advance, then, rather than development, and advance that should not seem inevitable. The dangers of this method are apparent. It rejects suspense, reduces the possibilities of conflict, and lays the stage open to an aimless dawdle of events. Of Mother Courage it might be said, as Eric Bentley has said of Tristan and Isolde/3 that it seems too long however much you cut it. One would not say this of The Chalk Circle. There are weak places, certainly: the scene between Grusha and the two elegant ladies,4 and the first and third of Azdak's cases as a judge. After each of these the tempo sags, so that the next scene has to start completely cold. What saves the play is its initial momentum (the early scenes are excellent ) and the vigorous personalities of Grusha and Azdak. Just over half way through Brecht launches his...