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Welcoming in the New Millennium: The Possibilities of Brecht's The Days of the Commune for Northern Ireland
- Modern Drama
- University of Toronto Press
- Volume 42, Number 2, Summer 1999
- pp. 176-184
- 10.1353/mdr.1999.0007
- Article
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
Welcoming in the New Millennium: The Possibilities of Brecht's The Days ofthe Commune for Northern Ireland ANNA SEYMOUR As far back as the 1950s, Martin Esslin claimed: The poet within [Brecht] always had to hide behind the MarxisL.. A really creative writer's power springs from sources thallie far below the sphere of conscious and rational thought. In committing himself, such a writer can only commit a relatively unimportant part of his personality. His commitment will furnish him with an incentive to write and it will influence his choice of subject-matter. But as to the substance of what he has to say, the political ties of such a major creative writer will remain relatively irrelevant.I Esslin's position has been thoroughly contested by Peter Brooker,' but, while it might be considered "old-fashioned," variants of Esslin's approach to Brecht proliferate in more covert forms. I want to begin by addressing the contention that either Brecht is not a convinced Marxist or somehow his plays and poetry can be detached from his politics. This assertion not only resorts to a traditional critical approach, namely that art has access to transcendent values and universal meanings that can remove it from its historical and material roots, but also suggests that critics likewise can be above material concerns in an unassailable "neutral" intellectual territory. In reality, critics are products of their own period and communicate as much about themselves as they do about their subject matter. Thus Peter Thomson, in his 1998 monograph on Mother Courage, appears, albeit reluctantly, to adopt the view of Bernard Dort, that one should start by "acknowledging his (Brecht's) lack of relevance ... [and] recognise how tangential he is to the history of the last thirty years.'" Dart's remark surely reflects his attitude towards the "evenements" of his own life. I don't think it is possible to write about Brecht in 1999 without acknowledging his politics and, consequently, taking some view of the events in EastModel 'll Drama, 42 (1999) 176 The Days ofthe Commune in Belfast 177 em Europe since 1989. For some commentators this represented the "end of socialism," and certainly "post-socialism"seems to have joined the canons of postmodernisrn and "post-feminism" and even, in some quarters, "post-ideology ." This bleak prospect has followed the late eighties period of "farewell to the working class'" and "the end of history" thesis.' The contemporary climate would, then, seem hostile for Brecht's work and ideas - indeed, the very nature of everything he tried to achieve. What use is a playwright whose work is predicated on Marxist ideas, who uses the metaphors of history as resonators for the concerns of his own period and explores them through an aesthetic of distancing derived from a political notion of alienation, if history has actually moved on to such an extent that this project is irrelevant? These are questions that all Brechtian scholars have to face, ultimately. It might be pleasurable to speculate on "queering Brecht,'''; to place him within the current debates about perfonnativity,7 or to concentrate on his poetry. Similarly, to claim Brecht for postmodernism requires selective reading. Would it not be better to read. teach. and stage Brecht as a source of discontinuous insight. extracting from his theory and practice what seems most valuable at the time?8 But "better" for what? The panial addresses I have mentioned avoid central issues. In this paper, I want to consider Brecht's place within the contemporary scene, with a panicular focus on his last original play, The Days of the Commune . I shall consider the circumstances that provoked Brecht to write it. Then I shall consider its early history and invite the reader to speculate on the potential of the play for audiences and community participants in Northern Ireland, in the context of preparations for a production in Belfast proposed for the year 2000. My aim will be to assen the continued relevance of Brecht's work and politics and, in panicular, to contend that, precisely because of his insistence on the central notion of the dialectic, his theatre carries within it the ability for self renewal. CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE FIRST PRODUCTION The...