The Brecht Yearbook ed. by M. van Dijk (review)

306 LETTERS IN CANADA 1996 project: a new Iserviceable subjectivity' that poses no threat to the postwar power elite in counselling a detachment transcending politics, and a lure for the disillusioned readers of the day in the safe haven of the poem's 'extraordinary' art, a 'beguiling demonstration of aesthetic power.' In this program, the poem was hugely successful (aided by its academic handmaids and caretakers of note). As though to prove the point, the author considers worthy of report a fact 'recalled by no less an authority than Dr Jean Sutherland Boggs,' 'a Canadian mandarin of the highest order': the poemwas read out inher English classes at the University ofToronto in the 19408 'with the reverence usually reserved for scripture, a kind ofscripture that especially ministered to the shattered spirit of the higher bourgeoisie.' As Cooper articulates this phenomenon in his concluding chapter, 'for the intelligentsia of the late 19405 and 19505, Eliot's Four Quartets can be seen to function as a benign and voluntary programme of re-education for lost souls.' An Wlspeakable fate for such a poem, to serve such an end. How we make our way back to Four Quartets from the insidious trap of this argument is a question. This book does not allow for the autonomous voice of the poet, the critic, or the poem. It reads Four Quartets as rhetoric - from the ground up - a rhetoric that 'assumes a specific subject position for its readers' and is replete with strategies and 'bona fides' in order to win mandarin assent. Cooper's ultimate disservice is to read Four Quartets as a 'poem that had to seem to mean' its pluralism, veiling dogma in a cloak of polysemy so as not to put offthe intelligentsia of the day. What would Eliot make of this argument? Or Yeats, who argued the crucial distinction - J we make out of the quarrel with others, rhetoric, but out of the quarrel with ourselves, poetry. Unlike the rhetoricians, who get a confident voice from remembering the crowd they'have won or may'win, we sing amid an uncertainty .' Returning to the poem from Cooper's argument, one finds that something of the poem remains - 'the ragged rock in the restless waters.' In Cooper's eyes, the poem is 'merely a monument' to a moment in history. But when one rereads the lines, one's experience escapes such facile definition. 'Waves wash over it and fogs conceal it,' and one is relieved to find that the poem lis what it always was.' (JULIA M. REIBETANZ) M. van Dijk, editor. The Brecht Yearbook, Volume 21 University of Wisconsin Press. x, 334. $30.00 Despite frequent protestations to the contrary, Brecht criticism has never ceased to be dynamic, imaginative, or resourceful. In the past, sporadic complaints of a general state of Brecht exhaustion reflected a perception more typical among members of the media than of the academy. In fact it is true that Brecht scholarship received a series of new impulses in the 1990S through the thorough examination and re-examination of the literary HUMANITIES 307 estates and correspondence of some of Brecht's closest associates and collaborators.'Last butnot least, the publication ofJolm Fuegi's iconoclastic and highly controversialbiography Brecht andCompany: Sex, Politics, and the Making of Modern Drama (1994), in which he accused the playwright of being a sexist exploiter of his female collaborators, had the impact of an explosion whose ripple effects will be felt for some time. A good number of the eighteen contributions in this volume go back to papers originally presented at the International Brecht Society's 1995 symposium held in Augsburg, Germany, under the timely theme of 'collective productivity.' Diviq.ed into three main sections entitled 'Brecht and The Others,' 'Music and Production,' and 'Intertext,' followed by a 'Forum' for discussion as well as a section of book reviews, the volume affords an excellent overview of current Brecht research world-wide and helps to disseminate results by prefacing each article with an abstract in French, Spanish, and either English or German. About 60 per cent of the contributions are in English, the rest in German. James K. Lyon's opening article sets the toneby making...