"Non-Aristotelian" Theater: Brecht's and Plato's Theories of Artistic Imitation

1 COMPARATIVE ? ama Volume 21Fall 1987Number 3 "Non-Aristotelian" Theater: Brecht's and Plato's Theories of Artistic Imitation William E. Gruber The history of literary criticism begins with Plato, but critics have always had trouble coming to terms with Plato's derogatory comments on mimesis. Probably the last major theorist of drama to discuss Plato at length was Sir Philip Sidney—and Sidney's Apology for Poetry, as is well known, does not really address Plato's objections to art. Instead, Sidney circumvents Plato's argument by claiming that the philosopher meant to condemn only the abuse of poetry, not the thing itself. After Sidney, Plato's opinions on drama are usually waived, occasionally ridiculed . In the twentieth century especially it is difficult to find sympathetic commentary on Plato. Even Jonas Barish (who takes antitheatricalism very seriously indeed) imagines Plato to have crippled Western drama.1 As far as most people who write about drama are concerned, Plato is an aboriginal killjoy. Far from being irrelevant or naive, however, Platonic mimeWILLIAM E. GRUBER is Associate Professor of English at Emory University. He is the author of Comic Theaters (1986) as well as a number of previous articles in Comparative Drama and other journals. 199 200Comparative Drama tic theory is ideally suited to certain modern theaters which are "out of sync" with the classical (Aristotelian) critical vocabulary , a vocabulary developed to accommodate illusionist acting and individualistic models for character.2 In particular, Brecht's theater—both plays and criticism—are implicated in Platonic thought. I shall not attempt to locate specific "echoes" or "traces" of Plato's works in Brecht's; there is little evidence of such direct influence. Instead, I want to describe the elements essential to Brecht's theater and to show how they can be fully appreciated only within the overall logic of a "Platonic" poetics.3 Specifically, a few topics common to both men's writings on theater are the actor-audience relationship, the place of identification in the poetic performance, and the kind of educative process, whether affective or intellectual, that drama accomplishes. Non-Aristotelian Theater. We can begin with Brecht's stubborn rejection of Aristotle. The Poetics must have been central to Brecht's intellectual and artistic development, or else he would never have considered his own theater "non-Aristotelian." Brecht repeatedly insisted that his plays were somehow an answer to "Aristotelian" drama, a term which, before Brecht, referred simply to a familiar set of formal structural principles or neoclassical "rules." Of course it had always been possible to write plays which did not obey Aristotle's supposed precepts, especially insofar as the so-called three unities were concerned. Before Brecht, however, the term "Aristotelian" had no contrary. Like several of Brecht's important inventions, the concept of "non-Aristotelian" theater has proved more cryptic than enlightening . The term has caused much less controversy than other Brechtian notions—Gestus, say, or Verfremdungseffekt—but it is no less problematic. At first glance it appears that Brecht uses the terms with little consistency and less logic. In general, Brecht uses "Aristotelian" and "non-Aristotelian" as broad classificatory adjectives in an attempt to bring order to a great deal of incongruous material.4 Depending on the context, the terms refer to periods of theater history, to types of plays, to actors' performance styles, even to responses of spectators. Thus he writes, for example, that Oedipus Rex, The Emperor Jones, and Broadway burlesques are all "Aristotelian" performances and that sound films (also "Aristotelian") are "one of the blooming examples of international narcotics trade."5 William E. Gruber201 Even Brecht's staunchest advocates rarely accept such comments at face value. At best Brecht seems naive, at worst utterly blinded by Marxist dogma. It is as if Brecht believes "Aristotelian " theater to be a kind of sickness or addiction that requires a cure or at least an antidote. Especially among Brecht's English-speaking interpreters, the overwhelming temptation is to assume that his theory and his actual theater are in conflict. Could a man so deeply committed to the theater really have despised so much of it? No, surely he must have been mistaken in his attacks on conventional "dramatic...