Brecht Plays 8: The Antigone of Sophocles; The Days of the Commune; Turandot or the Whitewasher's Congress: The Antigone of Sophocles , The Days of the Comm (World Classics)
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Wherever possible - with the kind permission of Neil Astley - we have used the translation of Hölderlin’s Antigone which David Constantine undertook for Bloodaxe Books in 2001, modified and adapted to suit Brecht’s own. For the rest, an attempt has been made to homogenise, as Brecht did. The intended result is a like strangeness.
Glossary of Mythological Names and Places (for Antigone)
Acheron: One of the rivers of the Underworld.
Antigone: Daughter of Oedipus and Jocasta.
Ares: God of war.
Argos: Chief city of Argolis in the Peloponnese.
Bacchus: Dionysus.
Bosporus: Straits joining the Black Sea and the Sea of Marmora.
Cadmus: Founder of Thebes.
Castalia: Sacred spring at Delphi.
Cocytus: One of the rivers of the Underworld. Probably confused, by Hölderlin and so by Brecht, with:
Corycia: A cave on Mount Parnassus.
Creon: Brother of Jocasta, ruler of Thebes after the deaths of Polynices and Eteocles.
Danaë: Daughter of Acrisius, imprisoned in a tower by him and there visited by Zeus in the form of a shower of gold.
Dionysus: God of wine and intoxication, closely associated with Thebes.
Dirce: A nymph, a devotee of Dionysus, who gave her name to a stream near Thebes.
Dryas: Father of King Lycurgus.
Eteocles: Son of Oedipus and Jocasta.
Haemon: Son of Creon and Eurydice, betrothed to Antigone.
Ismene: Antigone’s sister.
Ismenus: A stream flowing through Thebes. There was a temple by it in which the ashes of sacrifices were used for divination.
Labdacus: The father of Laius.
Lachmeus, the sons of: Invented by Brecht for a role in a myth he himself invented.
Laius: A king of Thebes, first husband of Jocasta, father of Oedipus.
Lycurgus: A king of the Edonians, a people of Thrace. He was driven mad by Dionysus.
Megareus: Son of Creon and Eurydice.
Menoeceus: Father of Creon and Jocasta.
Niobe: The wife of Amphion, an early king of Thebes. When she boasted that she had more children than Leto they were all killed by Leto’s children, Apollo and Artemis, and she herself in her grief was turned to stone.
Oedipus: Son of Laius and Jocasta.
Pelias: A character in several important Greek myths. Brecht invents another role for him.
Phineus: A king of Salmydessus, his sons were blinded by their stepmother.
Phrygian: Of Phrygia, a district of Asia Minor, here, an epithet of Niobe, who was born there.
Polynices: Brother of Eteocles.
Pontus: The sea, sometimes personified as a son of Gaia the Earth.
Salmydessus: City of Thrace on the Black Sea.
Sardis: Capital of Lydia in Asia Minor, on the gold- and electrum-bearing river Pactolus.
Sipylus: Mountain near Smyrna in Asia Minor.
Tantalus: Famous for his torment, he was a king of Lydia and the father of Niobe.
Thebes: Capital of Boeotia.
Thracian: Of Thrace, in the extreme north-east of Greece.
Tiresias: Blind seer of Thebes, from Cadmus’ time into Creon’s.
Zeus: Chief of the Greek gods.
THE DAYS OF THE COMMUNE
Texts by Brecht
SOLILOQUY OF AN ACTRESS AS SHE MAKES UP
I shall portray a drinker
Who sells her children
In Paris, at the time of the Commune.
I have only five sentences.
But I also have a walk, a walk up the street.
I shall walk like a person liberated
A person whom no one ever wanted
To liberate, except from liquor, and I shall
Turn around, like a drunk afraid
Of being followed, I shall
Turn around and look at the audience.
I have studied my five sentences like documents
Such as you wash with acid in case, beneath the surface writing
There may be other traces. I shall speak each one
Like an accusation
Against me and all who watch me.
If I were thoughtless, I’d make myself up
Like an old tramp, a drinker
A dissolute or an invalid, but I shall
Walk on stage as a fine woman, destroyed
With yellow skin, once soft, now wasted
Once desirable, now repulsive
So that everyone asks: who
Has done this?
[BFA 14, p.423. This was the poem Brecht wrote for Ruth Berlau when she played the part of Madame Lasalle in the first production of Nordahl Grieg’s Defeat in Copenhagen in 1937.]
LETTERS TO HELENE WEIGEL
[…] I’ve just read Defeat, don’t show it to anyone else, it’s astonishingly bad, but I think it can be changed, I’ve taken lots of notes. Anyway, I now understand Engel’s horror. Still, the play has good roles, and they could be made better. I’ll cut out the petty bourgeois nonsense and put some life into it, while sticking to the historical facts. […]
Zurich, 25/26 February 1949
Today, Wednesday, after all sorts of difficulties, Bern has finally sent a re-entry visa, though only for me, nothing for Barbara. In the meantime, I had taken steps, through von Einem in Salzburg, towards getting an Austrian passport. It would be valid for you and Barbara and would at least be a paper to travel with. The prospects are not bad, I should try to keep the line open to as many German-language theatres as possible. Then we could work wherever we pleased. Well, I still need a permit for Barbara and the one Bern has granted me for Munich. If Barbara doesn’t get one, I’ll go ahead and meet her in Salzburg. I hope the Russian permits are in Bern too, so far we haven’t been able to find out. The Commune play is in good shape, I’ve polished it a bit more and haven’t sent it off yet. But now I think it would be better to start with Puntila, which is much less controversial; besides the Commune play is an enormous production and if we put it in third place, we could work on it through the season. What about Busch? (Should I try to get Paryla interested?) I have to make sure Steckel can come at the beginning of September, I’ll find out in the next few days. (He can definitely come in February.) I think we could also get Seyferth for Puntila, and I believe Engel would be glad to have him. (In my opinion Steckel would be better.) Please ask Engel and let me know what you think. Otherwise Seyferth would come in February, and then it would be for the Commune play in the dual role of Thiers and Bismarck. – The information about the actors is being sent to you. – Also the figures on travel costs. – […] Tell her [Ilse Kaspriowiak] everything is all right. Of course you can’t say anything definite about which play is to be done first, until you’ve read the Commune play. But you know the subject, and of course I’ve stuck scrupulously to the truth, which as we know is not to everyone’s liking. Hirschfeld has read it; he spoke of it with great enthusiasm, but advised me to run it third, and possibly with an Ensemble augmented by the Deutsches Theater.
I kiss you
b
Zurich, 21 April 1949
[…] The play is finished in rough draft, time enough to polish it in Berlin. I’ll send it off at the beginning of the week, to be re-typed by Kaspriowiak: don’t show it to Engel until you have a clean copy, that’s important I think. I’ll have to go over it again for the language, and scenes 7-11 need more dash (and documentation). – It’s been a lot of work. […] If only I weren’t detained here; so far I haven’t wasted any time, I’ve been able to do the play, I had Cas here for it, now we’re working on the sets, which will be beautiful, I think. Oh yes, another thing: Hauptmann should ask old Duncker for literature, he’s the one who compiled the 1871 book. What I especially need is Documents historiques contemporains (Collection de la Revue de France): Les 31 scéances officielles de la Commune (1871).
b
Zurich, April/May 1949
[Letters, pp.459, 468-70. The
se are three of a whole series of letters to Helene Weigel and others, in the early months of 1949. They show Brecht trying, in the midst of worries about visas for himself and his daughter Barbara, to set up an opening season at the Berliner Ensemble. See also Introduction.
Weigel was the Intendant of the new Ensemble and so responsible for organising productions. Gottfried von Einem, a young Austrian composer, was a director of the Salzburg Festival, with whom Brecht was negotiating, both about artistic projects and for Austrian papers. Erich Engel had been a co-director of Mother Courage at the Deutsches Theater in January and discussions were underway for further collaborations. Leonard Steckel had directed The Good Person of Szechwan and Galileo, and played both Galileo and Puntila at the Zurich Schauspielhaus; he was to play Puntila in Berlin (the play with which the Ensemble opened on 8 November). Karl Paryla and Wilfred Seyferth were other members of the Zurich company. Kurt Hirschfeld was deputy director and another of the important contacts there; he had played a major part in the Brecht premieres in Zurich during the war, and was credited as the director of the Zurich Puntila when Brecht himself had been unable to get a work permit. Ilse Kaspriowiak was Brecht’s secretary at the Berliner Ensemble. Caspar Neher (Cas) was to design most of the Berliner Ensemble’s early productions, including The Days of the Commune. Hermann Duncker was the author/editor of Pariser Kommune 1871 (Berlin: Neuer Deutscher Verlag, 1931), Brecht’s main historical sourcebook for the play.
At around the same time Brecht wrote to Elisabeth Hauptmann who, recently returned from the United States, had been installed on the board of the Ensemble as dramaturg, asking her to hunt out further material:
About the Commune:
Documentation of mistakes.
The different tendencies among the communards.
Were any big businesses threatened?
What about war profits?
What business connections were there with the victorious Germans?
Food prices. Black market.
Bureaucracy in the Commune.
Did the courts sabotage the Commune?
What about the students?
Jokes and anecdotes.
The journalists.
Attitude of the Goncourts. Of Zola.
Is there anything by Maupassant? Baudelaire?
Attitude and role of England.
Did the Church agitate? What was the attitude of the lower clergy?
Were some of them favourable?
Were there shifts of mood?
Songs in the cabarets?
(Letters, p.473)
Later in the year he wrote to both Duncker and another Marxist historian, Albert Schreiner, sending them copies of the typescript and asking them to check on the historical accuracy of the play (Letters, pp.480 and 486).]
NOTES FOR THE PRODUCTION
1 The language is full of gallicisms. The lively, fast and physical manner and the elegant gestures of the French will have to be worked on; especially in the representation of the workers.
2 A deal of spite, but no caricatures!
3 For the women buying bread, play the vulgarity with relish.
5 One might show how Jean Cabet climbs up on to the back of the locomotive, argues with the stoker, gets physical with him, gets thrown off by the soldiers, etc. That sort of thing provides the spectaculum magnum people want.
6 The whole scene needs to be light, quick, the big city takes a huge deep breath, with noises from all over the place.
7b (Ministry of the Interior) Langevin watches Genevieve ‘governing’.
8 Beslay should be played tragi-comically.
9c (Night session of the Commune) The Commune learns from the enemy class.
11b (Last session of the Commune in the play) All the speeches, even the passionate ones, are dragged out, by people who are dog-tired; their gestures are slow, drunken with sleep.
12 From time to time the conversation sticks, and the jolly tone becomes uncertain.
After 14 the revolve turns, and the whole ensemble steps forward through a basic set (the flags on the houses are raised, the barricade has gone) and sings the final chorus.
NOTES ON ‘THE DAYS OF THE COMMUNE’
1 The population of Paris (in the National Guard) defends the capital and demands weapons, bread and proper leadership in battle, while the bourgeoisie wheels and deals and sabotages.
2 Thiers in Bordeaux sues for peace with the Germans, since otherwise France, and in particular Paris, would slip from the grasp of the bourgeoisie.
3 Thiers has secured peace and distributed bread, but his seizure of the guns of the National Guard gives rise to mistrust among the people.
4 The central committee of the National Guard decides to take up arms against Thiers, the bourgeoisie and their bourgeois peace, they announce elections for the Commune.
5 The flight of the bourgeoisie from Paris at the prospect of elections.
6 Overwhelming majority for the Commune. Paris celebrates.
THE STAGE SET
The basic set consists of a podium stretched into a gentle oval curve, and behind it the historical map of a besieged Paris in 1871, with the positions of the guns and barricades. The squares (in 1, 6 and 3 and 12 – the last of which has neither baker nor café, as if the barricade was projected across the entrance to a street) can be developed into the grand assembly hall of the Commune (4, 7, 9, 11). The houses in the long perspective of streets (12 and 13) are painted on thin flags which can be dropped down from the flies. The interiors (2 and 5 and 7a and 8 and 10) are set up inside the semi-circle of the podium. Two of them (2 and 10) have an architectural view as back-drop, which covers up the map of Paris. They are all built up of single, separable elements of furniture and the like, window, door, table, safe, grandfather clock, etc. For scenes 4, 9a and 14 the revolve is turned so that the back of the podium can be used. On the half-height curtain the words ‘The Days of the Commune’.
[BFA 24, pp.354-5. All of these notes date from 1949 when Brecht was planning to stage The Days of the Commune as his first production at the newly founded Berliner Ensemble. All the numbers refer to the scene numbers (although 5 and 7a are not really what we would understand as ‘interiors’). The final chorus was never completed.]
Editorial Notes
Unlike Antigone, which appears to have had an exceptionally straightforward genesis amongst Brecht’s works, the archival material, notes and letters relating to The Days of the Commune betray Brecht’s concern that the play might not work, might not make proper use of its complex historical material, or might turn out too unwieldy on stage.
In Svendborg in 1937, when Brecht was working on his Spanish Civil War play Señora Carrar’s Rifles, he encountered the Norwegian Communist Nordahl Grieg’s play, Nederlaget (Defeat), which had enjoyed a surprisingly successful première in Copenhagen earlier that same year (with Ruth Berlau in the minor role of Madame Lasalle). The tale of the Paris Commune of 1871 had some application to the current situation in Spain, where ‘bourgeois’ forces were defeating the left-wing republic with the assistance of foreign troops. Margarete Steffin produced a rough translation and, with Brecht’s support, it was published in 1938 in the Moscow-based exile journal Das Wort (The Word) – despite Brecht’s misgivings about the play, which he may not have read very carefully at this stage. When Grieg visited Svendborg that same year, Brecht apparently gave him a dressing-down about his misunderstanding of Marx’s classic essay on the Commune, Civil War in France. Anyway, the translation was taken up again in 1947 in Berlin by the Henschel publishing house. In 1948/49 Brecht’s initial plan was for a production of Grieg’s play at the Schiffbauerdamm Theatre in Berlin. For a nation in defeat, struggling between restoration and wholesale social change, both of them sponsored by competing foreign powers, an account of the historical events of the Commune could now be read as a rather different sort of political cautionary tale. He talked to Erich Engel and Erwin Piscator as potential directors, and even drew up cast lists. But on rereading the
play, on the way to Zurich where he was looking to recruit actors and others for the new Berliner Ensemble, he decided it was impossible: ‘Now I understand why the Danish king and the gentlemen in their dinner jackets applauded when the communards lay dying’ (Ruth Berlau, Brechts Lai-Tu, Darmstadt/Neuwied, 1985, p.220). Instead he resolved to re-work the material into his own account of the Commune.
Nordahl Grieg (born 1901) studied briefly in Oxford, lived for two years in Moscow, and worked as a journalist and playwright in his native Norway for most of the 1930s, except for a visit to Spain. He escaped to Britain after the Nazi occupation of Scandinavia, and died when the Lancaster he had joined as a war correspondent was shot down over Berlin in December 1943. Defeat was conceived in response to Grieg’s own experience of the defeat of the Left in the Spanish Civil War. The action begins in March 1871 and involves an alternation of scenes between representatives of various sectors of the people, the Commune delegates and Thiers and his ministers (there is no Bismarck scene). It is broadly Naturalist in style, but with an operatic conclusion: a raggle-taggle band of communards and children huddle in a churchyard, awaiting their execution by advancing government soldiers; a musical accompaniment of an aggressive drum beat is eventually overcome by the freedom motif from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (see extract below). Brecht inverts this whole operatic finale, and gives us a coda in which a group of bourgeois spectators turns the brutal ending of the Commune into a ‘sublime’, ‘immortal’ spectacle, which they can enjoy (through opera glasses) from the safety of the fortifications of Versailles. It is a scathing comment on Grieg’s dramatic concept. Brecht also intended a musical finale, but presumably with a bitterly ironic tone.