Brecht Collected Plays: 7: Visions of Simone Machard; Schweyk in the Second World War; Caucasian Chalk Circle; Duchess of Malfi (World Classics)

by Bertolt Brecht

  Can you tell me, Mr Schweyk, the quickest way to the rear?

  SCHWEYK

  Excuse me, the way to what?

  HITLER

  To the rear!

  SCHWEYK

  Beg to report, sir, this blizzard makes it impossible to hear.

  HITLER

  Because you’re not trying. Just wait; you egotists arouse my fury.

  SCHWEYK

  Oh, calm down. What’s the good of being so gory?

  HITLER

  I have made history.

  SCHWEYK

  They’ll say ‘That’s just his story’.

  HITLER

  Don’t you realize that ten peoples are now subject to my directing?

  SCHWEYK

  Not least the Germans, who are supposed to do the subjecting.

  HITLER

  The average German’s useless without my grip to keep him steady.

  SCHWEYK

  You kicked him too hard when he was down; he’s a master race already.

  HITLER

  When I took over I found his international reputation had been sinking.

  Now you and he are fighting side by side.

  SCHWEYK

  I’d rather he and I were drinking.

  HITLER

  It was always my assumption that the stronger man had to win.

  SCHWEYK

  And so it turned out.

  HITLER

  Mr Schweyk, if somebody gets done in,

  It’s because history has decreed he should disappear.

  Now take the case of Adam...

  SCHWEYK

  Tell me as we go, or we’ll get frozen solid here.

  You want a place where you can feel secure.

  Right; but the cold may be too much for you to endure.

  I can find the way backwards, though, I’m sure I can

  Backwards will suit me fine, make me another man.

  As for the future, nobody can tell:

  What suits me fine may suit you none too well.

  But let me lead you now, not that I care:

  Without a leader you won’t get anywhere.

  Schweyk picks up his rifle and shoves Hitler in front of him. They stop at the signpost, and Schweyk turns his torch on it. He reads ‘Stalingrad—5 km’, and marches on in that direction with Hitler before him. The darkness and the storm swallow them up.

  The final chorus then follows as in our version.

  THE CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE

  Texts by Brecht

  NOTES TO THE CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE

  1. Realism and stylization

  Actors, stage designers and directors normally achieve stylization at the cost of realism. They create a style by creating ‘the’ peasant, ‘the’ wedding, ‘the’ battlefield; in other words by removing whatever is unique, special, contradictory, accidental, and providing hackneyed or hackneyable stereotypes the bulk of which represent no mastery of reality but are just drawings of drawings—simple to provide since the originals already have elements of style in them. Such stylists have no style of their own, nor any wish to grasp that of reality; all they do is to imitate methods of stylization. Plainly all art embellishes (which is not the same as glossing over). If for no other reason it must do so because it has to link reality with enjoyment. But this kind of embellishment, formulation, stylization, must not involve phoneyness or loss of substance. Any actress who plays Grusha needs to study the beauty of Brueghel’s ‘Dulle Griet’.

  2. Tension

  The play was written in America after ten years of exile, and its structure is partly conditioned by a revulsion against the commercialized dramaturgy of Broadway. At the same time it makes use of certain elements of that older American theatre whose forte lay in burlesques and ‘shows’. In those highly imaginative manifestations, which recall the films of that splendid man Chaplin, the tension focused not merely on the progress of the plot (or only in a much cruder and larger sense than now), but more on the question ‘How?’ Nowadays when we are ‘offered an amusing trifle’ it is simply the feverish efforts of a rapidly ageing whore who hopes that her graceless tricks will serve to postpone or annul the moment when her painful and frequently-operated vagina has once again to be handed over to a client. The pleasure of telling a story is inhibited by fear that it will fall flat. Unleashing this pleasure however does not mean freeing it from all control. Detail will be of the greatest importance, but that does not mean that economy won’t be of great importance too. Imagination can be applied to the achievement of brevity. The point is not to abandon something rich. The worst enemy of true playing is playing about; meandering is the sign of a bad story-teller, while cosiness is just self-satisfaction and to be despised as such. Direct statement is among the most important methods of epic art, and it is as fair to [speak] of epic restlessness as of epic repose.

  3. The chalk circle

  The test of the chalk circle in the old Chinese novel and play, like their biblical counterpart, Solomon’s test of the sword, still remain valuable tests of motherhood (by establishing motherliness) even if motherhood today has to be socially rather than biologically defined. The ‘Caucasian Chalk Circle’ is not a parable. Possibly the prologue may create confusion on this point, since it looks superficially as if the whole story is being told in order to clear up the argument about who owns the valley. On closer inspection however the story is seen to be a true narrative which of itself proves nothing but merely displays a particular kind of wisdom, a potentially model attitude for the argument in question. Seen this way, the prologue becomes a background which situates the practicability and also the evolution of such wisdom in an historic setting. And so the theatre must not use the kind of technique developed by it for plays of the parable type.

  4. Background and foreground

  In the English language there is an American term ‘sucker’, and this is exactly what Grusha is being when she takes over the child. The Austrian term ‘die Wurzen’ means something of the same sort, while in High German one would have to say ‘der Dumme’, ‘the fool’ (as in the context ‘they’ve managed to find somebody fool enough to …’). Her maternal instincts lay Grusha open to troubles and tribulations which prove very nearly fatal. All she wants of Azdak is permission to go on producing, in other words to pay more. She loves the child; her claim to it is based on the fact that she is willing and able to be productive. She is no longer a sucker after the hearing.

  5. [Setting of the play]

  The play’s setting needs to be very simple. The varying backgrounds can be indicated by some form of projection; at the same time the projections must be artistically valid. The bit players can in some cases play several parts at once. The five musicians sit on stage with the singer and join in the action.

  6. Incidental music for the Chalk Circle

  Aside from certain songs which can take personal expression, the story-teller’s music need only display a cold beauty, but it should not be unduly difficult. Though I think it is possible to make particularly effective use of a certain kind of monotony, the musical basis of the five acts needs to be clearly varied. The opening song of Act 1 should have something barbaric about it, and the underlying rhythm be a preparation and accompaniment for the entry of the governor’s family and the soldiers beating back the crowd. The mimed song at the end of the act should be cold, so that the girl Grusha can play against the grain of it.

  For Act 2 (‘The Flight into the northern mountains’) the theatre calls for thrustful music to hold this extremely epic act together; none the less it must be thin and delicate.

  Act 3 has the melting snow music (poetical) and, for its main scene, funeral and wedding music in contrast with one another. The song in the scene by the river has the same theme as the Act 1 song in which Grusha promises the soldier to wait for him.

  In act 4 the thrustful, scurrilous Ballad of Azdak must be interrupted twice by Azdak’s two songs (which definitely have to be simple to sing, since Azdak must be playe
d by the most powerful actor rather than by the best singer). The last (lawsuit) act demands a good dance at the end.

  7. Behaviour of the Singer in the last scene of Act 1

  The playwright suggested that the general principle of having the scenes embody specific passages of the singer’s song in such a way that their performance never overshadows the singer’s solo performance to the villagers ought to be deliberately abandoned in production.

  8. Casting of Azdak

  It is essential to have an actor who can portray an utterly upright man. Azdak is utterly upright, a disappointed revolutionary posing as a human wreck, like Shakespeare’s wise men who act the fool. Without this the judgement of the chalk circle would lose all its authority.

  9. Palace revolution

  The curt orders given offstage inside the palace (sporadically and in some cases quietly so as to imply the palace’s vast size) must be cut once they have served to help the actors at rehearsal. What is going on onstage is not supposed to be a slice of some larger occurrence, just the part of it to be seen at this precise spot outside the palace gate. It is the entire occurrence, and the gate is the gate. (Nor is the size of the palace to be conveyed in spatial terms.) What we have to do is replace our extras with good actors. One good actor is worth a whole battalion of extras; i.e. he is more.

  [Sections 1-6, 8, and 9 are from GW Schriften zum Theater 17, pp. 1204-8. The typescripts suggest that 1-4 belong together, and we have put them in their original, possibly accidental but still logical order. They and section 6 are thought to date from 1944. Sections 5 and 7 are notes accompanying the first version of the script that year, 7 being taken from BBA 192/178. The last two were written nearly ten years later, 8 being assigned to about 1953 by BBA while 9 relates to a rehearsal held on 4 December of that year in preparation for Brecht’s Berliner Ensemble production.]

  DANCE OF THE GRAND DUKE WITH HIS BOW

  Oh, the green fields of Samara!

  Oh, the bent backs of a warlike race!

  O sun, o domination!

  I am your prince. This bow they are bringing

  Is elm tipped with bronze, strung with flexible sinew.

  This arrow is mine, which I mean to send winging

  To plunge itself deep, O my enemy, in you.

  Oh, the green fields of Samara!

  Oh, the bent backs of a warlike race!

  O sun, o domination!

  Off, off to the fight, bowstring taut. Aren’t you frightened

  To feel how much deeper the bronze will go worming

  Its way through your flesh as the bowstring is tightened?

  Fly, arrow, and cut up that enemy vermin!

  So I tug, tug and tug at the bow that they made me.

  How strong are my shoulders! A fraction more. Steady …

  Why, it’s broken! All lies! Elm and bronze have betrayed me.

  Help, Help! God have mercy: my soul’s so unready.

  Oh, the cattle-stocked fields of Samara!

  Oh, the bent backs of a warlike race!

  Oh, the cutting up of the enemy!

  [BBA 28/23-4. A pencilled note by Elisabeth Hauptmann, dating probably from the 1950s or later, identifies this as material discarded from the play.]

  CONCERNING THE PROLOGUE

  Your dislike of the prologue puzzles me somewhat; it was the first bit of the play to be written by me in the States. You see, the problem posed by this parable-like play has got to be derived from real-life needs, and in my view this was achieved in a light and cheerful manner. Take away the prologue, and it becomes impossible to understand on the one hand why it wasn’t left as the Chinese Chalk Circle, and on the other why it should be called Caucasian. I first of all wrote the little story which was published in Tales from the Calendar. But on coming to dramatize it I felt just this lack of elucidatory historical background.

  [From Werner Hecht (ed.): Materialien zu Brecht’s ‘Der kaukasische Kreidekreis’, Suhrkamp-Verlag, Frankfurt, 1966, p. 28. This passage is taken from a letter to Brecht’s publisher Peter Suhrkamp, and reflects a common attitude among West German critics and theatre directors. The ‘little story’ was ‘The Augsburg Chalk Circle’, for which see p. 313.]

  CONTRADICTIONS IN ‘THE CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE’

  1. Main contradictions

  The more Grusha does to save the child’s life, the more she endangers her own; her productivity tends to her own destruction. That is how things are, given the conditions of war, the law as it is, and her isolation and poverty. In the law’s eyes the rescuer is a thief. Her poverty is a threat to the child, and the child adds to it. For the child’s sake she needs a husband, but she is in danger of losing one on its account. And so forth.

  Bit by bit, by making sacrifices, not least of herself, Grusha becomes transformed into a mother for the child; and finally, having risked or suffered so many losses, fears no loss more than that of the child. Azdak’s judgment makes the rescue of the child absolute. He is free to award the child to her because there is no longer any difference between the child’s interests and hers.

  Azdak is the disappointed man who is not going to cause disappointment in others.

  2. Other contradictions

  The petitioners prostrate themselves before the governor as he goes to Easter Mass. Beaten back by the Ironshirts, they fight wildly among themselves for a place in the front row.

  The same peasant who overcharges Grusha for his milk is then kindly enough to help her pick up the child. He isn’t mean; he’s poor.

  The architects make utterly servile obeisances to the governor’s ADC, but one of them has to watch the other two to see how they do it. They are not just natural arse-creepers; they need the job.

  Grusha’s spineless brother is reluctant to take in his sister, but furious with his kulak of a wife on account of his dependence on her.

  This spineless brother cannot say boo to his kulak of a wife, but is overbearing to the peasant woman with whom he fixes up the marriage contract.

  The motherly instincts of the peasant woman who takes in the foundling against her husband’s wishes are limited and provisional; she betrays it to the police. (Likewise Grusha’s motherly instincts, though they are so much greater, so very great, are limited and provisional: she wants to see the child into safety, then give it away.)

  The maid Grusha is against war because it has torn her beloved from her; she recommends him always to stay in the middle in order to survive. However on her flight into the mountains she sings of the popular hero Sosso Robakidse who conquered Iran, in order to keep her courage up.

  [GW Schriften zum Theater 17, pp. 1208-10. Assigned by BBA to 1954. However, Brecht’s concept of main and subsidiary contradictions (i.e. conflicting elements in a situation) derives from Mao Tse-tung, whose pamphlet On Contradiction he seems to have read in 1955.]

  SIDE TRACK

  P: The people at X want to cut ‘the flight into the northern mountains’. The play is a long one, and they argue that this whole act is really no more than a side track. One sees how the maid wants to get rid of the child as soon as she has got it away from the immediate danger zone; but then she keeps it after all, and that, they say, is what counts.

  B: Side tracks in modern plays have to be studied carefully before one makes up one’s mind to take a short cut. It might turn out to seem longer. Certain theatres cut one of Macheath’s two arrests in the Threepenny Opera on the grounds that both might have occurred because he twice went to the brothel instead of clearing out. They made him come to grief because he went to the brothel, not because he went to it too often, was careless. In short they hoped to liven things up and finished by getting tedious.

  P: They say it weakens the maid’s claim to the child in the trial scene if her feeling for him is shown as subject to limitations.

  B: To start with, the trial scene isn’t about the maid’s claim to the child but about the child’s claim to the better mother. And the maid’s suitability for being a mother, her usefulne
ss and reliability are shown precisely by her level-headed reservations about taking the child on.

  R: Even her reservations strike me as beautiful. Friendliness is not unlimited, it is subject to measure. A person has just so much friendliness—no more, no less—and it is furthermore dependent on the situation at the time. It can be exhausted, can be replenished, and so on and so forth.

  W: I’d call that a realistic view.

  B: It’s too mechanical a one for me: unfriendly. Why not look at it this way? Evil times make humane feelings a danger to humanity. Inside the maid Grusha the child’s interests and her own are at loggerheads with one another. She must acknowledge both interests and do her best to promote them both. This way of looking at it, I think, must lead to a richer and more flexible portrayal of the Grusha part. It’s true.

  [From ‘Die Dialektik auf dem Theater’ in Versuche 15, Suhrkamp and Aufbau Verlags, 1956. As with other dialogues in that collection, Brecht shows himself as B, talking with some of his young collaborators: in this case P for Peter Palitzsch, R for Kathe Rülicke and W for Manfred Wekwerth. They were not literal transcriptions.]

  Editorial Note

  1. GENERAL

  The Caucasian Chalk Circle brings together two threads that had been twining their way gently through Brecht’s mind for several years before Luise Rainer asked him to write the play. They are of course the old Chinese story of the chalk circle, with its strong resemblance to the Judgement of Solomon, and the story of the eccentric, paradoxical judge which (though one can never be certain of this) Brecht appears to have devised for himself. Of the two the former probably has the longer ancestry—in Brecht’s mind, that is—for Klabund’s modern German dramatization was staged by Max Reinhardt at the Deutsches Theater, where Brecht had just spent a year as a junior dramaturg, on 20 October 1925. Brecht knew Klabund, or Alfred Henschke (as he was really called), from Munich as a writer and singer of ballads faintly akin to his own—he had actually replaced Brecht in the second performance of the Red Raisin programme that followed Drums in the Night there—and Klabund’s wife the actress Carola Neher was to become one of Brecht’s best-loved performers. Moreover his still earlier friend, her unrelated namesake Caspar Neher, was designer for the new play, while Elisabeth Bergner, then coming to the peak of her fame in Germany, played its leading part. ‘We all saw it,’ said Hanns Eisler later.