Epic Theater by B. Brecht
Anti-war pathos and allegorical meaning of the drama By. Brecht's "Mother Courage and Her Children"
I. The plot of the action is an opinion about the war. (Even before the action begins, we hear a dialogue between the recruiter and the sergeant major. And the latter pronounces the opinion that the world is a disorder, the basis of the immorality of society, “only wars create harmony.” For him, war is an exciting phase in which players begin to fear the world, for then they will have to count how much they have lost.)
II. There is no war without soldiers. (Mother Courage feeds from the war, because she is a market woman and trades in the army. And when they want to take her son Eilif into the army, she says: “Let other people’s sons go to the soldiers, not mine.” But the cunning recruiter still persuades the guy to enroll to the troops while Mother Courage was bargaining.)
III. Anyone who wants to live through war must pay it something.
Mother Courage meets her son Eilif only two years later, but he is brave and respected by the commander. He brutally deals with the peasants, and the war writes off everything. For now. And the second son, Courage Schweitzerkas, is taken into the army as a treasurer, because he is honest and decent. For this he suffered, because, trying to protect the regiment’s cash register, he was shot. The mother was not allowed to mourn and bury Schweitzerkas. Eilif also dies, for he kills a peasant family precisely during a short peace. And Mother Courage at this time is trying to improve her material affairs. Finally, Katrin’s daughter also dies when her mother went to the city to buy goods. And again she goes along the roads of war, without even having time to bury her daughter.
IV. The allegorical meaning of the images of Mother Courage’s children. (Each of Mother Courage’s children is the personification of some virtue. Eilif is brave, courageous. Schweitzerkas is honest, decent. Katrin is generous and kind. But they all die in war. Such is the fate of human virtues who die amid moral decay. It is no coincidence the priest says that war turns everything inside out and demonstrates the most terrible human vices, which may not have appeared in peacetime: “The ones who are to blame here are those who started the war, who turn out the worst that is in people.”)
V. What is the meaning of hidden irony. (Already in the title itself, Courage is called not a mother, but a mother. Why? Because there is a hidden irony here. Can a real mother want war? Of course not, even if this does not concern her children. And she does not treat her own too carefully. Every time the fate of her children is decided, she bargains, even when it comes to the life of her son - honest Schweitzerkas. The author's irony extends to other images - a priest, a cook, a sergeant major, a soldier, etc. because they live behind moral rules that are turned inside out. Irony helps to understand the allegorical meaning of Brecht's drama.)
VI. The meaning of the finitude of drama. (When Brechtov was reproached for the fact that his heroine did not curse the war, he said that his goal was different: let the viewer come to the conclusion himself. Although Mother Courage says: “Even though she was sunk, this is war!” - but this is not faith, because she continues to profit from the war. Her last words are: “I must continue to trade.”)
2. The image of mother Courage
In the late 30s - early 40s. Brecht creates plays that rank with the best works of world drama. These are Mother Courage and The Life of Galileo.
The historical drama “Mother Courage and Her Children” (1939) is based on a story by a German satirist and publicist of the 17th century. Grimmelshausen's "A thorough and outlandish biography of the great deceiver and vagabond Courage", in which the author, a participant in the Thirty Years' War, created a remarkable chronicle of this darkest period in the history of Germany.
The main character of Brecht's play is the sutler Anna Firliig, nicknamed "Courage" for her courageous character. Having loaded the van with marketable goods, she, along with her two sons and daughter, follows the troops into the war zone in the hope of extracting commercial benefits from the war.
Although the play takes place in the era of the Thirty Years' War of 1618-1648, which was tragic for the fate of Germany, it is organically connected with the most pressing problems of our time. With its entire content, the play forced the reader and viewer on the eve of the Second World War to think about its consequences, about who benefits from it and who will suffer from it. But there was more than just one anti-war theme in the play. Brecht was deeply concerned about the political immaturity of ordinary working people in Germany, their inability to correctly understand the true meaning of the events taking place around them, thanks to which they became the support and victims of fascism. The main critical arrows in the play are directed not at the ruling classes, but at everything that is bad and morally distorted that exists in the working people. Brecht's criticism is imbued with both indignation and sympathy.
Courage is a woman who loves her children, lives for them, strives to protect them from war - at the same time, she goes to war in the hope of profiting from it and actually becomes the culprit in the death of her children, because every time the thirst for profit turns out to be stronger than maternal feelings . And this terrible moral and human fall of Courage is shown in all its terrible essence.
The play unfolds in the form of a dramatic chronicle, allowing Brecht to paint a broad and diverse picture of German life in all its complexity and contradictions, and against this background to show his heroine. War for Courage is a source of income, a “golden time.” She doesn’t even understand that she herself was responsible for the death of all her children. Only once, in the sixth scene, after her daughter was violated, did she exclaim: “Damn the war!” But in the next picture she again walks with a confident gait and sings “a song about war - the great nurse.” But the most unbearable thing in Courage’s behavior is her transition from Courage the mother to Courage the selfish trader. She checks the coin to see if it is counterfeit, and does not notice how at that moment the recruiter takes her son Eilif away to become a soldier in the princely army. The tragic lessons of the war taught the greedy cantina nothing. But showing the heroine’s insight was not the author’s task. For the playwright, the main thing is that the audience learns a lesson from her life experience.
There are many songs in the play "Mother Courage and Her Children", as, indeed, in many other plays by Brecht. But a special place is given to the “Song of the Great Surrender,” which Courage sings. This song is one of the artistic techniques of the “alienation effect”. According to the author’s plan, it is intended to interrupt the action for a short time in order to give the viewer the opportunity to think and analyze the actions of the unfortunate and criminal merchant, to explain the reasons for her “great surrender”, to show why she did not find the strength and will to say “no” to the principle: “ To live with wolves is to howl like a wolf.” Her “great surrender” consisted in the naive belief that good money could be made from the war. Thus, the fate of Courage grows into a grandiose moral tragedy of the “little man” in a capitalist society. But in a world that morally disfigures ordinary workers, there are still people who are able to overcome humility and perform a heroic act. Such is Courage’s daughter, the downtrodden, mute Catherine, who, according to her mother, is afraid of war and cannot see the suffering of a single living creature. Catherine is the personification of the living, natural power of love and kindness. At the cost of her life, she saves the peacefully sleeping inhabitants of the city from a sudden enemy attack. The weakest of all, Catherine turns out to be capable of active action against the world of profit and war, from which her mother cannot escape. Catherine’s feat makes us think even more about Courage’s behavior and condemn it. Condemning Courage, perverted by bourgeois morality, to terrible loneliness, Brecht leads the viewer to the idea of the need to break a social system in which bestial morality reigns, and everything honest is doomed to destruction.
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Lesson 10. B. BRECHT’S PLAY “MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHILDREN”
Practical lesson plan
1. B. Brecht's theory of epic theater: goals and principles.
2. The embodiment of the principles of epic theater in the play “Mother Courage and Her Children.”
3. The influence of Brecht's ideas on modern theater.
Bertolt Brecht's theory of epic theater, which had a huge influence on 20th-century drama and theater, is very challenging material for students. Conducting a practical lesson on the play “Mother Courage and Her Children” (1939) will help make this material accessible to assimilation.
The theory of epic theater began to take shape in Brecht's aesthetics back in the 1920s, during a period when the writer was close to left-wing expressionism. The first, still naive, idea was Brecht's proposal to bring theater closer to sports. “Theater without an audience is nonsense,” he wrote in the article “More Good Sports!”
In 1926, Brecht completed work on the play “Like That Soldier, Like That Soldier,” which he later considered the first example of epic theater. Elisabeth Hauptmann recalls: “After staging the play “What is this soldier, what is that” Brecht acquires books about socialism and Marxism... Somewhat later, while on vacation, he writes: “I am up to my ears in Capital.” Now I need to know all this for sure...”
Brecht's theatrical system develops simultaneously and in inextricable connection with the formation of the method of socialist realism in his work. The basis of the system - the “alienation effect” - is the aesthetic form of the famous position of K. Marx from “Theses on Feuerbach”: “Philosophers have only explained the world in different ways, but the point is to change it.”
The first work that deeply embodied this understanding of alienation was the play “Mother” (1931) based on the novel by A. M. Gorky.
Describing his system, Brecht used either the term “non-Aristotelian theater” or “epic theater.” There is some difference between these terms. The term “non-Aristotelian theater” is associated primarily with the negation of old systems, while “epic theater” is associated with the affirmation of a new one.
The basis of “non-Aristotelian” theater is a critique of the central concept, which, according to Aristotle, is the essence of tragedy - catharsis. The social meaning of this protest is explained by Brecht in the article “On the theatricality of fascism” (1939): “The most remarkable property of a person is his ability to criticize... The one who gets used to the image of another person, and, moreover, without a trace, thereby refuses critical attitude towards him and himself.<...>Therefore, the method of theatrical acting, adopted by fascism, cannot be considered as a positive model for the theater if we expect from it pictures that will give the audience the key to solving the problems of social life” (Book 2, p. 337).
And Brecht connects his epic theater with an appeal to reason, without denying feeling. Back in 1927, in the article “Reflections on the Difficulties of the Epic Theatre,” he explained: “The essential... in the epic theater is probably that it appeals not so much to the feelings as to the mind of the viewer. The viewer should not empathize, but argue. At the same time, it would be completely wrong to reject feeling from this theater” (Book 2, p. 41).
Brecht’s epic theater is the embodiment of the method of socialist realism, the desire to tear away the mystical veils from reality, to reveal the true laws of social life in the name of its revolutionary change (see articles by B. Brecht “On Socialist Realism”, “Socialist Realism in the Theater”).
Among the ideas of epic theater, we recommend focusing on four main provisions: “the theater should be philosophical,” “the theater should be epic,” “the theater should be phenomenal,” “the theater should give an alienated picture of reality” - and analyze their implementation in the play “Mother Courage and her children."
The philosophical side of the play is revealed in the peculiarities of its ideological content. Brecht uses the principle of a parabola (“the narrative moves away from the author’s contemporary world, sometimes even from a specific time, a specific situation, and then, as if moving along a curve, it returns again to the abandoned subject and gives its philosophical and ethical understanding and assessment...”).
Thus, the parabolic play has two plans. The first is B. Brecht's reflections on modern reality, on the flaring flames of the Second World War. The playwright formulated the idea of the play, which expresses this plan: “What should the production of Mother Courage show first of all? That big things in wars are not done by small people. That war, being a continuation of business life by other means, makes the best human qualities disastrous for their owners. That the fight against war is worth any sacrifice” (Book 1, p. 386). Thus, “Mother Courage” is not a historical chronicle, but a warning play; it is addressed not to the distant past, but to the near future.
The historical chronicle constitutes the second (parabolic) plan of the play. Brecht turned to the novel of the 17th century writer X. Grimmelshausen “A simpleton in defiance, that is, an outlandish description of the hardened deceiver and tramp Courage” (1670). The novel, against the backdrop of the events of the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), depicted the adventures of the canteen Courage (that is, bold, brave), the girlfriend of Simplicius Simplicissimus (the famous hero from Grimmelshausen's novel "Simplicissimus"). Brecht's chronicle presents 12 years of the life (1624–1636) of Anna Vierling, nicknamed Mother Courage, and her travels through Poland, Moravia, Bavaria, Italy, and Saxony. “A comparison of the initial episode, in which Courage with three children goes to war, not expecting anything bad, with faith in profit and luck, with the final episode, in which the canteen, who has lost her children in the war, has essentially already lost everything in life, with stupid tenacity pulls his van along the beaten path into darkness and emptiness - this juxtaposition contains a parabolically expressed general idea of the play about the incompatibility of motherhood (and more broadly: life, joy, happiness) with military commerce.” It should be noted that the period depicted is only a fragment in the Thirty Years' War, the beginning and end of which are lost in the flow of years.
The image of war is one of the central philosophically rich images of the play.
Analyzing the text, students must reveal the causes of war, the necessity of war for businessmen, the understanding of war as “order”, using the text of the play. Mother Courage’s whole life is connected with the war; she gave her this name, children, and prosperity (see picture 1). Courage chose the “great compromise” as a way to survive in the war. But a compromise cannot hide the internal conflict between the mother and the sutler (mother - Courage).
The other side of the war is revealed in the images of the Courage children. All three die: the Swiss because of his honesty (picture 3), Eilif - “because he accomplished one more feat than was required” (picture 8), Catherine - warning the city of Halle about the attack of enemies (picture 11). Human virtues are either perverted during the war, or they lead the good and honest to death. This is how a grandiose tragic image of war as “the world in reverse” arises.
Revealing the epic features of the play, it is necessary to turn to the structure of the work. Students must study not only the text, but also the principles of Brechtian production. To do this, they should become familiar with Brecht's work, The Courage Model. Notes for the 1949 production." (Book 1. pp. 382-443). “As for the epic principle in the production of the German Theater, it was reflected in the mise-en-scenes, and in the drawing of images, and in the careful finishing of details, and in the continuity of action,” wrote Brecht (Bk. 1. P. 439). Epic elements are also: the presentation of the content at the beginning of each picture, the introduction of zongs commenting on the action, the widespread use of the story (from this point of view one can analyze one of the most dynamic pictures - the third, in which there is a bargain for the life of the Swiss). The means of epic theater also include montage, that is, the connection of parts, episodes without merging them, without the desire to hide the junction, but, on the contrary, with a tendency to highlight it, thereby causing a stream of associations in the viewer. Brecht in the article “The Theater of Pleasure or the Theater of Instruction?” (1936) writes: “The epic author Deblin gave an excellent definition of epic, saying that, unlike a dramatic work, an epic work can, relatively speaking, be cut into pieces, with each piece retaining its vitality” (Bk. 2. p. 66 ).
If students understand the principle of epicization, they will be able to give a number of specific examples from Brecht's play.
The principle of "phenomenal theater" can only be analyzed using Brecht's work "The Courage Model". What is the essence of phenomenality, the meaning of which the writer revealed in his work “Buying Copper”? In the old, “Aristotelian” theater, only the actor’s play was a truly artistic phenomenon. The remaining components seemed to play along with him, duplicating his creativity. In an epic theater, each component of the performance (not only the work of the actor and director, but also light, music, design) must be an artistic phenomenon (phenomenon), each must have an independent role in revealing the philosophical content of the work, and not duplicate other components.
In “The Courage Model,” Brecht reveals the use of music based on the principle of phenomenality (see: Book 1, pp. 383–384), the same applies to scenery. Everything unnecessary is removed from the stage, not a copy of the world is reproduced, but its image. For this purpose, few but reliable details are used. “If in the big a certain approximation is allowed, then in the small it is unacceptable. For a realistic depiction, careful development of the details of costumes and props is important, because here the viewer’s imagination cannot add anything,” wrote Brecht (Bk. 1, p. 386).
The effect of alienation seems to unite all the main features of epic theater and give them purposefulness. The figurative basis of alienation is metaphor. Alienation is one of the forms of theatrical convention, the acceptance of the conditions of the game without the illusion of plausibility. The alienation effect is intended to highlight the image, to show it from an unusual side. At the same time, the actor should not merge with his character. Thus, Brecht warns that in scene 4 (in which Mother Courage sings “The Song of Great Humility”) playing without alienation “is fraught with social danger if the performer of the role of Courage, hypnotizing the viewer with her performance, encourages him to get used to this heroine.<...>He will not be able to feel the beauty and attractive power of a social problem” (Book 1, p. 411).
Using the effect of alienation with a purpose different from that of B. Brecht, the modernists depicted on stage an absurd world in which death reigns. Brecht, with the help of alienation, sought to show the world in such a way that the viewer would have a desire to change it.
Information for home consideration
There was great controversy around the ending of the play (see Brecht’s dialogue with F. Wolf. - Book 1. pp. 443–447). Brecht replied to Wolf: “In this play, as you correctly noted, it is shown that Courage did not learn anything from the disasters that befell her.<...>Dear Friedrich Wolf, it is you who confirm that the author was a realist. Even if Courage has not learned anything, the public can, in my opinion, still learn something by looking at her” (Book 1, p. 447).
Homework
Give your own interpretation of the ending of B. Brecht’s play “Mother Courage and Her Children.”
The play is structured in the form of a chain of paintings that depict individual episodes from the life of a sutler of the second Finnish regiment. Traders who accompanied troops on campaigns were called marketers. Mother Courage has no illusions about the ideological background of the war and treats it extremely pragmatically - as a way of getting rich. She is completely indifferent to what flag she trades under in her travel shop, the main thing is that the trade is successful. Courage also teaches commerce to his children, who grew up in conditions of endless war. Like any caring mother, she makes sure that the war does not touch them. However, against her will, the war inexorably takes away her two sons and daughter. But even after losing all her children, the sutler doesn’t change anything in her life. As at the beginning of the drama, in the finale she stubbornly runs her store.
The eldest son, Eilif, embodies courage, the youngest son, Schweitzerkas, represents honesty, and the dumb daughter, Catherine, represents kindness. And each of them is ruined by their best traits. Thus, Brecht leads the viewer to the conclusion that in conditions of war, human virtues lead to the death of their bearers. The picture of Catherine's execution is one of the most powerful in the play.
Using the example of the fate of the Courage children, the playwright shows the “wrong side” of human virtues, which opens up in conditions of war. When Eilif takes the people's cattle, it becomes clear that courage has turned to cruelty. When Schweitzerkas hides money behind his own life, it is impossible not to be surprised at his stupidity. Catherine's muteness is perceived as an allegory of helpless kindness. The playwright encourages us to think about the fact that in the modern world, virtues must change.
The idea of the tragic doom of the children of Courage in the play is summarized by the ironic “zong” about the legendary personalities of human history, who allegedly also became victims of their own merits.
The author places most of the blame for the broken destinies of Eilif, Schweitzerkas and Catherine on their mother. It is no coincidence that in the drama their death is edited with the commercial affairs of Courage. Trying as a “business person” to win money, she loses her children every time. However, it would be a mistake to assume that Courage is only after profit. She is a very colorful person, even attractive in some ways. Cynicism, characteristic of Brecht’s early works, was combined in it with the spirit of disobedience, pragmatism with ingenuity and “courage,” trading excitement with the power of maternal love.
Its main mistake is its “commercial” approach to war, freed from moral feelings. The shopkeeper hopes to feed herself through the war, but it turns out that, according to the sergeant major, she herself feeds the war with her “offspring.” A deep symbolic meaning is contained in the scene of divination (the first picture), when the heroine, with her own hands, draws black crosses on scraps of parchment for her own children, and then mixes these scraps in a helmet (another “alienation” effect), jokingly comparing it with the mother’s womb.
The play “Mother Courage and Her Children” is one of the most important achievements Brecht's "epic theater". Mother Courage acts as a symbol of crippled Germany. However, the content of the play goes far beyond the framework of German history of the 20th century: the fate of Mother Courage and the stern warning embodied in her image concerns not only the Germans of the late 30s. - the early 40s, but also everyone who looks at war as commerce.
