Book Description

Book Description
Highly acclaimed when it was first published in 1967, Frederic Ewen's monumental biographical study of Bertolt Brecht has long been out of print. In response to national demand, Citadel Press is proud to reissue this complete and unabridged text.

Of "Bertolt Brecht: His Life, His Art, His Times, the critics wrote:

"The finest critical study of Brecht to date. This book is at least a worthy appreciation of a towering, poetic and dramatic genius." -Los Angeles Times

"What is particularly striking about Frederic Ewen's biography is that it conveys the excitement, the turmoil and triumph of Brecht's career." -The New York Times

"The great thing about Frederic Ewen's luminous biography is that it gently frees Brecht from the bear hugs of the bigots and restores him to us as a whole man, his youth contained in his age." -The Nation ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

From the Publisher-

FROM THE PUBLISHER
Highly acclaimed when it was first published in 1967, Ewen's monumental biographical study of Bertolt Brecht is "the finest critical study of Brecht to date. . . . a worthy appreciation of a towering, poetic and dramatic genius" ("Los Angeles Times").

BERTOLT BRECHT BY EVEN IN SPANISH
I am peruvian and I read the book in Spanish, thanks to a friend who bought it in Buenos Aires.
I am a Bertolt Brecht's researching friend. This is the way I considered him: like a living one working for the theater.
I found the book nearly excellent...but too much condescending at the "human valorization" of our beloved friend. Ewen looks throught his appreciations too much "innocent" in that respect.
And I have a big question. Ewen says that Brecht "got a Medicin degree".
I do not know if this are translation problems but it is the first time (and I search about living Brecht since 1968)I heard about it.... ... Read more

Book Description
Brutal, scandalous, perverted, yet humorous, hummable, and with a happy ending—Bertolt Brecht’s revolutionary masterpiece The Threepenny Opera is a landmark of modern drama that has become embedded in the Western cultural imagination. Through the love story of Polly Peachum and “Mack the Knife” Macheath, the play satirizes the bourgeois of the Weimar Republic, revealing a society at the height of decadence and on the verge of chaos. Complemented with music by Kurt Weill, it was one of the earliest and most successful attempts to introduce jazz into the theater, and the song “Mack the Knife” became one of the most popular and widely recorded songs of the twentieth century. ... Read more

Product Description
Eric Bentley's revised edition, with his Intro. Question: Isn't this Brecht's best play? ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (8)

IN DEFENCE OF SCIENCE
The pressures that the established order can bring to bear on those who want to move outside the status quo are enormous. In the end those in charge can grind down the best of men with the most worthy knowledge to disseminate.That is the story that the master communist playwright Bertolt Brecht brings here about the pressures to recant brought on Galileo by the Catholic Church in the 1500's.And for what crime? For merely bringing out facts about the nature of the world and its place in the universe that are taken as commonplaces, even by children, today.

Brecht himself certainly knew about such pressures. Although in public, at least, Brecht was a fairly orthodox Stalinist he had his private moments of doubt. Certainly some of the themes in his plays stretch the limits of the orthodox `socialist realist' cultural program. Thus the strongest part of the play is the struggle between an individual who is onto something new about the world and an institution that saw that such a discovery would wreak havoc on its claims to centrality. Every once in a while a section of humankind turns inward on itself like that and here the Church was no exception. Damn, the fight against such obscurantism is the price that we pay for some sense of human progress. Except, as in the case of the Catholic Church, it should not have taken 300 years to admit the error. Know this. We have to defend the Galileos of the world against the rise of obscurantism. And in this play Brecht has done his part to honor that commitment.

** 1/2 (**** for the play, zero for Bentley's comments)
Galileo is presented from the time of his first findings with which Mother Church took offense until twenty years after his recantation. While the play mainly focuses on Galileo and how his own views toward his work affect him and those around him, we're not allowed to go away without understanding how those views also affected the Italian society around him; as with all things, the subversion to be found in Galileo's discovery that the Earth revolves around the Sun instead of vice-versa seeps into the public mind, much to the Church's dismay. But at its heart, the play is about the man himself and those around him. Galileo himself, historically accurate or not, is a convincing character, and his family, friends, and supporters are also very well-drawn (with the arguable exception of his daughter, who never seems to really flesh out and become a believable human being; her actions and reactions are predictable and wooden). Whatever the message underlying, and whether the reader agrees with it or not, Galileo is first and foremost a decent piece of drama. Leave Bentley's preface until after you've drawn your own conclusions.

Galileo
So maybe it's not completely accurate. I just read this book for a class I have to take. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it. It wasn't the dry, boring piece of literature I had expected. It's really a book to read - maybe not multiple times, but at least once. It has an important message, and is presented in a reasonably interesting way.

Good play, bad packaging
Bertolt Brecht, Galileo (Grove Press, 1952)

Publishers who put out "literature" (perhaps I should capitalize the L) have felt it necessary for the past half-century or so to include long-winded dissections of the texts as a part of their editions. No mind is paid, seemingly, to whether these long-winded dissections contain major plot spoilers (they almost always do). Add Eric Bentley's interminable preface to the Grove Press edition of Brecht's Galileo to the list. Perhaps Groveassumes anyone reading the thing will either have already read the play or will be so turned off by Belntley's wooden prose style that they won't read far enough to get to the spoilers. My advice: go the second route. And book publishers, if you're putting essays in your editions, PLEASE put them AFTER the actual text, so the novice reader of a given work will be able to approach it without the coloring of another reader's analysis.

Bentley spends forty-odd pages discussing the historical inaccuracies of Brecht's Galileo and the two extant versions of the text (though Bentley says both are presented in the Grive edition, this is not the case; from his comments, I gather this is the second version of the play, completed after WW2 [the first was completed in 1937]). Bentley goes on forever about the socialist qualities of Galileo, and whether the scientist makes a worthy Marxist hero, both in the reader's eyes and in Brecht's. Whether anyone outside those writing a paper for a Marxist lit class would care doesn't seem to have crossed his mind. Brecht is one of the few authors who is capable of taking a political statement and couching it in such writing as to make the statement itself visible only to those looking for it; Galileo's Marxism, or lack of same, doesn't hit the reader in the face with a dead herring (or a dropped pebble, as 'twere) throughout the text. Commendable, especially for as fervent a Marxist as was Brecht. Here is a man who never let the message overtake the medium, and scads of modern authors could do with repeated readings of this text to get a handle on what it is they're doing wrong.

Bentley aside, the play itself is certainly worth the reader's time. Galileo is presented from the time of his first findings with which Mother Church took offense until twenty years after his recantation. While the play mainly focuses on Galileo and how his own views toward his work affect him and those around him, we're not allowed to go away without understanding how those views also affected the Italian society around him; as with all things, the subversion to be found in Galileo's discovery that the Earth revolves around the Sun instead of vice-versa seeps into the public mind, much to the Church's dismay. But at its heart, the play is about the man himself and those around him. Galileo himself, historically accurate or not, is a convincing character, and his family, friends, and supporters are also very well-drawn (with the arguable exception of his daughter, who never seems to really flesh out and become a believable human being; her actions and reactions are predictable and wooden). Whatever the message underlying, and whether the reader agrees with it or not, Galileo is first and foremost a decent piece of drama. Leave Bentley's preface until after you've drawn your own conclusions. ** 1/2 (**** for the play, zero for Bentley's comments)

This is tripe
Anybody who would recommend this as a history book is completely unaware of the true history.Brecht may have been using dramatic license or he may have had an axe to grind with the Catholic Church.Either way, this is NOT an accurate historical account.Any person who would suggest it as such is guilty of what Brecht and revisionists accuse the Church of doing: suppressing the truth to further their personal agenda. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Concentrates on Brecht
While other biographies spend time with external events, This book concentrates on Brech and his works.It shows his time in Weimar Germany and through the East Germany.Both his marriages are described.

There is an eight-page chronology to put the works in prospective.

Part One - Barvarian Beginnings

Part Two - Berlin

Part Three - Scandinavian Exile

Part Four - Brecht in Hollywood

Part Five - Towards the Schiffbauerdamm ... Read more

Book Description
Bertolt Brecht's work journals trace his years of exile (the period from 1934 to 1955) in Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and America, as well as his return, via Switzerland, to East Berlin. These journals include his perceptive and at times polemical critiques of other writers and intellectuals, but the accounts of his own writing practice provide the greatest insights into the creation of his dramatic work as well as the development of his politics and theories about epic theatre.

There are memorable and revealing passages: about D'Annunzio and Ezra Pond, about the bombing of Germany, about the Greek epigrams, about the Battle of Britain, about the death of Margarete Steffin, about Mrs. Wriggles the family dog, and about the precariousness of life in Los Angeles.

Now available in paperback, and illustrated by photographs and press cuttings collected by Brecht, the Journals offer frequently surprising and revelatory perspectives on the life and thought of one of the most influential writers of the century.

Excerpt: 16 sep 40
it would be unbelievably difficult to express my state of mind as i follow the battle of britain on the wireless and in the awful finnish-swedish papers and then write Puntila. this intellectual phenomenon explains both that such wars can exist and that literary works can still be produced. puntila means hardly anything to me, the war everything; about puntila i can write virtually antyhing, about the war, nothing. and i don't just mean `may', but truly `can'.

it is interesting how remote literature as a practical activity is from the centres where decisive events take place... ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The Frankfurt Scholarsand Bertolt Brecht.
A very short observation: Every one that wants to explore the reasons of why Adorno and Brecht were water and oil, why Brecht was very interested in dialectical relationships between wave and matter or why Brecht never endedat Frankfurt receiving three naked students meanwhile a director, can'tmiss this book. ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (6)

A must have for Theatre majors
This is a huge selection of essays written over many years. This not necessarily something you may want to just sit down and read straight through. If you do, you will find many contradictions over the years. At any rate, it is a very formative collection of Brecht's work, and certainly a must have for anyone who studies theatre or the arts in general.

Required Reading
Classic Text.Feel free to jump around chapters as you read this.It's a compilation of Brecht's ideas andis best read in random order.

Useful Toolkit for Theorists and Dramatists
Brecht's theater is a blast, a genuine attempt to do something unique and productive with the heretofore conservative and corporate medium of the stage.It represents the first wave of revolution in European theater since the English stage was closed in the mid-17th century. Brecht successfully constructs an antifascist, anti-exploitative theater without being didactic or heavyhanded about it. (As I mentioned, it's actually a blast.) Much of his success came from surrounding himself with brilliant and dedicated people, and much of the success of this collection of Brecht's writings comes from Brecht's polishing his ideas in the tumbler of real practice with those people.For me, Brecht's passing comments on Aristotle and Shakespeare are worth the price of admission.

Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic
There is only one way to describe this book: Paperback gold. I am currently studying A-Level theatre studies and I couldn't ask for a better resource on Brecht than this. However, I don't think it is necessary to be a drama student to read this book. Obviously some background knowledge of Brecht is helpful when tackling some of the essays that he has written but if you have any kind of interest in the theatre then have a go with this, it's very well edited and above all it's really quite an easy read.

Amazingly coherent for literary theory!
I expected Brecht to be murky at best in logic and stultifying at best in format, but this book reads very nicely.While he does express unique and sometimes eccentric views on epic theater, the ideas are overall incisive, original, and clear.The book is divided into many short essays, reviews, and interviews--making it easy and rewarding to pick up, ingest, digest, and set down again.I'm writing a thesis on contemporary theater; reading Brecht's ideas have clarified my own. ... Read more

Book Description
"...this impressive selection of Bertolt Brecht's poetry...roughly 500 poems...shows convincingly that his ouevre is one of the major poetic achievements of the present century. The editing, with excellent notes, excerpts from Brecht's own views about poetry and Mr. Willett's concise introduction is exemplary. Most important, the translations by 35 poets, among them H.R. Hayes, Peter Levi, Christopher Middleton, and Naomi Replansky, maintain a high standard of accuracy and often convey a very clear idea of the texture and feeling of the German." --Stephen Spender, The New York Times Book Review ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Brilliant poems
These poems are brilliant and inspiring because they were written by a socialist.They were written to make you think about the system.

Questions by a Worker Who Reads is one of my favourite poems.Thefreeways, offices, electricity system and everything else in ourcivilization were not built by politicians or company executives - theywere built by workers.

Brecht's poetry may be greater than his plays.
Bertolt Brecht has acquired the same status as those other artists whose work is known, but not appreciated.Like Faulkner, Joyce and Proust, he has become transmuted into an adjective; even worse, he has followers who describe themselves as "Brechtian" and who are happy to discuss his theories of drama instead of the dramas themselves. But things get even worse when you get closer to the man himself, for there is a wealth of evidence that "der arme B.B." was, in fact, a conscienceless thief who stole credit from everyone with whom he worked and, in particular, from the women he charmed into professional and emotional liaisons.Add to this his craven attitude towards Stalin, and his theories of epic theater seem to be, at the very least, a gross exercise in self-deception. All very off-putting.But his poetry is a different matter.Brecht approaches the reader without the arrogance of a theorist interested in instructing the audience how to think.He is more candid, both personally and politically, willing to condemn his own weaknesses and, in his later years, those of the movement that he had defended at any cost.And, most importantly, his poetry is fresh, direct, cutting and beautiful, even in translation.This is a volume that those who are interested in writing poetry should have. ... Read more

Book Description

Customer Reviews (3)

great read
This book is full of wonderful plays by Bertolt Brecht. I had performed a scene from The Judge in one of my acting classes in community college, and I just HAD to get my hands on my own copy after. I'm glad I got it, because I love reading all of his plays.

The Jewish Wife
This play has many angles of which may be interpreted.You can see that the wife and husband are well known in the community and the husband is intelligent. The wife is trying to find a way to stand up to her husband (about her leaving him to go to safer Amsterdam during WWII), but will she be able to gather her courage and speak up or just go along with what he tells her, though she thinks he is wrong?

Short Lessons in the Epic Theatre
Whatever the controversy in Brecht's personal life or even his authorship of the work which we credit him, the works contained in this collection are windows to understanding the form championed by many as the onlyalternative to Stanislavsky's method.

'The Elephant Calf' and 'TheMeasures Taken' are lessons in action and politics.'The Jewish Wife'apart from being one of the most important monologues of all time, is alesson in humanity. A great collection for any actor or serious theatreenthusiast. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Baal is Brilliance
Brecht's language is melting. The plot resembles that of Chekhov'sPlatonov, only more poetic. Is one of Brecht's best plays, oftenunderrated. Highly recommended by this reader. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

IN THE MATTER OF ONE MAC THE KNIFE
I have reviewed some of the Communist master playwright Bertolt Brecht's later more consciously political and didactic plays elsewhere in this space. The play under review is an earlier work, before he fully committed himself to communism, and is an adaptation of John Gay's 18th century Beggar's Opera to the modern theater. The subject at hand is a look at the way those in the lower depths of society survive under emergent capitalist conditions, especially the main character, one MacHealth a.k.a. Mac the Knife. As such Brecht's adaptation has given no end of problems for those critics who want to claim it for the communist cause. It is far too universal in it sentiment about human nature in the capitalist era and therefore properly is a transitional to his later more consciously partisan works like The Measures Taken and The Mother. Thus one should take it for is own worth as a look at survival in a seemingly Hobbesian world.

The plot line is rather simply-MacHealth, a former British imperial soldier, has struck out on his own in dog-eat dog London and has created a name for himself as a master criminal and seducer of the ladies. Other forces including the constabulary, a small disreputable but conniving businessman and, let us be politically correct here, some sexual workers combine in an attempt to deprive Mac of life and limb. However luck and a royal coronation combine to thwart those best laid plans. All of this is performed in a light operatic format that allows Brecht to wax poetic at humanity's plight through a series of sharply-etched songs in which he collaborated with the legendary Kurt Weill.

Above I referred to some controversy about Brecht's intention in this work. That the roguish, incipient capitalist MacHealth is saved in the end through royal intervention has caused some commentators to argue for the organic connection between the rising capitalist class and the monarchy in England. Others have noted the similarities in appetite between the lumpenproletariat element as represented by MacHealth and his criminal crew and the developing capitalism of the time. I think that both views overdraw what one can take out of Gay's story or Brecht's adaptation. This story line is much more conducive to a generalized treatment on the nature of survival in a world that has broken from its agrarian past and has not yet stabilized it bourgeois norms of propriety. Some of these same characteristics were played out in the development of American capitalism, especially in the Wild West. But as presented here this is only a rudimentary outline of where things could go. I stand by my comment in the first paragraph about the unmediated nature of Brecht's take on Gay's little work. He most definitely got more focused on the nature of the human plight under capitalism latter as he developed as a Marxist.

A rather boring translation of the great Dreigroschenoper
One has to know and understand the original German text of the Dreigroschenoper to be really able to judge the quality of the English translations. This one, used among others by Helen Schneider on her albumwith Weill songs, has nothing of the sarcasms of the German lyrics. Betterread the 1954 translation of Marc Blitzstein or the translation made byFrank McGuinness in the early 1990s.

Probably the best translation to capture Brecht's intentions
Of all the translations on the market, this one is the best -- most are watered-down, tepid versions.Manheim & Willet's was used in the late 1970's revival of the piece by the New York Shakespeare Festival, which starred the late Raul Julia and Ellen Greene (of "Little Shop of Horrors" fame, in the role originally intended for Lotte Lenya). ... Read more