Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director who radically transformed 20th-century theatre. His "epic theatre" synthesized theory and practice, using the stage as a forum for political ideas and critical aesthetics. Brecht sought to "re-function" theatrical production for new social uses, distinguishing him from other avant-garde approaches. His innovative form, which merged popular themes with experimental aesthetics, created a modernist realism with a lasting impact on drama, film, and theatrical practice worldwide.
"First published in German in 1965 and now translated and edited by Antony Tatlow, Brecht's Me-ti: Book of Interventions in the Flow of Things provides readers with a much-anticipated accessible edition of this important work. It features a substantial introduction to the concerns of the work, its genesis and context - both within Brecht's own writing and within the wider social and political history, and provides an original selection and organisation of texts. Extensive notes illuminate the work and provide commentary on related works from Brecht's oeuvre." --Publisher's website
The book explores the Paris Commune of 1871, highlighting its brief but impactful experiment in democracy and workers' governance. It includes Marx's address on the Commune, Lenin's reflections on its significance for building socialism, and Bertolt Brecht's poetic tribute. Additionally, it features the Manifesto of the Paris Commune's Federation of Artists, showcasing the cultural and political aspirations of the time. Together, these texts provide insights into revolutionary thought and the enduring legacy of the Commune in shaping socialist ideals.
Widely considered one of the great dramatic creations of the modern stage, "Mother Courage and Her Children" is Bertolt Brecht's most passionate and profound statement against war. Set in the seventeenth century, the play follows Anna Fierling -- "Mother Courage" -- an itinerant trader, as she pulls her wagon of wares and her children through the blood and carnage of Europe's religious wars. Battered by hardships, brutality, and the degradation and death of her children, she ultimately finds herself alone with the one thing in which she truly believes -- her ramshackle wagon with its tattered flag and freight of boots and brandy. Fitting herself in its harness, the old woman manages, with the last of her strength, to drag it onward to the next battle. In the enduring figure of Mother Courage, Bertolt Brecht has created one of the most extraordinary characters in the literature of drama.
Times Literary Supplement • Books of the Year ("The most generous available English collection of Brecht’s poetry.") A landmark literary event, The Collected Poems of Bertolt Brecht is the most extensive English translation of Brecht’s poetry to date. Widely celebrated as the greatest German playwright of the twentieth century, Bertolt Brecht was also, as George Steiner observed, “that very rare phenomenon, a great poet, for whom poetry is an almost everyday visitation and drawing of breath.” Hugely prolific, Brecht also wrote more than two thousand poems—though fewer than half were published in his lifetime, and early translations were heavily censored. Now, award-winning translators David Constantine and Tom Kuhn have heroically translated more than 1,200 poems in the most comprehensive English collection of Brecht’s poetry to date. Written between 1913 and 1956, these poems celebrate Brecht’s unquenchable “love of life, the desire for better and more of it,” and reflect the technical virtuosity of an artist driven by bitter and violent politics, as well as by the untrammeled forces of love and erotic desire. A monumental achievement and a reclamation, The Collected Poems of Bertolt Brecht is a must-have for any lover of twentieth-century poetry.
The title is ironic - How to make war, like, Oh, what a lovely war! A large format picture book containing over eighty photographs of the Second World War, each with a four line poem by Brecht written as the events unrolled. This is the first publication in English of a major work by Brecht.
From Scandinavia across Russia to Hollywood, then on, via Switzerland and a flirtation with Salzburg, back to his own disappointing country, Brecht makes shrewd if sometimes harsh judgements on the people he meets. Some people included are: Thomas Mann, the Frankfurt philosophers, Schonberg, Isherwood, D'Annunzio, Ezra Pound, Wordsworth, Margaret Steffin, and more
Now available in Bloomsbury Revelations series, Brecht on Performance: Messingkauf and Modelbooks presents a selection of Brecht's principal writings about the craft of acting and realising texts for the stage. It crystallises and makes concrete many of the more theoretical aspects of his other writing and illuminates the practice of this hugely influential director and dramatist. The volume is in two parts. The first features an entirely new commentated edition of Brecht's dialogues and essays about the practice of theatre, known as the Messingkauf, or Buying Brass, including the 'Practice Pieces' for actors (rehearsal scenes for classics by Shakespeare and Schiller). The second contains rehearsal and production records from Brecht's work on productions of Life of Galileo, Antigone, Mother Courage and others. Edited by an international team of Brecht scholars and including an essay by director and teacher Di Trevis examining the practical application of these texts for theatres and actors today, Brecht on Performance is a wonderfully rich resource. The text is illustrated with over 30 photographs from the Modelbooks.
"A man with one theory is lost. He must have several, four, many! He must stuff them in his pockets like newspapers, always the most recent, you can live well between them, you can dwell easily between the theories."-Bertolt Brecht, 1920"Brecht manages as a Marxist comedian to combine an extraordinarily sensitive nose for the imperfect, unfinished state of human affairs with the most resolute revolutionary commitment. In an epoch like our own, when these two options have become increasingly polarized and exclusive, Brecht offers a not inconsiderable lesson."-Terry Eagleton"Brecht's thought is present everywhere today without bearing his name and without our being aware of it."-Fredric Jameson
An intense and lively debate on literature and art between thinkers who became
some of the great figures of twentieth-century philosophy and literature
