SONGS AND POEMS PLAY A DIFFERENT ROLE in the genetic history of the Furcht und Elend complex than they do in the case of such canonical works as Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder, Der gute Mensch von Sezuan and Der kaukasische Kreidekreis. Instead of his usual practice of establishing a fixed corpus of sung and spoken epic commenting devices relatively early on, Brecht experiments at virtually every stage of Furcht und Elend's evolution with a changing repertoire of prologue verses (Vorsprüche), sung or spoken epic inserts, epilogues, and assorted framing devices. The main reasons for this change of approach are to be found in Brecht's repeated attempts to have his play appropriately staged and received during the prewar and wartime years of exile, as well as the need to adjust the work's components to changing historical circumstances.

The Preparatory Poems

A striking feature of the early phase of Furcht und Elend's genesis is the number of scenes for which a companion poem exists. No other play by Brecht stood in such an unmistakable relationship to a series of preliminary sketches in verse. (The symbiotic relationship between Brecht's Deutsche Satiren (BFA 12:61–80) and a number of his antifascist essays is in some respects a parallel, yet more complicated phenomenon.) Although the various preparatory poems have received sporadic attention, there has been little consensus about their function. One such poem (“Die Ängste des Regimes”) was already considered in Chapter Two.