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Brecht in America, 1935

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2022

Lee Baxandall
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Extract

Bert Brecht set out in 1935 on his first voyage to America. He sailed on a dingy, if not black, freighter, from Denmark, where he lived during several years of exile from Hitler's Germany. His destination: New York and the opportunity to collaborate in a production of The Mother at the Theatre Union, the most famous American socialist theatre.

Brecht had had few chances to see his work done since his emigration. He worked with productions in Copenhagen and Paris, but the reputation of American left theatre stood much higher, with enthusiastic theatre groups in dozens of large and small cities seeking good “social plays,” in response to the depression crisis. Friedrich Wolf, a fellow German emigre playwright, declared sweepingly in International Literature that New York left theatre was “without exaggeration the strongest and most outstanding outpost of the Left Theatre in all the capitalist countries.” (Wolf's Sailors ofCattaro was being done at Theatre Union.) Brecht had doubts.

Type
Research Article
Information
TDR (1967) , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , Fall 1967 , pp. 69 - 87
Copyright
Copyright © The Drama Review 1967

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References

1 Brecht, “Als der Klassiker am Montag, dem siebenten Oktober 1935, es verliess, weinte Dánemark,” Gedichte Vlll (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1965), p. 148.

2 This and other statements by Victor Wolfson from an interview with the present writer at Vernon, New Jersey, June 6, 1965.

3 Carbons of these letters are in the Theatre Union documents file, in the Theatre Collection of the New York Public Library at Lincoln Center. The letter of August 6 is unsigned but surely from Larkin. The letters were addressed to Barbara Nixon of England's Left Theatre. Significantly perhaps, Miss Nixon had made a stage version of the novel for Left Theatre.

4 Minutes of the Executive Board of the Theatre Union, kindly lent by Albert Maltz. Because of the workload on the recording secretary, Mr. Maltz explains, minutes for some meetings during this period do not exist. Surviving minutes with reference to The Mother, seen by the present writer, are for these dates: Apr. 23, 30; May 7, 21, 24-26, 30; July 26-29; Sept. 12, 29; Oct. 1, 2, 8, 15, 22, 27; Nov. 5,26; Dec. 3,, 4 (all 1935).

5 Both the translation and the subsequent adaptation by Peters are in the New York Public Library Theatre Collection at Lincoln Center. A sample of the adaptation is in Brecht, Stücke V (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1957), pp. 142-150. Jerome Moross states that James Agee made the adaptation of the song lyrics.

6 This and other statements by Manuel Gomez from a letter to the present writer, July 12, 1965.

7 Conversation with the present writer, London, August 1965.

8 Brecht, “Memorandum über die Verstümmelung und Enstellung des Textes,” Brecht-Archiv (Berlin), 340/24. Dated Nov. 22, 1935.

9 The statements by Jerome Moross from conversations with the present writer, New York City, Sept. 20 and 22, 1965.

10 Brecht, “Memorandum,” 340/24-29 (see fn. 8).

11 Hanns Eisler, untitled ms., Brecht-Archiv, 341/01-03. Presumably written in December 1935.

12 The following statements by Gorelik are from a letter to the present writer, dated Jan. 17, 1967, and from “Brecht: ‘I Am the Einstein Of the New Stage Form…',” Theatre Arts, March 1957, p.73.

13 Mordecai Gorelik, New Theatres For Old (New York: Samuel French, 1940), p. 396.

14 Brecht, Stücke V, p. 150. My Theatre Union correspondents and Stanley Burnshaw of New Masses say that they know nothing of efforts by Brecht to publish a defense.

15 Minna Lederman, “Memories Of Marc Blitzstein,” Show, June 1964, pp. 18, 21-24.

16 “Discussion Jerome/Brecht/Eisler,” Brecht-Archiv, 341/46-51. Dated Nov. 23, 1935. Brecht finds beauty in Archibald MacLeish's Panic and in T. S. Eliot's “The Waste Land” but holds for language in drama that reflects class idioms (“diction that historically belongs to them“) by which he does not mean naturalistic reproduction of idiom. He would make no distinction “between revolting Negroes, Chinese or Irish“; all would speak in a “free, syncopated, gestic rhythm.” Jerome points out that Negroes in Turner's time spoke in dialect and asks about verisimilitude. Brecht replies: “I would use a dialect when it plays a political part… If the spectator is supposed to learn that a dialect separates various classes, only then I would use dialect” as in a scene where plantation owners “speak while doing business pure English” and “those that they intend to rob (feel, exploit) might speak dialect… Nowhere else.” Jerome objects that “the American people are attuned to hear slaves speak dialect.” Brecht: “That's excellent! Then the introduction of standard English is very important. This is revolutionary to let the Negroes speak standard English!“

17 The poem is “Brief an den Stiickeschreiber Odets,” in Brecht, Gedichte VI (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1964), p. 95. Brecht's other comments are from a letter to V. J. Jerome, dated February 1936, published in Progressive Labor, December 1965, p. 74.

18 Brecht, Schriften zum Theater I (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1963), p. 271. Dated July 30, 1926.

19 Brecht-Archiv, 340/28-29. Some of this also in Brecht, Schriften zum Theater IV (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1963), pp. 73-76.

20 Brecht-Archiv, 340/23.

21 The entire letter is in Brecht, Stucke V, pp. 156-163. We have chiefly cited unpublished manuscripts with Brecht's fresh impressions of the production. His more considered statements, cited only where they add a further dimension, may be seen in Stücke V, pp. 141-171, partly translated in John Willett, ed., Brecht on Theatre (New York: Hill & Wang, 1964), pp. 81-84.

22 Brecht-Archiv, 340/21-22, 341/41-42. Portions are printed in his Schriften IV, pp. 71-72.

23 Brecht's circle included Peter Loire, Lion Feuchtwanger, Leonhard Frank, Fritz Lang, Ferdinand Bruckner, Paul Dessau, Heinrich (but not Thomas) Mann, Eisler, and others such as Charlie Chaplin, W. H. Auden, Eric Bentley, and Aldous Huxley. Brecht's reluctance to contact or gain help from the American left is confirmed by Franklin Folsom who was instrumental in the Committee for Exiled Writers, and from September 1937 to 1942 was executive secretary of the League of American Writers. Jerome Moross confirms that Weill aided Brecht, adding that the many Hollywood affiliates of the Party never helped him to find work.

24 The list appears in Piscator's new introduction to his Das Politische Théâter, published so far only in Theatre populaire.

25 Brecht, Schriften III, p. 207.