Editorial Notes
Brecht’s first idea for this play is thought to date from the time of He Said Yes and the writing of The Decision. It was inspired by a full-length Chinese play of the Yüan dynasty which Elisabeth Hauptmann had just translated from the French. This was a nineteenth-century version, made by M. Bazin aîné, and his title was Ho-Han-Shan ou la tunique confrontée (‘confrontation’ here meaning ‘matching’). Hauptmann called it Zwei halbe Mantel after the coat which is torn in half and given to a father and a son so they can identify one another. It really has very little to do with Brecht’s play apart from involving a journey and a judicial verdict at the end. But it seems that Hauptmann and Emil Hesse-Burri, who together had been working on Saint Joan of the Stockyards, were now given the task of developing her Chinese kernel on a smaller and simpler scale, under the initial title The Story of a Journey. This work coincided with the Brecht/Eisler/Dudow collaboration on The Decision, which clearly took precedence. The new play would involve choruses and songs, but we do not know how much thought was given to the question of music.
Like The Decision it was set in a never-never China; the one meaningful place-name being Urga, the old name for the Mongolian capital, Ulan Bator. And at first it seemed to rely largely on confrontation and contradiction: setting two choruses, Left and Right, to argue with one another, and even introducing a counter-title, The Rule and the Exception, along with two contradictory verdicts at the end, like the ‘dialectical’ opposition of He Said Yes and He Said No. So the opening chorus, now delivered by the Actors, was given to the Left Chorus, after which the Right Chorus came in with:
We confirm
The truth of these events. But
We see them as an unfortunate hitch
In the story of oil exploitation
By the Western pioneers.
We point out what is behind these things:
The conquest of the earth
By the race of Man.
Similarly at the end, the epilogue now spoken by the Actors was spoken by the Left Chorus only, and preceded by the Right Chorus with:
The law has spoken. The judgement seems harsh.
But oil must be extracted
And the load must be carried.
It is not for his own happiness
That Man is born. So let these events now
Be forgotten.
Another sketch for the antiphonal use of the two choruses comes from the same source, pp. 474–475 of the Berlin and Frankfurt Stücke 3, 1988. This raises an issue of some relevance today:
THE RIGHT CHORUS:
Forward! Merchant! Our cities were born
Of massive competition! Oil
Is delivered cheaply and in rich profusion
To the poorest hut, thanks to competition! Civilisation
Progresses through competition! The swift
Are beaten by the shrewder. So forward! The shrewd
Give in to the more shrewd. So forward! To him who brings the greater usefulness
The reward will be given. So forward!
THE LEFT CHORUS:
Oh, he is running too fast!
Slow, coolie! Their cities are great
But not good. In the leaky hut
Oil lights up hunger. Competition
Increases the brutality. The shrewd porter
Is slow. He fights
The haste which will finish him. Every step
That can be saved is a gain.
Competition between your exploiters
Is not yours. The most useful
Get the least reward.
Here the ‘Right’ and ‘Left’ were to have a political connotation. But this more ritualistic approach was discarded, perhaps around the time when Brecht went into exile and the collaboration with Hauptmann was interrupted. There was no more Chorus. The planned publication in the Versuche series had to be put off (till 1950, as it turned out) and from now on he would revise and simplify the play with Margarete Steffin. It first appeared in 1937 in the German edition of the Moscow magazine Internationale Literatur, without the label ‘Lehrstück’, after which Brecht checked it again before its definitive publication as a ‘Lehrstück’ in volume 2 of the Malik-Verlag Gesammelte Werke. This has been the basis of all subsequent printings, and there is no evidence of Brecht having worked on it again since 1938. It is unmentioned in his Journals.
In that year it was performed in Hebrew in Palestine (as the country was then called) by the actors of a kibbutz at Givat Chaim, directed by Alfred Wolf. The music, for voice and clarinet, was by the little-known Bulgarian-born Nissim Nissimov. Then after the Second World War Jean-Marie Serreau staged it in Paris in 1947 at the little Theatre de Poche in a translation by Genevieve Serreau and Benno Besson, who would also play the Guide; they then toured it in the French Occupation Zone of Germany, until the military government began objecting. With this tour in mind Brecht had asked Paul Dessau to compose the songs, apparently for performance in German, and such a performance was given, still under Serreau, at the Comédie des Champs-Elysées in July 1949. The first purely German production was in September 1956, a few weeks after Brecht’s death, at the Dusseldorf Kammerspiele; the Dessau music (later to become mandatory for any production) was not used. According to Carl Weber, then one of Brecht’s assistant directors, Brecht had become more interested in the play than his recommendation of it as a substitute for The Decision (see his letter to Paul Patera on p. 347 above) might suggest.
In England it was staged by Unity Theatre in October 1956, following the Ensemble’s first London season, and there have been a number of productions in schools and colleges, where its straightforward simplicity has made it one of the most acceptable of Brecht’s works.
THE HORATIANS AND THE CURIATIANS
Texts by Brecht
NOTE TO THE TEXT
The Horatians and the Curiatians, written in 1934, is a Lehrstück for children about dialectics. It is part of the 24th experiment (plays for schools).
[Prefixed to the text in Versuche 14, Berlin, 1955. ‘Dialectics’ for Brecht was a way of thinking about processes – historical, social, scientific – which Karl Marx had developed on the basis of the philosophy of Hegel.]
PREPARATORY WORK ON ‘THE HORATIANS AND THE CURIATIANS’
1
Can the story be constructed on the basis of ‘parity’ of forces? In real life such parity does not exist. But at given moments it does, and can be brought about by inequality of the terrain and so on. Moreover wars do not take place, or do not develop without the presence of a certain parity. Guile is more easily demonstrated if one assumes parity; then it is guile that is decisive. But perhaps it is best brought about by exploiting one’s own peculiarities (weakness or superiority) along with those of the other man. Tricks alone prove nothing; they are accidental and difficult to teach, leaving an inadequate recommendation of guile as such.
2
Can the story be constructed on the basis of inequality of forces? Awkward. Here the victor loses two of his three battles. Intellectual superiority wins him the third. So the stronger has to succumb. Then in what respect was he the stronger? Was he better armed – that too would have called for intelligence. (Better production . . .) More powerful? That depends on good economy. And so on.
3
The first battle could be won by better exploitation of the peculiarities of one’s equipment. The second by exploiting the terrain. The third, then, by organisation.
[From vol. 24 of the Berlin and Frankfurt edition, Suhrkamp, 1991, edited by Peter Kraft et al., p. 220. Written in 1934, at the planning stage.]
TRADITIONAL CHINESE ACTING
It is well known that the Chinese theatre uses a lot of symbols. Thus a general will carry little pennants on his shoulder, corresponding to the number of regiments under his command, Poverty is shown by patching the silken costumes with irregular shapes of different colours, likewise silken, to indicate that they have been mended. Characters are distinguished by
particular masks, i.e. simply by painting. Certain gestures of the two hands signify the forcible opening of a door, etc. The stage itself remains the same, but articles of furniture are carried in during the action.
[A passage from Brecht’s ‘Verfremdungseffekte in der chinesischen Schauspielkunst’, written in 1935/36 and included Brecht on Theatre (1964) as ‘Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting’.]
INSTRUCTION FOR THE ACTORS
1
At the same time the Generals stand for their armies. Following a convention of the Chinese theatre, the elements of those armies can be indicated by little flags which the Generals wear on wooden shoulderframes. They stick above the shoulder. The actors’ movements have to be slow, due to their awareness of supporting the shoulderframes, and of a certain breadth. The actors show the destruction of their army units by pulling a number of flags out of their shoulderframes with a great gesture and throwing them away.
2
The landscape is fixed to the floor of the stage. Actors and spectators alike see the river or the valley drawn there. If the stage is raked a complete structure can be built on it, the entire battlefield, knee-high forests, hills and so on. This decor must not be too prodigal (e.g. not coloured) but the kind of thing seen on old maps. In the chapter called ‘Seven conversions of a spear’ the obstacles (such as Crevasse, Snowdrift etc.) can be indicated on small panels fixed to the bare scaffolding.
3
The positions of footsteps also need to be fixed; to some extent the actors follow one another’s footprints. This is necessary because the time has to be measured. In the first battle the clock is the actor carrying the sun. During the ‘Seven conversions’ in the second, it is the Curiatian. The portrayal of the events must move as slowly as if it were under a magnifying glass.
4
In the battle of the archers no arrows are needed.
5
To indicate a blizzard a few handfuls of torn paper are thrown over the spearmen.
6
About speaking the verse: the voice starts each line afresh. But the recitation must not seem jerky.
7
One can make do without music by just using drums. After a while the drums will become monotonous, but not for long.
8
The titles should be projected or painted on banners.
[Written for the play’s first publication in Internationale Literatur (Deutsche Blatter), 1936, no. 1, and included with corrections in the Malik-Verlag Gesammelte Werke, vol. 2, 1938. Also in the subsequent collected editions.]
Editorial Notes
1934 may have been the year of the play’s conception, but the main work was done in 1935. This was when Brecht and Eisler had both visited Moscow. The former saw the private performance by the Chinese actor Mei Lan-fang which led him to write the essay ‘Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting’ where he first used the term ‘Verfremdungseffekt’ and also made the reference to the use of little flags which we cite above. Eisler, who had just been appointed chairman of the Comintern’s International Music Bureau, left Moscow after Brecht, bringing with him a commission from the Red Army to write a ‘Lehrstück’ for children, for which Brecht assumed Eisler would compose the music. Thus Brecht’s letter 267 of 29 August says that he has started work on the play ‘on your initiative’. This happened when the New York Mother production was already impending, and Eisler (though not as yet Brecht) was due to go over there.
The idea of a stylised playlet on a military theme seems to have come from a nineteenth-century translation of Livy’s history of Rome, which Brecht owned and subsequently drew on for his adaptation of Coriolanus. On the eve of a war in the seventh century BC between Rome and the nearby Alba Longa (Castel Gandolfo) the two cities decided that the rival armies should be represented each by three warriors, chosen from their leading families, the Horatii for Rome and the Curiatii for the Alban city. Each family put a trio of brothers, supposedly triplets, all skilled in one of the three military weapons of the time: the crossbow, the spear or lance, and the sword. On the face of it, then, there was parity of forces and equipment on the two sides, and at first the battle seemed equal. But then two of the Horatii were brought down and the third was expected to surrender. He however chose to run away, and in so doing to kill his three opponents one by one. Whether this put Brecht in mind of Napoleon’s Russian campaign we do not know – he mentioned it incidentally in the cited article – but the military symbolism clearly intrigued him, and the Chinese use of flags and a bare set accorded well with it. There is also Corneille’s tragedy Horace (1640), which centres on the victorious brother and his love for his wife Sabine, a sister of the Curiatians, together with his own sister Camille and her love for Curiace (of the rival family), whom he kills. The account of the fighting is much the same, but it is hearsay; we never see it; nor do the other brothers on each side appear. Nor have we any idea whether Brecht knew that classic work in rhyming couplets.
A number of commentators attribute the absence of any music, or specific provision for music, to an unexplained quarrel between Eisler and Brecht. If there was indeed such a quarrel it can hardly have provoked Eisler’s failure to stay with Brecht in Denmark in early September, but may rather have been the result of it. Brecht’s letter cited above suggests that the plan was thrown out by Eisler’s going off to Prague, as he felt bound to spend the first half of the month there in his new IMB capacity. This left virtually no time for visiting Brecht, before his boat left for New York, and so he chose to spend his two spare days in Paris rather than make the long detour from Prague via Denmark. This, at least, is what he eventually told Hans Bunge. Meanwhile Brecht, with Margarete Steffin’s help, had finished the revised version of the text by September 15th, nor were there any major changes before its publication in Moscow the following spring. Eisler seems not to have composed any music for it, apart from an unpublished sketch or two in the Eisler Archive, dating possibly from before September 1935. Some five years later Brecht discussed a collaboration with the Finnish composer Simon Parmet, but this too led to nothing. Only in the last year of Brecht’s life would there be a setting by the East German composer Kurt Schwaen, scored for woodwind, brass, percussion, piano and double-bass.
Brecht treated the Soviet commission as urgent and was plainly disappointed that it led nowhere. Yet he resumed the partnership with Eisler seamlessly almost at once, getting him to set further songs for the forthcoming Round Heads and Pointed Heads production, and presenting a common front to the Theatre Union over The Mother. All the same, there is no sign of his having pressed Eisler further about the school play, or even of having sent him the finished script. And he made none of his radical attempts to rework or transform it. Rather he suggested an unusually free treatment of the text: the Generals could introduce speeches or harangues of their own; there could be dialogues between one of the choruses and a member of the audience; and finally, the label ‘Lehrstück’ was dropped in favour of ‘Schulstück’ or ‘Play for schools’. The text remained unwanted until shortly before Brecht’s death in 1956. Then it was taken up by the music department of Halle university, where Hella Brock had been asking for a work of this kind. At Brecht’s suggestion Kurt Schwaen composed thirty musical numbers for it. The emphasis was on mime and dance, and the premiere was on 26 April 1958. The impact appears to have been slight.
ST JOAN OF THE STOCKYARDS
Texts by Brecht
PRELIMINARY NOTE TO THE STAGE SCRIPT (1931)
Place: Chicago
Time: c.1900
A screen in the background can carry statements detailing the course of business. This consists of a crisis of several weeks affecting the meat trade, during which the workers in the big packing yards are locked out. In view of the symptoms of an impending saturation of the market (falling prices, heightened competition, the threat of protective tariffs in the adjoining states) Pierpont Mauler decides to take his money out of the meat business. His shares are transferred to his crony Cridle in exc
hange for the elimination of his rival Lennox. This is achieved, but at the same time the by now fully developed crisis forces the Mauler-Cridle group to shut down. Once meat prices have fallen till they can hardly go further, Mauler places huge orders with the meat plants. Simultaneously, to keep his control of meat prices, he buys up the stockbreeders’ livestock. From then on the packing plants can only meet his orders by buying livestock from himself. The crucial battle is fought out on the Exchange, with Mauler’s agent Slift so tightening the screw by driving up prices that the packing plants go bankrupt, with the result that Mauler’s contracts, which should have guaranteed him a market, are void, and his livestock proves impossible to unload. The eventual answer to the whole dilemma is found when all concerned join together and decide to maintain prices at a profitable level by destroying part of the livestock while at the same time permanently eliminating part of the workforce from the production process. In other words, in the course of the crisis Mauler has united the packing plants under his control and cut wages and livestock prices alike.
In all this the Black Straw Hats personify public opinion.
[Gisela E. Bahr: Die heilige Johanna der Schlachthöfe Bühnenfassung, Fragmente, Variante, pp. 9–10. Edition Suhrkamp, Frankfurt-am-Main, 1971. The specified date of 1900 was later omitted.]