Non-Laughter, Laughter, Perhaps Syllables, or Only Phonemes in Western Civilization

I have long been interested in the representation and musicalization of laughter, or that representation of that which we take as laughter. It is a long history, and a rich one. I offer, here, only a small sample, a cross-section, an intersection, of texts, the crossroads, where Death--or its undead refusal, its burial, or the deal with the Devil--and the Devil, as the God, always seems to be, and be in the details.

My aunt, who is a nun, once said to me, a long time ago, "How can we know what other people know, when we can barely know ourselves?" She has since repudiated this remark, but for me, it was foundational. And psychoanalysis--and our current political situation--bears this observation out. How can we know another, when we can barely know ourselves? We insist on imputing intentions and meanings to others, when we barely understand our own. The lie tells the truth. The tangled web we weave, when we practice to deceive, tells a better truth than when we try to tell the truth. And our understanding of another, tells us so much more about ourselves. Is someone laughing, or just extending her lips and making a sound?

Of course, we begin with Mozart.

Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen

Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen,

The vengeance of Hell boils in my heart,

Tod und Verzweiflung flammet um mich her!
Death and despair flame about me!

Fühlt nicht durch dich Sarastro
If Sarastro does not through you feel

Todesschmerzen,

The pain of death,

So bist du meine Tochter nimmermehr.
Then you will be my daughter nevermore.

Verstossen sei auf ewig,
Disowned may you be forever,

Verlassen sei auf ewig,
Destroyed be forever

Zertrümmert sei'n auf ewig
Abandoned may you be forever,

Alle Bande der Natur
All the bonds of nature,

Wenn nicht durch dich!
If not through you

Sarastro wird erblassen!
Sarastro becomes pale! (as death)

Hört, Rachegötter,
Hear, Gods of Revenge,

Hört der Mutter Schwur!
Hear a mother's oath!


W. A. Mozart (music), Emanuel Schikaneder, (libretto), Lucia Popp (vocal), "Der Hölle Rache kocht in meinem Herzen," Die Zauberflöte, 1791.




Glitter and be Gay

And, here I am,
my heart breaking,
Forced to glitter,
Forced to be gay.

Glitter and be gay,
That's the part I play;
Here I am in Paris, France,
Forced to bend my soul
To a sordid role,

Victimized by bitter, bitter circumstance.
Alas for me! Had I remained
Beside my lady mother,
My virtue had remained unstained
Until my maiden hand was gained
By some Grand Duke or other.

Ah, 'twas not to be;
Harsh necessity
Brought me to this gilded cage.
Born to higher things,
Here I droop my wings,
Ah! Singing of a sorrow nothing can assuage.

And yet of course I rather like to revel,
Ha ha!
I have no strong objection to champagne,
Ha ha!
My wardrobe is expensive as the devil,
Ha ha!
Perhaps it is ignoble to complain...
Enough, enough
Of being basely tearful!
I'll show my noble stuff
By being bright and cheerful!
Ha ha ha ha ha! Ha!

Pearls and ruby rings...
Ah, how can worldly things
Take the place of honor lost?
Can they compensate
For my fallen state,
Purchased as they were at such an awful cost?

Bracelets... lavalieres
Can they dry my tears?
Can they blind my eyes to shame?
Can the brightest brooch
Shield me from reproach?
Can the purest diamond purify my name?

And yet of course these trinkets are endearing,
Ha ha!
I'm oh, so glad my sapphire is a star,
Ha ha!
I rather like a twenty-carat earring,
Ha ha!
If I'm not pure, at least my jewels are!

Enough! Enough!
I'll take their diamond necklace
And show my noble stuff
By being gay and reckless!
Ha ha ha ha ha! Ha!

Observe how bravely I conceal
The dreadful, dreadful shame I feel.
Ha ha ha ha!

Leonard Bernstein (music), Richard Wilbur (lyrics), Barbara Cook (vocal), "Glitter and be Gay," Candide, 1956.




O Superman (for Massenet)

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha...

O Superman.
O Judge.
O Mom and Dad.
Mom and Dad.

Ah, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

O Superman,
O Judge,
O Mom and Dad,
Mom and Dad.

Ah, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

Hi! I'm not home right now,
But if you want to leave a message,
Just start talking at the sound of the tone.

Ah, ah-ah,
Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah.

Hello? This is your Mother.
Are you there?
Are you coming home?

Ah, ah, ah, ah-ah, ah, ah.

Hello? Is anybody home?

Well, you don't know me,
but I know you,
And I've got a message
to give to you,
Here come the planes.

So, you better get ready,
Ready to go;
You can come as you are,
but pay as you go,
Pay as you go.

Ah-ah, ah-ah, ah-ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah.

And I said: Okay,
Who is this really?

And the voice said:

This is the hand,
the hand that takes.
This is the hand,
the hand that takes.
This is the hand,
the hand that takes.

Here come the planes.

They're American planes,
Made in America,
Smoking
or non-smoking?

Ah, ah-ah,
Ah, ah, ah, ah.

And the voice said:
Neither snow nor rain,
nor gloom of night,
Shall stay these couriers
from the swift completion
Of their appointed rounds.

Ah, ah-ah,
Ah-ah,
Ah-ah,
Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah-ah.

'Cause when Love is gone,
there's always Justice;

And when Justice is gone,
there's always Force;

And when Force is gone,
there's always Mom.

Hi Mom!

Ah, ah,
Ah, ah-ah.

So hold me, Mom,
in your long arms,
So hold me, Mom,
in your long arms,
In your automatic arms,
Your electronic arms,
In your arms.

So hold me, Mah-ahm,
in your long arms,
Your petrochemical arms,
Your military arms,
In your electronic arms.

Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah....

Laurie Anderson, "O Superman (for Massenet)," Big Science, 1982.



I have written a poem for a woman who rides a bus in New York City. She's a maid. She has two shopping bags. When the bus stops abruptly, she laughs. If the bus stops slowly, she laughs. If the bus picks up someone, she laughs. If the bus misses someone, she AH-ha-ha-ha. So, I watched her for about nine months. I thought, "Mm, uh-huh." Now, if you don't know black features, you may think she's laughing, But she wasn't laughing, she was simply extending her lips and making a sound, Eh, heh-heh-heh! I said, "Oh, I see. That's that survival apparatus. Now, let me write about that to honor this woman, who helps us to survive." By her very survival--Miss Rosie--through your destruction, I stand up. So, I use the poem with Mister Paul Laurence Dunbar's poem, "Masks," and my own poem for old black men. Mister Dunbar wrote "Masks" in 1892.

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It shades our cheeks and hides our eyes,—
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O my God, our tears
To thee from tortured souls arise.
And we sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world think otherwise,
We wear the mask!

When I think about myself,
I almost laugh myself to death,
My life has been one great big joke,
A dance that’s walked,
A song was spoke,

I laugh so hard, Ha-ha! I almost choke,
When I think about myself.

Seventy years in these folks’ world.
The child I works for calls me "girl";
I say, “HA-HA-HA, Yes ma’am,” for working’s sake.
I'm too proud to bend
And too poor to break,
So, I laugh, until my stomach ache,
When I think about myself.

My folks can make me split my side,
I laughed so hard, HA-HA-HA, I nearly died.
The tales they tell, sound just like lyin',
They grow the fruit, but eat the rind.
I laugh, AH-HA-HA-HA, until I start to cryin',
When I think about myself,
And my folks, and the little children.

My Fathers sit on benches,
Their flesh count every plank,
The slats leave dents of darkness
Deep in their withered flank,

And they nod, like broken candles,
All waxed and burnt profound
They say "But, Sugar, it was our submission
That made your world go round."

There in those pleated faces
I see the auction block,
The chains and slavery's coffles,
The whip and lash and stock.

My Fathers speak in voices
That shred my fact and sound,
They say, "But Sugar, it was our submission
And that made your world go round."

They laughed to shield their crying ,
They shuffled through their dreams
They step 'n' fetched a country
And wrote the blues in screams.

I understand their meaning,
It could and did derive,
From living on the ledge of death,
They kept my race alive.
By wearing the mask.

HEH-heh-heh,
Ah, HA, HA, HA, HA!
HA, HA, HA. HA, HA!
Aaah-aaaAHH!

Paul Laurence Dunbar and Maya Angelou, We Wear the Mask/When I Think about Myself/Song for the Old Ones, 1892, 19-something, Angelou's poem dating is not coming up on Google, which is its failure. The colloquium on Evil, from which this performance was taken, was held in Texas in 1988.

de Man is Da Man, yo?

The 6th of December is Paul de Man's birthday. From his--as the amazing Michael Riffaterre calls it--"seminal discussion of Nietzsche's On Truth and Lie," de Man makes a bold statement about poetry that I have spent several years pondering profitably:

What we call the lyric, the instance of represented voice includes the grammatical transformation of the declarative into the vocative modes of question, exclamation, address, hypothesis, etc., the tropological transformation of analogy into apostrophe or the equivalent, more general… transformation of trope into anthropomorphism.

He redescribes poetry as a series of figural moves of the voice and then resolves it into anthropomorphism. It's brilliant. It's fucking brilliant. It is a laser beam-direct insight into what makes representative language (and there is no other kind) happen, on the level of Rhetoric, on the level of Grammar (which he played with in oppositions, throughout his late career), as such. It is vital. It is indispensable. And I don't care if important readers, like Lydia Davis, whom I admire, and Louis Menand, who is an idiot, don't care for de Man. He's one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century, even if he wasn't really a Nazi.

Have a great day.

Andy Moozeek

Moore's German diction is just dreadful. And the set! The set is the most rotten, kitsch, awfulness. Schwarzkopf may not have noticed it, but she was so demanding--most especially of herself--and had such good taste, it's hard to imagine her even being there.

Andy Moozeek

Du holde Kunst,
Ich danke dir,
You watch her mouth, say.
Then, you look at her eyes
at the end. And you could fall
forever into that terrifying abyss.
Not because she is dead but
because she is so alive,
so much more alive
than you have ever been.
I believe it is two shots.
I love her hair.
I hope she wins.


L. Steve Schmersal, Andy Moozeek, Dez 2015.

On the Unreliability of Narrators and Other Options

There are no other options.

I am a writer

I can no longer post anything of value to Facebook. They seem to stifle all expression.

I post it here, instead:

The essential, brilliant Ursula LeGuin tells us:

I think hard times are coming, when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies, to other ways of being. And even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can remember freedom: poets, visionaries—the realists of a larger reality. Right now, I think we need writers who know the difference between production of a market commodity and the practice of an art. The profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art. We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable; so did the divine right of kings. … Power can be resisted and changed by human beings; resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art—the art of words. I’ve had a long career and a good one, in good company, and here, at the end of it, I really don’t want to watch American literature get sold down the river. … The name of our beautiful reward is not profit. Its name is freedom.

My mom worries about me, because her heart is so, so huge, and, like me, she looks for the good in things; my father worries too; they worry because they love me and because I will always be their little boy--at 46 I still am their little boy, and this is a fate I have given up trying to escape. 

I live a life they don't entirely understand; I move in a world different from theirs. It worries them because it is mysterious to them. But I am happy. I am a writer. They made me so, somehow, in a way ineffable, as they made my brother a musician (I cannot speak to what they made my brilliant, beautiful sisters, here, for it is much more complex than a word, but at the very least I can say they gave them an enormous talent for parenthood). 

I am a writer, and it falls to us--and we are all writers, all of us--to think and see, to worry and wonder, to pick apart and put together, to--as my students used to accuse me--"over-think." There is no over-thought, no over thinking; that is the nonsense of people who neither like to think nor want you to think, anything. 

We writers stray into dangerous neighborhoods and territories because, it is eventually true, that you can't know good until you have at least met evil; hope without meeting hopelessness. It is an unpleasant enterprise. We stray to watch and learn, to see and know, somehow, something, to know anything. This is literature; this is art. It is our job to see, to watch, to learn, to know: The Terrifying Other; most especially when that Other turns out to be Ourselves.

Get close to lies and see the truth. See evil and know what not to do. This is the world of art and literature, which gives us a chance to provisionally try out other options and see why they are so awful. This is why art, history, and literature are so important: they are the lab of ethics and behavior. Do not fail these lessons because we are all writers, writing the world. Listen to Ursula LeGuin, who is so much wiser than I have ever been.

Thanks, Rosemary.

Two by Celan

Paul Celan is probably the most important poet of the post-war generation working in German. He takes on Rilke and Brecht on a regular basis, and Goethe, and turns them inside out. Paul Antschel was born a Jew in Romania in 1920, his parents were murdered in the Shoah (aka The Holocaust), and he spent the rest of his life, mostly in Paris, writing some of the most significant poems ever produced in German. His Mother-Tongue was the language of the murderer, yet he continued to explore the rich history and possibilities of this wonderful language, pushing the boundaries of language and meaning as far as he could, to a place that many cannot follow. His desire to write in German is both a contradiction, as such, and a resistance to that force of death that the Nazis brought so powerfully to what we call Germany and the German language. This is the place of poetry. He drowned himself in the Seine in 1970. I do not blame him.

I have waited at least twenty years to even attempt any translation of his work. It is a very difficult work and among the most worthwhile in the world of poetry--that least understood and disappearing genre of letters. There never was and there never will be again an artist of the kind, calibre, depth of feeling, and depth of thoughtfulness that we find in Paul Celan nee Antschel.

I humbly present these well-intentioned attempts to bring Celan out in any kind of English. Please forgive me. Please, forgive me.

CORONA
by Paul Celan (b. 23 November 1920)

Autumn eats its leaf out of my hand: we are friends.
We shell time from the nuts and teach it to walk:
the time goes back into its shell.

In the mirror is Sunday,
in dream will be sleeping,
the mouth speaks true.

My eye descends to the sex of the beloved:
we look at each other,
we speak darkness,
we love each other like poppy and recollection,
we sleep like wine in seashells,
like the sea in the bloodshine of the moon.

We stand by the window embracing, and people look up from the street:
it is time they knew!
It is time that the stone tried to bloom,
that unrest had a heartbeat.
It is time that it is time.

It is time.

Translation attributed to L. Steve Schmersal, May 2014


CORONA

Aus der Hand frißt der Herbst mir sein Blatt: wir sind Freunde.
Wir schälen die Zeit aus den Nüssen und lehren sie gehn:
die Zeit kehrt zurück in die Schale.

Im Spiegel ist Sonntag,
im Traum wird geschlafen,
der Mund redet wahr.

Mein Aug steigt hinab zum Geschlecht der Geliebten:
wir sehen uns an,
wir sagen uns Dunkles,
wir lieben einander wie Mohn und Gedächtnis,
wir schlafen wie Wein in den Muscheln,
wie das Meer im Blutstrahl des Mondes.

Wir stehen umschlungen im Fenster, sie sehen uns zu von der Straße:
es ist Zeit, daß man weiß!
Es ist Zeit, daß der Stein sich zu blühen bequemt,
daß der Unrast ein Herz schlägt.
Es ist Zeit, daß es Zeit wird.

Es ist Zeit.

*** *** *** *** ***

PSALM
by Paul Celan (b. 23 November 1920)

Nobody kneads us again from earth and loam,
nobody summons our dust.
Nobody.

Blessed are you, Nobody.
For your sake would
we bloom.
Against your
will.

A nothing
we were, we are, shall
we ever remain, blooming:
the nothing--, the
nobody's rose.

With
pistil bright as soul,
stamen waste of heaven,
corona red
from the purple word, which we sang
over, oh, over
the thorn.

Translation attributed to L. Steve Schmersal, May 2014.

PSALM

Niemand knetet uns wieder aus Erde und Lehm,
niemand bespricht unsern Staub.
Niemand.

Gelobt seist du, Niemand.
Dir zulieb wollen
wir blühn.
Dir
entgegen.

Ein Nichts
waren wir, sind wir, werden
wir bleiben, blühend:
die Nichts-, die
Niemandsrose.

Mit
dem Griffel seelenhell,
dem Staubfaden himmelswüst,
der Krone rot
vom Purpurwort, das wir sangen
über, o über
dem Dorn.

The Queen is Dead: On King Lear

We can go for a walk where it's quiet and dry 
And talk about precious things
But when you're tied to your Mother's apron 
No one talks about castration

I had the opportunity to see a rather fine production of King Lear at The Theatre for a New Audience, here in New York, last night.

King Lear really is, I think, the most disturbing and harrowing of the Bard's plays, more so than Hamlet or Macbeth. I have never been more affected by Gloucester's plight nor by his exchanges with his son and Lear after his blinding than I was with this production. It is almost as if Shakespeare had to find a son and father to be emotional about in this play about fathers and daughters. It is also his most viscerally misogynist work, where womankind, as such, is denigrated, cursed, and shown at its worst across the board, except for fated, honest Cordelia. Not even Edmund's poor, unnamed mother escapes Shakespeare's angry, broad brushstrokes. Despite the fine, nuanced performances of the women playing Goneril and Regan in this production, I have never had such an easy time seeing these roles as imagined by a man to be played by men. What was the Bard going through at the time of its writing to make him paint such awful pictures? And by the end, as in Hamlet, everyone is dead or about to die, even, offstage, Gloucester of a broken heart bursting with love, "smilingly." So terrible.

Oh! Take me back to dear old Blighty,
Put me on the train for London Town,
Take me anywhere,
Drop me anywhere,
Or Liverpool, Leeds, or Birmingham
But I don't care!
I should like to see my--...

I don't

Bless them

Ooooooooh....
Farewell to this land's cheerless marshes
Hemmed in like a boar between archers
Her Very Lowness with her head in a sling
I'm truly sorry, but it sounds like a wonderful thing

I said, "Charles, don't you ever crave
To appear on the front of the Daily Mail
Dressed in your Muther's bridal veil?"
Oooh. Oooooooh-ooh-ooooh....
And so, I checked all the registered historical facts
And I was shocked into shame to discover
How I'm the eighteenth pale descendant
Of some old Queen or other

Or has the world changed, or have I changed?
Oh, has the world changed, or have I changed?

Some nine-year old tough who peddles drugs
I swear to God, I swear,
I never even knew what drugs were
Oooh. Oooooooh-ooh-ooooh....

So, I broke into the palace
With a sponge and a rusty spanner
She said : "Eh, I know you, and you cannot sing"
I said: "That's nothing, you should hear me play piano"

We can go for a walk where it's quiet and dry
And talk about precious things
But when you're tied to your Mother's apron
No one talks about castration
Oooh. Oooooooh. Oooooh....

We can go for a walk where it's quiet and dry
And talk about precious things
Like love and law and poverty
Oh, ooooh, these are the things that
Kill me

We can go for a walk where it's quiet and dry
And talk about precious things
But the rain that flattens my hair
Ooooh, 

These are the things that
Kill me

All their lies about make-up and long hair are still there

Past the Pub who saps your body
And the Church who'll snatch your money
The Queen is dead, boys
And it's so lonely on a limb
Past the Pub that wrecks your body
And the Church, all they want is your money
The Queen is dead, boys
And it's so lonely on a limb

Life is very long, when you're lonely
Life is very long, when you're lonely
Life is very long, when you're lonely
Life is very long, when you're lonely.

Lear should know that, don't you think? Life is very long when you're lonely. It's so lonely on a limb. The Queen is dead, boys! The Queen was dead before this play ever began. And this play, is, in a very certain sense, addressed to boys. Lear has only daughters, and he gives his land to their husbands, but not to France, who accepts Lear's only honest girl to his royal bosom, anyway. Isn't it funny how France keeps showing up in Shakespeare in so many funny ways? So funny and so strange. Passing strange. The others of England are constantly France and Italy in Shakespeare. And in Hamlet the attacking other is Fortinbras, who comes to take control of this diseased dynasty from without, not England, not France, not Italy. Yet, we should pay attention to this dead place where a family kills itself, as in Hamlet, as in King Lear. The obverse of King Lear is The Tempest, but not right now. No....

The Queen is dead, boys! Who was this Queen? Who was this Queen upon whom Lear begat such awful progeny, except for the one? The Queen, she is dead! Long live the Queen; the Queen is dead! The Queen was always dead. For Shakespeare--whom I prefer to call The Bard, rather than to give him a name, because his naming is far from clear--had to kill the Queen long before she could arrive to make anything better. The Queen must be dead in King Lear, because any softening agent would only interrupt his attack upon Woman. Elsewhere, the Bard seems to have a great fondness for Woman, for women--he recognizes their power and their beauty, both in the Sonnets and the plays, but not here; not in this play. In King Lear his fury, his anger--and only a man could write with such hatred toward Woman--is implacable, so much so that his writing of Cordelia almost feels like an afterthought. "Oh, I've given 'Woman' a hard time. I should make the most perfectest example of obedience and love and fidelity in Cordelia. That will do." In fact, my Bard, it will not do. And also, though you are inevitably my Bard, you are not "my" Bard. I rebuke your glorious nonsense. And not only because it has a great deal to teach us about ourselves. I welcome/I rebuke you. At the same time, I do. I have no other choice.

Who are these monstrous girls that The Bard thrusts upon us? It's Lady M. in twain; and Regan's husband matches her in her awfulness. How did these people find each other, when Goneril found a good man, so unlike her in every way, which she hides until it is too late? The Dead Queen knows. She lords over the whole play, and its improbability.

Oh. Oh, the Dead Queen knows. The Dead Queen knows so much more than we do. That is one of the great fortunes of being dead. Being dead, one can see the future; one can see everything. And this play joins all futures, all figures, in the same infinite death, where everyone can know everything. It is only being dead that they can know. And the play is one long procession toward Death, itself. It begins in an anterior past with the Dead Queen and marches the whole cast right into the grave. The Queen is dead! Long live the King, The King is dead....

Boys. The boys. Let us gather them up. They are scattered all about the field, all about the field of battle. I choose Gloucester; poor, late, blinded Gloucester. I choose you. I choose you and your sons. Both of them, and their failed legitimacy. Legitimacy must always fail, and isn't that what this sad poem, this play, this paean to that failing of what that is legitimate also always tells us? Let us bring them together, Gloucester and Edmund and Edgar, so named to make us forget which is who. (Is it not so easy to misremember Edgar as Edmund and nice-versa? And doesn't Edmund become Gloucester for a brief time, near the end, when he is so close to the Kinghead?) Let us gather them up; let us make them dance.

EDGAR says:

Let's exchange charity.

I am no less in blood than thou art, Edmund;

If more, the more thou hast wrong'd me.

My name is Edgar, and thy father's son.

The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices

Make instruments to plague us:

The dark and vicious place where thee he got

Cost him his eyes.

Is this not the darkest place in this play? Edmund's mother is blamed for his father's blindness. Her womb--that love--is called a "dark and vicious place." Horrible! Horrible. This isn't charity, and the gods are not just, because the gods are Shakespeare. No, this is the most woman-hating thing. And the Bard even allows Edmund some redemption at the end, in his failed attempt to save the King and Cordelia. In the Nineteenth Century, they changed the ending so that Cordelia and Lear lived. Not so, now. We get no such reprieve as the dead mothers get no reprieve. Not one mother in this play is named: not Edmund's mother, not Edgar's, not Goneril's, not Regan's, not Cordelia's. All the mothers are dead and nameless and almost completely forgotten except only to be cursed and blamed. It is a play without mothers, only fathers and their very bad decisions; where even the women are men. Is it any wonder their children are monsters? The Dead Queen knows why. The Dead Queen knows all.

Happy Bertolt Brecht's Birthday

Happy (Late) Bertolt Brecht's Birthday, everyone. (It was February 10th.)

It is entirely arguable that, although Bertolt Brecht was considered one of the most important German poets, playwrights, and theater directors of the first half of the Twentieth Century, in the second half he became the most influential dramatist and theater practitioner in the world. 

Meine Damen und Herren, Madames et Messieurs, Ladies and Gentlemen, he died. All people die. Mortality is part of what defines our precarious humanity. It keeps us from being gods. Except, not always. He became a god after he died, but because gods are ideas, he had no way of ever enjoying it. And the idea that he became was a diluted idea of his work and thought, a less nuanced, demanding, and radical Brecht that was the result of a dialectical encounter with the mainstream via incomplete and compromised translations into English. This was the god that became so popular.

Yes, for all of his posthumous success, exposure, influence, and adoption--everything from Oh, What a Lovely War! and Cabaret to Peter Brook's famous 1970 RSC production of A Midsummer Night's Dream to Hair, Marat/Sade, Godspell, Company, for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf, Chicago, Little Shop of Horrors, Evita, and Sweeney Todd, to Angels in America, All That Jazz, many of the films of Sirk, Godard, Fassbinder, Pasolini, and Todd Haynes to the plays of Tennessee Williams and Harold Pinter to Dogville, and the Atlantic Theater Company's enormously successful musical adaptation of Wedekind's Spring Awakening (the list is, for all practical purposes, endless)--Brecht remains deeply misunderstood in the international theatrical landscape, despite the monumental wake cast by his work, misrepresented by longstanding, received accounts--oversimplified, incomplete, humorless, and doctrinaire accounts--of, and prejudices against, his dramaturgy.

He is the troubling, insoluble, and almost completely forgotten conundrum of Twentieth Century theater. An unruly, mischievously critical, complicated, subversive, and often contradictory-seeming figure from the start; a rebellious enfant terrible/Wunderkind/eminence grise, simultaneously considered a rejuvenating pioneer of contemporary theater as well as its most reviled, bloodless, and overly-intellectual sidetrack; a Marxian revolutionary and a survivor who is often cast by his detractors, and many of his champions, as an apolitical opportunist, sellout, and plagiarist; an admirer of such varied cultural forces as Marx, the Marx Brothers, Japanese Noh theater, Shakespeare, Goethe, Marlowe, Kaiser, Kipling, Gay, Büchner, and Chaplin; a constantly evolving and unsentimental thinker and theorist on the place and function of theater in society; a practitioner who deplored the denigration of entertainment, humor, and slapstick in any art form as superficial and useless instead of essential and central; a cultural giant whom it should not be difficult for the critically open-minded and persistent investigator to admit that Brecht--and perhaps he alone--offers the most sustained, supple, sophisticated, useful, and nuanced engagement with the question of the political in art and the question of art in the political and social spheres.

Brecht's example, far from being a barbaric, anarchic, naïve, slapdash attack on popular or bourgeois culture, employs juxtaposition, tension, resonance, reversal, contradiction, comedy, irony, expectation, surprise, and sympathy to articulate the barbaric, anarchic, naïve, slapdash attack of culture on the individual, the gendered body, the couple, the family, the community, and the very idea of the just and the possible. But. And this is the most important, and challenging, ingredient missing from almost any production you've ever seen of any piece by Brecht or from any piece you've ever seen presented in what is referred to as a "Brechtian" mode or style: you must find a way to make the piece an entertainment--theater must be entertaining--or you've wasted the audience's time and everyone else's.

http://www.theatredatabase.com/20th_century/bertolt_brecht_001.html

It's Banned Books Week (late)

Thanks to the Zinn Education Project for the image.

It's Banned Books Week!

The last week of September is set aside to celebrate the proud and diverse traditions of American censorship; to honor the shining example of ignorance and anti-intellectualism winning over education, engaged thought, and thinking for oneself; and to remember those brave heroes on the front lines of history who thought better of reading a book and decided rather to burn it.

At the end of the day--or even at the end of days--burning a book is ultimately a display of selfless generosity toward one's beautiful mind that is also richly inclusive of future generations, just by ensuring no one will ever see the words written therein. For, yes, friends, it is always better to cultivate a calmed simplicity in the public discourse by eliminating the difficult or complicated bits with force and fire and law, which gets rid of troublesome notions along with any possible conversation, scholarship, or account of them, productive or not.

In the name of purity and undisturbed homogeneity, consistency and peace of mind, we must excise the blemish of the diseased thought, quarantine and destroy its infection, and protect our children and our children's children from the dangers of difference and thinking. Happy Banned Books Week, everyone! :)

Behold! Six ideas to celebrate in your school: http://bit.ly/1gXOfzG.