Line #32 Quotes/BertoltBrecht


1	! By Brecht
2
3	-> ''The bandit Macheath must be played as a bourgeois phenomenon. [[DamnItFeelsGoodToBeAGangster The bourgeosie's fascination with bandits]] rests on a misconception: that a bourgeois is not a bandit.''
4	-->-- 1931 Note on ''Theatre/TheThreepennyOpera''.
5
6	->''But you, when at last it comes to pass\
7	That man can help his fellow man,\
8	Do not judge us\
9	Too harshly.''
10	--> ''To Posterity''
11
12	->''After the uprising of the 17th of June\
13	The Secretary of the Writers' Union\
14	Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee\
15	Stating that the people\
16	Had forfeited the confidence of the government\
17	And could win it back only\
18	By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier\
19	In that case for the government\
20	To dissolve the people\
21	And elect another?''
22	--> ''The Solution''
23
24	->''[[TheEeyore Do not rejoice in his defeat]], you men. For though the world has stood up and stopped the bastard, [[HereWeGoAgain the bitch that bore him is in heat again]].''
25	-->-- ''Theatre/TheResistibleRiseOfArturoUi'', final lines addressing the audience.
26
27	->''"The great Carthage waged three wars. It was still powerful after the first, still habitable after the second. It was untraceable after the third."''
28	-->-- '''Creator/BertoltBrecht''', [[DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything after Germany's defeat in World War II]]
29
30	! About Brecht
31
32	-> ''Brecht is an elusive figure...He could use people and yet command absolute loyalty, not least from the many women in his life. He was a dedicated survivor who learnt to co-exist with many masters. A Communist from the late twenties, he never joined the Party. Aware of the excesses of Stalinism (which devoured some of his friends), he never took a public stand against the Soviet Union, yet in 1941 he ended up in California rather than Moscow. Arraigned by [the] [[UsefulNotes/TheHollywoodBlacklist House Committee on Unamerican Activities]], he convinced his interrogators that he was not a Communist without prejudicing his long-held convictions. When he returned to Europe [[PlayingBothSides he chose to have an East German theatre, a West German publisher and an Austrian passport]], [[MagnificentBastard all for the best of reasons]].''
33	-->-- '''Hugh Rorrison''', Introduction to Brecht Three Plays: ''Baal, The Threepenny Opera, The Mother''.
34
35	-> ''The deepest motive underlying Brecht's break with tradition, however, is neither the cause of social justice, nor, certainly his dialectical-materialist approach to history. Much more genuine in him is a passionate anger at the course of the world, where it has always been [[WrittenByTheWinners only the victors who have chosen what is to be recorded and remembered by mankind]]. His poetry is written not only for the underprivileged, but for all those, living or dead, [[TheGreatestStoryNeverTold whose voice has never been heard on earth]]...These are not songs of "social significance,"...but the expression of a passionate longing for a world in which all can be seen and heard, the passionate wrath against a history that remembered a few and forgot so many, a history that under the pretense of remembering caused us to forget. And here to lies the most valid reason for choice of the ballad, which in German tradition had always been the folk form of poetry, the tradition of unrecorded poetry, in which the people, condemned to darkness and oblivion, attempted to record their own history and create their own poetical eternity.''
36	-->-- '''Hannah Arendt''', ''Reflections on Literature and Culture''
37

Context Quotes / BertoltBrecht