Bertolt Brecht (born February 10, 1898 in Augsburg, Bavaria, Germany - died August 14, 1956 in Berlin) was a German playwright, theater director, and poet. In 1917, he began studying literature at the University of Munich, also pursuing medicine. During the German November Revolution of 1918, he was sent to serve in a field hospital. After the revolution failed, he continued his university studies and developed a strong interest in drama.
In the same year, he wrote his first short play "Baal," which attacked the hypocrisy of bourgeois morality. In 1920, he completed the play "The Drummer." In 1922, he wrote "Jungle of Cities" and began writing theater reviews. That year, he was hired by the Munich Chamber Theater as a dramatic advisor and director. In 1924, at the invitation of renowned director Max Reinhardt, he moved to Berlin to serve as a dramatic advisor at the Deutsches Theater, where he wrote the play "Man is Man."
In 1926, Brecht began studying Marxism-Leninism, forming his own unique artistic views and initially proposing the theory and practice of epic (narrative) theater. His works include: "The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny" (1927), "The Threepenny Opera" (1928), "Saint Joan of the Stockyards" (1930), and educational plays like "The Measures Taken" and "The Exception and the Rule." In 1931, he adapted Maxim Gorky's novel "Mother" into a stage play. In 1933, when Hitler came to power, he fled Germany with his family, beginning a 15-year exile. In October 1948, he returned to East Berlin to settle. In 1949, together with Helene Weigel, he founded and led the Berliner Ensemble, personally serving as its director and fully practicing his epic theater methods. He passed away on August 14, 1956, due to a sudden heart attack.
Brecht's main plays include: "The Roundheads and the Peakheads," "Fear and Misery of the Third Reich," "Mother Courage and Her Children," "The Good Person of Szechwan," "Mr. Puntila and His Man Matti," and adaptations such as "The Private Life of the Master Race during World War II" and "The Caucasian Chalk Circle." He also wrote essays, papers, and annotations for plays, explaining the theoretical principles and performance methods of epic theater, including important works like "The Alienation Effect in Chinese Acting," "On Experimental Theater," "Buying Brass," and "New Techniques in Acting Art." After 1948, his plays included "Days of the Commune" and "Turandot." His theoretical works include "A Short Organum for the Theatre," "Supplements to the Short Organum," and directorial analyses of plays such as "Mother Courage and Her Children."
Brecht's theatrical method emphasizes the "alienation effect," also known as the "defamiliarization method," which he proposed as a new aesthetic concept and a new theatrical theory and method. Its basic meaning is to use artistic methods to make the ordinary extraordinary, revealing causal relationships and exposing contradictions, allowing people to recognize the possibility of changing reality. Regarding performance methods, the "alienation effect" requires actors to maintain a certain distance from their characters, not merging the two completely; actors must be above their characters, control them, and perform them.
Brecht's theater represents an important school of German drama in the 20th century and has had a significant impact on world theater. This school, in its formation process, inherits and innovates the European and German realist tradition while drawing inspiration from Eastern culture, especially Japanese classical theater and Chinese opera. He gave high praise to Chinese opera art, held a positive attitude towards the Stanislavski system, and frequently discussed this system's contribution to realistic acting art.
When discussing modern Western literary theories, particularly modern dramatic creation theories, Brecht's name often arises. Just as Aristotle's theory of tragedy influenced Western classical drama, Brecht's theory centered on "defamiliarization" (also translated as "alienation," "alienation effect," or "estrangement") impacted the development of modern drama. Under fascist regimes, when mysticism and fideism were rampant, Brecht critically examined dramas that indulged in irrationalism, attempting to save drama through rationality. Under the banner of rationalism, he transformed the creation and performance of drama, establishing a unique non-Aristotelian dramatic aesthetic system and continuously improving it to form his rational dramatic theory.
Despite deeply disliking the hedonism prevalent during the Nazi era, Brecht never rejected the entertainment function of drama. On the contrary, he believed that "entertainment has always been the mission of theater." He did not acknowledge distinctions between high and low forms of entertainment, believing that art, in fulfilling its entertainment mission, does not differentiate hierarchies. Even though some might talk about higher and lower forms of entertainment, society sees a stern face in art because, when it entertains people, it hopes to engage in both high and low activities without interruption. However, facing inferior works in theaters that intoxicated and bewildered audiences, Brecht felt the need to define entertainment. He discovered that things not belonging to his category of "entertainment" or incorrect entertainment concepts occupied the rightful place of true entertainment and dragged theater toward destruction. Thus, Brecht presented the historical development theory of entertainment: at different historical stages, common ways of life differ, so entertainment, based on these common ways and reflecting them, should vary in form and content. Although people can still find entertainment in events from old plays staged in theaters, this is only because our common ways of life are still quite similar. Nowadays, people derive less entertainment from drama than ancient people because they have yet to find entertainment appropriate for their current common lives in the scientific age.
Brecht believed humanity had entered a new era where science determined the primary factors influencing common life. Science continually transforms the world with innovative results, but its spirit has not truly entered the lives of the general populace because the bourgeoisie in power obstructs it from entering the study of human relations. They know that if this research receives scientific support, the essence of their exploitation and destruction will be thoroughly exposed. Brecht believed that Marxism bridged the gap between scientific spirit and the study of human social relations, enabling the proletariat to begin seeing the approach of scientific spirit. As a form of production labor serving people's spiritual life, the role of drama is to bring people joy upon the arrival of scientific spirit and allow "the most passionate, intelligent, and active among us to gain feelings, insights, and impulses from daily and practical events that others can 'enjoy'." This joy and enjoyment, according to Brecht, suits the "children of the scientific age."
Brecht hoped drama would fulfill its entertainment function, making this entertainment full of rationality and characteristic of the times. Yet, the cacophony emanating from theaters worried him. He wrote:
"Let us enter such a theater and observe its effects on the audience. A glance around reveals images in a strange state, rather indifferent: the audience seems to be in a state of intense tension, all muscles taut, though exhausted, they do not relax. There is almost no interaction between them; they gather like sleeping people, restless dreamers lying on their backs. Of course, their eyes are open, they stare but do not see, they listen but do not hear. They gaze blankly at the stage, maintaining the same expression since the Middle Ages—the era of witches and priests. Watching and listening are activities, even entertainment activities, but these people seem detached from all activity, as if bewitched."
He realized that such drama could transform hopeful friends we call children of the scientific age into a group of shrinking, devout "bewitched" individuals. This occurs because the bourgeoisie, who own money and confer fame, dare not introduce scientific spirit into drama regarding human relations, fearing the proletariat might see their evil deeds.
Only the proletariat creates great wealth and represents the true subject of society. Only they reflect common human life. Therefore, only their "entertainment" suits the new era, and the spirit of entertainment must align with the rational scientific spirit possessed by and needed by these "children of the scientific age." This spirit is "rational scientific spirit." Drama should become a stage analyzing human relations in society under this spirit's guidance, allowing the audience (mainly proletarian) to gain pleasure from the critical stance within the drama. This critical stance belongs to and is appreciated by the proletariat.
To make scientific spirit genuinely part of drama, Brecht proposed the "defamiliarization" theory. This defamiliarization involves "stripping an event or character of what appears natural, well-known, and obvious, thus creating astonishment and novelty." The origin of this theory can be found in Hegel's "Phenomenology of Spirit": familiar things often remain untruly understood due to familiarity. In drama, Brecht stripped events and characters of their "natural," "well-known," and "obvious" components, removing this familiarity and creating a gap to provide a new understanding. As Brecht later explained, this understanding includes "not only the feelings, insights, and impulses allowed under specific historical conditions of human relations—where actions occur—but also the thoughts and emotions used and created in transforming those conditions." He viewed this as a process of "accumulating incomprehensibility until comprehension emerges."
Brecht hoped this understanding would help audiences analyze and explain the historical conditions of human relations in the drama, i.e., social human connections, thereby discovering the rational scientific spirit applicable to studying human social relations. To create this "defamiliarization," Brecht criticized the "empathy" model in traditional drama, deeming it necessary to eliminate the deliberate and focused empathy created between the audience and the events and characters in the drama. This empathy causes the audience to associate themselves with the characters, becoming entranced and losing their ability to critically assess the events and characters. Brecht worked to restore this critical ability to the audience, maintaining distance from the characters and restoring freedom to critique, making it possible to understand the true meaning of what is performed. The first step in eliminating empathy is for the actor to detach from the plot they perform. "Since he does not intend to put the audience into an entranced state, neither should he fall into one himself." Actors should appear on stage as performers, not as characters. "Actors must never fully transform into their characters...their own emotions should not entirely align with the characters' emotions, lest the audience's emotions align entirely with the characters' emotions." Audiences must perceive the actor's thoughts during performance, guided by clear thinking back to their real world.
Music, dance, and set design in the script should be isolated from the drama itself, reclaiming their independence. These sister arts of drama unite for a common cause, and their task here "is not to create a 'synthetic art,' thereby abandoning and losing their individual characteristics; instead, they should work together with the art of drama, using different methods to achieve a common goal." Meanwhile, regarding the structure of the drama, Brecht made modifications, breaking the integrity of the plot. He disrupted the already loose connections between scenes using choruses, songs, and sudden transitions between dialogue and song, or even having characters directly address the audience to remind them they are watching a performance, separating them from the events and characters on stage, eliminating "empathy," and creating a "defamiliarization" effect.
Although Brecht's various methods aim to sever emotional connections between the audience and the stage, viewing the elimination of "empathy" as the sole purpose of Brecht's transformation of drama would be a grave mistake. Brecht's sole aim was to restore rational judgment to the audience. Eliminating empathy is merely a coercive and imperfect means. In "New Techniques in Acting Art," he explicitly stated: "Performing art need not entirely reject empathy, but it must enable the audience to adopt a critical attitude, doing so without losing its artistic characteristics. This critical attitude is not a betrayal of art, as commonly said; it is both interesting and emotionally charged, itself an experience. One of the key claims of epic theater is that a critical attitude can become an artistic attitude." Brecht did not oppose emotional elements in drama and hoped to incorporate emotions into it while maintaining the audience's sense of detachment. He believed the opposition between reason and emotion exists in the "irrational minds" of people whose emotional lives are unreliable. Brecht pointed out that reason and emotion can reach a dialectical unity in drama, clearly expressing this view: "On the one hand, empathy can be produced under rational conditions; on the other hand, estrangement effects can be caused purely emotionally. Stanislavski used lengthy analysis to produce empathy, while panoramic paintings at New Year's markets ('Nero Watching Rome Burn,' 'The Lisbon Earthquake') achieved estrangement effects purely emotionally. In Aristotelian drama, empathy is also a form of thought criticism, and non-Aristotelian drama can hope for emotional criticism."
From this, it is evident that Brecht's rational concept of drama is not about eliminating emotional elements but adding as much emotion as possible while maintaining the audience's sense of detachment and their ability to critically assess the characters and events in the drama, because his sole purpose in proposing the "defamiliarization" theory is to return rationality to the "children of the scientific age" in the theater, allowing them to enjoy genuine entertainment characteristic of their times.
During Brecht's youth, German sinologists like Richard Wilhelm and Hermann Hesse translated classical Chinese philosophical works such as the I Ching, Tao Te Ching, Chuang Tzu, Analects, Mencius, Mozi, etc., into German, sparking widespread interest among intellectuals. The early 20th-century expressionist poets' sustained interest in ancient Chinese poetry became a typical German phenomenon in modern European literature. Translations like Hans Bethge's "Chinese Flute," Otto Hauser's "Li Taibai" poetry selection, Albert Ehrenstein's poetry collection "Yellow Song," Klapprott's Tang poetry translations, and Gustav Mahler's symphony "The Song of the Earth," as well as Eisler's "Anti-War" oratorio, were all based on ancient Chinese poetry.
Chinese Yuan dynasty operas also attracted attention from German writers at the turn of the century. Klapprott's translation and adaptation of Li Xingdao's "The Gray Cloth Robe," staged in 1925 at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin, played a crucial role in advancing the development of drama during the Weimar Republic. Precisely in the fields of ancient Chinese philosophy, poetry, and theater, Brecht engaged in extensive study, leaving a deep imprint on his literary creations.
In 1937, while in exile in Denmark, Brecht sought to overcome the prevailing tendency to adhere rigidly to Aristotle's "mimetic theory" in artistic thinking habits, promoting changes in Western aesthetic concepts. Using Arthur Waley's English translation of "170 Chinese Poems," he translated seven Chinese poems, published in the German magazine "Die Weltbühne" in Moscow. This was a literary activity parallel to his theatrical reforms. During the translation process, he showed particular affection for satirical poems like Bai Juyi's "New Ballads" and "Songs of Qinzhong," which criticized contemporary ills and sympathized with the hardships of the common people. He admired Bai Juyi's artistic proposition of using poetry as a "didactic tool," especially the artistic effect that made the powerful "exchange glances and change color," and the artistic style that made "farmers and herdsmen familiar with it." Bai Juyi's ideas about poetry and artistic style influenced Brecht's poetic creations. Notably, the "rhythmically irregular, unrhymed lyrical poems" he created during his exile, such as "War Primer," clearly exhibit the concise and profound style of the Tao Te Ching and Mo Jing (six chapters of the Mozi).
Around the mid-1920s, as Brecht accepted Marxist theory, he also began extensively reading classical Chinese philosophical works. According to his musician friend Eisler, "At the end of the 1920s and early 1930s, classical Chinese philosophy greatly influenced him, certainly as intellectual stimulation." Especially Mozi's social ethics left a deep impression on him. He saw many of Mozi's ideas as similar to certain Western modern philosophical trends and even connected with Marxist theory, leading some German scholars to directly call Mozi a "socialist." Among the ancient Chinese philosophers he read, Brecht favored Mozi, just as he favored Bai Juyi's poetry. During his long years in exile, he carried a leather-bound copy of Mozi with him wherever he went, reading it wherever he was, and wrote numerous reading notes in the typical style of Chinese philosophical pensmanship, expressing his understanding of contemporary philosophical debates and political events. These notes were published posthumously in the book "Mozi/I Ching."
Readers often notice two striking phenomena when reading Brecht's works.
First, his plays generally incorporate elements of Chinese theater, such as episodic structures, self-introductions, titles, prologues, singing, and more, and sometimes use Chinese theater works as templates for creation. For example, his educational play "The Exception and the Rule" is based on Zhang Guobin's Yuan opera "The Sweat-Stained Shirt," where Chen Hu murders his benefactor Zhang Xiaoyou and takes his wife. "The Good Person of Szechwan" is based on Guan Hanqing's Yuan opera "Rescue from Dust." "The Caucasian Chalk Circle" immediately reveals its source in its title, and Brecht repeatedly used the "chalk circle trial" framework four times: first in the interlude "Little Elephant" in the play "Man is Man," second in the unfinished "Odense Chalk Circle" written in Denmark, third in the short story "Augsburg Chalk Circle" written in Sweden, and fourth in the "Caucasian Chalk Circle" written in exile in the United States.
Second, his works often feature strokes inspired by classical Chinese philosophy that attract readers' and viewers' special attention. For instance, the lyrics in "The Threepenny Opera" are based on discussions by Mozi and Mencius about the relationship between human ethical conditions and property. Once performed on stage, these lyrics created a sensation among the audience, turning the phrase "first fill your belly, then you can talk about morality" into a catchphrase among young people expressing dissatisfaction with reality. In the first act of "Mother Courage and Her Children," the lyric "Whoever wants to live off war must give something to war" not only reveals the theme of the play but also foreshadows the tragic fate of Mother Courage's three