hi paul,
No, Boll isn't really forgotten, but nobody speaks about him much anymore either. People only talk of what is in the media, all those faces in the daily media talking trash. Maybe it is difficult for Boll to bring new sensational stories out from his grave - like Gunther Grass, being a member of the Waffen SS etc. Yes, he is a great author, Grass is great too, but Grass regards himself as being too self-important. I mean, every author who has reached such popularity and such a height of fame, must be something of an opportunist, otherwise they wouldn't have such an impact on the literature scene.
gruss
armin
Hi Armin, yes there are still many variants on Marxism, although a general decline in interest overall, but I still believe Marx's critique of Capitalism to be relevant, as any sensible person does. The DDR like the USSR used their variant of 'Marxism' as a front for the regime's elicit, illegal nature. Of course we could go on discussing the influence of the Russian Revolution all day and all night, but it is clear that it is still influencing the world. Just look at the 'Marxist' insurgency in Tibet and there are well-organised 'Marxist' insurgents in India too. No one knows why they think that a defunct ideology, an ideology that failed first time around, should work again, but they are gaining some ground as we know, especially in Tibet which has a shockingly despotic regime.
I didn't know that Boll is being forgotten. I read his novel 'The Clown' at university, a novel I really enjoyed and I've seen Fassbinder's working of 'The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant', in my view, one of the best studies of women' s feelings made by a man.
Many of the effects and techniques of Surrealist, Marxist and Modernist artists now seem silly or dated to us and there's an intimation that attempts to go against the grain of 'realist' novel or film-making can't or won't work or be popular. I think that's a thing that great artists can do, I mean break the rules but somehow still be popular.
Grass wants to be a Brecht, but he is too sophisticated to be great. Concealing his former membership of the Waffen SS typifies him. All genius is essentially naive, isn't it? And genius itself seems to me to be a naive term. Yes Grass wrote this play, so at this point he wrote a play, mainly to point up his divergence with the great man Brecht and to say that he was a wanker and yes, I Grass, am very like this wanker.
Grass is essentially an opportunist, isn't he?
Gruss
hi paul,
There is Marxism and the DDR-socialist variant which is rather different from the thing called Marxism. We all know that, and I think even Brecht knew it. The DDR was an authoritarian state, a dictatorship, where no democracy was possible. But Marxism, if we read Marx, means something completely different. I think Brecht must have had some sympathies for Marxism, but it should be simple to google it out, shouldn't it?
Yeah, the good old alienation effect. This was a brand new thing in the former times when Brecht established it and until today it is a good one. Today we know everything, we are so hardboiled in everyway, we have seen everything, it's very difficult to surprise us with something new, most things have been there, are hackneyed, the way to act the poets are worn out, and this effect is why most "modern" things of the classical modern authors seem to us as being pretty boring.
I don't know any plays by Grass. Has he written plays? I think he is a kind of a Wannabe-Brecht. Grass has done a lot for the BRD, but he would never be a Brecht. I don't know this play and I didn't know that Grass had written a play.
Grass is a painter too, his pictures are unknown. He is known as the great drummer with his baggy old tin drum. The funny thing is that Heinrich Boll is after his death slowly forgotten, he was a match for Grass.
gruss
armin
Hi, I meant chiefly Brecht's plays like MOTHER COURAGE and LIFE OF GALILEO where he employs his alienation effect. Personally I like these, but can't see an interest in opening out the text anymore. Perhaps this is because society generally has gravitated so far to the right, to the entertainment machine too. From today's point-of-view Brecht's ideas look old-fashioned and irrelevant. But you can see elements of the alienation effect in the work of, for instance, Lars von Trier, where the entertainment machine has seemingly synthesised with Brechtian alienation effects. Brecht stayed as some kind of Marxist but the DDR was deeply suspicious of him as they were of all intellectuals. Brecht sometimes distanced himself from the regime, but supported the regimes crushing of a worker's revolt in 1953. Do you know this play by Grass?
But Bernard Shaw is dead, and Brecht himself dealt with his 1953 crisis only in a few cryptic poems, and so the task of dramatizing it was left to Gunther Grass, the author of "The Tin Drum" and other novels. Herr Grass's play, entitled "The Plebeians Rehearse the Uprising," is set in a theater in East Berlin on June 17, 1953. It shows a famous author-director, referred to only as "the Chief," rehearsing a production of "Coriolanus," Shakespeare's play about the conflict between the Roman ruling clique and the plebeians; the rehearsal is interrupted by a delegation of real "plebeians" who seek to enlist "the Chief" and his powerful prestige in their revolt. There is no doubt as to the identity of "the Chief."
Hi Paul,
I do not know much about Brecht's attitude towards Marxism. At least, he went voluntarily to the eastern part of Germany after he returned from America, a tip that he could not have detested Marxism totally. He is valid anyway as a left-winger while Gottfied Benn is classified rather as a right-winger. And the just thus drawers (categories) are, and I always have my difficulties with drawers, because they mostly prevent one having thoughts and insights by oneself or to detest something from the start declines without knowing it really. How you judge Brecht's dramas there is something true in it. I do not know so many, but the great plays like Mother Courage or the Dreigroschenoper are great. Clear they are didactic, pretentious no, I do not find them, also they are easy as a rule to understand. And Brecht has given us together with Kurt Weill many fine songs.
Enzensberger is a really good author, but one of those which are so successful, that they already in the background of the topical discourse of contemporary poetry. One talks about the argumentative ones, the younger ones, the rebellious ones. They control the lyric scene. No one is interested in Enzenberger. I expect no new texts from him, he is old and maybe also a little bit tired. In contrast to Franz Mon who still writes sparkling, experimental texts with his 82 years. By the way, there is among the lyricists just an amount of great women like Sabine Scho, Marion Poschmann, Brigitta Oleschinski etc. Who make really interesting things. These are the real contemporaries who are so old as we are or even younger. We those big 2 Godfather of the German literatur: Gunther Grass and Hans Magnus Enzensberger, both old, comfortable, dried out, like fat, old and dopey elephants that are too big even for walking. They have already said the best of what they have to say. Even if each of them writes another 10 books, nothing amazing or new will follow.
Gruss
Armin
Dear Armin, yes I mean Hans Magnus Enzenberger. I know he is the most eminent German poet living today. No I'd forgotten that we talked about Brecht. I was reading, but only in brief, Michael Hofmann's translations of 20th century German poets in a Faber anthology. There were many poems by Brecht, Enzenberger, Rilke, a few by Georg Grosz, Heiner Muller (who I believe was mainly a playwright), Gunther Grass and others. Overall the anthologies disappointing, picking out only the obvious names. As always there were few German women poets represented. Brecht's main strength was as a poet, his plays are pretentious, inaccessible or too overtly didactic, or just ruined by Brecht's own historicist/Marxist views. He made an interesting film, Kuhle Wampe, about the economic and political situation in the 30s. Personally I'm more interested in the Modernist movement than Marxism. I think Enzenberger detests Marxism. Of course Marx himself is buried not far from here, in Highgate cemetery. Not far from there's a Karl Marx Memorial Library and the British library too. Lenin also lived in this part of London.
Gruss
hi paul,
probably you mean Hans Magnus Enzensberger? Yes, he is one of the greatest contemporary German authors. He is a very established one. I don't know anything about his relation to Marx, he is regarded as a progressive author. In the 70s he still wrote noteworthy texts, then he became accepted by the broad mass of people. He could be the court poet of the German government.
We talked about Brecht, maybe a year ago. Don't you remember? 2 ys ago was the 50th anniversary of his day of death. He is rather popular in Germany, I don't know if he is more popular in Munich than in other towns - I don't think so.
I prefer, actually, those authors who are argumentative or are even notorious. He has swum against the stream, as well as Goethe and others, but then he became successful and famous very quickly.
Gruss
armin
Hi, I read an interesting poem by Enzenberger about Marx. Doesn't look as if Enzenberger dug Marxism. I have his book 'Kiosk' in my book collection and attempted a translation.
Do you like work of Brecht? Are there ever any revivals of Brecht in Munich, or is he forgotten about now?
