Brecht and Company: Sex, Politics, and the Making of the Modern Dramaby John Fuegi

South Atlantic Modern Language Association

Brecht and Company: Sex, Politics, and the Making of the Modern Drama by John FuegiReview by: Siegfried MewsSouth Atlantic Review, Vol. 62, No. 1 (Winter, 1997), pp. 157-160Published by: South Atlantic Modern Language AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3201213 .

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South Atlantic Review 157

(196). Cixous has a loyal following on the American campus and Motard-Noar represents that group well.

The exclusions are numerous and, in the end, it would be completely unfair to demand ten or fifteen more chapters. This said, the most obvi- ous lacunae, and Thompson himself regrets their absence, are J.M.G. Le Cl&zio and Georges Perec. Perec's star has been rising since his un- timely death in 1982, as well it should. Les Choses, his first novel, is a deceptively simple story about alienation in consumer society and has provoked excellent discussion among my students. La Vie: mode d'emploi, his last novel, is a multi-layered stylistic and structural tour de force full of delightful surprises. Le Clzio is a prolific author who writes books for adults and children set in France, in Africa, and in Latin America. Among the many fine women authors in France today, Annie Ernaux would merit a chapter in this book. Her work is both accessible and compelling, very personal but spoken from an intriguing distance.

Thompson's criteria for The Contemporary Novel in France also seem to exclude a substantial group of French citizens, namely, the inhabit- ants of the overseas departments. Guadeloupe and Martinique, for in- stance, are home to some of these most interesting French writers today: Maryse Conde, Simone Schwartz-Bart, Patrick Chamoiseau, and Edouard Glissant, to mention a few.

The writers represented in this book do offer a broad range of stylistic technique and thematic concerns. I would like to end by reiterating my praise for this book. Michel Viegnes's chapter on Gracq and Susan Petit's chapter on Tournier are excellent. The Robert Henckels essay has convinced me that my idea of Pinget is too narrow and that I should read more of his work. The essay by William Cloonan makes me won- der how I ever passed over Echenoz, who sounds like a fascinating writer. Similarly, Marie-Ther se Noiset's essay prompted me to order several novels by Fernandez for the university library. Anyone interested in the French literary scene will appreciate the cogent overviews here that clearly demonstrate that prose fiction continues to thrive in France today.

John Lambeth, Washington and Lee University

'Brecht and Company: Sex, Politics, and the Making ofthe Modern Drama. By John Fuegi. New York: Grove Press, 1994. xx + 732 pp. $32.50.

John Fuegi's biography is that rare specimen among books aspiring to scholarly status that has attracted considerable attention and caused passionate controversy beyond the realm of academia. First published in Great Britain under the sensationalist title The Life and Lies ofBertolt Brecht and reissued in that country in a paperback edition, Brecht and



158 Book Reviews

Company was reviewed in virtually all major newspapers and periodical publications in the English-speaking countries-from the New York Times to the London Times, from the London Review of Books to the Chronicle of Higher Education-and achieved the unusual accolade of spawning a short novel, Elaine Feinstein's Loving Brecht (1992). The debate is by no means confined to the United States and Great Britain or, for that matter, to literary journals. The publisher of a French translation (and the author) were required by a Paris court to pay damages to Brecht's daughter, Barbara Schall-Brecht, for infringing her privacy and making libelous statements. Although, at the time of this writing, a Ger- man translation has not yet been published (it is said to be forthcom- ing), major German newspapers and magazines published reviews of the biography and vigorously participated in the continuing controversy.

It is justified, then, to ask what all the fuss is about. Perhaps part of the answer lies in the expectations that were raised by the publication of a book that, at first blush, does not only seek to titillate by exploring the sex life of one of the most influential dramatists of the twentieth cen- tury (Brecht's propensity for sexual escapades has been a staple of Brecht biographers for decades) but also promises to include the turbulent politics of Brecht's lifetime and to offer a comprehensive look at the origins of modern drama. After all, Fuegi is no tyro in Brecht circles; as the co- founder of the International Brecht Society and long-time editor of the Brecht Yearbook, his scholarly accomplishments appeared impeccable, and Brecht and Company was touted as the crowning achievement of almost thirty years of research. Furthermore, Fuegi's work could be pre- sumed to supersede Werner Mittenzwei's two-volume Das Leben des Bertolt Brecht, published in 1987 in what was then the German Demo- cratic Republic, and to reassess Brecht from a postsocialist perspective.

Although Fuegi does provide a reassessment of sorts, his enterprise is marred by an astonishing number of factual errors, mistranslations, unsubstantiated statements, and similar flaws, which have been listed- albeit not exhaustively-in a documentation encompassing 100 pages in volume 20 of the Brecht Yearbook (1995). These flaws undermine Fuegi's claims as to the scrupulousness of his scholarship and to provid- ing a definitive biography. Because of Fuegi's careless approach, it was suggested at a March 1995 panel discussion in Brecht's birthplace, Augsburg, that Brecht and Company should be classified as a novel or novel-like account rather than a biography-a suggestion that was re- jected by Fuegi, who insisted on the factual accuracy of his book.

As the title of the biography indicates, there are three major areas in which Fuegi seeks to advance new readings. As far as the sexual angle is concerned, Fuegi caters to feminist sensibilities by portraying Brecht as a relentless, ruthless exploiter of his female collaborators such as Elisabeth



South Atlantic Review 159

Hauptmann, Margarete Steffin, and Ruth Berlau-all of whom also doubled as his lovers. Their work, Fuegi asserts, was callously expropri- ated by Brecht, and his collaborators received little or no credit. The most excessive claim Fuegi makes in this respect is that Hauptmann is supposed to have written at least 80 percent of the text of The Threepenny Opera, a work on which Brecht collaborated with Kurt Weill. In ad- vancing this statistical claim Fuegi ignores the collective enterprise of the theater-an enterprise of which the text is only one element, and an enterprise that by its very nature makes it difficult to determine the exact share of each contributor to the success of a production.

Without doubt, Fuegi's attempt to draw attention to the contribu- tions of Brecht's female collaborators is basically both well-intended and praiseworthy. But, not content with depicting Hauptmann and others as helpless victims of sexual exploitation and unrecognized collaborators, providers of "both sex and text" (147), he seems to suggest that they were Brecht's equals as dramatists-or perhaps even superior to him-so that the "making of the modern drama" turns out to be the achievement of the unsung heroines rather than Brecht himself. In a similar vein, Fuegi attributes the creation of brutal macho figures such as Mac the Knife in The Threepenny Opera to Brecht, whereas he as- sumes that the female collaborators contributed the compassionate, car- ing female figures and used them as projections of their sufferings. Such a simplistic pattern appears hardly tenable when one considers, for ex- ample, the split personality of Shen Teh/Shui Ta in The Good Person of Szechwan who, forced by economic necessity, engages in both "typically" female and male behavior. Similarly, the male protagonist of Puntila and Matti, His Hired Man is also capable-depending on his state that changes from euphoric and kind-hearted drunkenness to mean-spir- ited sobriety-of both modes of conduct.

In catering to feminist concerns Fuegi anachronistically uses the yard- stick of the 1990s. However, in his attempt at dismantling Brecht the socialist icon, he reverts to the rhetoric of the Cold War. True, Brecht's lifelong public silence about Stalin's crimes is hardly an enchanting chapter of the Brecht biography. But Fuegi carries his argument to the ab- surd extreme of not only denying Brecht's well-established antifascist views as expressed in his work but to equate him explicitly with both Hitler and Stalin. According to Fuegi, Brecht, Hitler, and Stalin exer- cised a "wholly irrational power" (128) over their adherents-regard- less of the unmistakable difference that Brecht, unlike Hitler and Stalin, lacked the dictatorial power of sentencing millions to their deaths. It remains Fuegi's dubious merit to have constructed a "universe according to Brecht, Hitler, and Stalin" (357)-a universe that pertains to the realm of fanciful speculation rather than that of serious scholarship.



160 Book Reviews

Nevertheless, the publicity that Fuegi has generated with the publication of his voluminous Brecht and Company, which includes photos and a not entirely reliable index but lacks a bibliography, may ultimately contribute to the revival of interest in the "classic" Brecht and in the reexamination of fixed positions by invigorating the international Brecht discourse-a result that one should not dismiss lightly.

Siegfried Mews, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

o* Garcilaso de la Vega and the Italian Renaissance. By Daniel L. Heiple.

University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, "Penn State Stud- ies in Romance Literatures," 1994. xvi + 428 pp. $45.00.

This long study of Garcilaso is the most significant contribution to the comprehension of the art of the Spanish poet made in many years, and it will clearly be a major source for the study of his poetry for many years to come. The book is comprised of reflections on various aspects of Garcilaso's art, emphasizing his intellectual evolution, and accompa- nied by very detailed and cogent analyses of many of his poems. These analyses will be very helpful to teachers who need to explain the poems in an historical and artistic context.

Summarizing the book point by point seems to be unnecessary, since the curious reader will find a very adequate summary in Heiple's short preface. I would however like to point out a few very important contri- butions and insights into Garcilaso's poetry contained in this work.

Heiple silences the critics who have attempted to judge Garcilaso by his sincerity and also studies the misinterpretations of Garcilaso's mes- sage occasioned by the myth of Isabel de Freire. There are incisive chapters on Renaissance artistic imitation and on the importance of Bembo and later Bernardo Tasso on Garcilaso's poetic evolution. Heiple dis- cusses how Garcilaso, in his later work, subverts the received Petrarchan

systems and codes and creates poems of a new sort, based on a more extensive imitation of classical literature. He deals with the Neoplatonic aspect of some of the poems as well as "Garcilaso as a thinker and a wit." The study ends with a masterful analysis of the Ode adflorem Gnidi and

Heiple shows why he considers this poem the pinnacle of Spanish Re- naissance poetry.

The high quality of Heiple's poetic analysis is evident in of his treat- ment of Sonnet XXII [Con ansia estrema de mirar qu6 tiene], a poem which has prompted critics as far back as el Brocense to say silly things. Cautious critics, such as Lapesa steer clear and avoid comment. Re-

cently Navarrete (The Orphans of Petrarch 94) has analyzed the poem in



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Brecht and Company: Sex, Politics, and the Making of the Modern Dramaby John Fuegi