Antiwar pathos and allegorical meaning of the drama Would. Brecht "Mother Courage and her children"
In emigration, in the struggle against fascism, Brecht's dramatic creativity flourished. It was exceptionally rich in content and varied in form. Among the most famous plays of the emigration - "Mother Courage and her children" (1939). The sharper and more tragic the conflict, the more critical, according to Brecht, a person's thought should be. Under the conditions of the 1930s, "Mother Courage" sounded, of course, as a protest against the demagogic propaganda of war by the fascists and was addressed to that part of the German population that succumbed to this demagogy. War is depicted in the play as an element organically hostile to human existence.
The essence of "epic theater" becomes especially clear in connection with "Mother Courage". The play combines theoretical commenting with a realistic manner that is merciless in its consistency. Brecht believes that it is realism that is the most reliable way of influence. That is why in "Mother Courage" there is such a consistent and consistent "true" face of life even in small details. But one should bear in mind the two-plan nature of this play - the aesthetic content of the characters, i.e. reproduction of life, where good and evil are mixed regardless of our desires, and the voice of Brecht himself, not satisfied with such a picture, trying to establish good. Brecht's position manifests itself directly in the Zongs. In addition, as follows from Brecht's directors' instructions to the play, the playwright provides theaters with ample opportunities to demonstrate the author's thought with the help of various "alienations" (photography, film projection, direct appeal of actors to the audience).
The characters of the heroes in "Mother Courage" are outlined in all their complex contradictions. The most interesting is the image of Anna Fierling, nicknamed Mother Courage. The versatility of this character evokes a variety of feelings in the audience. The heroine attracts with a sober understanding of life. But she is a product of the mercantile, cruel and cynical spirit of the Thirty Years' War. Courage is indifferent to the reasons for this war. Depending on the vicissitudes of fate, she erects either a Lutheran or a Catholic banner over her van. Courage goes to war hoping for big profits.
Brecht's thrilling conflict between practical wisdom and ethical impulses infects the entire play with the passion of argument and the energy of preaching. In the image of Catherine, the playwright drew the antipode of Mother Courage. Neither threats, nor promises, nor death forced Katrin to abandon the decision dictated by her desire to help people in some way. Talkative Courage is opposed by mute Katrin, the girl's silent feat seems to negate all the lengthy arguments of her mother. Brecht's realism manifests itself in the play not only in the portrayal of the main characters and in the historicism of the conflict, but also in the vital authenticity of episodic persons, in Shakespeare's multicolor, reminiscent of the "Falstaffian background". Each character, being drawn into the dramatic conflict of the play, lives his own life, we guess about his fate, about his past and future life, and as if we hear every voice in the discordant chorus of war.
In addition to revealing the conflict through the clash of characters, Brecht complements the picture of life in the play with zones, in which a direct understanding of the conflict is given. The most significant zong is the Song of Great Humility. This is a complex kind of "alienation", when the author acts as if on behalf of his heroine, sharpens her erroneous positions and thus argues with her, inspiring the reader to doubt the wisdom of "great humility." Courage Brecht responds to mother's cynical irony with his own irony. And Brecht's irony leads the viewer, who has completely succumbed to the philosophy of accepting life as it is, to a completely different view of the world, to an understanding of the vulnerability and fatality of compromises. The song about humility is a kind of foreign counterpart, which makes it possible to understand the true, opposite wisdom of Brecht. The entire play, which critically portrays the heroine's practical, compromising "wisdom", is an ongoing debate with the "Song of Great Humility." Mother Courage does not see the light in the play, having survived the shock, she learns "about its nature no more than a guinea pig about the law of biology." The tragic (personal and historical) experience, having enriched the viewer, did not teach Mother Courage anything and did not enrich her in the least. The catharsis she experienced turned out to be completely fruitless. So Brecht argues that the perception of the tragedy of reality only at the level of emotional reactions in itself is not knowledge of the world, it is not much different from complete ignorance.
The play unfolds in the form of a dramatic chronicle, allowing Brecht to draw a wide and varied picture of the life of Germany in all its complexity and contradictions, and against this background to show his heroine. War for Courage is a source of income, a "golden time". She does not even understand that she herself was the culprit of the death of all her children. Only once, in the sixth scene, after having outraged her daughter, she exclaimed: "Damn the war!" But already in the next picture, she again walks with a confident gait and sings "a song about war - a great nurse." But the most unbearable thing in Courage's behavior is her transitions from Courage-mother to Courage - a co-ryst trader. She checks the coin for a tooth to see if it's fake and
In the late 30s - early 40s. Brecht creates plays that are on a par with the best works of world drama-tourism. These are "Mother Courage" and "The Life of Galileo".
The historical drama Mother Courage and Her Children (1939) is based on the story of a German satirist and publicist of the 17th century. Grimmelshausen's "Comprehensive and outlandish biography of the great deceiver and vagabond Courage", in which the author, a participant in the Thirty Years War, created a wonderful chronicle of this darkest period in the history of Germany.
The main heroine of Brecht's play is Anna Firliig, a canteen-woman, nicknamed "Courage" for her brave character. Having loaded the van with popular goods, she, along with her two sons and daughter, goes after the troops to the area of military operations in the hope of deriving commercial benefits from the war.
Although the action of the play takes place in the era of the Thirty Years' War of 1618-1648, tragic for the fate of Germany, it is organically connected with the most pressing problems of our time. With all its content, the play forced the reader and viewer on the eve of the Second World War to think about its consequences, about who benefits from it and who will suffer from it. But there was more than one anti-war theme in the play. Brecht was deeply worried about the political immaturity of ordinary working people in Germany, their inability to correctly understand the true meaning of the events around them, thanks to which they became the support and victims of fascism. The main critical arrows in the play are directed not at the ruling classes, but at everything that is bad, morally distorted, that is in the working people. Brechtian criticism is imbued with both indignation and sympathy.
Courage - a woman who loves her children, lives for them, striving to save them from war, - at the same time goes to war in the hope of making a profit on it and actually becomes the culprit of the death of children, because every time the thirst for profit turns out to be stronger than a motherly feeling. And this terrible moral and human fall of Courage is shown in all its terrible essence.
The play unfolds in the form of a dramatic chronicle, allowing Brecht to draw a wide and varied picture of German life in all its complexity and inconsistencies, and on show your heroine against this background. War for Courage is a source of income, a "golden time". She does not even understand that she herself was the culprit of the death of all her children. Only once, in the sixth scene, after having outraged her daughter, she exclaimed: "Damn the war!" But already in the next picture, she again walks with a confident gait and sings "a song about war - a great nurse." But the most unbearable thing in Courage's behavior is her transitions from Courage-mother to Courage - a co-ryst trader. She checks the coin for a tooth to see if it's fake and does not notice how at this moment the recruiter is taking her son Eilif to the soldiers of the princely army. The tragic lessons of the war taught nothing to the greedy waitress. But it was not the author's task to show the heroine's insight. For a playwright, the main thing is that the viewer draws a lesson for himself from her life experience.
moral
In the play "Mother Courage and Her Children" there are many songs, as, indeed, in many other plays by Brecht. But a special place is given to the "Song of the Great Surrender", which is sung by Courage. This pe-sna is one of the artistic techniques of the “alienation effect”. As conceived by the author, it is designed to interrupt the action for a short time in order to give the viewer an opportunity to think and analyze the actions of the unfortunate and criminal trader, to explain the reasons for her “great surrender”, to show why she did not find the strength and will to say “no” "The principle:" to live with wolves - howl like a wolf. " Her "great surrender" consisted in the naive belief that it was possible to make good money through the war. So the fate of Courage grows to a grandiose moral the tragedy of the "little man" in capitalist society. But in a world that morally disfigures ordinary workers, there are still people who turn out to be able to overcome obedience and perform a heroic deed. Such is the daughter of Ku-razh, the dumb dumb Katrin, who, according to her mother, is afraid of war and cannot see the suffering of a single living being. Katrin is the personification of the living, natural power of love and kindness. At the cost of her life, she saves the peacefully sleeping inhabitants of the city from a sudden attack of the enemy. The weakest of all, Katrin turns out to be capable of active actions against the world of profit and war, from which her mother cannot escape. The feat of Katrin makes you think about Courage's behavior even more and condemn him. Sentencing the Courage, perverted by bourgeois morality, to terrible loneliness, Brecht leads the viewer to the idea of the need to break such a social system in which animal morality prevails, and everything honest is doomed to destruction.
Lesson 10. PIECE BY B. BRECHT "MOTHER KURAZH AND HER CHILDREN"
Practical lesson plan
1. The theory of epic theater B. Brecht: goals and principles.
2. The embodiment of the principles of epic theater in the play "Mother Courage and her children."
3. The influence of Brecht's ideas on modern theater.
The theory of epic theater by Bertolt Brecht, which had a huge impact on the drama and theater of the 20th century, is a very difficult material for students. Conducting a practical lesson on the play "Mother Courage and Her Children" (1939) will help make this material accessible for assimilation.
The theory of epic theater began to take shape in Brecht's aesthetics as early as the 1920s, at a time when the writer was close to left expressionism. The first, still naive, idea was Brecht's proposal to bring theater closer to sports. “Theater without an audience is nonsense,” he wrote in the article “More good sports!”.
In 1926, Brecht completed work on the play "What is this soldier, what is this", which he later considered the first example of an epic theater. Elisabeth Hauptmann recalls: “After staging the play“ What is this soldier, what is this ”Brecht acquires books about socialism and Marxism ... A little later, while on vacation, he writes:“ I am head over heels in Capital. Now I need to know all this for sure ... ".
Brecht's theatrical system is taking shape simultaneously and inextricably linked with the formation of the method of socialist realism in his work. The basis of the system - "the effect of alienation" - is the aesthetic form of the famous position of K. Marx from "Theses on Feuerbach": "Philosophers only explained the world in different ways, but the point is to change it."
The first work that deeply embodied this understanding of alienation was the play "Mother" (1931) based on the novel by AM Gorky.
Describing his system, Brecht used the term "non-Aristotelian theater", then - "epic theater". There is some difference between these terms. The term "non-Aristotelian theater" is associated primarily with the rejection of old systems, "epic theater" - with the establishment of a new one.
The "non-Aristotelian" theater is based on criticism of the central concept that, according to Aristotle, constitutes the essence of tragedy - catharsis. The social meaning of this protest was explained by Brecht in his article On the Theatricality of Fascism (1939): critical attitude to him and to himself.<...>Therefore, the method of theatrical play, adopted by fascism, cannot be regarded as a positive model for the theater, if we expect from it pictures that will give the audience the key to solving the problems of social life ”(Book 2. P. 337).
And Brecht connects his epic theater with an appeal to reason, without denying feeling. Back in 1927, in his article “Reflections on the Difficulties of Epic Theater,” he explained: “The essential ... in epic theater is probably that it appeals not so much to the feeling as to the mind of the viewer. The viewer should not empathize, but argue. At the same time, it would be completely wrong to reject feeling from this theater ”(Book 2. P. 41).
Brecht's epic theater is the embodiment of the method of socialist realism, the desire to tear off mystical veils from reality, to reveal the true laws of social life in the name of its revolutionary change (see B. Brecht's articles "On Socialist Realism", "Socialist Realism in the Theater").
Among the ideas of epic theater, we recommend dwelling on four main points: “theater should be philosophical”, “theater should be epic”, “theater should be phenomenal”, “theater should give an alienated picture of reality” - and analyze their implementation in the play “Mother Courage and her children ”.
The philosophical side of the play is revealed in the peculiarities of its ideological content. Brecht uses the parabola principle ("the narrative moves away from the contemporary world to the author, sometimes even from a specific time, a specific setting, and then, as if moving along a curve, again returns to the abandoned subject and gives its philosophical and ethical understanding and assessment ...".
Thus, the play-parabola has two planes. The first one is B. Brecht's reflections on modern reality, on the flames of the Second World War. The playwright formulated the idea of the play expressing this plan in the following way: “What should the production of“ Mother Courage ”show first of all? That big things in wars are not done by small people. That war, which is the continuation of business life by other means, makes the best human qualities disastrous for their owners. That the struggle against war is worth any sacrifice ”(Book 1. P. 386). Thus, "Mother Courage" is not a historical chronicle, but a warning play, it is directed not to the distant past, but to the near future.
The historical chronicle is the second (parabolic) plan of the play. Brecht turned to the novel by the 17th century writer X. Grimmelshausen "To the simpleton in spite of, that is, the outlandish description of the hardened deceiver and vagabond Courage" (1670). In the novel, against the background of the events of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), the adventures of the waitress Courage (that is, the brave, brave), friend of Simplicius Simplicissimus (the famous hero from Grimmelshausen's novel Simplicissimus) were portrayed. The chronicle of Brecht presents 12 years of life (1624-1636) of Anna Fierling, nicknamed the mother Courage, her travels across Poland, Moravia, Bavaria, Italy, Saxony. “Comparison of the initial episode, in which Courage with three children goes to war, without expecting anything bad, with faith in profit and luck, with the final episode, in which the waitress who lost her children in the war, in fact, has already lost everything in her life with stupid stubbornness pulls his van along the beaten track into darkness and emptiness - this comparison contains the parabolic general idea of the play about the incompatibility of motherhood (and more broadly: life, joy, happiness) with military commerce. " It should be noted that the period depicted is only a fragment in the Thirty Years War, the beginning and end of which are lost in the stream of years.
The image of war is one of the central philosophically rich images of the play.
Analyzing the text, students should reveal the reasons for the war, the need for war for businessmen, understanding of war as "order", using the text of the play. The whole life of mother Courage is connected with the war, she gave her this name, children, prosperity (see picture 1). Courage chose the "great compromise" as a way of being in the war. But a compromise cannot hide the internal conflict between the mother and the waitress (mother - Courage).
The other side of the war is revealed in the images of the Courage children. All three die: the Swiss because of his honesty (Scene 3), Eilif - “because he performed one more feat than was required” (Scene 8), Catherine - warning the city of Halle about an enemy attack (Scene 11). Human virtues are either perverted in the course of war, or bring the good and honest to destruction. This is how the grandiose tragic image of the war as “the reverse world” arises.
Revealing the epic features of the play, it is necessary to turn to the structure of the work. Students should study not only the text, but also the principles of Brechtian staging. To do this, they must familiarize themselves with Brecht's work “Courage Model”. Notes for the 1949 production " (Book. 1.P. 382-443). “As for the epic beginning in the production of the German theater, it was reflected in the mise-en-scenes, and in the drawing of images, and in the careful finishing of details, and in the continuity of the action,” wrote Brecht (Book 1, p. 439). Epic elements are also: the presentation of the content at the beginning of each picture, the introduction of zones commenting on the action, the widespread use of the story (it is possible from this point of view to analyze one of the most dynamic pictures - the third, in which there is a bargaining for the life of the Swiss). The means of epic theater also include montage, that is, the connection of parts, episodes without merging them, without the desire to hide the joint, but on the contrary, with a tendency to highlight it, thereby causing a stream of associations in the viewer. Brecht in the article "Theater of Pleasure or Theater of Teaching?" (1936) writes: "The epic author Deblin gave an excellent definition of the epic, saying that, unlike a dramatic work, an epic work can, relatively speaking, be cut into pieces, and each piece will retain its vitality" (Book 2. P. 66 ).
If students understand the principle of epization, they will be able to cite a number of specific examples from Brecht's play.
The principle of "phenomenal theater" can only be analyzed using Brecht's work "Courage Model". What is the essence of phenomenality, the meaning of which the writer revealed in the work "Purchase of Copper"? In the old, "Aristotelian" theater, only the acting was a truly artistic phenomenon. The rest of the components, as it were, played along with him, duplicated his work. In an epic theater, each component of a performance (not only the work of an actor and director, but also light, music, design) should be an artistic phenomenon (phenomenon), each should have an independent role in revealing the philosophical content of the work, and not duplicate other components.
In "Courage Model" Brecht reveals the use of music on the basis of the principle of phenomenality (see: Book 1. pp. 383–384), the same applies to the scenery. All unnecessary is removed from the stage, not a copy of the world is reproduced, but its image. For this, few but reliable details are used. “If a certain approximation is allowed in the big, then in the small it is unacceptable. For a realistic depiction, careful elaboration of details of costumes and props is important, because here the viewer's imagination cannot add anything, ”wrote Brecht (Book 1. P. 386).
The effect of alienation, as it were, unites all the main features of the epic theater, gives them purposefulness. The figurative basis of alienation is a metaphor. Alienation is one of the forms of theatrical convention, the acceptance of the conditions of the game without the illusion of plausibility. The alienating effect is designed to highlight the image, to show it from an unusual side. In this case, the actor should not merge with his hero. So, Brecht warns that in picture 4 (in which mother Courage sings "The Song of Great Humility"), acting without alienation "is fraught with social danger if the performer of the role Courage, hypnotizing the viewer with her acting, encourages him to get used to this heroine.<...>He will not be able to feel the beauty and attractive power of a social problem ”(Book 1. P. 411).
Using the effect of alienation with a goal different from that of B. Brecht, the modernists depicted on the stage an absurd world in which death reigns. Brecht, with the help of alienation, tried to show the world in such a way that the viewer would have a desire to change it.
Information for home reflection
Around the finale of the play there were great controversies (see dialogue between Brecht and F. Wolf. - Book. 1. pp. 443–447). Brecht answered Wolf: “In this play, as you rightly noted, it is shown that Courage was not taught anything by the catastrophes that befell her.<...>Dear Friedrich Wolf, you are the one who confirms that the author was a realist. Even if Courage has not learned anything, the public can, in my opinion, still learn something by looking at her ”(Book 1. P. 447).
Homework
Give your own interpretation of the finale of B. Brecht's play "Mother Courage and Her Children".
Antiwar pathos and allegorical meaning of the drama Would. Brecht "Mother Courage and her children"
I. The plot of the action is the opinion about the war. (Even before the action begins, we hear a dialogue between the recruiter and the sergeant major. And the latter pronounces the opinion that the world is a mess, the basis of society's immorality, “only wars create harmony.” War for him is a fascinating fa in which players begin to fear peace, for then it will be necessary to calculate how much they have lost.)
II. There is no war without soldiers. (Mother Courage feeds from the war, because she is a market woman and trades in the army. And when they want to take her son Eilif into the army, she says: “let other people's sons go to the soldiers, not mine.” But the cunning recruiter persuades the guy to enroll into the troops while Mother Courage was bargaining.)
III. Who wants to live in war, I owe her something and pay.
Mother Courage meets her son Eilif in only two years, but he is brave and has the respect of the commander. He brutally cracks down on the peasants, and the war writes off everything. For now. And the second son Kurazh Schweitzerkas is taken into the army as the treasurer, because he is honest and decent. For this he suffered, because, trying to save the regiment's cash desk, he was shot. Mother was not allowed to mourn and bury Schweitzerkas. Eilif also dies, for it is during a short peace that he kills a peasant family. And mother Courage at this time is trying to establish material affairs. Finally, daughter Catherine also perishes when her mother left for the city to buy goods. And again she goes along the roads of war, not even having time to bury her daughter.
IV. Allegorical meaning of images of children of mother Courage. (Each of the children of mother Courage is the personification of some kind of virtue. Eilif is brave, courageous. Schweitzerkas is honest, decent. Katrin is nebalakucha and kind. But they all die in war. Such is the fate of human virtues that perish amid moral decay. It is no coincidence the priest says that the war turns everything inside out and demonstrates the most terrible human vices, which, in peacetime, may not have turned out to be: "Those who unleashed the war are to blame here, who turns out what is in people.")
V. What is the meaning of hidden irony. (Already in the very name Courage is called not a mother, but a mother. Why? Because there is hidden irony. Can a real mother want war? Of course not, even if it does not concern her children. And she does not treat her own people too carefully. Every time the fate of her children is decided, she bargains where. She bargains even when it comes to the life of her son - honest Schweitzerkas. The author's irony extends to other images - a priest, a cook, a sergeant major, a soldier, etc. This is because they live behind moral rules turned inside out. Irony helps to understand the allegorical meaning of Brecht's drama.)
Vi. The meaning of the finitude of the drama. (When Brechtov was reproached for the fact that his heroine did not curse the war, he said that his goal was different: let the viewer come to the conclusion himself. Although Mother Courage says: "Though she is lost, this is a war!" faith, because she continues to profit from the war. Her last words: "I must continue to trade."
"Mother Courage and Her Children" is a play by B. Brecht. The play was written in 1939 on the eve of World War II. The premiere took place in Zurich in 1941, and on 11 January 1949 the play was staged at the Berliner Ensemble Theater. In Mother Courage, Brecht practically fully embodied the theoretical principles of the "epic theater" he created as an alternative to dramatic theater ("Aristotelian"). New artistic ideas of the writer were born from his passionate desire to transform the old theater and turn it from a "hotbed of illusion" and "dream factory" into a theater that fosters class consciousness in the viewer, causing him to strive for a revolutionary change in the world.
According to Brecht's theory, an epic theater should tell about an event, and not embody it, appeal not to feelings, but to reason. To do this, it is necessary to create a distance between the viewer and the stage, so that he understands further and more than the stage character. This relationship is based on a technique created by Brecht called the “alienation effect”. Its essence is to show life phenomena and human types from some unexpected side for a deeper understanding of the phenomenon, for awakening a critical and analytical position in the viewer, as opposed to the compassion of traditional drama theater.
In Mother Courage, Brecht refers to the events of the Thirty Years' War of the 17th century. The replay of the past was to warn against the dire consequences of the coming future. Brecht appeals to a man from the "crowd" who does not object to the war, since he believes that the indifference and position of non-intervention of the "little" man in the political games of the powerful is the main cause of social catastrophes at all times.
The main character of the play is Anna Firling, a canteen-keeper, nicknamed "Mother Courage". She and her children - the sons Eilif and the Swiss and the mute daughter Catherine - wander the roads of war with a van loaded with marketable goods, "thinking of living through the war." The very image of a woman was painted by Brecht from a completely unexpected perspective. The drama of a mother who said "yes" to war, for whom human slaughter is a blessing, money, profit, intensifies the destructive and destructive all human impact of war. Twelve years pass between the beginning of the play and its end, they have changed the appearance and well-being of mother Courage (she has grown old, lost all her children, almost ruined), but her essence and her attitude to the war have not changed. She keeps pulling her van, hoping for better days, if only the war isn't over, her nurse.
Brecht's philosophical idea of the incompatibility of motherhood (and more broadly: life, joy, happiness) with military commerce is expressed in the form of a parabola (the narrative moves away from the modern world, and then, as if moving along a curve, again returns to the abandoned subject and gives its philosophical and ethical comprehension and assessment). The plot, individual situations, episodes associated with the alternate loss of mother Courage of her children are parabolic: each of them embodies the collision of a merchant and a mother, human and war.
Brecht in "Mother Courage", as in other plays, uses a number of techniques necessary to create the "alienation effect". This is editing, joining parts, episodes without merging them. These are zongs (songs) performed by the heroes, in a generalized form representing their worldview, life positions, and also designed to reveal the attitude of the author and actors to these characters. Brecht warned the actors about the distant, "alienated" performance of these songs, since they should be felt to be accused and criticized by the characters by the author and performers.
The image of mother Courage caused a heated discussion in German literary criticism. The main reproach to Brecht is that a mother who has not learned anything and has not changed can cause a pessimistic mood. Brecht answered very briefly: whether mother Courage will see clearly or not is not so important, the author must achieve the viewer's enlightenment. According to Brecht, a negative example is more convincing for a person who can see his double in mother Courage and draw appropriate conclusions.
The famous performer of the role of Courage was the actress Elena Weigel, wife of B. Brecht. On the Soviet stage, the play was staged by directors M.M. Shtraukh, M.A. Zakharov, television adaptation was made by S.N. Kolosov.