The Caucasian Chalk Circle

This play was great! I never knew Brecht could be such a humanist! I liked how it seemed like a real adventure, and you could imagine it taking place in a real painted wooden outdoors instead of on a stupid set. I liked how there were twists and turns and heartwarming young lovers with the politics! My favourite character was Azdak, though. The ending was a big challenge for me--if you're pro-revolution, you have to be okay with people getting their shit taken away, and not all those people will be the enemy--some will be the ones Brecht mentions, the ones who shelter under the big people's wings. I mean hell, that's me, and ... you? If you work a job in this economy and want to live your politics, instead of just talk about them, show more you're playing with fire.* And yet fire's all that warms our tired proletarian hearts! Gee whiz, Brecht really brings it all home with this one. Gewöhnungseffekt.

*(An alternative metaphor, given the subject matter of the play, would have been "stealing a baby.") show less

Peça fantástica. Saber que Brecht existe me faz ter o dobro de raiva daquilo que hoje se passa por arte política.
Bem, o que acontece é que ele era inteligente e escrevia para um público que ele supunha inteligente. Que ele tentava fazer inteligente. Era duma época em que ainda se punha fé na esperteza das massas.

É imprevisível e é engraçada (Brecht é o primeiro alemão que me fez rir e esse é um feito que não esquecerei). Todas as cenas com o Azdak são absolutamente espetaculares. O livro, que já era bom, vira o que é no penúltimo ato, quando ele entra em cena.

Mas Brecht não queria que as pessoas olhassem pra sua obra e dissessem simplesmente "muito bom" ou "fiz haha" — ele queria te fazer questionar por que é bom show more e por que haha, então me sinto numa obrigação aqui. Analisemos de maneira meio superficial o papel que o Azdak cumpre nessa peça por um minuto: Brecht nos põe de maneira intencionalmente inverossímil um juiz justo na história para que a gente ria, mas daí pare para pensar que absurdo é esse mundo em que vivemos onde é inverossímil um juiz ser justo. Só eu acho que não existe nada hoje em dia que faça algo minimamente próximo disso enquanto também ainda tenha algo a dizer? Não é apenas uma sobreposição de forma e conteúdo, mas o uso da forma como conteúdo em si. É algo que parece ter desaparecido em qualquer coisa com fim minimamente político. Em vez disso, temos esses troços meio oscarbait ou aqueles outros super vagos e pseudo-poéticos que são só chatos.

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A quem interessar, é um livro relativamente fácil de ler em alemão. Tem meia dúzia de coloquialismos para os quais o dicionário não é de ajuda alguma, mas dá pra lidar bem. Todas as vezes que eu achei que tivesse entendido algo errado porque "como assim???!" era só o Brecht fazendo a coisa dele. Fui totalmente Verfremdungseffektado. show less

When the sharks the sharks devour
Little fishes have their hour.

This might be the Master at his finest, remarkably both modern and ancient, timeless parables are bracketed in the struggle against fascists with an all too human squalor that likely made Stalin squeal.

The play within the play is apparently from an ancient Chinese tale, it proved unexpectedly surprising. Grusha is a wonderful, highly developed protagonist, unlike the Portia of Venice, her motivation isn't guile but an almost childish concept of loyalty and justice. No doubt Brecht embraced this unlikely refuge even as the world around him was collapsing into barbarism. The title refers to the Chinese story of a judge placing a child in a chalked circle and the two women show more claiming to be the mother are asked to remove the child, the nominal reason being that only the true parent could extricate the young one. As the reasoning goes the judge awards the child to the woman who didn't attempt to remove the child for fear of harming it. This is replicated by Brecht with certain human caveats about the stewards of justice and the greasing of palms. show less

A script should be a quick read. A play isn't going to be more than two hours, so it should take even less than that to read from cover to cover. Yet this book took me days to finish because I just wasn't enjoying it. This surprised me, because I recall finding it rather witty and interesting the last time I read it. It doesn't help that I studied and performed this in my first year of college, so every page is filled with memories of how poorly we achieved that.

The basic plot is all right. A rich, selfish woman is fleeing revolution, and is so interested in her clothes that she leaves her baby behind. A servant is unable to leave the child to be executed, so takes the child with her, and as they journey she comes to love and care for show more the child, raising him as her own son even though this destroys her reputation and loses her her fiancé. Then the rich woman comes back because she needs the heir to claim her money, and takes the servant to court for abducting the child. It's an exciting adventure with some romance and a court scene thrown in.

The problem is all the Brechtian trappings - his 'epic theatre' and blunt moralising. There is a framing device/opening scene that is unbelievably boring, setting the rest of the story as a platy within a play. The story is narrated by a 'singer' who acts as a Greek chorus - a device horribly outdated for something written in the 1940s. And most of the characters talk in endless riddles and metaphors that makes their dialogue irritating at best and incomprehensible at worst. Oh, and there is a lot of lewd dialogue - I'm not sure if this is due to the translator, but it just made me feel uncomfortable having people swear in the middle of a very stagey Greek theatre type play.

I don't know how I used to enjoy this script, because it was no fun at all. This edition is aimed at students and comes with a bunch of questions at the end to stimulate discussion, but no answers, so I find that sort of thing totally useless. show less

I think everyone who's read this book knows Brecht, and everyone who hasn't read it should. _The Caucasian Chalk Circle_ is of course a play -- 'book' is a little inaccurate -- which, in the process of being extremely good, shows just how much greater Brecht the writer was than Brecht the theoretician. Epic theater, to hear Brecht describe it, sounds downright inaccessible and unfriendly; to hear him _write_ it, it's like a dream, infinitely _superior_ to the naturalistic plays of earlier modern times.

(And I may never get an answer to this, at least in this context, but did anyone else pick up a massive 'early SNES RPG' vibe from this book? _This_ is the style and atmosphere that the likes of _Final Fantasy 4_ and _A Link to the Past_ show more were *trying*, and failing, to produce...) show less

Writing in exile in the USA during the Second World War, Brecht borrowed from an ancient Chinese story-echoed in the Judgement of Solomon-in which two women both claim the same child. Brecht's subversion of this tale provides a parable which seems to say that resources should go to those in whose hands they will be most productive. Thanks to the rascally judge, Azdak, one of Brecht's most vivid creations, this story, at least, has a happy outcome. The child is entrusted to the peasant Grusha, who has loved it and nurtured it.

Originally intended for Broadway, this translation by James and Tania Stern (with verse translation by W. H. Auden) has been thoroughly revised, and the volume includes a full introduction and commentary by John show more Willett and Ralph Manheim. show less

The start of the play was so boring. The actual interest started after the narration of the story of the tale about the child. I liked the judgement and the judge , but my winner character is Grusha. The simple hearted girl who took care of the baby so well against all odds. I really get amused at the narration of the character of governor's wife Natella , her love for gowns and i also derived fun from the description of her doctors. I do not understand the implication of the "caucasian" in the title. Never mind, I liked the plot and treatment too.