I’m in with Public Recordings at the Theatre Centre working on an Encyclopedia, so that’s where most of my writing energy is going, but I came across quote from Brecht that doesn’t fit there:
Brecht on Realism:
Now we come to the concept of realism. This concept, too, must first be cleansed before use, for it is an old concept, much used by many people and for many ends. This is necessary because the people can only take over their cultural heritage by an act of expropriation. […]
We must not derive realism as such from particular existing works, but we shall use every means, old and new, tried and untried, derived from art and derived from other sources, to render reality to men in a form they can master. Our concept of realism must be wide and political, sovereign over all conventions.Realistic means: discovering the causal complexes of society / unmasking the prevailing view of things as the view of those who are in power / writing from the standpoint of the class which offers the broadest solutions for the pressing difficulties in which human society is caught up / emphasizing the element of development / making possible the concrete, and making possible abstraction from it.
These are vast precepts and they can be extended. Moreover we shall allow the artist to employ his[sic] fantasy, his[sic] originality, his[sic] humor, his[sic] invention, in following them. We shall not stick to too detailed literary models; we shall not bind the artist to too rigidly defined modes of narrative.
We shall establish that the so-called sensuous mode of writing where one can smell, taste and feel everything – is not automatically to be identified with a realistic mode of writing; we shall acknowledge that there are works which are sensuously written and which are not realistic, and realistic works which are not written in a sensuous style. We shall have to examine carefully the question whether we really develop a plot best when our ultimate objective is to reveal the spiritual life of the characters. Our readers will perhaps find that they have not been given the key to the meaning of the events if, led astray by various artistic devices, they experience only the spiritual agitation of the heroes. By adopting the forms of Balzac and Tolstoy without testing them thoroughly, we might weary our readers – the people — as much as these writers often do themselves. Realism is not a mere question of form. Were we to copy the style of these realists, we would no longer be realists.
For time flows on, and if it did not, it would be a bad prospect for those who do not sit at golden tables. Methods become exhausted; stimuli no longer work. New problems appear and demand new methods. *Reality changes; in order to represent it, modes of representation must also change.* Nothing comes from nothing; the new comes from the old, but that is why it is new.
The oppressors do not work in the same way in every epoch. They cannot be defined in the same fashion at all times. There are so many means for them to avoid being spotted. […] What was popular yesterday is not today, for the people today are not what they were yesterday.
Anyone who is not a victim of formalistic prejudices knows that the truth can be suppressed in many ways and must be expressed in many ways. […]
I am not in agreement with everything or at ease with the language. Nor saying that what was functioning in the late 1930’s is the same as what would function now (since that would actually be the opposite of what B is suggesting.) I find it a compelling and provocative.