Seite 50 [50]
SASKIA FISCHER
of the ritual in the theater thus allows the audience a critical view of the ritual
itself. The self-sacrifice of the young comrade is a disturbing ritual that has
become questionable, which is displayed as theater within theater itself.
This critical perspective can be further supported by the justification for
the killing. So far, I haven’t focused on the fact that Brecht’s presentation of
the argumentation of the agitators, who consider the sacrifice of the young
comrade as necessary, is actually quite subversive in itself.
AGITATORS: Lamenting, we pummelled our heads with our fists
Asall they could offer us was this hideous counsel: forthwith
To chop off a foot from our own body; for
It is a fearsome thing to kill.
But not only others, but ourselves too would we kill
if need be
Since only by violence can this killing
World be changed, as
Every living thing knows.
Yet it is not granted to us,
we said, not to kill.”
The control choir then expresses its “compassion” [Mitgefühl] for the agitators
but not to the young comrade.” The speech of the agitators, thus, seems almost
like an ironic and cynical replica of Brecht’s own criticism of the self-assuring,
tragic worldview of bourgeois art. For in this scene, the agitators and the
control choir ultimately confirm their inability to change the “last remains of
agony” [letzten Rest von Qual], as Brecht puts it in his essay Voraussetzung der
Tragik [Precondition of the Tragic]. The well known and already profoundly
explored positions of his concept of epic theater need not be explained in de¬
tail here.” What is important for the question of the relationship of Brecht’s
poetics to ritual is that his fundamental criticism of a theater of empathy and
identification — as he sees it realized, especially in ancient tragedies and Ar¬
istotelian poetics, Lessing’s poetics of compassion [Mitleidspoetik], and the
5° Brecht: Ibid., 97. [Agitatoren: “Klagend zerschlugen wir uns unsere Köpfe mit unseren Fäusten
/ Daß sie uns nur den furchtbaren Rat wußten: jetzt / Abzuschneiden den eigenen Fuß vom
Körper; denn / Furchtbar ist es, zu töten. / Aber nicht andere nur, auch / Uns töten wir, wenn
es nottut, / Da doch nur mit Gewalt diese tötende / Welt zu ändern ist, wie / Jeder Lebende
weiß. / Noch ist es uns, sagten wir, / Nicht vergönnt, nicht zu töten.”]
60 Ibid.
61 Brecht: Voraussetzung der Tragik, in GBA 21, 384
62 Jan Knopf, for instance, concisely summarizes the research on Brecht’s idea of epic theater,
in Jan Knopf: Der entstellte Brecht. Die Brecht-Forschung muss (endlich) von vorn anfangen,
in H.L. Arnold - J. Knopf (eds.): Bertolt Brecht, München, Edition TEXT + KRITIK, 2006,
5-20.
+48»