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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 detail 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 Aristotelian 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»
