Chicken soup with pearl barley

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Chicken soup with pearl barley - day after day - Next Year in Jerusalem (Engl. Chicken Soup with Barley - Roots - I'm Talking about Jerusalem ) is a drama trilogy of Arnold Wesker .

World premieres

All three dramas premiered in Coventry at the Belgrade Theater: Chicken Soup with Barley : July 7, 1958; Roots : May 25, 1959; I'm Talking about Jerusalem : March 28, 1960; First performed as a trilogy: London on June 7th, June 30th and July 27th 1960, Royal Court Theater . German premieres: Part 1 on January 16, 1963 in Heidelberg; 2nd part October 12, 1962 in Bremen, 3rd part Wuppertal September 17, 1963.

theme

Wesker, a staunch socialist, deals in his trilogy with the genesis of the English working class between 1936 and 1959. In the case of the Kahn family, a Jewish peasant family from London , he makes it clear why the revolutionary class in modern Great Britain has fallen into crisis. All three parts are closely linked in terms of form and content. In the first part, the course of development is presented in its entirety (1st act London, 1936; 2nd act: London 1946/47; 3rd act: London 1955/56), the other two deepen certain phases, with Roots covering a period of fourteen Years ago (Norfolk, late 1950s) and next year in Jerusalem, the post-war events were documented in several short periods of time (1st act: Norfolk, 1946; 2nd act: Norfolk, 1947 and 1953; 3rd act: Norfolk, 1956 and 1959).

action

Chicken soup with pearl barley begins with a revolutionary spirit of optimism. The basement apartment of the Kahns in London's East End is a meeting place for staunch communists who have declared war on Anglo-Fascism around Sir Edward Mosley and who spontaneously report to the International Brigades when the Spanish Civil War broke out. Sarah Kahn embodies the generation of activists who want to bring about rule of the working class through violence. Her husband Harry is not infected by this enthusiasm, while daughter Ada is seized by the revolutionary exuberance. Finally, in 1946, the time for the triumph of the working class seems to have come: Hitler's Germany has been defeated, England is governed by the trade unionist Atlee and major social reforms are imminent. Sarah Kahn and her youngest, Ronnie, who wants to be a writer, are optimistic about the future. Anders Ada and her husband, Dave Simmonds, who fought Franco for years in Spain. The war cost both of their enthusiasm. Disillusioned, they found that the end of fascism does not mean the dawn of better times for the working class, but that it is confronted with problems in modern industrial society that cannot be overcome with the old solutions. Her mother criticizes the inconsistency of only wanting to change the relations of domination and not wanting to change the system of ruling and being ruled. Ronnie also goes through a process of disillusionment. Three experiences are of decisive importance for him: the Russian invasion of Hungary in 1956, his depressing experiences as a cook in Paris and the failure of Ada and Dave as his role models.

The attempt to found a reform settlement in the countryside, far from the big industrial centers, which is not subject to the rules of the capitalist social order, is the subject of next year in Jerusalem . The experiment arises from the longing to discover one's own roots, an endeavor that they strive to realize with a truly socialist community: a community that lives socialism and not only discusses it. But this new Jerusalem of creative self-realization is doomed to fail because Dave, who wants to live off his hands and rejects the use of machines, as a small carpenter cannot compete with industry. In the end, he and Ada find themselves forced to return to London.

The middle part of the trilogy, day after day , is minimalist. At its center is the young Beatie Bryant, who comes from a family of farm workers in Norfolk, works as a waitress in London and is friends with Ronnie Kahn. He, whose intellectuality she admires, has tried to teach them that language is knowledge and that the disadvantaged can only improve their situation if they give up consumption-oriented behavior and rediscover their real, human needs. When Beatie tries to convince her parents and relatives of these ideas in her home village, she has to learn that she cannot make herself understandable to them. In contrast to her relatives, Beatie finally succeeds in building a new self-confidence: she breaks away from Ronnie and finds her own language.

literature

expenditure

  • Arnold Wesker: The Wesker Trilogy: Wesker Plays, Volume 1 . Penguin (1964). ISBN 978-0-14-048048-1 ( engl. )
  • Arnold Wesker: Collected pieces . Berlin: Suhrkamp (1970)

Secondary literature