The good man from Sezuan
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| Title: | The good man from Sezuan |
| Genus: | Epic theater |
| Original language: | German |
| Author: | Bertolt Brecht |
| Publishing year: | 1943 |
| Premiere: | February 4, 1943 |
| Place of premiere: | Schauspielhaus Zurich |
| Place and time of the action: | The capital of the Chinese province of Sezuan |
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The Good Man of Sezuan is a play by Bertolt Brecht , written between 1938 and 1940 with the collaboration of Ruth Berlaus and Margarete Steffin , which premiered on February 4, 1943 at the Schauspielhaus Zürich under the direction of Leonard Steckel and was first published as a book in 1953. Paul Dessau composed the music .
It is a prime example of Brecht's epic teaching theater , from which many elements of classical drama theory have been banned. The theme of the play is also typical for Brecht: Among other things, criticism of religion and capitalism as well as a questioning of the bourgeois Enlightenment are decisive aspects of the play.
The drama is set in the Chinese province of Sezuan ( Sichuan ), but according to Brecht's express preliminary remark, it is to be understood as a parable , which means that Sezuan stands for all places where people are exploited by people. The preliminary remark was added in later editions that this is no longer the case (in Brecht's view) in today's Sezuan (i.e. in the People's Republic of China ).
Emergence
The Greek legend of the old married couple Philemon and Baucis served as a template for Brecht's work . The couple lives in a poor hut on the outskirts and welcomes the disguised god Zeus and his son Hermes in an extremely friendly manner. The two guests had lowered themselves to the ground to test the goodness of the people. When Philemon and Baucis find out that they are dealing with gods, they apologize for the meager meal. Zeus and Hermes, however, are very satisfied and reward the hospitable couple.
Another template is the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah , in which God wants to destroy the two cities and first sends three angels to Abraham and then, when he asks God not to punish the guilty and the innocent equally, sends two angels to Sodom, where Abraham's nephew Lot is staying. He turns out to be the only innocent person and is saved from the catastrophe with his family.
In fact, only the most intensive core of its creation has been taken into account with the date of 1938-40 as stated by Brecht. Brecht completed the first five scenes of the later play as early as 1930 under the name Die Ware Liebe . In 1939, while in exile in Denmark and Sweden, he finished a first rough version, and in 1942 finally stopped working on the piece. Despite frequent revisions, Brecht never thought the piece was completely finished.
content
In the Chinese province of Sezuan , three gods want to prove that good people also live on earth.
The water seller Wang, the only one who recognizes the gods, is desperately looking for a place to stay. He only finds what he is looking for with the prostitute Shen Te after he has been turned away several times by other, wealthier people. When she reports on her financial worries, the gods pay a small fortune for her night quarters. With this Shen Te buys a tobacco shop and promises the gods to behave well.
Shen Te is increasingly providing shelter to people in need who take advantage of them. Debts pile up. In the role of the ruthless cousin Shui Ta, Shen Te drives out parasites. The rent is still outstanding and she is advised to marry a wealthy man because of it.
In the city park, Shen Te meets the unemployed aviator Yang Sun, who is about to commit suicide. To stop him, she starts a conversation and falls in love with him. Shen Te learns from Sun's mother that he had received a job offer as a postal operator in Beijing and that he would need 500 silver dollars to bribe a hangar operator. Shen Te doesn't hesitate to give him the 200 silver dollars she had previously borrowed from the old carpet dealer couple to pay the rent for the shop, which puts her shop at risk.
Shen Te and Sun's wedding is supposed to take place in a cheap restaurant. Shen Te confesses to her fiancé that she cannot sell the shop because of her debts with the elders. During a conversation between Sun and his mother, it becomes clear that he will not marry Shen Te if she does not give him the promised money. Sun hopes that Shui Ta can help his future family and sends for him. Since Shen Te cannot act as Shui Ta at the same time, he waits in vain and the wedding falls through the water.
Wang accuses the gods of not helping Shen Te. They respond: "We are only observers", the strength of the good person "will grow with the burden."
Shen Te realizes that she cannot start a new existence with Sun, even though she has given up her shop for it. She is also pregnant. In the interests of the unborn child, she puts on the mask of Shui Ta again and uses exploitative methods to set up a flourishing tobacco factory with Sun as a worker and later as a supervisor. Sun, the father of her child, does not tell Shen Te about her pregnancy. She retains the role of Shui Ta and does not face the others as Shen Te until the end, with the exception of the Shin, who becomes her confidante with compensation. Shui Ta tells the others that Shen Te has gone away. However, this lie soon met with skepticism, especially with Wang and Sun. Shen Te's disappearance is attributed to Shui Ta, who is accused of murdering her.
Shui Ta is brought to justice, which is formed by the three gods. He or she recognizes them, reveals their true identity and tells their story. Although it becomes clear that the claim of the gods "to be good and yet to live" cannot be fulfilled in this world without the human being split into a moral-good and viable-hard personality, the gods ignore this knowledge. The end remains open and the viewer is asked to find their own solution.
Epic structural elements
Unlike, for example, the life of Galileo , The Good Man of Sezuan fulfills all the criteria of epic drama theory . The piece is open at the beginning and the end, the individual images stand for themselves, are strung together and can be viewed individually.
The action takes place on two completely different levels of action. The transcendent world of the gods, unworldly and far from all everyday problems, does not perceive the harsh reality of the social slums, which represents the other level of action. The gods, on the other hand, have no meaning in the slums of Sezuan. Both levels of action are linked in the course of the piece by montage - like inserted dream sequences.
Only in the last picture, when the gods are acting as false judges, do both levels of action meet again, whereby the gods are so far removed from the real world that they are no longer able to interpret Shen Te's story correctly. Both levels of action - the early capitalist, culturally mainly East Asian slums of Sezuan and the unrealistic world of the gods - create a great distance to the audience, who lives in completely different conditions and to whom the events on the stage appear strange and unreal.
The alienation effect finds numerous applications in particular. The plot is interrupted in many places by elements alien to the plot, for example by interludes in which Wang the gods appear, as well as songs that comment on the event, sometimes sarcastically (e.g. the “Song of the water seller in the rain” or “Trio of the disappearing” Gods on the Cloud ”). Furthermore, there are numerous places where action-distancing design elements are used. B. Characters step out of their role and comment on the events as outsiders.
This form of the alienation effect becomes very clear in the 8th picture, in which Ms. Yang's flashback, which she tells from her subjective perspective, is alienated by scenic representations on the stage that deviate massively from Ms. Yang's point of view. The resulting contrast between the presented and described events creates a critical distance in the viewer that stimulates thought.
Last but not least, the splitting of Shen Te into two completely contradicting personalities and the ridiculousness of the gods, who often seem very human and fallible and who in no way do justice to the claim to be divine, are further applications of the alienation effect.
The alienation effect is also used in the piece on a linguistic level. In the 8th picture, Ms. Yang not only depicts the truth in a completely distorted way, but also increases this distortion into an exaggerated way when she speaks of Shui Ta as "infinitely kind" and emphasizes that she and her son could "really not thank him enough" .
main characters
Shen Te
The main character of the play Shen Te - it is an actual Chinese name which translates as "divine efficacy" - is a prostitute and later the owner of a small tobacco shop. She helps wherever she can, but she is selfless, naive and only ever sees the good in people. However, she quickly realizes that a good person cannot survive in this world. The external circumstances literally force her to split her personality by transforming herself into the cold-hearted cousin Shui Ta in tricky situations in order to secure her existence. In spite of everything, she remains "the angel of the suburbs" and "the good man of Sezuan" in the eyes of the gods and the inhabitants of Sezuan.
Shui Ta
Shui Ta, the alleged cousin of Shen Te, but in fact Shen Te in disguise, embodies the complete opposite of Shen Te. He is the adversary or antagonist of Shen Tes. He is a selfish, ruthless, unscrupulous, profit-oriented person with a strong sense of creating his own advantages out of everything (e.g. building up the tobacco factory). Shui Ta represents the part of Shen Te that as a modern capitalist drastically pursues its personal goals. In addition, it becomes clear that Shui Ta is a person who does everything in his power to build good relationships with higher-ups (e.g., making friends with a police officer).
Wang
The water seller Wang introduces the play and functions throughout its course as a connection between the gods and the real plot, which he partially reports to them. Already at the beginning of the play he fails the gods because his measuring cup has a double bottom and he is cheating on his customers. But this is its only falsehood. It is also noticeable that he puts all his hope in the gods, even fears them.
The gods
From the beginning the gods are described as hardly to be taken seriously. They do not fulfill the traditional idol of people and are neither omniscient nor omnipotent. Although the gods always appear together, individual traits can be determined: the first god is a dogmatic, the second a critic and the third a naive idealist. In their search for a good person, the gods have numerous bad experiences, which are also manifested in their appearance. In the last interlude, someone was "knocked off his head" and "someone has a leg in a fox trap". With their unworldly ideals, they represent various aspects of a mindset that can be assigned to the paternalism that has found expression in the liberal bourgeoisie since the German Classical period. In the last picture, she and the audience have to admit that their mission has failed: In a capitalist world, a life that is both good and humane is impossible. Completely ridiculed, the gods go to heaven on a pink cloud. Reversing the principle of deus ex machina , which was dear to ancient and baroque theaters and in which at the end of the play God floats down on the stage to solve all remaining problems, the Brechtian gods move away and leave the protagonists to their dubious fate.
Yang Sun
Yang Sun is a jobless aviator at the beginning of the piece. He cannot cope with the capitalist world and wants to commit suicide. Shen Te saves him and becomes his girlfriend. He wants to become an aviator, so he needs 500 silver dollars to bribe an employee at the airline in Beijing. He cheats her of her money, spends it all, and decides to work at Shui Ta's tobacco factory to avoid fraud charges. After a while, he is promoted to overseer and finally to general manager. He achieves his goals with flattery and denunciations, and is only surpassed by the Shen Te's second identity, Shui Ta, who has risen to become a factory owner through his unscrupulous acts.
Image of man
“The gods: 'O you weak / well-minded but weak person! / Where there is need, he thinks, there is no goodness! / Where there is danger, he thinks, there is no bravery! / O weakness that leaves nothing with good hair! / O quick judgment! O frivolous despair! '"
The piece is shaped by the question of people's ability to act well. It tests whether there can be good people under the conditions of capitalism. Brecht uses the parable - a means that he describes as "much smarter than all other forms" and "Columbus' egg, because it is concrete in abstraction by making the essentials apparent". It allows him to contrast different images of people with one another. Shen Te acts out of pity when she says:
“She is not entitled, but she is hungry: that is more.
[…]
Oh you unfortunate ones!
Your brother is being violated and you are screwing up your eyes!
The victim cries out loud and you are silent?
The violent one goes around and chooses his victims
And you say: he spares us, because we show no displeasure "
Her alter ego Shui Ta, on the other hand, puts people under pressure, manipulates them in order to create opportunities for themselves; he does not see them as victims of circumstances, but as beings that can be guided by influences. The people who take advantage of Shen Te act like animals whose instincts command them to meet their needs at all costs.
Whether there is a good person in the piece ultimately remains a question that is as open as the end of the piece:
“We stand disappointed ourselves and see
the curtain closed and all questions unanswered. [...]
Should it be another person? Or another world?
Maybe just other gods? Or none? […]
You yourself immediately thought about
How you can
help a good person to a good end.
Dear audience, come on, find the end yourself!
There must be a good one, must, must, must! "
However, the fact that the main character splits into two personalities suggests that under the conditions of capitalism there cannot be a good person unless he also has a bad, viable side. The piece is supposed to show that under capitalism, people's true values, such as goodness, are of no use and that only capital counts. Another interpretation of the double role assumes that Shen Te consciously plays the role of Shui Ta and is no longer a good person at the beginning of the piece.
filming
In 1966, the SDR produced under the direction of Fritz Umgelter a three-hour television play under the original title The Good Man of Sezuan , in which Nicole Heester played Shen Te and Shui Ta.
literature
Text output
- Bertolt Brecht: The good person from Sezuan . Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1964, ISBN 978-3-518-10073-8 .
Secondary literature
- Horst Grobe: Bertolt Brecht: The good person from Sezuan . King's Explanations and Materials (Volume 186). Bange Verlag, Hollfeld 2002, ISBN 978-3-8044-1704-5 .
- Werner Hecht (Ed.): Materials on Brecht's "The Good Man of Sezuan" . Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1968, ISBN 3518002473 .
- Jan Knopf (ed.): Brecht's “Good Man from Sezuan” . Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1982, ISBN 3-518-38521-6 .
- Wolf-Egmar Schneidewind, Bernhard Sowinski: Bertolt Brecht, The good person from Sezuan. Interpretation . Oldenbourg, Munich 1992, ISBN 3-486-88630-4 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Ursula Brech: Klett reading aid: The good person of Sezuan . Stuttgart 1987, p. 79.
- ↑ Bertolt Brecht: The good person of Sezuan . Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1964, p. 112.
- ↑ Jan button: Brecht manual: Theater. An aesthetic of contradictions . Metzler, Stuttgart 1980, ISBN 3-476-00445-7 , p. 203.
- ↑ Bertolt Brecht: The good person of Sezuan. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1964, p. 30, lines 26ff.
- ↑ Ernst Schumacher: Brecht. Theater and Society in the 20th Century. Eighteen essays . 3. Edition. 1981, p. 17.
- ↑ Bertolt Brecht: The good person of Sezuan . Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1964, p. 12, line 12 and p. 61, line 13
- ↑ Bertolt Brecht: The good person of Sezuan . Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1964, p. 144
- ↑ The good person of Sezuan in the Internet Movie Database (English)