South Atlantic Modern Language Association

Brecht's "Der gute Mensch von Sezuan": Dialectic toward Utopia Author(s): Peter Ruppert Reviewed work(s): Source: South Atlantic Bulletin, Vol. 41, No. 4 (Nov., 1976), pp. 36-43 Published by: South Atlantic Modern Language Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3198952 . Accessed: 08/02/2012 12:27
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BRECHT'S "DER GUTE MENSCH VON SEZUAN": DIALECTIC TOWARD UTOPIA

PETER RUPPERT

Florida State University The challenge of Brecht's parable play Der gute Mensch von Sezuan (1943) is explicitly stated in the Epilogue when one of the actors appears before the curtain and confronts the audience directly with the issue left open in the play itself: Auf welche Weis dem guten Menschen man Zu einem guten Ende helfen kann.1 With this provocation, the spectator is asked to reflect on the possibility of a social order in which "goodness to oneself" and "goodness to others" are not mutually exclusive. The underlying dilemma of the play, which has been clearly noted, is the dialectical opposition between self and society, between personal happiness and collective well-being.2 Brecht's well-known dramatic strategy of making contradictions and paradoxes sharp and transparent3 is particularly evident in this opposition, as well as in the means/ends paradox set forth in the play.4 Through these oppositions Brecht attempts to make visible the dialectical nature of change; he attempts to make the spectator conscious of the changeability of the social structure and to arouse in him the desire to act. These oppositions, therefore, ought not to be viewed as insoluble paradoxes or absolute contrasts, as they often are,5 but rather in terms of a mutually changing relationship. Brecht makes this evident in the split character of Shen Te/Shui Ta, two sides of the same person. Split between self-interest and a desire to help others, Shen Te personifies the dialectical relationship of these oppositions and points to a possible solution through human action. Her dilemma provokes us to think about the possibility of a world in which the interests of self and the interests of society do not negate each other, a world in which it would no longer be necessary to do evil in order to survive. Such an order, in which the means/ends and self/society antagonisms are ameliorated, constitutes the utopian vision, "die eschatologische Hoffnung,"6 of the play. It is a vision not concretely shaped, but rather emerging from a dialectic of apparently antithetical values. Represented in the character of, and cluster of values surrounding, Shen Te, this utopian vision is a negation of existing conditions in Sezuan and is expressed in terms of a balance between individual happiness and the collective good: Keinen verderben zu lassen, auch nicht sich selber Jeden mit Gliick zu erfiillen, auch sich, das ist gut. (81)

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This utopian hope has at first sight very little in common with the concrete image of life in Sezuan. Those critics who see in Brecht's utopianism only a "pious and touching hope"7 find corroboration in the play's seething image of a society characterized by brutality, injustice, exploitation, poverty, and human degradation. Brecht's Sezuan is a dehumanized society in which survival depends on cunning, deceit, and aggression-a society in which human beings are instruments and human relationships are determined by commerce. In Sezuan, the values of love and compassion represent a form of suicidal weakness. Even the gods describe Sezuan as uninhabitable: Was fur eine Welt haben wir vorgefunden? Elend, Niedrigkeit und Abfall iiberall! Selbst die Landschaft ist von uns abgefallen. Die sch6nen Baume sind enthauptet von Drahten, und jenseits der Gebirge sehen wir dicke Rauchwolken und h6ren einen Donner von Kanonen, und nirgends ein guter Mensch, der durchkommt! . . . Die Welt ist unbewohnbar, ihr miisst es einsehen! (130-131) Conditions in Brecht's Sezuan are so overwhelmingly bad that critics have generally discounted the utopian elements in the play as peripheral and unconvincing.8 Martin Esslin has written about convictions were outside his work. The truth can be contained only within the concrete action of his plays themselves. But these never give concrete evidence of the feasibility, or even the nature of the utopian state he aimed at. They are wholly negative attacks upon the existing order."9 Walter Sokel sees in the contradictory relationship between means and ends in Der gute Mensch and other plays the source of the tragic in Brecht's work and finds the utopian implications to be outweighed by the tragic means/ends paradox. For Sokel, these contradictions point to an inevitable tragic paradox in the human condition itself, beyond man's capacity to change and ultimately incompatible with progressive social organization. Sokel concludes: "The dream of human goodness and fraternity
... in Shen Te's poverty-stricken the question in general: "It is . . . irrelevant what [Brecht's] political

China."0l Although Brecht certainly does not provide us with a blueprint for utopia in ler gute Mensch, there are definite utopian values that emerge from the play and that do indeed suggest "the nature of the utopian state he aimed at." The split character of Shen Te/Shui Ta is a device that should be associated with Brecht's famous Verfremdungseffekt. By contrasting the values and actions of Shen Te with those of Shui Ta, Brecht provides the reciprocal distancing necessary for "cool" critical judgment and at the same

remains fantastic and utopian

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time makes visible the dialectical pattern of the play. It is a pattern of polar oppositions that Brecht had already used in Mutter Courage and would repeat in the second version of Leben des Galilei and in Herr Puntila und sein Knecht Matti. Mother Courage alternates between ruthless merchant and compassionate mother; Galileo is simultaneously hero and abject criminal, while Puntila vacillates between "altruism"1 and exploitation, depending on whether he is drunk or sober. In the last years of his life Brecht in fact came to prefer the label "dialectical theatre" to "epic theatre."'2 In the Appendices to the Short Organum he wrote: "The theatre of the scientific age is in a position to make dialectics into a source of enjoyment."13 In Der gute Mensch, this "enjoyment" arises from the sense of opposites that informs every scene. By directing our attention to these oppositions, Brecht makes us aware of variant possibilities. The dialectical pattern implies that there is nothing inevitable about conditions in Sezuan and makes us conscious of the changeability of these conditions. This kind of "open theatre" requires the dialectical cooperation of the spectator. It is a genuine theatre of possibility in which a given social condition is exposed as transitory; the Sezuan of the play is only one variation of what is possible, and what is possible becomes as plausible as what is presently real. Shen Te's personal well-being may conflict with her social obligation, but the question is: are the interests of one forever incompatible with the interests of the other? Brecht takes us back and forth on this issue, and stimulates us to find the means of transforming the prevailing conditions. "A genuine story," Brecht writes in the Appendices to the Short Organum, "unreels in a contradictory manner; the individual scenes retain their own meaning; they yield (and stimulate) a wealth of ideas; and their sum, the story, unfolds authentically without any cheap all-pervading idealizations. . "14 The dialectical pattern of oppositions in Der gute Mensch yields the possibility of change, and in the case of Sezuan this means a society free from exploitation, violence, and irrational authority, a society that will develop utopian potentials and human creative possibilities. Because characters and events are historically conditioned for Brecht, they are subject to change.15 Change becomes, then, the key to his entire dramaturgy. In his often-quoted reis sponse to a question raised by Friedrich D)iirrenmatt (whether it to reproduce the present-day world by means still at all possible of theatre), Brecht replied: "One thing has become quite plain: the if present-day world can only be described to present-day people it is described as capable of transformation."'6 In Der gute Mensch the dialectical incompatibilities center on the interests of Shen Te. As the good woman17 of Sezuan, she is

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kind, generous, compassionate and loving. Her goodness is a natural unfolding of herself; she shares her possessions freely, loves spontaneously, and reveals a genuine desire to help others. The significant values that emerge from her actions are friendliness, cooperation, peace, equality. These values flow effortlessly, without conscious deliberation. "Bosheit," she says, "ist bloss eine Art Ungeschicklichkeit. Wenn jemand ein Lied singt oder eine Maschine baut oder Reis pflanzt, das ist eigentlich Freundlichkeit" (49). But in a world of strife, hunger, and poverty, Shen Te's generosity and kindness prove self-destructive, and Shui Ta, her dialectical opposite, becomes a timely and necessary corrective. Shui Ta is clever, calculating, and manipulative. He is simply another side of Shen Te's personality. As one of the characters in the play puts it, "Er ist kein b6ser Mensch, aber Shen Te ist gut" (108). Shen Te finds that she must from time to time resort to the repulsive means of Shui Ta in order to survive and to maintain her ability to do good. The ends to which she aspires (peace, friendliness, kindness) are, in the present situation in Sezuan, dependent on the coercive and ruthless means of Shui Ta. This apparent paradox presents several questions: Do the highest ends always require repulsive means? Is it necessary to do evil in order to eliminate evil or even just to survive? Are the means of Shui Ta necessary to avoid even greater evil? Is it possible to achieve utopian ends (Shen Te) through nonutopian means (Shui Ta)? Utopian literature usually projects a vision of a more perfect society in order to expose what the author sees as contemporary evils and abuses. This is the case with patterns of utopia ranging from Plato's Republic to Huxley's The Island. In genuine visions of utopia (excluding such antiutopias or dystopias as Brave New World, Zamiatin's We, Orwell's 1984), the positive vision reflects a negative appraisal of existing conditions in the hope of encouraging criticism and change. Brecht, on the other hand, gives us a hard critical look at the way things are (in Sezuan and elsewhere) in the hope of something better. The criticism encourages hope, and, as Shen Te exclaims, "Ohne Hoffnung sprechen heisst ohne Giite sprechen" (49). The dialectical opposition is between the way things are and the way they ought to be. And, although Brecht does not explicitly show the way things ought to be, it is certainly clear what kind of society he envisions. Brecht's concern is with the present moment, but the present moment, subject to dialectical change, can yield a world without scarcity, dehumanizing competition, ugliness, and with less human suffering. It can yield a world in which Shen Te's conflicts of interest and conflicts of conscience are diminished. The play itself projects the goal of such a utopian world, a world in which no man wastes his life:

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Keinen verderben zu lassen, auch nicht sich selber Jeden mit Gliick zu erfiillen, auch sich, das ist gut. (81) The focus of Brecht's utopianism is toward a social system in which individual aspiration does not conflict with the common good. And this vision is founded on the utopian premise that the world and its institutions can and should be changed. Soil es ein andrer Mensch sein? Oder eine andre Welt? Vielleicht nur andere Gotter? Oder keine? (Epilog) Brecht suggests these options in the Epilogue, but only one of them is meaningful in terms of the play: the world must be changed. And it is man who has the power and responsibility of shaping the world, not the gods. The three gods, who in the beginning of the play come to earth in search of a good person, seek only to justify the status quo. Waiting for them in anticipation that they will bring change, that with their arrival conditions in Sezuan will miraculously change, Wang, the water-seller, exclaims: ". . . in unserer Provinz herrscht iiberhaupt grosse Armut. Es heisst allgemein, dass uns nur noch die Gotter helfen k6nnen" (7). But the play demonstrates that there is no redemption forthcoming from another world. The three gods, ignored in the province, confess their own uselessness: "In das Wirtschaftliche k6nnen wir uns nicht mischen" (16), and, in the context of the play, that simply means that they do not understand the world as it really is. If a better time is to come, man cannot rely on the impotent and unknowing gods. Brecht also excludes a purely fantastic vision of utopia as a means of implementing change. "Das Lied vora Sankt Nimmerleinstag" at the end of Scene 6 parodies the notion of utopia as a never-never land, as an impossible scheme for social improvement. A better world, according to the song, cannot come about gratuitously or through empty dreaming. Justice, equality, peace do not become real by themselves, or, in terms of the song, come about by themselves only on "Sankt Nimmerleinstag." The dream of a better life will remain weightless as long as utopia is equated with pure fantasy or as long as man believes that "ohne dass er mehr tut / Wird die Erde zum Paradies" (92). In order to transfer utopia from the realn of dream into the realm of concrete possibility, human effort and action are required. The conclusion, left for the spectator to draw, is that only man has the power to realize utopian possibilities of a better world through revolutionary action. The reference in the Epilogue to the "golden myth" ("Vorschwebte uns: die goldene Legende") underscores the importance of human action in a social context. Here Brecht suggests that in another world the saintly Shen Te would perhaps have been granted her private salvation through divine grace or intervention. In Der

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gute Mensch, however, there is a bitter end: Sezuan remains in all its imperfections, and Shen Te, with outstretched arms, pleads for help. In this way, Brecht focuses not on individual salvation but on social consciousness. Shen Te's desire is to be good to others and to herself. She wants to be kind to her lover, her child, and all those who depend on her for survival. It is the social-economic conditions of Sezuan that cause her self-division and that force her to rely on the repulsive means of Shui Ta. Myths about an otherworldly salvation will not solve her dilemma. The Epilogue concludes with an arousal to action: Verehrtes Publikum, los, such dir selbst den Schluss! Es muss ein guter da sein, muss, muss, muss! Brecht stops short of portraying the desired change only to suggest what is possible but what is not yet real. The utopian vision in Der gute Mensch is not simply a pious hope or a noble intention. Nor is it a simple negation of the capitalist system. Rather it proceeds from a recognition of the dialectical opposition between the self and society in the capitalist socio-economic system and calls on the spectator to find a balance for the terms of this dialectic. Brecht's utopianism first of all recognizes the need to implement change, rejects otherworldly visions of perfection, is based on the conviction that human action is capable of changing the human world, and is grounded in a utopian dialectic which aims at self-realization within the collective good. Failure in the past by some of Brecht's critics to recognize these utopian implications no doubt stems from a curious disregard of Brecht's "Marxist aims" and "the genuine humanistic hope"18 manifest in Der gute Mensch and other plays. We must add, however, that Brecht's utopian vision is not based on the complete resolution of contradictions as in the more traditional utopian patterns. That there is no depiction in Brecht's work of an ideal world19 has undoubtedly encouraged the view that Brecht's plays "are wholly negative attacks upon the existing order." Brecht's utopian vision is, however, founded on the dialectic and on the maintenance of the dialectic. The social order he projects in Der gute Mensch is one in which personal liberty and social obligation, individual happiness and collective well-being are more in balance with each other than is presently the case. This makes Brecht's utopian vision a dynamic and progressive one, i.e., one that does not culminate in complete perfection but continues to develop and change. Aimed at resolving discrepancies and contradictions in socio-political conditions, it is founded on the social determinants that give rise to these conditions, not on a naive vision of a perfect world. In Der gute Mensch, Brecht does not project an image of

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another world, but simply the possibility of making this one better. Brecht's utopia does not transcend the dialectical movement of history but, rather, in maintaining the dialectic, arouses in the spectator the desire to participate in the changing historical process.
NOTES 1. Bertolt Brecht, Der gute Mensch von Sezuan (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 1970). Subsequent citations will appear in the text. 2. Volker Klotz, "Interpretation des Guten Menschen von Sezuan," in Materialien zu Brechts "Der gute Mensch von Sezuan" (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1968), pp. 134-144. 3. For a discussion of this strategy see Hans Mayer, "Bertolt Brecht and the Tradition," in Steppenwolf and Everyman, trans. Jack D. Zipes (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1971), pp. 35-162. 'Ihis collection contains eleven essays by H. Mayer. 4. See Walter H. Sokel, "Brecht's Split Characters and His Sense of the Tragic," in Brecht: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Peter Demetz (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1962), pp. 127-137. 5. For example, both Sokel and Klotz express this view. 6. Reinhold Grimm acknowledges "die eschatologische Hoffnung der Utopie" in Der gute Mensch, but in his view it remains a beautiful dream. For Grimm, as for Sokel and Klotz, the play remains a tragedy. See Grimm's "Bertolt Brecht: Der gute Mensch von Sezuan," in Das deutsche Drama vom Expressionismus bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Manfred Brauneck, 2nd ed. (Bamberg: C. C. Buchners Verlag, 1972), pp. 168-173. 7. Martin Esslin, Brecht: The Man and His Work (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1961), p. 260. 8. A notable exception is Edward M. Berckman, "The Function of Hope in Brecht's Pre-Revolutionary Theater," in Brecht Heute/Brecht Today: Jahrbuch der Internationalen Brecht-Gesellschaft (1971), pp. 11-26. Berckman's excellent essay contains an important discussion of the dialectical nature of Brecht's theatre. Berckman also sees the utopian hope of the play as embodied in the character of Shen Te, but does not identify this hope specifically with the dialectical relationship between self and society. 9. Esslin, pp. 260-261. 10. Sokel, p. 132. 11. Puntila's altruism has been effectively challenged by several critics. See, for example, Jost Hermand's essay, "Herr Puntila und sein Knecht Matti," in Brecht Heute/Brecht Today (1971), pp. 117-136. 12. See Brecht on Theatre, ed. and trans. John Willett (New York: Hill and Wang, 1964), p. 281. 13. Brecht on Theatre, p. 277. 14. Brecht on Theatre, pp. 278-279. 14. In his essay "Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting," Brecht writes that the Verfrerrdungseffekt "was principally designed to historicize the incidents portrayed." This "historicizing" sees "the idea of man as a function of environ." See Brecht on Theatre, ment and the environment as a function of man.. pp. 96-97. Willett's translation of Verfremdungsegfekt as "Alienation Effect" is, of course, unfortunate since the term does not capture Brecht's sense of "distancing" or "making strange," and furthermore conflicts with the Marxist sense of the term. Several critics have commented on the use of this term in translations. See, for example, Claude Hill, Bertolt Brecht (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1975), p. 146. For an excellent discussion of what Brecht meant by "historiciz-

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ing" see E. Berckman's essay, "The Function of Hope in Brecht's Pre-Revolutionary Theatre." 16. Brecht on Theatre, p. 274. 17. John Fuegi has discussed the play in terms of Shen Te's predicament as a woman, seeing in Der gute Mensch "a paradigmatic instance of women's alienation in a male-dominated society." See "The Alienated Woman: Brecht's The Good Person of Setzuan" in Essays on Brecht: Theater and Politics, eds. Siegfried Mews and Herbert Knust (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1974), pp. 190-196. The play seems, however, to be less concerned with the exploitation of women in a sexist society than with the misuse of one human being by another in a capitalist society. 18. Berckman, p. 11. 19. The one notable exception, of course, is the Prologue to Der Kaukasische Kreidekreis, in which a dispute over landownership is solved in what some would consider an eminently utopian manner.

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