Schwarz reads Brecht

Abstract

It is possible to say that there is a considerable change in Roberto Schwarz’s reading of Bertolt Brecht. If on the one hand his short comment – due to the Brazilian translation of The Saint Joan of the stockyards – is determined by an aesthetic and intellectual admiration for the playwright’s work, on the other hand in his provocative essay – “Brecht’s relevance: highs and lows”– the tone is more critical and even, in one sense, pessimistic in face of the perspectives opened up by the contemporary insistence on Brechtian epic theatre procedures, mainly thanks to its corresponding transformation into “articles of consumption” under the circumstances of the extinction of the old workers’ movement and the age of revolutions, as well as due to the fact that capitalism had supposedly become a dynamic factor. In this sense, such brief reflection aims at reconstituting the main arguments developed in these two texts and delimiting at least two moments of Schwarz’s readings on Brecht, taking into account the fundamental explanation for this metamorphosis – the absence of a social revolution that could give support and sense to brechtian theories and theatre.