Brecht’s Ways of Thought

Abstract

The young Brecht hated Bolshevism as being too orderly and regimented (Tb., 61: 12.9.20). His intellectual attitudes were undisciplined: he doubted his ability to keep to a single philosophical system (Tb., 32: 24.8.20). The less rigid and more meditative quality of oriental thought had more appeal to him; he discovered an affinity with Lao Tzu as soon as introduced to his work (Tb., 66: 21.9.20). Oriental aspects can be seen in such poems as Of swimming in lakes and rivers (8,209; B. Poems, 29), where the individual progressively abandons himself to the influence of water and becomes an aquatic object with no will of his own to contradict nature. A nihilism or cynicism typical of the twenties is also visible. His early works show a keen sense of the morbidity of nature alongside the wish for communion with it;¹ the nauseating and the attractive are not separated. Similarly, a sharp awareness of man’s proclivities to exploit and terrorise man does not exclude a romantic wish to see mankind brought closer to perfection. Marxism is a means to that end.