I am wondering what you make right now of these impressions from 1990. What has happened to the reputation and performance of Brecht? You were at An interesting time and place.
Indeed, you are right to ask. In the decades following 1990—at least in the Euro-American pantheon—Brecht fluttered downwards to perch somewhere in the top fifty. That his plays are said to be more popular now than ever in the non-Western world, however, perhaps attests to an even more salient ‘contemporaneity'. Roland Barthes observed of such disjunctions, “the contemporary is untimely.”
You summoned impressions I had on different trips to Berlin – both before the fall of the Wall and after.
I am wondering what you make right now of these impressions from 1990. What has happened to the reputation and performance of Brecht? You were at An interesting time and place.
Indeed, you are right to ask. In the decades following 1990—at least in the Euro-American pantheon—Brecht fluttered downwards to perch somewhere in the top fifty. That his plays are said to be more popular now than ever in the non-Western world, however, perhaps attests to an even more salient ‘contemporaneity'. Roland Barthes observed of such disjunctions, “the contemporary is untimely.”