628
PAR TI SAN REV lEW
of what the votaries did was necessary and desirable. Thus Brecht's
p0-
litical "indecisiveness" lends his work a good deal of its universal rele–
vance and value. For who today
is
not troubled
by
the society we live
in and,
if
not a coward, anxious to take steps to alter the course
of
its
destructive march without always being sure of the right means?
If
Brecht
was
unorthodox both from the standpoint of the communist and
th~
anti-communist, yet deeply involved in the tension which gave
rise
to the Marxist movement in general, he was, as far as I am concerned,
in one of the healthiest of modern traditions. That
is
one of the reasons
I find his work mote central to our times than that of
11'.
S. Eliot, Camus,
Genet, Beckett, lonesco, et al.
Brecht's work
has
already exerted a beneficent influence on the
European theater. And even such partial and not genuinely assimilated
influence as may be observed at The Theater East and The Royal
Court Theater in London, not to speak of Charles Laughton'S produc–
tion of Shaw's
Major Barbara
in New York, is useful in broadening the
sco~
of our theater concepts and practice.
In fine, Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956)
is
one of the outstanding figures
of the contemporary theater and with equal certainty one of the twen–
tieth century's most notable poets.
