178
PARTISAN REVIEW
criterion of final success with incorrigible naivete in the most trivial
and banal of enterprises: the visit of a commercial traveller or an
application to an authority. The conversation concentrated at times on
the story "The Next Village." Brecht declares it a counterpart to the
story of Achilles and the tortoise. Someone who composes the ride from
its smallest particles (leaving aside all incidents) will never reach the
next village. Life itself is too short for such a ride. But the error lies in
~he
"someone." For just as the ride is deceptive, so too is the rider. And
just as the unity of life is now done away with, so too is its brevity. No
matter how brief it may be. This makes no difference, because a
different person than he who started the ride arrives at the village. For
my part I give the following interpretation: the true measure of life is
remembrance. Retrospectively, it traverses life with the speed of light–
ning. As quickly as one turns back a few pages, it has gone back from
the next village to the point where the rider decided to set out. He
whose life has turned into writing, like old people's, likes to read this
writing only backwards. Only so does he meet himself, and only so-in
flight from the present-can his \ife be understood.
27th September, Dragf/Jr.
In a conversation one evening a few
days ago Brecht explained the curious indecision which at present
prevents him from making definite plans. The first reason for this
indecision is, as he emphasizes himself, the advantages distinguishing
his personal situation from that of most emigrants.
If
in this he scarcely
acknowledges emigration in general as the basis of undertakings and
plans, any such conception of it in his particular case is all the more
irrevocably abolished. His plans have a wider compass. This presents
him with a choice. On one hand prose projects are waiting. The
smaller one on
Ui-a
satire on Hitler in the style of the historiogra–
phers of the Renaissance-and the big project of the Tui-novel. The
Tui-novel is intended to give an encyclopaedic survey of the follies of
the Tellectual-Ins (intellectuals); it will, it seems, take place at least in
part in China. A small model for this work is ready. But besides these
prose plans he is claimed by projects which go back to very old studies
and reflections. And while it was just possible to include the reflections
that originated in connection with epic theater in the notes and
introductions to the
Versuche,
ideas that arose from the same interests,
but were later combined with the study of Leninism on one hand and
with the scientific tendencies of the empiricists on the other, have
outgrown so restricted a framework. For years they have been grouped
now under this, now under that heading, so that in turn non–
Aristotelian logic, behavior theory, the new encyclopaedia, the critique
