Walter Benjamin
CONVERSATIONS WITH BRECHT:
SVENDBORG NOTES
1934
4th July .
A long conversation in Brecht's sick-room at
Svendborg yesterday revolved round my essay "The Author as Produ–
cer." The theory it develops (that a decisive criterion for a revolution–
ary function of literature lies in the state of technical progress, which
points to a revised function of art-forms and so of the intellectual
means of production) Brecht would only accept with regard
to
a single
type, the upper-middle-class writer, among whom he counts himself.
"Such a writer," he says, "does indeed enjoy solidarity with the
interests of the proletariat at one point: where the development of his
own means of production is concerned. But in feeling solidarity at this
on~
point, he is at this point, as producer, proletarianized, and utterly
so. This complete proletarianization at one point, however, brings
about solidarity with the proletariat on the entire front." My criticism
of proletarian writers of Becher's type Brecht found too abstract. He
tried to improve it by an analysis of the poem by Becher printed in one
of the latest numbers of one of the official proletarian literary journals
under the title "I say in all frankness.'.'." Brecht compared it on one
hand with his didactic poem on the art of acting written for Carola
Neher, and on the other with
Bateau ivre.
"I taught Carola Neher a
number of things, " he said. "She not only learned how to act, but how
to wash, for example. For she used to wash in order not to be dirty.
There was nq..question of that. I taught her how to wash one's face. She
then brought this to such perfection that I wanted to film her doing it.
But this came to nothing because at that time I was unwilling to film,
and she unwilling to be filmed by anyone else. This didactic poem was
a model. Every pupil was intended to put himself in the place of the
'1' .
When Becher says
'1',
he believes himself-as President of the Union of
Proletarian-Revolutionary Writers in Germany-exemplary. Only no
one wants to follow the example. One gathers simply that he is pleased
Excerpled [rom
R eflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings,
by Waller
Benjamin. To be published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.
English Translalion copyrighl
©
1978 by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.
