Die Hauspostille (1927). Brecht et la quête de la modernité poétique

Abstract

Young Brecht’s lyricism has long been interpreted from the point of view of a supposed nihilism that would be the expression of a partly unconscious perception of the historical process of bourgeois decadency. We might see it rather as the will of the author to put at centre stage the absolute immanence and the complete rematerialization of reality that is determinative.The attachment to a teleological conception that makes his first, and it is true, heterogeneous productions, a simple sign of the work of maturity conditioned by a Marxist vision is not a defensible position. The parody of utilitarian literature (Gebrauchsliteratur) cannot be put on the same level as use value (Gebrauchswert).Referring to some poems from the Manual of piety (1927) we will show that Brecht takes over forms borrowed from European subculture (Moritat, popular ballad) and from Stars of French lyric tradition (Villon, Rimbaud – both translated at the time by K. L. Ammer) so that Brecht’s poetic work has to be read as a decisive contribution to the genesis of poetic modernity in Germany.