Weeping in the Night: Reading Beyond Language in The Caucasian Chalk Circle

Abstract

Critical readings of Bertolt Brecht's drama have fallen into a certain pattern ever since the original performances of the plays, due largely to the works' relationship to two interrelated dogmas through which they have constantly and consistently been read: his espoused Marxism and his own theory of epic drama. Either kind of reading inevitably leads to a discussion of whether or not Brecht lived up to his own articulated world view. No matter what the results, such a study by its very nature privileges overt statement over art, by assuming that the former represents a more concrete truth. To do this is to read the ineffable through the eyes of reason, a task which blinds one to the vibrant dialectic of reason and emotion that energizes some of the later plays. I will here attempt a reading of The Caucasian Chalk Circle that acknowledges Brecht's politics, or his reason, while at the same allowing the drama itself to reveal his other side, the irrational. To do this I will examine the ways in which the nonverbal elements operate in the work and how they interrogate the "rationality" of human explanations and plans.