Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht's work journals trace his years of exile (the period from 1934 to 1955) in Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and America, as well as his return, via Switzerland, to East Berlin. These journals include his perceptive and at times polemical critiques of other writers and intellectuals, but the accounts of his own writing practice provide the greatest insights into the creation of his dramatic work as well as the development of his politics and theories about epic theatre. There are memorable and revealing passages: about D'Annunzio and Ezra Pond, about the bombing of Germany, about the Greek epigrams, about the Battle of Britain, about the death of Margarete Steffin, about Mrs. Wriggles the family dog, and about the precariousness of life in Los Angeles. Now available in paperback, and illustrated by photographs and press cuttings collected by Brecht, theJournalsoffer frequently surprising and revelatory perspectives on the life and thought of one of the mostinfluential writers of the century. Excerpt:16 sep 40 it would be unbelievably difficult to express my state of mind as i follow the battle of britain on the wireless and in the awful finnish-swedish papers and then writePuntila.this intellectual phenomenon explains both that such wars can exist and that literary works can still be produced. puntila means hardly anything to me, the war everything; about puntila i can write virtually antyhing, about the war, nothing. and i don't just mean 'may', but truly 'can'. it is interesting how remote literature as a practical activity is from the centres where decisive events take place...