Abstract
Brecht’s third major play, In the Jungle 1, marks a return from the relatively realistic depiction of contemporary events in Drums in the Night to the more freely fantastic vein of writing in which, as the author of Baal, he had begun his literary career. As in Baal and many other Expressionist works, fantasy is used here by the playwright as a source of symbolic figures and actions which give shape and expression to aspects of the mind which normally remain hidden in everyday life. The setting of the action, “in an unreal, cold Chicago” (D, 134), is an inner landscape, the world of urban civilisation as experienced by the existential self.2 The action, a wild “metaphysical struggle” (D, 52) between a Malayan timber merchant named Shlink and the much younger George Garga, a bookseller by profession, is a vehicle for exploring imaginatively the nature of the existential self and its relations with other selves. This action, which was intended by Brecht to create a certain degree of puzzlement,3 has prompted some critics to describe the play as downright incomprehensible.4 It is therefore best to begin with a fairly detailed analysis of the plot, in order to establish that the struggle between Shlink and Garga, although admittedly strange and idiosyncratic, does have a coherent meaning.
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Notes
Brecht’s original title for the play was Im Dickicht (In the Jungle,). This early version, which I have followed, is now available in the edition by G. Bahr under the title Im Dickicht der Städte: Erstfassung und Materialien, (Frankfurt a. M., 1968). All references are indicated by (D, page no.) in the text. The title Im Dickicht der Städte (In the Jungle of the Cities), was first used for a revised version of the play in 1927, which, like the revised version of Baal, made in 1926 (Lebenslauf des Mannes Baal, — Biography of the Man Baal,), is written in a much less metaphorical, more sober style.
Brecht’s early diaries show that he too liked to withdraw, in the imagination at least, to Tahiti or Asia (Diaries, 16, 50, 54, 62, 76, 79, 110). A number of dramas written in the immediate post-war years were concerned with a flight from Europe to the South Seas, see H. F. Garten, Modern German Drama, (London, 1964) p. 174. Brecht’s treatment of both “Amerikanismus” and “Asiatismus” in In the Jungle, is characteristically free of illusions that either the Far East or the Far West hold out any real hope of a better way of life.
R. Pohl, Strukturelemente und Entwicklung von Pathosformen in der Dramensprache Bertolt Brechts, (Bonn, 1969) p. 83.
Brecht wrote this as a motto in the copy of the play he gave to Carl Zuckmayer — see Carl Zuckmayer, Als wärs ein Stück von mir, (Vienna, 1966) p. 381.
Engel’s notes on his method are in Erich Engel, Schriften über Theater und Film, (Berlin, 1971) pp. 75–9. A review of Peter Stein’s production is to be found in Brecht in der Kritik, ed. Monika Wyss (Munich, 1970) pp. 27–9.
Brecht’s disagreements with Engel are recalled by the actor Erwin Faber (who played the part of Garga in 1923) in W. Stuart McDowell, “Actors on Brecht: the Munich Years”, The Drama Review, vol. 20 (1976) pp. 101–16.
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© 1982 Ronald Speirs
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Speirs, R. (1982). In the Jungle. In: Brecht’s Early Plays. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-05449-7_4
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