1 Brecht, Bertolt, “Verfremdungseffekte in der chinesischen Schauspielkunst,” in Schriften zum Theater: Über eine nicht-aristotelische Dramatik, comp. Siegfried Unseld (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 1957), 74–89 Google Scholar. On 3 February 1955, Elisabeth Hauptmann sent Brecht’s essay to Peter Suhrkamp, then the publisher of Suhrkamp Verlag, for a planned publication of Brecht’s works (Bertolt-Brecht-Archiv [hereafter BBA] 789/16). Siegfried Unseld, then an editor at Suhrkamp, compiled the collection of Brecht’s theoretical writings. Unseld noted that Brecht’s essay was “written in 1937, published in 1954 in Sonntag” (Schriften zum Theater, 288). Here, in addition to repeating the wrong date (1937) provided by Hauptmann, Unseld clearly confused Brecht’s essay with the 1935 short text “Bemerkungen über die chinesische Schauspielkunst,” published in Sonntag (2 January 1955, 5). Likewise, Werner Hecht noted in his 1963 edition of Brecht’s works: “The essay was probably written in 1937. Excerpts were first published in January 1954 in the weekly Sonntag, Berlin, No. 1” (Schriften zum Theater, 7 vols., ed. Werner Hecht [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1963], 5: 309–10). I have not found Brecht’s essay in any issues of the East Berlin Sonntag published in 1954. Clearly, Hecht misidentified the 1935 short text as the “excerpts” of Brecht’s full-length essay. Later in the Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe of Brecht’s works, Hecht corrected Hauptmann’s inaccurate dating and did not repeat the same publication reference (Werke: Große kommentierte Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe [hereafter (and cited parenthetically in the text as) BFA], 30 vols., ed. Werner Hecht et al. [Berlin and Weimar: Aufbau; Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1988–2000], 22: 959.

Unless otherwise noted, all translations into English are mine.

2 Brecht, Bertolt, “Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting,” in Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic, ed. and trans. Willett, John (New York: Hill & Wang, 1964), 91–9Google Scholar.

3 Brecht, Bertolt, “The Fourth Wall of China: An Essay on the Effect of Disillusion in the Chinese Theatre,” trans. White, Eric Walter, Life and Letters To-day 15.6 (1936): 116–23Google Scholar. Two decades later, White published another translation under the same main title, which combines part of the full-length text of Brecht’s essay and part of the early short text, “Bemerkungen über die chinesische Schauspielkunst” (Brecht, “The Fourth Wall of China,” trans. Eric Walter White, ADAM International Review 24.254 [1956]: 19–21); but it is the 1936 version that is cited herein.

4 Brecht, Bertolt, “The Fourth Wall of China: An Essay on the Effect of Disillusion in the Chinese Theatre,” in BFA, 22: 960–8Google Scholar.

5 Bertolt Brecht, “Über den Verfremdungseffekt in der Chinesischen Schauspielkunst,” Eric Walter White Papers, Container 2.4/1-12 [hereafter, EWP-C2.4/1-12], Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin. In addition to the numerous English translations of words and phrases that White jotted down on the typescript, he added a handwritten note of his own on Brecht’s interest in Asian theatre: “The author is too modest. He appears to have forgotten some of his own productions, such as ‘Der Jasager’ (The Yes-Boy) based on Arthur Waley’s translation of the Japanese play Taniko” (EWP-C2.4/1-12: 8). This note also appears in his published translation (“Fourth Wall of China,” 121). I am grateful to the reference team at the Harry Ransom Center for making Brecht’s manuscript available for my research.

6 Here I want to record my sincere thanks to Iliane Thiemann, Deputy Head of Department and Research Associate at the Bertolt-Brecht-Archiv, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, for her expertise and great efforts to make these manuscripts available for my research. Likewise, I am grateful to the Bertolt-Brecht-Archiv and Suhrkamp Verlag for permission to quote unpublished texts and notes from Brecht’s manuscripts.

7 Bertolt Brecht, “Über den Verfremdungseffekt[e] in der chinesischen Schauspielkunst,” BBA 2205/6-20, Akademie der Künste, Berlin. Note that in the title “Über den” was struck through and a pluralizing “e” was appended to “Verfremdungseffekt.” The amended title was used by all the later versions of Brecht’s essay. The change from the singular “Verfremdungseffekt” to the plural indicates that Brecht approached the V-Effekt of Chinese acting only as individual “transportable” techniques that can be “shaken loose” from the Chinese theatre as a whole and utilized to illustrate, technically, his concept Verfremdungseffekt, as he, at the same time, differentiated his concept socially from the underlying “motives and aims” of the Chinese V-Effekt, which he considered “alien and suspect” to the Europeans (EWP-C2.4/1-12: 7; BBA 2205/6-20: 13; cf. Brecht, Bertolt, “Chinese Acting,” trans. Bentley, Eric, Furioso 4.4 (1949): 68–77 Google Scholar, at 73–4). [Bentley’s translation was reprinted as “On Chinese Acting,” Tulane Drama Review 6.1 (1961): 130–6.]

Before the German text of the whole essay was published in 1957, two parts of the essay had been extracted and included in the “Anhang” (Appendix, nos. 10 and 16) of Brecht’s new essay, “Kurze Beschreibung einer neuen Technik der Schauspielkunst, die einen Verfremdungseffekt hervorbringt” [A short description of a new technique of the art of acting that produces an alienation/estrangement effect], written in 1940 and first published in 1951 (Versuche 11 [Berlin: Suhrkamp, 1951]: 89–105, at 100, 101–2; BFA, 22: 641–59, at 651, 654–5). The two parts are “Der Artist sieht sich selber zu. . . . , was die Illusion stören könnte” [The artist observes himself. . . . , which could disrupt the illusion] (BBA 2205/6-20: 7; EWP-C2.4/1-12: 2; BFA, 22: 201; emphases in original); and “Auf der Bühne sei folgendes darzustellen: . . . , sie muss das Verständnis seiner Motive ermöglichen und den Protest” [The following is to be presented on the stage: . . . , she must make the understanding of its motives and the protest possible] (BBA 2205/6-20: 17–19; EWP-C2.4/1-12: 911; BFA, 22: 208–9).

8 Bertolt Brecht, “Verfremdungseffekte in der chinesischen Schauspielkunst,” BBA 89/1-14, Akademie der Künste, Berlin.

9 Bertolt Brecht, “Verfremdungseffekte in der chinesischen Schauspielkunst,” BBA 89/15-25 and BBA 657/17-27, Akademie der Künste, Berlin.

10 In September 1935, Margarete Steffin asked Walter Benjamin, who was then in Paris, if he could publish an earlier version of Brecht’s essay on Chinese acting (Margarete Steffin, Briefe an berühmte Männer: Walter Benjamin, Bertolt Brecht, Arnold Zweig, ed. Stefan Hauck [Hamburg: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1999], 143). In his reply in October, Benjamin acknowledged his receipt from Steffin of Brecht’s essay, “Bemerkungen über die chinesische Schauspielkunst” (Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Briefe, 6 vols., eds. Christoph Gödde and Henri Lonitz [Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1995–2000], 5: 175).

11 Brecht, Bertolt, “Bemerkungen über die chinesische Schauspielkunst,” Theater der Welt: Ein Almanach, ed. Ihering, Herbert (Berlin: Bruno Henschel und Sohn, 1949), 76–9Google Scholar. In late July 1948, Herbert Ihering wrote Brecht, asking him to write something for the second volume of the Almanach (Briefe an Bertolt Brecht im Exil (1933–1949), 3 vols., eds. Hermann Haarmann and Christoph Hesse [Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014], 3: 1752). Obviously, Brecht contributed this relatively short text.

A French translation of Brecht’s essay, “Remarques sur l’art du comédien chinois,” translated by Geneviève Serreau, was published in Théâtre populaire 14 (1955): 52–6. In his editorial for this special issue on Chinese theatre, Roland Barthes, who had become an ardent advocate for Brecht in France, noted that an overview of Chinese theatre provides “the awareness of a possible lesson for our Western theatre” and that there is “a definite benefit” in knowing how the Chinese people strived to resolve, within its own history, what he called “the crucial question of the relationship between form and content.” According to Barthes, in his essay, “Brecht helped us pose this problem, and now the Chinese theatre in turn allows us to continue to study it and to come closer to its solution” (“Éditorial,” Théâtre populaire 14 [1955]: 1–2, at 2). In the following two decades, the French critic and semiotician, who had developed his own exotic interest in “Oriental” theatre, remembered Brecht as “the first to understand and articulate the critical importance of Oriental theatre” (Roland Barthes, Œuvres complètes, 3 vols., ed. Éric Marty [Paris: Seuil, 1993–5], 2: 489) and, in particular, “one of the first Westerners to take an interest in Chinese theatre, at a time when China was absolutely not fashionable” (Œuvres complètes, 3: 331).

At the Brecht Archive, there are at least six typescripts (or copies) of this short text (BBA 447/25-29, BBA 501/7-11, BBA 154/51-54, BBA 446/12-16, BBA 447/35-39, BBA 1158/1-4), and one of them (BBA 447/25-29) has paragraphs arranged in a different order from the other ones. Between this typescript and the others, there is one variant: “dem westlichen zuschauer kommt das spiel der chinesischen artisten vielfach kalt vor. niemand würde behaupten wollen, es sei gefühllos; zweifellos ist da wärme vorhanden, aber die wärme ist doch temperiert” (“To the Western spectator, the Chinese artists’ performance often appears cold. No one would claim that it is emotionless; there is undoubtedly warmth there, but the warmth is tempered”) (BBA 447/25-29: 29; BBA 501/7-11: 9; BFA, 22: 153). Here, it is important to note that the word “Zuschauer” (spectator) was first changed to “Schauspieler” (actor) in the full-length draft (BBA 158/78-87: 80) and was later replaced with the latter in all the following versions (starting with EWP-C2.4/1-12: 3 and BBA 2205/6-20: 8). Likewise, the line “Niemand würde behaupten wollen, es sei gefühllos” (“No one would want to claim it was emotionless”) was revised as “Nicht als ob das chinesische Theater auf die Darstellung von Gefühlen verzichtete!” (“Not that the Chinese theatre renounces the portrayal of emotions!”) (EWP-C2.4/1-12: 3; BBA 2205/6-20: 8; BBA 89/1-14: 4; BBA 89/15-25: 17; BBA 657/17-27: 19; BFA, 22: 202). Hence the subtle but crucial difference: after all, contrary to what Brecht had thought or expected, the Chinese performance may often not appear “cold” or “strange” even to the Western (or European) spectator; in fact, Brecht complained of some of the spectators sitting in front of him watching Mei Lanfang’s performance in a death scene as if they were watching a European performance and “were present at the real death of a real poor girl” (BFA, 22: 206). It certainly does not appear “cold” or “strange” to the Chinese spectator (see Tian, Min, Mei Lanfang and the Twentieth-Century International Stage: Chinese Theatre Placed and Displaced [New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012], 195–208 CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

12 Brecht, Sonntag, 2 January 1955, 5.

13 Brecht, “Fourth Wall of China”; “Chinese Acting.”

14 Brecht, Bertolt, “Verfremdungseffekte in der chinesischen Schauspielkunst,” in Schriften zum Theater, 5: 166–82Google Scholar.

15 Brecht, Bertolt, “Verfremdungseffekte in der chinesischen Schauspielkunst,” in Gesammelte Werke, 20 vols., ed. Hauptmann, Elisabeth (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1967), 16: 619–31Google Scholar.

16 Elisabeth Hauptmann, “Anmerkungen 7”, in Brecht, Gesammelte Werke, 16.

17 That is, “schwach” (BBA 89/15-25: 18; BBA 657/17-27: 20); “Kunstbegriff” (BBA 89/15-25: 20; BBA 657/17-27: 22); and “den” (“den untersten der Höllen”) (BBA 89/15-25: 24; BBA 657/17-27: 26). These errors also appear in the 1957 published text (79, 83, 88), which was, again, based on one of the two identical abridged typescripts. In addition, the same three errors were repeated in Hecht’s 1963 edition (172, 176, 182) and Hauptmann’s 1967 edition (623, 626, 631), which both follow the same abridged typescript (BBA 89/15-25; BBA 657/17-27).

18 Brecht, “Fourth Wall of China.”

19 Brecht, “Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting”; “Verfremdung Effects in Chinese Acting,” in Brecht on Theatre, 3d ed., eds. Marc Silberman et al., trans. Jack Davis et al. (London: Bloomsbury, 2014), 151–8; “Effets d’éloignement dans l’art du comédien chinois,” in Écrits sur le théâtre (Paris: L’Arche, 1963), 120–30; “Effets de distanciation dans l’art dramatique chinois,” in Écrits sur le théâtre (Paris: Gallimard, 2000), 818–29; “Effetti di straniamento nell’arte scenica cinese,” in Scritti teatrali (Torino: Giulio Einaudi, 1962), 54–65; “‘Effekt Otchuzhdeniia’ v kitaiskom stsenicheskom iskusstve,” in O teatre (Moscow: Izdatelstvo Inostrannoi Literatury, 1960), 229–40; “Zhongguo xiju bianyan yishu zhong de moshenghuaxiaoguo,” in Bulaixite lun xiju [Brecht on theatre] (Beijing: Zhongguo Xiju Chubanshe, 1990), 191–202.

20 Brecht was once reminded of White’s translation. In a letter to Brecht, dated 9 February 1937, Mordecai Gorelik wrote that Mark Marvin, secretary of the New Theatre League and editor of Theatre Workshop, brought him Brecht’s “Fourth Wall of China,” published in Life and Letters To-day. Gorelik added that he encouraged Marvin to publish it in Theatre Workshop (Briefe an Bertolt Brecht im Exil [1933–1949], 2: 632). It is also well known that Bentley and Brecht had maintained a close working relationship for many years. On 15 October 1949, Bentley sent a royalty payment to Brecht’s secretary, Ilse Kasprowiak, for the publication of his translation of Brecht’s essay in Furioso (BBA 782/27).

21 Brecht, “Fourth Wall of China,” 121.

22 Ibid. In the typescript original, “dialektisch” was italicized (EWP-C2.4/1-12: 8).

23 Brecht, “Fourth Wall of China,” 116–17.

24 However, in “Verfremdung Effects in Chinese Acting,” a revision of Willett’s translation, Verfremdung was intentionally left untranslated.

25 Brooker, Peter, “Key Words in Brecht’s Theory and Practice of Theatre,” in Thomson, Peter and Sacks, Glendyr, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Brecht (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 185–200 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 193.

26 Bertolt Brecht, “Über den Verfremdungseffekt in der chinesischen Schauspielkunst,” BBA 158/78-87, Akademie der Künste, Berlin.

27 This paragraph was originally written and existed as a fragment (BBA 332/78).

28 My thanks again to Iliane Thiemann of the Brecht Archive for identifying this typescript.

29 Nor did White add the author’s name in his translation (“Fourth Wall of China,” 123).

30 Thus, in White’s translation, it was put in a note (ibid., 117); in Bentley’s translation, it was put in brackets (“Chinese Acting,” 70).

31 BBA 89/1-14: 3–4; BBA 89/15-25: 17; BBA 657/17-27: 19; BFA 22: 202.

32 Brecht, “Chinese Acting,” 76.

33 Bertolt Brecht, “Die Straßenszene,” Versuche 10 (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 1950): 125–35; “Die Strassenszene” (BFA 22: 370–81). Similarly, at the beginning of his essay, Brecht spoke of “a relatively new way of acting” attempted in a number of the postwar German theatres, which can be qualified and defined as “epic.” He then introduced a street scene or “a street-corner demonstration” (a nonillusionary and nonempathetic demonstration Brecht likewise saw in Mei Lanfang’s performance) as “an example of the most primitive type of epic theatre” (which recalls Brecht’s portrayal of the Chinese art of acting as a primitive technology), a “basic model” for epic theatre, “the theatre for a scientific age” (125).

34 EWP-C2.4/1-12: 9-11; BBA 2205/6-20: 18-19; BFA, 22: 208–9.

35 That is, BBA 158/78-87 and BBA 610/71-72 for the draft, EWP-C2.4/1-12 for what was used by White, and BBA 2205/6-20 for the identical typescript. There is another incomplete typescript also titled “Über den Verfremdungseffekt in der chinesischen Schauspielkunst,” in which a few blanks were filled with Brecht’s handwritten phrases and lines (BBA 67/1-7). It was based on the draft (BBA 158/78-87), as it likewise does not include the concluding section (BBA 610/71-72).

36 BBA 89/1-14: 12; 89/15-25: 23; BBA 657/17-27: 25; BFA, 22: 209. The line was originally in the separate part (BBA 610/71-72: 71) of the draft (BBA 158/78-87), in which “Charakter” was spelled as “karakter,” and remained intact in the typescript for White’s translation (EWP-C2.4/1-12: 10; “Fourth Wall of China,” 122) and for Bentley’s translation (“Chinese Acting,” 76). Evidently, the line was cut in the 1950s, most likely to preempt an association of what Brecht called the “bourgeois theatre,” which underscores the importance of naturalistic (psychological but not historical) portrayal of the character of the role, with Stanislavsky’s system. As I show later in this article, the idea of the actor’s “complete transformation” that Brecht perceived as central to Stanislavsky’s system entails the actor’s inner experiencing of the inner character of the role, as Stanislavsky himself declared: “I am a character actor. Not only that, I claim that all actors must be character actors, of course not in the sense of outer, but of inner characteristics” (My Life in Art, trans. J. J. Robbins [Boston: Little, Brown, 1924], 188).

37 BFA, 22: 200–10; BFA, 22: 1100, “651, 39f.”

38 For instance, “alten” was added to “chinesischen Schauspielkunst” (BBA 89/1-14: 1; BBA 89/15-25: 15; BBA 657/17-27: 17); “lediglich” to “einzufühlen” (BBA 89/1-14: 1; BBA 89/15-25: 15; BBA 657/17-27: 17); “der Alten Art” to “Welcher westliche Schauspieler” (BBA 89/1-14: 6; BBA 89/15-25: 18; BBA 657/17-27: 20).

39 “The alienation/estrangement effect had failed to have its effect.”

40 “The V-effect [Alienation/estrangement effect] had failed to have its effect on them [some of the spectators]” (BBA 2205/6-20: 13; BBA 89/1-14: 8; BBA 89/15-25: 20; BBA 657/17-27: 22; BFA, 22: 206).

41 Tian, Mei Lanfang, 205–7.

42 “A comparison with the Asiatic art of acting shows the deep priestly state in which our art is still bogged down” (BBA 89/1-14: 6; BBA 89/15-25: 19; BBA 657/17-27: 21; BFA 22: 204). However, the line, with the keyword “tief,” is originally in the 1935 short text (BBA 447/25-29: 27; BBA 501/7-11: 9; BFA, 22: 153), as it is in the earlier versions (BBA 158/78-87: 81; EWP-C2.4/1-12: 5; BBA 2205/6-20: 11).

43 “As a charm and a new finesse, as a formalistic gimmick, it would not be able to achieve any significance” (BBA 158/78-87: 84; EWP-C2.4/1-12: 8).

44 BBA 2205/6-20: 14; BBA 89/1-14: 10; BBA 89/15-25: 22; BBA 657/17-27: 24.

45 “The Western spectator easily turns against this kind of performance by calling it pure aestheticism. Now a great deal of this art of acting is indeed no more than formula and line; that comes from its age, from the fact that its ideas, expressed with such force and finesse, are out of date; but the principle itself is hardly out of date—it is very new for us, and in absorbing it we are by no means following aesthetic points of view” (BFA, 22: 154; BBA 447/25-29: 29; BBA 501/7-11: 10; BBA 154/51-54: 53; BBA 446/12-16: 14–15).

46 BBA 447/25-29: 29; BBA 501/7-11: 10; BBA 154/51-54: 53; BBA 446/12-16: 14; BFA, 22: 154.

47 “The coldness comes from the fact that the individual is not so much the center of attention as on the Western stage. Indeed, there is hardly such a cult of the star in a theatre as in the Asiatic theatre. The eyes of the spectators slavishly hang on the star. The other characters give him the cues, set him the obstacles, show him off. But the actor distances himself from the character he is portraying in the aforementioned manner” (BBA 2205/6-20: 10; BBA 89/1-14: 4–5).

It is interesting to note that there is one crossed-out handwritten note on the left margin of the lines that were struck through in the identical version (BBA 2205/6-20: 10) to which I have just referred. Although indecipherable, the note by Karl Korsch indicates that Korsch, Brecht’s Marxist teacher and friend, had read Brecht’s manuscript.

48 BBA 89/15-25: 17–18; BBA 657/17-27: 19–20; BFA, 22: 203.

49 “When you see Chinese performers, it is at first already difficult to free yourself from the feeling of strangeness that they arouse in us, as Europeans. So, you must be able to imagine that they also achieve the V-effect with their Chinese audience” (BBA 158/78-87: 84; EWP-C2.4/1-12: 7; BBA 2205/6-20: 13; BBA 89/1-14: 9; BBA 89/15-25: 21; BBA 657/17-27: 23; BFA, 22: 206; emphasis in original).

Given the fact that Brecht had never seen Mei Lanfang (or any other Chinese actor) perform in front of his native Chinese audience, it is at first even more difficult for Brecht’s readers (Europeans or Chinese) to free themselves from feeling the strangeness of his imagination. At least, such is Korsch’s impression from his reading of these lines, as indicated by his note on them: “etwas unbestimmt! Was soll behauptet werden?” (“Somewhat vague! What is being asserted?”) (BBA 2205/6-20: 13). However, what underlies the apparent strangeness of Brecht’s imagination is the real familiarity of his imaginary projection, onto the Chinese theatre and its Chinese audience, of his preconceived idea of Verfremdungseffekt or rather Entfremdungseffekt.

Korsch’s note appears incomplete in the copy of the typescript but remains intact in the original kept at the Elisabeth-Hauptmann-Archiv at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin. My thanks to Iliane Thiemann for locating the original and for her transcription of the note.

50 “However, what is far more difficult is not to be disturbed by the fact that the Chinese artist creates the impression of the mysterious for a purpose completely different from any that we can envision. Only those who have learned to think dialectically will believe it possible that a technique taken from the realm of magic can be used to fight against magic. The Chinese artist may intend to use the V-effect to make the events he is depicting mysterious, incomprehensible, and uncontrollable to his audience, and yet this effect can be used to make the events understandable, controllable, and earthly. The attitude of the researcher, who initially appears amazed at his objects, may well resemble that of the magician; however, in both cases, the apparently identical attitude has a completely opposite function” (BBA 158/78-87: 84; EWP-C2.4/1-12: 8; emphases in original). (In the earliest full-length draft [BBA 158/78-87: 84], Brecht did not use capital letters and wrote “verfremdungseffekt” instead of “V-effekt.”)

Likewise, in a fragment probably written in 1936 about the Chinese artist’s pantomimic demonstration of his art, particularly the conventional performance of horseback riding, Brecht states: “Thus, he achieves the effect of one being possessed, and his way of acting is a demoniacal one. He alienates [entfremdet] the horse-riding, indeed, certainly not to make it comprehensible” (BFA, 22: 214).

51 As I have noted above, White translated the critical word “Magie” as “illusion” (“Fourth Wall of China,” 121). Bentley faithfully translated the same word as “magic” (“Chinese Acting,” 74).

52 In a short piece written in 1935, Brecht noted that “the ‘strangeness’” (Seltsamkeit) that the Chinese artist strives for “undoubtedly has the character of magic” (Zaubercharakter) and that “in this respect, Chinese theatre is apparently not ahead of Western theatre” (BFA, 22: 125). But for Brecht, for those who believed that “it is absolutely important to get out of conjuring [Zaubern]” and that “there is too much magic [Zauber] in both Western and Eastern acting,” Eastern acting “offers more at the moment,” even though, as Brecht contended, “the strangeness [Fremdheit] portrayed does not arise in Chinese representational art through social measures, not at all in the field of the social” (125). And thereby, as Brecht argued, Chinese acting, a mystifying magic nonetheless, can be used to fight against magic in Western acting.

53 “However, what is far more difficult is not to be disturbed by the fact that the Chinese artist, when he creates the impression of the mysterious, seems to have no interest in unveiling a secret to us. He makes his secret out of the mysteries of nature (especially human nature), and he does not allow anyone to look into how he produces the natural phenomenon, nor does nature yet allow him, who has already produced the phenomenon, to have insight into it” (BBA 2205/6-20: 15–16).

54 BBA 89/1-14: 9; BBA 89/15-25: 21; BBA 657/17-27: 23; BFA, 22: 206–7.

55 “We are faced with the artistic expression of a primitive technology, a primal stage of science. The Chinese artist draws his V-effect from the arsenal of magic. The ‘how one does it’ is still secretive; knowledge is still the knowledge of tricks, and it is in the hands of a few who guard it carefully and profit from their secret knowledge” (BBA 2205/6-20: 16; BBA 89/1-14: 9; BBA 89/15-25: 21; BBA 657/17-27: 23; BFA, 22: 207).

In the later versions that follow BBA 2205/6-20, “Zeughaus” (arsenal) was spelled as “Zeugnis” (testimony) (BBA 89/1-14: 9; BBA 89/15-25: 21; BBA 657/17-27: 23; BFA, 22: 207). However, in a short piece written in 1935, Brecht used the original word in his argument against the actor’s art of complete transformation, “an aesthetic full of superstition, a technique that is derived from the arsenals [Zeughäusern] of magic and belongs to museums, an art that openly and brazenly denies the intellect from crossing its threshold” (BFA, 22: 177).

56 “[N]evertheless, here we are already intervening in the process of nature; the ability to do something produces the question, and in the future the researcher, endeavoring to make the process of nature understandable, controllable, and earthly, will always first seek out a standpoint from which it appears mysterious, incomprehensible, and uncontrollable. He will adopt the attitude of someone who is amazed and apply the V-effect” (BBA 2205/6-20: 16; BBA 89/1-14: 9; BBA 89/15-25: 21; BBA 657/17-27: 23; BFA, 22: 207).

57 Martin Esslin’s letter to Eric Walter White, 15 June 1961, Eric Walter White Papers, Container 2.6, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin. Esslin consulted the 1957 collection of Brecht’s essays and apparently learned from it the wrong date (1954) of publication of Brecht’s essay (see note 1). I want to thank the reference team at the Harry Ransom Center for making Esslin’s letter available for my research. My quotations from Esslin’s letter are “Reproduced with permission of Curtis Brown Group Ltd, London on behalf of the Estate of Martin Esslin. Copyright © Martin Esslin.”

58 Ibid.

59 Ibid.

60 See Berkofsky, Axel, China–GDR Relations from 1949 to 1989: The (Bad) Company You Keep (Cham, Switzerland: Springer International, 2022), 17–52 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wobst, Martina, Die Kulturbeziehungen zwischen der DDR und der VR China 1949–1990: Kulturelle Diversität und politische Positionierung (Münster: Lit, 2004), 25–40 Google Scholar.

61 See Wobst, Die Kulturbeziehungen, 109–23.

62 Renmin ribao (The People’s Daily), 9 October 1954, 4.

63 F. C. Weiskopf, “Chinesische Schauspielkunst,” Sonntag, 21 February 1954.

64 Sergei Tretyakov, “Novyy teatr starykh form” [New theatre of ancient forms], Pravda, 26 March 1935, 4. About the geopolitical significance of the Chinese troupe’s tour of the Soviet Union, see Tian, Mei Lanfang, 103–33.

65 Sonntag, 2 January 1955, 5.

66 Johannes R. Becher, “An Bertolt Brecht,” Sonntag, 2 January 1955, 5.

67 Brecht, Bertolt, “Die Dialektik auf dem Theater: Studium des ersten Auftritts in Shakespeares Coriolan ,” in BFA, 23: 386–402 Google Scholar, at 398.

68 Wekwerth, Manfred, Schriften: Arbeit mit Brecht (Berlin: Henschelverlag Kunst und Gesellschaft, 1973), 115 Google Scholar.

69 See ibid., 114–26. The Ensemble acknowledged its use of Mao’s works, such as On Contradiction, On Practice, and Speech at the Yan’an Conference on Literature and Art, in its production of the play. (See the introduction of the historical material of the play in Loo Ding, Chang Fan, and Chu Shin-nan, Hirse für die Achte [Leipzig: VEB Friedrich Hofmeister, 1956], n.p.)

70 In the same letter to Yüan Miau-tse, who translated the Chinese play, Brecht mentioned that he had Yüan’s Chinese calligraphic reproduction of Mao Tse-tung’s original poem, “Flying over the Great Wall,” hanging on the wall of his apartment (BFA, 30: 370). In 1948/9, Brecht made a “translation” (rather, a free adaptation of a German translation) of Mao’s poem (see Brecht’s letter to Hauptmann, dated July/August 1951, BFA, 30: 83). For Mao’s influence on Brecht’s reading of Coriolanus, see Squiers, Anthony, “Contradiction and Coriolanus: A Philosophical Analysis of Mao Tse Tung’s Influence on Bertolt Brecht,” Philosophy and Literature 37.1 (2013): 239–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

71 Neurath, Otto, “Wege der wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung,” Erkenntnis 1.1 (1930–1): 106–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Danneberg, Lutz and Müller, Hans-Harald, “Brecht and Logical Posivitism,” Brecht Yearbook 15 (1990): 151–61Google Scholar, at 154; Giles, Steve, “Bertolt Brecht, Logical Empiricism, and Social Behaviourism,” Modern Language Review 90.1 (1995): 83–93 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

72 See Brecht’s letter to Neurath, BFA, 28: 366.

73 Neurath, “Wege der wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung,” 109.

74 Ibid., 124.

75 Otto Neurath, Empirische Soziologie (Wien [Vienna]: Julius Springer, 1931), 4.

76 Ibid., 5–6; emphases in original.

77 Neurath, “Wege der wissenschaftlichen Weltauffassung,” 124.

78 Here Brecht’s association of the “magic” of Chinese theatre with the “primal stage of science” reminds me of Sergei Eisenstein’s perception of the magical metamorphosis of meaning in Chinese theatrical representation—which, according to Eisenstein, can be traced back to the primal stage in the evolution of the Chinese system of thinking. It is perhaps not by accident that Eisenstein, who was likewise influenced by Lévy-Bruhl and Frazer, dubbed Mei Lanfang the “magician” of Chinese theatre. (On Eisenstein’s essay “To the Magician of the Pear Orchard,” see Tian, Min, The Spectre of Tradition and the Aesthetic-Political Movement of Theatre and Performance: An Intercultural Perspective [Abingdon, Oxon, UK: Routledge, 2023], 94–135 Google Scholar).

79 Having returned to Denmark from the United States, in a letter to Margarete Steffin dated 26 February 1936, Brecht asked her: “Is Stanislavsky’s book on his system of acting available in English? If not, could you translate it for me? That would be highly important” (BFA, 28: 548; emphasis in original). Steffin received Brecht’s letter on 1 March 1936 (BFA, 28: 779). In the middle of July 1936, Brecht wrote to Erwin Piscator: “I read Stanislavsky’s My Life in Art with envy and unease. The man has put his system in order, and the result is that people in Paris and New York are becoming Stanislavsky’s students” (BFA, 28: 557). As noted above (note 36), J. J. Robbins’s English translation of My Life in Art was published in 1924, and White’s translation of Brecht’s essay was published in the winter of 1936. Thus, Brecht most likely read Stanislavsky’s autobiography between March and July 1936.

80 BBA 158/78-87: 81; EWP-C2.4/1-12: 4; BBA 2205/6-20: 10. Emphases in original.

81 “This act of complete transformation is an extremely laborious one. Stanislavsky puts forward a series of artful tricks, a whole system of them, by means of which this creative mood (die Schaffenslaune) can be forced anew at every performance” (BBA 158/78-87: 81; EWP-C2.4/1-12: 4; BBA 2205/6-20: 10).

Here, it is worth noting the English translation of Brecht’s word “Kunstkniffen.” White jotted down two words, “dodges” and “tips” (EWP-C2.4/1-12: 4), but eventually chose the less dismissive word “tips” (“Fourth Wall of China,” 118); Bentley used the more acceptable word “devices” (“Chinese Acting,” 71).

The English phrase “creative mood,” followed by the German word “Schaffenslaune,” is clearly a direct quote of Stanislavsky without quotation marks. Likewise, Brecht criticized the Western actor’s “intuitive” act of creating the character portrayed, using the German word “intuitiver” in quotation marks (BBA 158/78-87: 81; EWP-C2.4/1-12: 4; BBA 2205/6-20: 10). As one of the core concepts of Stanislavsky’s system, “intuition,” like “creative mood,” appears numerous times in My Life in Art. Here it is worth noting that in their respective translations both White and Bentley left out Brecht’s quotation marks for “intuitiver” (“Fourth Wall of China,” 118; “Chinese Acting,” 71).

82 “This act of complete transformation is incidentally an extremely laborious one. Stanislavsky puts forward a series of artistic means, a whole system, by means of which what he called creative mood (Schaffenslaune) can be forced anew at every performance” (BBA 89/1-14: 5; BBA 89/15-25: 18; BBA 657/17-27: 20; BFA, 22: 203).

83 Esslin’s letter to White, 15 June 1961.

84 About Brecht’s thoughts on the conference, see “Einige Gedanken zur Stanislawski-Konferenz,” BFA, 23: 236–9.

85 BBA 89/1-14: 5–6; BBA 89/15-25: 18–19; BBA 657/17-27: 20–1; BFA, 22: 203–4.

86 BBA 158/78-87: 81; EWP-C2.4/1-12: 4; BBA 2205/6-20: 10.

87 “The Chinese art of acting also knows Entfremdungseffekt and uses it in an exceptionally sophisticated way.”

88 “The ancient Chinese art of acting also knows Verfremdungseffekt and uses it in an exceptionally sophisticated way” (BBA 89/15-25: 15; BBA 657/17-27: 17; BFA 22: 200).

89 Esslin’s letter to White, 15 June 1961. Here, not knowing the “unabridged” typescript, Esslin was not precise in his note, as the “correction” was first made in the “unabridged” typescript and was retained in the two identical abridged typescripts that form the basis of the 1957 published text.

90 “The Chinese theatre is also familiar with the disillusion effect [Entfremdungseffekt] and uses it with the utmost skill” (Brecht, “Fourth Wall of China,” 116).

91 Brecht, “Chinese Acting,” 68. Bentley’s emphases.

92 That is, “an artful and artistic act of self-estrangement” (Brecht, “Chinese Acting,” 70).

93 “No one continued to allow the spectators to indulge themselves in experiences uncritically (and practically without consequences) by simply empathizing with dramatic characters. The representation subjected the material and events to a process of alienation [Entfremdungsprozeß]. It was the alienation [Entfremdung] that is necessary to be able to understand” (BFA, 22: 108–9).

Brecht’s essay was not published in his lifetime; it was presumably written in February/March 1935 (BFA, 22: 915).

94 “What was sought was a kind of representation through which the familiar became striking, the usual astonishing. . . . In order for the process to appear as the socially significant and problematic event that it is, it must be alienated from the audience through the representation” (BFA, 22: 211).

95 “The artist obviously wants to appear strange, even disconcerting, to the audience. He achieves this by observing himself and his performances with strangeness. Thereby, everything he performs gains something astonishing. Everyday things are elevated out of the realm of the self-evident through this art” (BBA 447/25-29: 25; BBA 501/7-11: 8; BFA, 22: 152).

This passage was kept intact in the full-length versions of Brecht’s essay (EWP-C2.4/1-12: 3; BBA 89/1-14: 3; BBA 89/15-25: 16; BBA 657/17-27: 18; BFA, 22: 202). See also the editors’ note at “fremd, ja befremdlich”: “Umschreibung von Verfremdung” (“description of Verfremdung”) (BFA, 22: 934). But I would add that it is also, if not more so, a “description” of Entfremdung with which Brecht was familiar at the time.

96 BBA 158/78-87: 80; EWP-C2.4/1-12: 3; BBA 2205/6-20: 8; BBA 89/1-14: 4; BBA 89/15-25: 17; BBA 657/17-27: 19; BFA, 22: 202. Both White’s and Bentley’s translations of “Selbstentfremdung” are “self-estrangement” (“Fourth Wall of China,” 118; “Chinese Acting,” 70); Willett’s translation is “self-alienation” (“Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting,” 93).

97 Grimm, Reinhold, “Alienation in Context: On the Theory and Practice of Brechtian Theater,” in Mews, Siegfried, ed., A Bertolt Brecht Reference Companion (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1997), 35–46 Google Scholar, at 43.

98 “The spectators should not be appealed to through their emotions, which would allow them to vent themselves aesthetically, but through their reason. The actors must alienate [entfremden] the characters and events from the spectators so that they stand out to them. The spectators must take sides instead of identifying themselves with them.” Quoted in Jan Knopf, “Verfremdung,” in Werner Hecht, ed., Brechts Theorie des Theaters (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1986), 93–141, at 96. Emphases in original. Knopf cites from Reiner Steinweg, ed., Brechts Modell der Lehrstücke (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1976), 51 n. 9. See also “Die Grosse und die Kleine Pädagogik,” BFA, 21: 396.

99 Knopf, “Verfremdung,” 96.

100 Ibid. Knopf cites from Gesammelte Werke, 15: 347. See also BFA, 22: 646. It should be noted that Brecht first used the word “verfremdet” in a handwritten note on Chinese theatre: “psychologisch nicht der vorgang, sondern die person wird verfremdet” (“psychologically, it is not the process but the person that is alienated/estranged”) (BBA 61/25; BFA, 22: 960).

101 Knopf, “Verfremdung,” 97.

102 Knopf cites from Brecht’s essay in Gesammelte Werke, 16: 622.

103 Willett, John, The Theatre of Bertolt Brecht: A Study from Eight Aspects (London: Methuen, 1959), 179 Google Scholar.

104 Erwin Piscator, Die Briefe, 3 vols., ed. Peter Diezel (Berlin: Bostelmann & Siebenhaar, 2005–11), 3.3: 359.

105 Ibid.

106 Brecht, Brecht on Theatre, 99.

107 Reich, Bernhard, Im Wettlauf mit der Zeit: Erinnerungen aus fünf Jahrzehnten Deutscher Theatergeschichte (Berlin: Henschel, 1970), 371–2Google Scholar. Nikolay Pavlovich Okhlopkov was an acclaimed actor and stage director.

108 Willett, John, Brecht in Context: Comparative Approaches (London: Methuen, 1984), 219 Google Scholar; rev. ed. (London: Bloomsbury, 1998), 236. Peter Brooker and Douglas Robinson have both questioned Bernhard Reich’s recollection ( Brooker, Peter, Bertolt Brecht: Dialectics, Poetry, Politics [London: Croom Helm, 1988], 68–9Google Scholar; Robinson, Douglas, Estrangement and the Somatics of Literature: Tolstoy, Shklovsky, Brecht [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008], 171–2)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. But Robinson, unlike Brooker, still tries to explore “Brecht’s Shklovskyan roots” (178).

109 Knopf, Jan, Bertolt Brecht: Ein kritischer Forschungsbericht; Fragwürdiges in der Brecht-Forschung (Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum, 1974), 17 Google Scholar.

110 Ibid., 19–20.

111 Knopf, “Verfremdung,” 96–7.

112 Knopf, Jan, Bertolt Brecht: Lebenskunst in finsteren Zeiten; Biografie (München [Munich]: Carl Hanser, 2012), 310–11Google Scholar.

113 BBA 447/25-29; BBA 501/7-11; BFA, 22: 151-5.

114 Tretyakov’s letters (1935) to Brecht, in Tretjakow, Sergej, Gesichter der Avantgarde: Porträts, Essays, Briefe, ed. Fritz Mierau (Berlin and Weimar: Aufbau-Verlag, 1985), 408–15Google Scholar; S. M. Tretyakov, “Bert Brekht,” in Bertolt Brecht, Epicheskie dramy [Epic dramas], trans. S. M. Tretyakov (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatelstvo, Khudozhestvennoi Literatury, 1934), 3–22; S. M. Tretyakov, “Bert Brekht,” in Liudi odnogo kostra [People of the same fire] (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe Izdatelstvo, Khudozhestvennaia Literatura, 1936), 39–65.

115 Louis Althusser, the noted French Marxist philosopher, once proposed his translation of Verfremdungseffekt as “effet de déplacement.” For my discussion of Althusser’s translation, see Tian, Spectre of Tradition, 144–5.

116 As shown in the Grimm dictionary, Verfremden was very rarely used, and there is no reference to Verfremdung (Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm [Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1956], 12: 353); in contrast, Entfremden was much more used by such noted German writers as Christoph Martin Wieland, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller, Ludwig Tieck, and others, and there are, correspondingly, references to Entfremdung as well (Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm [Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1862], 3: 522–3).

117 Such being the case, Reinhold Grimm is hardly justified when he states that it was Brecht, “the didactic poet,” who “first united” the Hegelian and Marxist “purely philosophical and sociological” ideas of Verfremdung (or rather Entfremdung) and the Russian formalists’ “purely aesthetic and literary” ideas of “ostranenie,” and “thus created Verfremdung as an aesthetic means of philosophical knowledge” ( Grimm, Reinhold, “ Verfremdung: Beiträge zu Wesen und Ursprung eines Begriffs,” Revue de littérature comparée 35.2 [1961]: 207–36Google Scholar, at 213), even as he acknowledges that “Brecht occasionally used this closely related word [Entfremdung] as a synonym for his own term Verfremdung” (211).

118 Knopf, Bertolt Brecht: Ein kritischer Forschungsbericht, 20. Despite Knopf’s investigation, Reinhold Grimm, speaking of the threefold origin of Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt (the Hegelian philosophy, Marxist sociology, and the aesthetic theory of the Russian formalists), still insisted in 1997 that “no study of Brechtian alienation can do without mentioning him [Shklovsky] and his contribution” (Grimm, “Alienation in Context,” 42). Like Willett and Reich, Grimm speculated that Brecht “likely” received the idea of Verfremdung from the Russian formalists and that “in all probability, it was passed on to him by Sergei Tretyakov” (43).