The Days of the Commune

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The Days of the Commune is a play by the twentieth-century German dramatist Bertolt Brecht. It is Brecht's last "original" full-length play. It dramatizes the rise and fall of the Paris Commune in 1871.

[edit] Overview

The work forgoes the individual hero and focuses on the Paris Commune itself, a collective composite of people. The scenes shift through the different lives of people, going from the street corners of Montmarte to the Paris City Council. On this council, the enemies of the Commune, Thiers and Bismarck bring about the collapse of the Commune.

[edit] Marxist influence

The play detail an event considered the original proletarian revolution and a major event in the Socialist Revolution. Marx viewed the fall of the Commune as the coming into being of a classless Communist society. According to Marx, the emergence of a classless society would appear within a provisional state that would eventually disappear. Brecht's play reflects a Leninist view of the Commune, or the attempt to bring about the revolution through the working-class.

[edit] References

Calabro, Tony, Bertolt Brecht and the Art of Dissemblance, Longwood Academic, 1990

v • d • e The Plays of Bertolt Brecht Baal • Drums in the Night • The Beggar • A Wedding • Driving Out a Devil • Lux in Tenebris • The Catch • In The Jungle of Cities • Edward II • Man Equals Man • Downfall of the Egotist Johann Fatzer • The Elephant Calf • Little Mahagonny • The Threepenny Opera • The Flight across the Ocean • The Baden-Baden Lesson on Consent • Happy End • The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny • Der Jasager / Der Neinsager • The Decision • Saint Joan of the Stockyards • The Exception and the Rule • The Mother • Kuhle Wampe • The Seven Deadly Sins • Round Heads and Pointed Heads • The Horatians and the Curiatians • Fear and Misery of the Third Reich • Señora Carrar's Rifles • Life of Galileo • How Much Is Your Iron? • Dansen • Mother Courage and Her Children • The Trial of Lucullus • Mr Puntila and his Man Matti • The Good Person of Szechwan • The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui • Hangmen Also Die! • The Visions of Simone Machard • The Duchess of Malfi • Schweyk in the Second World War • The Caucasian Chalk Circle • Antigone • The Days of the Commune • The Tutor • Die Verurteilung des Lukullus • Report from Herrnburg • Coriolanus • Joan of Arc • Turandot • Don Juan • Trumpets and Drums