Fashions News

“This face of a happy self-satisfied citizen,” Mr. Eustis said, “it’s a public mask.” Then he quoted from memory a poem Brecht wrote close to his death in 1956: “Sad in my youth/ Sad later on/ When can I be happy?/ Better be soon.”
Yikes. You might guess that Mr. Eustis’s mordant appreciation of the Meissen plate contains a sting of criticism for his mother’s undying love for one of the 20th century’s greatest ideological failures. But this story is not about Hamlet, but Brecht. Or, you might say, Brecht with Hamlet overtones.

Part of what is inspiring about Brecht’s going to East Germany, Mr. Eustis said, was his courage in joining the new regime. At the time he was writing his treatise on how the theatrical ideal is never to fully engage the audience but to leave it critically detached, as he always was. So even while he was torn between engaging in, and detaching from, the struggles he saw and felt, he did manage, with some success, to be and not to be.
“He took on all these contradictions you have to deal with in order to be politically effective and artistically effective,” Mr. Eustis said. “It was about being willing to enter into the messiness of history.”
However misleading, the plate is ultimately not the bitter pill one may think. When sifting through history’s mess, it can be hard to distinguish between stuff made sincerely and that made cynically. But for those of us who can appreciate kitsch, there is always hope.