Can you provide us with any more insight into his life Mrs. Cook?
What I mean is, he died at what age 23, but was a huge political activist, formed some new philosophic notions and wrote insightful plays before his death?
He's easy the most interesting for me since Wedekind feels like a slightly more sane Freud and Meyerhold's cool but his interests for theater are pretty straightforward.
What did people think of Buchner ( I ask to the class and to Cook), he lived way earlier than any of these guys but he has glimpses of all sorts of modern ideas in his work.
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Ahh...!
He is quite the interesting character. Here's the scoop. He was definitly considered a man ahead of his time, but yet still a man of this time. Georg was raised in an environment steeped in intellectualism and science, and thus he had a very pragmatic view of the world. Humanism and pragmaticism were common intellectual themes, but not in the literary world, per se, considering he lived and worked during the height of the Romantic movement. The Romantics believed in things like truth and beauty, which were much more important than petty thing like class and poverty. Buchner stepped outside of the ROmantics' box and focus his writings on political activism and current events that focused on political themes.
His works were not well recieved, because, like Brecht, he ruffled too many feathers about what theatre should be about. He really influenced Brecht in style. Look up information on his famous unfinished play, Woyzeck for more info.
I read about how he almost got arrested for his revolutionary, anti classist ideas! I forgot to mention that. I was reading about him and how his ideas are along the same lines as Kafka.
Hmm. He rally does seem like a Brecht who died too young. I read (on Wikipedia I admit) that people think he would have rivaled Goethe if he had lived a full life. There's always that tragedy of people dying too soon, Like Dostoevsky wanting to write Brothers Karamazov into a series...
Anyway, I only saw information on Danton's Death which admittedly seems a bit angsty and childish but also very insightful and a definitive forerunner to Epic theater. Ol' Brecht doesn't seem so revolutionary when you realize Buchner was out there over a century before when the world really wasn't ready for confrontation with realty! Not that we are now either though *sigh*
Well, don't sell brecht short here. He was up against a heck of a culturally oppresive social movement in his time. It takes guts in any realm to go against the grain. He was influenced and inspired by Buchner and managed to take him one step further. Because of Brecht, you've learned about him...and thus he lives on...
That's the incredible thing about theatre: it is constantly evolving (for good, or for ill) based on the society in which it exists.
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