LETRAS

Cuarenta años después de que Barthes vaticinara que "la obra de Brecht sería cada vez más importante", cabe preguntarse si tal profecía se ha cumplido sin matices. La aparición de un copioso volumen con su teatro completo quizá sea buen momento para averiguarlo. Repasando sus treinta y tantas obras, advertimos algunas constantes de su teatro. Por ejemplo, el clásico "primum vivere, deinde philosophari", que él tradujo en La ópera... como "primero comer, después moralizar", ya figuraba en "La Biblia", una pieza breve escrita a los quince años, que aparece aquí por vez primera en español. Y han pervivido sin tambalearse secuencias y personajes inolvidables: esa eficacia teatral para transmitir el "terror" y la "miseria" en algunas escenas de "Terror y miseria..."; el grito desgarrador de Shen Te que ya torturaba a Job: "¿Por qué la maldad tiene su premio y por qué aguardan a los buenos tan duras penas?"; o Azdak, el cínico juez de El círculo, que acaso podría ser un alter ego de Brecht. En cambio ha envejecido mal el didactismo.

Some laws teach the need for prudence (“Law 1: Never Outshine the Master”), others teach the value of confidence (“Law 28: Enter Action with Boldness”), and many recommend absolute self-preservation (“Law 15: Crush Your Enemy Totally”). Every law, though, has one thing in common: an interest in total domination. In a bold and arresting two-color package, The 48 Laws of Power is ideal whether your aim is conquest, self-defense, or simply to understand the rules of the game.

"Huckleberry Finn" is set in Missouri in the 1830's and it is true to its time. The narrator is a 13 year old, semi-literate boy who refers to blacks by the N-word because he has never heard them called anything else. He's been brought up to see blacks as slaves, as property, as something less than human. He gets to know Jim on their flight to freedom (Jim escaping slavery and Huck escaping his drunken, abusive father), and is transformed. Huck realizes that Jim is just as human as he is, a loving father who misses his children, a warm, sensitive, generous, compassionate individual. Huck's epiphany arrives when he has to make a decision whether or not to rescue Jim when he is captured and held for return to slavery. In the culture he was born into, stealing a slave is the lowest of crimes and the perpetrator is condemned to eternal damnation. By his decision to risk hell to save Jim, he saves his own soul. Huck has risen above his upbringing to see Jim as a friend, a man, and a fellow human being.