In Praise of Doubt
by Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht was a few things, notably a German communist dramatist during the time of the Nazis rise to power. He's probably most famous for 'The Threepenny Opera' or 'Die Dreigoschenoper' which is a play with music depicting a socialist critique of the poverty of the capitalist world; I first heard of it due to a reference to 'Pirate Jenny' in another song who's a character in the play but I haven't actually seen the play - maybe I should watch it sometime. However Brecht was also a poet and while browsing in the library I found a book collecting all his poetry.
The only poem I had seen previously from Brecht was a short one written about his disillusionment with the East German government called 'The Solution'. In this book there were other interesting poems that I enjoyed; the one I want to focus on here is investigating the role of doubt in the world. I also want to try something a little more detailed where I go over the poem bit by bit despite not really being a great poetry critic; just going over my interpretation of it. Note that this is a translation from German so perhaps I should read the original as well to get a feel for the exact lingo.
In Praise of Doubt
Praised be doubt! I advise you to greet
Cheerfully and with respect the man
Who tests your word like a bad penny.
I'd like you to be wise and not to give
Your word with too much assurance. Here the poem is laying out the stakes, immediately being enthusiastically in favour of doubting things you hear. Bad penny here is a reference to counterfeit money such that you shouldn't dislike people who question what you say.
Read history and see
The headlong flight of invincible armies.
Wherever you look
Impregnable strongholds collapse and
Even if the Armada was innumerable as it left port
The returning ships
Could be numbered. This part I really appreciate - so often I see people asserting things or predicting the future confidently without a shred of introspection and it's extremely off-putting to me but it appears like those kinds of things are rewarded. That's not to say you shouldn't believe in things whole-heartedly but blind faith is how you get stuck in a cult. I guess the Titanic wasn't as prominent as the premier example of an unsinkable ship back then so perhaps that's more modern thinking.
Thus one day a man stood on the unattainable summit
And a ship reached the end of
The endless sea. Here we see a bit of metaphor to show the absurdity of stating absolutes and certainties in many cases, I love the poetic flow of this stanza.
O beautiful the shaking of heads
Over the indisputable truth!
O brave the doctor's cure
Of the incurable patient! Similar to the previous stanza about the revocation of certainties. As an atheist Brecht is probably evoking religious doctrine with the 'indisputable truth' section; since religious people tend to have eternal truths where questioning them is a dangerous affair.
But the most beautiful of all doubts
Is when the downtrodden and despondent raise their heads
and
Stop believing in the strength
Of their oppressors. Now we turn to a more political stance about questioning the ruling classes' authority over the people.
Oh, how laboriously the new truth was fought for!
What sacrifices it cost!
How difficult it was to see
That things were thus and not thus!
What a sigh of relief one day a man entered it in the record of
knowledge.
For a long time perhaps it stands there, and many generations
Live with it and regard it as eternal wisdom
And the learned scorn all who are ignorant of it.
And then it may happen that a suspicion arises, for new experience
Makes the established truth open to question. Doubt spreads
And then one day a man thoughtfully strikes it out
From the record of knowledge. Pondering about what is common knowledge and how it changes. It is strange to think as a parallel to this the 'natural' state of humanity throughout history and how malleable we are. People lived under the yoke of kings, barons and lords for hundreds of years as serfs in villages. Poeple suffered as slaves and fought as soldiers against one another. Nowadays we still have similar constructs but in a different form; power is acquired and dispersed in ways that would seem unusual to our forebears but will surely be seen as absurd to our descendents. I assume this is what Brecht had in mind given his Marxist tendencies - about how the contradictions force the state of the world to be re-evaluated as it is found wanting.
Deafened by commands, examined
For his fitness to fight by bearded doctors, inspected
By resplendent creatures with golden insignia, admonished
By solemn clerics who throw at him a book written by God
himself
Instructed
By impatient schoolmaster, stands the poor man and is told
That the world is the best of worlds and that the hole
In the roof of his hovel was planned by God in person.
Truly he finds it hard
To doubt this world. This one is sarcastically striking at religious gospel and its lofty ideals failing to address the hardships of the real world. It reminds me of Joe Hill, who was an American songwriter, and wrote a song called 'The Preacher and the Slave' about the preachings of the Salvation Army and how they didn't help people in there here and now but promising glory after death. It's actually where the phrase 'pie in the sky' comes from.
The thoughtless who never doubt
Meet the thoughtful who never act.
They doubt, not in order to come to a decision but
To avoid a decision. Their heads
They use only for shaking. With anxious faces
They warn the crews of sinking ships that water is dangerous.
Beneath the murderer's axe
They ask themselves if he isn't human too.
Murmuring something
About the situation not yet being clarified, they go to bed.
Their only action is to vacillate.
Their favourite phrase is: not yet ripe for discussion. Ouch, this feels like a personal excoriation of me. I am indecisive and have a tendency to be paralysed by it into taking what appears to be the default option, or the option of least resistance. This causes outcomes which are worse than taking any other option sometimes and leads to a lack of deliberacy/agency in the way I feel about my situation. In a political sense this would be about people and leaders who refuse to make difficult decisions and end up kicking the can down the road. It's interesting in the poetry craft how the first two lines are used to transition and help the reader with the change in direction. It also cautions against doubt when it's overbearing. For Brecht this may have been the leaders of political parties or groups that allow them to stagnate and fall behind with the times - especially pressing in Germany at the time.
Therefore, if you praise doubt
Do not praise
The doubt which is a form of despair. This is a short addendum to the previous stanza but it really resonates politically currently. It feels heavily like people often want to avoid looking at problems holistically and the tinkering around the edges is insufficient to address the challenges of today. This may sound vague so more specifically around things like wealth consolidation, climate change, ownership of land and public resources and tech control/monopoly feel like they're slowly deteriorating and little adjustments to ameliorate these things do nothing to address the underlying causes and general slide.
What use is the ability to doubt to a man
Who can't make up his mind?
He who is content with too few reasons
May act wrongly
But he who needs too many
Remains inactive under danger. As we approach the crux of the poem and come to the core thesis we get to a message of having a healthy amount of doubt: enough to avoid dogmatic thinking but not so much to be too lethargic and indecisive. Seems like a pretty dull message but everything seems more interesting when it's written poetically.
You who are a leader of men, do not forget
That you are that because you doubted other leaders.
So allow the led
Their right to doubt. This is the end of the poem and it ends with a key theme throughout Brecht's work: questioning core structures. I like that it ends positively of doubt; perhaps there was some meta analysis going on where to be doubtful properly you must doubt doubt itself. Here it's an explicit message to the leaders of communities, parties and countries to allow freedom of expression and to permit dissent which is a good message in my opinion.
To sum up, I really enjoy the flow and style of this poem and the message is something that really resonates with me. I hope if you read this you enjoyed it too; I'm not sure about the style of review in this post but it was interesting to do. Remember to keep doubting, stay sceptical.