The Cult of Genius and the "Worker Who Reads"

In spite of his great importance for modern literature Bertolt Brecht is little mentioned in the English-speaking world, while from what mention he does get it is as a highly experimental playwright, rather than as a poet who produced many a verse of more conventional character.

One of Brecht's more famous poems is "Questions From a Worker Who Reads." The poem's worker, becoming acquainted with the events of history--the feats of arms, the feats of construction--finds himself wondering at who actually accomplished those feats. As he remarks early on all this is attributed to "kings," but it is not clear how they did it. "Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?" he asks. Reading of the conquests of Alexander and Caesar and even Frederick the Second, he wonders if they were alone when he made them--for certainly the books give the impression, speaking of no others. "Who cooked the feast for the victors?" he asks. "Who paid the bill?"

The worker finds no answers in the conventional, "Great Man"-minded history he has before him--and many would consider it an impertinence that he expect any, for only the Great Man was worth writing about. But alas, there is the matter of who hauled up "the lumps of rock." The trick for many is to trivialize that aspect of the matter, and the people who perform that task, as they enlarge the contribution of the "Great Men."

This is where the usage of the concept of "genius" of which we hear so much comes in, because it permits that to happen--permits, above all, individuals to be credited with the work of collectivities, even collectivities over eons, because it claims nothing short of transcendence of the merely human via reference to some mystical quality that endows the rare possessor with powers of the mind or personality as outlandish as the physical powers of the greatest superheroes.

However, to the best of my knowledge Brecht never wrote the poem where the worker was given that answer--and what the worker thought about it.