SOCRATIC DIALOGUE AS A LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL PROTOFORM OF B. BRECHT’S DRAMATIC WORKS (BASED ON THE PLAY LIFE OF GALILEO)

Abstract

The article examines Bertolt Brecht’s play Life of Galileo in the context of the tradition of Socratic dialogue as a derivative of carnivalized serious and laughter forms of antiquity. The philosophical and literary genre of Socratic dialogue is characterized by a focus on searching for truth, its comprehensive polyphonic discussion, the technique of provoking with a word, and checking the thinker’s truth with his life and death; all these features are revealed in Brecht’s epic drama. The artist's innovative dramaturgy is philosophical in nature, subordinated to the objective of giving thorough consideration to the main problem of the work, building a complex system of dialogical microcontexts, the correlation of which is supposed to highlight the possibilities of its solution to the fullest extent. The poetics of epic drama moving towards the "dialectical theatre" (Bertolt Brecht’s concept) is designed to transfer the intellectual and philosophical conflict embedded in the depicted events into the viewer’s consciousness. Influenced by the aesthetics of this poetics, the viewer is supposed to change their established views on the present and, therefore, their behavior in the contemporary world, which requires a person to take active actions based on understanding the truth hidden in the depths of historical reality. The article pays special attention to the artistic concept of man, embodied in the image of Galileo, a scientist ahead of his time who comes into conflict with the conservative majority. An artistic interpretation of the central image, in particular, Brecht’s representation of its close connection with the Renaissance, alienates the play’s material from the author’s time and personality. However, paradoxically, this alienation actualizes the lyric and biographical principle laid down by the playwright in the image of the main character; it creates prerequisites for generalization, which makes it possible to emphasize the continuity of the tradition of a selfless search for truth and constant relevance of this tradition from the era of antiquity (Socrates and Plato) through the Renaissance (Giordano Bruno and Galileo Galilei) to the author’s present (Brecht and his contemporaries: artists and scientists with their behaviours in the situation of severe political pressure).