Brecht’s revolutionary theater secretly connects to Benjamin’s childlike allegorical obsessions

Evidence

Benjamin was of course fortunate in the artistic example which lay before him: for he illustrates his thesis with the epic theater of Brecht, perhaps indeed the only modern artistic innovation that has had direct and revolutionary political impact. But even here the situation is ambiguous: an astute critic has pointed out the secret relationship between Benjamin’s fondness for Brecht on the one hand and “his lifelong fascination with children’s books” on the other25 (children’s books: hieroglyphs: simplified allegorical emblems and riddles). Thus, where we thought to emerge into the historical present, in reality we plunge again into the distant past of psychological obsession. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 171

Categorization

• XREF: This psychological-readuction critique recalls the Marxist suspicion of biographical/psychoanalytic reading Jameson discusses elsewhere.
• QUESTION: Could chase the hieroglyph/children’s-book/allegory thread — it links to secularization of religious allegory in Dialectic of Enlightenment.