Letter: Brecht dissolves the electorate
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Your support makes all the difference.Neal Ascherson writes: "After the East Berlin rising in 1953, Bertolt Brecht is supposed to have made the ironic suggestion that the Communist regime should dismiss the people and appoint a new one." ("Are we the electorate they deserve?" 23 March). There's no supposed about it. These words are to be found in one of Brecht's most famous poems, "The Solution":
After the uprising of June 17th
The Secretary of the Authors' Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Which said that the people
Had forfeited the government's confidence
And could only win it back
By redoubled labour. Wouldn't it
Be simpler in that case if the government
Dissolved the people and
Elected another?
Philip Hoy
London N8
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