Business Affairs of Mr Julius Caesar, The

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It's Brecht. His "historicization" abounds here. The best historical novels are the ones that have that special power to conjure a mist while you read them, immediately convincing the reader that while familiar, these characters aren't quite modern people (insofar as historical novels taking place in Ancient times). There isn't this mist here. Brecht's novel is an allegory of his social context in early twentieth century. But... while superior novels like The Ides of March (Thornton Wilder), Augustus (John Williams) and Memoirs of Hadrian (Marguerite Yorcenar) conjure the magic of "reviving things past" (developing thus an authenticity to it's characters), truth is they mostly portray the lives of aristocrats and their musings, literary and philosophical: difficult to see the lives that existed in the streets, in the INSULAE, the slaves, the urban poor and their day-to-day lives. In this novel, Brecht shows us the worries of the underprivileged people, the bars, the desperate drive to not die of starvation, the corruption of the electoral system due to the Plebs selling their votes to make ends meet and the organizing of the underclass in urban clubs so as to mobilize their political power. Another fascinating aspect that Brecht imposes in this work is the reality of economic considerations taken by agents who react to economic incentives and circumstances. This is an insight that both classical liberals and marxists share. Of course, Cicero was an arrogant and (what we would call today) elitist man to whom the plight of the urban poor was not an important matter. This reality of roman patricians elitist attitudes, Brecht reveals to us. But Cicero was also a gifted writer and philosopher. This Brecht doesn't quite shows us. Perhaps it is true, though, that pagan morality, as Paul Johnson says it, was an empirical morality. What serves the maintenance of the roman state and the cult of traditional gods, goes. A brutal world, no christian morality here. I also don't doubt that Cicero cared, in his own way, for the Res Publica. Brecht's novel is superior in the matter of showing the reality of material deprivation in ancient times, but still... it feels too modern, too anachronistic. Giulio Cesare, il grand'uomo, descritto dal punto di vista dal suo segretario e revisore dei conti (l'autore del diario che un giovane avvocato romano, pregno di ideali e di retorica, decide di consultare per scrivere un biografia sul grand'uomo di cui sopra) e da quello del funzionario che era stato il suo pignoratore (e che possiede i diari). Sed fortuna, quae plurimum potest cum in reliquis rebus tum praecipue in bello, parvis momentis magnas rerum commutationes efficit; ut tum accidit. Consuesse enim deos immortales, quo gravius homines ex commutatione rerum doleant, quos pro scelere eorum ulcisci velint, his secundiores interdum res et diuturniorem impunitatem concedere. Inscription on the triumphal wagon reported in The Twelve Caesars by Suetonius, as translated by Robert Graves (1957).

Book I, Ch. 1; these are the first words of De Bello Gallico, the whole sentence is "All Gaul is divided into three parts, one of which the Belgae inhabit, the Aquitani another, those who in their own language are called Celts, in ours Gauls, the third." [1] I came, I saw, I conquered". Written in a report to Rome 47 B.C., after conquering Pharnaces at Zela in Asia Minor in just five days, as quoted by Plutarch in Life of Caesar, a work written in Greek ( ἦλθον, εἶδον, ἐνίκησα). This is also reported to have been inscribed on one of the decorated wagons in the Pontic triumph in Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Julius, by Suetonius in Latin ( veni, vidi, vici). He had inaugurated a new era. Before him Rome had been a city with a few scattered colonies. He was the one who founded the Empire. He had codified the law, reformed the currency and even modified the calendar on the basis of scientific knowledge. His Gallic campaigns, which had taken the Roman flag as far as distant Britain, had opened up a new continent to trade and civilization. His statue had its place with those of the Gods, he had given his name to cities as well as a month in the calendar, and the monarchs added his illustrious name to their own. The history of Rome had found its Alexander. It was already apparent that he would become the unattainable model for every dictator. The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach (1967) was the first of their innovative approaches to presenting music on film. Totally convincing in its historical accuracy and musical authenticity, with most of the roles taken by professional musicians, and the harpsichordist Gustav Leonhardt playing Bach (both the man and the music), it is an almost documentary account of instrumentalists at work in the 18th century. T]he rule of Caesar, although during its establishment it gave no little trouble to its opponents, still, after they had been overpowered and had accepted it, they saw that it was a tyranny only in name and appearance, and no cruel or tyrannical act was authorized by it; nay, it was plain that the ills of the state required a monarchy, and that Caesar, like a most gentle physician, had been assigned to them by Heaven itself. Therefore the Roman people felt at once a yearning for Caesar, and in consequence became harsh and implacable towards his murders...Once we have seen this, we can be shown the social space again; the third driving shot shows more of the residential streets which appear towards the end of the second shot, and more of the use of the pavement as a social space that we saw there. The shops are smaller. A Communist election poster, which appeared fleetingly above a corner café as the biographer drove away from the market square, is pasted up throughout these streets.

Later, ever more minimalist, Straub-Huillet’s focus shifted to the works of the modernist novelist Elio Vittorini, with three features: Sicily! (1999), Workers, Peasants (2001) and The Return of the Prodigal Son (2003). Their final film together, before Huillet’s death, was These Encounters of Theirs (2006), adapted from the last five stories of Pavese’s Dialogues with Leucò, filmed as a series of meditative texts read by different couples against a lush landscape. Prod Co/Prod: Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet Dir: Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet Scr: Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet (uncredited), from Die Geschäfte des Herrn Julius Caesar (The Business Affairs of Mr. Julius Caesar) by Bertolt Brecht Phot: Renato Berta, Emilio Bestetti Ed: Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet Mus: J. S. Bach It is, after all, well known that impulsive and inexperienced people are often terrified by false gossip and impelled to take inconsiderate action, making their own decisions about what should actually be matters of state. Plutarch,Parallel Lives, The Life of Crassus, 4.1; also Cic. Scaur. fragment at Ascon.27G=23C, with Asconius' comment on the passage. Bertolt Brecht, The Business Affairs of Mr Julius Caesar (2016), p. 23; quoted in Long Live Latin: The Pleasures of a Useless Language (2019) by Nicola Gardini, p. 72Bu kitabında edebi bir kaygı gözetmediği anlaşılıyor, hedefi herkesin övgü ve hayranlıkla söz ettiği Sezar’ın efsaneliğinin sorgulanması olduğu açıkca belli oluyor. Demokrasi ve Cumhuriyet’in o günkü anlamlarıyla nasıl işlediğini, Sezar’ın ve Çiçero’nun demokrasi anlayışları, rüşvet, politik ayak oyunları ve sınıfsal ezilmişlikleri o güzel üslubuyla anlatıyor Brecht. As well as describing Caesar's activities at this crucial period, Brecht presents the essential difficulty of explaining historical events coherently: in an echo of his dramatic theories - stressing the audience's task of interpretation rather than passive acceptance - we have to work out our own views about Caesar.

Bertolt Brecht spoke of “the theatre whose stage is the street”, and in their adaptation of the Pierre Corneille play Othon (1970, released in the US as Eyes Do Not Want to Close at All Times, or, Perhaps One Day Rome Will Allow Herself to Choose in Her Turn), Straub-Huillet placed their non-French-speaking, non-professional actors on the terrace of the Palatine hill in Rome, reading the play against the noises of the modern city. (The couple had moved to Rome that year.) It was a disconcerting way of finding a new approach to dialogue. Caesar was and is not lovable. His generosity to defeated opponents, magnanimous though it was, did not win their affection. He won his soldiers' devotion by the victories that his intellectual ability, applied to warfare, brought them. Yet, though not lovable, Caesar was and is attractive, indeed fascinating. His political achievement required ability, in effect amounting to genius, in several different fields, including administration and generalship, besides the minor arts of wire pulling and propaganda. In all these, Caesar was a supreme virtuoso. Said when crossing the river Rubicon with his legions on 10 January, 49 BC, thus beginning the civil war with the forces of Pompey. The Rubicon river was the boundary of Gaul, the province Caesar had the authority to keep his army in. By crossing the river, he had committed an invasion of Italy. The interviewees’ distance from the city’s bustle is in line with the villas and retreats of Brecht’s text, and also with reality. Gilberto Perez ends his long essay on the film with the suggestion that Spicer’s “modern counterparts” are to be found “lurking in the streets of Rome”, 3 but this is an idealization; when not safely out of earshot, they have no need to lurk. A recent study found that 22, 000 of London’s flats have been kept vacant by their owners. The residential streets seen in the second and third car shots have long since been gentrified. 4 The former legionary was glad to go to war, even on the losing side, because he had three brothers, and what land they had was not enough for all of them.Although Straub said: ‘“I try to make as little fuss about my life as possible”, a fair amount is known about him. He was born in Metz, north-east France, and organised a film society in his home town while in his teens. When he was at school, during the Nazi occupation, German was the official language and children were forbidden to speak French in public. He later referred to this experience in the short film Lorraine! (1994), based on a novel by Maurice Barrès. The first car shot may have appeared to be an arbitrary selection of arbitrary events; the point of the second car shot, taken in the same way and possibly on the same day, is that none of what we are seeing is arbitrary. All of it is determined by the kinds of calculations we heard outlined in the preceding interviews; calculations about how to maximise profits, and calculations about how the consequences of these calculations are to be survived. The interviews are theory or cause, the city is practice or effect.