With a few admittedly great exceptions, writers of drama criticism and aesthetic theory are up against a mystery when they deal with Brecht. The solution cannot be found within the confines of the aesthetic or the academic, but so abhorrent is any venture outside this realm to those who inhabit it that they have devised a special method: mystification. Whatever is an enigma for the theorists must be inherently enigmatic. Decisive questions fly back and forth in the Olympian heights, where the air is thin: Is the enigma of Brecht on the right or on the left? Is Brecht more mysterious as a Communist or as a Man? Can people in Leipzig or Munich better understand the meaning of all the things Brecht did not write? Where are the acrostic punctuation marks which Brecht used to tell us what he really meant? Is the late Brecht more Brecht or less Brecht than the early Brecht? Is Brecht really Brecht at all or was he his own double? Should you read Brecht's own writings to understand him? Did Brecht identify with Mack the Knife or Galileo?