rebugged a post a few minutes ago which invoked the adjective "brechtian", someone on my feed mentioned they were unfamiliar with brecht¹, and generally I am too but here's one of his works, the poem "A Worker Reads History", which I just generally adore

Who built the seven gates of Thebes?
The books are filled with names of kings.
Was it the kings who hauled the craggy blocks of stone?
And Babylon, so many times destroyed.
Who built the city up each time? In which of Lima's houses,
That city glittering with gold, lived those who built it?
In the evening when the Chinese wall was finished
Where did the masons go? Imperial Rome
Is full of arcs of triumph. Who reared them up? Over whom
Did the Caesars triumph? Byzantium lives in song.
Were all her dwellings palaces? And even in Atlantis of the legend
The night the seas rushed in,
The drowning men still bellowed for their slaves.

Young Alexander conquered India.
He alone?
Caesar beat the Gauls.
Was there not even a cook in his army?
Phillip of Spain wept as his fleet
was sunk and destroyed. Were there no other tears?
Frederick the Great triumphed in the Seven Years War.
Who triumphed with him?

Each page a victory
At whose expense the victory ball?
Every ten years a great man,
Who paid the piper?

So many particulars.
So many questions.

1. in the tags, so there's not a great way to respond to them yet²

2. someone should do something about this

also worth noting that brecht wrote the song which was localized into english as "mack the knife" which, as an uncultured american, I'd always thought "mack the knife" was a goofy sinatra song about an american street tough, and only learned brecht composed it after seeing the epigraph at the start of braverman's "labor and monopoly capital" quoting the extra stanza he wrote for the 1931 film version of the opera he'd composed it for:

Denn die einen sind im Dunkeln
Und die andern sind im Licht
Und man siehet die im Lichte
Die im Dunkeln sieht man nicht.

There are some who are in darkness
And the others are in light
And you see the ones in brightness
Those in darkness drop from sight.

which is also extremely hard

But I did read On Theatre and here's roughly how I think of the term "Brechtian", if folks are curious:

Brecht was really suspicious of emotional narratives. He didn't want people to get lost in the story and drama of his plays because he thought that, by appealing to people's emotions instead of their logic, you could sneak in really regressive ideas. He wanted people to think about what the play was saying, so he purposely did a lot to jolt people out of the experience, whether that was heightened acting or purposefully sparse or nonliteral set design.

For a popular usage, it doesn't quite mean that a work is weird, but rather weird in a way that draws you out of it and makes you consciously engage with it. One of the techniques he used, and is kind of synonymous with "Brechtian" is the "Distancing Effect" or the "Alienation Effect." Here's a good definition of that!.

Not trying to be pedantic or anything. I just think Brecht is neat!