This paper discusses Walter Benjamin's comments on the poems of the cycle 'Handbook for city dwellers" by Bertolt Brecht, to discuss the specificity of Brechtian lyricism in the more general debate about the Benjamin's reflexions on modern urban lyricism. Benjamin takes up two critical issues to the constitution of Brecht's work : the sobriety of language and teaching as a means of transmission of the urban and political experience. This link between experience and transmission can not be reduced to the instruction of conditions of survival in the big city, but it is constituted principally in learning a critical stance towards the city. While communication between isolated individuals is poor, and political organization approaches the illegality, the poems aspire to the establishment of a link between "I" and "you" through a poetic reflection of urban experience.
Walter Benjamin; Bertolt Brecht; urban lyrism; criticism; experience