by Tom Kuhn
EDITORIAL PRINCIPLES
Approaching an oeuvre such as this is certainly daunting for the translator, but it is daunting also for the editor. We thought we should set out some of the thoughts that governed our organization and presentation of the work.
In general, we have been inclusive. We have included very nearly all of the poems Brecht himself published in his lifetime, as well as many hundreds more. But it needs to be said that not all of Brecht’s vast poetic oeuvre is containable in this volume. We have excluded a handful of large and important poetic works, which must await an English-speaking public in some different form. The narrative poem in fourteen chapters, Die drei Soldaten (The Three Soldiers, BFA 14, 68–90), is not only long, it is also of a piece with the illustrations by the great graphic artist George Grosz and should one day be published in an illustrated format. The same goes for the Kriegsfibel (War Primer, BFA 12, 127–283), a collection of four-line epigrams which is unthinkable without the accompanying press photographs, and which anyway already exists in John Willett’s version (Libris, 1998, and now Verso, 2017). Finally, there is Brecht’s heroic and unfinished attempt to refashion the Communist Manifesto in hexameters (BFA 15, 120–57), a huge work, which defeated him and which would distort this volume. Then there has been a small handful of other works on which we have given up. For example, Brecht composed a wonderful children’s alphabet poem (‘Alfabet,’ BFA 14, 230), which starts off well enough. Loosely:
A is for Adolf, his facial hair
Is a most peculiar affair.
Kids, there’s surely something odd;
A tiny moustache, and such big gob.
But, as it goes on, the letters stand for words, important words, that do not have the same initial in English. The fourth stanza (D) refers to Germany (Deutschland) as the land of “Dichter” and “Denker” (poets and thinkers). There did not seem much point botching this, and losing all the lightness and wit in the process. Otherwise, we have excluded the following: poems which are reiterations or alternative versions of material already somewhere in the volume; a great many fragmentary, unfinished, and relatively trivial pieces, although this has not been a judgment we have reached lightly; and, finally, we have been relatively neglectful of the poems and songs from the plays, on the grounds that these at least already exist, sometimes in several alternative versions, in the English translations of the plays themselves. Some of these, where we judged that they could stand alone as poems, independent of their context in the play, and where we enjoyed our translations, we nonetheless offer again.
In fact there have been very few editorial principles that we have stuck to doggedly. The most important has been to offer complete translations, and in Brecht’s own sequence and arrangement, of the most significant of his own collections. There are three great collections, Bertolt Brecht’s Domestic Breviary (Bertolt Brechts Hauspostille, 1927), Svendborg Poems (Svendborger Gedichte, 1938), and the slim but mighty Buckow Elegies (Buckower Elegien, 1954, but unpublished in Brecht’s lifetime). The Domestic Breviary and many of the individual poems in each of these collections have been seen before, but now the complex architecture and interrelationships of Svendborg Poems and the rather more tortured and obscure self-dialogue of Buckow are visible in English for the first time. In the case of the Buckow Elegies it is the first time they have been published in any language following this ordering, which seems to be authorized by Brecht’s own hand. In addition, there are several minor collections and groupings of poems that Brecht undertook himself, even if they were never published separately as such, or only in fragmentary form or along with other material, for example in his own periodical-style Versuche series (Versuche means “Experiments,” and the volumes were designed to look like a scientific journal). These too we have tried to respect, often placing next to them poems which clearly came about in the same context or were at one point destined to belong. Such are the Songs for the Guitar (Lieder zur Klampfe), Psalms (Psalmen), Augsburg Sonnets (Augsburger Sonette), From the Reader for City Dwellers (Aus dem Lesebuch für Städtebewohner), Studies (Studien), Steffin Collection (Steffinsche Sammlung), Chinese Poems (Chinesische Gedichte), and the Hollywood Elegies (Hollywoodelegien). Each of these collections we have given a short introduction of its own. We have not represented as collections other arrangements and rearrangements that Brecht undertook or contemplated more for pragmatic considerations of publication, like Songs, Poems, Choruses (Lieder Gedichte Chöre, 1934) or Poems in Exile (Gedichte im Exil, 1943–44)—all of the poems of these are here, in this volume, but simply redispersed to their original contexts or collections. Finally, we have also created some minor groupings ourselves, of poems and songs from plays, or of those addressed to Brecht’s close collaborators and lovers, Ruth Berlau and Margarete Steffin. Many of the latter remained unpublished in Brecht’s lifetime. The editorial titles for groupings of poems that are not Brecht’s own are not italicized.
Then there is the division into five Parts, the chronology, and the Notes. The Parts are simply there for ease of access, and they represent some of the major chapters of Brecht’s own life, although it is really only 1933 that represents an immovable rupture in his circumstances and preoccupations; all the other divisions might just as well be shifted a year or so either way. Each Part is prefaced by a short introduction to the years in question, and within each Part we have followed a loose chronological organization, following the example and the dating of the standard German edition, the Grosse kommentierte Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe (BFA) in thirty volumes (1988–2000). Our versions too, unless otherwise explained in the Notes, are based on the BFA texts; and where the poem is a fragment we have represented the gaps and state of incompletion in imitation of that edition. In many cases, the dates of composition can only be inferred and are far from certain, and in just a few cases we have adjusted those BFA datings in consideration of more recent scholarship. In the Notes we have also given, alongside that putative date of composition and some brief elucidations of obscurities or significant allusions, the date of first publication (in the form, e.g., P1938). Such dates of first publication are derived, where possible, from the BFA or from Edgar Marsch, Brecht Kommentar zum lyrischen Werk (1974); and where there is no other reliable scholarship only publications in major collections of Brecht’s poems are taken into consideration. We have departed from the outline chronology that, overarching, governs the order of the poems, in only two ways: firstly, in order to present the already mentioned collections (and associated poems) at an appropriate moment in the flow, and, secondly, here and there in order to bring together poems that, although they may have been composed several years apart, simply belong together, for example, the two poems addressed to the great Viennese critic, satirist, and friend of Brecht, Karl Kraus, ‘On the meaning of the ten-line poem in issue 888 of The Torch (October 1933)’ and ‘On the swift fall from grace of the worthy know-nothing,’ where the second is so obviously an answer to the first that it would be perverse to separate them. In all of this organization our purpose has been, simply and pragmatically, to make the huge mass of poems more easily approachable without distorting that sense of progress through the years.
With the exception of the poems of The Reader for City Dwellers, which are presented here in translations by Brecht’s granddaughter Johanna Schall, assisted by Michael Dressel (J.S./M.D. in the Notes), and just one or two other exceptions (also indicated in the Notes), all the translations here are ours. When we received the original commission from the late Barbara Brecht-Schall (Brecht’s daughter and Johanna’s mother), she was insistent that some unity and consistency of voice were crucial and could best be guaranteed by having as few translators as possible. We have then portioned up the work between us, largely following pragmatic considerations of time, inclination, and so on, but again aiming for some consistency: so, for example, David has translated nearly all the poems of the Domestic Breviary, and Tom those of Svendborg Poems.
We are, neither of us, fond of tr
anslation theory and leave it to others to describe our practice, as they wish. Our concern has been to render all these amazingly bounteous and various poems in versions that, as far as possible, can stand for themselves, as English poems (and without the Notes), using all the resources of poetry and of language at our disposal. One detail that we should perhaps explain: Brecht was very sparing, especially after the early years, in his use of punctuation in verse, above all at the ends of lines; for the most part we have tried to imitate this restraint, only adding punctuation where it is necessary in English for the sense.
It would be very strange not to acknowledge the many translations of Brecht poems into English that have gone before our own project, and in particular John Willett and Ralph Manheim’s groundbreaking Poems 1913–1956 (1976), with work by a full thirty-four translators, including such greats as Michael Hamburger, Christopher Middleton, Naomi Replansky, and Stephen Spender. Although we have always undertaken our translations independently, we have been grateful to be able, in so many cases, to cross-check that we have not made basic errors of understanding. The Willett/Manheim volume is now sadly out of print, and copyright restrictions may have as a consequence that few other versions of Brecht’s poems will, for the time being, appear. We look forward to a time when others can test their skills on this rich tapestry of poetic invention, create new versions against which ours may be read, and bring these works to more new readers, across the globe. It is one of the great poetic oeuvres of all world literature.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Several of the poems in this volume have previously been published, with permission, in the periodicals Modern Poetry in Translation, German Life and Letters, Grand Street, Poetry (Chicago), and other literary journals, and in the volumes Hanns Otto Münsterer: The Young Brecht (Libris, 1992), Empedocles’ Shoe: Essays on Brecht’s Poetry (Methuen, 2002), The Literary Agenda: Poetry (Oxford University Press, 2013), Nine Fathom Deep (Bloodaxe Books, 2009), The Hundred Years’ War (Bloodaxe, 2014), and elsewhere. The collection Bertolt Brecht: Love Poems (Norton/Liveright) appeared in 2014.
Amongst many, we owe especial debts of gratitude to Barbara Brecht-Schall, Johanna Schall, the Suhrkamp and Norton publishing houses, the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK), and the Brecht Archive of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin.
Tom Kuhn
David Constantine
In this first section will be found poems Brecht wrote between 1913 and 1924. He grouped many of them together in three collections, only one of which, Bertolt Brecht’s Domestic Breviary, was published as such in his lifetime. The others are Songs for the Guitar by Bert Brecht and His Friends and Psalms.
The section is arranged thus:
Uncollected Poems 1913–1918
Songs for the Guitar by Bert Brecht and His Friends
Psalms
Uncollected Poems 1919–1924
Bertolt Brecht’s Domestic Breviary
The arrangement, roughly chronological, shows the collections emerging out of, and representing, this extraordinary first phase of Brecht’s poetry.
Brecht began writing poetry as Europe, and then much of the world, headed into war; and by the time that war was over he had come fully into the possession of his gift. From the start, his work bore witness to vast upheaval, colossal change, and a new level and breadth of atrocity. Born into the middle class, déclassé by his art, he was at once a poet of wide sympathies: for the oppressed, the poor, and, increasingly, for all manner of outcasts, misfits, and rebels. The context for these early poems is war, revolution (in Russia and Germany), hyperinflation, terrible hardship, and the violent polarization of his country’s politics. Hitler, imprisoned for his failed putsch in 1923, was released the following year; and began then in earnest to organize the seizure of power.
Uncollected Poems
1913–1918
In ‘Workers,’ one of the earliest of Brecht’s poems, written when he was fifteen, there is a sympathy out of which his later politics will grow. His poems about the war, seven of which were very soon published, are chiefly remarkable for the compassion they extend to the dead, the suffering, and the bereaved on both sides. Later his attitude hardens, his tone becomes sardonic, the war seems to him a criminal folly characteristic of a society in the throes of deserved collapse. His revolt, a hedonist energy, becomes anarchic.
Workers
Their slow walk shows how tired they are
Coming away
At shift-end, how hard the labour
How very long the day.
Dull men, dead beat, a leaden tread – – –
In their tired faces
Rich in troubles, in their blank faces
The light of the eyes is dead
Like the eyes of corpses.
They walk in silence, they make no din
They are too tired, too tired
One laughs shrilly now and then
But in this laugh there is no solace.
They march as though they have to carry
Chains that weigh
Very heavily
And on and on they must
Hasten and never rest.
They come from down among grey bulks of stone
Where they work their lives to the bone
Like machines that labour
For foreign masters
And never rest, but toil
Year in year out – – –
Do they not suffer?
Do they not complain
And ask will this torment never end?
Who never gaze in joy at the blue of heaven
Do they not ever feel a sudden terror
That they will die and never
In their misery see the sun?
In the many years will they not one day
Rise up with curses suddenly
In savage rage and shake
And strive to break
Free of the shackles of slavery? – – –
But at home! Wife and child sit there
And they so badly need the father – – –
If he sees them in his mind’s eye
He leaves off cursing, he sees reason
He works and he knows why – – –
And revenge and freedom are forgotten.
And so they labour all day through
They labour year after year
They see neither wood nor meadow
They never go out there.
They drag themselves at evening
Dead on their feet to the grey
And desolate stone zones
Whose colours by the rain’s
Sad weeping seem so strangely washed away
Such are their dwelling places.
They rest from their days
Hovel by hovel and on these faces
So strangely placated
The weeping shows.
Those two
They walked side by side together
And they had sweet things to say
But they found the words too difficult
So they fell to lamenting the weather
And the way things are today
And said nothing of what they felt – – –
Many years have gone by and those two
Lamenting their time away
Never said what they wanted to do.
The friend
You ask me what love is?
I’ve felt not a tremor.
You ask me what joy is?
I’ve seen not a glimmer.
You ask me what care might be?
I do know her
She does love me
She’s my friend for sure.
The beggar
Sometimes when on moonlit nights
Quietly I pass among the village houses
In this raddled throat of mine
Hot and fearful sorrow rises.
And I think then of my mother
See that feeling face of hers
And I think how often in such n
ights
By the light of the moon she sat in tears.
The memory
I lay in the red of the evening
A beggarman drew near
And on a flute he was playing
A tune of yesteryear.
Who might that be, I wondered
With his flute and where before
Have I heard the tune he is playing
That tune of yesteryear?
The beggarman has gone now
And faded the song I knew
And the peace and quiet of my old age
Are stolen from me too.
Passion
“Pale minstrel, take up your fiddle
And tuck it under your chin
And play us a tune that’s cheerful
Let the merriment begin!”
“I dare not dream of playing
Death houses in my breast
And if I play, that wild bad glee
Will feed my hungry guest.”
“Come, fiddler, leave off caring
Play and be rapt away!
Why care today for tomorrow?
Life is so fine today.”
The fiddler cannot master
Such power that craves and sues
His face is white, he plays so sweet
Until he drops and dies.
The burning tree
Through the evening’s red haze