The Collected Poems of Bertolt Brecht
Page 88
[Hochzeitsverkündung des Goliath durch die Philister]
BFA 14, 364; 1937; P1993; T.K.
At one point Brecht planned a Goliath opera. The poem takes the names but does not follow other details of the biblical story. Ishai (Hebrew) is another name for Jesse, father of David.
In dark times
[In finsteren Zeiten]
BFA 14, 364; 1937; P1964; T.K.
Address to the characters of the first two volumes
[Adresse an die Figuren der beiden ersten Bände]
BFA 14, 371; c. 1937; P1965; T.K.
In this fragment Brecht addresses some of the lead characters of the plays intended for the first volumes of his Collected Works (London: Malik, 1938): Man Equals Man, The Threepenny Opera, Saint Joan of the Stockyards, and Round Heads and Pointed Heads.
Every year in September . . .
[Alljährlich im September]
BFA 14, 371; c. 1937; P1964; T.K.
When I told them . . .
[Als ich ihnen erzählte]
BFA 14, 372; c. 1937; P1965; T.K.
This poem appears to be based on a real experience.
The song of your pound and our pound
[Das Lied von eurem Pfund und unserm Pfund]
BFA 14, 373; c. 1937; P1965; T.K.
Throughout the poem Brecht plays on the biblical parable of the “talents” and the German expression “mit deinem Pfund wuchern,” which could mean literally “to practice usury with your pound,” but in fact normally means “to make the most of your gifts.” Compare ‘The poor man’s pound’ (above).
The parting
[Der Abschied]
BFA 14, 374; c. 1937; P1965; T.K.
Reconstruction in the time of the housepainter
[Der Aufbau in der Zeit des Anstreichers]
BFA 14, 375; c. 1937; P1982; T.K.
The doubter
[Der Zweifler]
BFA 14, 376; c. 1937; P1964; T.K.
The poem makes reference to a Chinese scroll which Brecht owned and carried with him through all the stations of the exile. It is a drawing circa 1700 by Kao Chi Pei. Brecht seems to have been undecided between two versions of the last lines. The other begins, “We rolled together the doubting . . .”
The poorer pupils from the suburbs
[Die ärmeren Mitschüler aus den Vorstädten]
BFA 14, 378; c. 1937; P1961; T.K.
The ballad of knowledge
[Die Ballade vom Wissen]
BFA 14, 379; c. 1937; P1993; T.K.
The ballad appears to have come about in the context of Brecht’s work on his novel The Business Affairs of Mr Julius Caesar. Later a new version made its way into the play The Congress of the Whitewashers, where it has a final stanza on the subject of love:
The game of love has two quite different players
The one adores, the other one’s adored.
One partner gives, the other one just takes it
One plays his heart, the other looks on, bored.
So hide your face if ever you feel it blushing
And keep your pretty, pouting mouth tight shut.
For if you give him leave, he’ll have your heart out
And if he knows you love—he’ll take his cut.
The Chancellor’s economics
[Die Ökonomie des Kanzlers]
BFA 14, 380; c. 1937; P1982; T.K.
The prisoner’s dreams
[Die Träume des Gefangenen]
BFA 14, 381; c. 1937; P1967; D.C.
Theatre of emotions
[Theater der Gemütsbewegungen]
BFA 14, 386; c. 1937; P1967; T.K.
On judgement
[Über das Urteilen]
BFA 14, 386; c. 1937; P1967; T.K.
Exclusively because of the increasing disorder . . .
[Ausschliesslich wegen der zunehmenden Unordnung]
BFA 14, 388; c. 1937/38; P1964; T.K.
Biddi and the sons of the suburbs
[Biddi und die Söhne der Vorstädte]
BFA 14, 389; c. 1937/38; P1982; T.K.
Fragment. Brecht started out writing this poem about his friend Orge (Georg Pfanzelt), then partly changed it to Biddi (one of his own nicknames).
Flameproof painting
[Feuerfeste Malerei]
BFA 14, 391; c. 1937/38; P1982; T.K.
The first line is an allusion to Hermann Göring, the Prussian Ministerpräsident, whom Brecht held responsible for the Reichstag Fire of February 1933. And there really was a Nazi painter called Max Zaeper, known above all for painting on thin Bakelite plates, so that the paint and plastic fused in supposedly indestructible “timeless landscapes.” In 1937 a decree, formulated by Goebbels, came into force which prohibited art criticism; henceforth only “description” was to be permitted. This poem belongs in spirit with the ‘German Satires’ of the Svendborg Poems. Compare ‘A prohibition on theatre criticism’ (below).
Set on the bench the glittering grenades . . .
[Legt auf den Tisch die funkelnden Granaten]
BFA 14, 391; c. 1937/38; P1982; T.K.
This satire takes as its model a mid-nineteenth-century poem by Herman von Gilm, ‘Allerseelen’ (‘All Souls’ Day’), which had become famous in a setting of 1885 by Richard Strauss. The first stanza goes thus:
Set on the bench the scented mignonettes
Bear in the last red asters for the spray
And let us speak again of love’s delights
As once in May. As once in May.
Brecht’s choice of the month of August is a reference to the First World War.
With dismay, however . . .
[Mit Erschütterung aber]
BFA 14, 391; c. 1937/38; P1982; T.K.
Of young Pumm, who always had to laugh
[Vom jungen Pumm, der über alles lachen musste]
BFA 14, 394; 1938; P1993; T.K.
This poem was written together with Margarete Steffin. Brecht appears to have contemplated including it among the children’s poems in Svendborg Poems.
The conquest of Austria
[Die Eroberung Österreichs]
BFA 14, 401; 1938; P1982; T.K.
On the occasion of the Anschluss. Possibly a fragment.
Morning twilight
[Die Morgendämmerung]
BFA 14, 402; 1938; P1993; T.K.
This is Brecht’s unpolished version of a Baudelaire poem, ‘Le Crépuscule du matin’ from Les Fleurs du mal. The typescript includes notes of alternative formulations. Baudelaire’s poem is in pretty regular rhyming alexandrine couplets, but Brecht abandons that regularity. At the time he was having heated conversations with Walter Benjamin about Baudelaire, and writing his own notes on what he perceived to be the limitations of this variety of modernism. Possibly almost in answer to Baudelaire, at about the same time Brecht also undertook a translation of Shelley’s ‘Hell’ from Peter Bell the Third:
Hell is a city much like London—
A populous and a smoky city;
There are all sorts of people undone,
And there is little or no fun done;
Small justice shown, and still less pity.
This was a poem that meant a great deal to Brecht and to which he often referred. It belongs in here, but there is little point translating it back into English for this volume.
Yes, from time to time I follow . . .
[Ja, ich folge diesen kleinen Alten bisweilen]
BFA 14, 403; 1938; P1967; T.K.
This is another Baudelaire version. Brecht did a literal translation first, of part III of ‘Les Petites Vieilles,’ then moved on to a freer rhymed version. As in the previous poem, the typescript includes handwritten corrections and alternatives.
Egyptian peasant song
[Ägyptisches Bauernlied]
BFA 14, 412; 1938; P1967; T.K.
Lightly adapted from a song that Brecht found, in German translation, in an anthology, Stimmen der Völker (Voices of the Nations; Amsterdam, 1938).
> When, in the age of the housepainter . . .
[Als wir zur Zeit des Anstreichers]
BFA 14, 412; 1938; P1993; T.K.
Dragør is a small town near Copenhagen and the Öresund is the strait that forms the Danish-Swedish border.
On the decline of love
[Über den Verfall der Liebe]
BFA 14, 416; 1938; P1965; T.K.
Written while Brecht was working with Berlau on her collection of satirical stories about the decay of bourgeois love-life, which bore the Danish title Ethvert dyr kan det (Every Creature Can Do It). It may be that the last two strophes are meant to be in the reverse order.
The trowel
[Die Kelle]
BFA 15, 270; 1938; P1965; D.C.
This has previously been dated to 1953 and in the context of the response to the East German uprising in June that year, but recent research suggests it may belong here, in the context of the Spanish Civil War and with the next poem.
Second poem of the dead brickie
[Zweites Gedicht vom toten Maurer]
BFA 14, 416; 1938; P1982; T.K.
The very abbreviated form of this poem makes it difficult to translate. The second strophe refers both to a real sickle (to mow the corn) and to the hammer and sickle badge popular amongst the International Brigades in Spain. “The dead brickie” was the nickname of Henry Jul Andersen, a Danish writer and actor, who never got work as a mason although that was the profession for which he had qualified. He died on August 1, 1938. See also the next poem.
One day when victory . . .
[Eines Tages, wenn der Sieg erstritten ist]
BFA 14, 409; 1938; P1993; T.K.
The poem breaks off unfinished. See previous commentary.
To a poet-friend about his Deutschland poems
[An einen befreundeten Dichter, seiner Deutschlandgedichte wegen]
BFA 14, 417; c. 1938; P1964; T.K.
A response to fellow Communist exile Johannes R. Becher’s ecstatic and rhetorically overblown poems in praise of Germany and its cultural traditions.
Now the instrument is out of tune . . .
[Da das Instrument verstimmt ist]
BFA 14, 418; c. 1938; P1965; T.K.
Brecht plays on the word volkstümlich (folksy, popular, demotic), a word potentially laden with ideology because of the Nazi’s professed fondness for the Volk. The poem is also a comment on the “Expressionism Debate” about the appropriate forms for a political literature; compare Brecht’s essay ‘The Popular and the Realistic.’
For the dependable . . .
[Der Verlässlichen]
BFA 14, 419; c. 1938; P1982; T.K.
Written for Helene Weigel and presented to her in a little casket.
Critique of Michelangelo’s Creation
[Kritik an Michelangelos “Weltschöpfung”]
BFA 14, 420; c. 1938; P1964; T.K.
This (possibly unpolished) sonnet probably belongs with the ‘Studies’ (see Part IV), but it is a pair with the next poem. The reference is to the famous scene on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
The painter’s (presumptive) answer
[(Vermutliche) Antwort des Malers]
BFA 14, 421; c. 1938; P1964; T.K.
Possibly fragmentary sketches towards another sonnet.
In praise of forgetting
[Lob der Vergesslichkeit]
BFA 14, 422; c. 1938; P1964; T.K.
Soliloquy of an actress putting on her mask
[Selbstgespräch einer Schauspielerin beim Schminken]
BFA 14, 423; c. 1938; P1967; T.K.
Brecht wrote the poem for Ruth Berlau, who played in a Copenhagen production of Nordahl Grieg’s Nederlaget (Defeat).
And the seventeen-year-olds were carried in . . .
[Wurden die Siebzehnjährigen hereingetragen]
BFA 14, 426; c. 1938; P1982; T.K.
Brecht refers to the diversion of resources away from essentials and into the Nazi “defense” industry.
SVENDBORG POEMS
From my refuge beneath the Danish thatch, my friends . . .
[Geflüchtet unter das dänische Strohdach]
BFA 12, 7; 1937; P1937; T.K.
The “sound” is the channel that separates Fyn, the Danish island where Brecht was living, from its neighboring islands to the south. Brecht could see this arm of the sea from the thatched house, and in the summer the family bathed in its waters.
In the higher echelons
[Bei den Hochgestellten]
BFA 12, 9; 1936/37; P1937; T.K.
The bread of the hungry has been eaten
[Das Brot der Hungernden ist aufgegessen]
BFA 12, 9; 1936/37; P1937; T.K.
The housepainter speaks of the great times that are coming.
[Der Anstreicher spricht von kommenden grossen Zeiten]
BFA 12, 10; 1936/37; P1937; T.K.
The “housepainter” (der Anstreicher) was Brecht’s habitual label for Hitler, who was twice rejected by the Vienna Academy and briefly worked as a painter-decorator.
In the calendar the day is not yet marked.
[Im Kalender ist der Tag noch nicht verzeichnet]
BFA 12, 10; 1936/37; P1937; T.K.
The workers cry out for bread.
[Die Arbeiter schreien nach Brot]
BFA 12, 10; 1936/37; P1937; T.K.
Those who take the meat from the table
[Die das Fleisch wegnehmen vom Tisch]
BFA 12, 10; 1936/37; P1937; T.K.
The bosses say: peace and war
[Die Oberen sagen: Frieden und Krieg]
BFA 12, 10; 1936/37; P1937; T.K.
When over the loudspeakers the housepainter talks of peace
[Wenn der Anstreicher durch die Lautsprecher über den Frieden redet]
BFA 12, 11; 1936/37; P1937; T.K.
When the top brass speak of peace
[Wenn die Oberen vom Frieden reden]
BFA 12, 11; 1936/37; P1937; T.K.
The brass
[Die Oberen]
BFA 12, 12; 1936/37; P1937; T.K.
Man with the threadbare coat:
[Mann mit der zerschlissenen Jacke]
BFA 12, 12; 1936/37; P1937; T.K.
On the wall in chalk were the words:
[Auf der Mauer stand mit Kreide]
BFA 12, 12; 1936/37; P1937; T.K.
The top brass are saying:
[Die Oberen sagen]
BFA 12, 12; 1936/37; P1937; T.K.
The war that is coming
[Der Krieg der kommen wird]
BFA 12, 13; 1936/37; P1937; T.K.
The top brass say: in the army
[Die Oberen sagen, im Heer]
BFA 12, 13; 1936/37; P1937; T.K.
The Volksgemeinschaft (“national community”) was one of the Nazi mantras, designed to obscure social and other divisions.
When it comes to marching, many do not know
[Wenn es zum Marschieren kommt, wissen viele nicht]
BFA 12, 13; 1936/37; P1937; T.K.
General, your tank is a powerful thing.
[General, dein Tank ist ein starker Wagen]
BFA 12, 13; 1936/37; P1937; T.K.
When the war begins
[Wenn der Krieg beginnt]
BFA 12, 14; 1936/37; P1937; T.K.
The housepainter will say that distant lands are being conquered
[Der Anstreicher wird sagen, dass irgendwo Länder erobert sind]
BFA 12, 14; 1936/37; P1937; T.K.
When the drummer begins his war
[Wenn der Trommler seinen Krieg beginnt]
BFA 12, 14; 1936/37; P. 1937; T.K.
The “drummer” (der Trommler) is another label for Hitler, used not only by Brecht.
In the dark times
[In den finsteren Zeiten]
BFA 12, 16; 1939; P1939; T.K.
German song
[Deutsches Lied]
BFA 12, 16; 1936; P1939; T.K.
Ballad of the Jew’s whore
Marie Sanders
[Ballade von der Judenhure Marie Sanders]
BFA 12, 16; 1935; P1937; T.K.
The Nuremberg Laws were the Nazi race laws of September 1935 that forbade, amongst other things, marriage or sexual relations between Jews and so-called Aryans. Julius Streicher was one of the most unpleasant anti-Semitic rabble-rousers and editor of the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer. The first line of Brecht’s refrain (“Das Fleisch schlägt auf in den Vorstädten”) is enigmatic. Brecht said it referred to price rises, but it has a violent undertone too: “meat” is food, but it may also refer to the commodification of sex. Hanns Eisler set these verses to music in 1935.
Ballad of the widows of Osek
[Ballade von den Osseger Witwen]
BFA 12, 17; 1934; P1939; T.K.
This poem is a response to a mining disaster in Bohemia in early 1934 that claimed 142 lives. German and Czech family members protested against the lack of safety precautions and the failure to offer decent compensation.
Song of the starling flocks
[Lied der Starenschwärme]
BFA 12, 18; 1932; P1939; T.K.
Suiyuan and Hunan are provinces in China, in the north and south respectively.
Ulm 1592
[Ulm 1592]
BFA 12, 19; 1934; P1939; T.K.
There was a historical “tailor of Ulm” who attempted, in 1811, to fly from the city wall across the river. Brecht’s choice of date may be a reference to the anniversary of Columbus’s “discovery” of America, and so invite thoughts about historical and technological progress.
According to his friend Walter Benjamin, Brecht justified the inclusion in the Svendborg Poems of these poems for children, of which he made several collections around this time, in these terms: “In the struggle against [Fascism] nothing should be omitted. . . . They strike out at everything. Every single cell recoils under their blows. That’s why we must forget no one and nothing. They cripple the child in its mother’s womb. We must not leave out the children.” Eisler set several of the songs to music.
The child that wouldn’t wash
[Vom Kind, das sich nicht waschen wollte]