by Tom Kuhn
A protest in the sixth year of Ch’ien Fu
[Ein Protest im sechsten Jahre des Chien Fu]
BFA 11, 263; 1938; P1938; D.C.
The Chinese poet is Ts’ao Sung (830–910). The poem can be dated 879. On the last line Brecht commented: “As we can tell from the figure of ten thousand, civilization in the age in which this poem was written was still only poorly developed. A general’s reputation in those days was still comparatively cheap.”
On the birth of his son
[Bei der Geburt seines Sohnes]
BFA 11, 264; 1938; P1938; D.C.
The Chinese poet is Su Tung-p’o (1036–1101). Brecht commented: “This poem is as topical now as the day it was written.” He includes it also in the Svendborg Poems (above, under the title ‘On the birth of a son’).
Address to a dead soldier of Marshal Chiang Kai-shek
[Ansprache an einen toten Soldaten des Marschalls Chiang Kai-Shek]
BFA 11, 264; 1950; P1950; D.C.
The poem is by Kuan Chao. Brecht worked from a literal translation by Wu-an and Fritz Jensen.
Thoughts whilst flying over the Great Wall
[Gedanken bei einem Flug über die Grosse Mauer]
BFA 11, 264; 1950; P1950; D.C.
Poem written by Mao Tse-tung in 1936, usually known as ‘Snow.’ Brecht worked from a literal translation by Wu-an and Fritz Jensen.
Resignation
[Resignation]
BFA 15, 111; 1944; P1967; D.C.
This and the next are two versions of one poem by Po Chü-i.
Keep your thoughts away from everything . . .
[Halte deine Gedanken von allem]
BFA 15, 112; 1944; P1982; D.C.
The hat, presented to the poet by Li Chien
[Der Hut, dem Dichter geschenkt von Li Chien]
BFA 15, 112; 1944; P1967; T.K. (with Arthur Waley).
This is a very literal version of Waley’s translation of another Po Chü-i poem, written on the occasion of the death of a friend. Brecht noted above the lines: “Nothing proper to do, and the old Russian headache. So I just translate a bit.”
The Chancellor’s gravel drive
[Des Kanzlers Kiesweg]
BFA 14, 427; 1938 or 1944; P1967; D.C.
Original poem by Po Chü-i. Elisabeth Hauptmann translated Waley’s version. This—she noted—is Brecht’s version of hers.
HOLLYWOOD ELEGIES
[Hollywoodelegien]
BFA 12, 115–16; 1942; P1949, as ‘Hollywood’; T.K.
Bach and Dante can be read as ironic self-portraits of Eisler and Brecht.
UNCOLLECTED POEMS 1943–1945
I, the survivor
[Ich, der Überlebende]
BFA 12, 125; 1942; P1964; T.K.
The rain falls down from up above . . .
[Der Regen fliesst von oben nach unten]
BFA 15, 83; c. 1942/43; P1965; T.K.
Aurora
[Aurora]
BFA 15, 84; 1943; P1964; T.K.
Now in New York, Wieland Herzfelde planned to found a new publishing house for the anti-fascist writers and was looking for a name. Brecht offered “Aurora” and sent this poem, and Aurora it did indeed become. The poem combines the goddess of dawn of classical antiquity with the history of the Russian Revolution, when the cruiser Aurora, moored on the Neva in St. Petersburg, gave the signal for the storming of the Winter Palace.
Landscape of exile
[Landschaft des Exils]
BFA 15, 88; 1943; P1993; T.K.
On watering the garden
[Vom Sprengen des Gartens]
BFA 15, 89; 1943; P1949; T.K.
German Miserere
[Deutsches Miserere]
BFA 12, 124; 1943; P1988; T.K.
The title refers both to the ‘Miserere’ of the mass (Psalm 50:3 in the Vulgate) and to the German Misere, a phrase often used by left-wing writers for the distortions of German political and social development since the eighteenth century (in the absence of a bourgeois revolution). The poem was set by both Eisler and Dessau, and taken up into the play Schweyk in the Second World War.
Homecoming
[Die Rückkehr]
BFA 12, 125; 1943; P1949; D.C.
When the Nobel Prize winner Thomas Mann granted the Americans and English the right to chastise the German people for ten long years for the crimes of the Hitler regime
[Als der Nobelpreisträger Thomas Mann den Amerikanern und Engländern das Recht zusprach, das deutsche Volk für die Verbrechen des Hitlerregimes zehn Jahre zu züchtigen]
BFA 15, 90; 1943; P1965; T.K.
Brecht and many other German exiles sought to distinguish sharply between the Nazis (the aggressors) and the German people (their first victims). On August 1, 1943, he and other writers, artists, and scholars, in anticipation of the defeat of the Hitler regime, signed an open declaration to that effect and in support of a strong German democracy. Thomas Mann initially gave his signature, but withdrew it the very next day—to Brecht’s fury.
Embarrassing incident
[Peinlicher Vorfall]
BFA 15, 91; 1943; P1965; T.K.
Brecht comments ironically on Alfred Döblin’s sixty-fifth birthday.
The song of the Moldau
[Es wechseln die Zeiten/Das Moldaulied]
BFA 15, 92; 1943; P1993; T.K.
Written for his Schweyk play. Eisler made it into a song with three four-line verses by repeating lines 5–8 at the beginning. The Moldau is the German name for the Vltava, the great Czech river that runs through Prague.
One time among many times . . .
[Einmal unter vielen Malen]
BFA 15, 93; 1943; P1964; T.K.
Written as an interlude between Acts 1 and 2 of Brecht’s adaptation of The Duchess of Malfi, but ultimately not included.
The condemnation of classical ideals
[Verurteilung antiker Ideale]
BFA 15, 93; 1943; P1964; T.K.
This angry poem must have been written in response to a representation of one of the proponents of an ethics of passive acceptance in classical antiquity, possibly Marcus Aurelius, an emperor of Rome, practitioner of Stoicism, and author of the Meditations.
Night in Nyborg . . .
[Nacht auf der Nyborgschaluppe]
BFA 15, 92; 1943; P1967; T.K.
This poem for Ruth Berlau lists some of the places in which they lived and loved. The references (in chronological order, rather than that of the poem) are to Svendborg on Fyn (where the Brechts lived for much of 1933 to 1939); the ferry from Nyborg to Copenhagen (where Berlau bought a house at Vallensbæk and later staged Señora Carrar’s Rifles); the Writers’ Congresses in Paris in 1935 and 1937; the Finnish phase of the exile, where they spent the summer of 1940 on Hella Wuolijoki’s estate at Marlebäck; the Annie Johnson was the boat they took from Vladivostok to San Pedro in 1941; and Fifty-Seventh Street was Berlau’s address in New York.
Workroom
[Arbeitszimmer]
BFA 15, 94; 1943; P1993; T.K.
Addressed to Ruth Berlau.
The fisherman’s tool
[Das Fischgerät]
BFA 15, 94; 1943; P1964; T.K.
The attack on Pearl Harbor took place in December 1941. Stefan gave his father this fishing tool for his forty-fourth birthday on February 10, 1942, shortly after which an exclusion zone was established on the US West Coast for people of Japanese ancestry, and the internment began.
The new sweat cloth
[Das neue Schweisstuch]
BFA 15, 95; 1943; P1965; T.K.
The poem reworks the legend of Veronica, who is said to have lent Christ her “veil,” or in German her Schweisstuch (sudarium), on the way to the Crucifixion.
The voluntary watch
[Die freiwilligen Wächter]
BFA 15, 95; 1943; P1964; T.K.
The discontents who acted . . .
[Die handelnd Unzufriedenen]
BFA 15, 96; 1943; P1964; T.K.
The
phrase that Brecht repeats in many contexts of “man being a wolf unto man” derives from Plautus: “homo homini lupus.”
Long before; Marked generations
[Lange bevor; Gezeichnete Geschlechter]
BFA 15, 97; 1943; P1967 (Lange bevor), P1956 (Gezeichnete Geschlechter); T.K.
City landscape
[Städtische Landschaft]
BFA 15, 98; 1943; P1964; T.K.
This poem bears similarities to the Hollywood Elegies.
I saw twenty-year-olds . . .
[Zwanzigjährige sah ich wie Götter]
BFA 15, 100; 1943; P1982; T.K.
Your deeds will not be approved . . .
[Deine Taten werden nicht gutgeheissen]
BFA 15, 101; c. 1943; P1967; T.K.
New epochs
[Die neuen Zeitalter]
BFA 15, 102; c. 1943; P1964; T.K.
Metamorphosis of the gods
[Die Verwandlung der Götter]
BFA 15, 102; c. 1943; P1964; T.K.
Compare ‘Red carnival’ (above).
In the early hours of the new day . . .
[In der Frühe des neuen Tags]
BFA 15, 103; c. 1943; P1964; T.K.
On bourgeois belief
[Über den bürgerlichen Gottesglauben]
BFA 15, 103; c. 1943; P1964; T.K.
We drove, we six . . .
[Wir fuhren, sechs]
BFA 15, 104; c. 1943/44; P1982; T.K.
A four-liner in the style of the photo-epigrams of War Primer, the poems which Brecht began to assemble in the early 1940s, although the collection was not published until 1955. Probably there was a press photo to go with this one too, although it has not survived. See also above, ‘Memorial for the fallen in Hitler’s war.’
The play is over . . .
[Aus ist das Stück]
BFA 15, 105; c. 1943/44; P1967; T.K.
Laughton’s belly
[Der Bauch Laughtons]
BFA 15, 108; 1944; P1965; T.K.
Brecht got to know Charles Laughton early in 1944. He admired the actor enormously. In due course they would collaborate on the English translation of Life of Galileo.
Garden in progress
[Garden in progress]
BFA 15, 109/378; 1944; P1964; T.K.
In the summer of 1944, after Brecht had already started writing this poem, part of Laughton’s garden slipped down the cliff to the ocean. Brecht comforted him by showing him drafts of these stanzas, which he never finally ordered into a finished poem. This translation largely follows the ordering suggested by Elisabeth Hauptmann.
On hearing the news of the Tory bloodbaths in Greece
[Auf die Nachricht von den Toryblutbädern in Griechenland]
BFA 15, 111; 1944; P1964; T.K.
This fragment refers to the British (Tory-led coalition) government’s intervention in December 1944 against the ELAS (Communist-led) partisans in Greece.
But when he walked to the block . . .
[Aber wenn er zum Block ging]
BFA 15, 112; 1944; P1965; T.K.
This is an adaptation of an earlier text, from The Mother, that Brecht undertook for Paul Dessau’s Deutsches Miserere.
Letters on recent reading
[Briefe über Gelesenes]
BFA 15, 113; 1944; P1964; T.K.
Epistle 1 of Book 2 of Horace’s Epistles (14 BCE) is an open letter to the Emperor Augustus. Brecht responds especially to sections where Horace speaks of the benefits of poetry, taste in matters of poetry, and the relationship between the patron and the poet. He is using Christoph Martin Wieland’s translation and commentary.
Parade of the benefactors
[Die Spenderparade]
BFA 15, 114; 1944; P1993; T.K.
Modeled on Shelley’s Masque of Anarchy (1819).
A film by Charlie Chaplin
[Ein Film des Komikers Chaplin]
BFA 15, 115; 1944; P1965; T.K.
Brecht was a great admirer of Chaplin, whom he met in Hollywood. But this poem goes back to recollections of The Face on the Barroom Floor (1914), which Brecht had seen in Wiesbaden in 1921.
Crooked cross and Double-cross
[Hakenkreuz und Doublecross. 1944]
BFA 15, 115; 1944; P1964; T.K.
Brecht uses the normal German word for swastika, Hakenkreuz (hook cross), throughout, and he supplied his own little note explaining that “to double-cross is gangster language for to deceive.”
In the sixth year
[Im sechsten Jahr]
BFA 15, 116; 1944; P1964; T.K.
Reading without innocence
[Lektüre ohne Unschuld]
BFA 12, 123; 1944; P1964; T.K.
On hearing the news that a great statesman has fallen ill
[Bei der Nachricht von der Erkrankung eines mächtigen Staatsmanns]
BFA 12, 123; 1944; P1964; T.K.
Everything changes . . .
[Alles wandelt sich]
BFA 15, 117; c. 1944; P1964; T.K.
Report on a one-hundred-year war
[Bericht über einen hundertjährigen Krieg]
BFA 15, 117; c. 1944; P1967; T.K.
In favour of a long wide skirt
[Empfehlung eines langen, weiten Rocks]
BFA 15, 117; c. 1944; P1965; T.K.
Five long years . . .
[Fünf Jahre kamen die grossen Bomber geflogen]
BFA 15, 118; c. 1944; P1967; T.K.
The first couplet refers to the poor equipment of the nonetheless victorious Red Army. Thyssen and Krupp were the preeminent armaments manufacturers in Germany. Bendler Street in the Tiergarten district of Berlin housed the War Ministry and many of the senior military offices; it was one of the sites of the unsuccessful officers’ putsch in July 1944. The Leipzig Reichsgericht was the senior court in the land until the creation of the Volksgerichtshof in Berlin in 1936. Nazi party offices were all known as “Brown Houses,” after the main party office in Munich. Friedrich II of Prussia is used here as a symbol of Prussian militarism.
The town builder, from the Visions
[Der Städtebauer aus den Gesichten]
BFA 15, 158; 1945; P1945; T.K.
Brecht wrote this prose poem for Berthold Viertel, who was honored with a special number of the Austro-American Tribune (May 1945). For the ‘Visions,’ see above in the Steffin Collection.
I am the patron . . .
[Ich bin der Schutzgott]
BFA 15, 159; 1945; P1967; T.K.
This and the next were conceived for the never-completed opera project The Travels of the God of Good Fortune.
Instruction in love
[Liebesunterricht]
BFA 15, 162; 1945; P1967; T.K.
Legality
[Legalität]
BFA 12, 287; 1945; P1982; T.K.
Hitler married his mistress, Eva Braun, in the Führer-Bunker in Berlin on April 29, 1945. At the very end of the war Brecht contemplated a second sequence of ‘German Satires,’ after the manner of those in Svendborg Poems, this time in a spirit of critical skepticism about the way in which the war had ended. This and the next two were composed with such a collection in mind.
Epistle to the Augsburgers (1945)
[Epistel an die Augsburger (1945)]
BFA 15, 159; 1945; P1964; T.K.
This was written in the middle of May; Hitler had committed suicide on April 30.
Envoi
[Abgesang]
BFA 15, 160; 1945; P1964; T.K.
Written after the atom bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.
Part V
After the War: Buckow Elegies and Other Late Poems, 1945–1956
UNCOLLECTED LATE POEMS
War has been brought into disrepute
[Der Krieg ist geschändet worden]
BFA 12, 287; 1945; P1964; D.C.
Germany
[Deutschland]
BFA 15, 161; 1945; P1964; T.K.
Pride
[Stolz]
> BFA 15, 163; 1945; P1964; T.K.
The Nuremberg Trial
[Der Nürnberger Prozess]
BFA 12, 287; 1945; P1988; T.K.
The trials of war criminals by a military tribunal of the Allied Powers began on November 20, 1945. Brecht wrote that the task was to transform the destruction of Nazi imperialism into the rescue of the German people.
The writer feels betrayed by a friend
[Der Schreiber fühlt sich verraten von einem Freund]
BFA 15, 160; 1945; P1964; T.K.
Written to Ruth Berlau, who had begun an affair with a Danish sailor in New York.
The fine fork
[Die schöne Gabel]
BFA 15, 161; 1945; P1964; T.K.
Probably also about Ruth Berlau.
Once
[Einst]
BFA 15, 162; 1945; P1951; T.K.
On inequality. Hard though it is to uncover it
[Über Ungleichheit. Schwierig, sie zu entdecken]
BFA 15, 163; 1945; P1967; T.K.
This was probably written in the context of Brecht’s efforts to versify the Communist Manifesto in hexameters, but it comes down to us a self-contained poem.
Lightly, as if never touching the ground . . .
[Leicht, als ob nie den Boden berührend]
BFA 15, 162; 1945; P1965; T.K.
Written while working on an adaptation of The Duchess of Malfi with W. H. Auden and H. R. Hays.
The theatre, place of dreams
[Das Theater, Stätte der Träume]
BFA 15, 165; c. 1945; P1967; T.K.
Just after the end of the war, with thoughts of returning to Europe, Brecht was contemplating a short collection of poems about the theater, to which this and the next eleven poems, some of which are marked in Brecht’s own notebooks as unfinished “fragments,” might belong.
Showing must be shown
[Das Zeigen muss gezeigt werden]
BFA 15, 166; c. 1945; P1993; T.K.
He who but imitates . . .