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Love Poems
Longlisted for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation
An historic publication in which the legendary German poet and dramatist emerges, quite like Goethe, as a poet driven by Eros.
Bertolt Brecht is widely considered the greatest German playwright of the twentieth century, and to this day remains best known as a dramatist, the author of Mother Courage, The Threepenny Opera, and The Caucasian Chalk Circle, among so many other works. However, Brecht was also a hugely prolific and eclectic poet, producing more than 2,000 poems during his lifetime—indeed, so many that even his own wife, Helene Weigel, had no idea just how many he had written."A thieving magpie of much of world literature," the full scope and variety of his poetic output did not become apparent until after his death. Now, the English-speaking world can access part of his stunning body of work in Love Poems, the first volume in a monumental undertaking by award-winning translators David Constantine and Tom Kuhn to translate Brecht's poetic legacy into English. Love Poems collects his most intimate and romantic poems, many of which were banned in German in the 1950s for their explicit eroticism.
Written between 1918 and 1955, these poems reflect an artist driven not only by the bitter and violent politics of his age but, like Goethe, by the untrammeled forces of love, romance, and erotic desire. In a 1966 New Yorker article, Hannah Arendt wrote of Brecht that he had "staked his life and his art as few poets have ever done." In these 78 poems, we see Brecht's astonishing and deeply personal love poems—including 22 never before published in English—many addressed to particular women, which show Brecht as lover and love poet, engaged in a bitter struggle to keep faith, hope, and love alive during desperate times.
Featuring a personal foreword by Barbara Brecht-Schall, his last surviving child, Love Poems reveals Brecht as not merely one of the most famous playwrights of the twentieth century but also one of its most fiercely creative poets.
An historic publication in which the legendary German poet and dramatist emerges, quite like Goethe, as a poet driven by Eros.
Bertolt Brecht is widely considered the greatest German playwright of the twentieth century, and to this day remains best known as a dramatist, the author of Mother Courage, The Threepenny Opera, and The Caucasian Chalk Circle, among so many other works. However, Brecht was also a hugely prolific and eclectic poet, producing more than 2,000 poems during his lifetime—indeed, so many that even his own wife, Helene Weigel, had no idea just how many he had written."A thieving magpie of much of world literature," the full scope and variety of his poetic output did not become apparent until after his death. Now, the English-speaking world can access part of his stunning body of work in Love Poems, the first volume in a monumental undertaking by award-winning translators David Constantine and Tom Kuhn to translate Brecht's poetic legacy into English. Love Poems collects his most intimate and romantic poems, many of which were banned in German in the 1950s for their explicit eroticism.
Written between 1918 and 1955, these poems reflect an artist driven not only by the bitter and violent politics of his age but, like Goethe, by the untrammeled forces of love, romance, and erotic desire. In a 1966 New Yorker article, Hannah Arendt wrote of Brecht that he had "staked his life and his art as few poets have ever done." In these 78 poems, we see Brecht's astonishing and deeply personal love poems—including 22 never before published in English—many addressed to particular women, which show Brecht as lover and love poet, engaged in a bitter struggle to keep faith, hope, and love alive during desperate times.
Featuring a personal foreword by Barbara Brecht-Schall, his last surviving child, Love Poems reveals Brecht as not merely one of the most famous playwrights of the twentieth century but also one of its most fiercely creative poets.
145 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 10, 2014
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About the author
Bertolt Brecht
1,604 books1,922 followersEugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director. A seminal theatre practitioner of the twentieth century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the Berliner Ensemble—the post-war theatre company operated by Brecht and his wife and long-time collaborator, the actress Helene Weigel—with its internationally acclaimed productions.
From his late twenties Brecht remained a life-long committed Marxist who, in developing the combined theory and practice of his 'epic theatre', synthesized and extended the experiments of Piscator and Meyerhold to explore the theatre as a forum for political ideas and the creation of a critical aesthetics of dialectical materialism. Brecht's modernist concern with drama-as-a-medium led to his refinement of the 'epic form' of the drama (which constitutes that medium's rendering of 'autonomization' or the 'non-organic work of art'—related in kind to the strategy of divergent chapters in Joyce's novel Ulysses, to Eisenstein's evolution of a constructivist 'montage' in the cinema, and to Picasso's introduction of cubist 'collage' in the visual arts). In contrast to many other avant-garde approaches, however, Brecht had no desire to destroy art as an institution; rather, he hoped to 're-function' the apparatus of theatrical production to a new social use. In this regard he was a vital participant in the aesthetic debates of his era—particularly over the 'high art/popular culture' dichotomy—vying with the likes of Adorno, Lukács, Bloch, and developing a close friendship with Benjamin. Brechtian theatre articulated popular themes and forms with avant-garde formal experimentation to create a modernist realism that stood in sharp contrast both to its psychological and socialist varieties. "Brecht's work is the most important and original in European drama since Ibsen and Strindberg," Raymond Williams argues, while Peter Bürger insists that he is "the most important materialist writer of our time."
As Jameson among others has stressed, "Brecht is also ‘Brecht’"—collective and collaborative working methods were inherent to his approach. This 'Brecht' was a collective subject that "certainly seemed to have a distinctive style (the one we now call 'Brechtian') but was no longer personal in the bourgeois or individualistic sense." During the course of his career, Brecht sustained many long-lasting creative relationships with other writers, composers, scenographers, directors, dramaturgs and actors; the list includes: Elisabeth Hauptmann, Margarete Steffin, Ruth Berlau, Slatan Dudow, Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler, Paul Dessau, Caspar Neher, Teo Otto, Karl von Appen, Ernst Busch, Lotte Lenya, Peter Lorre, Therese Giehse, Angelika Hurwicz, and Helene Weigel herself. This is "theatre as collective experiment [...] as something radically different from theatre as expression or as experience."
There are few areas of modern theatrical culture that have not felt the impact or influence of Brecht's ideas and practices; dramatists and directors in whom one may trace a clear Brechtian legacy include: Dario Fo, Augusto Boal, Joan Littlewood, Peter Brook, Peter Weiss, Heiner Müller, Pina Bausch, Tony Kushner and Caryl Churchill. In addition to the theatre, Brechtian theories and techniques have exerted considerable sway over certain strands of film theory and cinematic practice; Brecht's influence may be detected in the films of Joseph Losey, Jean-Luc Godard, Lindsay Anderson, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Nagisa Oshima, Ritwik Ghatak, Lars von Trier, Jan Bucquoy and Hal Hartley.
During the war years, Brecht became a prominent writer of the Exilliteratur. He expressed his opposition to the National Socialist and Fascist movements in his most famous plays.
From his late twenties Brecht remained a life-long committed Marxist who, in developing the combined theory and practice of his 'epic theatre', synthesized and extended the experiments of Piscator and Meyerhold to explore the theatre as a forum for political ideas and the creation of a critical aesthetics of dialectical materialism. Brecht's modernist concern with drama-as-a-medium led to his refinement of the 'epic form' of the drama (which constitutes that medium's rendering of 'autonomization' or the 'non-organic work of art'—related in kind to the strategy of divergent chapters in Joyce's novel Ulysses, to Eisenstein's evolution of a constructivist 'montage' in the cinema, and to Picasso's introduction of cubist 'collage' in the visual arts). In contrast to many other avant-garde approaches, however, Brecht had no desire to destroy art as an institution; rather, he hoped to 're-function' the apparatus of theatrical production to a new social use. In this regard he was a vital participant in the aesthetic debates of his era—particularly over the 'high art/popular culture' dichotomy—vying with the likes of Adorno, Lukács, Bloch, and developing a close friendship with Benjamin. Brechtian theatre articulated popular themes and forms with avant-garde formal experimentation to create a modernist realism that stood in sharp contrast both to its psychological and socialist varieties. "Brecht's work is the most important and original in European drama since Ibsen and Strindberg," Raymond Williams argues, while Peter Bürger insists that he is "the most important materialist writer of our time."
As Jameson among others has stressed, "Brecht is also ‘Brecht’"—collective and collaborative working methods were inherent to his approach. This 'Brecht' was a collective subject that "certainly seemed to have a distinctive style (the one we now call 'Brechtian') but was no longer personal in the bourgeois or individualistic sense." During the course of his career, Brecht sustained many long-lasting creative relationships with other writers, composers, scenographers, directors, dramaturgs and actors; the list includes: Elisabeth Hauptmann, Margarete Steffin, Ruth Berlau, Slatan Dudow, Kurt Weill, Hanns Eisler, Paul Dessau, Caspar Neher, Teo Otto, Karl von Appen, Ernst Busch, Lotte Lenya, Peter Lorre, Therese Giehse, Angelika Hurwicz, and Helene Weigel herself. This is "theatre as collective experiment [...] as something radically different from theatre as expression or as experience."
There are few areas of modern theatrical culture that have not felt the impact or influence of Brecht's ideas and practices; dramatists and directors in whom one may trace a clear Brechtian legacy include: Dario Fo, Augusto Boal, Joan Littlewood, Peter Brook, Peter Weiss, Heiner Müller, Pina Bausch, Tony Kushner and Caryl Churchill. In addition to the theatre, Brechtian theories and techniques have exerted considerable sway over certain strands of film theory and cinematic practice; Brecht's influence may be detected in the films of Joseph Losey, Jean-Luc Godard, Lindsay Anderson, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Nagisa Oshima, Ritwik Ghatak, Lars von Trier, Jan Bucquoy and Hal Hartley.
During the war years, Brecht became a prominent writer of the Exilliteratur. He expressed his opposition to the National Socialist and Fascist movements in his most famous plays.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews
July 4, 2015
This book has its luminous moments--but considering Bertolt Brecht wrote more than 2000 poems during his lifetime (1898-1956), this short (122-page) collection of seventy-eight "love" poems (twenty-one of which are eight lines or less) left me disappointed and wanting more. Perhaps for others like me, this thin book of poetry will spark an interest in a more comprehensive collection of Brecht's verse.
August 29, 2016
Half In My Sleep
Half in my sleep in the pale beginning light
Against your body, many a night: that dream.
Ghostly highways under evening-pale
Very cold skies. Pale winds. Crows
Screaming for food and in the night comes rain.
With clouds in the wind, years following on years
Your face washes away, my Bittersweet, again
And in the cold wind with a shock of fear I feel
Your body lightly, half in my sleep, in the beginning light Still with a trace of bitterness in my brain.
----
Discovery About A Young Woman
A morning’s parting, and about to go my way
A woman in the doorway, casually observed
And then I saw: one strand in her hair was gray
And found I could not bring myself to leave.
Mutely I reached out for her breast, and when
She asked me why—pointing at last night’s bed—
I would not go, for that had been the plan
I looked at her straight in the eye and said:
Even just one more night, I want to stay
But you must use your time; for that’s the worst
A woman on the threshold there like you
And let’s be quicker with the things we say
We had not thought that you were so far through.
And then desire rose and choked my words.
----
The Thirteenth Sonnet
The word you’ve often said I should not use
Comes from the Italian of Florence
From fica, meaning: vulva. They accuse
Even great Dante of vulgarity since
The word comes in his poems. Today I read
That for this he was vilified as once
Paris was Over Helen (though Paris, it must be said
Had more fun in his story than Dante did in his).
So even the sombre Dante as you see
Got caught up in the quarrels that arise
Around this thing that else earns only praise.
Not only Machiavelli teaches us:
In life and books much hot controversy
Has raged around this justly famous locus.
----
Weaknesses
You had none
I had one:
I loved.
Half in my sleep in the pale beginning light
Against your body, many a night: that dream.
Ghostly highways under evening-pale
Very cold skies. Pale winds. Crows
Screaming for food and in the night comes rain.
With clouds in the wind, years following on years
Your face washes away, my Bittersweet, again
And in the cold wind with a shock of fear I feel
Your body lightly, half in my sleep, in the beginning light Still with a trace of bitterness in my brain.
----
Discovery About A Young Woman
A morning’s parting, and about to go my way
A woman in the doorway, casually observed
And then I saw: one strand in her hair was gray
And found I could not bring myself to leave.
Mutely I reached out for her breast, and when
She asked me why—pointing at last night’s bed—
I would not go, for that had been the plan
I looked at her straight in the eye and said:
Even just one more night, I want to stay
But you must use your time; for that’s the worst
A woman on the threshold there like you
And let’s be quicker with the things we say
We had not thought that you were so far through.
And then desire rose and choked my words.
----
The Thirteenth Sonnet
The word you’ve often said I should not use
Comes from the Italian of Florence
From fica, meaning: vulva. They accuse
Even great Dante of vulgarity since
The word comes in his poems. Today I read
That for this he was vilified as once
Paris was Over Helen (though Paris, it must be said
Had more fun in his story than Dante did in his).
So even the sombre Dante as you see
Got caught up in the quarrels that arise
Around this thing that else earns only praise.
Not only Machiavelli teaches us:
In life and books much hot controversy
Has raged around this justly famous locus.
----
Weaknesses
You had none
I had one:
I loved.
September 30, 2024
Playful, intelligent, and on many occasions, absolutely fucking filthy.
June 6, 2016
Oops. Sometimes your favorite author produce other things.
March 27, 2019
"And she was in me like a small juniper on the
Mongolian steppes, concave with a washed-
out yellow sky and great sadness."
- from “The Eleventh Psalm”
"It is many years ago and at times I know
nothing about her anymore who was once all
things to me but all things pass."
- from “The Eleventh Psalm”
"But at night sometimes when you see me
drinking I see her face white in the wind and
strong and turned my way, and I bow into the wind."
- from “The Seventh Psalm”
"with a shock of fear I feel
Your body lightly, half in my sleep, in the beginning light
Still with a trace of bitterness in my brain."
- from “Half in My Sleep”
"The days of all your bitternesses
Will soon be over now, my dear
Like those of our unheard-of kisses
Which all too soon have disappeared."
- from “The days of all your bitternesses …”
"That night you didn’t come I couldn’t sleep but went
Many times to the door and it
Was raining and I went back in again.
I didn’t know it then but I know it now:
That night it was already like the later nights
When you never came again and I couldn’t sleep
And was already scarcely waiting anymore
But many times went to the door
Because it was raining there and cool.
But after those nights and still in later years
Whenever the rain dripped I would hear your footsteps
Outside the door and in the wind your voice
And your crying on the cold corner because
You couldn’t get in."
- from “To M.”
"Once you are soiled
You’ll never again be pure."
- from “Song of Lost Innocence Folding The Linen”
"Evenings by the river in the dark heart of the
bushes sometimes I see her face again, hers,
the woman I loved, my woman, dead now."
- from “The Eleventh Psalm”
"I held her like a sweet dream in my arms
My pale love, and she was quiet with me."
- from “Remembering Marie A.”
Mongolian steppes, concave with a washed-
out yellow sky and great sadness."
- from “The Eleventh Psalm”
"It is many years ago and at times I know
nothing about her anymore who was once all
things to me but all things pass."
- from “The Eleventh Psalm”
"But at night sometimes when you see me
drinking I see her face white in the wind and
strong and turned my way, and I bow into the wind."
- from “The Seventh Psalm”
"with a shock of fear I feel
Your body lightly, half in my sleep, in the beginning light
Still with a trace of bitterness in my brain."
- from “Half in My Sleep”
"The days of all your bitternesses
Will soon be over now, my dear
Like those of our unheard-of kisses
Which all too soon have disappeared."
- from “The days of all your bitternesses …”
"That night you didn’t come I couldn’t sleep but went
Many times to the door and it
Was raining and I went back in again.
I didn’t know it then but I know it now:
That night it was already like the later nights
When you never came again and I couldn’t sleep
And was already scarcely waiting anymore
But many times went to the door
Because it was raining there and cool.
But after those nights and still in later years
Whenever the rain dripped I would hear your footsteps
Outside the door and in the wind your voice
And your crying on the cold corner because
You couldn’t get in."
- from “To M.”
"Once you are soiled
You’ll never again be pure."
- from “Song of Lost Innocence Folding The Linen”
"Evenings by the river in the dark heart of the
bushes sometimes I see her face again, hers,
the woman I loved, my woman, dead now."
- from “The Eleventh Psalm”
"I held her like a sweet dream in my arms
My pale love, and she was quiet with me."
- from “Remembering Marie A.”
March 23, 2023
Too horny. Also problematic in a way that is upsetting and not camp (i.e. Salome). The Constantine and Kuhn translation is exceedingly generic, I understand the choice to keep the rhyme scheme but all charm from the original is sucked out (this is not meant to be an innuendo). Very weird choice to translate what I presume was not the N word into the N word from German.
March 16, 2019
"Seven times I’ll call your name
Six times stay away
But promise me the seventh time
You’ll come right away"
Six times stay away
But promise me the seventh time
You’ll come right away"
January 25, 2024
Poetry isn't my thing, but I understood these.
July 7, 2022
Amo e odeio!
August 29, 2021
Couldn't read beyond the 12th Psalm for how anti-Black, racist and misogynistic these pieces are.
March 15, 2021
This book is Brecht’s good try into world poetry. As one reading, his collection of love poems is peculiar, unapologetically erotic, and very misogynistic in perspective. The first poems translated feel so dull and short, squared and lost in transcribing the Occidental musicality which I know is present in Brecht’s native language—the German language. The latter verses then had modernist excursions, reflecting variant literary traditions, and surprisingly, it is the better half of the book. It is then magnetic and musical, though Brecht still falls short to embody a woman’s voice in poetry. Some poems, from the viewpoint of a woman, still sounded like the male playwright speaking: direct and compromisingly sexist.
The question hence: Is this poetry lost in translation, or is it the poet himself who was a product of his time that gives the book its own worms?
David Constantine and Tom Kuhn, as translators of one of the greatest playwrights and a revered prolific poet, have some explaining to do in this divisive poetry collection.
The question hence: Is this poetry lost in translation, or is it the poet himself who was a product of his time that gives the book its own worms?
David Constantine and Tom Kuhn, as translators of one of the greatest playwrights and a revered prolific poet, have some explaining to do in this divisive poetry collection.
January 9, 2015
But, but, but... I thought I hated Bertolt Brecht (which was admittedly almost completely foundless). It turns out I just dislike the movie Dancer in the Dark, which I understand to be a good example of what I understand to be Brechtianism.
I got an Advanced Reader's Copy of this book at BEA, so I didn't feel too bad about folding down the corners of the pages of poems I liked. Unfortunately now my book looks quite silly, because it turns out I liked a whole bunch of them.
There are some real gems in here. Some quite naughty bits too. Oh, and I think they chose nice fonts, particularly the font they chose for the titles of the poems.
I got an Advanced Reader's Copy of this book at BEA, so I didn't feel too bad about folding down the corners of the pages of poems I liked. Unfortunately now my book looks quite silly, because it turns out I liked a whole bunch of them.
There are some real gems in here. Some quite naughty bits too. Oh, and I think they chose nice fonts, particularly the font they chose for the titles of the poems.
January 24, 2022
The days of all your bitternesses
Will soon be over now, my dear
Like those of our unheard-of kisses
Which all too soon have disappeared
Soon life will give up all its substance
And death itself will lose its hurt
You'll take the line of least resistance
And sleep in peace in the hallowed dirt.
* * *
The river sings praises. Stars in the trees.
The smell of thyme and peppermint.
Our brows are freshened by a little breeze
We are the children, this is God's present.
The grass is soft: the woman without bittnerss
The lovely willows make everything rejoice:
Pleasure's a certainty for those who will say yes.
Never again would you want to leave this place.
* * *
The virtuous woman who gives her lover all
And offers up herself to him quite freely
Must learn that good intentions are not really
Quite enough - he's also crying out for skill.
And even if her cry of "Iamyours"
Translates to sex with breakneck quickness
He isn't only interested in slickness
When it comes to emptying his swollen balls.
Although it may be love that stokes the fire
She'll need, for winters in these harsher years
Some real talent in that bum of hers.
More needful than a soulful gaze and sighs
(Although she'll need them too) are eager thighs
Performing tricks with gusto and desire.
* * *
A morning's parting, and about to go my way
A woman in the doorway, casually observed
And then I saw: one strand in her hair was gray
And found I could not bring myself to leave.
Mutely I reached out for her breast, and when
She asked me why - pointing at last night's bed -
I would not go, for that had been the plan
I looked at her straight in the eye and said:
Even just one more night, I want to stay
But you must use your time; for that's the worst
A woman on the threshold there like you
And let's be quicker with the things we say
We had not thought that you were so far through.
And then desire rose and choked my words.
* * *
When we were first divided into two
And one of our beds stood here and one stood there
We picked an inconspicuous word to bear
The senses we gave it: I am touching you.
The pleasure of such speaking may seem paltry
For touch itself is indispensable
But we at least kept "it" inviolable
And saved for later, like a surety.
Stayed ours, and yet removed from you and me
Could not be used yet had not ceased to be
Not rightly there and yet not gone away
And standing among strangers we could say
This word of ours as in the common tongue
And mean by it: we know where we belong.
* * *
When we had been apart longer than ever before
Fearfully I searched your letters through for such
Words unknown to me as would say you were
No longer the one I know so well and miss so much.
And yet it must be that, seeing one another again
At once we'd recognize how in need we are
* * *
He whom I love
Has told me
That he needs me.
That's why
I take care of myself
Watch my step and
Fear every raindrop
Lest it strike me down.
* * *
And now it's war and now our way is tougher.
You fellow-wayfarer, my given comrade
On level ways or steep, narrow or wide
Teacher and taught, both being both together
And both in flight now with a common goal
Know what I know: that this goal's not more
Than the way itself, so should one of us fall
And the other let her, let him, only setting store
On the goal itself, the goal would disappear
Become unrecognizable, nowhere known
And breathless at the end the one arriving there
Would stand in sweat ans a gray nothingness.
Here where we are now at this milestone
I ask the poem's muse to tell you this.
* * *
Since you died, little teacher
I go around not seeing, restless
In a gray world amazed
Without employment like a man dismissed.
I am denied
Admission to the workplace
Like any other stranger.
I see the streets and the public gardens
Now at unaccustomed times of the day and so
Scarcely recognize them.
Home
I cannot go: I am ashamed
That I am dismissed and in
Unhappiness.
* * *
When it is fun with you
Sometimes I think then
If I could die now
I'd have been happy
Right to the end.
When you are old then
And you think of me
I'll look like now
And you'll love a woman
Who is still young.
Will soon be over now, my dear
Like those of our unheard-of kisses
Which all too soon have disappeared
Soon life will give up all its substance
And death itself will lose its hurt
You'll take the line of least resistance
And sleep in peace in the hallowed dirt.
- The Days of All Your Bitternesses..., pg. 11
* * *
The river sings praises. Stars in the trees.
The smell of thyme and peppermint.
Our brows are freshened by a little breeze
We are the children, this is God's present.
The grass is soft: the woman without bittnerss
The lovely willows make everything rejoice:
Pleasure's a certainty for those who will say yes.
Never again would you want to leave this place.
- The River Sings Praises..., pg. 27
* * *
The virtuous woman who gives her lover all
And offers up herself to him quite freely
Must learn that good intentions are not really
Quite enough - he's also crying out for skill.
And even if her cry of "Iamyours"
Translates to sex with breakneck quickness
He isn't only interested in slickness
When it comes to emptying his swollen balls.
Although it may be love that stokes the fire
She'll need, for winters in these harsher years
Some real talent in that bum of hers.
More needful than a soulful gaze and sighs
(Although she'll need them too) are eager thighs
Performing tricks with gusto and desire.
- Need for Art, pg. 35
* * *
A morning's parting, and about to go my way
A woman in the doorway, casually observed
And then I saw: one strand in her hair was gray
And found I could not bring myself to leave.
Mutely I reached out for her breast, and when
She asked me why - pointing at last night's bed -
I would not go, for that had been the plan
I looked at her straight in the eye and said:
Even just one more night, I want to stay
But you must use your time; for that's the worst
A woman on the threshold there like you
And let's be quicker with the things we say
We had not thought that you were so far through.
And then desire rose and choked my words.
- Discovery About a Young Woman, pg. 45
* * *
When we were first divided into two
And one of our beds stood here and one stood there
We picked an inconspicuous word to bear
The senses we gave it: I am touching you.
The pleasure of such speaking may seem paltry
For touch itself is indispensable
But we at least kept "it" inviolable
And saved for later, like a surety.
Stayed ours, and yet removed from you and me
Could not be used yet had not ceased to be
Not rightly there and yet not gone away
And standing among strangers we could say
This word of ours as in the common tongue
And mean by it: we know where we belong.
- The First Sonnet, pg. 59
* * *
When we had been apart longer than ever before
Fearfully I searched your letters through for such
Words unknown to me as would say you were
No longer the one I know so well and miss so much.
And yet it must be that, seeing one another again
At once we'd recognize how in need we are
- When We Had Been Apart..., pg. 63
* * *
He whom I love
Has told me
That he needs me.
That's why
I take care of myself
Watch my step and
Fear every raindrop
Lest it strike me down.
- To Be Read Mornings and Evenings, pg. 77
* * *
And now it's war and now our way is tougher.
You fellow-wayfarer, my given comrade
On level ways or steep, narrow or wide
Teacher and taught, both being both together
And both in flight now with a common goal
Know what I know: that this goal's not more
Than the way itself, so should one of us fall
And the other let her, let him, only setting store
On the goal itself, the goal would disappear
Become unrecognizable, nowhere known
And breathless at the end the one arriving there
Would stand in sweat ans a gray nothingness.
Here where we are now at this milestone
I ask the poem's muse to tell you this.
- Sonnet, pg. 85
* * *
Since you died, little teacher
I go around not seeing, restless
In a gray world amazed
Without employment like a man dismissed.
I am denied
Admission to the workplace
Like any other stranger.
I see the streets and the public gardens
Now at unaccustomed times of the day and so
Scarcely recognize them.
Home
I cannot go: I am ashamed
That I am dismissed and in
Unhappiness.
- After the Death of My Collaborator M.S., pg. 92
* * *
When it is fun with you
Sometimes I think then
If I could die now
I'd have been happy
Right to the end.
When you are old then
And you think of me
I'll look like now
And you'll love a woman
Who is still young.
- When It Is Fun with You, pg. 103
July 4, 2019
I have to admit that this book was a bit disappointing; it was not a surprise at all in the way that the author seemed to glorify a heathen sense of love that was directly contrary to the Bible. Nor was it a surprise that the author talked a lot about politics. What was disappointing was that the author's perspective of love was sufficiently broad to include far more than romantic or sexual love but not broad enough to include spiritual perspectives on it. What was disappointing was that the book sought to use other perspectives but ended up showing the author obsessed with painting the women whose perspective he was writing from as being either virgins or whores, and far more usually the latter (although there are occasional variations on this). One has more disappointment in someone who can be expected to know and to do better than someone who is clearly not able to do more than they are already doing, and Brecht's poetry is impressive enough that it could be so much better here, if it was only approached with some decency and some morality rather than being written in a way that glorifies the heathen views of sex magic of Baalism.
The book itself is a short one at a bit more than 100 pages, and it contains a variety of poems that can be considered as love poems, some of them written from the author's perspective and some of them written from other perspectives. The author shows himself a devotee of vitality, shows a bit of hostility to commitment in a personal sense while showing ideological commitment. There are sonnets, although they are Petrarchian rather than Shakespearean. The author also does a good job at picturing poetry in different places, ranging from Southeast Asia to Europe to even Africa. The author also shows love in the sense of ideological commitment to leftist by commenting on a good comrade. Among the more poignant poems here is the author's portrayal of the thoughts of a stripper while undressing, how she is concerned with the logistical details and concerns of her life while making her money off of the lusts of the men whom she holds in contempt but is simultaneously dependent on for her living. This book is a lot like that, where Brecht shows himself contemptuous of love but also somehow aware of its importance in various aspects of our lives, from family to political life to romantic relationships.
And that is why there is some value in a book like this even though it comes from a defective worldview. The author clearly enjoys exploring love and also enjoys visualizing himself in different perspectives, even if he is not always as insightful as he might think and even if his empathy is somewhat limited. Those who appreciate Brecht's writing in general are likely to find enough here that is pleasing so that they may very well enjoy these poems. The writer of the foreword comments a bit on the difficulty of the poems, but at least in translation they come off well, even if some nuance is inevitably lost. For the most part, though, this book offers modest pleasures for those who are prepared to deal with the author's rather tiresome and immoral worldview as well as his leftist politics. For those who are not enamored with these things, this book is obviously not as enjoyable to read. In this book as in many other examples, the distance between the author's views and one's own is likely to greatly influence the way this book is read and the extent to which it is enjoyed.
The book itself is a short one at a bit more than 100 pages, and it contains a variety of poems that can be considered as love poems, some of them written from the author's perspective and some of them written from other perspectives. The author shows himself a devotee of vitality, shows a bit of hostility to commitment in a personal sense while showing ideological commitment. There are sonnets, although they are Petrarchian rather than Shakespearean. The author also does a good job at picturing poetry in different places, ranging from Southeast Asia to Europe to even Africa. The author also shows love in the sense of ideological commitment to leftist by commenting on a good comrade. Among the more poignant poems here is the author's portrayal of the thoughts of a stripper while undressing, how she is concerned with the logistical details and concerns of her life while making her money off of the lusts of the men whom she holds in contempt but is simultaneously dependent on for her living. This book is a lot like that, where Brecht shows himself contemptuous of love but also somehow aware of its importance in various aspects of our lives, from family to political life to romantic relationships.
And that is why there is some value in a book like this even though it comes from a defective worldview. The author clearly enjoys exploring love and also enjoys visualizing himself in different perspectives, even if he is not always as insightful as he might think and even if his empathy is somewhat limited. Those who appreciate Brecht's writing in general are likely to find enough here that is pleasing so that they may very well enjoy these poems. The writer of the foreword comments a bit on the difficulty of the poems, but at least in translation they come off well, even if some nuance is inevitably lost. For the most part, though, this book offers modest pleasures for those who are prepared to deal with the author's rather tiresome and immoral worldview as well as his leftist politics. For those who are not enamored with these things, this book is obviously not as enjoyable to read. In this book as in many other examples, the distance between the author's views and one's own is likely to greatly influence the way this book is read and the extent to which it is enjoyed.
October 23, 2023
"But at night sometimes when you see me drinking I see her face white in the wind and strong and turned my way, and I bow into the wind." - Bertolt Brecht, The Seventh Psalm
Brecht was a genius. Of that there can be no doubt. However, I would be lying if I were to say that his poetry spoke to me the way that some other poetry does.
His poems here are simple, often beautifully so, and they explore love in its many guises from fleeting lust to lingering longing.
As with all poetry there are some hits and some misses each of them I suspect deeply personal to the individual reader. For myself the misses outweighed the hits but there is definitely beauty here to be found.
"He held her hand the way someone holds
A weak rope in the sea
Already drowning and said: You were
A good wife to me." Bertolt Brecht, Ballad
Brecht was a genius. Of that there can be no doubt. However, I would be lying if I were to say that his poetry spoke to me the way that some other poetry does.
His poems here are simple, often beautifully so, and they explore love in its many guises from fleeting lust to lingering longing.
As with all poetry there are some hits and some misses each of them I suspect deeply personal to the individual reader. For myself the misses outweighed the hits but there is definitely beauty here to be found.
"He held her hand the way someone holds
A weak rope in the sea
Already drowning and said: You were
A good wife to me." Bertolt Brecht, Ballad
October 7, 2017
3.5 stars. I thought I would love it more than I did. Some of the poems are 5 stars but most are about a 3 for me. Overall, though, a well-curated collection of love-themed poems by Brecht, better known for his plays. Short, digestible poems where every word counts. With an illuminating introduction written by his daughter.
January 14, 2024
These poems just didn't click with me. I like a good bawdy, horny poem, but the translation from the original German robbed them of any possible eroticism or charm.
Very bland language made this slim book of slim poems a chore to get through.
Very bland language made this slim book of slim poems a chore to get through.
September 9, 2017
Bana bir iyilik yap ve çok sevme beni / Son kez sevildiğim zaman, sevildiğim sürece / Duymadım en küçük bir neşe bile.
April 28, 2018
this wasn't bad, but it wasn't the best thing i've ever read either.. definitely did not enjoy the beginning and how rough every word sounded, but it got better towards the end
December 24, 2020
One of my fav poem book.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 26, 2021
Very racist, sexist, mysoginistic and condescending. Did not like it at all as it is demeaning towards women and only talks about sexual and emotional abuse towards women. Do not recommend
September 27, 2021
After reading this all I can say is, I feel really bad for every woman ever romantically involved with Brecht. Dude was an asshole who treated women like Kleenex.
December 31, 2022
awful. one or two with merit, but not worth the effort.
April 22, 2023
Should’ve been titled Fuck Poems! Kind of a dog this guy lol. Super weird curation …pretty much just bad & I usually love Brecht poems. Or I guess I just like his prose. bummer lol
May 10, 2024
Not exactly the love poems I looked for, but written in a dramatic and interesting way.
October 29, 2016
Good poems, a little dirty but I thought that added to the appeal
December 13, 2019
WEAKNESSES [Schwächen]
You had none
I had one:
I loved.
I quite literally have a weakness for this poem, which is what prompted me to read the collection of Love Poems, shortly after reviewing Poetry & Prose, wherein I opined that poetry doesn't seem like his forte. Reading this confirms it. While some poems are romantic or full of lament, and those are the ones I liked the best, there are others full of unadulterated sexuality (I do enjoy erotic and sensual poetry, but Bertolt's expressions come across as quite crass (for example, Sauna and Sex) whether they're about sex, or women (Instruction in Love).
I'd have rated it 2 stars but for the work invested by the translators, it deserves another star.
OUR UNCEASING CONVERSATION . . .
Our unceasing conversation that was like
The conversation of two poplars and that had lasted many years
Has fallen silent.
I no longer hear
The things you say or write nor do you hear
The things I say.
I held you on my lap and combed your hair
I instructed you in the art of war
And taught you how to conduct yourself with a man
How to read books and how to read faces
How to fight and how to rest
But now I see
How much I never said to you.
Often I wake in the night choking
On useless counsels.
WHEN WE HAD BEEN APART . . .
When we had been apart longer than ever before
Fearfully I searched your letters through for such
Words unknown to me as would say you were
No longer the one I know so well and miss so much.
And yet it must be that, seeing one another again
At once we’d recognize how in need we are
To M
That night you didn’t come
I couldn’t sleep but went
Many times to the door and it
Was raining and I went back in again.
I didn’t know it then but I know it now:
That night it was already like the later nights
When you never came again and I couldn’t sleep
And was already scarcely waiting anymore
But many times went to the door
Because it was raining there and cool.
But after those nights and still in later years
Whenever the rain dripped I would hear your footsteps Outside the door and in the wind your voice
And your crying on the cold corner because
You couldn’t get in.
For that reason I got up often in the night and
Went to the door and opened it and
Let in whoever had no home
And beggars came and whores, dossers
And all manner of folk.
Now many years have passed and even if
Rain still drips and the wind blows
If you came now in the night
I know I wouldn’t know you anymore, not your voice
And not your face because things have changed.
Yet I still hear footsteps in the wind
And weeping in the rain and that somebody
Wants to come in.
And I’ve a mind to go to the door
And open it and see has no one come—
But I don’t get up and I don’t go out
Don’t see
And nor does anybody come
THE SEVENTH PSALM
1. My beloveds, I know it: my hair is falling out with this wild living and I must lay me down on the stones. You see me drinking the cheapest schnapps and I go naked in the wind.
2. But, my beloveds, once upon a time I was pure.
3. I had a woman, she was stronger than me as the grass is stronger than the bull. The grass lifts up again.
4. She saw that I was bad and she loved me.
5. She did not ask where the way led that was her way and perhaps it led downward. When she gave me her body she said: That is all. And it became my body.
6. Now she is not anywhere anymore, she vanished like the cloud when it has rained, I let her go and she fell, for that was her way.
7. But at night sometimes when you see me drinking I see her face white in the wind and strong and turned my way, and I bow into the wind.
I SHALL GO WITH THE ONE I LOVE . . .
I shall go with the one I love.
I shall not reckon what it costs.
I shan’t consider if it’s right.
I shall not ask if he loves me.
I shall go with him I love.
TO BE READ MORNINGS AND EVENINGS
He whom I love
Has told me
That he needs me.
That’s why I take care of myself
Watch my step and
Fear every raindrop
Lest it strike me down.
June 24, 2015
Like a lot of Anglophones, probably, I first became aware of the poetry of Bertolt Brecht from a scene in the movie The Lives of Others in 2007. Since most of us think of Brecht as an avant-garde Communist playwright, it was a bit odd to hear a beautiful love poem by the same guy, being used by a secret policeman as therapy for his crushing loneliness and his awakening as a human being.
Since then, the only Brecht poetry in English I was able to get my hands on were the 18 poems (pretty much all of them great, including the poem from the movie, "Erinnerung an die Marie A." -- "Memory of Maria A." or "Remembering Maria A.") collected in Michael Hofmann's great anthology Twentieth-Century German Poetry. (Hofmann, in his introduction to the anthology, also complains a bit bitchily about the lack of Western love for Brecht's verse as opposed to his plays.)
Now, here's the first of a projected many volumes of Brecht's more than 2,000 poems in English, and on the whole it's pretty great and still comfortingly strange and transgressive. This is one of the standout poems for me:
So far removed from Robert Graves's comically prudish"Down, Wanton, Down!" -- and written at more or less the same time in the early twentieth century.
But the above sample also highlights my one complaint about this book: the translation itself -- a collaboration between David Constantine and Tom Kuhn, a couple of British academics -- which on the whole is rather dull and stilted. They also can't seem to help inserting British slang (e.g., "bum" instead of "ass") incongruously into the verse. A case in point is the "Marie A." poem. It's available in the Hofmann anthology in a lovely version by Derek Mahon, who retitled it "A Cloud" and took some other liberties with the original; for instance, Brecht's "Pflaumenbaum" ("plum tree") becomes an "apple bough" in the translation. So the version in Constantine and Kuhn's book is (at least based on my rudimentary high school German skills) closer to the original in the literal sense, but Mahon's is quite simply better poetry. Aside from the grace of the lines themselves, the tone is markedly different. In Mahon's version, the takeaway is one of ruefully jaded but still genuine romanticism. Constantine and Kuhn's rendering conveys little more than cynicism. Based on the Wiesler character's reaction in the clip linked at the beginning of this review, I'm inclined to side with the romantic interpretation.
That one long-winded complaint aside, I'm grateful to have this book and am more than sold on the idea that Brecht is one of the signature poetic voices of the last century. It will probably be a while before he is a serious rival of Rilke for the attention of English-speaking readers, but here's hoping he's on his way.
Since then, the only Brecht poetry in English I was able to get my hands on were the 18 poems (pretty much all of them great, including the poem from the movie, "Erinnerung an die Marie A." -- "Memory of Maria A." or "Remembering Maria A.") collected in Michael Hofmann's great anthology Twentieth-Century German Poetry. (Hofmann, in his introduction to the anthology, also complains a bit bitchily about the lack of Western love for Brecht's verse as opposed to his plays.)
Now, here's the first of a projected many volumes of Brecht's more than 2,000 poems in English, and on the whole it's pretty great and still comfortingly strange and transgressive. This is one of the standout poems for me:
Need For Art
The virtuous woman who gives her lover all
And offers up herself to him quite freely
Must learn that good intentions are not really
Quite enough -- he's also crying out for skill.
And even if her cry of "Iamyours"
Translates to sex with breakneck quickness
He isn't really interested in slickness
When it comes to emptying his swollen balls.
Although it may be love that stokes the fire
She'll need, for winters in those harsher years
Some real talent in that bum of hers.
More needful than a soulful gaze and sighs
(Although she'll need them too) are eager thighs
Performing tricks with gusto and desire.
So far removed from Robert Graves's comically prudish"Down, Wanton, Down!" -- and written at more or less the same time in the early twentieth century.
But the above sample also highlights my one complaint about this book: the translation itself -- a collaboration between David Constantine and Tom Kuhn, a couple of British academics -- which on the whole is rather dull and stilted. They also can't seem to help inserting British slang (e.g., "bum" instead of "ass") incongruously into the verse. A case in point is the "Marie A." poem. It's available in the Hofmann anthology in a lovely version by Derek Mahon, who retitled it "A Cloud" and took some other liberties with the original; for instance, Brecht's "Pflaumenbaum" ("plum tree") becomes an "apple bough" in the translation. So the version in Constantine and Kuhn's book is (at least based on my rudimentary high school German skills) closer to the original in the literal sense, but Mahon's is quite simply better poetry. Aside from the grace of the lines themselves, the tone is markedly different. In Mahon's version, the takeaway is one of ruefully jaded but still genuine romanticism. Constantine and Kuhn's rendering conveys little more than cynicism. Based on the Wiesler character's reaction in the clip linked at the beginning of this review, I'm inclined to side with the romantic interpretation.
That one long-winded complaint aside, I'm grateful to have this book and am more than sold on the idea that Brecht is one of the signature poetic voices of the last century. It will probably be a while before he is a serious rival of Rilke for the attention of English-speaking readers, but here's hoping he's on his way.
Read
December 27, 2014I didn't like this as much as I expected I would. The volume and variety of poems is impressive, but very few of them really grabbed me. If this was due to Brecht practicing the "distancing" effect he's famous for in his plays, I have to say it was a bad idea to apply it to love poetry!
Many of the poems are sonnets, ballads, or "psalms" that approach love in a diagrammatic way, illustrating or declaiming on aspects of it, but nothing they say is terribly insightful or revelatory. If what you want, however, is a kind of catalog of standard (and at times, even stereotypical) sentiments about love expressed (admittedly very competently) through a variety of standard poetic forms, then this could be a good book for you.
My two favorite poems in the collection were "To M" and "The actress in exile". In the first, the actual individual human being who is the poet speaks of his personal experience in a way that doesn't happen much in the rest of the book. The poem even ends with a kind of distorted grammar, as if it were being compressed by the weight of emotion it was asked to bear. In the second, we see an actual individual woman described with great detail and focus. The love implicit in that concentrated gaze is more potent than any generalization about Love found elsewhere in the book.
Many of the poems are sonnets, ballads, or "psalms" that approach love in a diagrammatic way, illustrating or declaiming on aspects of it, but nothing they say is terribly insightful or revelatory. If what you want, however, is a kind of catalog of standard (and at times, even stereotypical) sentiments about love expressed (admittedly very competently) through a variety of standard poetic forms, then this could be a good book for you.
My two favorite poems in the collection were "To M" and "The actress in exile". In the first, the actual individual human being who is the poet speaks of his personal experience in a way that doesn't happen much in the rest of the book. The poem even ends with a kind of distorted grammar, as if it were being compressed by the weight of emotion it was asked to bear. In the second, we see an actual individual woman described with great detail and focus. The love implicit in that concentrated gaze is more potent than any generalization about Love found elsewhere in the book.
July 19, 2015
Wish I could give it 3.5 stars. I didn't really enjoy this nearly as much as I thought I would.
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