Bertolt Brecht: Poetry and Prose

by Bertolt Brecht, Reinhold Grimm (Editor), Caroline Molina y Vedia (Editor)

This volume contains selected poems by Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) taken from various points throughout his career. English translations are presented on the facing pages. Also included are translations of two prose works: "Socrates Wounded" and "The Unseemly Old Lady." Grimm (affiliation not cited) provides some background information on Brecht's life and career in the introduction. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Genres: Poetry, Philosophy

148 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Eugen 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.

Reviews

[Aerandir · Rating 3 out of 5]

"She has savoured to the full the long years of servitude and the short years of freedom and consumed the bread of life to the last crumb."

The selected poems and prose are an interesting introduction to Brecht as not only a playwright. I really appreciated them especially the poem on abortion (Von der Kindesmoerderin Marie Farrar), homeless (Die Nachlager) and many others about the atrocities of war and other topics. The translation left much to be desired and often took considerable liberties. I'll now move onto his first few plays...

[Nuri · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

And you I beg, make not your anger manifest
For all that lives needs help from all the rest.

I decided to rate this ⭐⭐ as I wanted to put this book down shortly after reading a few page but I tried to go along. I wasn't particularly thrilled after reading it but I was also not disappointed.

Bertolt is a famous playwright but I don't feel that poetry was his forte. Or maybe it's just the way the poems are translated from German? Or maybe they carry more depth in German.

The book is a collection of poems written between 1927-1956. They revolve around the theme of war, suffering, escape from Nazi Germany.

Only while gathering these poems for this review, was I struck by the details that painted quite a picture of the war time and suffering that people witnessed and died from — it's hard to fathom, but it brought me closer to feeling the pain of those who were slaughtered or fled away — away from brutality but into the arms of Death.

Following two poems are heart wrenching — "On the Infanticide (Von der Kindesmorderin) about a girl, who was a minor, unwed mother, who bore a child and had to kill him. The details in here, of an unblessed pregnancy shook me.

On the Infanticide (excerpt)

[...] Between the servants' privy and her bed (she says
That nothing happened until then),
the child Began to cry, which vexed her so, she says
She beat it with her fists, hammering blind and wild
Without a pause until the child was quiet, she says.
She took the baby's body into bed
And held it for the rest of the night, she says
Then in the morning hid it in the laundry shed.
But you I beg, make not your anger manifest
For all that lives needs help from all the rest.

Marie Farrar: month of birth, April
Died in the Meissen penitentiary
An unwed mother, judged by the law, she will
Show you how all that lives, lives frailly.
You who bear your sons in laundered linen sheets
And call your pregnancies a " blessed" state
Should never damn the outcast and the weak:
Her sin was heavy, but her suffering great.
Therefore, I beg, make not your anger manifest
For all that lives needs help from all the rest.

Children's Crusade
(the hunger stricken children gathered around Poland and marched for their safety)

In thirty nine
in Poland
There was a bloody fight
And many a town and village
Turned to waste land overnight.
Sisters lost their brothers
Wives were widowed by the war
And in fire and desolation
Children found their kin no more.
There came no news from Poland
Neither letter nor printed word
But in an eastern country
A curious tale is heard.
Snow fell, as they related
In a certain eastern town
How a new crusade of children
In Poland had begun.
For all along the highways
Troops of hungry children roamed
And gathered to them others
Who stood by ruined homes.
They wished t o flee the slaughter
For the nightmare did not cease
And some day reach a country
Where there was peace.
They had a little leader
To show them where to go.
Yet he was sorely troubled
Since the way he did not know.
A girl of ten was carrying
A little child of four.
All she lacked to be a mother
Was a country without war.
In a coat with a velvet collar
A little Jew was dressed
He had been reared on whitest bread
But he marched on with the rest.
There was a thin and wretched boy
Who held himself apart.
That he came from a Nazi legation
Was a load of guilt in his heart.
They also had a dog with them
Which they had caught for food.
They spared it; so, another mouth
It followed where it would.
There was a school for penmanship
And teaching did not cease.
On the broken side of a tank
They learned to spell out peace.
A girl of twelve, a boy of fifteen
Had a love affair
And in a ruined farmyard
She sat and combed his hair.
But love could not endure
Cold wind began to blow:
And how can saplings bloom
When covered deep in snow?
They had a funeral besides
Two Poles and two Germans carried
The boy with the velvet collar
To the place where he was buried.
There were Catholics and Protestants
And Nazis at the grave
At the end a little
Communist spoke
Of the future the living have.
So there was faith and hope
But the lack of bread and meat.
And if they stole let no one blame
Who never bade them eat.
Let no one blame the poor man
Who never asked them in
For many have the will but have
No flour in the bin.
They strove to travel southward.
The south is where, 'tis said
At high noon the sun stands
Directly overhead.
They found a wounded soldier
In a pinewood one day.


And for a week they tended him
In hopes he'd know the way.
To Bilgoray, he said to them.
The fever made him rave.
Upon the eighth day he died.
They laid him in his grave.
Sometimes there were signposts
Though covered up in snow
All turned around and pointing wrong
But this they did not know.
And no grim joke it was, but done
On military grounds.
And long they sought for Bilgoray
Which never could be found.
They stood about their leader.
Who stared at the snowy sky.
He pointed with his finger
Saying: Yonder it must lie.
Once, at night, they saw a fire
They turned away in fear.
Once three tanks came rolling by
Which meant that men were near.
Once, when they reached a city
They veered and went around.
They traveled then by night alone
Till they had passed the town.
Towards what was south-east Poland
In deeply drifting snow

The five and fifty children
Were last seen to go.
And if I close my eyes
I see them wander on
From one ruined barnyard
To another one.
Above them in the clouds I see
A new and greater host
Wearily breasting the cold wind
Homeless and lost
Seeking for a land of peace
Without the crash and flame of war
That scars the soil from which they came
And this host is always more.
Now in the gloom it seems to me
They come from many other places:
In the changing clouds I see
Spanish, French, yellow faces.
In January of that year
Poles caught a hungry dog
Around whose neck a placard hung
'Twas tied there with a cord.
These words thereon were:
Please send help!
We don't know where we are.
We are five and fifty
The dog will lead you here.
And if you cannot come to us
Please drive him out.

REMEMBERING MARIE A.

It was a day in that blue month September
Silent beneath a plum tree's slender shade
I held her there, my love so pale and silent
As if she were a dream that must not fade.
Above us in the shining summer heaven
There was a cloud my eyes dwelt long upon
It was quite white and very high above us
Then I looked up, and found that it had gone.
And since that day so many moons, in silence
Have swum across the sky and gone below.
The plum trees surely have been chopped for firewood
And if you ask, how does that love seem now?
I must admit: I really can't remember
And yet I know what you are trying to say.
But what her face was like I know no longer
I only know: I kissed it on that day.
As for the kiss, I'd long ago forgot it
But for the cloud that floated in the sky
I know that still, and shall for ever know it
It was quite white and moved in very high.
It may be that the plum trees still are blooming
That woman's seventh child may now be there
And yet that cloud had only bloomed for minutes
When I looked up, it vanished on the air.

[Evan Pincus · Rating 2 out of 5]

Found myself frustrated by metric irregularities and questionable rhymes in the poems where meter and rhyme came into play, found myself frustrated by strange formatting even in the poems where meter and rhyme didn't come into play, found myself confused by the tenuous links between the works collected - having never read any Brecht, I couldn't say for certain whether my problems lie entirely with the translation and anthologization, but I have my suspicions.

[Alexa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, I love his style. The drama of the theatre, but in poem form. Certainly more different than what I think of the conventional poetic style.

[pablo! · Rating 5 out of 5]

I sit by the roadside
The driver changes the wheel.
I do not like the place I have come from. I do not like the place I am going to. Why with impatience do I
Watch him changing the wheel?

[Sidsel Sander · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brecht er helt klart en af mine yndlingsforfattere!

[Martin · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was surprised how far short this fell of my expectations. For all his brilliance in the theatre Brecht was not much of a poet.