The Collected Poems of Bertolt Brecht

by Tom Kuhn

And the better they spoke

  The better speakers they were.

  5

  As to those querulous persons

  Who rebel against the laws, they shouldn’t

  Be reasoned with.

  It will have no effect.

  Better to photograph them.

  Say nothing clever to them, nothing difficult.

  Some of my friends from the south should have a word with them

  No noise without content

  No emptiness with élan

  But

  Clearly.

  To my son

  1

  You must behave in such a fashion that they will want to photograph you in your most comfortable suit.

  2

  What you need of ethics is: that you act like the boy you would like to be. You must know: I am someone with whom you can have all sorts of dealings.

  3

  The important things are those that you do for the second time.

  4

  When you have achieved something you wanted it will have been important only if you learned something achieving it.

  5

  Other people are never to blame. In matters concerning you, they are numbskulls.

  6

  A top-class lad has enough common sense to do some good.

  7

  Vices are things you can’t afford. You are an inferior person if other people can’t afford you.

  8

  In your dealings with people (including yourself) it is important to make the brutality of the situation the declared basis of every action. Only then may kindness etc. begin (kindness being self-assurance from which others may profit).

  9

  There are about 1600 million people too many in the world. That is about the total number of human beings in the world. But a few of them cause these facts to be forgotten—they themselves don’t forget them.

  10

  The decisive thing is not how many successes you achieve but: how many defeats you can withstand.

  11

  Plans are something for people who can let them drop. You must do what is possible, but know: the best thing is to do nothing.

  12

  In your dealings with the world don’t try not to show your weaknesses: you won’t be able to.

  13

  A man with no chances left is worse off than one who only has chances—

  and even if he has achieved all he wanted, because: he wanted too little.

  Ane Smith relates the conquest of America

  In the beginning

  It was grassland from

  The Atlantic Ocean to the quiet Pacific

  Bear and buffalo

  Ran by the nameless Mississippi

  And the red man

  Ate their bloody flesh and his horse

  The grass

  One day a man with white skin arrived

  He made a noise and spat chunks of iron

  When he was hungry and he was

  Always hungry

  The red man was still killing the red man

  On the Mississippi River but already

  The white man was passing by, many a white man

  With firewater, chunks of iron and the good book, the Bible

  And soon

  In red men chunks of iron were found and in bears and buffalo

  For thrice one hundred years between

  The Atlantic Ocean and the quiet Pacific

  The red men died

  But

  The waters were divided and the white man

  Lifted forth from them the yellow metal

  And the earth tore under his hands

  And out of it ran

  The golden oil and on all sides

  Out of the rotting grass the wooden huts grew and

  Out of the huts of wood mountains of stone that were

  Called cities in which walked

  The white people and said on the terrestrial globe

  A new age has begun and is called the Age of Iron

  But the cities

  Burned through the nights

  With golden electricity

  And by day

  Up through the rotting forests thundered the trains

  Buffalo and red men

  Were dead but

  There was oil and iron and gold more than water

  And with music and screaming the white people sat

  In the everlasting prairies of stone

  But the names of the places were

  Arkansas, Connecticut, Ohio

  New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts

  And still today

  There are men and oil and it is said

  It is the greatest earthly race

  That lives now and all

  Build houses and say

  Mine is higher and they are where there is oil

  Travel in iron trains to the ends of the earth

  Grow wheat and sell it over the seas

  And no longer die unknown but are

  An everlasting race in the terrestrial globe’s

  Greatest age

  The good times

  Vis-à-vis

  My red jalousie

  I used to have, when God still smiled on me, a clock

  I played cards all the time, and tobacco, yes, I smoked a lot

  My squaw was always cow-warm, I’d put away my tomahawk

  Evenings I spent drinking in the Cherry Brandy Bar

  At eleven, going on, I went to my woman with not a care

  And fell asleep at twelve, my flesh grown slack.

  Jeppe Karl

  You met Jeppe Karl in Hamburg, he’d tell you, “Lobster’s the name”

  He was a barman in the Crimea for a time

  And a big shot in the South Seas

  And the talk of Chicago once, for three days.

  He was the man who in the Philippines

  Chased by tigers up a monkey-bread tree

  Smoked monkey-bread leaves as though he was where he had always wanted to be

  Until there wasn’t a leaf on a monkey-bread branch to be seen

  Alas. But he shot the tigers and calmly went his ways.

  He could also, when the mood took him, lift

  Four teeth from a man without him noticing it

  And for example out of the earthquake in Trebizond

  He returned with a valuable pedigree hound.

  He was related by marriage to German drovers and Japanese marchionesses.

  Eight ships went to the bottom under him, he chatted

  With sharks as you might with the herring lasses.

  Jeppe Karl is buried in the Emerald Isle.

  He met his end in almost tragic style:

  In drink he drowned, hairy and matted

  In a strongly stinking brandy vat

  His last words: Everything’s shit. Even dead

  He looked frightful, it is said.

  Anna Schreiber’s last letter

  I went to matins last at the end of September

  I was full of doubts then already and in distress

  And then—a thing I never thought could happen ever—

  Middle of October this year suddenly I got syphilis

  I was washing myself in the morning and suddenly

  Saw the pale pink marks on my belly and tried first to

  Wash them off wet but at noon in the clinic they told me

  Alas I was already infected through and through

  I couldn’t very well confide in my father because

  In his opinions he is very behind the times

  I feel sorry for him, he’ll find out soon enough because

  Often syphilis eats away at the nose and even the jaw sometimes.

  Now I often can’t find my plate at midday

  And I catch hold of everything with a cloth when I cook

  And the whole room stinks of me anyway

  And I used to change my shift only twice a week.

  Remarkable how even the
greatest pass . . .

  Remarkable how even the greatest pass

  And nothing’s left but dust. Are but as grass.

  Hardly anything is so terrible and unexplained as that.

  In Altötting for example, Adults 2 Marks Only, you can view

  The Catholic general Tilly in his coffin, treated, under glass

  And a notice: Do not touch Tilly!

  And I had it from the attendant himself side by side with me at the bier

  And why should he tell me anything that wasn’t true?

  And what he said is right, undoubtedly:

  A few years ago His Lordship the General still had hair.

  Always gives you a shock, a thing like that.

  Bertolt Brecht’s

  Domestic Breviary

  The earliest poem in this collection, ‘Song of the Fort Donald railroad gang,’ was written in 1916; the latest are the ‘Mahagonny Songs’ of 1924–25. Brecht offered the book, in provisional form, to the publisher Kiepenheuer towards the end of 1921, but for various reasons no publication ensued until 1926, and then only in twenty-five copies “for the author’s own use,” with the title Taschenpostille (Pocket Breviary). The Domestic Breviary (pretty much the same text) came out the following year from the Propyläen-Verlag. In its format that first edition answered closely to Brecht’s wish that the poems should be presented and understood as a polemical contrafacture of the traditional—both Lutheran and Catholic—breviary. Each page was divided into two columns and the poems were set out down them, prayer-book and Bible style. The Propyläen Domestic Breviary of 1927 was far more conventional in its appearance. The shock of the poems, however, was undiminished. What might be called the “pose” of the book—its calling on the reader not to gobble the contents down unheedingly—is at once facetious and serious. A Nietzschean “Umwertung aller Werte” (revaluation of all values) is under way, and that needs attending to carefully. In 1940, as a Marxist poet in exile, Brecht came to view his Domestic Breviary as a product of bourgeois decadence and collapse. “Beauty established on wrecks,” he commented. “Risus mortis [Grin of death].” And added: “but not without power.”

  DIRECTIONS FOR THE USE OF THE INDIVIDUAL LESSONS

  This domestic breviary is intended to be used. Readers are not to sink their teeth into it senselessly.

  The first lesson (‘Supplications’) appeals directly to the reader’s feelings. It is not advisable to read too much of it at once. Moreover, only people in perfect health should make use of this lesson intended for the feelings. The Apfelböck mentioned in Chapter 2, born in 1906 in Munich, became known for murdering his parents. The Marie Farrar portrayed in Chapter 3, born in Augsburg on the Lech a year earlier than the Apfelböck mentioned in Chapter 2, was tried for infanticide at the tender age of sixteen. Farrar aroused emotion in the court by her innocence and lack of human feelings. The François Villon mentioned in Chapter 9 made a name for himself by an attempt at robbery and murder as well as by some (probably obscene) poems.

  The second lesson (‘Spiritual Exercises’) appeals more to the faculty of reason. To profit from it, it should be read slowly and repeatedly and never without naivety. From the maxims hidden in it, as well as from its explicit directions, much that is instructive for living may be gained. Thus Chapter 11 (‘Orge’s reply’) considers certain tribulations that few are spared, while Chapter 5 (‘Legend of Malchus, the pig in love’) warns against causing offence by excess of feeling.

  The third lesson (‘Chronicles’) should be leafed through in times of brutal violence in nature. In times of brutal violence in nature (downpours, snowfalls, bankruptcies etc.) the adventures of bold men and women in foreign parts are something to hold on to, and such adventures are to be found in the Chronicles, which have been kept so simple that they might be thought suitable reading for primary schools. Smoking is recommended when reading the Chronicles aloud, and a stringed instrument may be used to accompany and support the voice. Chapter 2 (‘Ballad on many ships’) is to be read in moments of danger: in that chapter the Rubber Man makes an appearance. The men of Fort Donald in Chapter 4 belonged to the railroad gangs who laid the first tracks right through the wilderness of the Rocky Mountains. Chapter 6 (‘Ballad of the pirates’) is chiefly intended for the bright June nights; but the latter part of this ballad, insofar as it treats the pirates’ downfall, may also be sung as late as October. The tune is that of ‘L’Étandard de la pitié’. Chapter 8 (‘Hannah Cash’) will suit times of unprecedented persecution. (In times of unprecedented persecution a woman’s devotion becomes manifest.)

  The fourth lesson (‘Mahagonny Songs’) is the right thing for periods of wealth, for consciousness of the flesh, for an arrogant boldness. (And will therefore be appropriate for very few readers.) Such are free to launch into the songs with all the voice and feeling they can muster (but no miming).

  There will be hours of the day for remembrance and early happenings. The following five chapters of the fifth lesson (‘The Brief Hours of the Dead’) are for remembrance and early happenings. The second chapter, concerning the seduced girls, is to be accompanied by harsh discords on a stringed instrument. It has the epigraph: “As thanks that the sun shines on them, things cast shadows.” The third chapter, concerning the drowned girl, is to be read with whispering labials. The fourth chapter, on the Liebestod, is dedicated to the memory of the two lovers Franz Diekmann and Frieda Lang of Augsburg. The fifth chapter, concerning the dead soldier, is in memory of infantryman Christian Grumbeis, who was born on April 11, 1897, in Aichach and who died in Easter Week 1918 in Karasin (southern Russia).

  After reading the rather sombre lesson of ‘The Brief Hours of the Dead’ the final chapter belonging with it should then be read. Altogether it would be advisable to conclude every reading of the Domestic Breviary with that final chapter.

  The appendix (‘On poor B.B.’) is dedicated to George Pfanzelt, Caspar Neher and Otto Müllereisert, all from Augsburg.

  FIRST LESSON: SUPPLICATIONS

  The bread and the little children

  1

  The children have not eaten

  The bread in the wooden shrine

  Rather than that, cried the children

  We’d eat a cold stone.

  2

  And so the bread went mouldy

  For none would eat the bread.

  It looked to heaven meekly

  And softly the cupboard said:

  3

  “One day they’ll fall on any

  Meanest bit of bread

  Though scantly spiced it will be

  But the body must be fed.”

  4

  The little children journeyed

  On many roads and far

  And came as they were bound to

  Beyond Christ’s frontier.

  5

  Children among the heathen

  Hunger thin and white.

  The heathen give to no one

  Ever a bite to eat.

  6

  Now they’d fall on any

  Meanest bit of bread

  Scantly spiced it may be

  But the body must be fed.

  7

  But the bread that had mouldered

  It fed the sheep and kine.

  Please God, in heaven for the children

  A pinch of spice remain.

  Apfelböck or the lily of the field

  1

  In a mild light Jakob Apfelböck

  Murdered father and mother and both of them

  He shut up in the cupboard where the washing went

  And stayed on in the house, just him.

  2

  Under the heavens clouds swam on their way

  The airs around the house were summer-mild

  And there within, in that same house, he sat

  Who seven days ago was still a child.

  3

  The days went by as did the nights also

  And all but this and that remained the same
>
  And with his parents Jakob Apfelböck

  Was simply waiting for whatever came.

  4

  And when from the cupboard the corpses’ smell came in

  Jakob purchased an azalea

  And thenceforth Jakob Apfelböck

  Poor child he went to sleep on the sofa.

  5

  The milkwoman still brings the milk into the house

  Creamy buttermilk, sweet, cool and rich

  And what he doesn’t drink Jakob tips out

  For Jakob Apfelböck no longer drinks that much.

  6

  The paperman still brings the newspaper

  Enters in the evening light with a heavy tread

  And clatters it through the letterbox. However

  By Jakob Apfelböck it won’t be read.

  7

  And when the corpses smelled all through the house

  Jakob wept, the smell made him poorly.

  And weeping, Jakob Apfelböck moved out

  And after that slept on the balcony.

  8

  The paperman, arriving daily, spoke

  What is that smell here? I smell something bad.

  In a mild light Jakob Apfelböck

  It is the washing you can smell, he said.

  9

  Arriving daily, then the milkwoman spoke

  What is that smell here? It smells like dying stuff.

  In a mild light said Jakob Apfelböck

  It is the veal in the cupboard going off.

  10

  And when they looked into that cupboard of his

  In a mild light Jakob Apfelböck stood by

  And when they asked him why he had done this