The Collected Poems of Bertolt Brecht
Page 91
[Die Schrift sagt, sie steht still]
BFA 14, 420; c. 1938; P1955; T.K.
Written just when he had completed the first version of Life of Galileo, this is introduced by Andrea in Scene 8 (9 in the later version). Legend has it that Galileo said, “Eppur si muove” (“And yet it moves”), after his public recantation.
Solomon song
[Salomon Song]
BFA 14, 451; 1939; P1948; T.K.
The first version of this was written in 1928 for The Threepenny Opera and in the later 1930s and 1940s Brecht several times reworked it, especially in the context of Mother Courage and Her Children.
I shall go with the one I love . . .
[Ich will mit dem gehen, den ich liebe]
BFA 14, 458; c. 1939; P1953; T.K.
From The Good Person of Szechwan, but also published by Brecht as an independent poem.
The song of St Neverever Day
[Das Lied vom Sankt Nimmerleinstag]
BFA 15, 7; 1940; P1953; T.K.
This was part of The Good Person of Szechwan from the very beginning. It is sung by Sun in Scene 6 when the guests are waiting in vain for the arrival of Shui Ta.
Song of the defencelessness of the gods and the good
[Das Lied von der Wehrlosigkeit der Götter und Guten]
BFA 15, 8; 1940; P1945; T.K.
Another song from The Good Person of Szechwan.
Song of the smoke
[Das Lied vom Rauch]
BFA 15, 37; 1941; P1953; T.K.
In 1941 Brecht added this to Scene 1 of The Good Person of Szechwan (compare ‘In the beginning, in my childhood . . .’ in Part I).
When we came to Milano . . .
[Als wir kamen vor Milano]
BFA 15, 84; 1943; P1964; T.K.
This came about during the work on The Duchess of Malfi. There are different versions of parts in various drafts of the play, and it was also under consideration for Mother Courage.
The people say . . .
[Im Volk heisst es]
BFA 15, 106; 1944; P1982; T.K.
A version of this appeared in the first draft of The Caucasian Chalk Circle.
When I am lying in my churchyard grave
[Wenn ich auf dem Kirchhof liegen werde]
BFA 15, 108; 1944; P1949; T.K.
The soldiers sing this in Scene 3 of The Caucasian Chalk Circle. Brecht borrowed it from a Moravian song by way of Béla Bartók’s Slovak Folksongs.
The terrifying doctrine and opinions of the Master Court Physicist Galileo Galilei, or A foretaste of the future
[Die erschröckliche Lehre und Meinung des Herrn Hofphysikers Galileo Galilei oder Ein Vorgeschmack der Zukunft]
BFA 15, 167; c. 1945; P1955 (German) 1952 (English); Brecht/Charles Laughton/Ferdinand Reyher
This ballad came into being during the final phase of the English reworking with Charles Laughton of the play Life of Galileo. No German text from this period survives, but it was translated back into German in 1947/48, or rather reconceived (for the German text is rather different). It is sung, with various scenic interruptions, by the Ballad Singer and his Wife in Scene 10 of the play.
The song of fraternization
[Lied vom Fraternisieren]
BFA 15, 177; 1946; P1949; T.K.
This song is sung by the camp-following prostitute, Yvette, in later versions of Mother Courage.
POEMS FOR MARGARETE STEFFIN, 1938–1941
The 21st sonnet
[Das 21. Sonett]
BFA 14, 418; c. 1938; P1964; D.C.
Sonnet
[Sonett: Und nun ist Krieg]
BFA 14, 437; 1939; P1964; D.C.
Sonnet No. 19
[Sonett Nr. 19]
BFA 14, 437; 1939; P1964; D.C.
Then at the last, when death . . .
[Als es soweit war]
BFA 15, 40; 1941; P1964; D.C.
Now, oh fearing for our lives . . .
[Fürchtend, ach, für unser Leben]
BFA 15, 40; 1941; P1965; D.C.
Written on the Annie Johnson from Vladivostok to Los Angeles, between June 13 and July 21, 1941.
Wreckage
[Die Trümmer]
BFA 15, 42; 1941; P1964; D.C.
Remembering my little teacher . . .
[Eingedenk meiner kleinen Lehrmeisterin]
BFA 15, 43; 1941; P1964; D.C.
In the ninth year fleeing from Hitler . . .
[Im neunten Jahre der Flucht vor Hitler]
BFA 15, 44; 1941; P1964; D.C.
My general has fallen . . .
[Mein General ist gefallen]
BFA 15, 45; 1941; P1964; D.C.
After the death of my collaborator M.S.
[Nach dem Tod meiner Mitarbeiterin M.S.]
BFA 15, 45; 1941; P1964; D.C.
CHILDREN’S CRUSADE 1939
[Kinderkreuzzug 1939]
BFA 15, 50; 1941; P1942; D.C.
Children’s Crusade had its origin in a poem by Arvo Turtiainen that a friend of Brecht’s translated into German for him in Finland in April 1941. Brecht wrote a poem of his own out of it, ‘The war dog’ (below). Then, already in Santa Monica, he thought he might use the story for a film script, but noted in his Journal (December 17, 1941) that he had made a ballad of it instead. Translated into English by Hedda Korsch, it was first published in The German American in New York in December 1942. Since then it has often been translated, adapted, and performed. Benjamin Britten set it for children’s voices and orchestra to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Save the Children at a concert in St. Paul’s Cathedral on May 19, 1969. The title alludes to the notorious Children’s Crusade of 1212, in which thousands of children from France and Germany were lured onto ships in Marseilles, bound for the Holy Land as they believed, and sold into slavery in Alexandria. Biłgoraj, about fifty miles south of Lublin, lay by the end of 1939 on the border of German-occupied Poland and the Soviet Union. On one typescript of the poem Brecht added a dedication “to the memory of Margarete Steffin who died of exhaustion fleeing from Hitler.”
UNCOLLECTED POEMS 1941–1942
The war dog
[Der Kriegshund]
BFA 15, 39; 1941; P1967; T.K.
See note on Children’s Crusade, above.
Ode to a High Dignitary
[Ode an einen hohen Würdenträger]
BFA 15, 46; 1941; P1964; D.C.
The poem treats the ever more anxious efforts made by Brecht’s party in Finland in 1940–41 to get visas to the United States. “The little door” is the Finnish port of Petsamo from which, briefly, it was possible to sail. By the time their visas came through, that door had closed, so they took the land route across the Soviet Union to Vladivostok.
At the sight of a severed tree root looking like a fallen man
[Angesichts einer abgeschlagenen Baumwurzel, einem gestürzten Mann gleichend]
BFA 15, 39; 1941; P1964; T.K.
And I saw fields greening . . .
[Und ich sah Felder grünen]
BFA 15, 39; 1941; P1993; T.K.
Fragment.
The beam
[Der Balken]
BFA 15, 42; 1941; P1964; D.C.
The typhoon
[Der Taifun]
BFA 15, 42; 1941; P1964; D.C.
W.B.
[W.B.]
Benjamin und Brecht. Denken in Extremen (Berlin, 2017), p. 11; 1941; P2017; T.K.
A fleeting pencil sketch and possibly Brecht’s first reaction to the news of his friend’s death. Benjamin committed suicide in Portbou on September 26, 1940. Having crossed into the supposed safety of Spain, his party were told they would be returned to France—which for him would have meant certain death. The news did not reach Brecht until the summer of 1941. The next three poems refer again to this.
To Walter Benjamin who, fleeing from Hitler, took his own life
[An Walter Benjamin . . . ]
BFA 15, 41; 1941; P1964; D.C.
On the suicide of the refug
ee W.B.
[Zum Freitod des Flüchtlings W.B.]
BFA 15, 48; 1941; P1964; D.C.
The losses
[Die Verlustliste]
BFA 15, 43; 1941; P1964; D.C.
I asked myself: why talk to them?
[Ich fragte mich: warum reden mit ihnen?]
BFA 15, 44; 1941; P1967; D.C.
Brecht in the early days of his exile in America, uneasy among the people he was meeting.
Autumn in California
[Kalifornischer Herbst]
BFA 15, 44; 1941; P1964; D.C.
In August 1941 Brecht and his family moved into a house on Argyle Avenue in Santa Monica.
Thinking about Hell . . .
[Nachdenkend, wie ich höre]
BFA 15, 46; 1941; P1964; D.C.
Shelley brings London and Hell together in his Peter Bell the Third.
Sonnet of an emigrant
[Sonett in der Emigration]
BFA 15, 48; 1941; P1964; D.C.
I am the god of fortune . . .
[Ich bin der Glücksgott]
BFA 15, 56; 1941; P1967; T.K.
In November 1941 Brecht acquired a small Chinese statue of a god of good fortune which was to inspire (unexecuted) plans for a cycle of Songs of the God of Good Fortune and an opera The Travels of the God of Good Fortune, neither of which progressed very far. He bought a second little sculpture which he sent to Fritz Lang with these lines. See also below, ‘I am the patron . . .’ and ‘Instruction in love.’
In view of the circumstances in this city
[Angesichts der Zustände in dieser Stadt]
BFA 15, 58; c. 1941; P1964; T.K.
Another of Brecht’s first poems about Los Angeles.
Red carnival
[Die rote Fastnacht]
BFA 15, 59; c. 1941; P1982; T.K.
Compare ‘Metamorphosis of the gods’ (below).
In this country, I hear . . .
[In diesem Land, höre ich]
BFA 15, 60; c. 1941; P1982; T.K.
Self-laceration of the proletariat
[Selbstzerfleischung des Proletariats]
BFA 15, 61; c. 1941/42; P1993; T.K.
This poem survives as a clean typescript with the designation “fragment” typed beneath the title and the sheet of paper cleanly torn below the bottom line.
The master race
[Die Herrenrasse]
BFA 15, 62; c. 1941; P1982; T.K.
To the German soldiers in the East
[An die deutschen Soldaten im Osten]
BFA 15, 64; 1942; P1942; T.K.
The poem was an immediate response to the reversals the German army suffered between August 1941 (Battle of Smolensk) and January 1942. It exists in several typescripts and variants, and was several times published in slightly different versions in 1942 and 1943. Later versions were sometimes given the title ‘Lament for the dead 1941.’ Our version follows the first publication, with some elements incorporated from the last version that Brecht reworked for his One Hundred Poems (1951).
Song of the Polish Jews in the Soviet Union
[Lied der polnischen Juden in der Sowjetunion]
BFA 15, 69; 1942; P1982; T.K.
Sarny is a small city, then on the border between Poland and western Ukraine. In 1941 it had a population of 10,500 Jews, of whom 3,500 could escape to the Soviet Union. In August 1942, after the writing of this song, it was the site of the murder of between 14,000 and 18,000 mostly Jewish people by German troops and the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police.
And what did the soldier’s wife get?
[Und was bekam des Soldaten Weib?]
BFA 15, 71; 1942; P1942; T.K.
The first version of this song was written in response to the events of the war in the winter of 1941/42, but it was several times reworked and towns were added (Warsaw, Rotterdam, Tripoli) and removed (Amsterdam, Bucharest). This version is modeled on that which made its way into the play Schweyk in the Second World War, where it is called ‘The song of the Nazi soldier’s wife.’ Brecht said he didn’t wish to blame the common soldier for looting. There are settings by Eisler, Weill, and Dessau.
Finnish workers . . .
[Die finnischen Arbeiter]
BFA 15, 72; 1942; P1967; T.K.
Brecht wrote this after one Samuel Bernstein, a tailor and owner of a dry cleaner’s, gave him a suit in thanks for the songs ‘And what did the soldier’s wife get?’ and ‘To the German soldiers in the East,’ which he had just heard in Yiddish translation in Los Angeles. The poem also commemorates the assistance of the many friends who helped Brecht and his family and associates in Finland and in Moscow.
Song of the tank crew
[Lied der Besatzung des Panzerkarrens]
BFA 15, 72; 1942; P1944; T.K.
Brecht wrote this chorus for the American production of scenes from Fear and Misery of the Third Reich, which premiered under the title The Private Life of the Master Race, in a translation by Eric Russell Bentley. Hanns Eisler set it to a variation on the Nazi ‘Horst Wessel Song.’
Summer 1942
[Sommer 1942]
BFA 15, 74; 1942; P1964; T.K.
The poem refers to Brecht’s new home in Santa Monica.
Time and again . . .
[Immer wieder]
BFA 15, 78; 1942; P1967; T.K.
Young man on the escalator
[Junger Mann auf der Rolltreppe]
BFA 15, 79; 1942; P1965; T.K.
What exactly of Eliot’s Brecht had in mind we do not know. This parodic account of male, Prufrockian hesitation on the brink, and confronted with that emblem of modernity, the moving staircase (department store or hotel), is reminiscent of ‘The Love Song’ (1917), and in form and style more of the later collection, Poems (1920). Eliot and Brecht were of course light-years apart in social sympathies.
When I came back from Saint-Nazaire . . .
[Als ich ging nach Saint Nazaire]
BFA 15, 74; 1942; P1956; D.C.
Originally written for the play The Visions of Simone Machard.
Brother, now’s the time . . .
[Bruder, es ist Zeit]
BFA 15, 74; 1942; P1967; T.K.
This was written to the tune of the ‘Comintern Song’ (‘Verlass die Maschinen’) for the Fritz Lang film which eventually appeared in 1943 under the title Hangmen Also Die; there the translation, which Brecht wrote off as “unbelievable crap,” is called ‘No surrender.’ A typescript of the song also features as the conclusion to the ‘Koloman Wallisch Cantata’ (see above). The song and the film refer to events in the Czech mining village of Lidice: in response to the assassination of the Nazi governor Reinhard Heydrich in May 1942 the SS burned the village to the ground, shot all the men, and took the women and children to concentration camps.
When I was robbed . . .
[Als ich bestohlen wurde]
BFA 15, 75; 1942; P1967; T.K.
Answer of the practitioner of dialectics when reproached that his prediction of the defeat of Hitler’s armies in the East had not come to pass
[Antwort des Dialektikers, als ihm vorgeworfen wurde, seine Voraussage der Niederlage der Hitlerheere im Osten sei nicht eingetroffen]
BFA 15, 75; 1942; P1964; T.K.
Smoke signal; In pale white smoke . . .
[Das Rauchzeichen; Mit weissem Rauch]
BFA 15, 75 and 80; c. 1942; P1982; T.K.
These two may be fragmentary drafts of the same idea or complementary responses to the same image. The style is similar to the Hollywood Elegies (below).
Germany
[Deutschland]
BFA 15, 76; 1942; P1943; T.K.
The world reverberates . . .
[Die Welt hallt wider]
BFA 15, 76; 1942; P1967; T.K.
Under the sign of the tortoise
[Im Zeichen der Schildkröte]
BFA 15, 76; 1942; P1967; T.K.
Time and again . . .
[Immer wieder]
BFA 15, 77; 1942; P1964; T
.K.
In the second stanza Brecht refers to the registration and evacuation of Japanese Californians after the attack on Pearl Harbor (December 1941).
Song of a German mother
[Lied einer deutschen Mutter]
BFA 15, 80; 1942; P1943; D.C.
The poem was first published in the émigré newspaper Freiheit für Österreich (Freedom for Austria) on January 15, 1943.
Citizenship exam
[Das Bürgerschaftsexamen]
BFA 15, 80; c. 1942; P1967; T.K.
When the no-season evening . . .
[Wenn der jahrzeitlose Abend]
BFA 15, 82; c. 1942; P1993; T.K.
Whatever your name . . .
[Wie immer du heisst]
BFA 15, 82; c. 1942; P1982; T.K.
Reading the newspaper while making tea
[Zeitungslesen beim Teekochen]
BFA 12, 123; 1942; P1949; T.K.
The mask of the angry one
[Die Maske des Bösen]
BFA 12, 124; 1942; P1949; T.K.
Did I not sniff danger . . .
[Ahnte ich nicht Gefahr]
BFA 15, 83; c. 1942/43; P1982; T.K.
CHINESE POEMS
The friends
[Die Freunde]
BFA 11, 261; 1938; P1938; D.C.
In the 1938 edition Brecht prefaces the poem (after Waley) so: “Unknown poet (first century BC).”
The big blanket
[Die grosse Decke]
BFA 11, 261; 1938; P1938; D.C.
This and the following three poems are by Po Chü-i (772–846), who spoke the truth to power and was beloved among the common people. In him, as also in Shelley, Brecht saw a comrade and kindred spirit.
The flower market
[Der Blumenmarkt]
BFA 11, 261; 1938; P1950; D.C.
The politician
[Der Politiker]
BFA 11, 262; 1938; P1938; D.C.
The dragon of the muddy black pond
[Der Drache des schwarzen Pfuhls]
BFA 11, 262; 1938; P1938; D.C.
At lines 16–20, Brecht departs radically from Waley’s version of the hymn (which is itself a parody of one that Po Chü-i’s audience would have known). Brecht combines the Annunciation (Luke 1:28) with the old Prussian national anthem.