Therefore learn how to see and not to gape.
To act instead of talking all day long.
The world was almost won by such an ape!
The nations put him where his kind belong.
But don’t rejoice too soon at your escape
The womb he crawled from still is going strong.
Brecht .. epilogue of Arturi Ui…
and the lamp his work ignited
we have tried to keep alight
stooping low, and yet high-minded
unrestrained, yet laced up tight.
making moon and stars obey us
grovelling at our rulers feet
we sell our brains for what they’ll pay us
to satisfy out bodies’ need
so, despised by those above us
ridiculed by those below
we’ve found the laws that move us
keep this planet on the go.
knowledge grows to large for nitwits
servitude expands as well
truth becomes so many titbits
liberators give us hell.
riding in the new railway coaches
to the new ships in the waves
who is it that now approaches?
only slave-owners and slaves.
only slaves and slave-owners
leave the trains
taking the new aeroplanes
through the heaven’s age-old blueness.
till the latest one arrives
astronomic
white, atomic
obliterating all our lives
Bertolt Brecht. - from poems and songs from the plays…(1990)
Vol. 5., p. 226-7)
i stood on a hill and i saw the old approaching, but it came as the new.
it hobbled up on new crutches which no one had ever seen before
and stank of new smells of decay which no one had ever smelt before.
Bertolt Brecht (1939) from parade of the old new…
‘early in 1922
i signed on the 6000 to freighter osaka
built four years earlier for two million dollars
by the united states shipping board. in hamburg
we picked up cargo, champagne and liqueurs for rio.
as the pay was bad
we felt a need to drown our sorrows
in alcohol. so
a case or two of champagne found its way into
the crews quarters. but from the officers’ room too
even on the bridge and the chartroom
only four days after leaving hamburg, were heard
the clinking of glasses and the songs
of carefree folk. several times
the ship was thrown off her course. however
owing to sundry favourable circumstances
we reach rio de janerio. our skipper
missed a hundred cases of champagne
when we unloaded. but as he could not pick up any better
crew in brazil he had to
make do with us. we loaded
over a thousand tons of meat for hamburg.
a day or so out our sorrows overcame us again -
the bad pay, our insecure old age - and
one of us in his despair fed oil into the furnace , and fire
shot from the funnel all over the upper structure so
that lifeboats, bridge and chartroom were burned away
to prevent our sinking
we helped put it out, but
meditating on the bad pay (uncertain prospects) didn’t
exert ourselves very hard to save much on deck. it
could easily be repaired at some cost; after all, they had
saved enough on our pay.
undue exertion in middle life
ages men fast, unfits them for life’s struggle.
so, as we had to be sparing of our strength
the dynamos burned out one fine day, since they needed
the sort of care
not given by those with no heart in the job. now
we had no light. at first we used oil lamps
to avoid collision with other ships, but
a tired mate, dejected by thoughts
of his joyless old age, threw the lamps overboard
to save work. about then , just off maderia
the meat began to stink in the cold storage chamber
due to the failure of the dynamos. unfortunately
a preoccupied sailor, instead of the bilges
pumped out nearly all the fresh water. there was enough
left for drinking
but none for the boilers. s we had to
use salt water for steam, with the result that
the pipes choked with salt. cleaning them out
took quite a while. it had to be done seven times.
then there was a breakdown in the engine room. grinning
we patched it together again. the osaka limped slowly into maderia. no facilities there
for the extensive repairs that were now needed. we procured
only water and a few lamps and some oil for the
running lights. the dynamos
it appeared, were totally ruined, consequently
the refrigeration system didn’t work, and the stench of
the frozen meat rotting became intolerable to
our shattered nerves. the skipper
never stirred without his revolver - a sign of
insulting mistrust. one of us outraged
by such demeaning treatment
finally shot steam into the refrigerator pipes, so that the
damn meat
should at least be cooked. that afternoon
the whole crew sat down and diligently figured
how much the united states government would have to
pay for the cargo. before the voyage ended
we actually managed to beat our own record: off the coast of
holland
the fuel oil supply gave out, and we had to be
towed into hamburg at enormous expense.
the stinking meat caused out skipper much further trouble
the ship went into the boneyard. any child we considered
could see from this that our pay
really was too low….
Brecht (1934-36)
(a warning tale for capitalists everywhere… 1922 being only 10 years in the future)
horkheimer and adorno are still ruminating over reichenbach’s lecture. the physicists announcement that they have discovered processes in the microcosm that are not amenable to the causal relationships with which we are familiar, visibly irritates them, because physicists have also gone over to the attack contemptuously handing over to metaphysics - with fire-tongs - the postulate that the law of causality might be recognized even where it cannot even be theoretically postulated. the philosophers insist doggedly it is possible to conceive of grounds that you cannot conceive of. the physicists seem to be irritated at the presumption of the strict causationists and have gone over to working with probability theory.
i like the world of the physicists , men change it, and then it looks astonishing, we can appear as the gamblers we are, with our approximations, our to-the-best-of-our-abilities, our dependence on others, on the unknown, on things complete in themselves, so once again a variety of things can lead to success, more than just one path is open, oddly enough I feel more free in this world than in the old one….
Today, Easter Sunday morning
a sudden snowstorm swept over the island
between the greening hedges lay snow. My young son
drew me to a little apricot tree by the house wall
away from a version which I pointed at those
who were preparing a war which
could well wipe out the continent, this island, my people, my
Family
Red Rosa now has vanished too.
Where she lies is hid from view.
She told the poor what life is about
And so the rich have rubbed out.
All afternoon
a thunderstorm hung on the rooftops,
then broke, in lightning, in torrents.
I stared at lines of cement, lines of glass
with screams inside them, wounds mixed in and limbs,
mine also, who have survived. Carefully, looking
now at the bricks, embattled, now at the dry page,
I heard the word
of a poet expire, or change
to another voice, no longer for us. The oppressed
are oppressed and quiet, the quiet oppressors
talk on the telephone, hatred is courteous, and I too
begin to think I no longer know who’s to blame.
Write, I say to myself, hate those
who gently lead into nothingness
the men and women who are your companions
and think they no longer know. Among the enemies’ names
write your own too. The thunderstorm,
with its crashing, has passed. To copy
those battles nature’s not strong enough. Poetry
changes nothing. Nothing is certain. But write
It is not often that the real effectivity of artistic methods can be successfully tested. Most one experiences at best agreement (‘Yes you can show me the way it is with us’), or that one has given ‘initiative in some direction or other…. #Brecht
For someone with a background in a discipline which ascribes what is at times an excessively high value to proofs and testing Bertolt Brecht’s opening comment in the short text is informative. It is the notion that experiments can be tested, even artistic experiments… Even when the description of the successful test is a narrative with the censor, who as you know passed the film, the narrative is strangely recognizable and comparable across disciplines. I have in mind end of engineering project reviews, which whilst always being constructs also always contain moments of similar estrangement of the audience, the users.
We had a hard time getting our film passed. Going out of the building we did not hide our esteem for the acute censor. He had penetrated far deeper into the substance of our artistic aims than our most well-wishing critics. He had read us a little lecture on realism. From the standpoint of the police.
Brecht writing on Kuhle Wampe in the 1930s
