von Bertolt Brecht
Alles wandelt sich. Neu beginnen
Kannst du mit dem letzten Atemzug.
Aber was geschehen, ist geschehen. Und das Wasser
Das du in den Wein gossest, kannst du
Nicht mehr herausschütten.
Was geschehen, ist geschehen. Das Wasser
Das du in den Wein gossest, kannst du
Nicht mehr herausschütten, aber
Alles wandelt sich. Neu beginnen
Kannst du mit dem letzten Atemzug.
~ ~ ~
Translation courtesy of patfromch -- DANKE!
Everything Changes
by Bertolt Brecht
Everything changes. Begin anew with your last breath.
What happened, happened. And water
tipped into wine
cannot be poured out again.
(Second verse is the same, but in reverse order)
Now I find that quite pessimistic ...
=============
Well, Brecht wasn't the Happiest Camper at Camp Takajo.
The quarterly newsletter published by The Kurt Weill Foundation for Music (It's FREEEEE!) might just as well be titled "Bad Stuff about Bertolt Brecht." The Foundation (they're rolling in $$$ from Weill's song royalties) seems to pressure its scholar-authors into badmouthing Brecht and denying him equal admiration for the great Brecht-Weill musical collaborations. I don't know what up with that. I think they should re-think their whole attitude about Brecht.
When I made a Surprise Invasion of Berlin in 2002 to see the artist and haute cuisine chef Uwe Bressem, he asked what I wanted to see most in Berlin. I had two destinations:
1. The State Theater / The Berliner Ensemble which Brecht founded in East Berlin / DDR. It's still thriving and important, and when I visited, its director was the playwright and novelist Rolf Hochhuth ("The Deputy," "Eine Liebe in Deutschland").
Wikipedia:
In 1978, [Hochhuth's] novel "A Love in Germany" about an affair between a Polish POW and a German woman in World War II stirred up a debate about the past of Hans Filbinger, Minister-President of Baden-Württemberg who had been a Navy lawyer and judge at the end of World War II [and sentenced people to death]. The affair culminated in Filbinger's resignation.
We had lunch in the annex cafeteria of the Berliner Ensemble and I got to see the corner table where Brecht held court, smoking a (Havana) cigar, and generously offered dramatic advice to ingenues. He helped a lot of ingenues.
2, The studios of UFA / Universum Film AG. But we didn't go. Today it's just an ordinary television and film production studio, utterly nothing remains, not a single echo, of its magnificent achievements in motion pictures. Shame. Shame.
7 comments:
Translation:
Everything changes. Begin anew with your last breath.
What happened, happened. And (the) water (you) tipped into (the) wine
cannot be poured out again.
(Sencond vers is the same, but in reverse order)
(Comment: Now I find that quite pessimistic...)
Danke! I got the gist, it interested, startled me.
Can you say anything about his style of deutsches? Is it smooth or rough, high-class or low-class, harsh to the ear (when read aloud) or interesting to the ear?
Go back to the post, I've put your translation up there, and added some stuff about Brecht, the DDR, and Rolf Hochhuth.
Hmm...good question. I can say for sure that Brecht was considered a very "modern" wirter in his day. I would say clear, sober, short, reduced, minimalistic to the essential, very brief and direct, therefore quite easy to translate :). Brecht was a walking contradiction, he was quite a nasty piece of work and quite a complicated personality (yuo read Mephisto by Klaus Mann, Brecht makes an appearence as the young poet), but still able to come directly to the point in his writings.
I do not understand so well that he wanted to say , but I think That the blog has some good lines, IT is interesting.
Thanks for the post, pretty helpful data.
This is all erroneous what you're writing.
It isn't pessimistic, that is precisely the point. Reversing the order reverses the weight of the message.
"What's done is done, and the water you poured into your wine can't be poured out again, but everything changes, and you can begin again with your last breath."
It's not much different from the yin/yang symbol. Depends how you turn it -- but it won't stay in one fixed position, positive or negative.
Post a Comment