Download or read book The Collected Poems of Bertolt Brecht written by Bertolt Brecht and published by Liveright Publishing. This book was released on 2018-12-04 with total page 1606 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Times Literary Supplement • Books of the Year ("The most generous available English collection of Brecht’s poetry.") A landmark literary event, The Collected Poems of Bertolt Brecht is the most extensive English translation of Brecht’s poetry to date. Widely celebrated as the greatest German playwright of the twentieth century, Bertolt Brecht was also, as George Steiner observed, “that very rare phenomenon, a great poet, for whom poetry is an almost everyday visitation and drawing of breath.” Hugely prolific, Brecht also wrote more than two thousand poems—though fewer than half were published in his lifetime, and early translations were heavily censored. Now, award-winning translators David Constantine and Tom Kuhn have heroically translated more than 1,200 poems in the most comprehensive English collection of Brecht’s poetry to date. Written between 1913 and 1956, these poems celebrate Brecht’s unquenchable “love of life, the desire for better and more of it,” and reflect the technical virtuosity of an artist driven by bitter and violent politics, as well as by the untrammeled forces of love and erotic desire. A monumental achievement and a reclamation, The Collected Poems of Bertolt Brecht is a must-have for any lover of twentieth-century poetry.
Download or read book Bertolt Brecht A Literary Life written by Stephen Parker and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2014-02-13 with total page 716 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This first English language biography of Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) in two decades paints a strikingly new picture of one of the twentieth century's most controversial cultural icons. Drawing on letters, diaries and unpublished material, including Brecht's medical records, Parker offers a rich and enthralling account of Brecht's life and work, viewed through the prism of the artist. Tracing his extraordinary life, from his formative years in Augsburg, through the First World War, his politicisation during the Weimar Republic and his years of exile, up to the Berliner Ensemble's dazzling productions in Paris and London, Parker shows how Brecht achieved his transformative effect upon world theatre and poetry. Bertolt Brecht: A Literary Life is a powerful portrait of a great, compulsively contradictory personality, whose artistry left its lasting imprint on modern culture.
Download or read book Love Poems written by Bertolt Brecht and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2014-11-10 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Longlisted for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation An historic publication in which the legendary German poet and dramatist emerges, quite like Goethe, as a poet driven by Eros. Bertolt Brecht is widely considered the greatest German playwright of the twentieth century, and to this day remains best known as a dramatist, the author of Mother Courage, The Threepenny Opera, and The Caucasian Chalk Circle, among so many other works. However, Brecht was also a hugely prolific and eclectic poet, producing more than 2,000 poems during his lifetime—indeed, so many that even his own wife, Helene Weigel, had no idea just how many he had written. "A thieving magpie of much of world literature," the full scope and variety of his poetic output did not become apparent until after his death. Now, the English-speaking world can access part of his stunning body of work in Love Poems, the first volume in a monumental undertaking by award-winning translators David Constantine and Tom Kuhn to translate Brecht's poetic legacy into English. Love Poems collects his most intimate and romantic poems, many of which were banned in German in the 1950s for their explicit eroticism. Written between 1918 and 1955, these poems reflect an artist driven not only by the bitter and violent politics of his age but, like Goethe, by the untrammeled forces of love, romance, and erotic desire. In a 1966 New Yorker article, Hannah Arendt wrote of Brecht that he had "staked his life and his art as few poets have ever done." In these 78 poems, we see Brecht's astonishing and deeply personal love poems—including 22 never before published in English—many addressed to particular women, which show Brecht as lover and love poet, engaged in a bitter struggle to keep faith, hope, and love alive during desperate times. Featuring a personal foreword by Barbara Brecht-Schall, his last surviving child, Love Poems reveals Brecht as not merely one of the most famous playwrights of the twentieth century but also one of its most fiercely creative poets.
Download or read book Life Of Galileo written by Bertolt Brecht and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-02-13 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Student Edition of Brecht's classic dramatisation of the conflict between free enquiry and official ideology features an extensive introduction and commentary that includes a plot summary, discussion of the context, themes, characters, style and language as well as questions for further study and notes on words and phrases in the text. It is the perfect edition for students of theatre and literature Along with Mother Courage, the character of Galileo is one of Brecht's greatest creations, immensely live, human and complex. Unable to resist his appetite for scientific investigation, Galileo's heretical discoveries about the solar system bring him to the attention of the Inquisition. He is scared into publicly abjuring his theories but, despite his self-contempt, goes on working in private, eventually helping to smuggle his writings out of the country. As an examination of the problems that face not only the scientist but also the whole spirit of free inquiry when brought into conflict with the requirements of government or official ideology, Life of Galileo has few equals. Written in exile in 1937-9 and first performed in Zurich in 1943, Galileo was first staged in English in 1947 by Joseph Losey in a version jointly prepared by Brecht and Charles Laughton, who played the title role. Printed here is the complete translation by John Willett.
Download or read book Bertolt Brecht s Me ti written by Bertolt Brecht and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-07-14 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bertolt Brecht's Me-ti, which remained unpublished in his own lifetime, now appears for the first time in English. Me-ti counselled against 'constructing too complete images of the world'. For this work of fragments and episodes, Brecht accumulated anecdotes, poems, personal stories and assessments of contemporary politics. Given its controversial nature, he sought a disguise, using the name of a Chinese contemporary of Socrates, known today as Mozi. Stimulated by his humorous aphoristic style and social focus, as well as an engrained Chinese awareness of the flow of things, Brecht developed a practical, philosophical, anti-systematic ethics, discussing Marxist dialectics, Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, the Moscow trials, and the theories behind current events, while warning how ideology makes people the 'servants of priests'. Me-ti is central to an understanding of Brecht's critical reflections on Marxist dialectics and his commitment to change and the non-eternal, the philosophy which informs much of his writing and his most famous plays, such as The Good Person of Szechwan. Readers will find themselves both fascinated and beguiled by the reflections and wisdom it offers. First published in German in 1965 and now translated and edited by Antony Tatlow, Brecht's Me-ti: Book of Interventions in the Flow of Things provides readers with a much-anticipated accessible edition of this important work. It features a substantial introduction to the concerns of the work, its genesis and context - both within Brecht's own writing and within the wider social and political history, and provides an original selection and organisation of texts. Extensive notes illuminate the work and provide commentary on related works from Brecht's oeuvre.
Download or read book Tea at the Midland written by David Constantine and published by Comma Press. This book was released on 2013-11-29 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: **WINNER of the 2013 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award** **WINNER of the BBC National Short Story Prize** 'The excellence of the collection is fractal: the whole book is excellent, and every story is excellent, and every paragraph is excellent, and every sentence is excellent. And, unlike some literary fiction, it's effortless to read.' - The Independent on Sunday ‘Perhaps the finest of contemporary writers in this form.’ – The Reader To the woman watching they looked like grace itself, the heart and soul of which is freedom. It pleased her particularly that they were attached by invisible strings to colourful curves of rapidly moving air. How clean and clever that was! You throw up something like a handkerchief, you tether it and by its headlong wish to fly away, you are towed along... Like the kite-surfers in this opening scene, the characters in David Constantine’s fourth collection are often delicately caught in moments of defiance. Disregarding their age, their family, or the prevailing political winds, they show us a way of marking out a space for resistance and taking an honest delight in it. Witness Alphonse – having broken out of an old people’s home, changed his name, and fled the country – now pedalling down the length of the Rhône, despite knowing he has barely six months to live. Or the clergyman who chooses to spend Christmas Eve – and the last few hours in his job – in a frozen, derelict school, dancing a wild jig with a vagrant called Goat. Key to these characters’ defiance is the power of fiction, the act of holding real life at arm’s length and simply telling a story – be it of the future they might claim for themselves, or the imagined lives of others. Like them, Constantine’s bewitching, finely-wrought stories give us permission to escape, they allow us to side-step the inexorable traffic of our lives, and beseech us to take possession of the moment.
Download or read book The Caucasian Chalk Circle written by Bertolt Brecht and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-03-16 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Student Edition of Brecht's classic dramatisation of the conflict over possession of a child features an extensive introduction and commentary that includes a plot summary, discussion of the context, themes, characters, style and language as well as questions for further study and notes on words and phrases in the text. It is the perfect edition for students of theatre and literature. Brecht projects an ancient Chinese story onto a realistic setting in Soviet Georgia. In a theme that echoes the Judgment of Solomon, two women argue over the possession of a child; thanks to the unruly judge, Azdak (one of Brecht's most vivid creations) natural justice is done and the peasant Grusha keeps the child she loves, even though she is not its mother. Written in exile in the United States during the Second World War, The Caucasian Chalk Circle is a politically-charged, much-revived and complex example of Brecht's epic theatre. This volume contains expert notes on the author's life and work, historical and political background to the play, photographs from stage productions and a glossary of difficult words and phrases. It features the acclaimed translation by James and Tania Stern with W. H. Auden.
Download or read book War Primer written by Bertolt Brecht and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2017-05-02 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A terrifying series of short poems by one of the world’s leading playwrights, set to images of World War II In this singular book written during World War Two, Bertolt Brecht presents a devastating visual and lyrical attack on war under modern capitalism. He takes photographs from newspapers and popular magazines, and adds short lapidary verses to each in a unique attempt to understand the truth of war using mass media. Pictures of catastrophic bombings, propaganda portraits of leading Nazis, scenes of unbearable tragedy on the battlefield — all these images contribute to an anthology of horror, from which Brecht’s perceptions are distilled in poems that are razor-sharp, angry and direct. The result is an outstanding literary memorial to World War Two and one of the most spontaneous, revealing and moving of Brecht’s works.
Download or read book The Jewish Wife and Other Short Plays written by Bertolt Brecht and published by . This book was released on 1965 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These six plays represent the best and most humorous of Brecht's shorter works. The Jewish Wife is from the Fear and Misery in the Third Reich cycle of one-act plays, which, along with In Search of Justice and The Informer, chromicles the hardships of life in Nazi Germany. The Exception and the Rule, one of Brecht's most popular short works, grimly depicts the consequences of the mutually dependent -- yet inevitable inequitable -- relationship between the priviledged and the poor; it is included here with The Measures Taken and The Elephant Calf. Though all of these ales of horror, ad Eric Bentley calls them, have tragic undertones, they are also infused with farcical absurdities and cosmic irony so characteristic of Brecht's work.
Download or read book Poems 1913 1956 written by Bertolt Brecht and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 1979 with total page 658 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Download or read book Die Hauspostille written by Bertolt Brecht and published by Grove Press. This book was released on 1991 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Book jacket: Known primarily as a dramatist, Bertolt Brecht was also a gifted poet. These fifty poems--among them many ballads that later became part of The Threepenny Opera, Mahagonny, and Baal--reveal the tremendous range and versatility of Brecht's expression. His first and best book of poetry, Manual of Piety uses the traditional form of devotional literature to provide both an irreverant spoof and a serious critique of the post-World War I European (and more specifically, German) culture that gave rise to fascism. His characteristically sly wit combines with mordant social commentary to make Manual of Piety Brecht at his most hilarious--and also his most brutally incisive.
Download or read book Brecht on Brecht written by and published by . This book was released on 1961 with total page 1 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Theatre de Lys, the greater N.Y. chapter of ANTA presents the Cheryl Crawford production, Dane Clark, Anne Jackson, Lotte Lenya, Viveca Lindfors, George Voskovec, Michael Wager, in "Brecht on Brecht," arranged and tanslated (except where otherwise stated) by George Tabori, directed by Gene Frankel, designed by Wolfgang Roth.
Download or read book Measures Taken and Other Lehrstucke written by Bertolt Brecht and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-04-10 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Lehrstücke (or 'learning-plays') lie at the heart of Brechtian theatre. Written during 1929 and 1930, years of far-reaching political and economic upheaveal in Germany and the period of Brecht's most sharply Communist works, these short plays show an abrupt rejection of most of the trappings of conventional theatre. The Lehrstücke are spare and highly formalized pieces intended for performance by amateurs, on the principle that the moral and political lessons contained in them can best be taught by participation in an actual production. There is nothing in the drama of the twentieth century to match the precision of their language and the economy of their theatrical technique.
Download or read book Poems 1913 1956 written by Bertolt Brecht and published by Other. This book was released on 1987 with total page 710 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over 50 years since his death, the importance and scale of Brecht's poetry has only now begun to be recognized. This work showcases a selection from the whole range of his works, conveying his masterful command of different forms and styles, as well as the evolution of his interests and concerns.
Download or read book Brecht On Film Radio written by Bertolt Brecht and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2015-02-06 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Weimar Germany to Hollywood to East Berlin, Brecht on Film and Radio gathers together a selection of Bertolt Brecht's own writings on the new film and broadcast media that revolutionised arts and communication in the twentieth century. Bertolt Brecht's hugely influential views on drama, acting and stage production have long been widely recognised. Less familiar, but of profound importance, are his writings on film and radio. From Weimar Germany to Hollywood to East Berlin, Brecht on Film and Radio gathers together for the first time a selection of Brecht's own writings on the new film and broadcast media that fascinated him throughout his life and revolutionised arts and communication in the twentieth century. Marc Silberman's full editorial commentary sets Brecht's ideas in the context of his other work. "I strongly wish that after their invention of the radio the bourgeoisie would make a further invention that enables us to fix for all time what the radio communicates. Later generations would then have the opportunity to marvel how a caste was able to tell the whole planet what it had to say and at the same time how it enabled the planet to see that it had nothing to say." (Bertolt Brecht)
Download or read book The Business Affairs of Mr Julius Caesar written by Bertolt Brecht and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-01-28 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bertolt Brecht's extraordinary historical novel presents an aspiring scholar's efforts to write an idealized life of Julius Caesar twenty years after his death. But the historian abandons his planned biography, confronted by a baffling range of contradictory views. Was Caesar an opportunist, a permanently bankrupt businessman who became too big for the banks to allow him to fail – as his former banker claims? Did he stumble into power while trying to make money, as suggested by the diary of his former slave? Across these different versions of Caesar's career in the political and economic life of Rome, Brecht wryly contrasts the narratives of imperial progress with the reality of grasping self-interest, in a sly allegory that points to the Weimar Republic and perhaps even to our own times. Brecht reminds his readers of the need for constant vigilance and critical suspicion towards the great figures of the past. In an echo of his dramatic theories, the audience is confronted with its own task of active interpretation rather than passive acceptance -- we have to work out our own views about Mr Julius Caesar. This edition is translated by Charles Osborne and features an introduction and editorial notes by Anthony Phelan and Tom Kuhn.
Download or read book The Life and Lies of Bertolt Brecht written by John Fuegi and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page 788 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
