A Poem for Truly, Truly Dark Times
It’s true, we live in very dark times. In the USA, a fascist, authoritarian government is doing its best to destroy the principles and practices upon which its democracy was built. In India, Narendra Modi is still in power. In Hungary, Viktor Orbán remains in power, the far right is strong in Italy and France. Then there is the AfD in Germany. I could go on and on.
Dark times come and go, and those of us caught in the moment might wonder what posterity will think of our attempts at resistance, our struggles with personal and collective responses to abuses of power and human rights abuses. People caught in previous dark times have asked themselves the same question.
In the 1930’s the poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht was living in Berlin. He had already written what is probably his best-known play, The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper), together with Kurt Weil, who wrote the score.
But times were changing. The Nazis were interrupting performances and harassing performers.
In early 1933, police stormed a performance of The Measures Taken (Die Massnahme), a play about communism, collective action, and the principles a person would be willing to die for. The organizers were charged with high treason.
In February that year, the buildings of pariament, the Reichstag, were set alight, a state of emergency was declared, and the way was cleared for the Nazis, who were growing more powerful by the day, and who began openly enlisting the police and armed right-wing paramilitary forces to persecute their opponents.
The following day, Brecht fled Berlin with his family. His path of exile would eventually see him settle in the USA, but initially he lived in Denmark, where he remained until 1939. Meanwhile, he was black-listed, his books were burned, and his German citizenship was revoked.
In 1939, he was living in Svendborg on the Danish island of Funen, in the house you see here. And it was here that, in the same year, he published the collection Svendborg Poems (Svendborger Gedichte).
One of my favourite poems from this collection is also one of Brecht’s best known poems: An die Nachgeborenen. Nachgeboren means “born afterwards”. Brecht is 41 years old, and probably feels the temporal disorientation that comes with middle age. What have I done with my life? How do I fit in the relentless motion of time, of history, as it snatches private lives and starts burying them in the past? Is there hope for the future, for future generations? And how will they look upon this moment in history, and upon my life within this moment? Brecht’s son Stefan was 14, and his daughter Barbara was eight years old when he wrote this poem. How might his children and grandchildren look back on those who lived in dark times?
But more than that, Brecht speaks to us, to you, you who have survived these times. For to imagine a future where the troubles of today have been put to rest, and a time when there will be voices to hear what once was – this is the great hope in dark times.
When a poem moves me, I want to translate it. Of course, we already have excellent translations of An die Nachgeborenen. And excellent commentaries. I like Scott Horton’s 2008 version, published in Harper’s magazine. And I was thrilled to see that, as Trump took presidential office for the first time in 2017, Jesse L. Kopp, moved by sentiments similar to my own, read Brecht’s musings on dark times and translated the poem.
There are probably more examples I’ve missed; my aim here was not to be exhaustive, but to share with you my own reading of Brecht. I won’t reproduce the German, it’s there on the pages I’ve linked above. Here is my reading of Brecht for our own dark, dark times:
A Poem to Those Yet to be Born
I
It’s true, I live in very dark times!
An innocent word is foolish. An untroubled face
Is a sign of insensitivity. Those who laugh
Have not yet heard
The terrible news.
What are these times,
When talking of trees is almost a crime
Since it means saying nothing of all these terrible deeds!
That person crossing the street,
He’s just not there for his friends
Who struggle in need?
It’s true, I only just manage to earn my keep.
But believe me, that’s just by chance. There’s nothing
I do that justifies a full stomach.
It’s just by chance that I’m spared. (If my luck runs out, I’m lost).
They tell me, eat and drink! Be glad for what you have!
But how can I eat and drink when I’m tearing my food from the hungry, and
My glass of water from those dying of thirst?
I’d like to be wise.
It’s written in the ancient books what wisdom is:
Withdraw from worldly disputes and spend your brief time
Without fear
And make your way without violence
Meeting evil with good
And not pursuing your desires but forgetting them;
That counts as wise.
Those are things I cannot do.
It’s true, I live in very dark times!
II
I came to the cities in a time of disorder
When hunger reigned.
I joined the people in a time of rebellion
And I shared their outrage.
And that’s how the time passed by
That was given me here on earth.
I ate my food between the battles
I lay down to sleep among the murderers
I took care of love carelessly
And nature I regarded without patience.
And that’s how the time passed by
That was given me here on earth.
The roads led into quagmires in my time.
Language betrayed me to the slaughterer.
Little could I do. But without me the rulers
Would have felt a little safer. That’s what I hoped.
And that’s how the time passed by
That was given me here on earth.
My powers were meagre. The goal
Lay very far away
It was clear to see, even if it was
Hardly attainable for me.
And that’s how the time passed by
That was given me here on earth.
III
You who shall rise up from the flood
In which we went under
When you speak of our weakness
Pay heed
To the dark times
You managed to flee.
We may have passed through the war of the classes,
Changing our country more often than our shoes, despairing
When there was only injustice and no outrage.
Yet this we know:
Hatred of what is contemptible also
Distorts the face.
Anger over injustice
Leaves the voice hoarse. Oh, we
Who wanted to pave the way for kindness
We ourselves could not be kind.
But you, when the time has come
For people to be helpers to people
May your thoughts of us
Treat us gently.
Freund Humanus 