azdak

I've avoided posting anything in translation so far, because it's so bloody difficult to translate poetry well, and anyway, there's more than enough stuff in English to fill a month of months, but I have a huge soft spot for this particular poem. When I did Henry V, I put this in the programme notes, because it does exactly what Shakespeare does with the play - he sets "Henry" scenes, with the "one great man" view of history, against the "lowlife" scenes of camp life and mining and looting and rainy marching in the painful fields, thereby casting doubt on the whole "one great man" perspective (not to mention the idea of military glory).

For the German speakers on my flist, the original follows under the cut.


Who built Thebes of the seven gates?
In the books you will find the name of kings.
Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?
And Babylon, many times demolished.
Who raised it up so many times? In what houses
Of gold-glittering Lima did the builders live?
Where, the evening that the Wall of China was finished
Did the masons go? Great Rome
Is full of triumphal arches. Who erected them? Over whom
Did the Caesars triumph? Had Byzantium, much praised in song,
Only palaces for its inhabitants? Even in fabled Atlantis
The night the ocean engulfed it
The drowning still bawled for their slaves.
The young Alexander conquered India.
Was he alone?
Caesar beat the Gauls.
Did he not have even a cook with him?
Philip of Spain wept when his armada
Went down. Was he the only one to weep?
Frederick the Second won the Seven Years' War. Who
Else won it?
Every page a victory.
Who cooked the feast for the victors?
Every ten years a great man.
Who paid the bill?
So many reports.
So many questions.

Bertolt Brecht, translated by Michael Hamburger

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