home | down to January | down to February | down to March | next page | page down

Previews

 

April 2002

Bertolt Brecht: "The Enterprises of our Mr. C."

I. what has happened so far: A young historian arrives from Rome to do research for his biography of the late dictator Julius Caesar. He hopes that Caesar's former banker, Mumlius Spicer, will give him access to the diaries of the dictators personal secretary in his possession. He does, but for a price! Not only must the young man pay a hefty fee, he also has to listen to the old banker's street-wise instructions.

II. synopsis: In the course of his studies of the secretary's papers the young historian must repeatedly visit the old banker's villa to receive further installments and instructions. This brings him in touch with a number of visitors calling in on Mumlius Spicer: corporate attorneys, a poet, politicians. Everyone of them has his own views on the young historian's undertaking. None of them really appeals to the historian's preconceptions. He even interviews a war veteran in the neighborhood, who had served under Caesar. Still, all this coaching leaves the young idealist totally unprepared for what he is finding in the secretary's diaries. Caesar, the great Caesar, during the period covered in the diary, was barely more than a pawn in the hands of greater forces and up to his gills entangled in a criminal conspiracy against the state. He managed to get himself out of the malaise, but only just, and then takes a post in the province, from which he returns almost triumphant ... .

 

from Bertolt Brecht's "The Enterprises of our Mr. C."

First Book
The Career of a noble young Man (continued:)

The old man questioned the slave who was driving the donkeys in a circle. We were told, that the news of his sale had come to him as a surprise. They called him in from the fields, and only here they told him that he couldn't say good-bye to the others. It weighed him down, that every minute the agent could come and take him away, before the others would come back to lunch from the fields.

"He may have had friends among them," said Spicer, "even sons. As you know, you can never tell, who is the father. I am not against intercourse in the pen, I support it even. The women get their freedom after the third child."

Slowly we walked on. The warden's wife had stepped to the slave and handed him a loaf of bread and a salted fish for the travel. When I turned around for a last time, I saw, how even more anxious he looked out to the fields, while taking the food under his arm.

"He always needed money. Once, he even tried his hand in the slave trade," the old man said, walking on. "I guess you heard the story about the pirates?"

I realized, that he talked again about "C," and I nodded somewhat puzzled. The lovely little anecdote can be found in every schoolbook.

"Would you mind recalling, what you know of it?" Spicer asked.

"I can do that," I said and repeated all I knew of it. I made my delivery in a voice not unlike the tone in which I used to recite my lesson to my teacher in Greek, when I quoted the famous anecdote.

"The young Caesar was taken hostage by pirates near the Isle of Pharmacusa. They used to run a considerable fleet and covered the ocean with their vessels in great numbers. At the beginning he taunted the pirates, because they didn't ask for a bigger ransom than twenty talents. Didn't they know, who they had caught? And he offered from his own generosity to pay them fifty. And immediately he dispatched to different cities a few of his companions to collect the money. Cool and collected, with his doctor, his cook, and two of his valets Caesar remained with the murderous orientals. He treated them with such disdain, that he ordered them to keep quiet whenever he went to sleep. For 38 days he passed his time in a fashion, that the ship's crew looked more like his bodyguard, than he like their captive. Without the slightest concern he played his games and made them the butt of his humor. Sometimes he even drafted a poem or speech and read it to them. Who dared not to be bowled over in admiration, he addressed as bonehead and barbarian, even promised laughingly to have him hanged. The pirates found it amusing and for his loose tongue considered him a charming jester.

"But as soon as the ransom came in from Milet and he found himself set free, he hired mercenaries and manned a few vessels in the port of Milet, and set out against the pirates. He found them still anchoring near the Isle of Pharmacusa and captured most of them. Their treasures he considered his rightful spoils of war, the prisoners he delivered to the prison in Pergamon. Then he went to Junius, the governor of Minor Asia, to have his captives put on trial. But since the governor seemed to have eyes only for the confiscated treasure - which indeed was of a considerable sum of money - and therefore didn't give a clear answer, saying that he was too busy at the moment, to concern himself with the prisoners, Caesar went back to Pergamus and ordered on his own authority to have the pirates nailed to the cross, as he had promised them in jest so often before, when he still was with them on the island."

The old man had nodded to almost every sentence. He stepped with one foot into the raked soil of a radish-bed, to mark it to some purpose for his people. Moving on, he said: "That's how already almost everything from his life has changed its appearance. I tell you what the whole thing was. It was slave trading. The little episode happened at the time, when C. turned the funeral of his first wife and of his aunt to a public demonstration for democracy - immediately after he had brought to trial the senators for the violations in their provinces. It was the trip to Rhodes where he said to improve his oratorical skills. Our young attorney was fond of doing several things at the same time. And as I said, he needed money. So he went on his way with a payload of slaves, if I remember correctly, experienced leather workers from Gaul. Of course this was contraband.

The great corporate slave traders in Asia Minor had long-standing agreements with our ports of entrance as well as with the Greek isles and Syria, which guaranteed them the monopoly of the slave-traffic in both directions. As you know, slave-trading was a well organized business with lots of money in it, including Roman money. On a single day, in the market of Delos, there could come under the hammer up to 10,000 pieces. The ties of the slave traders with the traders in the City were close and well organized. Only later, when the City started her own slave-trade, it came to conflicts with the export corporations in Asia Minor. In the middle of a profound peace, our tax-farmers, protected by the Roman Eagle, organized regular slave hunts in the provinces of Asia Minor. The corporations in Cilicia and Syria considered this as an unfair competition, and defended their turf to the best of their abilities. The struggle for the monopoly in the slave-trade soon developed into a quite intense naval war. On both sides men of trade were raided and their slave-cargo confiscated. The Roman corporations called their opposite numbers in Asia Minor "pirates" and the Asian firms called the Romans "robbers."

C. traveled during winter, when the bad weather provided some protection against the Asian corsairs. Yet they caught up with him anyway. They took away his cargo and took him into custody. As the history books are telling us he received a very decent treatment. He was allowed to keep his doctor and his valet and they even listened patiently to his poems. The orientals suffered even this brutality in good humor, and remained courteous.* He was to asked to pay merely the damages, which were calculated according to the size of his cargo. It amounted to 20 talents.

* I don't know, what to think of Spicer's description of the pirates as honorable traders, but the ancient authors testify that they did live in civilized circumstances. The are reputed to have had an excellent literature. I quote: "Never before or after sweeter songs were to be heard on the coasts of the Mediterranean, never had there been profounder and more philosophical conversations under the sky, than during the pinnacle of Slavery.

What I am telling you now, I know from the Proconsul Junius, who at the time held office there, and to whom I was introduced when he was an old man. He did the enquiry into this affair, because it had caused a huge scandal.

C. first approached the cities in Asia Minor for the money. He didn't tell that it was for damages in the slave-trade, and claimed it to be for the ransom extorted by pirates. And he demanded not 20 but 50 talents. The money was procured. He never returned it. Set free again, he travelled to Milet, manned a few ships with gladiators and from the orientals took it all back: the "ransom" and his slave-cargo. On top of it he not only abducted and brought to Pergamos the crew of the Asian privateer, but also a few traders who ran the ship and all of their slaves he could find. Called to account by Junius, C. demanded, that the Asians without exception should be treated as pirates, and when Junius refused and began to inquire a bit too closely into the circumstances of this case, he departed to Pergamos at night and had the Asians nailed to the cross on forged instructions, so that they couldn't testify against him.

C., by the way, because he had hoodwinked the terrible "pirates" by threatening them in jest with crucifixion, and then actually doing it, gained with historians a reputation for humor. Completely unfounded; he didn't have a penny's worth of humor. But he showed initiative."

"I don't understand, that he had the power to do all this, even then" I said.

"He didn't have any more power, than every other young jerk from a senatorial family. They just did whatever came to their mind."

We were forced to step aside. Down from the way behind us came rattling an oxcart. The elderly slave sat on it, with a small chest beside him. He was brought to the market. He waved to a band of slaves, who were working in the vineyard at the side. They responded to his waving but didn't call out to him, probably because they saw their master.

The departing scanned with an eager expression the band. Apparently, she or he, whom he was seeking, was not with them.

"You shouldn't lose sight of the fact," Spicer continued, "that the people C. had crucified were business people, if you wish to grasp the enormity of the problem this had created for Junius. In those days it wasn't yet customary to officially label the firms in Asia Minor as pirates. These days, that's how they are presented in the history books. Since we wrote them ourselves, our point of view could naturally made to prevail.

Yet even then, in Rome, with loads of money, a moral campaign had been initiated against the Asiatic firms; claiming that they acquired their merchandise in an unlawful way, even to the point of accusing them of atrocious treatment of the merchandise. As if it isn't evident that the merchandise the governors brought home as spoils of war, suffered incomparably more on the transports. The military didn't care, how many heads per freight would arrive in one piece. Whereas the trader lost money with every casualty, and therefore cared for sanitary transportation. But only years after our little incident, Roman firms managed to turn their agenda into an issue of Rome's policy. They gave the sentiment in the house a helping hand by having now and then some obscure Greek corsairs raid a few Roman corn freighters. Only then they could call on the state for help and demand the implementation of the anti-piracy act. But the City got the Roman Navy for her competitive skirmish against the Asians not without a struggle. And C. too, by the way, played a part in it, though only a minor one.

When in the year 87 the tribune Gabienius submitted to the Senate on behalf of the City, that Pompeius should be commissioned with the command of the Roman navy to fight the "pirates," their lordships almost lynched the man. They had long-standing agreements with the firms in Asia and couldn't accept an interruption or decrease of slave imports; it was out of the question to run their vast estates without slaves. They didn't feel like handing the City a monopoly on the slave trade on a silver platter. They were afraid of the monopoly pricing.

The City appealed to the people. The democratic fraternities took action. Of course, nothing goes without a little demagoguery. You got to talk folksy to the folks. The speakers (C. was one of them) pointed out the low prices for slaves by the Asiatic firms, which caused the Roman artisan to lose his income.

Among the small land owners widely grew a bitter sentiment about the Senate's attitude. The employment of slaves on the big estates had a devastating effect on the small farming communities. They hoped with the demolition of the Asian slave trade to destroy the slave trade altogether. In Etruria, the Senate was forced to call in the military against rioting farmers.

The urban proletariat suffered too, when their employers ruined their earnings with cheaper slave labor. Yet even here it tipped the scales, that the new and well funded corporations of slave importers staged a little rise in the corn prices and started rumors that pirates prevented the imports of corn. And, of course, a lot of money made the round. Before Pompeius, as before other magistrates the lictors, always walked his men with big envelopes. So the people just laughed, when in their assembly the old Catulus, the senate's representative, after a flowery eulogy on Pompeius' list of achievements, beseeched the people not to expose such a man to the dangers of war. And as he cried out in despair: "Who would be there for you, if you lose him?" they shouted with a grin: "You!" And when another speaker warned to invest a single man with so much power, they made such a noise, that a raven flying across the market, passed out and fell into the crowd. He must have been on his way to collect his part of the public funds. However all this circus would have come to nothing, if the slave importing corporations hadn't handed out stock-options to a dozen senators. Only now the issue became a national issue, and Pompeius on behalf of the city took command of the navy.

The price for corn dropped by half, in three months the ocean was swept clean of the competition from Asia Minor, and immediately after, Pompeius, merely as an amendment, so to speak, was invested with the supreme command in Asia. He brought in the slaves.

You get the drift: the voter voted twice for the same man, but the man didn't do the same thing twice. His naval war could be considered as a move against the slave trade, but his campaign at land meant slave trade on an exceptional scale. Half a year later, Rome's market was virtually inundated with slaves, this time by Roman corporations. It was the time when Cicero held his maiden speech. He pressed for the renewal of the supreme command of Pompeius. Where he got his commission from, you can figure yourself."

For a while, we walked in silence. I must say, the shameless way, with which the old man described all this maneuvering, did disgust me quite a bit.

He seemed to sense my thoughts. He had developed to the highest degree the notorious ability of a banker to read other people's mind. He added dryly: "You are wondering, why I approve of this. I tell you why. I approve of the way we acquire our slaves, because we need slaves."

I didn't answer. His opinions about the City and her slave trade, which seemed to him of so much more interest than Gaius Julius Caesar, left me completely cold. Descending to the lake, we now passed a heavily fettered chain gang working in the vineyard. "Aren't they hampered by the chains?" I asked.

"No" was his answer. "Not in the vineyard. They are former convicts. Working in the vineyard requires more brain than plowing. This sort is the best for the job. They are brighter than the rest and cheap."

Before I could bit him good bye, he showed me cherry trees, a new kind of fruit, which he had asked to send him. A few of the still small trunks had already been planted, the others in their straw-covers were still laying on the freshly broken soil. "I try out whatever is new," he said. "I am making not more than 12 percent. Columela gives a margin of 17 percent, but he forgets in his calculation to add the costs for the maintenance of vines, vine-supports, and the slaves.

I got the impression, that he ran the not excessively large estate more for his own amusement and not really as a business. Yet at the same time he couldn't bear the thought that capital shouldn't earn interest. Anyway, it was an model estate.

When I had returned to my little villa, I found my Sempronius chattering in the kitchen with a man in almost tattered clothes, of stocky and broad build and a mighty brow. After my entry, with curt expression, he said goodbye. I learned, that he had delivered the firewood.

Sempronius, who, as usual, had found out everything about the neighborhood in just a few hours, chattily reported to me, that he had chosen this man, who cultivated a few acres of olives on the other side of the hill, as our delivery man, because he was a former legionary of Caesar.

I was glad about this discovery and decided to have him interviewed. This seemed to be a good time, to rid myself of the depressing gloom, which after the old man's narrative had gained a grip on me. It was astonishing, how little I had learned about the true Caesar from Mumlius Spicer, who had known him for so many years and had been during the entire campaign in Gaul Caesar's financial adviser. I was certain, that this simple soldier, one of the old guard, from whose worship for their great commander the monographs speak in countless moving episodes, would be able to tell me more. After I had freshened up a bit, we went out.

In the only room of a cabin in conspicuous disrepair, Caesar's former legionary sat with a slave at a stone hearth. The smoke from the hearth had blackened the unpainted walls made of large irregular pieces of stone. In one corner hung a huge fishing net. Apparently he occasionally went down to the lake for a little fishing. When we entered, the man greeted us with a nod. He just had his dinner. As his slave went to fetch us an old bench from outside the house, his master continued to eat from a pan pieces of bred with a tin spoon. The slave, an elderly fellow with watery red hair, joined him again with his own spoon. Sempronius started the conversation with a question where it would be possible to get a few pheasants.

He got his answer and tuned the conversation to the book, that I, his master, was about to write about the great Gaius Julius Caesar. The stocky man turned for a moment his mighty head with the grey lumpy hair and shot a quick glance at me, but didn't say a word. Only after, with a piece of bread between his fingers, he had wiped clean the emptied pan of its gooey cheese sauce, he slowly said:

"I have seen him only twice in ten years." While the red haired slave clumsily took away pan and spoons, brought it to the back and started to clean the tableware in a pail, his master kicked back on his stool so far that he leaned against the wall, and his stretching forward his unbelievably broad chest, he looked with blinking eyes at me and then Sempronius. "What do you want to know about him?" he asked in a not exactly friendly tone.

"Have you been in Gaul too?" I asked back.

"Yes Sir," he said, "we were there too. Three legions, Sir."

I was a bit confused, so my next question was pretty prosaic. "Have you seen him from close by?"

"500 paces the first time, 1000 paces the other," was the answer. "The first time, if you must know, during a review in Lucus, which meant four hours of penalty exercise. The other time when we boarded ship for Britain."

"He was popular, wasn't he?" I asked.

I kept silent for some time, looking at me somewhat undecided. Then he said: "He was thought to be clever."

"But the man in the ranks did trust him?"

"The food wasn't bad. He was said to look after these things."

"Have you been in the civil war?"

"Yes Sir! On the side of Pompeius."

"How so?"

"I belonged to the legion, he had borrowed from Pompeius. He returned the troops before the civil war started."

"I see," I said.

"Hard luck," he said. "I lost my pay-off. And he made quite good pay-offs. But I had no choice."

I tried to think. How could I get something out of him. I tried a different approach. "Why did you enlist?"

"Long ago, Sir!"

"Have you forgotten?"

He laughed. His mighty chest added power to the laugh of this stocky man. It was not an angry laugh, and I laughed with him. "You are very persistent" he said. "I went to the military, because I was a conscript. Somewhere near Setia is my hometown, if this does tell you anything. So I am citizen from Latium. If I had been a Roman citizen, they could not have drafted me."

"So you rather would have stayed in your place of birth?"

"Nahh, not that. We were four boys. This was too many for the few acres of cornfield. And trying to find a job on the big estates was impossible too, because they preferred to hire freedmen, which couldn't be conscripted. And apart from this, they had their slaves."

"Are your brothers still on the farm?"

The stocky fellow shrugged his shoulders. "How should I know? Not likely, Sir. Not with these corn prices. They have the Sicilian corn in Italy. That is so much cheaper. Even the army had been fed only with Sicilian corn - at my time already!"

"And you yourself have looked for land only recently?"

"Yes. In my age you are no longer soldering. Yes. The land question was never resolved, and it will not be resolved. Impossible!"

"Not very large, your farm, isn't it?"

"Few olive groves. But we small farmers are simply not competitive. You need slaves." He looked at the red haired chap, who went out with the pail in hand. Yet he still could hear the following: "This is a Raetian. He isn't worth a lot, barely the feed."

The conversation was ebbing. It began to fall dark.

"Have you heard anything of the democratic fraternities in your youth?" I suddenly asked.

"I think so," he said. "When I was in the capital. I even voted once. But whether for the democratic police chief, I don't remember. I got 50 sestercies. Lots of money."

"I thought, the Democrats were in favor of a solution of the land question," I tried.

"So?" he asked. Then he thought a while, and continued: "Didn't they go for the corn-dole for the jobless?

"That too," I said.

"But that's what ruined the corn price!"

But, if you lived in the city, as you did then, was it not a good thing to get cheaper bred?" I asked with astonishment.

"Yes in the city it was necessary," he replied. "There you were out of job."

"So you think, only for your people in Latium it was bad, because the low corn price destroyed your existence?"

"Yes, this and the huge number of slaves. Which we ourselves went to get. In Gaul and everywhere. Complicated? That's politics!"

I rose, because I wanted to go to Mumlius Spicer. "What did Caesar look like?"

He thought and then said vaguely: "dissipated."

I went away in thought. The human inability to see greatness, where it is, became more and more annoying.

* * * * *

Spiecer had a visitor. The attorney and ...

(to be continued)

by Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956)
© - 3/28/2002 - translated by Michael Sympson - all rights reserved

 

 

March 2002

Bertolt Brecht: "The Enterprises of our Mr. C."

Bert Brecht (1898-1956), German playwright, poet and stage director. His work was meant to reform the theories of Stanislavsky which Brecht rejected as a method of hypnotic make belief that caters to the trance of a herd of peeping toms. In his "Little Organum for the Theatre," Brecht asks for a more dissociated acting style and requires a theatre of a more narrative character which addresses an audience at ease with itself and fully conscious of the staged character of the play. Brecht rejected Aristotele's concept of catharsis and plot as a simple story with a beginning and an end.

Born and educated in Bavaria, Brecht studied medicine from 1917 to 1921 in Munich, studies he had to interrupt in 1918 for his service as paramedic in the military. He especially admired Wedekind, Rimbaud, Villon, and Kipling and it shows in his ealy plays and short stories. In 1918 he wrote his first play, "Baal," (produced in 1923) which is a Villonian celebration of life and sexuality. In 1922 he received the Kleist award for "Drums in the Night," published his collected poems and songs in "A Manual of Piety" (translated 1966), and brought to the stage Christopher Marlowe's "Edward II" as his first professional production.

Brecht's association with Communism began in 1919, when he joined the Independent Social Democratic party. He briefly worked for Max Reinhardt and Erwin Piscator and gradually assembled his own group and associates, many of which would stay with him to his last days in East Berlin. In 1928, in cooperation with the composer Kurt Weill, Brecht wrote the "Threepenny Opera" after John Gay´s "The Beggar´s Opera," and in 1930 "The Rise and Fall of the Town of Mahaganny." At the Schiffbauerdam Theater he trained many actors who were to become famous on stage and screen, among them Oscar Homolka, Peter Lorre, and the singer Lotte Lenya, Kurt Weil's wife.

By 1929 Brecht concluded his studies of Marxist theory and became a hard-line communist. After Hitler came to power in 1933, Brecht went into exile, first to Denmark, where he lived mostly near Svendborg until 1939, and after stopovers in Finland and Russia arrived in Santa Monica, California, in 1941: a very uncongenial surrounding for him. "The intellectual isolation here is enormous," Brecht complained, "compared to Hollywood, Svendborg was a world center." Brecht tried to write for Hollywood, but the only script that found partial acceptance was "Hangmen Also Die" (1942). During this period he wrote most of his major works: "Mother Courage and Her Children," "The Life of Galileo," "The Good Woman of Setzuan," and "The Caucasian Chalk Circle."

Brecht also wrote a novel: "The Enterprises of our Mr. C." It was the time when the FBI, CIA, and McCarthy, not only put taps on suspicious immigrants wo had fled the Nazis, but extended their surveillance on 130 authors of their own nation. The files on Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Pearl S. Buck and Sinclair Lewis, on Thornton Wilder, Tennessee Williams, John Dos Passos, Thomas Wolfe, Truman Capote, Archibald MacLeish and Nelson Algren, barely differ in style and stupidity from similar documents in the archives of the KGB or the East German STASI. Even the membership in a book-club could be construed as incriminating. Teachers and library employees lost their jobs by the ten thousands.

Brecht too was subpoenaed to a congressional hearing. Though definitely a communist, he managed to flabbergast J. Parnell Thomas, the chairman of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, who praised Brecht for being an exemplary witness. Brecht returned to Eastern Germany where he founded the "Berlin Ensemble." He had a great triumph at the Paris International Theatre Festival in 1954, and in 1955 received in Moscow the Stalin Peace Award. He died in the following year. In 1954 Brecht wrote: "What times are these, when to speak of trees is almost a crime because it passes in silence over so much infamy!" A fitting epitaph to his own work. Brecht's works have been translated into 42 languages.
© - 2/28/2002 - by Michael Sympson - all rights reserved

 

from Bertolt Brecht's "The Enterprises of our Mr. C."

First Book
The Career of a noble young Man (continued:)

... The great Gaius Julius Caesar, of whose private life I hoped to glean a few ideas from the notes of his longstanding secretary, had been dead for twenty years by now. He had ushered in a new era. Before him, Rome had been a large city with a few scattered colonies. Only he had founded the empire. He had codified the law, had reformed the currency, had even the calendar brought up to scientific standards. His campaigns into Gaul carried the Roman colors even to the distant isles of Britain and opened a new continent for trade and civilization. His statue had found a place next to the gods; cities and a month of the year were named after him; monarchs used to add his illustrious name to their own. Roman history had found in him its Alexander. It became already evident, that he was going to be the unsurpassed prototype for all the dictators of the future. And all that was left for us lesser mortals, was to write of his accomplishments. This is, what I planned to do in my monograph. I now had the documents I needed.

When I arrived early in the evening at the villa of my idol's banker, I had already had initiated the necessary steps regarding the money. In the afternoon I went to town by boat, and at the bank there, they had promised to check out my letter of credit immediately. I was about to receive the sum of 12,000 sesterces within the next day.

Apparently, Mumlius Spicer had been waiting with supper for me to arrive. He immediately led me to the table. The meal the two of us ate, was simple. The old man had actually only a few figs, and excused himself with a weak stomach. Yet for me a little keg of anchovies from the Black Sea was opened, a delicacy, which, as I know very well, did cost in Rome 1,600 sestercies.

Of course I found this luxurious hospitality quite astonishing. In fact, I should point out here, that the banker's generosity to me, continued during my entire stay. I must have cost him several times the amount of my 12,000 sestercies. Just the original manuscript of the speeches of Hortensius which at my departure he presented to me as a gift, was worth much more.

However, on this evening, Spicer did not even mention the object of my visit, except for some general remarks about history, remarks of a rather derogatory nature by the way. Neither was there a word about the notes of Rarus; the little ash-wood box was no longer on the bookshelf.

The only reason for the old man's reserve I could think of, was the fact that I hadn't yet settled our financial agreement, and my anger awoke again. Our parting was rather cold.

The next morning the money had arrived, and I went on my way at the same time as yesterday. The old man sat in his library and dictated to a slave. He continued finishing his dictation, while I had a look at his books. Then he received the money, counted it and passed it on to the slave to put it away. He didn't act any different from the sale of, say, a pig. What I found especially tactless, was his way of ordering the slave to bring in the box immediately after. Which he did. With little regard it was put again on the shelf.

Then the old man began to speak, in an even and deep voice. Without any transition, simply as if honouring an agrrement, he said:

"As you probably know, during the nineties I was a bailiff in the fourth district. In this position many claims against C.* went through my hands, most of them quite substantial, but also a surprising number of petty claims, as from bakers and tailors. This indicated, that the country estate which he owned in the Campagna, already wasn't able to deliver such things to the residence in Rome: it was in the hands of trustees. C. was very well known for his spectacular games, which he had hosted during his tenures as Ædil and Quæstor. The common people were impressed by his debts, about which the gossip spoke in fantastic figures. I saw him the first time, if memory serves me right, in his bedroom, when a tailor just fitted him with a tunic. I still remember this, because I noticed, how particular he was about the neckline. He actually used the terms and expressions of a tailor. It wasn't the first time, I had been in his house. Usually I was received by his secretary, who is this Rarus. We had an agreement, that I only should come in the morning, so that I wouldn't run into C.'s mother, of whom everybody in the house had the fear of god, C. himself included, and not just barely. She was a little friendly old lady, but with a sharp tongue. Later I should be on good terms with her.

* Spicer always adressed Caesar as "C."; I first thought, in order to stress the illegitimate character of our enterprise. But Rarus too always speaks of C.

C., by the way, treated me with great cordiality, and without any irony pointed to some valuable old furniture and asked, whether I would like to confiscate it. He seemed to feel no embarrassment in the tailor's presence, although the man after he caught sight of me, must have had second thoughts.

I also think, that already in our first meeting he inquired into my own circumstances and conditions of living. They hadn't been too good. I lived in one of Crassus' apartment blocks, in a small storey with wife and six children, and had difficulties to pay the rent. Almost all of my conversations with C., one way or the other, turned to my own calamities. He gave me advice while sitting on a chair, which I had no intention to leave with him.

We met more often then, and if I may say so, I liked to go to him. In the end our acquaintance did last until his death."

He stopped talking. We heard voices and the shuffle of many feet on the flagstone before the house. The dinner break was over. The little Gaul from yesterday, came in, and Spicer stamped a giant "S" into the ledger which the Slave held open for him. Through the door I saw a slightly clouded sky. The laurel bushes, planted as a windscreen, shivered in the wind. The narrow but tall room with its whitewashed walls and the friendly bookcases made of leather, was comfortably warm. In the fireplace crackled a few mighty logs. The aftertaste of the old man's simple story lingered on my mind.

I clearly could see Spicer before my inner eye, a younger, but otherwise not very different Spicer - these people don't change a lot, since worries and hardship make them look old in their early years - and then the broke aristocrat with a big name. I was amused to think that this man with his heavy bones and the long jawbone, despite of a certain intimacy would remain rather a stickler when it came to business and under no circumstance leave without the chair. I suddenly remembered my 12,000 sestercies.

The old man took a little sip of the wine, he had ordered to serve for us, and continued: "In this time, to my knowledge, C. had stopped to do anything at all. At some point in his life, he too, had made an attempt to learn a trade and earn money. He had tried his hand as a barrister in two lawsuits, which he carried out on behalf of the democratic fraternities against high ranking Senators for their extortions committed in the provinces.

The City used to pay young attorneys from good families quite handsomely for such actions. It was the old antagonism between City and Senate. For uncounted ages, 300 clans divided among themselves all the magistracies and high offices in- and outside of Rome. The Senate was their stock exchange. There they horse-traded, who of them should sit on the senator's bench, who be a judge, who should mount a warhorse, and who was to surveil his land. They were great landowners, who treated the rest of the citizenry as their servants and their servants as scum. The business people they treated as thieves, and the inhabitants of conquered provinces as their enemies. One of these landowners was the old Cato, a great grandfather of our Cato, who in my and C.'s time had been the speaker of the conservatives in the House. He extolled a piece of legislation from the 2nd century, where the thief was to repay twice, but the moneylender who lend on interest, four times the sum, he had "taken." Even as late as a generation before mine, they had passed a law, which prohibited a senator from involving himself in trade. The law came too late, they immediately went around it; the law can stop everything, it cannot stop trade. In fact this law led to the creation of mutual trust funds, so that fifty ship owners would own just one fiftieth of a ship and and so could control fifty ships instead of just one. You see the mind set of these gentlemen. They made excellent field commanders, quite capable to conquer a province, but then didn't have a clue what to do with it.

But after our trade had outgrown the nursery and we started in a big way to export olive-oil, wool and wine, and imported grain and many other things, and especially, when we tried to export money to earn interest in the provinces, their lordships would show their redneck incapacity to go with the times, and the budding City realized that what was wanting, was a sensible leadership. You get my drift, we felt no calling, to mount a warhorse and while away our time, which is money, on the mouldy seats of magistrates. As far as we were concerned, their lordships could very well keep their positions and remain what they are, but only under the professional leadership of the City. You may understand what I mean, if for instance, you care to recall the Punic war. We fought this war for the best of all reasons in the world: to suppress the African competition. And what became of it? Our military took away from Carthage not her products and customs but her walls and navy. One didn't go for the corn but for the plough. Our generals proudly said, "no grass will grow where my legion has set a foot." But it was this grass we were after. You know it, from one of these kinds of grass we use to bake bread. But what in the Punic war had been conquered with immense costs, was just desert. Those territories could easily have fed our entire peninsula, but for a triumphal celebration in Rome, they took away from them whatever they would have needed to work for us - equipment, slaves and everything. And such conquest was followed by a similar administration. The appointed governors practised bookkeeping only for themselves. Everybody knows that no dress has so many pockets as a general's uniform, but the dress of a governor was just one big pocket. When their lordships came home, they tingled with metal no less, as if they would have walked in armor. Cornelius Dolabella and Publius Antonius, the characters, against who the young C. had pressed charges, had half of Macedonia stowed away on their ships.

With such methods one couldn't of course put up anything, that even remotely resembled trade. After every war you had in Rome bankruptcies and insolvency. Every victory was a defeat for the City. The triumphs of the generals were triumphs over the people. The wailing to be heard after the battle of Zama, which ended the Punic war, came in two languages. It was the wailing of the punic and the Roman banks. The Senate slaughtered the milk cow. The system was rotten to the quick.

All of this had been the gossip in Rome. In every barbershop, people used to talk about the moral decay of the Senate. People used to talk even in the Senate of a "necessary and fundamental moral rebirth." Cato the younger, had a dim view about the future of the 300 clans. He decided to do something about and as governor in the cities of Sardinia made his appearance on foot and accompanied by one single servant who carried his coat and the sacrificial bowl. And when he returned from his governorship in Spain, he sold his warhorse, because he thought that he was not entitled to charge the treasury with its costs. Unfortunately his ship got into a storm, he suffered shipwreck and lost all his ledgers and account books. To the last days of his life he would whine that he couldn't prove to anybody how honest he had run his administration. He knew that he had behaved impossibly. The City didn't give a hoot on "good examples" and moral platitudes. The City knew what was missing: officials needed to be paid.

Because their lordships used to volunteer for office. To accept pay for work, they perceived as demeaning. With such lofty ideals, they had of course no other choice but to steal. And they stole from the tributes in corn and from the road-building and water from the public water supply. The City, as I said, was not unreasonable. It approached the business communities in the conquered provinces and encouraged them to press charges. So there were lawsuits. Cicero himself, the great mouthpiece of the City, conducted more than one on behalf of Sicilian firms.

But over time the lordships from the Senate got used to court actions in the same way as one is getting used to rain: one puts on a cloak. From now on they wouldn't steal a lot from a few, but few from the whole lot. And should be a lawsuit in the cards, they would steal everything. You need money to press charges. Therefore they stole from the people they pillaged even the possible trial fees.

So a few well funded democratic fraternities in Rome began to advance the money for court actions against the senatorial highwaymen, at least the most audacious of them, those who became even for the Roman business people an obstacle to do business in the province. The trials did indeed create a little bit of an onus, and, what was perhaps even more important, it gave the young attorneys an opportunity to familiarize themselves with corporate lawsuits. Because what was needed here, was not just a few witty pleads. The attorney had to put up and train the witnesses, and he needed skill to distribute the funds that kept the legal machinery well oiled. We even got young attorneys from the senatorial clans. In no other way they could study so closely the machinery of administration. One has to have made a bribe before, in order to properly receive a bribe.

C. lost both lawsuits. Some say, because he was too inept, I think, because he was too sharp. The latter was indicated by the fact that he had to go on a journey to - as he once had put it to me - "go out of the way of a hostile sentiment stirred up against me." He took passage to Rhodes, to, as he claimed, "improve his oratorical skills." Since such motive for a young attorney's sudden departure doesn't sound very impressive, one must assume, that there had been other reasons too for his journey, which would have sounded even less impressive.

It is true, that as an attorney, one may perhaps earn even more money by losing a trial, than by actually winning it. But one shouldn't do this with the very first lawsuits entrusted with. It was a weakness of this young man, that he didn't leave anything undone. Probably he wanted to be a "real" attorney from day one. In his war campaigns he later did the same thing. It did make my hair grow white."

The old man related all this, the whole story of the trials, with complete indifference and not a shred of humour. He seemed to be barely aware, that the picture he drew, of the great statesman's first public appearance, was anything but flattering. He suggested no less, than that Caesar had allowed himself to be bribed by his opponents. The two trials are of a certain significance for his biography. They were reputed to be the first, albeit not very successful attempt of the young Caesar, to raise the new banner of democracy against the corruption of the conservative senators. He was the descendant of a patrician family, which however had traditional ties to democracy. The widow of the people's general Marius was his aunt, the daughter of the revolutionary Cinna his wife. Spicer made his disapproval of Caesar's first public appearance very clear, but it came from a funny direction.

"Yet quite early he was seen to be the coming man in the democratic party, wasn't he?" I said nonchalantly.

Spicer looked at me with an inscrutable expression on his face. "Yes," he said dryly, "he was seen to be the coming man. He came for money. They were keen to have his name. His family belonged to the fifteen or sixteen oldest patrician clans in Rome."

I decided to lift the level of conversation. "You can't deny, that it speaks for his loyalty to democracy, that he rejected Sulla's demand, to divorce his first wife, Cornelia, because she had been Cinna's daughter. Or are you telling me, he wasn't serious about this either?"

"Why shouldn't he have been serious?" said the old man patiently. "Cinna had made a nice fortune in Spain."

"That was to be confiscated," I replied.

"Not from C. When this possibility came up, he took the money, and went with Cornelia on a trip to Asia."

"So you mean to say, that his refusal to divorce Cornelia, had nothing to do with his political convictions? And love, you don't consider at all?" Spicer looked at me with a quizzical expression. But I continued. "You seem to think, he was completely incapable of loving?"

"Why should I believe such a thing?" he said with calm. "Especially at that point in time he had been in love. It was a Syrian freedman; I forgot his name. Cornelia was, if one can believe the gossip, pretty much worked up about this. There had already been ugly scenes on board of the ship, and the Syrian insisted, that Caesar would get a divorce. Same as Sulla. But C. didn't give in to him either. Even if that disappoints you, he didn't allow his heart to control his head."

All this was said in complete earnest, even with a certain reluctance and with regard to my feelings, which one can hardly spot from the crude expression, if one just reads the sentences. Something in his voice seemed to say, that I was perfectly free, to continue listening to him or not, and to use or not use the information he imparted according to our agreement, but that he won't bend the truth nor change his opinion because of me. His opinion about C.'s capacity for true love, was indeed astounding, coming from a man who had six children and certainly was a good father and husband. Somewhat angry I cut short any more digressions and only said: "And the funeral, that he gave Cornelia and her aunt?"

"This was a political thing. During the funeral procession, he ordered to wear the wax masks of Marius and Cinna. He received 200,000 sestercies for this move from the democratic party. His family, especially his mother, a very sensible woman - I mentioned her to you - bore him a grudge for this long after. 200,000 sestercies that's not more than one pays for two good chefs. But the clubs thought the amount to be sufficient, since there wasn't any more danger in such demonstration: at that time, the chief of police had already been a democrat."

Before I descended back to the lake, he showed me around in some parts of his estate. Mainly it consisted of vineyards and only a few olive groves. We directed our steps towards the slave stables; two cleanly whitewashed stone buildings with many narrow window-openings high up.

In the neatly paved court two donkeys turned a mill under the supervision of an unfettered slave. Another slave sat unemployed on a little wooden bench next to the door. He was an elderly man and seemed very restless. His expression was absentminded, and his head turned incessantly around, as if he was listening to something.

"He will be picked up at noon," Spicer said. "He goes down to the market." He has passed his forties and is worn out."

"Why is he so anxious?" I asked. ...

(to be continued)

by Bertolt Brecht (1898­1956)
© - 2/28/2002 - translated by Michael Sympson - all rights reserved

 

February 2002

This month's edition is exclusively dedicated to the poetry of Gottfried Benn. The March issue will bring another selection from Bert Brecht's novel.

 

Gottfried Benn (1886-1956)

Poem 
Many Autumns 
Chopin 
September 
Recollections 
If something light 
Pictures
Old Waiter 
Primary Bloom
Pastor's Son

Poem
(1955)

and what does it mean, these urges,
half image, half word, and half sense,
what is in you that generates the surges
which a quietly grieving feel dispense?

it gathers in yourself out of the void
from single matters, from a potpourri,
digs in ashes, has the flame employed,
which you must keep to set it free.

you know, your grasp has bounds,
so fence things in within your scope
of thoughts, and calmly go the rounds,
even be open to misguided hope.

so day and night you make your move,
even sundays you chisel with persistence
and knock in the silver into the groove,
then you leave it - this is it: existence.

by Gottfried Benn (1886­1956)
© 12/02/2000 - tr. by Michael Sympson - all rights reserved

 

Many Autumns
(1952)

when many autumns fuse and congeal
inside your blood and in your mind,
calling out for another summer's appeal ­
and sweeping in the roses' fattened kind,

the entire pomp and all the lustre,
of Crêpe de Chine, terrace-night
and glamour ball: before shadows cluster
on your sorry tinsel's pathetic sight,

on foliage, burdens, a farewell's scrutiny,
on balconies, an odd geranium-sequence -
just tell me, who are you, you ninny,
what have you pitched in of substance?

by Gottfried Benn (1886­1956)
© 12/02/2000 - tr. by Michael Sympson - all rights reserved

 

Chopin
(1944)

not exactly profound in his conversation ­
opinions were not his strong points,
opinions talk "about" things ...
when Delacroix concocted yet another theory
he became restless; as for him
he couldn't tell the reason for his nocturnes.

in bed not a stallion;
a mere shade in Nohant,
where George Sand's children
preferred to ignore
his pedagogic advice.

ill in the chest by way
of bloody discharge and developing scars,
which drags on a long time;
but it is a quiet death
if compared to one
in agony
or in front of a shooting squad.
they pulled up to the door the piano (Erard)
and in his last hour
Delphine Potocka sang to him
a forget-me-not-song.

to England he travelled with three pianos:
Pleyel, Erard, Broadwood,
played for 20 guineas the evening
or for fifteen minutes
at the Rothschilds, Wellingtons, at Staffordshire Manor
in front of countless orders of the garter.
clouded by fatigue and mortality
he returned
to the Square d'Orleans.

then he burned all his sketch-books
and manuscripts.
no leftovers, fragments, notes
those treacherous insights;
his last words:
"my attempts are satisfactory, given the limits
for what I was able to achieve."

every finger had to be employed
according to its anatomical strength,
the fourth being the weakest
(just the Siamese companion to the third.)
when he commenced performance, his fingers rested
on e, f-sharp, g-sharp, h, c.

who ever has heard certain
preludes of him
will hardly forget it:
be it in manor houses or
carried over the hills,
or through open terrace-doors,
for instance at a sanatorium.
never composed an Opera,
never a symphony,
only these tragic obsessions,
out of an artistic conviction
and with a small hand.

by Gottfried Benn (1886­1956)
© 12/02/2000 - tr. by Michael Sympson - all rights reserved

 

September
(1944)

I.
you: who in the company of phlox bends over the fence,
(the rainfall tore it apart,
it smells strange, like game,)
you: who likes to walk on stubble,
who steps up to the older people who harvest
the balsam-apple,
you: in the ecstasy of the fields ­
every breath inhales lust and despondency.

where brickwork rises,
in need of a roof before the arrival of snow and winter;
where masons slake the lime,
you hesitate to greet them
or to say: "give it up."

you: more on the stocky side than tall,
and an obscene pumpkin clinging to your shoe -
a toadstool - it looks fat, yet is weightless.

you: the migrant from the plains,
the last moon over all fires in the world,
bloated from fruit and fever
you: who falls behind under a shaded face.

you: the clown and baptizer,
the summer's buffoon, the imitator - shall it be an obituary
or the glaciers early song?
it certainly introduces you as a nutcracker,
a reed-mower,
as a fuss-pot stating the obvious.

ahead of you lays the snow,
in towering silence and infertile,
and in immutable vastness -
so you stretch out your arm,
still bent over the fence,
into a crowd of herbs and teeming bugs,
into this urge for life
of spiders and dormice.

II.
you: who's veiled behind the aspen trees
in early autumn,
in a stubble-mesh,
breathing in the cabbage white butterflies:
go, let the arms run their round
till the cuckoo-clock calls the hour;
holler with the evening bell,
hit the gong,
the hour has arrived, the golden predestined hour,
which infuses tan
into a trembling heart!

you: the other guy!
only gods rest like this
or the clothes
of unassailable titans
from the oldest stock,
with thick embroidery
of butterfly and flower
along the seams!

or a slumber of more ancient kind,
when there was no awakening,
only golden heat and purple berries
with marks of pecking swallows, the eternal birds
which never migrate -

for this, chime the gong,
for this hour!
then,
after you fell silent,
the horizons will close in on you,
dressed in poplars and already cooling down.

by Gottfried Benn (1886­1956)
© 12/02/2000 - tr. by Michael Sympson - all rights reserved

 

Recollections
(1943)

I.
oh those were the years! the green light in the morning,
the hookers' district still unkempt ­
from the wide plains summer screamed into the city
and suckled at a horn
replenished from high.

the hours passed without sound. the colours seemed watery
and reflected in thin rays from a bright-green eye.
images of a charmed green, of a translucent ring-a-ring-a-roses:
of shepherds and maidens, a dome and doves ­
entwined and spent, they glittered and echoed
in ever changing clouds of happiness!

that's how you faced the day: the fountains
still without their pearls; the architecture and stairways
nothing to write home about; the houses
still locked, - you invented
the morning, a jasmine-morning,
the primeval holler,
the outburst - it still hasn't ended; those were the years!

something remains unquenchable in your heart,
corollaries to Heaven and Earth,
an influx from reed and garden,
the thunderstorms at evening
who quench the umbel's iron thirst,
tormenting it with pulsing sap, till it busts after dark.
ocean and beaches
had flagged with canvas,
and were pregnant with white-hot sand;
after weeks of suntan, everything was brown;
kisses ran along the skin, they rained down
carefree and barely noticed,
like a sudden shower!

and from high loomed this weight -
even now - yet we pulled
down a branch
to pluck the grapes - then it whipped back.
just a few berries,
if you fancied berries,
but first - -

still not so pressed and overburdened
by corncob sized fruit-clusters,
by heavy and ancient grape-meat -

oh those were the years!

II.
dark days of spring,
and the never ending twilight in the foliage;
the lilac-bloom droops, barely looks up,
narcissi-coloured it reeks of death,
between outbursts of happiness,
and a defeated grief for the unfulfilled.

rain falls on the leaves
and in the distance
I hear an old song from the woods;
woods which I once had travelled
and revisited, but I didn't step
into the hall, where the song was sung;
for a long time the keys have fallen silent.
somewhere her hands are laid to rest;
they fell off from arms that used to hold me
and moved me to tears,
hands from the eastern plains,
gored and crushed underfoot.
only her song from the woods
in dark days of spring
drifts into the rain,
towards the eternal steppe.

by Gottfried Benn (1886­1956)
© 12/02/2000 - tr. by Michael Sympson - all rights reserved

 

If Something Light
(1943)

if something light and swishing takes you in
like the wisteria-glory on this fence,
then the hour of despondency will win
your mind and say you lack exuberance.

not like the blossoms or the light:
coming in rays, as a shifting swarm,
doing their thing at nature's building-site,
but all united in one ecstatic form,

the velvet at the bottom of all things,
so fluid and so undivided -
it marks the hours, pulls the strings
and leaves you sad and undecided.

by Gottfried Benn (1886­1956)
© 12/02/2000 - tr. by Michael Sympson - all rights reserved

 

Pictures
(1941)

when you see on pictures in the galleries
crooked backs, grey lips, the wrinkled sweat
of an indecently bloated hoary head,
whose walking corpse lives on in reveries,

a cracking hide, beard, pasty stubble,
bloodshot lard from his daily booze,
in his pouch fishing for a fag - a ruse
that makes you to pay for him a double -

a retirement with decorous gripes,
fortunes of four letter words, rags, pestilences,
eviction notes from ever changing residences,
all day at pawnshops, all night in sewer pipes:

if in pictures at the galleries you see
how this hoary head has paid for life and art
you see the features on the painter's part
you see the genius - this is he!

by Gottfried Benn (1886­1956)
© 12/02/2000 - tr. by Michael Sympson - all rights reserved

 

Old Waiter
(1938)

the vacant, the human lot, and destiny,
an old waiter who must slave and run:
if any of his children came to see
he'd rather be an other one.

another one he never could become,
birth and fate, urges and distress ­
to faded lust of age old soil, succumb
early deaths and absence of finess.

the spirit's lineage, the butcher's crib,
burdens, treason, the species' swag ­
all this conspired to dress his rib
with meat and raise this tired nag.

his life runs out ­ some guest provokes ­
he drags the club-foot, clenches the shoe,
another guest steps in and plies him jokes
and pretends to share his feelings too.

nature's laws, or forces of eternity,
spur and fatigue, grand scheme or play:
another one he never was to be,
created for the void, for mankind's way.

by Gottfried Benn (1886­1956)
© 12/02/2000 - tr. by Michael Sympson - all rights reserved

 

Primary Bloom
(1925)

primary bloom,
a genuine "no"
to utilitarian gloom
to evolutions' throe.
cosmos is random,
work is curse
it fades in boredom
the universe.

does the mind not feel
sometimes this rap
as if a deeper deal
under foliage pushes sap,
or a cloud-scape
and the tidal sea
from theory escape
into infinity?

it is the fever's trance
of boundless eternity,
an obsessive dance,
of you and me
and the stellar sign
on Orion's fall,
at the peonies' line
blooming tall.

by Gottfried Benn (1886­1956)
© 12/02/2000 - tr. by Michael Sympson - all rights reserved

 

Pastor's Son
(1922)

scion to hernia cases on the estate
of aristocratic clap and of bastardy,
bones wrapped in diapers and pee,
placenta flies its colours at the gate:

in the hamlet the old man rises a stir
and jingles the collection-bowl,
your excellency, your worship, Sir,
the water broke ­ ninth tadpole.

in the winter the old man is green
like summer's wheat and mistletoe
praise the lord let mother wean:
and again dips his rod into the roe.

so be it, in the name of God my son,
"God is my fortress" and for you a grant:
the ole tailor Johnes can spare a bun
once a week, on tuesday, at his aunt.

so be it, in the name of God, on lent:
treatment for mother's cancer plight?
who pays? "into your hands I commend -"
twelve children scream into the night.

in the winter the old man is green
like mistletoe and summer's wheat
a new Adam's rib, they sit and preen
have another lay and soil the sheet:

old Abraham, you bloody hopper,
twelve plagues of Isaac in the throng
wait on you with a pasta chopper,
mash your balls and dash your dong:

dare talk to me of God and family?
a crowbar through this pious drool:
your worship, Sir, your excellency,
Geronimo! yours truly: ninth tadpole.

by Gottfried Benn (1886­1956)
© 12/02/2000 - tr. by Michael Sympson - all rights reserved

January 2002

The first issue brings a bit of two different authors.

Gottfried Benn introduces himself in his typical manner in his "Epilogue." The account stops before his political boo-boo from 1933. Why this sudden hysterical endorsement of Hitler by a man who not only was no anti-Semite but before had detested the Nazis for their vulgarity and actually continued to detest them? The feeling was mutual, the Nazis had him on their black list as a pervert and degenerate. In actual fact after a brief honeymoon, the Nazis expelled him from the list of physicians who could prescribe certain drugs, which was tantamount to professional suicide. In 1938 the government also imposed a publishing ban. Benn had little choice but to reactivate his career in the medical corps of the military, which carried him to the rank of a colonel. In this position he always was close to the inner circles of the Army's general staff. Even after 1945, and in full awareness of the extermination camps, Benn privately maintained that "the NS had been a great movement of spiritual renewal in western civilization." But why? Where was the common ground for a sensitive and sensible artist of Benn's calibre, who at one point in his life was thought to be Nobel price material, and the Nazis? The answer lies in the eugenic section of the Nurenberg legislation. Benn as scientist and physician had written extensively on eugenic matters even before 1933. His private correspondence testifies that he never changed his position on this matter. See also: a blurred vision: Gottfried Benn's prose.

Bertolt Brecht was seen as Benn's opposite number, in fact Brecht has a few well aimed lampoons on Benn in the critical section of his collected works. Brecht was not only a communist, he employed his art to serve the cause. This has become an obstacle for the critical and public acclaim of his work. It can make it difficult to fairly appreciate the true stature of the man, who might be counted as one of the five greatest writers in his language. For more see his biography.

 

Gottfried Benn (1886-1956)

Epilogue 
Caryatid 
The Strand 
Never Lonlier 
Clemenceau  

Bertold Brecht (1898-1956)

Selection from Bert Brecht: "The Enterprises of our Mr. C."

from Gottfried Benn's "Epilogue"

"Born in 1886 as son of a Lutheran pastor and a French women somewhere from Yverdon I grew up in a village of approximately three hundred people ... I went to grammar school, then the University, read two years for linguistics and theology, after that enrolled for medicine at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Academy, was active in the military as a doctor in the territorial forces, but soon discharged, because after six hours on horseback during an exercise, a kidney got loose, continued my medical education, travelled to America, inoculated passengers in the third class, went to war, conquered Antwerp, had a good time behind the front-line, lived for a long time in Brussels ... now I stay in Berlin, make a living as specialist for skin - and venal diseases: consultation hours every evening between five and seven o'clock.

I registered and certified, obtained degrees, practiced medicine as an intern, wrote on diabetes in the army, on vaccines for the clap, on gaps in the peritoneum, on cancer statistics, received from the University of Berlin the golden medal for an essay on epilepsy; whatever I produced in literature I have written in spring 1916, except for the "Morgue" which had been published by A.R.Meyer in 1912. I was doctor at a clinic for prostitutes, a completely isolated post, lived in a confiscated house, eleven rooms, alone with my valet, had few duties, was permitted to go in civilian clothes, had no obligations, no ties to anybody, barely understood the language; strolled through the streets, watched the foreign folk; a peculiar spring, three months beyond any comparison, not a day passed without a barrage at the Yser ­ but it barely touched the everyday routine ­ life swung like a pendulum in an air of silence and solitude, I lived on the fringe where the existence ends and the self begins. My thoughts often turn back to those weeks; this was the life, it will not come again, everything else was rot.

As far as I can follow the four thousand years of human history, there are two basic types of neurological responses. Separated by a different sensitivity for the interplay between the whole and its elements and represented in a certain irritability against concepts for a more total view. Primacy of the whole, to en cai pan, incidental play of forms, painful and centripetal: the Hindus, the speculative types, the introverts, the expressionists, and on the opposite end the individual as absolute measure of all things, who pigeonholes the world in ideas: the casuistic activist, ethical and working out; I rather stay with the primacy of the whole, with the harbingers of chaos, and this to such extent, that I think of Darwin as a midwife and of monkeys as a branch of arts and crafts: we invented space to kill time, and time to motivate our will to live; in fact nothing happens and nothing develops, the category in which the cosmos reveals itself is the category of hallucination.

I am a child of the century of natural sciences; I know exactly where I stand. In a bacchanal of singularities, in a triumph of the concrete ­ I am drilled like no one else in formulaic transformations and the synthetic summary, my inner self is distorted to a grotesque persiflage; and by the way I must add, that I did not always ply my present trade, the skin diseases. Initially I had been a psychiatrist, till the strange phenomenon occurred, which turned into a crises, and in a piece this meant, that I was no longer able to pay attention to the individual case. It became physically impossible for me to concentrate my interest on the new patient, or to continue to survey individually the old cases. It caused me pain beyond description to inquire into the history of their illness and into their lifestyle, and to test a patient's IQ and to assess what motivates him morally. My mouth became dry, my eyelids became inflamed, I would have gone berserk, if my superior, before he got me fired, had not summoned me and demanded an explanation for my utterly inadequate keeping of the charts.

I tried to understand what was my problem. From textbooks on psychiatry I moved on to modern publications, some quite remarkable, especially when coming from the French; I took particular interest in what is called a depersonalisation syndrome or alienation to sense perception, I began to envision the self as an entity so powerful, that it makes gravity appear to be the kiss of a snowflake, and it pulls towards a condition, where none of the intellectual capacities that count in modern culture, would matter any more; instead, what in the wake of mainstream medicine had become odious in our civilization ­ nervous breakdowns, fatigue, psychotic disorders ­ had to be seen for what it really was: the profound, age-old and mythological alienation of man from his world.

Impossible to live in society any longer, impossible to find a point of reference in life or work; the brackish condition of antithetic structures has become too obvious, this compromising intercourse of potbellied contradictions is too disgusting. ­ Once I had read in Montesquieu, that, because he descended from Antony as well as from Augustus, the Emperor Caligula had said, he would penalize the senate, if they dared to celebrate the holiday he had created to commemorate the victory of Actium, but he would also penalize them for not celebrating it; and as his sister, Drusilla, had died and been deified, it was high treason to mourn for her, because she was a goddess, and a criminal offence not to mourn, because she was his sister. This gave me the idea. I had to think of this, when people faced up to me. It was this form in which I recognized them, when ever somebody stepped into my way; it was this line which revealed to me his nature.

It was the structure of "either ­ or," in which these people operate when they traverse their professions or practice safe sex . On one hand as well as on the other the same anal retentive personality, completely and down to the dirt under the fingernails and always coerced into social compromise, be it for food or for the next quickie, it is always this mediocre balance, and this generalizing sub-structure of "positive thinking." Lemurs, grand schemes, the shrieking night-mares, the galoshes squish through the soggy naught; words Horatio, words, the lips balloon like blisters and spew their semen out as gossip ­ time and again I closed shop and locked the door behind and travelled. Time and again I had to set out, because I couldn't find a desert in Europe. Before me, in my consultation room, there sits a gentleman, he addresses me, his speech is full of the communality of experience and a life of honest work, "take heart my friend, things are going to look up," he says, soothing and agreeable.

I look out of the window and across the street a gentleman is dusting his jacket, but in this moment, many gentlemen dust their jackets, where ever you turn, always these simultaneous events, to and forth between stabile certainties and the unquestionably vast, between ideas and totality, to and forth ... How shall we live? Who says we must! Vulnerable in the coronary area, neurotic and incontinent, beholding the carnal self, beholding the apocalypse, schizoid dissociated instead of responding with affection, instead of being fertile aborting into every direction under the sky, self-centered and solitary, putrefying and one-sided, like cyclops over the ram's back, which carries its spoil underneath, on the belly and not on a grid of absolute gradients; thirty seven years and completely finished, I have nothing more to write - one should write with intestinal worms and with coprolites, I have stopped reading - what is there to read? The good old titans with wings of a dragonfly sticking to their sandwich wrapper?

I think no longer, no longer follow thoughts to their conclusion; it is so cute this image of the Western thinker, who still musters the courage to confront chaos with his only weapon, the definition, David's slingshot, fighting for his life and fighting another day until the West sinks into the shadow - the Sun sets over formalistic methodology, but what touches me in passing is the notion of a method beyond psychology's eternally latent antinomies, a syndicalistic metaphysic. Now they have been published, these Collected Works, one volume, two hundred pages, very slim, I should be ashamed, if I were still alive. Nothing to shout about; it would surprise me if anybody should care to read it; it already appears to be very distant from me, I throw it over my shoulder like Deucalion threw the stones, perhaps the emerging hobgoblins turn human, but which way ever they turn out to be, I do not love them. ("Epilogue," 1926)

by Gottfried Benn (1886­1956)
© - 12/02/2000 - translated by Michael Sympson - all rights reserved

Caryatid
(1916)

[...] ­
look: this blue summer's fading breath
carries over seas of asters to distant
tree-brown shores and dawns!
look at this last lying hour of bliss
of our southerness
pregnant swell.

by Gottfried Benn (1886­1956)
© - 12/02/2000 - translated by Michael Sympson - all rights reserved

 

The Strand
(1920)

with every wave it drums you into dust,
it spikes you on your self, in every dune
of frost-less spill an unforgiving gust
bereaves of space, and throttles a tune.

always about Kattegatt and fire-sign
and Finisterre, the landmark's final frill;
buoys tumble before the mud-flats' line
of dead endurance ­ cyclopean and still.

oh your dialectic's sweetest melody:
you gather and scatter sea-gull screams,
identity, sidereal monotony,
that never spills and always streams ­

you: at night, towers glide like spume;
you: at noon's rock-studded sweep ­
just washed-out slag, void stretches of room,
of all this plunder, of all this deep.

by Gottfried Benn (1886­1956)
© - 12/02/2000 - translated by Michael Sympson - all rights reserved

 

Never Lonelier
(1936)

never lonelier than in August:
'tis closing hour ­ in the shires
burn red and gold the fires,
yet where is your garden's lust?

lakes are bright, soft the skies,
fields ooze a pure and quiet shine,
yet where has victory set a sign
of your domain's highest price?

where all receive bliss in kind,
exchanging looks, exchanging rings,
in scent of wine, ecstasy of things ­
you serve the anti-bliss, the mind.

by Gottfried Benn (1886­1956)
© - 12/02/2000 - translated by Michael Sympson - all rights reserved

 

Clemenceau
(1944)

"with a view on how it ends,
life is good,"
his glance rested on the roses of the Vendee.
and then:
"people have no soul,
if only they had character."

the following remark testifies to a superior mind:
"there are stars,
which have ceased for more than 2000 years
but we still receive their light.
if you think of it,
everything else is just fine."

he had expertise in the arts.
about his neighbour, the painter Monet, he wrote:
"he should have lived ten more years,
then nobody would have understood
his creations;
on his canvas
he may have left nothing to look at."

for his wit speaks this dialogue:
C.: "he had the reputation of a passionate pederast?"
M.: "no, he speaks of pedophilia without passion."
C.: "what? he couldn't even wind up a passion?"

in regard to our own character, he jokes:
"these Germans!
they see a cute little animal frolicking in the water,
and what do they call it? a guinea -- pig!!

perspective replaces emphasis;
at eighty-five he sums it up:
"nothing is true. everything is true.
that's all there is to it."

often he had visited Greece,
collected there many artifacts.
he ended his will with:
"set the Hellenic marble on my grave."

by Gottfried Benn (1886­1956)
© - 12/02/2000 - translated by Michael Sympson - all rights reserved

 

 

from Bertolt Brecht's "The Enterprises of our Mr. C."

First Book
The Career of a noble young Man

The way, as directed, was narrow and rather steep. Upwards from the lake, fringed by low stone walls, it climbed the terraces and led in a zigzag through the olive groves. It was a bright morning. Apparently they had their early break: we met only a few slaves in the plantation, and there barely rose any smoke from the huts. Soon we caught sight of the villa, at least of the parts that shone through the olive branches. It was located halfway up the hill. Still climbing, I again was troubled by doubts, whether the old man would really allow us to have a look into the invaluable documents. The letters of commendation in the baggage of my Sempronius were not exactly a heavy burden. I rather had seen him sweat under their weight.

As so often, when the difficulties, not to mention the expenses, had became too overwhelming, I found comfort in the thought, that the great statesman, whose biography I was about to write, unwittingly, but also knowingly, had created weightier obstacles than just a couple of arduous journeys. There was this legend, which covered everything under a cloud of mist. He even had written books, in an attempt to lead us astray. And he also had spent money, and not just petty cash! Great men have a habit of making us sweat before we can possibly grasp the motives behind their accomplishments.

The villa turned out to be a one storey building, but very spacious. It was constructed in the simplest of styles, so very unlike of the monstrosities our metropolitan parvenus like to favour. And the master of the house, who welcomed us in his library, also displayed very little of the airs of our new senators. The former bailiff who became a banker, Mummius Spicer, is a tall and boney old man with a somewhat grey complexion in his face; the heavy jawbone makes it rather conspicuous. He has a slight stoop, yet this doesn't seem to be a sign of old age. Stepping to the window, he inspected our letters of commendation; and very carefully. From the way he handled the documents you could guess his profession. Business people are used to read with greater care than the ordinary novel reader. They know all about the disadvantages of a cursory reading.

Nothing in his wide and coarse face betrayed what he thought about the different attorneys and how he evaluated their commendations. Then and there I thought, that he was probably most impressed by the words of the imperial quaestor Tullius Varro, a very influential man. Later, after knowing Spicer a little better, I changed my mind and came to believe, that it was the short letter of Cavella, the freedman, who made a favourable mentioning of my law practice, that had turned him around to look more approvingly on my undertaking. He himself, never brought it up. After he'd read, he handed the documents back without a word, and continued to use the same tone, with which he'd bade us welcome.

Some of the commendations referred to the purpose of my visit, and the old man began to inquire into my studies and interests. His questions were to the point, and he received my replies without any sign of agreement or disapproval. He wanted to know, whether I had published anything. I mentioned my "Solon." Then he asked for my affiliations to political parties, and I answered, that I had none. Then, rather blunt, as I thought, he turned to my private affairs, and it slowly dawned on me, that he planned to receive payment for whatever information he had.

I must say, that I was quite astonished. The library surrounding us, was that of a very wealthy man. Only later I discovered, that it must have been assembled at random, presumably from gifts; the collection showed no coherence and system; but the items were expensive gifts to a rich man. I also knew, that he had some very profitable real estate, and that his by no means inexpensive house, if compared to the part of his income which he drew just from the Sardinian silver mines, could only qualify as being very modest. My undertaking, and therefore my reason to approach him, was purely scientific. No financial profit could be expected from it. It was really not the common thing, to buy historical memorabilia like pieces of tableware.

He couldn't help noticing my resentment. There was a little, not very comfortable pause. Then he brusquely asked: "So what do you really want from me?" I said something to the extent, that he was thought to have the diaries of Rarus in his possession. "I don't have it anymore," he said calmly.

I fell silent again. If he thought, that after eleven days of travel, I would haggle with him over a couple of parchment scrolls like one haggles over an orchard or a slave, then he would be badly mistaken. But he appeared completely unruffled when he quietly continued: "You wouldn't be able to use them anyway. I guess, you want to write a biography. This is a political subject." ­ "The notes of a politician's secretary are a political subject, whatever else they may be," I said, a little testy. "Perhaps," he said, turning his face away to one corner in the room, "but I don't have it."

A short Gallic slave entered the room, apparently the estate's steward. The old man gave him very detailed instructions concerning the repair of an aqueduct. Their meeting, in which the old man didn't look at me even once, took over a quarter of an hour. Then, the Gaul left, and the master of the house, picked up on our conversation.

"You wouldn't be able to make use of this stuff without extensive explanations anyway," he maintained calmly. "And who should provide it for you? Of course, if what you are after is just a couple of intimate details - - but I doubt, whether there is any entry, that the man in question had fish for breakfast, and other such trivia that interests the general public. This Rarus had to deal with the business side of the affairs, and you know of course, that for this aspect our historians don't give a hoot; they have not a clue, how bear trading is done. All of you think this is just ephemeral."

"I don't believe, that the notes contain only quota from the corn exchange," I said. "And what if?" he asked, and, even so his face remained as unmoved as ever, I seemed to detect a slightly amused expression. "Well, then even this will yield valuable information," I put in quickly. "Oh yeah?" he said.

I came to believe, that he belonged to the kind of people who receive no pleasure from a cut and dry trade, just as most women don't like to get laid in a rush, and I decided to give him a long lay. "Pity, you threw away the thing," I said with regret in my voice. "It was nothing less than a testimony to the founding of the Empire."

He thought for a while, before he answered. "You mean to say, that if we gain clues as to the character of Mr. X from the composition of his breakfast, then the same can be elicited from his dealings at the corn exchange. Have you already found a place to stay?"

This question caught me somewhat on the wrong foot, and I told him with some hesitation, that I had had rented for a full month a small house at the lake. An unforgivable mistake, which quite simply could open the floodgate to the most exorbitant demands.

For a while he looked attentively at me. Then he rose, went to the wall and knocked with his knuckles at a plate of brass, hanging there from a string. Stepping behind a low, beautifully crafted reading desk, he pulled a sheet of carton out of a leather case and to the entering slave pointed his finger at an entry on the carton. There was silence, till the man returned with a little box made of ash wood under his arm. Casually the old man took the box and placed it on the bookshelf behind a chair. "These are the notes," he said curtly. "What are they worth to you?"

I laughed. "It is incomprehensible without exact explanations," I said. "It is not on sale without explanations," he answered unmoved. "I shall provide it. And of course, you can't purchase the scrolls as such, only the right to read them."

"8,000 sestercies," I said. I could see him hesitating. "You did two weeks of travelling for this, and you rented a house for one month, so you won't like to return empty handed," he grunted. 12,000 sestercies are very little to ask. A good chef costs you 100,000."

I was angry. He really had no manners. "Good," I said tersely. "But I have instructed you," he cautioned, "that there is not much in it, that people like you, could make use of. "So you have," I said impatiently. 12,000 sesterces is quite a lot of money. I had still no idea, whether the notes were worth the amount. And as for my host's instructions, it was not mentioned any further; I was too angy. Yet for him, it appeared to be part of a done deal, and he asked me, to visit him as soon as the next evening.

(to be continued)

by Bertolt Brecht (1898­1956)
© - 1/05/1998 - translated by Michael Sympson all rights reserved

page up | up to January | up to February | next page