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Wait for history to count to ten, then you can come and get us, come and get me
My poem "Shadow-Song" is now online at Uncanny Magazine. I wrote it in October on a train to New York. It started off as a ghost poem for Bertolt Brecht, but it changed.
Elisabeth Hauptmann not only performed the initial translation of John Gay's The Beggar's Opera (1728) that evolved into Brecht and Weill's Die Dreigroschenoper (1928), she wrote much of the finished play's text, although she was not credited for it at the time. It is not completely a case of Brecht taking the labor of others for granted; Hauptmann seems to have published even her solo work under pseudonyms and anonymity by preference. She took credit for the book of the musical Happy End (1929) only under pretext of adapting it from an English-language original à la Threepenny when in fact she had written the story from scratch with lyrics by Brecht and music by Weill. I think it was complicated. Anyway, I knew who Kurt Weill was from childhood and certainly Brecht by the time I saw him haunting Marc Blitzstein in Tim Robbins' Cradle Will Rock (1999), but I must have been in college before I'd heard of Hauptmann. In life she was nicknamed Brecht's "devoted shadow," whence the title.
So that's my coincidental but heartfelt rebuttal to that article by Zoe Williams that's popped back up on my friendlist, about the value of art in times of apocalypse. Outside my office window, it appears to be lightly and dryly and sunnily snowing.
Elisabeth Hauptmann not only performed the initial translation of John Gay's The Beggar's Opera (1728) that evolved into Brecht and Weill's Die Dreigroschenoper (1928), she wrote much of the finished play's text, although she was not credited for it at the time. It is not completely a case of Brecht taking the labor of others for granted; Hauptmann seems to have published even her solo work under pseudonyms and anonymity by preference. She took credit for the book of the musical Happy End (1929) only under pretext of adapting it from an English-language original à la Threepenny when in fact she had written the story from scratch with lyrics by Brecht and music by Weill. I think it was complicated. Anyway, I knew who Kurt Weill was from childhood and certainly Brecht by the time I saw him haunting Marc Blitzstein in Tim Robbins' Cradle Will Rock (1999), but I must have been in college before I'd heard of Hauptmann. In life she was nicknamed Brecht's "devoted shadow," whence the title.
So that's my coincidental but heartfelt rebuttal to that article by Zoe Williams that's popped back up on my friendlist, about the value of art in times of apocalypse. Outside my office window, it appears to be lightly and dryly and sunnily snowing.
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It's fine! I didn't want to be rude, but it was entirely possible this was another Gina I hadn't heard of.
You'll love this quote by Gina Kaus, apropos all the male exile writers moaning about the indignity of working for the movie industry: "I never had time to wonder whether it was undignified to write for the movies. I needed the money."
Hah. Yes. Thank you.
As, for example, Manfred Flügge telling me he's convinced Brecht died because the state deliberately prevented him from getting medication only available in the West. He says there is a tape of Erich Mielke ranting about unreliable writers, and mentioning Brecht before adding, after an ominous pause, "...but then he died". "They didn't exactly kill him," the compact, fierce-looking Mr. Flügge pronounced, daring anyone to disagree, "but they let him die!"
These conferences sound invaluable.
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If a brick of money falls out of the sky, I will give it serious consideration! If not, I will look forward to your writeup.
The last time, we had Nicole Nottelmann there to tell us about Salka Viertel and her relationship with Garbo as described in this book.
Nice.