A Brecht/Weill Post: on "Nannas Lied"

People like to say that Brecht is cold, but I believe he has a deeper game. When I read a piece like Nannas Lied, I can't help thinking that despite his political and sexual opportunism, he actually had a great deal of sympathy for women. I think this comes out in the poetry and the plays.

This is a song about a streetwalker making sense out of her world using a famous Villon refrain as her own. So what if Brecht plagiarized this line or meant it as an intertext, it's the overall effect that seems like it is most important, and in this case we find the delicate and the brutal coming together in an explication of what happens when a girl sells her body and feelings in the market of "love." And apparently, it's not so easy.

Nanna’s Song

Dear sirs, with seventeen years
I came to the market of love.
And I had been through a lot,
Bad stuff happens a lot,
Indeed, that’s the game.
But nevertheless, I have some of the blame.
(After all, I am a person too.)

Thank God, everything goes by so quickly,
Both the love and the even sorrow, as well.
Where are the tears of last evening?
Where is the snow of yesteryear?
Where are the tears of last evening?
Where is the snow of yesteryear?

Of course, as you go through the years,
The love market becomes easier,
And you embrace them by the score.
But your feelings
Grow oddly cool,
If they’re rationed far too little.
(After all, any supply has to come to an end.)

Thank God, everything goes by so quickly,
Both the love and the even sorrow, as well.
Where are the tears of last evening?
Where is the snow of yesteryear?
Where are the tears of last evening?
Where is the snow of yesteryear?

And also, if you have learned the trade well,
In the measuring of love:
To transform desire into small change,
Still is never easy.
Now, you’ll make it.
Meanwhile you become older.
(After all, you can’t stay seventeen forever.)

Thank God everything goes by so quickly,
Both the love and even the sorrow, as well.
Where are the tears of last evening?
Where is the snow of yesteryear?
Where are the tears of last evening?
Where is the snow of yesteryear?

Nannas Lied, Bertolt Brecht, 
English translation attributed to L. Steve Schmersal.
Music by Kurt Weill, 1929.


And now, auf Deutsch:


Nannas Lied

Meine Herren, mit siebzehn Jahren
Kam Ich auf den Liebesmarkt
Und Ich habe viel erfahren
Böses gab es viel
Doch das war das Spiel
Aber manches hab ich doch verargt.
(Schlieβlich bin ich ja auch ein Mensch.)

Gott sei Dank geht alles schnell vorüber
Auch die Liebe unde der Kummer sogar.
Wo sind die Tränen von gestern Abend?
Wo ist der Schnee vom vergangenen Jahr?
Wo sind die Tränen von gestern Abend?
Wo ist der Schnee vom vergangenen Jahr?

Freilich geht man mit den Jahren
Leichter auf den Liebesmarkt
Und umarmt sie dort in Scharen.
Aber das Gefühl
Bleibt erstaundlich kühl
Wenn man damit allzuwenig kargt.
(Schlieβlich geht ja jede Vorrat zu Ende.)

Gott sei Dank geht alles schnell vorüber
Auch die Liebe unde der Kummer sogar.
Wo sind die Tränen von gestern Abend?
Wo ist der Schnee vom vergangenen Jahr?
Wo sind die Tränen von gestern Abend?
Wo ist der Schnee vom vergangenen Jahr?

Und auch wenn man gut das Handeln
Lernte auf der Liebesmess’:
Lust in Kleingeld zu verwandeln
Ist doch niemals leicht.
Nun, es wird erreicht.
Doch man wird auch alter unterdes.
(Schlieβlich bleibt man ja nicht immer siebzehn.)

Gott sei Dank geht alles schnell vorüber
Auch die Liebe unde der Kummer sogar.
Wo sind die Tränen von gestern Abend?
Wo ist der Schnee vom vergangenen Jahr?
Wo sind die Tränen von gestern Abend?
Wo ist der Schnee vom vergangenen Jahr?

Nannas Lied, Bertolt Brecht.
Music by Kurt Weill, 1929.


And now for the song.


The incomparable Teresa Stratas singing Kurt Weill's setting of the poem that he wrote as a birthday gift for Lotte Lenya, after they'd moved to America, and married for the second time:





Ute Lemper singing the same:

Get Home Safe

"Get Home Safe." I heard that phrase tonight. It’s something I often say, and now we enter again that domain in which I am most uncomfortable: the personal experience, Dear-Kitty-type essay. How I hate this form. I don’t mean to belittle those who pursue it, like one of my favorites—the Gay Prof—but it truly is not the sort of thing one should do on an anti-‘Blog, such as the one you are reading.

Anyway, I was on the subway tonight, and at the stop before mine, a man said to someone—I could not, and did not, see either of them—“Get home safe.”

Why do I say this often, O Reader? It is something people in my family often say, almost always say, really. I come from farm-stock, Midwestern people. Should I begin here? I find myself saying it to anyone, whether they are walking, taking a cab, driving, or flying in a plane. Is the farm somehow an important place to begin?

This command, this injunction, comes from a world when travel was dangerous. Anytime you put your fate in hands of a bus driver, a train conductor, or the wheel of your own car, was something that was not like the stillness, the safety, of home, of table, of bed. You can die out there, you know. You can die.

I was fortunate to move to a New York that was dangerous enough, or used to be, so that friends gave me a couple bucks if my wallet was empty, so that if I got mugged on my way home, I had some cash to give that angry, desperate other on the other end of a knife or gun. Get home safe.

This has, I think, to do with the history of the night. It has to do with that dark, unlit place, that time, when travel was uncertain—I mean a time, which is also a place that was mysterious, and unpredictable, before electric lighting, before everyone lived in cities. A time when we lived by the sun, a time when after the sun fell, we had a long night of moon, if we were lucky. Get home safe, we said, because in that darkness, in that confidence we put in the driver, the conductor, the pilot, there was a certain uncertainty that we might never arrive home.

I hate to share this, but, I recently had a disturbing death—two of them—in my extended family, where people headed home, did not get home safe. They were making their way in the most banal fashion, yet they did not get home. They died.

The people who died were sort of in-laws, the sibling and spouse of an in-law, and it made me think of how I would feel if one of my siblings had this fate right now. It was unthinkable. My mind literally could not go there, could not imagine this, this thing that happens to all living things.

Any unexpected death probably has a similar effect on the survivors of it. I am talking of people I knew so little, yet it needs must remind me of the preciousness of the people around me. Do they know I love them so much? Have I told them recently? Told them enough? How do we tell this to anyone? I expect that we do the best job we can, and yet it is probably never enough. Get home safe is always an I love you.

I am, frankly, very thankful that I have been instilled with this fear of the unpredictable night, the exigencies of travel. Life turns out to be always fragile. It is not a bad thing to be reminded of that that. Have I told you how much you mean to me?

Get home safe.