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After Brecht: A Celebration

Bertolt Brecht

Edited by Karen Leeder

Cover Picture of After Brecht: A Celebration
Categories: 20th Century, German, Translation, War writings
Imprint: Carcanet Poetry
Publisher: Carcanet Press
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  •      Who gives works their longevity?
         Those who will live after.
         Whom to choose as builders?
         Those still unborn.


    from 'About the Way to Construct Enduring Works' by Bertolt Brecht (translated by Karen Leeder)
    An anthology of German poetry translated into English.

    Including poems by Wolf Biermann, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Paul Celan, Peter Huchel and Heinrich Böll

    Including translations by David Constantine, Ian Fairley, Michael Hamburger, Michael Hofmann and Karen Leeder


    Bertolt Brecht's life as a dramatist, poet and polemicist has inspired writers from all over the world. This anthology, published to mark the fiftieth anniversary of his death in August 1956, brings together English translations of poems by German poets who have responded to his remarkable legacy. Celebrating the continuing creative dialogue between Brecht and 'those who will live after', it includes poems from East and West Germany and Austria; poems written duing Brecht's own lifetime by friends, lovers and colleagues; responses to his death, and works by later writers for whom Brecht remains a challenge and an inspiration. After Brecht: A Celebration demonstrates the way in which Brecht's concerns and his unique diction have become a part of the very stuff of modern poetry.
    Bertolt Brecht
    Bertoldt Brecht was born in 1898 in Munich and one of the most significant German writers of the 20th Century. Brecht objected to Germany's part in World War I (as he saw his classmates be "swallowed by the army") and was almost expelled from school for an essay criticising his country's ... read more
    Karen Leeder
    Karen Leeder (born 1962) is a writer, translator and academic. Since 1993 she has taught German at New College, Oxford and is Professor of Modern German Literature there. She is also a translator of German poetry into English, most recently Volker Braun, Rubble Flora: Selected Poems (with David Constantine, 2014), Michael ... read more
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