Brecht Collected Plays: 1: Baal; Drums in the Night; In the Jungle of Cities; Life of Edward II of England; & 5 One Act Plays: "Baal", "Drums in the Night", "In the Jungle of Ci (World Classics) Read Online Free PDF

as large and pale and calm
    Naked, young, endlessly marvellous
    As Baal loved it when he came to us.
Dining Room
    Mech, Emilie Mech, Pschierer, Johannes Schmidt, Dr Piller, Baal and other guests enter through the revolving door
.
    MECH
to Baal
: Would you like some wine, Mr Baal?
All take seats
,
Baal in the place of honour
. Do you like crab? That’s a dead eel.
    PILLER
to Mech
: I’m very glad that the immortal poems of Mr Baal, which I had the honour of reading to you, have earned your approval.
To Baal
: You must publish your poetry. Mr Mech pays like a real patron of the arts. You’ll be able to leave your attic.
    MECH: I buy cinnamon wood. Whole forests of cinnamon float down the rivers of Brazil for my benefit. But I’ll also publish your poetry.
    EMILIE: You live in an attic?
    BAAL
eating and drinking
: 64 Klauckestrasse.
    MECH: I’m really too fat for poetry. But you’ve got the same-shaped head as a man in the Malayan Archipelago, who used to have himself driven to work with a whip. If he wasn’t grinding his teeth he couldn’t work.
    PSCHIERER: Ladies and gentlemen. I admit it frankly: I was shattered to find a man like him in such modest circumstances. As you know, I discovered our dear poet in my office, a simple clerk. I have no hesitation in calling it a disgrace to our city that personalities of his calibre should be allowed to work for a daily wage. May I congratulate you, Mr Mech! Your salon will be famous as the cradle of this genius’s, yes genius’s, worldwide reputation. Your health, Mr Baal!
    Baal wards off the speech with a gesture; he eats
.
    PILLER : I shall write an essay about you. Have you any manuscripts? I have the backing of the press.
    A YOUNG MAN : How, my friend, do you get that accursed naïve effect? It’s positively homeric. I consider Homer one,or rather one of several, highly civilized adapters with a penetrating delight in the naïveté of the original folk sagas.
    A YOUNG LADY: You remind me more of Walt Whitman. But you’re more significant. That’s what I think.
    ANOTHER MAN: I’d say he had something rather more of Verhaeren.
    PILLER: Verlaine! Verlaine! Even in physiognomy. Don’t forget our Lombroso.
    BAAL: Some more of the eel, please.
    THE YOUNG LADY: But you have the advantage of greater indecency.
    JOHANNES: Mr Baal sings his songs to the lorry-drivers. In a café down by the river.
    THE YOUNG MAN: Good God, none of those poets are even in the same category. My friend, you’re streets ahead of any living poet.
    THE OTHER MAN: At any rate he’s promising.
    BAAL: Some more wine please.
    THE YOUNG MAN: I consider you a precursor of the great Messiah of European literature whom we can undoubtedly expect within the very near future.
    THE YOUNG LADY: Dear poet, ladies, and gentlemen. Permit me to read you a poem from the periodical ‘Revolution’ which will also be of interest to you.
She rises and reads
:
    The poet shuns shining harmonies.
    He blows trombones, shrilly whips the drum.
    He incites the people with chopped sentences.
    The new world
    Exterminating the world of pain,
    Island of rapturous humanity.
    Speeches. Manifestos.
    Songs from grandstands.
    Let there be preached the new,
    The holy state, inoculated into the blood of the people,
    Blood of their blood.
    Paradise sets in.
    – Let us spread a stormy climate!
    Learn! Prepare! Practise!
    Applause
.
    THE YOUNG LADY
quickly
: Permit me! I shall turn to another
    poem in the same issue.
She reads
:
    Sun had made him shrivel
    And wind had blown him dry.
    By every tree rejected
    He simply fell away.
    Only a single rowan
    With berries on every limb,
    Red as flaming tongues, would
    Receive and shelter him.
    So there he hung suspended,
    His feet lay on the grass.
    The blood-red sunset splashed him
    As through his ribs it passed.
    It moved across the landscape
    And struck all the olive groves.
    God in his cloud-white raiment
    Was manifest above.
    Within the flowering forest
    There sang a thousand