Love in a Time of Exile and War
A reading of the love poems of Brecht and Margarete Steffin in new translations by David Constantine.
The forthcoming issue of Modern Poetry in Translation, ‘The Constellation’, focusses on the exchange of poetry between two star-crossed lovers: Bertolt Brecht and his lover, collaborator and friend Margarete Steffin.
Brecht and Steffin met in the early thirties and Steffin followed Brecht into exile from Nazi Germany in 1933. She accompanied Brecht and his family as far as Moscow where, in 1941, she succumbed to TB. Brecht was devastated, writing:
Remembering my little teacher
Her eyes, the blue angry fire
And her worn cloak with the wide hood
And the wide hem, I named
Orion in the sky the Constellation of Steffin.
Looking up and contemplating it, shaking my head
I believe I hear a faint coughing.
Many of these poems have never been available in English translation.
On Saturday 19 July MPT presents a staged reading of the poems, directed by Di Trevis and set to music by Dominic Muldowney. Two actors will read the poems, and translator and former MPT co-editor David Constantine and Brecht scholar Tom Kuhn will tell the story of their work together, their flight into exile and their love.
This promises to be a great event. Book your tickets fast as we anticipate they will sell out. Book tickets here!
Read the Guardian article about the event.
The poems are published in the Poetry International issue of Modern Poetry in Translation. 
Photo: Ruth Berlau (c) Berlau/Hoffmann