{"id":20732,"date":"2022-04-21T14:20:38","date_gmt":"2022-04-21T19:20:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/?p=20732"},"modified":"2022-04-21T14:20:38","modified_gmt":"2022-04-21T19:20:38","slug":"die-hoffnung-der-welt-a-close-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2022\/04\/21\/die-hoffnung-der-welt-a-close-reading\/","title":{"rendered":"Die Hoffnung der Welt, a close reading"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n

National Poetry Month isn\u2019t over yet, and I happened to come across Tony Kushner referencing<\/a> a line from a Bertold Brecht poem, and I thought I\u2019d look in to it a bit. The poem is called \u201cDie Hoffnung der Welt<\/a><\/i>\u201d, which is \u201cThe Hope of the World<\/a>\u201d, and the reference is to the last lines:\r\n

Aber das Mitleid der Unterdr\u00fcckten mit den Unterdr\u00fcckten ist unentbehrlich.
Es ist die Hoffnung der Welt.<\/blockquote>\r\n

I\u2019ll give the Google Translate translation, just to begin with:\r\n

But the pity of the oppressed for the oppressed is essential.
It's the hope of the world.<\/blockquote>\r\n

Before I get too close to the words, I should start with the title and closing line. \u201cDie Hoffnung der Welt\u201d is, I think, generally a religious phrase\u2014the Hope of the World is Christ, or is Salvation, or the Church. But Brecht, of course, does not find hope in religion or in Gd. He doesn\u2019t, in the poem, seem to find much hope anywhere, at first. It begins Ist die Unterdr\u00fcckung so alt wie das Moos an den Teichen?<\/i> \u201cIs oppression as old as the moss on the ponds?\u201d And then goes on to talk about the oppression of pyramid-builders in ancient Egypt, four thousand years ago, and concludes, probably, yes, oppression is that old.\r\n

In the second verse, he says: when it\u2019s one child that is about to be hit by a car, people grab that child and save him\u2014not just the Good People, but anyone would do that. But when it\u2019s a mass of people suffering, nobody will do that, not even the Good. Auch die G\u00fctigen gehen vorbei und sind hernach ebenso g\u00fctig, wie sie waren, bevor sie vorbeigegangen sind.<\/i> Even the Good go right past and are afterwards just as good as the were before they went past.\r\n

The third stanza begins: The more there are who suffer, the more their suffering appears natural, and the sufferers themselves begin to believe it. It becomes, he says, natural not only to ignore the suffering of other people, but even to ignore your own suffering, since after all, that\u2019s what life is, isn\u2019t it? Everyone, he says, that has dwelt on these grievances at all, has had to push down that impulse, that compassion. But, he concludes, the oppressed\u2019s compassion for the oppressed is unentbehrlich<\/i>, it can\u2019t be done away with. And that, he says, is the titular hope of the world.\r\n

I want to focus on that word: unentbehrlich<\/i>. It seems to be translated as either indispensable<\/I> or essential<\/i>, and I think indispensable<\/i> is slightly better but still doesn\u2019t get across the connotations in this poem, or at least what I take from it. Entbehren<\/i> means to lack or miss something, or to do with out it; unentbehrlich<\/i> is a slightly awkward construction that draws attention to the initial un<\/i>. It\u2019s not just that it\u2019s crucial<\/i>, or essential<\/i>, or necessary<\/i>, it\u2019s that it\u2019s not inessential, that it is not un-necessary. But more than that\u2014if a thing is entbehrlich<\/i> then we would miss it but we could do without it; if it is instead unentbehrlich<\/i> then the void of its absence would be too much.\r\n

And in fact, what he\u2019s saying in the middle stanza is precisely that we do<\/i> get along without it. And right before the line, he says: Alle, die \u00fcber die Mi\u00dfst\u00e4nde nachgedacht haben, lehnen es ab, an das Mitleid der einen mit den andern zu appellieren.<\/i> Everyone\u2014everyone!\u2014who has thought about the grievances has ablehnen<\/i>, to reject or refuse, the appeal of the sympathy of one with another. That\u2019s another odd little phrase there, that comes back, so let me look at Mitleid<\/i>. Leid<\/i> is sorrow (as in es tut mir leid<\/i>, a first-semester German phrase meaning more or less I\u2019m sorry<\/i>). So mitleid<\/i> is together-sorrow, or sympathy, but that mit<\/i> draws attention (well, my attention, anyway) to the idea that it\u2019s sorrow \u201cwith\u201d, not just sorrow. I mean sympathy is, inherently, sympathy with<\/i> someone, and compassion also requires an object of that compassion, but the with<\/i> in mitleid<\/i> draws attention to that.\r\n

So he says: everyone who has thought about it must reject the appeal of that with-sorrow, of one person with another person. But, he concludes, it is that with-sorrow\u2014and here it is not one with another but the repetition das Mitleid der Unterdr\u00fcckten mit den Unterdr\u00fcckten<\/i>, the downtrodden with the downtrodden, that can\u2019t be unentberlich<\/i>. And\u2026 there\u2019s an ambiguity there, isn\u2019t there?\r\n

Earlier in the third stanza, he writes: Und die Leidenden selber teilen diese H\u00e4rte gegen sich\/und lassen es an G\u00fcte fehlen sich selber gegen\u00fcber.<\/i> And the sufferers (here is lied<\/i> without the mit<\/i>) themselves share this hardness and lack (lassen<\/i> not entbehren<\/i>) kindness toward themselves. And this is a hell of a reflexive sentence\u2014selber<\/I> and gegen sich<\/i> and then sich selber gegen\u00fcber<\/i>. Brecht is pounding on the idea that (in this sentence) the people don\u2019t have sympathy for themselves<\/i>. In the later sentence, he could say das Mitleid der Unterdr\u00fcckten mit den Unterdr\u00fcckten sich selber<\/i>, but he chooses not to. That means that grammatically, he could be referring to two different groups of the oppressed, or to the same group of all of them.\r\n

I think this is the heart of the poem, for me, at least today, that perhaps missing sich selber<\/i> and the mit<\/i> on the leid<\/i>. It\u2019s not that those pushed down in one way can pity themselves or<\/i> they can have fellow feeling for those pushed down in some other way. It\u2019s both\/and. That\u2019s what you can\u2019t do without, and that\u2019s the hope of the world: that in active compassion for yourself<\/i> you can learn compassion for others<\/i>, and that in connecting with others<\/i> who have been held down you can learn compassion for yourself under those oppressions you<\/i> experience. And this is why it\u2019s not just important<\/i> or essential<\/i> but unentberlich<\/i>, un-leave-out-able.\r\n

But now I have another question. At the opening of the poem, he asks about moss on ponds, and says: it\u2019s not avoidable. So what is the difference between saying that moss on ponds is not avoidable<\/i> (nicht vermeidbar<\/i>) and saying it\u2019s unavoidable<\/i> (unvermeidlich<\/i>)? And why is das Mitleid<\/i> (the sympathy or compassion or sorrow-together-with) unentbehrlich<\/i> rather than nicht entbehrlich<\/i>? Is the inevitability of moss on ponds quantitatively different than the non-inessentialness of compassion? And if so\u2026 how? And if not, how could it not be?\r\n

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,<\/I>
-Vardibidian.\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In Which Your Humble Blogger attempts to understand a Bertolt Brecht poem, or at least to read it.","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[199],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-litchrachoor"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20732","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20732"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20732\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20741,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20732\/revisions\/20741"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}