Love Poems, by Bertolt Brecht, translated by David Constantine and Tom Kuhn

I have to admit that this book was a bit disappointing; it was not a surprise at all in the way that the author seemed to glorify a heathen sense of love that was directly contrary to the Bible.  Nor was it a surprise that the author talked a lot about politics.  What was disappointing was that the author’s perspective of love was sufficiently broad to include far more than romantic or sexual love but not broad enough to include spiritual perspectives on it.  What was disappointing was that the book sought to use other perspectives but ended up showing the author obsessed with painting the women whose perspective he was writing from as being either virgins or whores, and far more usually the latter (although there are occasional variations on this).  One has more disappointment in someone who can be expected to know and to do better than someone who is clearly not able to do more than they are already doing, and Brecht’s poetry is impressive enough that it could be so much better here, if it was only approached with some decency and some morality rather than being written in a way that glorifies the heathen views of sex magic of Baalism.

The book itself is a short one at a bit more than 100 pages, and it contains a variety of poems that can be considered as love poems, some of them written from the author’s perspective and some of them written from other perspectives.  The author shows himself a devotee of vitality, shows a bit of hostility to commitment in a personal sense while showing ideological commitment.  There are sonnets, although they are Petrarchian rather than Shakespearean.  The author also does a good job at picturing poetry in different places, ranging from Southeast Asia to Europe to even Africa.  The author also shows love in the sense of ideological commitment to leftist by commenting on a good comrade.  Among the more poignant poems here is the author’s portrayal of the thoughts of a stripper while undressing, how she is concerned with the logistical details and concerns of her life while making her money off of the lusts of the men whom she holds in contempt but is simultaneously dependent on for her living.  This book is a lot like that, where Brecht shows himself contemptuous of love but also somehow aware of its importance in various aspects of our lives, from family to political life to romantic relationships.

And that is why there is some value in a book like this even though it comes from a defective worldview.  The author clearly enjoys exploring love and also enjoys visualizing himself in different perspectives, even if he is not always as insightful as he might think and even if his empathy is somewhat limited.  Those who appreciate Brecht’s writing in general are likely to find enough here that is pleasing so that they may very well enjoy these poems.  The writer of the foreword comments a bit on the difficulty of the poems, but at least in translation they come off well, even if some nuance is inevitably lost.  For the most part, though, this book offers modest pleasures for those who are prepared to deal with the author’s rather tiresome and immoral worldview as well as his leftist politics.  For those who are not enamored with these things, this book is obviously not as enjoyable to read.  In this book as in many other examples, the distance between the author’s views and one’s own is likely to greatly influence the way this book is read and the extent to which it is enjoyed.