June 7th 2004

The entrance fee to Brecht Haus is more than three pennies or three Groshen, even allowing for inflation. For six euro I expect arias of insight to serenade me from the book shelves where Joyce and Beckett‘s Molloy lie no longer read. Mao‘s boxy words take pride of place, pasted to the wall, indecipherablae even to Brecht, who, acid collector of English books and brochures, possessed the scripts to The Winslow Boy and ephemeral Broadway hits.

The apartment is as spotless as it must hav been in Bertold‘s day, more so, no books lie open or piled on tables; the two capitalist-fashioned typewriters are paperless as if his personal cleaner still dusted her way without obstacles through his world. His cook, who slaved ovr his stove, is long-since dead; the kitchen devoid of smells or scents. The carpets are forbidden territory like the space beyond the walls which hermetically sealed him in his Utopia while his royalties reputedly accumulated in vaults in Switzerland.

Am I hypocritical placing a pebble on his cairn next door? I smile wryly at the biros and cigar left as offerings, materialist sacrifices at his Godless tomb, near an enormous monument to Christ.

Patrick Cotter

Der Autor ist Direktor des Munster Literature Centre, Frank O‘Conner House, Cork