This blog always celebrates Beethoven's birthday when I remember to.  Here virtuoso Rudolf Kerer plays the Appassionata for pensive actors portraying Lenin and Gorky..

Hans Magnus Enzensberger 1929-2022

 

this one was no philanthropist, 

avoided meetings, department stores, arenas, 

he never ate the flesh of his like. 

 

violence walked in the streets, 

smiling, not naked;

but there were screams in the sky. 

 

people's faces were indistinct;

they seemed crushed

even before the blow fell. 

 

the one thing he had fought for all his life, 

with words and with teeth, grimly, 

cunningly, on his own account: 

 

the thing he called his peace, 

now, that he has it, there is no mouth 

to his skeleton now, no mouth to taste it.  

           To the Grave of a Peace-Loving Man, 1964, tr: Gertrude C. Schwebell

 

Jean-Marie Straub 1933-2022