The Burning Of The Books Poem by Bertolt Brecht
The Burning Of The Books
When the Regime
commanded the unlawful books to be burned,
teams of dull oxen hauled huge cartloads to the bonfires.
Then a banished writer, one of the best,
scanning the list of excommunicated texts,
became enraged: he'd been excluded!
He rushed to his desk, full of contemptuous wrath,
to write fierce letters to the morons in power —
Burn me! he wrote with his blazing pen —
Haven't I always reported the truth?
Now here you are, treating me like a liar!
Burn me!
Translated by Michael R. Burch
I'm glad people are enjoying my translation of a great poet with an important message.
Wonderful poems. This poem reminded me, Poet Joseph Brodsky's quotation: ''There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.''
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
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12/5/2024 9:29:19 PM # 1.0.0
I have discovered that your translation is not wholly accurate, I am a fluent German speaker and in class I decided to translate it from the original, and I did not get what you got.