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But apart from a few such exceptions, 'pure* lyric products like these are overvalued. They are simply too far distant from the original gesture of the communication of a thought or a feeling which might be of advantage even to a stranger. All great poems have the value of documents. They contain the voice of the author, who was an important man. I should confess at this point that I don't think much of the poetry of Rilke (an otherwise really good man), Stefan George or Werfel, since this is perhaps the best and most radical way of informing my readers about my inability to somehow pass judgement on that sort of product.

And it is simply better to shape a thought, than to invest all your thoughts in shaping. Let us get back to detective novels! The only read Detective novels are the only occasion for me to get abusive about literature. Let us get back to them! ] First published in Die Literarische Welty Berlin, 2 April 1926. , Berta Eckstein-Diener). Sven Elvestad and Frank Heller (§3) were authors of detective stories; and the Very old man' is Hindenburg, who was seventy-seven when he was elected Reichsprasident and head of state of the German Republic in 1925.

Chaos. But we have created no more disorder than science itself has, which they always thought was busy creating order. We know that, from the moment when science relinquished idealism and grew strong, it set to work to create chaos. It invented microscopes in order to make chaos out of an orderly, touchingly harmonious drop of water. I am perfectly aware that people would prefer not to read the word chaos quite so often. Some of our friends - naturally they 43 B R E C H T ON ART A N D P O L I T I C S were the influential ones - had their work cut out proving to the public that we were just beginning to emerge from chaotic conditions.