Bertolt Brecht: On Thinking about Hell in Los Angeles, 1941 ("...just when I enter the desert")

 
On thinking about hell, I gather
My brother Shelley found it was a place
Much like the city of London. I
Who live in Los Angeles and not in London
Find, on thinking about Hell, that it must be
Still more like Los Angeles.
 
In Hell too
There are, I've no doubt, these luxuriant gardens
With flowers as big as trees, which of course wither
Unhesitantly if not nourished with very expensive water. And fruit markets
With great heaps of fruit, albeit having
Neither smell nor taste. And endless processions of cars
Lighter than their own shadows, faster than
Mad thoughts, gleaming vehicles in which
Jolly-looking people come from nowhere and are nowhere bound.
And houses, built for happy people, therefore standing empty
Even when lived in.

The houses in Hell, too, are not all ugly.
But the fear of being thrown on the street
Wears down the inhabitants of the villas no less than
The inhabitants of the shanty towns.

Bertolt Brecht (10 February 1898-14 August 1956):Nachdenkend über die Hölle, 1941, translated byNicholas JacobsasOn Thinking about Hellin Bertolt Brecht: Poems 1913-1956, ed. John Willett and Ralph Manheim with the co-operation of Erich Fried, 1976

Hell is a city much like London --
A populous and a smoky city;
There are all sorts of people undone,
And there is little or no fun done;
Small justice shown, and still less pity.

-- Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822): from Part the Third: Hell, in Peter Bell the Third. By Miching Mallecho, Esq. (1839)

Esther Williams, Hollywood -- Frammenti da film immaginari: photographer unknown, 1941; image by Norma Gombox (aka Regivar)

August 1 [1941]: Brecht has great difficulty becoming accustomed to the new environment, America and especially Hollywood. "There is hardly a place where it was harder for me to live than in this showplace of easy going." He misses Margaret Steffin: "It's as though my guide has been taken from me just when I enter the desert."
-- Klaus Völker, Brecht Chronicle, 1971, translated by Fred Wieck, 1975; Brecht diary quotation from Bertolt Brecht: Arbeitsjournal, I, 291

 
 

Socony-Vacuum Oil Company advertisement for Mobilgas:Harold Anderson (illustrator), Life, 28 April 1941 (via Gallery of Graphic Design)