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MacHeath revision 2. Decided to revisit my Mack the Knife character concept for Deadlock. You can check our his thread on the suggestions forum for more details if you're interested.

Leaning into a "Coked up 80's guy" angle this time.

#art #concept art #deadlock #macheath #mack the knife #he's a literal loan shark #the only voice I can imagine for him is an older Nathan Vetterlein

"Today, in this stable, my marriage to Miss Polly Peachum will be celebrated; she has followed me for love, in order to share the rest of my life with me."

#haven't been here for ages but last week some people left really sweet things in the tags #so i got motivated to post again :)#this was such a lovely piece to do #die dreigroschenoper #threepenny opera #polly peachum #macheath

I think Christopher’s translations are generally adequate. But he made one mistake which is worth describing because it was deliberate and because it illustrates a fundamental difference in outlook between the translator and his author. “Polly Peachum’s Song” tells how Polly behaved to her suitors before she met the right one, Macheath. In each verse, a boat is mentioned. Polly and one of the suitors get into it. In the first two verses, the boat is cast loose from the shore, and Polly adds, “But that was as far as things could go.” In the third and last verse, however, the boat is “tied to the shore,” when she has got into it with Macheath. Christopher found this incomprehensible, because he took it for granted that the proper poetic metaphor for sexual surrender would be the casting loose of the boat. So, quite arbitrarily, disregarding the meaning of the German text, he transposed the lines and had the boat tied up in the first two verses, only to be cast loose in the last verse when Polly is possessed by Macheath. No one protested. The book appeared with Christopher’s version of the poem. It was only when Christopher met Brecht for the first time, in California about six years later, that he had his misunderstanding corrected. Brecht told him mildly, with the unemphatic bluntness which was so characteristic of him: 'A boat has to be tied up before you can fuck in it'

Christopher Isherwood, Christopher and His Kind I doubt I will ever read a funnier anecdote than this one.