How To Survive

May 1, 2006 | By | 7 Comments

I saw “The Threepenny Opera” a few weeks ago, and despite all the flaws in the production (the NY press tore it to shreds) I was deeply moved by the text. I had my friend Jason burn me the CD from the famous off-Broadway production with Lotte Lenya (Kurt Weill’s widow), Bea Arthur and Charlotte Rae. (Yes, that’s Dorothy from The Golden Girls and Mrs. Garrett from Facts of Life!) Of all the songs–which are very dark but all piercingly brilliant–this one, “How To Survive” has tortured my conscience the most. The lyrics are pretty self-explanatory but with the music it packs an even greater emotional wallop. I don’t want to risk getting sued by uploading the mp3, so I’ll pretend I didn’t though you may find it in the text above. Hope you find it as powerful as I do. [And that is, indeed, Mrs. Garrett singing at the end. Her voice is a bit shrill but as the saying goes: you take the good, you take the bad.]

“How To Survive”

lyrics by Bertolt Brecht

music by Kurt Weill

from “The Threepenny Opera”

Now those among you full of pious teaching

Who teach us to renounce the major sins

should know before you do your heavy preaching

our middle’s empty

there it all begins

Your vices and our virtues are so dear to you

So learn the simple truth from this our song

wherever you aspire

whatever you may do

first feed the face

and then talk right and wrong

For even honest folk

May act like sinners

unless they’ve had their customary dinners.

What keeps a man alive?

What keeps a man alive

He lives on others

He likes to taste them first then eat them whole if he can

Forgets that they’re supposed to be his brothers

That he himself

Was ever called a man

Remember if you wish to stay alive

For once do something bad and you’ll survive

You warn us with appropriate caresses

That virtue humble virtue always wins

Now please before your moral verve oppresses

Our middle’s empty there it all begins

Oh you who don’t in our despair and your desire

may learn the simple truth from this our song

whatever you may do whatever you aspire

first feed the face and then talk right and wrong

for even saintly folk may act like sinners

unless they’ve had their customary dinners

WHat keeps a man alive?

What keeps a man alive

He lives on others

He likes to taste them first then eat them whole if he can

Forgets that they’re supposed to be his brothers

That he himself was ever called a man

Remember if you wish to stay alive

For once do something bad and you’ll survive.

Categories: Uncategorized

7 Comments

  1. Nina says:
    May 1, 2006 at 10:59 pm

    The song wasn’t much to my taste, but I did find much meaning in the lyrics. Thank you.

  2. Jenni H. says:
    May 3, 2006 at 5:26 pm

    I’m related to Kurt Weill, did you know that?

  3. Erel says:
    June 25, 2006 at 5:23 pm

    I’ve been kind of obsessed with this musical since I saw it 2 weeks ago. Thanks for posting the lyrics.

    Haunting.

  4. Kim Scarborough says:
    June 28, 2006 at 4:54 pm

    If you’re interested… I’ve posted the songs from what I believe to be a superior production. See <http://www.dinosaurgardens.com/archives/180>.

  5. Kim Scarborough says:
    June 28, 2006 at 4:57 pm

    In fact, for comparison’s sake, here’s that show’s translation:

    You gentlemen who think you have a mission

    To purge us of the seven deadly sins

    Should first sort out the basic food position,

    Then start your preaching: That’s where it begins.

    You lot who preach restraint and watch your waist as well

    Should learn for once the way the world is run:

    However much you twist, whatever lies you tell,

    Food is the first thing. Morals follow on.

    So first make sure that those who now are starving

    Get proper helpings when we all start carving.

    What keeps mankind alive?

    What keeps mankind alive? The fact that millions

    Are daily tortured, stifled, punished, silenced, oppressed.

    Mankind can keep alive thanks to its brilliance

    In keeping its humanity repressed.

    For once you must try not to shirk the facts:

    Mankind is kept alive by bestial acts.

    You say that girls may strip with your permission.

    You draw the lines dividing art from sin.

    So first sort out the basic food position,

    Then start your preaching: That’s where we begin.

    You lot who bank on your desires and our disgust

    Should learn for once the way the world is run:

    Whatever lies you tell, however much you twist,

    Food is the first thing. Morals follow on.

    So first make sure that those who now are starving

    Get proper helpings when we all start carving.

    What keeps mankind alive?

    What keeps mankind alive? The fact that millions

    Are daily tortured, stifled, punished, silenced, oppressed.

    Mankind can keep alive thanks to its brilliance

    In keeping its humanity repressed.

    For once you must try not to shirk the facts:

    Mankind is kept alive by bestial acts.

  6. Anne Kerry Ford says:
    August 1, 2006 at 7:20 pm

    I am passionate about Kurt Weill’s music, and have just released a CD of Weill songs, recorded for the most part with WDR’s 28 peice big band in Cologne, Germany. It’s been getting very good reviews, come to my web site and listen…

  7. Dennis Raphael says:
    November 13, 2006 at 10:03 am

    In these times of decaying public policy and growing gaps between rich and poor, it is perhaps timely that I have come across a posting of the complete musical score from the 1976 New York Shakespeare festival’s production of Bertolt Brecht’s Threepenny Opera.

    If you are not familar with Brecht == Now is your chance.

    see especially cuts # 6,9,12

    http://www.dinosaurgardens.com/archives/180

    ———————————————————————————

    From the website:

    The cast recording was issued by Columbia in 1977 and, naturally, has never been reissued on CD. It featured some highly-informative liner notes by Papp and Stanley Silverman (from which I cribbed much of the information for this post), which included a good, concise description of Threepenny’s revolutionary appeal:

    From that moment in 1928 when the banjo entered playing lowdown jazz in “Ballad of Mac the Knife”, following a sophisticated neo-classical overture, the course of music history was ineluctably altered….