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Elke Heidenreich, literary critic:
»This is Dorothy Parker. Her “New York Stories” were published in America in 1944 and 20 years ago, in 2003, by Kein & Aber Verlag. And your esteemed expert, Ms. Heidenreich, wrote a wonderful foreword and said that Dorothy Parker, for example, was too clever for love. Because love cannot be had without illusions, and it has never created illusions for itself.
She was a very clever and deeply unhappy person: always the wrong men, miscarriages, abortions, suicide attempts, a major alcohol problem. So really the whole program. But she was clever, she was funny as a theater and book and film critic. She wrote these stories, and she also wrote screenplays and once won an Oscar, was nominated for an Oscar, or I think she even got it - I don't know exactly - for a screenplay that she wrote. And she was the leader of the famous Algonquin Round Table. You may remember. Alan Rudolph made a film about it in 1994 with the idiotic title "Miss Parker and Her Vicious Circle," but that's pretty much it. This was a circle of critics who always met at lunchtime at the Hotel Algonquin on 44th Street. And she was the leader there and no one dared to go to the toilet when she was there because she mercilessly criticized everyone who was away. For example, about Katharine Hepburn, she said: "She controls the entire range of emotions - from A to B." It couldn't have been that much. And the famous sentence: “One more martini and I’ll lie under the host” is also from her.
So she was very sharp-tongued, very clever, very, very quick. And she was also a committed leftist. She wasn't a communist, but as a leftist she was of course on McCarthy's Hollywood blacklist. And she was always very committed to Martin Luther King's black civil rights movement. The rights to all of their works also go to them. I've always known a lot about Dorothy Parker, otherwise I wouldn't have written the foreword so brilliantly.
But what I didn't know is that she also wrote great poems. But the small, fine Dörlemann Verlag knew this and has now published two volumes with her poems. Volume one, “For my heart is freshly broken,” is the poems that were published during her lifetime, and volume two is “Unforced,” all of which were found in her legacy and have been compiled here. Wonderfully translated by Ulrich Blumenbach, truly a masterpiece. And always in two thick volumes, all poems in English and German. And what should I tell you? They are grenade-like, the way they execute men, love, misfortune and life in just a few lines.
This is unique and great. For example, she once wrote a review about the so-called realistic novel that she hated. I don't know by heart how that worked. But the criticism is something like this: it says that when the author really wants action, the main character spills oatmeal at breakfast. And when things get really exciting, the heroine decides to rework her old taffeta blouse. So you can see what she thought about boredom, namely nothing at all. Has never been better described. She once said about a bad book. This cannot be put aside lightly. You have to throw it into the corner with all your might. Here on volume one, “For my heart is freshly broken,” it says at the back, “A song is life. It sings and it sounds. A medley of Improvisina, Love is something that always succeeds. And I am the Emperor of China." So she doesn't believe in love. And I have another example that I liked too. The poem is called “Philosophy”: “If I just toil, day in and day out, self-sacrificing, heroic, always under the yoke, I will surely leave my mark on the world. And what if not? And what if it does?”
And here's an example of Ulrich Blumenbach's translation, a very short, "news item": "Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses." And that means "short message" in German: "Men hardly desire to have intercourse with a line of glasses." . Wonderful. I'm having so much fun with this book. This is not something you should put aside lightly. You don't have to fire that into the corner either. You should just read this. The Poems of Dorothy Parker, Volume One and Volume Two. And if you feel like it, the wonderful “New York Stories” again. See you next time."