An inscription in Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany:
\u201cThe poet Wolfgang Borchert was born in this building on 20 May 1921.
+ 20 November 1947, Basel\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
My wife and I are just back from the Brigham Young University campus, where we enjoyed a concert by the Utah Symphony entitled \u201cRhapsody in Blue.\u201d \u00a0As you might guess from that title, it was an (almost) all-Gershwin program.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
It started out with Gershwin\u2019s familiar Cuban Overture<\/em>, featuring (as three of the other numbers on the program did) the pianist Kevin Cole, and that was followed by Sacred Geometry<\/em>, by the Los Angeles-based composer Andrew Norman (b. 1979), which I really liked. \u00a0Next came Gershwin\u2019s Second Rhapsody for Piano and Orchestra. \u00a0After the intermission, we heard Gershwin\u2019s Variations for Piano and Orchestra on \u201cI Got Rhythm\u201d and his Promenade \u201cWalking the Dog.\u201d \u00a0Finally came the great and sometimes even sublime Rhapsody in Blue<\/em>.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, the life of George Gershwin (1898-1937), like the lives of so many other great geniuses, ended far too soon. \u00a0He died in Los Angeles at the age of 38, probably from a brain tumor and related causes.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
The brevity of such lives, a topic on which I often reflect, has been on my mind again lately because, the other day, I read a short story (\u201cDas Brot\u201d) by the German poet and playwright Wolfgang Borchert (1921-1947), whose most famous work is the still often-read and often-performed play Drau\u00dfen vor der T\u00fcr<\/em> (often titled, in English, The Man Outside<\/em>).<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Wolfgang Borchert was and is considered one of the great literary talents of modern Germany and perhaps the principal spokesman for the immediately postwar German generation, who have sometimes been called \u201cdie Jugend ohne Jugend\u201d (\u201cthe youth without a youth\u201d).<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
But his life was so terribly, terribly short: \u00a0Although he opposed Hitler and Nazism \u2014 and paid for his opposition with multiple bouts of imprisonment (even, at one point, facing a prosecutor who sought the death penalty against him) \u2014 he was obliged to serve in the German military during World War Two, including a stint on the Russian front. \u00a0He died of health problems incurred during his military service and his incarcerations just two years after the war ended, at the age of 26.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWir wollen nach Hause,\u201d he wrote when he was 24, just at the conclusion of the war. \u00a0\u201cWir wissen nicht, wo das is: zu Hause. \u00a0Aber wir wollen hin.\u201d \u00a0(\u201cWe want to go home. \u00a0We don\u2019t know where that is: \u2018at home.\u2019 \u00a0But we want to go there.\u201d)<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Such early deaths as those of Gershwin and Borchert are among the features of human life that make me impatient with triumphalist atheism: \u00a0I can understand the belief that, well, they just died. \u00a0They ceased to exist, and their genius vanished, its potential forever unrealized. \u00a0And, sadly, that\u2019s just the way it is. \u00a0 What I can\u2019t<\/em> understand is how anybody could possibly imagine that to be good news.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 My wife and I are just back from the Brigham Young University campus, where we enjoyed a concert by the Utah Symphony entitled \u201cRhapsody in Blue.\u201d \u00a0As you might guess from that title, it was an (almost) all-Gershwin program. \u00a0 It started out with Gershwin\u2019s familiar Cuban Overture, featuring (as three of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1727,1014,6570,6573,1104,6576,6567,1011,401],"class_list":["post-80175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-afterlife","tag-atheism","tag-borchert","tag-brevity-of-life","tag-death","tag-genius","tag-gershwin","tag-life-after-death","tag-theism"],"yoast_head":"\n
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![\"Borchert](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/186\/2019\/11\/Geburtshaus_von_Wolfgang_Borchert.jpg\")
<\/a>