The last days of mankind
Subtitle: the complete text
By: Karl Kraus ; translated by Fred Bridgham and Edward Timms ; with a glossary and index
Contributors: Bridgham, Frederick George Thomas, 1943- translator; Timms, Edward, translator
Series: Margellos world republic of letters book; Margellos world republic of letters book
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2015
Language: eng
Number of pages: 645
ISBN-13: 9780300207675
Subjects: Drama; World War, 1914-1918
Work titles: Letzten Tage der Menschheit
Description: One hundred years after Austrian writer and satirist Karl Kraus began his dramatic masterpiece, The Last Days of Mankind remains as powerfully relevant as the day it was first published. Kraus's play enacts the tragic trajectory of the First World War, when mankind raced toward self-destruction by methods of modern warfare while extolling the glory and ignoring the horror of a necessary war. This volume is the first to present a complete English translation of Kraus's towering work, filling a major gap in the availability of Viennese literature on the era of the War to End All Wars. Bertolt Brecht hailed The Last Days as the great dramatic work of modernism. In the apocalyptic play Kraus constructs a textual collage, blending actual quotations from the Austrian Army's call to arms, people's responses, political speeches, newspaper editorials, and a range of other sources. Seasoning the drama with comic invention and satirical verse, Kraus reveals how bungled diplomacy, greedy profiteers, Big Business complicity, gullible news readers, and, above all, the sloganizing of the press brought down the Empire. In the dramatization of sensationalized news reports, inurement to atrocities and openness to war as remedy, today's readers will hear the echo of the fateful voices Kraus recorded as his homeland descended into self-destruction.
Notes: Translated from the German.

Includes bibliographical references and index.