God and Péguy – The Courier

FRIEDRICH DÜRRENMATT (1921-1990), author of detective novels, playwright and painter, acquired international notoriety with his plays The Old Lady’s Visit (1956) et Physicists (1962), and with the cinema adaptations of his thrillers such as The Judge and his executioner (1952) or The Promise (1958). His poetry is the least explored side of his work. It is perhaps in his verses that his genius as a moralist is expressed with the most virulence, there also where he confides to us what he always was: an ardent pacifist. By publishing “Dieu et Péguy”, composed in 1958, The Mail gives an entirely new poem to be read in French.

ALEXANDRE PATEAUafter having translated numerous German-speaking authors, proposed a new French version of The Threepenny Operaby Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, created by the Comédie-Française (Ed. de L’Arche, 2023). In 2025 he will perform a “bouffe reading” taken from his translation of Panne by Dürrenmatt (preview on October 26, 2024 in Geneva, lepicotin.ch). He discusses his translation of “Dieu et Péguy” in a text to read on our site.