GRUSHA: And now I can tell you: I took him because on that Easter Sunday I got engaged to you. And so it is a child of love. Michael, let’s dance.
She dances with Michael. Simon dances with the cook. The old couple dance with each other. Azdak stands lost in thought. The dancers soon hide him from view. Occasionally he is seen again, but less and less as more couples enter and join the dance.
THE SINGER
And after this evening Azdak disappeared and was never seen again.
But the people of Grusinia did not forget him and often remembered
His time of Judgment as a brief
Golden Age that was almost just.
The dancing couples dance out. Azdak has disappeared.
But you, who have listened to the story of the Chalk Circle
Take note of the meaning of the ancient song:
That what there is shall belong to those who are good for it, thus
The children to the maternal, that they thrive;
The carriages to good drivers, that they are driven well;
And the valley to the waterers, that it shall bear fruit.
Notes and Variants
THE VISIONS OF SIMONE MACHARD
Texts by Brecht
THE VISIONS OF SIMONE MACHARD
Little Simone Machard works for the hostellerie at a small town called Saint-Martin in central France. She is there to help out, primarily in connection with the hotel petrol pump; the hotel also runs a transport business. It is June 1940; the Nazis have taken Paris; streams of refugees are pouring across central France and passing through Saint-Martin.
Simone’s seventeen-year-old brother is at the front; she loves him dearly and is sure that he is involved in the fighting. Meanwhile in the village and in the hotel she finds that at this point, in the middle of a great national disaster, high and low alike can think of nothing but themselves. It is now that she reads a book given her by her teacher, which contains the story of the Maid of Orleans, greatest of all French patriots.
During those feverish nights, with the leading Germans already up to the Loire, she is moved by the course of events to dream that she is herself Saint Joan. An angel appears to her from the garage roof and tells her that she has been chosen to save France. He has the features of her soldier brother André. In her dream the legend of the book mingles with the reality of the little hotel. The hotel’s patron is suddenly a connétable of the royal court; the hotel staff, the drivers and the old night porter, wear armour and form a little unit of feudal soldiery who escort her to the king; while in the king himself she recognizes the spineless local mayor.
Thereafter Simone at the hostellerie undergoes a miniature version of the terrible and uplifting fate of Joan of Arc, and again and again in her dreams she turns into the saint.
She dreams that the angel gives her an invisible drum. He tells her that this drum is the soil of France, and that in an emergency the soil of France—her drum—will resound, summoning the people to resist France’s enemies. In her role as a great popular leader she then in her dream goes to the king, holds confidential talks with the king-mayor and warns him not to spend his time playing cards with his nobles, the patron-connétable and the other luminaries of Saint-Martin, but instead to attend to the arming and feeding of the people. The people, for their part, are called on to fight wholeheartedly. In this way she manages to unite king, people and nobles and to crown the king-mayor in Rheims.
In the real world of the hotel, when the patron and his drivers simply wish to run away from the Germans, she fetches the mayor and has the hotel forced to hand over its stocks of food to the municipality rather than remove them to the interior, while the drivers and their lorries are made to evacuate the refugees who are blocking the French army from using the roads.
(The patron allows the child to have her way because at least this stops his hostellerie from being looted, and the drivers help her because they sympathize with her anxiety for her brother at the front.)
But when she calls for the hostellerie’s secret stocks of petrol to be destroyed to prevent them from falling into enemy hands she is going too far, and the patron’s mother dismisses her.
That night she dreams the chapter in her book in which the Maid, following her initial victories, encounters the first problems in her own ranks. Although Paris is still in enemy hands she is not given command of a fresh army. The king-mayor and the patron-connétable ennoble her, admittedly, but they take away her sword. Once more the angel appears on the garage roof and she has to tell him that she has been dismissed. Severely the angel recommends her to stick to her course and not, for instance, to let the petrol fall into the hands of the Germans, or else their murderous tanks will be able to keep on thrusting ahead.
A few days later the Germans enter Saint-Martin. The patron has fled. His mother and old Captain Beleire, a Laval supporter and vineyard owner, wish to come to terms with the victorious Germans at any price. To prove that they mean to collaborate they tell the German commandant that the petrol is hidden in the brickworks. But the brickworks is already ablaze when the Germans get there. Simone has set fire to it. This act of sabotage threatens the new and promising Franco-German collaboration. Wanted: the incendiarist.
In a disturbing dream Simone once again encounters the heroic Joan of the legend, now deserted by her own side, because the Queen Mother Isabeau and the Duke of Burgundy have asserted themselves at Court and are trying to arrange an armistice with the enemy. The Queen Mother looks just like the mother of the patron, while the Duke of Burgundy is like the connétable. Only Simone, now wide awake, cannot believe this dream. And when on the patron’s return he feels sorry for her, and he and the drivers want to take her away, she insists on staying. How is her brother to find her if and when he returns? So she is denounced to the Germans and arrested.
In a final vision Simone dreams that she, Joan, has been taken captive and handed over by the enemy to an ecclesiastical court which has to decide whether the voices which she heard summoning her to resist the enemy came in fact from God or from the devil. She is tragically shocked to find that the noble judges who condemn her to the stake for having spoken with the devil’s voice only are all people whom she knows: the mayor, the Captain, the patron, with the patron’s mother putting the case for the prosecution.
Simone dreams this last dream in prison, and the following morning the Germans hand her back to the French. Her friends among the hotel staff are hopeful for her. They feel that a French official inquiry into the fire must be bound to admit the patriotic nature of her motives. But there are good reasons why the German attitude should be so generous. The Germans think it undesirable that there should have been an act of sabotage which might act as a precedent for others. And shooting a child would jeopardize the collaboration they so badly need. So they have agreed with their French friends that the case should be sidetracked.
Simone has to hear the patron and his mother, her employers, giving evidence against her, while the mayor leaves her to her fate. Numb with shock, she learns that a French court finds that her action was not undertaken for patriotic reasons, but that she caused the fire for purely personal motives, as a mischievous act of revenge for her dismissal. She is sent for corrective training.
The people, however, are not fooled. When the patron returns to the hostellerie he finds that his staff have left. And as Simone is being led away after the verdict Saint-Martin is shaken by a bombing attack. English planes are carrying on the struggle.
For Simone these explosions have a special meaning. Did her dream angel not tell her that the soil of France was her invisible drum, whose sound would bring the sons of France hurrying to defend it? And here is French soil reverberating. It is the angel, her brother André, who has sent her the planes. (N.B.: Interwoven with the play is the delicate story of little Simone’s relations with a wounded soldier, one of her brother’s friends.)
[GW Schriften zum Theater 3, pp. 1181-5. This plan for the play, which may have been conceived
as a film treatment, differs from our text, particularly in its ending, which is unlike that in any other version. Nowhere else is the Captain specifically described as being old, while the identification of the drum with the soil of France is also unusually clearly made. Note that there is no mention of the refugees in the gymnasium.]
WORKING PLAN
1. the germans invade france. at the hostellerie ‘au relais’ it is business as usual, but simone machard is reading a book of legends.
(a) two drivers see bombs, an old man mends tyres, a soldier licks his wounds, a child reads a book.
(b) the colonel does not wish to be greeted.
(c) conversation about the treachery of the top people, about visions, hordes of refugees, headaches, teachers and wine.
(d) soldiers get their dixie half-filled with lentils. simone’s brother is unknown.
(e) the patron defends his stocks and tells simone to give the colonel his bill.
(f) the hotel has a star, the staff remain cool.
(g) the mayor is bawled out by the colonel because the roads are blocked.
(h) the mayor wants lorries for the refugees, the patron has no petrol, the staff confirm it, the captain needs the lorries for his barrels of wine, the war is lost.
(i) only a miracle can save france, in the mayor’s view; the staff say ‘simone thinks one will take place’.
2. joan of arc, summoned by divine voices, crowns the king in rheims and unites all frenchmen against the hereditary foe.
(a) the angel calls joan and gives her the task.
(b) she gets helmet and bayonet.
(c) the ajaxes escort her, and battles are won.
(d) she recognizes the king.
(e) her argument with the king.
(f) she crowns him.
3. simone gets a hearing for the mayor, and the hotel is saved.
(a) the germans have crossed the loire, the staff has breakfast, the patron has certain wishes, the staff has breakfast, simone disappears.
(b) the patron is horrified to find that he is not liked. simone is looked for by her parents.
(c) the mayor arrives with soldiers, having been fetched by simone. the lorries are requisitioned but the mayor weakens.
(d) simone supports him and arranges everything, aided by madame mére, the soldiers are given wine, and leave for the front. the village is given the food stocks, and simone’s parents are the first.
(e) the wave of patriotism infects the patron. handshake and toast. the petrol must be saved, as simone said.
(f) the patron has departed. madame mere fires simone. the mayor admires the tip.
4. joan, rewarded by the court but dismissed in her native village, is encouraged by her voices to continue the struggle.
(a) although the enemy is still in her country, joan can get no more troops.
(b) instead she is thanked for her services. she is knighted with her own sword.
(c) but her sword is not returned to her; the king gives it to the connétable as a mark of gratitude.
(d) the angel appears and tells her to carry on the struggle.
5. the germans occupy the village. simone sets fire to the petrol.
(a) madame mere receives the german commandant. ‘he’s human like the rest of us’.
(b) the captain harangues the staff. in future discipline will prevail.
(c) simone hears the captain warning the mayor not to conceal the existence of the petrol in the brickworks.
(d) simone tells the mayor of her plan to set fire to the brickworks. he seems to approve.
(e) the opponents also get on at a low level. the commandant’s batman talks with the wounded soldier.
(f) the gentry enter the yard to inspect the brickworks. a good understanding prevails.
(g) the brickworks are ablaze.
6. simone is surrendered by the top people.
(a) simone’s parents come to thank her: as a result of her generous action her father has got the job with the council.
(b) the patron returns. he is embarrassed by the parents’ tributes: ‘your hotel is france in miniature’. père gustave accompanies him inside.
daydream
(a) the maid’s messenger is kept from the king. why?
(b) because the english are within. and what is being talked about?
(c) the maid. and what else?
(d) the fact that she is to blame for the war.
(e) so she isn’t relieved, but her troops are thrown in again. and so she is captured.
(f) but the angel appears once more and assures her that everything she did was right, and warns her to stick to her mission.
6. simone is surrendered by the top people, continued.
(c) the drivers urge simone to flee. she stands by her faith in the patron.
(d) then the patron comes out too and urges her to flee.
(e) simone is seized by panic, and does flee.
(f) the german commandant and the french gentry enter the yard and a search is made for simone. she is not there. the commandant is angry and goes back indoors.
(g) sigh of relief from the gentry. simone is standing in the yard. she has come back. they implore her. she refuses to flee. the commandant arrives. simone: it’s me.
7. the english hand joan over to an ecclesiastical court consisting of frenchmen, which interrogates her about the angel.
(a) the english bring joan before the ecclesiastical court. they ask for a report as to whether the voices come from god or from the devil.
(b) the connétable, the burgundian and the renegade colonel don their ecclesiastical robes.
(c) the ecclesiastical court discusses the voices’ origin with joan and finds them devilish.
8. trial of simone machard by the authorities of her village. she is found not guilty of the crime of sabotage but is sent to the pious sisters’ corrective institution on the grounds of incendiarism and vindictiveness.
(a) the germans hand simone back.
(b) the commission goes out of its way to whitewash her of any accusation of sabotaging the germans.
(c) the staff welcome this attitude on the court’s part and hope for her release.
(d) the remainder of the hearing is devoted to simone’s attitude to her employers, particularly on the day of the great panic.
(e) questioned about her motives for incendiarism she continues to insist that she did it for france’s sake.
(f) she is forced however to admit that she really wanted to save the petrol from its owners.
(g) she is therefore handed over to the pious sisters of sainte-madeleine for correction.
(h) while she says good-bye in the yard to the staff and to her parents the commission goes off to report to the german commandant.
[BBA 1204/1–3. This is one of the most elaborately worked out of all Brecht’s characteristic structural plans. It is mounted on card, with scenes 1–8 (and their subheadings) forming eight parallel columns. There are pencilled figures by Brecht giving (apparently) the estimated duration of each sub-scene, and it seems altogether probable that the collaborators used it as a basis for their first script.]
THE DREAMS
The dreams in which Simone relives the St Joan legend can be made intelligible to audiences unaware of the legend by the large-scale projection of individual pages from the book, possibly including woodcut illustrations.
For the first dream: ‘Summoned by an angel to save France, Joan units the French by crowning Charles VII king in the city of Rheims.’
For the second dream: ‘Following some brilliant victories, Joan is ennobled. However, she has powerful enemies at court who would like to see an armistice.’
For the third dream: ‘Betrayed into enemy hands, Joan is handed over to an ecclesiastical court which condemns her to death.’
[GW Schriften zum Theater 3, p. 1185. These captions can be compared with those in the plans quoted in the Editorial Note, below. Illustrations reproduced from old illuminated manuscripts are gummed into
one or two of Brecht’s typescripts of the play.]
FIRST DREAM OF SIMONE MACHARD (DURING THE NIGHT OF 14/15 JUNE)
I was addressed from the garage roof in a loud voice as ‘Joan!’, went immediately out into the yard and saw the angel on the roof of the garage. He waved to me in friendly fashion and told me that I had been called to defeat France’s enemies. He ordered me to go straightway to Châlons and crown the king, as I had read in the book. After the angel had disappeared once more the soldier came out of the garage towards me and handed me sword and helmet. The former looked like a bayonet. I asked whether I should clean it for him but he answered that it was against the enemies of France. Thereupon I felt as if I were standing in green countryside. A strong wind was blowing and the sky was like it is between four and five in the morning when you go to mass. Then I saw how the earth, together with all the meadows and poplars upon it, curved as if it were a ball, and how the enemy loomed up in a mighty procession without end. In front rode the drummer with a voice like a wolf and his drum was stretched with a Jew’s skin; a vulture perched on his shoulder with the features of Farouche the banker from Lyons. Close behind him came the Marshal Incendiarist. He went on foot, a fat clown, in seven uniforms and in none of them did he look human. Above these two devils was a canopy of newsprint, so it was easy for me to recognize them. Behind them rode the remaining executioners and marshals, with countenances for the most part like the backsides of plucked chickens, and behind them drove an endless procession of guns and tanks and railway trains, also automobiles on which were altars or torture chambers, for everything was on wheels.
[BBA 118-19. More than anything else, this draft of the first dream, part of which was taken into the play (p. 20), links the ‘Visions’ of the play’s title with the series of poetic ‘Visions’ written by Brecht from 1938 on. See the notes to Poems 1913–1956 (hardback edition) pp. 510–11. The drummer is Hitler, the marshal Hermann Goering, whom the Communists held responsible for the Reichstag fire of 1933.]
Bertolt Brecht: Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder 7 Page 27