Bertolt Brecht: Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder 2

by Bertolt Brecht

  The epic actor’s efforts to make particular incidents between human beings seem striking (to use human beings as a setting), may also cause him to be misrepresented as a short-range episodist by anybody who fails to allow for his way of knotting all the separate incidents together and absorbing them in the broad flow of his performance. As against the dramatic actor, who has his character established from the first and simply exposes it to the inclemencies of the world and the tragedy, the epic actor lets his character grow before the spectator’s eyes out of the way in which he behaves. ‘This way of joining up’, ‘this way of selling an elephant’, ‘this way of conducting the case’, do not altogether add up to a single unchangeable character but to one which changes all the time and becomes more and more clearly defined in course of ‘this way of changing’. This hardly strikes the spectator who is used to something else. How many spectators can so far discard the need for tension as to see how, with this new sort of actor, the same gesture is used to summon him to the wall to change his clothes as is subsequently used to summon him there in order to be shot, and realise that the situation is similar but the behaviour different? An attitude is here required of the spectator which roughly corresponds to the reader’s habit of turning back in order to check a point. Completely different economies are needed by the epic actor and the dramatic. (The actor Chaplin, incidentally, would in many ways come closer to the epic than to the dramatic theatre’s requirements.)

  It is possible that the epic theatre may need a larger investment than the ordinary theatre in order to become fully effective; this is a problem that needs attention. Perhaps the incidents portrayed by the epic actor need to be familiar ones, in which case historical incidents would be the most immediately suitable. Perhaps it may even be an advantage if an actor can be compared with other actors in the same part. If all this and a good deal more is needed to make the epic theatre effective, then it will have to be organised.

  3. Making the play concrete

  The parable Man equals Man can be made concrete without much difficulty. The transformation of the petty-bourgeois Galy Gay into a ‘human fighting-machine’ can take place in Germany instead of India. The army’s concentration at Kilkoa can be made into the Nazi party rally at Nuremberg. The elephant Billy Humph can be replaced by a stolen motor-car now the property of the SA. The break-in can be located in a Jewish junk dealer’s shop in lieu of Mr Wang’s temple. The shopkeeper then engages Jip to be his Aryan partner. The ban on damaging Jewish shops could then be explained by the presence of English journalists.

  [From Brecht Gesammelte Werke, London 1937, vol 1, pp. 220-224. Of the three sections, I refers to the 1931 production; 2 reprints Brecht’s letter to the Berliner Börsen-Courier of 8 March of that year; while 3 dates from 1936. The SA or Storm Detachments were Hitler’s brownshirts. The term ‘Aryan’ was used by the Nazis to denote non-Jewish.]

  ON LOOKING THROUGH MY FIRST PLAYS (V)

  I turned to the comedy Man equals Man with particular apprehension. Here again I had a socially negative hero who was by no means unsympathetically treated. The play’s theme is the false, bad collectivity (the ‘gang’) and its powers of attraction, the same collectivity that Hitler and his backers were even then in the process of recruiting by an exploitation of the petty-bourgeoisie’s vague longing for the historically timely, genuinely social collectivity of the workers. Before me were two versions, the one performed at the Berlin Volksbühne in 1928 and the other at the Berlin Staatstheater in 1931. I decided to restore the earlier version, where Galy Gay captures the mountain fortress of Sir El-Djowr. In 1931 I had allowed the play to end with the great dismantling operation, having been unable to see any way of giving a negative character to the hero’s growth within the collectivity. I decided instead to leave that growth undescribed.

  But this growth into crime can certainly be shown, if only the performance is sufficiently alienating. I tried to further this by one or two insertions in the last scene.

  [From ‘Bei Durchsicht meiner ersten Stücke.’ GW Schriften zum Theater, p. 951. Written in March 1954 and originally forming part of the introduction of Stücke I and II.]

  Editorial Notes

  I. EVOLUTION OF THE PLAY

  The name Galy Gay and the basic idea of one man being forced to assume the personality of another both derive from the Galgei project which Brecht appears to have conceived as early as 1918 and begun developing in spring or early summer of 1920. ‘In the year of Our Lord …’, says a diary note of 6 July 1920,

  citizen Joseph Galgei fell into the hands of bad men who maltreated him, took away his name and left him lying skinless. Everyone should look to his own skin.

  It was to be ‘just the story of a man whom they break (they have to) and the sole problem is how long can he stand it … They lop off his feet, chuck away his arms, bore a hole in his head till the whole starry heaven is shining into it: is he still Galgei? It’s a sex murder story.’

  This play was to have been set in Augsburg, and its theme was how ‘Galgei replaces Pick the butter merchant for a single evening’. An early scheme specifies eight scenes, thus:

  1. In the countryside. Pick’s death.

  2. The Plärrer [i.e. the Augsburg fair]. Galgei’s abduction.

  3. The Shindy Club. Dagrobu [?meaning]. Pick’s funeral. Galgei.

  4. Ma Col’s bedroom. Galgei half saved. The big row.

  5. River. Murder of Galgei. His rescue.

  6. Next morning at the club.

  7. Galgei’s house. Galgei’s burial.

  8. In the countryside. Pick’s resurrection.

  A fragmentary text of the first three scenes shows Pick going off in dudgeon; a splash is then heard. Scene 2 is described as ‘Big swing-boats. Evening. Violet sky’ and opens with the news of Pick’s death:

  MATTHI: Who is going to pay Pick’s taxes and emit Pick’s farts?

  Galgei, a fat man, is on the swings; by profession he is a carpenter. A bystander describes him:

  He is a most respectable man. Lives quietly and modestly with his wife. He’s behaving very childishly today. It’s the music. He’s such a reliable worker.

  Scene 3 at the Shindy Club’s subterranean bar is subdivided into episodes. Ma Col (a proto-Begbick) is behind the bar polishing glasses. Enter Galgei with Ligarch, the club president, who was on the swings with him. Shaking hands, he says ‘I must remain what I am. But I’m in top form tonight …’, and there it breaks off. However, a slightly more detailed scheme than the first one takes it on:

  Galgei gatecrashes the Shindy Club. 1. He wants to ingratiate himself. 2. He takes part in the business. 3. He hasn’t got a woman. 4. He takes the butter business over.

  – while the remaining scenes are developed in a slightly different order thus:

  4. Bedroom, white calico. Love.

  The screws are tightened. Galgei is caught.

  i. He falls in love with Ma Col.

  ii. He gets money. Hunger.

  iii. He falls out with Matthi.

  iv. He goes to the butter business.

  5. Bar. Brown. Beasts of prey. Schnaps.

  He is transformed. The big row in the club. Galgei feels that he is Pick.

  i. He fights for Ma Col.

  ii. He stands up for Salvarsan.

  iii. He abandons Lukas.

  6. River meadows, green weeds, fat bodies.

  He turns nasty.

  i. He murders Matti.

  ii. He is overcome by doubt.

  7. Bar.

  i. He wakes up.

  ii. He consoles Ma Col until he is at home.

  A further sketch for scene 8 describes the setting as ‘River. Dawn light. Distant sound of bells.’ and has Ligarch saying to Galgei ‘Come. Today God is in Chicago. The sky is displaying the cruel constellations.’

  Like Shlink in In the Jungle, a play which Brecht was only to start planning a year or more later, Galgei was supposed to lose his skin. He was fat and passive, so a note of May 1921 suggests,
with

  a red wrinkled skin, particularly on his neck, close-cropped hair, watery eyes and thick soles. He seethes inwardly and cannot express himself. But everything derives from the fact that people look towards him.

  This ‘lump of flesh’ was to be like a jellyfish, an amorphous life-force flowing to fill whatever empty shape was offered it. It was like ‘a donkey living who is prepared to live on like a pig. The question: Is he then living?

  Answer: He is lived.

  ‘What I’m not sure of,’ reflected Brecht, ‘is whether it is at all possible to convey the monstrous mixture of comedy and tragedy in Galgei, which lies in the fact of exposing a man who can be so manipulated and yet remain alive.’

  From then on the project seems to have stagnated, only to be revived in the summer of 1924 when Brecht was about to leave Bavaria for Berlin. The Augsburg context was now discarded, to be replaced by an Anglo-Indian setting derived from Brecht’s interest in Kipling and first foreshadowed in a story and poem about ‘Larrys Mama’, the ‘mummy’ in question being the British (or Indian) army. The first version of the new scheme specifies no less than fifteen scenes as follows:

  1. galgei goes to buy a fish. 2. Soldiers lose fourth man. 3. buy galgei. 4. have to do without fourth man. 5. galgei plays jip. 6. jip’s betrayal. 7. billiards. 8. elephant scene. 9. flight. 10. execution, 11. departure. 12. train on the move. 13. jip. 14. mime, niggerdance, boxing match. 15. general clean-up.

  – also mentioning ‘Blody Five’, a ‘Saipong Song’ and such key phrases as ‘the gentleman who wishes not to be named’, ‘1 = 0’ [einer ist keiner] and ‘there must be two souls in you’, the old Faustian principle. Starting on his own, then later with Elisabeth Hauptmann’s help. Brecht completed this to make the first full version of the play, an extremely long text which included the whole of The Elephant Calf, more or less as we now have it, as the penultimate scene. The characters at first included besides Galgei: John Cakewater (or Cake), Jesse Baker (or Bak), Uria Heep (presumably after Dickens) and Jerome Jip as the four soldiers, and Leokadja Snize as the canteen lady, with a daughter called Hiobya. In the course of the writing, however, these names gave way respectively to Galy Gay, Jesse Cakewater, Polly Baker, Uria Shelley, Jeraiah Jip, and Leokadja and Hiobya Begbick. The sergeant remained Blody Five throughout. Saipong, the original setting, became Kilkoa, and at some point in 1925 Brecht decided that the play’s title would be Galy Gay or Man = Man.

  Bound in with the script of this version is a good deal of miscellaneous material, which sets the tone thus:

  the three knockabouts

  the worst blokes in the indian army

  the golden scum

  knife between the teeth gents

  you people stand in the corner when he comes in and smile horribly (this happens)

  A discarded episode between Bak and Galgei goes:

  bak: some people live like in a marriage ad to put it scientifically their excrement is odourless but there are those who look life straight in the eye i don’t know if you’ve ever felt the carnal pepper in you i’m talking about unchastity

  galgei: i know what you mean

  bak: have you ever handled a woman with paprika i’ll never forget how a woman once bit me on the tit because i didn’t beat her quite long enough

  galgei: she liked your beating her did she

  bak: that’s not so uncommon but don’t put on an act with me i bet you’re just as ready to give your flesh its head in that sort of situation don’t tell me a man with a face like yours isn’t sensitive to the impressions one can pick up in gents’ urinals say

  galgei: i must tell you that in the circumstances i find it difficult to put up with your remarks

  bak: take a good look at your innermost self do you feel any impulse say to hit me in the face?

  galgei: just a fleeting one

  bak: look the other way i get too excited when you look at me excuse me

  on another occasion someone describes a peculiarly bloody battle scene their hair stands on end as they sing like drunks he quivers like a rabbit

  the scum is bawling

  every spring blood has to flow

  jabyourknifeintohimjackhiphiphurrah

  It ends with two significant phrases: ‘they bank on him entirely, will go to the stake for him’ and ‘he is ready to become a murderer, saint, merchant’. A third – ‘He cannot say no’ – comes in a slightly later scheme. There is also an unrealised idea for ‘Galgay [sic] choruses’:

  All those who do far too much

  Have no time for sleeping

  Have no longer a cold hand

  For their best crimes

  Whatever happens

  Under the sun and under the moon

  Is as good as if

  Sun and moon were thoroughly used to it

  You’ll see three soldiers in Kilkoa

  Commit an offence

  And when night came with its dangers

  You saw them go to bed

  But there are other criminals who

  Bear Cain’s mark on their brows

  Before nightfall

  Seated at the bicycle races

  But these go to bed

  So do not lose heart

  For the moon goes on shining

  While they are provisionally asleep

  And next day they’ll step with old

  Feet into new water

  For they are not always present

  But leave the wind blowing through the bushes for one night

  And the moon shining for one night

  And next day look out on

  Changed world

  The first published version is dated 1926 and bears the final title Mann ist Mann. It represents a reduced and somewhat subdued revision of its 1924/5 predecessor, with the penultimate scene now separated as an appendix under the title The Elephant Calf or The Provability of Any Conceivable Assertion; the direction saying that it should be performed in the foyer only came later. This text, which doubtless bears a close relationship to that of the play’s premières the same year, has been translated in full by Eric Bentley in the Grove Press Seven Plays by Bertolt Brecht (1961 – to be distinguished from later Grove Press editions where the play has been adapted). The original Ullstein (Propyläen) edition also gives melody and piano accompaniment for the ‘Man equals Man Song’ which seems to have developed out of the Saipong Song mentioned earlier. An amended version of this text was used for Erich Engel’s 1928 production at the Volksbühne, after which Arkadia (another offshoot of the Ullstein publishing empire) issued a duplicated stage script. This in turn formed the basis of Brecht’s own production with Peter Lorre at the Staatstheater in 1931. The major changes made up to this point included the cutting of Begbick’s three daughters Hiobya, Bessie and Ann, who are described in the 1926 version as ‘half-castes who form a jazz band’, and an extensive reshuffling of lines between the three soldiers. Our scenes 4 and 5 were run into one and scenes 6 and 7 were cut, while in our long scene 9 the soldiers were to sing the Mandalay Song (as in Happy End) and the Cannon Song (as in the Threepenny Opera) finishing up with the Man equals Man Song and a very short final scene. For Brecht’s production however Begbick’s Interlude speech was shifted to form a prologue, its place being taken by Jesse’s speech ‘I tell you, Widow Begbick’ on p. 41, which was to be delivered ‘before the portrait of Galy Gay as a porter’. Blody Five was changed to Blutiger Fünfer (Bloody Fiver) throughout; it will be seen how as a character he diminishes. Both the Man equals Man Song and the Song of Widow Begbick’s Drinking Car were thrown out, but a new Song of the Flow of Things (stylistically very close to the ‘Reader for Those who Live in Cities’ poems) was brought in instead of the interpolated songs in scene 9. The play ended with the soldiers entraining as at the end of that scene. The programme described it as a ‘parable’.

  This in turn formed the basis for the second published version, that of the Malik collected edition in 1938. Its text is the same as ours up to th
e end of Galy Gay’s long verse speech in scene 9 (v), after which a slight shuffling of the dialogue, followed by a final brief speech from Galy Gay, allowed the play to end with that scene. In 1954, however, ‘on looking through his first plays’ for Suhrkamp’s new collected edition, Brecht decided to bring back scenes 10 and 11 from the 1926 version, modifying them slightly so as to include the final brief speech of 1938, which now occurs on p. 76. The result was the text which we now have. But of course Brecht never saw it staged in this form, and no doubt he would have modified it yet again. For of all his plays there was scarcely one that he found so difficult to let alone. All in all, he once wrote, ‘from what I learnt from the audiences that saw it, I rewrote Man equals Man ten times’. Looking at the material in the Brecht Archive one soon loses count. But it is easy to believe that he spoke the truth.

  2. NOTES ON INDIVIDUAL SCENES

  Scene numbers and titles are given as in our version of the play. Numbers in square brackets refer to those in whichever text is under discussion.

  1. Kilkoa

  The 1924/5 text describes the setting simply as ‘road’. Otherwise this scene has remained unchanged apart from the wife’s final line:

  Please don’t wander around. I am going to bolt myself into the kitchen so you needn’t be worried on account of all those idle soldiers.