Bertolt Brecht: Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder 5

by Bertolt Brecht

  Apart from the penultimate scene, this is the most heavily amended of them all. In place of Federzoni there is the ‘elderly scholar’, while, in the first typescript only, ‘the housekeeper’ figured instead of Mrs Sarti. The exchanges with Ludovico are entirely different, as well as shorter; again Ludovico is no aristocrat, and his nervousness about his prospective father-in-law’s theories seem to stem from hints dropped at the university where he is a student without private means. The order of events also underwent subsequent changes.

  Thus the scene opens with Galileo demonstrating the behaviour of floating bodies. He begins with an extended version of the remarks later put after the experiment with the needle (p. 69):

  GALILEO: The aim of science is not to open the door to everlasting wisdom, but to set a limit to everlasting error. Philosophy for the most part is limitless, wild and indefinite, but truth is restricted and contained in small examples. A main cause of poverty in the sciences is the illusion of wealth. We only conquer nature by obeying her. Whatever counts as a cause when we are observing counts as a rule when we are putting something into effect. By observing the small errors on which the great philosophies are erected we arrived in the course of the summer at all kinds of concepts which have been obstructing the advance of science ever since Aristotle’s time. Such as cold and thinness, dampness and length, from which some people think they can construct a whole world if they put the words together the right way.

  Andrea then puts the Aristotelian case, about the ice and the needle, going on to describe Galileo’s disproof of it while Galileo demonstrates. When he succeeds they all laugh, leading the women to make their remarks about laughter (p. 69) up to Sarti’s ‘I don’t know’.

  Mucius then appears, and is dealt with very much as in the final text. Then after Galileo has gone into his study Virginia and Mrs Sarti have their chat about horoscopes (p. 66), in its final form – an episode which was not, however, in the first typescript – before Andrea starts asking Galileo about sunspots, saying he has read Fabricius’s book. The dialogue here is largely different. Thus when the elderly scholar asks Galileo ‘Is it really right to keep one’s mouth shut?’ Galileo replies with the Keuner story about the man who was asked if he would serve his enemy, served him for seven years till he died, and then bundled up his corpse, scrubbed out the room, breathed deeply and replied ‘No’. Only Galileo tells it, in the first typescript, of ‘Mr Sarrone, a philosopher in Modena’, amended to ‘the Cretan philosopher Keunos, who was much loved by the Cretans for his libertarian views’. As the others laugh Andrea shakes his head and (in the revised versions) says he doesn’t care for the story.

  Gaffone the rector makes his brief appearance, as on p. 67, followed by some twenty lines of dialogue between the two women, including Virginia’s remark about ‘a very high church person’ (p. 65), some references to signs of official surveillance, and an inquiry to Andrea about his fiancee:

  VIRGINIA: How’s Jessica? Are you still quarrelling?

  ANDREA laughing: No. I’ve found out now why she didn’t want to marry me. Pangs of conscience. Because astronomers are unholy people, you know. Of course that wasn’t a very serious obstacle. We’re together again. Goes upstairs.

  MRS SARTI [in the revised versions]: She knows she’s doing well for herself. Her father’s just an ordinary artisan …

  Ludovico enters in travelling clothes, followed by a servant, saying he has got to speak to Galileo, about a rumour. Is he writing a book on sunspots? Galileo says what nonsense; did Ludovico come all the way to ask that?

  LUDOVICO: I hope you understand. They’re all talking about Copernicus again in connection with these sunspots. And I was hoping you weren’t getting involved. I’ve already had hints dropped at the university.

  GALILEO: Oh, so you’re frightened?

  Like the final Ludovico, this one brings the news that Barberini may soon be pope. Much of Galileo’s speech in the first typescript about what his election might mean for science – e.g.

  This means nothing less than the start of a new century of the arts and sciences. No more fear. Knowledge will be a passion and research a self-indulgence. What a dreadful age, where saying what is, is considered a crime. But now people will say, what a dreadful age it was. Who’s scared of discoveries now, they’ll ask. Who’s got reason to be?

  – was shifted to immediately in front of his ‘Put a grid of squares on the screen’ (p. 72), so that his order to focus the telescope on the sun follows instantly on the news, without any of the teasing of Ludovico which is found in the final text. Ludovico begs him not to join in the sunspot controversy, to which Galileo answers:

  … Are they to say Galileo hasn’t got the courage to open his mouth? People are looking at me, man. The earth rotates – it’s I who say that, do you get me? If I keep silent it’ll stop!

  LUDOVICO: Virginia, I know I love you. But I can’t marry you if this is how things are. I haven’t any money of my own.

  Andrea suggests Galileo should help them. ‘My Jessica has come to terms with her conscience, but after all she’s only risking hell. I don’t know what she’d do if the city clergy stopped getting their communion vessels from her father the silversmith. A threat of that sort is far worse.’ But Galileo turns away to his collaborators.

  LUDOVICO: Virginia, I love you, and I love your father the way he is. But his concerns are not mine; I don’t understand them and I haven’t got the courage.

  And because Galileo remains silent, Virginia gives Ludovico back his ring.

  Thus virtually everything in the final text from Mrs Sarti’s ‘Almost!’ (p. 72) to Andrea’s interruption (p. 75) is missing in this version. Galileo goes straight on to his big speech (p. 75), including already such key phrases as ‘My object is not to establish that I have been right all along but to find out if I am’ and ‘And whatever we wish to find we shall regard, once found, with particular mistrust.’ As Ludovico embraces Virginia and leaves, Galileo continues (from ‘go on talking all the same’)

  Then we’ll crush this stupidity underfoot, eh, my boy? We’ll peel off its skin to carry as our banner. And we’ll write on it in blood: look out! Or, rather, in ink – which is more dangerous. At last we’re going to bang those narrow-minded heads together till they burst like eggshells. Yes, we’re going to make cruel use of our arguments. Perhaps it’ll be the first time in history that cruelty has been directed against ignorance. A historic date!

  ANDREA: And are you going to write the book on the world systems?

  GALILEO: Yes, and not in Latin for the few but in Tuscan for the many. Because this book has got to be understood by everybody. For that I need people who work with their hands. Who else is going to want to know the causes of everything? [Then, in the revised versions, as on p. 74 to ‘will probably laugh’.] And the peasants who force their plough into the earth, and the weavers at their looms, the people now stirring in every street, are all going to point at the sun and say: it’s not a golden coat of arms but a motor. We move it, because it moves us.

  Virginia repacks her trousseau, and Andrea closes the scene with his four-line epigram from p. 71.

  10 [9, or 8 in first typescript]

  The Copernican doctrine circulates among the common people

  The setting is a street, with a street singer and his wife singing to a hurdy-gurdy and the populace listening from windows. The ballad differs, above all structurally, from that in the final text, and goes roughly as follows:

  Great Galileo told the sun

  (Or so the story says)

  To give up turning around the earth

  On which it casts its rays.

  What a to-do!

  The sun has started turning around itself

  Not around me and you.

  And immediately the sun had ceased

  Reserving all its light for us

  The verger gave up following after the priest

  The apprentice after his boss.

  No doubt you’ve guessed:
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  They all want to turn around themselves

  And do what suits them best.

  The bricklayer who was building the house

  Is now its occupier.

  The woodcutter who chops down trees

  Puts the wood on his own fire.

  What a to-do!

  The woodcutter was telling his wife

  His feet were frozen through.

  I saw two housewives shopping for fish

  The clock was striking twelve.

  The fishwife took out a piece of bread

  And ate the fish herself.

  What a to-do!

  The fishwife thought she’d have fish for once

  Very nutritious too.

  The master appears, the maids don’t get up

  The footmen omit to bow.

  The master observes to his great surprise

  Nothing turns around him now.

  No doubt you’ve guessed:

  The footmen have their hands too full

  The maids give them no rest.

  THE WOMAN

  I too had been dancing out of line

  And said to my husband, ‘My dear

  What you do for me might well be done

  By any other star.’

  THE MAN

  What a to-do!

  My wife ought to turn around no one but me –

  That’s always been my view

  The princes clean their boots with their own hands.

  The emperor bakes his own bread.

  The soldiers no longer obey commands

  But stroll in the streets instead.

  No doubt you’ve guessed:

  There was too much work for too many to do.

  In the end they had to protest.

  (In a confidential undertone)

  The cardinals all stood in St. Peter’s Square

  When the pope showed himself to the crowd

  The cardinals acted as if he weren’t there.

  And went on talking too loud.

  What a to-do!

  Their eminences have taken to kissing their own feet –

  You know who that’s due to.

  Three archangels came down to earth, to complain

  It should praise God more audibly.

  But the earth said: ‘There are so many worlds in space

  Why do they have to pick on me?’

  No doubt you’ve guessed:

  If our earth is just one of a whole lot of worlds

  It can share such chores with the rest.

  At the end of the ballad ‘a Jesuit crosses the square. He crouches when he hears the song, and goes off like a drenched poodle. The people laugh and throw down coins.’

  A note then says that the scene can develop into a ballet. ‘A popular carnival celebration can be shown in the style of Brueghel’s The Battle Between Carnival and Lent. Following the first verse of the ballad a carnival procession can move across the square, including a man dressed as a BIBLE with a hole in it, and a cart with a monk stretching out, trying with both hands to hold back a collapsing ST. PETER’S THRONE. Then after the last verse the MOON, SUN, EARTH and PLANETS can appear and demonstrate the new system of motion in a dance, to a severe musical setting.’

  11 [10, or 9 in first typescript]

  1633. The Inquisition summons the world-famous scientist to Rome

  This short scene in the Medici palace is close to the final text, except that the episode with Vanni the iron founder from Virginia’s ‘Here’s Mr Vanni’ on p. 80 to Galileo’s ‘you risk losing your arm’ on p. 82 is not in this version. Instead a man passes to whom Galileo vainly calls out ‘Galliardo! Galliardo!’, commenting:

  That was the director of artillery equipment. He must have seen me. He usually eats out of my hand. Today he’s running away as if he thought I was infectious.

  Then a student passes, who wants to stop and talk to Galileo but is called away by his tutor. Just before Cosimo’s entrance Galileo comments:

  After all, we’re not here to get polite attentions paid us. I crawled into this position years ago on all fours, since anybody wanting to introduce the truth – or even a morsel of it – into a place like this can only enter through the lowest hole of all, the one for dogs. But it was a good thing to do, as now they’ll have to protect me. There’s something in the air. If I hadn’t got the pope’s imprimatur for it I’d think it was the book. But they know the book has passed the censors. The pope would flatly reject any attempt to make a trap for me out of it. And after all the grand duke is my pupil. I shall complain to him.

  The passage about Sagredo’s invitation (p. 83) and the appearance of the cardinal inquisitor were added before this in revision. Galileo’s resolve to escape in Volpi’s wine cart is not in this version; nor is the last sentence of the final text.

  12 [11, or 10 in first typescript]

  The pope

  This scene is divided by a ‘transformation’ into two halves, of which the second is not in the later versions and is given in full below. The first half, in the pope’s own room, is a slightly shorter version of the final text. It excludes notably the reference to Galileo’s star charts and the maritime cities’ need for them, the mention of his powerful friends, leading to the pope’s order ‘Hands off him!’ (p. 86) with the inquisitor’s cynical reply and the pope’s comment that ‘His thinking springs from sensuality.’ This half accordingly ends with ‘Not the whole of it, but its best part.’ Then, after the transformation:

  Another room. At the window, Galileo, waiting. Here too the stamping and shuffling of many feet of the gathering congregation is heard. In the foreground two officials of the Inquisition.

  OFFICIAL sotto voce to his companion: He’s got good nerves. He’s having a look at all his enemies.

  GALILEO: I hope the interview with His Holiness will take place before the session. It’s important for me, as I want to ask for my evidence and proofs to be investigated before any decision is come to. It is of course quite impossible for me to make any kind of statement in a matter of such importance for the world of science without my evidence and proofs first getting a most scrupulous hearing and examination. I’d be glad of a little water. The first official pours him some water from a carafe on the table. Galileo reaches for it uncertainly and spills some.

  SECOND OFFICIAL when the firsts returns: Having a look at his enemies, but at nothing else. Had you forgotten he’s half blind?

  GALILEO: I suppose His Holiness really does want to see me?

  FIRST OFFICIAL: Definitely.

  GALILEO: Then I’d prefer to wait in another room if that’s possible.

  SECOND OFFICIAL: It’s not possible. You wouldn’t like His Holiness to arrive and find you weren’t here, because you couldn’t stand the shuffling.

  GALILEOlooks at him blankly.

  SECOND OFFICIAL: Yes, you must be beginning to realise it isn’t just a handful of people gathering there to testify against you. It’s the most distinguished minds in Italy, the most learned scholars, the stars of all the universities, in short it’s everybody.

  GALILEO: Yes. He turns to his window again.

  FIRST OFFICIAL: He must feel rather like someone before the flood who was expecting a spring shower, then the real rain came, then came an endless downpour and that turned into the flood, don’t you think?

  A high official appears. Galileo turns to face him and makes a deep bow. He thinks it is the pope.

  THE HIGH OFFICIAL: Has this person eaten?

  FIRST OFFICIAL: He was served a substantial meal.

  THE HIGH OFFICIAL: The session later may go on a long time. Goes out.

  GALILEO has risen to his feet in confusion: Gentlemen, I know His Holiness personally, having met him once at Cardinal Bellarmin’s. But my eyesight is not what it was, and I must beg you to tell me when he is coming.

  FIRST OFFICIAL: Shall be done, even though you wouldn’t oblige us by making a proper meal.

  GALILEO: The fact that the gentleman who just
left used the word ‘later’ when speaking about the Inquisition’s session today is surely a definite sign that His Holiness wants to speak to me first?

  FIRST OFFICIAL shrugs his shoulders.

  GALILEO: Did you say something?

  FIRST OFFICIAL: I shrugged my shoulders.

  13 [12 or 11 in first typescript]

  Apart from the fact that Federzoni’s subsequent lines are given to the elderly scholar, that the end of the scene (after the blackout) was at first conceived as a short scene on its own, and that Andrea’s insults (’Wine-pump!’ etc., p. 91) are missing, this version is not much different from the final one. In the first typescript a speech for the elderly scholar was written in; it appears to belong after Andrea’s ‘He couldn’t write his book there’ (p. 88) but was omitted in revision.

  Clearly he didn’t pay enough attention to that part. It’s true that he said: it’s not enough to know something, you have to be able to prove it. And he held his tongue till he was forty-six years old, and only spoke when he was able to prove his knowledge. But then he talked about his proofs to people with bunged-up ears, not to those who were dissatisfied with what had been believed in up to then but to those who were content with it. His mistake was to think that the choice between speaking in a republic and speaking in a grand duchy wasn’t an astronomical problem.

  14 [13, or 12 in first typescript]

  1633–1642. A prisoner of the Inquisition, Galileo continues his scientific studies up to his death. He manages to smuggle his principal work out of Italy

  Like 9, this is a heavily altered scene with substantial differences from the final text. To sum them up briefly: (a) Galileo has conspired with a stove-fitter to conceal and smuggle out his writings; (b) Virginia reads him aphorisms by Montaigne, not scribbled texts provided by the archbishop; (c) his big speech (pp. 100–101) is differently conceived, though containing one or two phrases that recur in its final form; it omits all but the most general references to science’s social implications, accuses himself only of failure to speak up for reason, and includes neither the warning of a ‘universal cry of horror’, nor the proposal for a scientists’ Hippocratic oath; (d) it is only after this speech that Virginia leaves the room and Galileo admits to having written the Discorsi; (e) Andrea’s enthusiastic reaction in praise of the ‘new ethics’ is missing, as also is Galileo’s counter-speech of self-abasement (’Welcome to the gutter’, p. 99); thus there are no dramatic reversals of feeling between the handing-over of the Discorsi and the end of the scene.