Bertolt Brecht: Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder 5

by Bertolt Brecht

  In the opening stage direction Galileo is described as ‘old and ill, and moves like a blind man Virginia solicitously serves him his supper (’Now let’s eat up our good soup, and try not to spill a drop of it’). He then complains that the stove isn’t working properly, and asks when the stove-fitter is coming. The official in the antechamber (the monk of the final text) complains to Virginia that manuscripts have been leaking out:

  Don’t forget that the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems was smuggled to Holland from here. And now they’ve intercepted a letter to Strasbourg, saying a manuscript will be coming. It must already have got out. Who took it? Enter a big, broad-shouldered man, the stove-fitter. He has his tools with him.

  The stove-fitter is indeed the agent responsible, but this time he has brought the manuscript back because ‘They are after us. Villagio has been arrested’. The doctor then appears, to check on Galileo’s eyesight.

  THE OFFICIAL: Can he or can he not see?

  THE DOCTOR shrugs his shoulders: I don’t know; very little, I’d say. I’ll be making my report.

  Virginia then comes in again to read to her father. The following passage was published in 1957 in Ver suche 15 as an addendum to the play:

  VIRGINIA: Shall I read to you?

  GALILEO: Yes, those inscriptions on the beams of M. de Montaigne’s library. But only the ones I’ve marked.

  VIRGINIA gets the book and reads: 54th Inscription: Without leaning.

  GALILEO: Is that all?

  VIRGINIA: Yes.

  GALILEO: But that depends on at least three things: the force of the thrust applied to one, the visibility of the objective and the solidity of the base. Some advice! Go on.

  VIRGINIA: 52nd inscription: I do not understand.

  GALILEO: That’s good. It’s a starting point.

  VIRGINIA: 13: It is possible and it is not possible.1

  GALILEO: Good, so long as he gives reasons.

  VIRGINIA: 5: It’s no more like this than like that or like neither.2

  GALILEO: Provided one goes on looking.

  VIRGINIA: 21: He who knows that he knows doesn’t know how he knows.3

  GALILEO: Again, that’s very good. But it all tastes of defeatism.

  VIRGINIA: 10: What are heaven and earth and sea, with all they embrace, against the sum of sums of the immeasurable whole?4

  GALILEO: One has to start, though. Make a note.

  VIRGINIA: 2: He gave them curiosity, that he might torment them.5

  GALILEO: Rubbish.

  VIRGINIA: 15: Man is too fragile.6

  GALILEO: Not fragile enough.

  VIRGINIA: 20: Be wise in moderation, that you may not grow stupid.7

  GALILEO: Go on.

  VIRGINIA: 42: Men are not confused by things but by opinions about things.8

  GALILEO: That could be wrong too. Who confuses the opinions?

  VIRGINIA: Should I make a note of that?

  GALILEO: No.

  VIRGINIA: 19: I am a human; nothing human is alien to me.9

  GALILEO: Good.

  VIRGINIA: 37: God has created man like a shadow. Who can judge him once the sun has set?10

  Galileo is silent.

  VIRGINIA: 17: You should neither fear your last day nor yearn for it.11

  GALILEO: I used to find the first point difficult: now it’s the second.

  VIRGINIA: 14: A wondrous thing is goodness.12

  GALILEO: Louder!

  VIRGINIA louder: A wondrous thing is goodness.

  A much shorter alternative to the whole passage, which is also given in the first typescript, with Galileo and Virginia going over proofs, replaces it in the revised versions. In this Virginia reads Galileo the extract from the Discorsi which appears at the end of the previous scene in the final text.

  At this point Andrea enters, and the dialogue is fairly close to the final text, up to where Galileo asks about his scientific friends ‘Did they learn anything from my recantation?’ (p. 96). Andrea hardly answers the question; he says nothing about Fulganzio, or, of course, Federzoni; the immediately preceding exchange about Descartes is also missing. Instead the text continues:

  ANDREA: For a time there was a considerable difference of opinion about you. Some of your former friends insisted that you had recanted because of services you still hoped to render physics by remaining alive. Because of such works as only you could write.

  GALILEO brusquely: There are no such works.

  ANDREA: How do you mean? If you hadn’t written the Dialogue …

  GALILEO: Then someone else would have written it.

  ANDREA: So that wasn’t your motive?

  GALILEO: Shortly after my trial various people who had known me earlier were good enough to credit me with all kinds of noble intentions. I wouldn’t have this. To me it simply signified a decline of the critical faculties, brought about by the fact that they found drastic physical changes in me.

  After carefully considering all the circumstances, extenuating and otherwise, it is impossible to conclude that a man could arrive at this state of – call it obedience, from any other motive than an undue fear of death. Pause. That is not to deny addressing Virginia the profound regret which I, as a son of the church, felt when my superiors induced me, by the most weighty of all arguments, to see the error of my ways. As a rule nothing less than threatening a man with death will serve to dissuade him from something of which his reason, that most dangerous of all God’s gifts, has persuaded him. I fully understood that I could now only expect that hell which, so the poet tells, is inhabited by people who have gambled away the gifts of the mind and are accordingly without hope.

  He tells Andrea that science should be able to get along without authority (including his own). ‘Authority and absence of truth doubtless go together, and so do truth and absence of authority.’ Andrea then sums up the case against him, as it emerges in this version:

  … a lot of people everywhere were hanging on your words and actions because they felt what you stood for was not a particular theory about the movements of the stars but the freedom to theorise in any field. Not just for any particular thoughts, in other words, but the right to think in the first place, which was now being threatened. So as soon as these people heard you recanting all you had said they concluded that it was not merely certain thoughts about celestial motions that were being discredited but thinking itself that was being regarded as unholy, since it operates by means of causes and proofs.

  Virginia replies that the church has not forbidden science, but has even absorbed Galileo’s main discoveries. Only he mustn’t attack the opinions of theology, which is an entirely different science.’ The big speech follows, starting very much as it does in the final text (p. 100):

  GALILEO: In my free time, and I’ve got plenty of that, I have asked myself how the world of science, of which I no longer consider myself a member, even if I still know a thing or two about its pursuits, will judge my conduct. In lecture style, bands folded over his paunch. It will have to take into account whether it is good enough for its members to provide it with a given number of principles, for instance about the tendencies of falling bodies or the motions of certain stars. I have, as I said, excluded myself from the scientific way of thinking; however, I take it that when faced with the threat of destruction that world will be in no position to lay down more far-reaching duties for its members, e.g., that of collaborating in its own maintenance as science. Even a wool merchant, in addition to buying cheap and providing good wool, has to worry about his trade being permitted at all without restriction. On that principle no member of the scientific world is logically entitled to point to his own possible contributions to research if he has failed to honour his profession as such and to defend it against any use of force. This, however, is a business of vast scope. For science consists, not in a licence to subordinate facts to opinions, but in an obligation to subordinate opinions to facts. It is not in any position to permit restriction of these principles or to establish
them only for ‘certain views’ and ‘those particular facts’. In order to make sure that it can apply these principles unrestrictedly at any one time, science has to fight to be respected in every sphere. For science and humanity as a whole happen to be in the same boat. So it can’t say ‘What business is it of mine if the boat springs a leak at the other end?’ [A passage cut from the original typescript here is repeated between two asterisks on p. 262 below.] Science has no use for people who fail to stick up for reason. It must expel them in ignominy, because, however many truths science knows, it could have no future in a world of lies. If the hand that feeds it occasionally seizes it unpredictably by the throat then humanity will have to chop it off. That is why science cannot tolerate a person like me in its ranks.

  VIRGINIA with passion: But you are accepted in the ranks of the faithful (cf. p. 101)

  GALILEO: That is the position. In my view I have wrecked every experiment that might have been injurious to blind faith. Only my ingrained habit of making allowances for improbabilities would lead me to say ‘nearly every experiment’. Plainly nothing but the irresistible arguments put forward by the Inquisition could have convinced me of the harmfulness of my researches.

  ANDREA in a strangled voice: Yes.

  Virginia leaves the room, and Galileo at once slyly admits that he has had relapses (p. 97). The dialogue then roughly anticipates that in the final text, up to where Andrea takes up the manuscript of the Discorsi, with the difference that Andrea never assumes that the work has been irrevocably handed over to ‘the monks’ as occurs, with consequently heightened tension, in the final text. Nor does Galileo simply tell him to ‘Stuff it under your coat’ (p. 98), but makes more elaborate and self-protective hints as to how he might take it away. Then as Andrea leaves, there is a significantly different exchange, to which the section in square brackets was added in the course of revision:

  ANDREA who has concealed the manuscript on him: Yes, I’m going now. [I realise it’s as if a tower had collapsed which was enormously tall and thought to be unshakeable. The noise it made collapsing was louder than the noise of the builders and their machines during the whole period of its construction, and the column of dust which its collapse caused was even higher than it had been. But conceivably when the dust disperses it may turn out that although the top twelve stories fell down the bottom thirty are still standing. In which case the building could be developed further. Is that what you mean? It would be supported by the fact that the inconsistencies in our science are still all in evidence and have been sifted. The difficulty seems to have increased, but at the same time the necessity has become greater.] I’m glad I came. He holds out his hand to him.

  GALILEO does not take it; hesitantly: My eyesight is bad, Andrea. I can’t see any more, I only stare. You had better go. He walks slowly to [the globe and sees if it is shut. I’m not unresponsive to the kindnesses I’m always being shown. Travellers passing through remember me, and so on. I don’t misinterpret such things.] I’m glad too to have talked to you, and to have found you as you are. You have had experiences which could have given you a quite wrong view of what we’ve always termed the future of reason. But of course, no single man could either bring it to pass or discredit it. *It is too big an affair ever to be contained inside a single head. Reason is something people can be divided into. It can be described as the egoism of all humanity.* Such egoism is not strong enough. But even a person like myself can still see that reason is not coming to an end but beginning. And I still believe that this is a new age. It may look like a bloodstained old harridan, but if so that must be the way new ages look. When light breaks in it does so in the uttermost darkness. While a few places are the scene of the most immense discoveries, which must contribute immeasurably to humanity’s resources for happiness, great areas of this world still lie entirely in the dark. In fact the blackness has actually deepened there. Look out for yourself when you travel through Germany with the truth under your coat.

  Andrea goes out.

  Andrea says nothing about a ‘devastating analysis’ (p. 102). The scene quickly closes, somewhat as in the final text, though not on the word ‘Clear’ but on Galileo’s ensuing comment: ‘That’s good. Then he’ll be able to see his way.’

  15 [14]

  1637. Galileo’s book the Discorsi crosses the Italian frontier

  Very close to the final text.

  3. THE AMERICAN VERSION, 1944–1947

  This English-language version, which Brecht and Laughton worked on from the end of 1944 up to the Hollywood production of July 1947, maintains the general structure of the play, but shortens and very largely rewrites it. The main structural changes are the omission of the first half of scene 4; the cutting of scene 5 a off the end of scene 4 and the elimination of it and 5b (the plague scenes); also the cutting of the second half of scene 12 (pp. 254–5 above), with Galileo waiting for the pope. An element of social interest was introduced by making Ludovico an aristocrat and creating two new characters: Federzoni the lens grinder, who helps bring out the point of Galileo’s use of the vernacular language, and the iron founder here called Matti, whose function is to appear in scenes 1 and 11 and show that the embryo bourgeoisie is on Galileo’s side. Ludovico takes over Doppone’s role in scenes 1 and 2; not surprisingly he becomes a little unconvincing. Federzoni too gets some of the elderly scholar’s lines in scene 9. In this scene Mucius is cut, in scene 14 the stove-fitter and the doctor. According to Brecht it was Laughton who insisted on transposing the handing-over of the Discorsi in this scene so that Galileo’s big self-accusatory speech should come after it.

  The carnival scene (10) was rewritten entirely, with a new English-language ballad, though the gist of this remained much the same. The actions of the masqueraders and the crowd, while not exactly amounting to the ‘ballet’ proposed in the first version, were described in some detail, finishing with the appearance of the enormous dummy figure of ‘Galileo, the Bible-buster’.

  Finally there are no scene titles in the text as published, but short English verses were put at the beginning of each scene, and at the end of the play, which now finished with the warning:

  May you now guard science’ light,

  Kindle it and use it right,

  Lest it be a flame to fall

  Downward to consume us all.

  The full text of this version is given on page 333 ff. After the first plan for an American publication of the plays had fallen through, it was included in Eric Bentley’s anthology From the Modern Repertoire 2 and published by University of Denver Press in 1952. Scene 15, which had been available in 1946 but was not played in the Los Angeles and New York production, was now added, and the resulting version seems closer to what Brecht wanted published for readers than any other.

  The following is a brief scene-by-scene commentary on its changes from the first version. Scene numbers are those of the final text, with the American version’s numbering in square brackets.

  1.

  The scene begins with the arrival of the Ptolemaic model which was previously already there. Galileo’s speech on the ‘new age’ is shorter and simpler and more sloppily worded (‘A new age was coming. I was on to it years ago’), but includes the ships and the Sienese masons. His second demonstration to Andrea, with the apple (which is in both the first and the final versions), is cut from Andrea’s ‘But it isn’t true’ (p. 10) to Galileo’s ‘Ha’ on p. 11. Ludovico then appears, the gist of the dialogue being much the same as in the final text, but very much shortened. Galileo’s discussion with Andrea about hypotheses is cut. The procurator, who follows Ludovico’s exit, is for some reason a museum curator; again the dialogue is shortened and simplified, even vulgarised:

  CURATOR: You’ve never let me down yet, Galilei.

  GALILEO: You are always an inspiration to me, Priuli. The ending of the scene is likewise shorter.

  2.

  The form of the scene is as in the final text, except that Virginia makes the presentation, that Matti t
he (Florentine) ironfounder appears, and that the Doge has nothing to say. Note the curator’s ‘best chamber-of-commerce manner’ and the allusion to him as a businessman, also the new silliness of Virginia as exemplified in the closing exchanges.

  3.

  This is the same scene as in the final version, but shortened. It introduces Galileo’s remarks about star charts, but cuts the episode with Mrs Sarti (p. 28) who does not appear at all. Virginia enters earlier – there is no cross-fade as before – and stays long enough to hear Sagredo read out the end of the letter to the grand duke. The scene now ends approximately as in the final text, though rather more abruptly.

  4.

  The first half of the scene has been cut: Mrs Sarti’s speech, the grand duke’s arrival and the episode with the two boys, also Galileo’s opening speech and the beginning of the scientific argument up to where Cosimo’s three professors are invited to look through the telescope for themselves (p. 36 in the final version). Instead it begins with the philosopher talking Latin and the exchange (p. 36) about the need to use the vernacular for Federzoni’s sake. The argument which follows, now interrupted by the court ladies with jarringly improbable comments, follows the same pattern as the final version, though again in shortened form. It introduces notably Galileo’s remark, ‘Why defend shaky teaching? You should be doing the shaking,’ and the speech that follows about the arsenal workers and the sailors. The professors leave without speculating about Cosimo’s hurried departure, now attributed to the state ball.

  5.