Bertolt Brecht: Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder 5

  It is well known how beneficially people can be influenced by the conviction that they are poised on the threshold of a new age. At such a moment their environment appears to be still entirely unfinished, capable of the happiest improvements, full of dreamt-of and undreamt-of possibilities, like malleable raw material in their hands. They themselves feel as if they have awakened to a new day, rested, strong, resourceful. Old beliefs are dismissed as superstitions, what yesterday seemed a matter of course is today subject to fresh examination. We have been ruled, says mankind, but now we shall be the rulers.

  Around the turn of this century no other line from a song so powerfully inspired the workers as the line: ‘Now a new age is dawning’; old and young marched to it, the poorest, the down-and-outs and those who had already won something of civilisation for themselves – all felt young. Under a house painter the unprecedented seductive power of these selfsame words was also tried and proved; for he too promised a new age. Here the words revealed their emptiness and vagueness. Their strength lay in their very indefiniteness, which was now being exploited in demoralising the masses. The new age – that was something and is something that affects everything, leaves nothing unchanged, but is also still only unfolding its character gradually; something in which all imagination has scope to flower, and which is only restricted by too precise description. Glorious is the feeling of beginning, of pioneering; the fact of being a beginner inspires enthusiasm. Glorious is the feeling of happiness in those who oil a new machine before it is to display its strength, in those who fill in a blank space on an old map, in those who dig the foundation of a new house, their house.

  This feeling comes to the researcher who makes a discovery that will change everything, to the orator who prepares a speech that will create an entirely new situation. Terrible is the disappointment when men discover, or think they discover, that they have fallen victims to an illusion, that the old is stronger than the new, that the ‘facts’ are against them and not for them, that their age – the new age – has not yet arrived. Then things are not merely as bad as before, but much worse because people have made immense sacrifices for their schemes and have lost everything; they have ventured and are now defeated; the old is taking its revenge on them. The researcher or the discoverer – an unknown but also unpersecuted man before he has published his discovery – when once his discovery has been disproved or discredited is a swindler and a charlatan, and all too well known; the victim of oppression and exploitation, when once his insurrection has been crushed, is a rebel who is subject to special repression and punishment. Exertion is followed by exhaustion, possibly exaggerated hope by possibly exaggerated hopelessness. Those who do not relapse into indifference and apathy fall into worse; those who have not sacrificed their energies for their ideals now turn those selfsame energies against those very ideals. There is no more remorseless reactionary than a frustrated innovator, no crueller enemy of the wild elephant than the tame elephant.

  And yet these disappointed men may still go on existing in a new age, an age of great upheaval. Only, they know nothing of new ages.

  In these days the conception of the new is itself falsified. The Old and the Very Old, now re-entering the arena, proclaim themselves as new, or else it is held to be new when the Old or the Very Old are put over in a new way. But the really New, having been deposed today, is declared old-fashioned, degraded to being a transitory phase whose day is done. ‘New’ for example is the system of waging wars, whereas ‘old’, so they say, is a system of economy, proposed but never put into practice, which makes wars superfluous. In the new system, society is being entrenched in classes; while old, so they say, is the desire to abolish classes. The hopes of mankind do not so much become discouraged in these times; rather, they become diverted. Men had hoped that one day there would be bread to eat. Now they may hope that one day there will be stones.

  Amid the darkness gathering fast over a fevered world, a world surrounded by bloody deeds and no less bloody thoughts, by increasing barbarism which seems to be leading irresistibly to perhaps the greatest and most terrible war of all time, it is difficult to adopt an attitude appropriate to people on the threshold of a new and happier age. Does not everything point to night’s arrival and nothing to the dawning of a new age? So shouldn’t one, therefore, assume an attitude appropriate to people heading towards the night?

  What is this talk of a ‘new age’? Is not this expression itself obsolete? When it is shouted at us, it is bellowed from hoarse throats. Now indeed, it is mere barbarism which impersonates the new age. It says of itself that it hopes it will last a thousand years.

  So should one hold fast to the old times? Should one discuss sunken Atlantis?

  Am I already lying down for the night and thinking, when I think of the morning, of the one that has passed, in order to avoid thinking of the one to come? Is that why I occupy myself with that epoch of the flowering of the arts and sciences three hundred years ago? I hope not.

  These images of the morning and the night are misleading. Happy times do not come in the same way as a morning follows a night’s sleep.

  [Dated 1939; not revised by Brecht. From Werner Hecht (ed.): Materialien zu Brecbts ‘Leben des Galilei’, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1968, pp. 7 ff.]

  THE Life of Galileo is NOT A TRAGEDY

  So, from the point of view of the theatre, the question will arise whether the Life of Galileo is to be presented as a tragedy or as an optimistic play. Is the keynote to be found in Galileo’s ‘Salutation to the New Age’ in scene 1 or in certain parts of scene 14? According to the prevailing rules of play construction, the end of a drama must carry the greater weight. But this play is not constructed according to these rules. The play shows the dawn of a new age and tries to correct some of the prejudices about the dawn of a new age.

  [Dated 1939. From Werner Hecht (ed.), ibid., p. 13.]

  PORTRAYAL OF THE CHURCH

  For the theatre it is important to understand that this play must lose a great part of its effect if its performance is directed chiefly against the Roman Catholic Church.

  Of the dramatis personae, many wear the church’s garb. Actors who, because of that, try to portray these characters as odious would be doing wrong. But neither, on the other hand, has the church the right to have the human weaknesses of its members glossed over. It has all too often encouraged these weaknesses and suppressed their exposure. But in this play there is also no question of the church being admonished: ‘Hands off science!’ Modern science is a legitimate daughter of the church, a daughter who has emancipated herself and turned against the mother.

  In the present play the church functions, even when it opposes free investigation, simply as authority.

  Since science was a branch of theology, the church is the intellectual authority, the ultimate scientific court of appeal. The play shows the temporary victory of authority, not the victory of the priesthood. It corresponds to the historical truth in that the Galileo of the play never turns directly against the church. There is not a sentence uttered by Galileo in that sense. If there had been, such a thorough commission of investigation as the Inquisition would undoubtedly have brought it to light. And it equally corresponds to the historical truth that the greatest astronomer of the Papal Roman College, Christopher Clavius, confirmed Galileo’s discoveries (scene 6). It is also true that clerics were among his pupils (scenes 8, 9 and 13).

  To take satirical aim at the worldly interests of high dignitaries seems to me cheap (it would be in scene 7). But the casual way in which these high officials treat the physicist is only meant to show that, by reason of their past experiences, they think they can count on ready complaisance from Galileo. They are not mistaken.

  When one looks at our bourgeois politicians, one cannot but extol the spiritual (and scientific) interests of those politicians of old.

  The play, therefore, ignores the falsifications made to the protocol of 1616 by the Inquisition of 1633, falsifications established by recent historical
studies under the direction of the German scholar Emil Wohlwill. Doubtless the judgment and sentence of 1633 were thereby made juridically possible. Anybody who understands the point of view outlined above will appreciate that the author was not concerned with this legal side of the trial.

  There is no doubt that Urban VIII was personally incensed at Galileo and, in the most detestable manner, played a personal part in the proceedings against him. The play passes this over.

  Anyone who understands the standpoint of the author will realise that this attitude implies no reverence for the church of the seventeenth, let alone of the twentieth century.

  Casting the church as the embodiment of authority in this theatrical trial of the persecutors of the champions of free research certainly does not help to get the church acquitted. But it would be highly dangerous, particularly nowadays, to treat a matter like Galileo’s fight for freedom of research as a religious one; for thereby attention would be most unhappily deflected from present-day reactionary authorities of a totally unecclesiastical kind.

  [Dated 1939. From Werner Hecht (ed.), ibid., pp. 14 f.]

  THREE NOTES ON THE CHARACTER OF GALILEO

  1. [The new type of physicist]

  […] It’s important that you shouldn’t idealise Galileo: You know the kind of thing – the stargazer, the pallid intellectualised idealist. I know you wouldn’t if left to yourself, but the pictures you’ll see in the books are already idealised. My Galileo is a powerful physicist with a tummy on him, a face like Socrates, a vociferous, full-blooded man with a sense of humour, the new type of physicist, earthly, a great teacher. Favourite attitude: stomach thrust forward, both hands on the buttocks, head back, using one meaty hand all the time to gesticulate with, but with precision; comfortable trousers for working in, shirtsleeves or (particularly at the end) a long whitish-yellow robe with broad sleeves, tied with a cord round his stomach. You get the idea – preferably an etching of this figure or some kind of steel engraving or wood engraving to maintain its historical flavour: in other words, realistic. Or for that matter one could have pen drawings standing freely on the page. Don’t be scared of a bit of humour. History without humour is a ghastly thing …

  N.B. As far as I know, Galileo’s telescope was about two and a half feet long and the thickness of a man’s arm. You can stand it on an ordinary tripod. The model of the Ptolemaic system (in scene 1) is of wood, some twenty inches in diameter. You could probably get a rough idea from the keeper of the planetarium.

  2. The Sensual Element in Galileo

  Galileo of course is not a Falstaff: He insists on his physical pleasures because of his materialist convictions. He wouldn’t, for instance, drink at his work; the point is that he works in a sensual way. He gets pleasure from handling his instruments with elegance. A great part of his sensuality is of an intellectual kind: for instance, the ‘beauty’ of an experiment, the little theatrical performance with which he gives shape to each of his lessons, the often abrupt way in which he will confront somebody with the truth, not to mention those passages in his speeches (in 1, 7, 13) where he picks good words and tests them like a spice. (This has nothing to do with that bel canto of the actor who may produce his arias as if he enjoyed them, but fails to show the enjoyment of the character he is playing.)

  3. About the Part of Galileo

  What gives this new historical character his quality of strangeness, novelty, strikingness, is the fact that he, Galileo, looks at the world of 1600 around him as if he himself were a stranger. He studies this world and finds it remarkable, outdated, in need of explanation. He studies:

  in scene 1, Ludovico Marsili and Priuli

  in scene 2, the way in which the senators look though the telescope (When am I going to be able to buy one of these things?)

  in scene 3, Sagredo (the prince being a child of nine)

  in scene 4, the court scholars

  in scene 5, the monks

  in scene 7, the young monk

  in scene 8, Federzoni and Ludovico

  in scene [11], (for just one second) Virginia

  in scene [13], his pupils

  in scene [14], Andrea and Virginia.

  [From Werner Hecht (ed.), ibid. pp. 27 f. The first section comes from a letter from Brecht to the painter Hans Tombrock in March 1941, and refers to the first version of the play, which Tombrock illustrated for a proposed publication in the USSR which never materialised. The second and third are undated, but appear to refer to the second, American version.]

  ENTRIES FROM BRECHT’S JOURNAL 1944–5

  10 Sept 45

  the atom bomb, in which atomic energy makes a timely first appearance, strikes ‘normal folk’ as simply awful, to those impatiently awaiting their sons and husbands, the victory in japan seems to have a bitter taste, this superfart is louder than all the victory bells.

  (for a moment LAUGHTON fears quite naively that science might be so utterly discredited by it, that the birth of science – in GALILEO – could lose all sympathy, ‘the wrong kind of publicity, old man.’)

  20 Sept 45

  most of the time we are still working on GALILEO, which laughton’s audience in the military hospital listen to with quite extraordinary interest, the atom bomb has, in fact, made the relationship between society and science into a life-and-death-problem.

  in between times i am making a COPY OF MACBETH for a film with lorre and reyher. the great Shakespearian motif, the fallibility of instinct (the lack of clarity in the inner voice) cannot be renewed, from it i take the little people’s defencelessness against the ruling moral code, which limits the criminal potential of their contribution.

  10 Oct 45

  driven on by his theatrical instinct, LAUGHTON plugs away relentlessly at the political elements in GALILEI too. at his behest i have worked in the new ‘ludovico-line’, and the same goes for the reordering of the last galileo scene (handing over the book first, then the lesson that the book must in no way alter the social condemnation of the author), laughton is fully prepared to throw his character to the wolves, he has a kind of lucifer in mind, in whom self-contempt has turned into a kind of hollow pride – pride in the magnitude of his crime etc. he insists on a full presentation of the degradation that results from the crime which has unleashed all g[alileo]’s negative features, all that is left is the excellent brain, functioning in the void independently of the control of its owner who is happy to let himself sink.

  he brings this conception out most clearly one evening when they had shouted ‘scab’ at him as he went through a picket line in front of the studio, this wounded him deeply – no applause for him here.

  [From the Methuen edition of the Journals, translated by Ralph Manheim and edited by John Willett, 1993. The first of these refers to the prewar version of the play, which had had its premiere seven months previously in Zurich (where Wilder had seen it). ‘I am given to understand’ – presumably by the accounts of that production. The collaboration with Laughton began at the end of 1944. The atom bombs were dropped on Japan on 6 and 9 August; the war ended five days later.]

  DRAFTS FOR A FOREWORD TO Life of Galileo

  The Life of Galileo was written in those last dark months of 1938, when many people felt fascism’s advance to be irresistible and the final collapse of Western civilisation to have arrived. And indeed we were approaching the end of that great age to which the world owes the development of the natural sciences, together with such new arts as music and the theatre. There was a more or less general expectation of a barbaric age ‘outside history’. Only a minority saw the evolution of new forces and sensed the vitality of the new ideas. Even the significance of expressions like ‘old’ and ‘new’ had been obscured. The doctrines of the socialist classics had lost the appeal of novelty, and seemed to belong to a vanished day.

  The bourgeois single out science from the scientist’s consciousness, setting it up as an island of independence so as to be able in practice to interweave it with their politics, their economics, their ide
ology. The research scientist’s object is ‘pure’ research; the product of that research is not so pure. The formula E = mc2 is conceived of as eternal, not tied to anything. Hence other people can do the tying: suddenly the city of Hiroshima became very short-lived. The scientists are claiming the irresponsibility of machines.

  Let us think back to the founding father of experimental science, Francis Bacon, whose phrase that one must obey nature in order to command her was not written in vain. His contemporaries obeyed his nature by bribing him with money, and so thoroughly commanded him when he was Lord Chief Justice that in the end Parliament had to lock him up. Macaulay, the puritan, drew a distinction between Bacon the scientist, whom he admired, and Bacon the politician, of whom he disapproved. Should we be doing the same thing with the German doctors of Nazi times?

  Among other things, war promotes the sciences. What an opportunity! It creates discoverers as well as thieves. A higher responsibility (that of the higher ranks) replaces the lower (that for the lowly). Obedience is the midwife of arbitrariness. Disorder is perfectly in order. Those doctors who combatted yellow fever had to use themselves as guinea pigs; the fascist doctors had material supplied them. Justice played a part too; they had to freeze only ‘criminals’, in other words those who did not share their opinions. For their experiments in using ‘animal warmth’ as a means of thawing they were given prostitutes, women who had transgressed the rule of chastity. They had served sin; now they were being allowed to serve science. It incidentally emerged that hot water restores life better than a woman’s body; in its small way it can do more for the fatherland. (Ethics must never be overlooked in war.) Progress all round. At the beginning of this century politicians of the lower classes were forced to treat the prisons as their universities. Now the prisons became universities for the warders (and doctors). Their experiments would of course have been perfectly in order – ‘from a scientific point of view’, that is – even if the state had been forced to exceed the ethical bounds. None the less the bourgeois world still has a certain right to be outraged. Even if it is only a matter of degrees it is a matter of degrees. When Generals von Mackensen and Maltzer were being tried in Rome for shooting hostages, the English prosecutor, a certain Colonel Halse, admitted that ‘reprisal killings’ in war were not illegal so long as the victims were taken from the scene of the incident in question, some attempt was made to find the persons responsible for it, and there were not too many executions. The German generals however had gone too far. They took ten Italians for every German soldier killed (not twenty, though, as demanded by Hitler), and dispatched the whole lot too quickly, within some twenty-four hours. The Italian police, by an oversight, handed over several Italians too many, and by another oversight the Germans shot them too, out of a misplaced reliance on the Italians. But here again they had ransacked the prisons for hostages, taking criminals or suspects awaiting trial, and filling the gaps with Jews. So a certain humanity asserted itself, and not merely in the errors of arithmetic. All the same, bounds were exceeded in this case, and something had to be done to punish the excess.