Collected Plays, Volume 4 (Bertolt Brecht: Plays, Poetry & Prose) 8

January: in Moscow Meyerhold’s avant-garde theatre is abolished. March: Hitler takes over Austria without resistance. It becomes part of Germany. May 21: premiere of scenes from Brecht’s Fear and Misery of the Third Reich in a Paris hall. Autumn: Munich Agreement, by which Britain, France and Italy force Czechoslovakia to accept Hitler’s demands. In Denmark Brecht writes the first version of Galileo. In Moscow Koltsov disappears into arrest after returning from Spain.

  1939

  March: Hitler takes over Prague and the rest of the Czech territories. Madrid surrenders to Franco; end of the Civil War. Eisler has emigrated to New York. April: the Brechts leave Denmark for Stockholm. Steffin follows. May: Brecht’s Svendborg Poems published. His father dies in Germany. Denmark accepts Hitler’s offer of a Non-Aggression Pact. August 23: Ribbentrop and Molotov agree Nazi-Soviet Pact. September 1: Hitler attacks Poland and unleashes Second World War. Stalin occupies Eastern Poland, completing its defeat in less than three weeks. All quiet in the West. Autumn: Brecht writes Mother Courage and the radio play Lucullus in little over a month. November: Stalin attacks Finland.

  1940

  Spring: Hitler invades Norway and Denmark. In May his armies enter France through the Low Countries, taking Paris in mid-June. The Brechts hurriedly leave for Finland, taking Steffin with them. They aim to travel on to the US, where Brecht has been offered a teaching job in New York at the New School. July: the Finnish writer Hella Wuolijoki invites them to her country estate, which becomes the setting for Puntila, the comedy she and Brecht write there.

  1941

  April: premiere of Mother Courage in Zurich. May: he gets US visas for the family and a tourist visa for Steffin. On 15th they leave with Berlau for Moscow to take the Trans-Siberian railway. In Vladivostok they catch a Swedish ship for Los Angeles, leaving just nine days before Hitler, in alliance with Finland, invades Russia. June: Steffin dies of tuberculosis in a Moscow sanatorium, where they have had to leave her. July: once in Los Angeles, the Brechts decide to stay there in the hope of film work. December: Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor brings the US into the war. The Brechts become ‘enemy aliens’.

  1942

  Spring: Eisler arrives from New York. He and Brecht work on Fritz Lang’s film Hangmen Also Die. Brecht and Feucht-wanger write The Visions of Simone Machard; sell film rights to MGM. Ruth Berlau takes a job in New York. August: the Brechts rent a pleasant house and garden in Santa Monica. Autumn: Germans defeated at Stalingrad and El Alamein. Turning point of World War 2.

  1943

  Spring: Brecht goes to New York for three months – first visit since 1935 – where he stays with Berlau till May and plans a wartime Schweik play with Kurt Weill. In Zurich the Schauspielhaus gives world premieres of The Good Person of Szechwan and Galileo. November: his first son Frank is killed on the Russian front.

  1944

  British and Americans land in Normandy (June); Germans driven out of France by end of the year. Heavy bombing of Berlin, Hamburg and other German cities. Brecht works on The Caucasian Chalk Circle, and with H. R. Hays on The Duchess of Malfi. His son by Ruth Berlau, born prematurely in Los Angeles, lives only a few days. Start of collaboration with Charles Laughton on English version of Galileo.

  1945

  Spring: Russians enter Vienna and Berlin. German surrender; suicide of Hitler; Allied military occupation of Germany and Austria, each divided into four Zones. Roosevelt dies; succeeded by Truman; Churchill loses elections to Attlee. June: Private Life of the Master Race (wartime adaptation of Fear and Misery scenes) staged in New York. August: US drops atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan surrenders. Brecht and Laughton start discussing production of Galileo.

  1946

  Ruth Berlau taken to hospital after a violent breakdown in New York. Work with Auden on Duchess of Malfi, which is finally staged there in mid-October – not well received. The Brechts have decided to return to Germany. Summer: A. A. Zhdanov re-affirms Stalinist art policies: Formalism bad, Socialist Realism good. Eisler’s brother Gerhart summoned to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee. November: the Republicans win a majority in the House. Cold War impending.

  1947

  FBI file on Brecht reopened in May. Rehearsals begin for Los Angeles production of Galileo, with Laughton in the title part and music by Eisler; opens July 31. Brecht’s HUAC hearing October 30; a day later he leaves the US for Zurich.

  1948

  In Zurich renewed collaboration with Caspar Neher. Production of Antigone in Chur, with Weigel. Berlau arrives from US. Summer: Puntila world premiere at Zurich Schauspielhaus. Brecht completes his chief theoretical work, the Short Organum. Travel plans hampered because he is not allowed to enter US Zone (which includes Augsburg and Munich). Russians block all land access to Berlin. October: the Brechts to Berlin via Prague, to establish contacts and prepare production of Mother Courage.

  1949

  January: success of Mother Courage leads to establishment of the Berliner Ensemble. Collapse of Berlin blockade in May followed by establishment of West and East German states. Eisler, Dessau and Elisabeth Hauptmann arrive from US and join the Ensemble.

  1950

  Brecht gets Austrian nationality in connection with plan to involve him in Salzburg Festival. Long-drawn-out scheme for Mother Courage film. Spring: he and Neher direct Lenz’s The Tutor with the Ensemble. Autumn: he directs Mother Courage in Munich; at the end of the year The Mother with Weigel, Ernst Busch and the Ensemble.

  1951

  Selection of A Hundred Poems is published in East Berlin. Brecht beats off Stalinist campaign to stop production of Dessau’s opera version of Lucullus.

  1952

  Summer: at Buckow, east of Berlin, Brecht starts planning a production of Coriolanus and discusses Eisler’s project for a Faust opera.

  1953

  Spring: Stalin dies, aged 73. A ‘Stanislavsky conference’ in the East German Academy, to promote Socialist Realism in the theatre, is followed by meetings to discredit Eisler’s libretto for the Faust opera. June: quickly suppressed rising against the East German government in Berlin and elsewhere. Brecht at Buckow notes that ‘the whole of existence has been alienated’ for him by this. Khrushchev becomes Stalin’s successor.

  1954

  January: Brecht becomes an adviser to the new East German Ministry of Culture. March: the Ensemble at last gets its own theatre on the Schiffbauerdamm. July: its production of Mother Courage staged in Paris. December: Brecht awarded a Stalin Peace Prize by the USSR.

  1955

  August: shooting at last begins on Mother Courage film, but is broken off after ten days and the project abandoned. Brecht in poor health.

  1956

  Khrushchev denounces Stalin’s dictatorial methods and abuses of power to the Twentieth Party Congress in Moscow. A copy of his speech reaches Brecht. May: Brecht in the Charité hospital to shake off influenza. August 14: he dies in the Charité of a heart infarct.

  1957

  The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, The Visions of Simone Machard and Schweyk in the Second World War produced for the first time in Stuttgart, Frankfurt and Warsaw respectively.

  The Antigone of Sophocles

  A version for the stage after Hölderlin’s translation

  Collaborator: Caspar Neher

  Translator: David Constantine

  Characters:

  TWO SISTERS

  SS MAN

  ANTIGONE

  ISMENE

  CREON

  TIRESIAS

  HAEMON

  GUARDS

  THE ELDERS OF THEBES

  MESSENGER

  MAIDS

  PRELUDE

  Berlin. April 1945.

  Daybreak.

  Two sisters come back to their home from the air-raid shelter.

  FIRST SISTER:

  And when we came up from the air-raid shelter

  And the house was whole and in a brighter

  Light than dawn from the fire opposite

 
It was my sister who first noticed it.

  SECOND SISTER:

  Sister, why is our door open wide?

  FIRST SISTER:

  The draught of the fire has hit it from outside.

  SECOND SISTER:

  Sister, what made the tracks there in the dust?

  FIRST SISTER:

  Nothing but someone who went up there fast.

  SECOND SISTER:

  Sister, the sack in the corner there, what’s that?

  FIRST SISTER:

  Better that something’s there than something’s not.

  SECOND SISTER:

  A joint of bacon, sister, and a loaf of bread.

  FIRST SISTER:

  That’s not a thing to make me feel afraid.

  SECOND SISTER:

  Sister, who’s been here?

  FIRST SISTER:

  How should I know that?

  Someone who’s treated us to something good to eat.

  SECOND SISTER:

  But I know! We of little faith! Oh luck

  Is on us, sister. Our brother is back.

  FIRST SISTER:

  Then we embraced each other and were cheerful

  For our brother was in the war, and he was well.

  And we cut and ate of the bacon and the bread

  That he had brought us to feed us in our need.

  SECOND SISTER:

  Take more for yourself. The factory’s killing you.

  FIRST SISTER:

  No you.

  SECOND SISTER:

  It’s easier on me. Cut deeper.

  FIRST SISTER:

  No.

  SECOND SISTER:

  How could he come?

  FIRST SISTER:

  With his unit.

  SECOND SISTER:

  Now

  Where is he, do you think?

  FIRST SISTER:

  Where they are fighting.

  SECOND SISTER:

  Oh.

  FIRST SISTER:

  But there was no noise of fighting to be heard.

  SECOND SISTER:

  I shouldn’t have asked.

  FIRST SISTER:

  I didn’t want you scared.

  And as we sat there saying nothing a sound came

  In through the door that froze the bloodstream.

  A screaming from outside.

  SECOND SISTER:

  Sister, there’s someone screaming. Let’s see who.

  FIRST SISTER:

  Sit still. You go and see, you get seen too.

  So we did not go outside the door

  To see what things were happening out there.

  But we ate no more either and we did not

  Look at each other again but we stood up and got

  Ready to go to work as we did daily

  And my sister took the plates and I bethought me

  And took our brother’s sack to the cupboard

  Where his old things are stored.

  And I felt, so it seemed, my heartbeat stop:

  In there his army coat was hanging up.

  Sister, he isn’t in the fight

  He’s run for it, he’s cleared out

  His war’s over, he has quit.

  SECOND SISTER:

  Those still there, he’s left them to it.

  FIRST SISTER:

  They had death lined up for him.

  SECOND SISTER:

  But he disappointed them.

  FIRST SISTER:

  There was still an inch or two …

  SECOND SISTER:

  That was where he crawled through.

  FIRST SISTER:

  Some still in, he’s left them to it.

  SECOND SISTER:

  His war’s over, he has quit.

  FIRST SISTER:

  And we laughed and we were cheerful:

  Our brother was out of the war and he was well.

  And as we stood there such a sound came

  It felt like ice in the bloodstream.

  A screaming from outside.

  SECOND SISTER:

  Sister, who is it screaming outside our door?

  FIRST SISTER:

  Again they are tormenting folk for pleasure.

  SECOND SISTER:

  Sister, should we not go and find out who?

  FIRST SISTER:

  Stay in. You go and find out, you get found out too.

  So we waited a while and did not go and see

  What the things that were happening outside might be.

  Then we had to leave for work and I was the one who saw

  What it was outside our door.

  Sister, sister don’t go out.

  Our brother is home but he is not

  Safe and sound but hanging there

  From a meat hook. But my sister

  Went out of the door

  And screamed herself at what she saw.

  SECOND SISTER:

  They have hanged him, sister. That was

  Why he cried out loud for us.

  Give me the knife, give it here

  And I’ll cut him down so he won’t hang there

  And I will carry his body in

  And rub him back to life again.

  FIRST SISTER:

  Sister, leave the knife.

  You’ll not bring him back to life.

  If they see us standing by him

  We’ll get what he got from them.

  SECOND SISTER:

  Let me go. I didn’t while

  They were hanging him. Now I will.

  FIRST SISTER:

  And as she made for the door

  An SS man stood there.

  Enter an SS man.

  SS MAN:

  We know who he is. Say who you are.

  He came out of here.

  Seems to me very probable

  You know that traitor to his people.

  FIRST SISTER:

  Sir, we are not the ones to question.

  We do not know the man.

  SS MAN:

  So what’s she doing with the knife, her there?

  FIRST SISTER:

  Then I looked at my sister.

  Should she on pain of death go now

  And free our brother who

  May be dead or no?

  Outside Creon’s palace. Daybreak.

  ANTIGONE collecting dust in an iron pot:

  Sister, Ismene, twin shoot

  From the stem of Oedipus, do you know any thing

  Error, sad travail, any disgraceful thing

  Not visited by the Father of the Earth

  On us who have lived to here?

  In a long war, one man among many

  Eteocles fell, our brother. In the tyrant’s train

  He fell young. And younger than him Polynices

  Sees his brother pulped under horses’ hooves. Weeping

  He rides from an unfinished battle, for this to one

  And that to another the battle spook deals when he comes

  at him hard

  With his just deserts and smashes his hands. Headlong

  Already the fugitive

  Had crossed the streams of Dirce and breathing again

  He sees the seven gates of Thebes still standing, then Creon

  There at the rear lashing them into the fight

  Seizes him splashed with the blood of his brother and hacks

  him to pieces.

  Have they told you or have they not told you

  What more shall be heaped on Oedipus’

  Dwindling breed?

  ISMENE:

  I did not show myself in the marketplace, Antigone.

  No further word has come to me of loved ones

  No kind word and no sad one either.

  I am not happier and not more troubled.

  ANTIGONE:

  Hear it from me then. And whether your heart’s

  Beat stops or beats

  Deeper in misery, show me that.

  ISMENE:

  You w
ith the dust in your collecting hand, you seem

  To dye your words with red.

  ANTIGONE:

  This then: our two brothers

  Dragged both into Creon’s war for the grey metal

  Against remote Argos and slaughtered both

  Shall not be covered both of them with earth.

  The one who did not fear the fight, Eteocles

  He, it is said, shall be wreathed and buried as is the custom.

  Of the other’s though, who has died wretchedly,

  Of Polynices’ corpse they say they have

  Broadcast it in the city he shall not

  Be hidden in any grave and not lamented.

  He shall be left unwept without a grave

  Sweet dish for the birds. But whosoever

  Does anything about this will be stoned.

  So tell me then what you will do about it.

  ISMENE:

  Sister, are you testing me?

  ANTIGONE:

  Would I have your help?

  ISMENE:

  In what dangerous endeavour?

  ANTIGONE:

  To cover him.

  ISMENE:

  Whom the city has abjured?

  ANTIGONE:

  Whom they have failed.

  ISMENE:

  The man in rebellion.

  ANTIGONE:

  Yes. My brother and also yours.

  ISMENE:

  Sister, you will be caught in lawlessness.

  ANTIGONE:

  But not

  In faithlessness.

  ISMENE:

  Unlucky girl, are you impelled

  To gather us all below now

  Of Oedipus’ stock?

  Let be what’s past.

  ANTIGONE:

  You are younger, you have seen

  Less horror. What is past, let be

  Does not stay past.

  ISMENE:

  Think of this too: we are women

  And must not make a quarrel against men

  Not being strong enough and thus in thrall

  In this and much else harsher too. Therefore

  I beg them down below whom only earth oppresses

  They will forgive me. Under this duress

  I will follow the ruler. For doing

  Things in vain is unwise.

  ANTIGONE:

  I shall not go on asking. You

  Follow whoever gives the orders and do

  Whatever he orders. But I

  Will follow the custom and bury my brother.