Bertolt Brecht: Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder 1

by Bertolt Brecht

  For the present edition of Baal the original version of the first and last scenes has been restored. Otherwise I have left the play as it was, not having the strength to alter it. I admit (and advise you): this play is lacking in wisdom.

  [‘Bei Durchsicht meiner ersten Stücke. Foreword to Stücke I, all editions but the first. GW Schriften zum Theater, pp. 947-8. For a more accurate view of the revisions to the first and last scenes, see p. 372 below.]

  Editorial Note on the Text

  For the following note and for the writings by Brecht quoted in it the editors have drawn gratefully and extensively on the two volumes of ‘materials’ edited by Dieter Schmidt, Baal. Drei Fassungen and Baal. Der böse Baal der asoziale. Texten, Varianten und Materialien, published by Suhrkamp-Verlag in 1966 and 1968 respectively (‘edition suhrkamp’ numbers 170 and 248).

  Brecht’s first play was not written in four days and for a bet, as has been alleged, but developed from a paper which he read in the spring of 1918 to Professor Artur Kutscher’s theatre seminar at Munich University. His subject was Hanns Johst, the Expressionist novelist and playwright who later wrote the Nazi play Schlageter and at the end of 1933 became president of the (purged) Prussian Academy. Brecht undertook to write a ‘counter-play’ to Johst’s Der Einsame (The Lonely One), an emotionalized account of the life of the nineteenth-century dramatist Christoph Dietrich Grabbe, which the Munich Kammerspiele were presenting. A first draft was complete by mid-May, and a month later he could write to his lifelong friend Caspar Neher:

  My play:

  Baal eats! Baal dances!! Baal is transfigured!!!

  What’s Baal up to?

  24 scenes

  is ready and typed – a substantial tome. I hope to get somewhere with it.

  He revised the play in the spring of 1919, after his military service and the writing of the earliest draft of Drums in the Night. That was the version first submitted to publishers and theatre managements, but Brecht appears to have decided that it was too long – there were 29 scenes – and too wild, and before its publication he overhauled it yet a third time, jettisoning about one-third of the 1919 text. Publication should have taken place some time in the second half of 1920, but the original publishers were by then already in trouble with the censorship over other books, and only a few copies for Brecht’s own use were ever printed. The rights were transferred to another firm (Kiepenheuer of Potsdam) who brought the book out two years later at the time of the première of Drums in the Night, virtually unchanged apart from the addition of the first woodcutters’ scene.

  This first published version was the play as we now have it, apart from the first and last scenes. It was republished in 1953 as the first volume of Brecht’s collected Stücke; then in 1955 scene I was given its present form (including the two poems quoted from the Munich Expressionist periodical Revolution, which are in fact Georg Heym’s ‘Der Baum’ and ‘Vorbereitung’ by the then East German Minister of Culture, Johannes R. Becher), while Brecht restored the final scene which he deleted from the proofs in 1920. What Brecht says in his own note of 1954 is not precisely right, since neither of these scenes is in its original form. But clearly he was content to leave it as an early work.

  In the later 1920s he felt otherwise. The version which he himself staged at the Deutsches Theater in February 1926 (a single afternoon performance by the ‘Junge Bühne’ – and Baal’s only performance in Berlin to this day) was a largely new, much shorter play called Life Story of the Man Baal. As will be seen below, it retained only eleven of the published scenes, which were altered so as to set Baal in the emergent technological society of the first decade of the century. They were stripped of much of their original lyricism and given an ‘epic’ framework by means of titles to each scene. Brecht wanted this version to appear as an appendix to the Stücke edition of the 1950s, but it remained unpublished till 1966. Its only other known performances were in Vienna in 1926 (with a prologue by Hofmannsthal) and in Kassel the year after.

  Around 1930 – the dates and also the intended arrangement of the fragmentary typescript are uncertain – he planned a number of linked Lehrstücke (or didactic playlets) about the character he now called Bad Baal the Antisocial Man. Here he thought of making Baal appear in various guises –

  guest/whore/judge/dealer (bulls)/engineer (only concerned with experiment)/suppliant – in need of help (exploiting other people’s wish to be exploited)/nature-lover/demagogue/worker (strikebreaker)/mother/historian/soldier/lover (baker’s apprentice scene from ‘breadshop’)/as parson/as civil servant/the 2 coats

  – but apart from a reception where Baal is guest and the Baal Hymn is sung this plan has very little to do with the play. The writing is deadpan, with strange word order and virtually no punctuation apart from full stops. Brecht’s aphoristic alter ego Herr Keuner appears, and the only Baal character apart from Baal himself is Lupu. Some idea of the style can be got from the beginning of ‘Bad Baal the Antisocial Man and the Two Coats’, which is one of the few complete episodes:

  BAAL: all night i have been going in increasing cold through the forests towards where they get darker. the evening was icy. the night was icier and a crowd of stars crept into a whiteish fog towards morning. today the bushes occupy the least space of the entire year. whatever is soft freezes. whatever is hard breaks.

  THE LEFT-HAND CHORUS the best thing is

  the cold comes before the warmth

  everything makes itself as small

  as it can. everything is

  so sparingly silent only

  thinking becomes

  impracticable and then

  comes the warmth

  THE POOR MAN it is cold. i have no coat. i’m freezing. perhaps that grand gentleman can tell me what i can do against the cold. good day sir …

  In 1938 Brecht again looked at the play with a view to the Malik-Verlag collected edition of his work (which was never completed). ‘A pity,’ he then noted: ‘it was always a torso, and on top of that it underwent a number of operations … Its meaning almost disappeared. Baal the provocateur, the admirer of things as they are, who believes in living life to the full, other people’s lives as well as his own. His “do what amuses you” could be very rewarding if properly handled. Wonder if I could find the time’. That is, aside from the Lehrstücke plan, which was still on the agenda. A few months later he seems to have written that off, to judge from a diary note of 4 March 1939:

  Today I finally realized why I never managed to turn out those little Lehrstücke about the adventures of ‘Bad Baal the Antisocial Man’. Antisocial people aren’t important. The really antisocial people are the owners of the means of production and other sources of life, and they are only antisocial as such. There are also their helpers and their helpers’ helpers, of course, but again only as such. It is the gospel of humanity’s enemies that there are such things as antisocial instincts, antisocial personalities and so on.

  He also came to feel that he had made a mistake in seeing socialism as a matter of social order rather than of productivity, which may have been another reason underlying his more sympathetic judgement of Baal at the end of his life.

  THE VERSIONS OF 1918, 1919 AND 1920-2 (first published version)

  Numbers in square brackets refer to the scene order of the final text. Other numbers to that of the particular script under discussion

  Though Baal at first appears to have little structure, so that Brecht could change scenes around, or add or delete them, without greatly affecting the play’s character, there are nine basic scenes which recur in the same order in every version, together with four others* which are in all except the 1926 text. They are: [1] (the opening party scene), [2] (Baal and Johannes), [3] (the first tavern scene), [4 i] (Baal and Johanna, after the seduction), [4 iii] (first scene with Sophie), [6]* (second ditto), [7] (cabaret scene), [8]* (Baal and Ekart), [15] (Baal reading a poem to Ekart, who speaks of his girl), [17]* (Baal reads ‘Death in the Forest’). [18] (last tavern scene, with the
murder of Ekart), [20]* (the two gendarmes), and [21] (the death scene in the forest hut). Accordingly, we shall start by describing the more significant changes in these scenes, from one version to another up to 1922.

  [1] In the first two versions it is a grand party: full evening dress. The host and other guests are not named; the host’s wife is not mentioned. Unspecified poems by Stramm and Novotny (whoever he was) are read; Baal, who is a clerk in the host’s office, calls them drivel. The servants try to throw him out, but he fights them off, saying, ‘I’ll show you who’s master.’

  The 1922 version is virtually the same as the final text, less the character of Pschierer and all between the first remark of the Young Man and the last remark of the Young Woman. The scene ends, after Piller’s last jibe, with Johannes asking Baal if he may visit him and Emilie saying, ‘I’m sorry for him.’

  [2] Baal’s speeches are longer than in the final version, but the scene is not essentially changed.

  [3] In 1918 it is a bourgeois bar. Baal reads the ‘Ballad of Evelyn Roe’ (now in Brecht’s collected poems), is applauded and introduces Johannes and ‘Mr Ekart, a brilliant composer who is passing through’. He insults the bourgeois, who fail to pay for his drinks; he refuses to join Ekart on his wanderings because Marie the waitress, who is in love with him, cannot come too. Johannes leads him away.

  In 1919 this becomes the Inn with an audience of drivers to whom he sings ‘Orge’s song’. Johannes brings Johanna; Emmi arrives, identified by Baal as ‘wife of my office boss’ and described as well-dressed, nervous, rather domineering. It is virtually the final version.

  [4 i] Essentially the final version, though in 1918 Johanna is called Anna. Instead of asking Baal if he still loves her, she asks, ‘Do you love me?’ in a small voice, breathlessly.

  [4 iii] Sophie Dechant in 1918 appears dressed in white. She is an actress, on her way to play (presumably Hebbel’s) Judith. Much of the final version is there – Baal calling her a white cloud, her reference to Baal’s ugliness, her virginity, her declaration that she loves him – till Baal’s mother comes in, accusing him of having whores in his room. He says Sophie is to be his wife, and asks her if she will. A piano is playing all the time, off.

  In 1919 the scene has been largely rewritten. Sophie ceases to be an actress and takes her eventual form. Baal still says she is to be his wife, but no longer asks her.

  By 1922 the mother is cut out of the play. Baal’s long opening speech, which originally introduced another scene with his mother (see below) is added to this one. Johannes makes his brief appearance. Sophie’s name is changed to Barger, and there is no mention of her becoming Baal’s wife. Instead of the piano there is intermittently the beggar’s hurdy-gurdy playing Tristan.

  [6] In 1918 it is ‘Night’, with no place given. Sophie says they are penniless, and wants to go back to the stage. Baal says he will go on the stage: in a cabaret. He sings the verse which later introduces 4 (ii).

  In 1919 the scene is rewritten. It is a bedroom in the summer, and several phrases of the dialogue survive into the final version. It is now Baal who says, ‘Do you realize we’ve got no money?’ The cabaret is not mentioned.

  In 1922 there is no song, and the scene is set out of doors in May, as we have it.

  [7] In 1918 there is an unnamed compère instead of Mjurk. There is no Lupu and no mention of the agreement about schnaps. The dialogue is differently phrased, but the only major differences from the ultimate version are: (1) the irruption of a group of Young Artists, who tell Baal: ‘Your latest poem in the Phoebus is good, but too affectedly simple – Princess Ebing’s taking an interest in you. She’s hot stuff. Lucky fellow!’; (2) the song which Baal sings, dressed in tails and a child’s sailor hat, which goes roughly:

  If a woman’s hips are ample

  Then I want her in the hay

  Skirt and stockings all a-rumple

  (cheerfully) – for that’s my way.

  If the woman bites in pleasure

  Then I wipe it clean with hay

  My mouth and her lap together

  (thoroughly) – for that’s my way.

  If the woman goes on loving

  When I feel too tired to play

  I just smile and go off waving

  (amiably) – for that’s my way.

  The 1919 version is textually the same, except for the replacement of ‘Compère’ by ‘Nigger John’ throughout. For Nigger John, see below.

  In 1922 Mjurk, Lupu, and the final song make their appearance. There is a typescript of the song dated 21 January 1920.

  [8] Basically the same in all versions.

  [15] 1918 and 1919 (slightly lengthened) versions show Ekart talking about his pale-faced girl as an experience of the past; Baal goes to sleep while he is talking about her. The poem which Baal recites to him is not the ‘Drowned Girl’ (as in the 1922 text) but ‘The Song of the Cloud in the Night’ (in the collected poems).

  [17] In 1918 the scene is set outside a country tavern. The text is almost word for word the same as in the final version, apart from some slight variations in the poem ‘Death in the Forest’, until what is now the end of the scene. Thereupon Baal says ‘I’ll go and get one’ (i.e., a woman), and breaks into the dance which has started inside the tavern. There is almost a fight with the man whose partner Baal pulls away from him, then Baal suddenly crumples and leaves.

  In 1919 the setting becomes ‘Maple Trees in the Wind’, and the dance episode is detached to make a separate short scene, which Brecht dropped in the third version.

  [18] The 1918 and 1919 versions are almost identical apart from the absence of Johannes from the former and certain differences in the arrangement of the verses. Baal here arrives, on the top of his form, having sold a book of his poems to a publisher. ‘I want meat! What’s your name, kids, and what’s your price? I’m as choosy as a vicar. But watch what I can do. I’ll pay for everything!’ He orders champagne (in the final version there is an allusion to this left after the third verse of the Ballad) and, with Luise on his knee (who does not yet look like Sophie) sings an obscene, blasphemous, and largely untranslatable song about the Virgin. Watzmann, whose character was even then unexplained, sings in lieu of ‘The trees come in avalanches’:

  When the hatred and venom he’s swallowed

  Are more than his gullet can take

  He may well draw a knife from his pocket

  And languidly sever his neck.

  At the end of the scene, before Baal attacks Ekart, Ekart tries to get Luise off his lap, saying, ‘Oh, rubbish! Gentlemen! Let’s drink to fair shares between brothers!’

  There is a draft of January 1920 showing the waitress with Sophie’s features and Baal a wreck, as in the 1922 text, which also substitutes the new dialogue between Baal and Ekart at the end.

  [20] The dialogue between the two policemen is little changed. In 1918 and 1919 three other professions are attributed to Baal: gardener, city clerk, and journalist. Those of roundabout proprietor, woodcutter, and millionairess’s lover only appear in the 1922 version.

  [22] This scene has remained essentially unchanged from the 1918 version, apart from Baal’s last speech, which both there and in 1919 runs:

  Dear God. Gone. Groans. It’s not so simple. My God, it’s not so simple. If only I. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Not much help. Dear God. Dear God. Feverishly: Mother! Send Ekart away! Oh, Mary! The sky’s so damned near. Almost touch it. My heart’s thumping. One. Two. Three. Four. Whimpers, then alt of a sudden, loudly: I can’t. I won’t. It’s stifling here. Quite distinctly: It must be clear outside. I want to. Raising himself with difficulty. Baal, I want to go out. Sharply: I’m not a rat. He tumbles off the bed, and falls. Hell. Dear God! As far as the door! He crawls to the threshold. Stars … hm. He crawls out.

  In the 1922 version the five invocations of God and one of Mary are replaced by the three invocations of ‘Dear Baal’.

  Other scenes:—

  Seven further scenes were cut or tel
escoped with others when Brecht revised the play in 1919. Two of these represent a loss to the narrative: 9, which shows Baal arrested on Corpus Christi day because he is drunkenly outraged by the cutting of branches for the procession, and scene 11, where a theatre review which he has written is rejected by the manager of his newspaper, and the editor then sacks him. The main points of the other five scenes (which elaborate the affairs with Emmy and Johanna, show him being visited in prison by his mother, and later forcing an unnamed girl to sell herself for him) are incorporated in or anticipated by other changes.

  There are three new long scenes in the 1919 revision, and five others of which two appear in this version only. The long ones are [10] the scene over the body of the dead woodcutter Teddy, [13] the Bolleboll-Gougou scene, and [9] Baal’s pretence of buying bulls. The two scenes subsequently cut are scene 8, immediately following the first Sophie scene, where the barman Nigger John offers Baal (in a top hat) a job in his cabaret; and scene 19, preceding the ‘Death in the Forest’ scene, where Baal, Ekart and a new girl called Anna try to get a night’s lodging. A man opens his window and says that Anna can come in his room and the others sleep in the hay.

  ANNA: I’m so frightened. I don’t want to be alone.

  BAAL: You won’t be alone.

  The man says he can offer them soup with milk and fresh bread. ‘The young lady gets the cream, hahaha.’

  ANNA: I must do whatever you want, but I’m sure it’s not right.

  BAAL: Nonsense. Warmth is right and soup is right. Get on in! You’ve been a burden so far; now you can make yourself useful.

  The other new scenes are [12], where Baal and Ekart abandon the pregnant Sophie; an early version of [11], with Baal and Ekart in a hut in the winter; and the very short [14], in the undergrowth by the river, where Baal says, ‘I don’t care for women any longer …’