Bertolt Brecht: Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder 1

by Bertolt Brecht

  In the 1922 text the position of all these new scenes is changed relatively to the basic framework. Four more are added, of which [4 ii], where the two sisters visit Baal’s room, is the most substantial. [5] with the drunk tramp restores the point of one of the scenes cut in 1919. [16] is the scene with Ekart’s pale red-haired girl, now very much part of the present. [19] is Baal’s brief passage across the stage ‘10° East of Greenwich’. Nine scenes are cut, including the two 1919 additions mentioned above and the detached (quarrel at the dance) episode of [17]. The others are two scenes with Baal’s mother, who is thus eliminated from the play (one, originally scene 4, showing her reprimanding her son for his drunkenness, the other preceding the last tavern scene and showing her on her deathbed); a scene following the cabaret episode, with Baal arrested by the police in a café; and the next scene after that, with Baal in prison being reasoned with by a clergyman:

  CLERGYMAN: You’re sinking deeper all the time.

  BAAL: Thanks to my immense weight. But I enjoy it. I’m going down. Aren’t I? But I’m doing all right, aren’t I? Am I going off course? Am I a coward? Am I trying to stave off the consequences? Am I scared of you? Death and I are friends. Hardship’s my whore. I’m humbler than you.

  CLERGYMAN: You’re too light to go under. You cheerful bankrupt.

  BAAL: Sometimes I’m like a diver whose cables and breathing tubes have been cut, going for a walk all alone in the depths.

  CLERGYMAN: Nothing is so terrible as loneliness. Nobody is alone with us. We are all brothers.

  BAAL: Being alone has so far been my strength. I don’t want a second man in my skin …

  Finally, two short scenes are deleted near the end of the play: one with a moralizing Baal interrupting lovers on a park bench, the other between [20] and [21], where Baal, on the run at night, tries vainly to get a peasant girl to walk with him.

  ‘LIFE STORY OF THE MAN BAAL’ (1926)

  This later typescript is published in the second of Dieter Schmidt’s volumes, and is subtitled ‘Dramatic Biography by Bertolt Brecht. (Stage adaptation of “Baal”.)’ It consists of the nine basic scenes in shortened and largely rewritten form, plus [12] and [19], and a new short scene only found in this version (scene 9 below). All except scene I are given titles. Some of the names are spelt differently. The play begins with seven verses of the Hymn (verses 1, 2, 4, and the last four) sung by Baal, who then leaves the stage.

  Scene 1. Room with dining table.

  Enter Mäch, Emilie Mäch, Johannes Schmidt, Dr Piller, Baal.

  MÄCH while Baal stands eating at the buffet: I think I may claim to have been the first to foresee your path to those heights of fame for which born geniuses are predestined. Genius has always suffered persecution; as it listens in its unworldly way to higher voices it is brought down to the cold realities of the world. I would like to think that my salon had been the first to welcome you, before the distinction of the Kleist Prize snatches you away from us. Will you have a glass of wine? …

  Johannes says that Baal sings his poems to the taxi-drivers.

  MÄCH: Fantastic.

  EMILIE:

  With cynical penury of airy poems

  Of an orange-flavoured bitterness

  Chilled on ice, black Malayan

  Hair over the eyes! O opium smoke! …

  Is that really by you?

  JOHANNES: That’s Herr Baal’s. They generally give him three glasses of kirsch for each song. And one glass for a look at the special instrument he invented, which he says posterity will know as Baal’s original tin-stringed banjo.

  MÄCH: Fantastic.

  JOHANNES: It’s in a café at a goods station.

  EMILIE: I suppose you’ve read a great deal?

  MÄCH: Just let him eat in peace for the moment. Let him recover. Art’s hard work too, you know. Help yourself to brandy, Hennessy, it’s all there.

  EMILIE: You live in a garage?

  BAAL: 64a Holzstrasse.

  MÄCH: Fantastic. Weren’t you a mechanic?

  EMILIE:

  In wind-crazed huts of light paper

  O you bitterness and gaiety of the world

  When the moon, that soft white animal

  Falls out of colder skies.

  Apart from one remark of Baal’s, who announces: ‘In the year 1904 Joseph Mäch gives Baal a light for his cigar,’ the last two-thirds of the scene are close to our version from after the last remark of the Young Lady (on p. 8) to the end. Then the Servant is cut (as in 1922) and, after Johannes has asked if he may visit Baal, Emilie says: ‘I don’t know. I like him. He needs looking after.’ Then a new closing speech from Baal:

  It’s raining. At the time of the Flood they all went into the ark. All the animals, by agreement. The only time the creatures of this world have ever agreed about anything. They really all did come. But the ichthyosaurus didn’t. Everybody said he should get on board, but he was very busy just then. Noah himself warned him the Flood was coming. But he quietly said, ‘I don’t believe it’. He was universally unpopular when he drowned. Ah yes, they all said, the ichthyosaurus won’t be coming. He was the oldest beast of them all, well qualified by his great experience to say whether such a thing as a Flood was or was not feasible. It’s very possible that if a similar situation ever arises I shan’t get on board either.

  Baal’s Unhesitating Abuse of Divine Gifts.

  Scene 2. Garage.

  The tone is drier, but essentially the scene is a condensed version of the Baal-Johannes scene as we have it, except that it ends with Baal saying not ‘you should avoid it’ but ‘I think you should bring her to me’.

  Baal Abuses his Power over a Woman.

  Scene 3. ‘Pub.’

  Baal, Eckart, a tart. Taxi-drivers at the bar.

  ECKART: I’m on the move. I’ve had just about enough of this town. Last night I slept with this lady and realized that I’m too grown up for that sort of thing. My advice is to hang all ovaries on the hook once and for all. I’m for freedom of movement till one’s forty-five. Plato says the same if I’m not mistaken.

  BAAL: Where are you going?

  ECKART: The South of France, I think. Apart from anything else they seem to have a different type of town there. The plan is different, to start with, because there’s enough light and that guarantees order. Are you coming?

  BAAL: Got any money?

  ECKART: Up to a point.

  BAAL: Enough for a train?

  ECKART: Enough for feet.

  BAAL: When are you off?

  ECKART: Today. I’m leaving this pub at eleven-thirty.

  BAAL: How come?

  ECKART: I’ve got a photo of Marseilles. Three dingy ellipses. Are you coming?

  BAAL: Possibly. I don’t know yet.

  A version of the scene as we have it then begins, with Baal’s account of Mäch’s party and then Johannes’s entrance. Johanna, however, is now fifteen: two years younger. It is not specified what ballad Baal sings. Eckart having already made his appeal does not make it again, but before singing Baal says:

  Today, my friends, I was made an offer which no doubt has erotic motives. Kirsch, Luise. The man in question is about to move off. He’s just smoking his last cigar and drinking his last kirsch. I’m probably going to say ‘not yet’. Drink up, Emilie. Obviously I’m in the market for counter-offers. I imagine that poses a problem for you, Emilie.

  EMILIE: I don’t know what’s the matter with you today …

  After the driver Horgauer has kissed Emilie the ending is wholly changed. The taxi-drivers applaud and Johanna tells Baal he should be ashamed of himself, as in our version. Then Emilie tells Johanna:

  Don’t pay any attention to me. I’ve been criticized for not having enough temperament for this kind of place. But perhaps I’ve shown that my dirtiness has been underestimated.

  ECKART: Bill!

  BAAL: Emmi, you haven’t paid. You can relax. It’s over now. Forget it.

  ECKART: I’m going.

  BAAL
: Where?

  ECKART: South of France. Are you coming too?

  BAAL: Can’t you put it off?

  ECKART: No, I don’t want to do that. Are you coming or not?

  BAAL: No.

  64a Holzstrasse

  Scene 4. Garage.

  A condensed conflation of scenes [4 i] and [4 ii]. The tone of Baal’s dialogue with Johanna is drier. She has no remorse, and is only concerned about getting dressed. The Porter’s Wife irrupts after Baal’s ‘Give me a kiss’, and berates him in much the same shocked words as the landlady of [4 ii]. Then back to the finish of [4 i], with Baal saying:

  Off home with you! Tell Johnny Schmidt we just came in for five minutes because it was raining.

  JOHANNA: Tell Johnny Schmidt it was raining. Exit.

  BAAL: Johanna! There she goes.

  – and no music.

  Two Years later: Baal Discovers a (to him) New Kind of Love

  Scene 5. Garage.

  On the wall a nude drawing of a woman. Baal arrives with Miss Barger.

  BAAL: My workshop.

  BARGER: Excuse me, but I’m going back down.

  BAAL: You can’t just do that.

  BARGER: They’ll find me here. There was a man who followed us when you came up and spoke to me outside.

  BAAL: Nobody’ll find you here.

  BARGER: Out there you told me you were a photographer.

  BAAL: That’s what I said out there, wasn’t it?

  BARGER: Then I’m going.

  BAAL: There was something particular I wanted to ask you.

  BARGER: No.

  BAAL: What are you scared of all of a sudden?

  BARGER: I’m not the least bit scared.

  BAAL: Oh. That’s a drawing I did to help make matters clear. If you don’t like it we’ll take it down. But you see, I know you inside and out; there’s no mystery. There! He scratches out the drawing with his knife.

  BARGER: Holy mother of God! Screams.

  BAAL: What are you screaming about? Don’t make such a noise. They’ll hear you next door. Is it the knife? Picks up a bottle. Nothing left in there. No air left either. As for the meat! The meat’s pathetic. It’s not meat at all, just skin and a couple of fibres. I don’t call that meat. Altogether this planet’s a washout. A piece of impertinence. All fixed up for visitors. With mountains. But there aren’t any mountains. That’s what the valleys are for. Stuff the one into the other and the stupid planet’s flat again. There, now you’ve stopped.

  BARGER: Shall I stay with you?

  BAAL: What?

  BARGER: Your drawing’s very ugly. But you look discontented. Me too. When I was fourteen the butcher next door wouldn’t even let me sweep the snow off his pavement because I was too ugly. Lately men have taken to turning round and looking at me in the street; what I’ve got won’t last long; I think I ought to make use of it. I don’t think it has to be a man in a smart hat. But it’s no good having something that isn’t made use of.

  BAAL: Now could that surprising way of talking be because she’s scared of death?

  BARGER: Scared of death? Have you had ideas of that sort?

  BAAL: Don’t get up. You don’t suit. Smokes. Get your voice in operation again. It was a great moment. I’m abandoning hope. Seven years in this room, eighteen months’ conscious abstention from food, washing out my mind with unadulterated consumption of alcohol. Never in my life having done the least little thing, I’m on the verge of entering new territory. This place of mine is all worn out. Mostly by systematic overestimation of everything, I suppose. I can see them saying that at the time of my death table and wall had been utterly worn away. And I still have to resolve the permanent problem of my life: the devising of an evil deed.

  BARGER: It isn’t easy, but I’m sure I can understand you if I really try.

  BAAL: I give up. You talk now. Nobody shall say I neglected anything. You’ve got a woman’s face. In your case one could perhaps cause seven pounds of disaster, where with most women one can’t even cause two. How old are you?

  BARGER: Twenty-four in June.

  BAAL: How many men have you had in your life?

  Barger says nothing.

  BAAL: Then you’ve got that behind you. Any relatives?

  BARGER: Yes, a mother.

  BAAL: Is she old?

  BARGER: She’s sixty.

  BAAL: Then she’s got used to evil.

  BARGER: They oughtn’t to blame me. I can’t support myself.

  BAAL: You’ll learn.

  BARGER: You’re asking an awful lot. You’re so ugly it’s terrifying. What’s your name?

  BAAL: Baal.

  Baal Earns Money for the Last Time.

  Scene 6.The Prickly Pear nightclub.

  This is scene [7], still the ‘Small, swinish café’, with the difference that the parts of the Soubrette and her accompanist have been considerably written up, that the text of Baal’s song is not given, and that when Baal escapes through the lavatory window it is (according to the accompanist) to go to the Black Forest, where a postcard from Eckart at the beginning of the scene has asked him to join him.

  Baal Abandons the Mother of his Unborn Child.

  Scene 7. Flat land, sky, and evening.

  This is approximately [12], but without reference to Baal’s taking Eckart’s women, or having been in prison, and without the two men’s wrestling at the end of the scene. It is all shorter, and it appears to come as a surprise to Baal that Sophie is pregnant:

  BAAL: Pregnant? That’s the last straw. What do you think you’re up to? And now I suppose I’ll have you hanging round my neck?

  ECKART: On principle I don’t interfere in your exceedingly shabby human relationships. But at least when a third party is present they should be conducted with some semblance of fairness.

  BAAL: Are you going to abandon me on her account? That’d be just like you. She can clear out. She’s going downhill. I’m as patient as a lamb. But I can’t change my skin.

  SOPHIE: You see, Baal, I didn’t need to tell you before. It’s been slower than I thought, mostly because you didn’t like me all that much. I’m in the fourth month.

  ECKART: She’s showing some vestige of common sense. Once again: I refuse to let my feelings get involved, but I’ll wait here till it’s all settled.

  Sophie then starts begging them to stay, for an hour, for half an hour. She tells Baal: ‘Oh yes, it’s a beautiful evening, and you like it. But you won’t like it when you have to die without another soul there.’ ‘Yes, I will,’ says Baal. And as Sophie shouts that they are degenerate beasts Baal tells Eckart, ‘I absolutely insist that you and I leave now.’

  In the Years 1907-10 We Find Baal and Eckart Tramping across South Germany.

  Scene 8. Countryside. Morning. Wind.

  Baal – Eckart

  BAAL: The wind’s getting up again. It’s the only thing you get free in this country, but all it does now is touch my skin. It isn’t strong enough for my ears these days. Your fugue hasn’t made much progress either.

  ECKART: The sounds my fugue is based on are no worse than most. As for the mathematics of it, it’s more mathematical than the wind. The landscape keeps getting more mathematical. It’s humanity’s only prospect. There’s already a corrugated iron barn over there; tomorrow there’ll be a steel-framed building. The big cities are spreading their standardized limbs across the old landscape. Between all those tall buildings the wind will be measurable.

  BAAL: We’re the last people to see the flat plain. In forty-nine years the word ‘forest’ won’t be needed. Wood will cease to be used. Mankind will disappear too, if it comes to that. But to stick to our own lifetime, by the time your big cities are built you’ll be delirious. Instead of those tall constructions you’ll see rats.

  ECKART: By then it will take entire typhoons to make you hear the slightest noise.

  BAAL: My friend, I want to live without a skin. You’re really an evil man. Both of us are. Unfortunately. Here’s a poem I’ve written.r />
  He then reads ‘The Drowned Girl’, as in [15], after which:

  ECKART: You don’t seem to have lost much of your power.

  BAAL: Everything there is to say about life on this planet could be expressed in a single sentence of average length. That sentence I shall some time or other formulate, certainly before I die.

  Scene 9. Countryside.

  Night. Baal asleep. Eckart looking at him.

  ECKART: This man Baal worries me. He’s not light enough any longer. I’m an objective kind of person. It would be simple enough to pick up a piece of chalk and establish the graph of his life on all the house walls. When I think about it, the only thing that keeps me is the fact that his character’s if anything getting harder. All the same, I’m the last man to want to witness the enfeeblement that’s bound to accompany his decline and death. I’m not a vindictive character. Just lately he’s been keeping a very sharp eye on me. It’s difficult to tell if he’s genuinely asleep now, for instance. There are no fields left for him to graze down. It’s starting to rain again; I’d better cover him up.

  In the Year 1911 Baal Succumbs to his Predestined Disposition to Murder.

  Scene 10. ‘Pub.’

  Autumn evening. Eckart, Emilie Mäch, and Johann Schmidt in black.

  This is essentially [18], with the difference that the waitress is Sophie and that Emilie is present, with a good deal to say. Watzmann is cut, his verse about ‘When the hatred and venom’ from the 1919 version being now hummed by Emilie. There are no other verses apart from those of the ‘Ballad of the Adventurers’ sung by Baal.

  It starts with Johann asking, ‘When’s Baal coming?’ Then Eckart:

  It’s become increasingly clear to me in these last few years that great times are in store for us. The countryside is going to ruin. I’ve seen photographs of buildings on Manhattan Island which indicate a vast power in the human race. Having reached a high point of insensitivity, mankind is setting to work to create an age of happiness. The years in question will be limited in number; what matters is to be there. For a few weeks I’ve felt myself becoming increasingly restless.