Aside from the subsequent change of names, which has already been mentioned and which gives a much more Georgian flavour, the amendments to the first script are generally minor ones. The dusty messenger originally entered just before the Governor’s ‘Not before divine service’ (p. 152) which was followed by the exchange ‘Did you hear’, etc. (p. 154); this was altered only in the 1950s. The references to geese in the dialogue between Grusha (Katya) and Simon (Volodya Surki) were originally to fish, but appear in the second script. Katya’s answer to the query ‘Is the young lady as healthy as a fish in water’ was
Why as a fish in water, soldier? Why not like a horse at a horse market? Can it pull two carts? Can it stand out in the snow while the coachman gets drunk? Being healthy depends on not being made ill.
SURKI: That won’t happen.
—while when he asks if she is impatient and wants apples (not cherries) in winter she retorts ‘Why not say “does she want a man before she’s too old?”’ This and the new stress on her aptitude for the role of ‘sucker’ (’You simple soul’, ‘You’re a good soul’, ‘You’re just the kind of fool’, p. 163) represent the main differences between Grusha and the Katya of the first script.
Her song ‘When you return I will be there’ (p. 159) was a response to Konstantin Simonov’s war poem ‘Wait for Me’, whose translation, by Nathalie Rene, Brecht had cut out of Moscow News and gummed in his journal at the time of the first work on Simone Machard:
Wait for me and I will come.
Wait, and wait again.
Wait where you feel sad and numb
And dreary in the rain.
Wait, when snows fall more and more,
Wait when days are hot...
etc., the ‘I’ of course here being a soldier. The remainder of the verse in this scene is virtually unchanged from the first version, though the ‘temptation to do good’ there was ‘great’ and not ‘terrible’. It is interesting perhaps that the whole line in its present form should have been very firmly written in by Brecht on the second script; he clearly felt it to be important.
3. The Flight into the Northern Mountains
Much of the unrhymed verse (which was originally not broken into lines but divided by oblique strokes) differs in the first script, where it is mainly struck out without having yet been replaced by the new versions; maybe these became detached from the script. In the second script it is all there, virtually as now. According to Rudolf Vápeník the song ‘O sadly one morning’ of the two Ironshirts on p. 173 is translated from a Moravian folksong set (as one of his Slovak Folk Songs) by Bartók; it could be a by-product of Brecht’s researches for Schweyk.
The first episode (Grusha getting milk from the old peasant) is one of those which Brecht retyped entirely for the second script, but despite some rewording it was not substantially changed. As revised it ended with the words ‘Michael, Michael, I certainly took on a nice burden with you’ (p. 167), followed by the stage direction:
She stands up, worried, takes the child on her back and marches on. Grumbling, the old man collects his can and looks expressionlessly after her.
The next episode (In front of the caravansary), which figures in the first script, was then cut, not to be restored till the collected edition; it was not performed in Brecht’s production. The brief appearance of the two Ironshirts which follows was slightly bowdlerised in the 1950s; before ‘He lets himself be hacked to pieces by his superiors’ (p. 173) it read ‘When he hears an order he gets a stand; when he sticks his lance into the enemy’s guts he comes’. The short scene with the two peasants is virtually unchanged from the first script, but once Grusha runs into the Ironshirts there are a fair number of alterations; the central part of the episode being among the passages retyped by Brecht for the second script. The gist of his changes here is to make Grusha more evidently frightened of the soldiers than was Katya in the first version, and also to make it seem less likely that she is handing the child over to the peasants for good. Thus Katya was not ‘frightened’ (p. 175) and did not ‘utter a little scream’ (p. 176)—these directions appearing only from the third script on—while instead the first script made her laugh and say:
Corporal, if you’re going to question me so severely I’ll have to tell you the truth: that I’d like to be on my way. How about lowering your lance?
The episode of the bridge is once again almost as in the first script, though there is one possibly significant detail: the First Man originally greeted Katya’s feat in exactly the words the First Soldier uses of the similarly-named Kattrin in the drum scene of Mother Courage (Collected Plays, Vol. 5): ‘She’s made it’. Brecht changed this in the 1950s to ‘She’s across’, presumably in order not to stress the connection between the two characters, both of whom were at that time played by the same actress, Angelika Hurwicz.
4. In the northern Mountains
Originally entitled ‘Katya Grusha’s sojourn at her cowardly brother’s: her strange marriage and the return of the soldier’. A number of passages here were retyped and rewritten for the second script, for instance the episode of the melting snow, starting with the Singer’s introduction (p. 185):
THE SINGER
The sister was too ill. The cowardly brother had to shelter her / She lay in the store room. Through the thin wall she heard him talking to his wife: / ‘She’ll soon be gone’, he said. ‘When she’s well. How soft your breasts are...’. / The sister was ill till winter came. The cowardly brother had to shelter her. / The store room grew cold and she heard him talk to his wife. / ‘When spring comes she’ll be gone’, he said. ‘How firm your thighs are...’. / The room was cold. The road was colder. The winter was long, the winter was short. / The rats must not bite, the child must not cry, the spring must not come. / Where to go when the snow melts? Still weak, Katya squats at the loom in the store room. She and the child, who is squatting on the ground, are wrapped in rugs and rags against the cold. The child cries. Katya tries to comfort it. [At this point there is a photograph of a Mongolian-looking woman at a spinning-wheel gummed into the script.]
KATYA: Don’t cry, or do it quietly. Otherwise my sister-in-law will hear us and we’ll have to go. Cockroaches aren’t supposed to make any noise, are they? If we keep as quiet as cockroaches they’ll forget we’re in the house. Remember the cockroaches. The child cries again. Hush. The cold doesn’t have to make you cry. Being poor’s one thing, freezing’s another. It doesn’t get you liked. You keep quiet and I’ll let you see the horses; remember the horses. The child cries again. Michael, we have to be clever, we’ve no wedding lines for my sister-in-law. If we make ourselves small we can stay till the snow melts. She draws the child to her and looks, appalled, at one particular point. Michael, Michael, you’ve got no sense. If it’s on account of the rats you don’t need to cry. Rats are quite human. They have families. They store up food for 500 years.
PIOTR slips in: What’s up? Why are you looking over at that corner, Katya? Is he frightened?
KATYA: What’s he to be frightened of? There’s nothing there.
PIOTR: I thought I heard scuffling in the straw. I hope it isn’t rats. You wouldn’t be able to stay with the child here.
KATYA: There aren’t any rats. It’d be impossible to get a job anywhere with him.
PIOTR sits by her: I wanted to talk to you about Lisaveta...
Piotr is Lavrenti, and Lisaveta his wife Aniko, and the conversation continues much as in our text from ‘She has a good heart’ to ‘Was I talking about Aniko?’ (pp. 186-7), then:
You can’t think how it upsets her not to be able to offer you anything better than this room. The big room above is too hard to heat. ‘My sister will understand’: I’ve told her that a thousand times, but does she believe me? She even blames herself privately for not being able to stand children. That’s because she hasn’t any of her own. Her heart’s not strong enough, you see.
Grusha’s song ‘Then the lover started to leave’ (p. 186) then comes after the second ‘Gru
sha is silent’ (p. 187). After the ‘beat of the falling drops’ (ditto) Piotr makes his proposal about the marriage, much as in our text except that Katya is to come back to live in his house again as soon as her bridegroom dies; the provision about her being allowed to stay on in the latter’s farm for two years (p. 189) only appearing in the third script. The wedding ceremony itself was hardly changed except in this respect, thus on leaving (p. 190) Piotr/Lavrenti says ‘I’ll wait for you by the poplar at the entrance to the village, Katya’.
KATYA: Suppose it takes longer?
MOTHER-IN-LAW: It won’t take longer.
The conversation among the guests (p. 193) was retyped virtually as now for the second script; in the first it ran:
THE GUESTS noisily: There’ve been more disturbances in the city, have you heard?—Ay, the boyar Rajok’s besieged in the palace, they say.—The Grand Duke is back and it’s all going to be like it used to be.—Lots of them coming back all the time from the Persian war.—They even say the old governor’s wife’s come back, and all the palace guard with her. Katya drops the baking sheet. People help her to pick up the cakes.
A WOMAN to Katya: You not feeling well? Too much excitement, that’s it. Sit down and have a rest. Katya sits down.
THE GUESTS: Here today, gone tomorrow. Gone tomorrow, here today. But we still have to pay taxes.
KATYA feebly: Did someone say the palace guard had come back?
A MAN: That’s what I heard.
ANOTHER: They say, though, that boyar Rajok’s green flag is still flying over the palace. But the palace is being besieged. The old governor’s wife is supposed to be living in one of the houses opposite.
KATYA: Who told you that?
THE MAN to a woman: Show her your shawl...
Thenceforward (p. 193) to the end of the scene the first version has been altered very little, the one significant addition (on the second script) being Grusha’s explanation that she cannot go back to Nukha (originally Kachezia) because she had knocked down an Ironshirt.
5. The Story of the Judge
Most of the amendments to this scene are minor ones, and a good few date from 1954; the three scripts are thus close to one another, only the episode with the Fat Prince’s nephew having been to some extent rewritten after the first script. Already there the Singer, who up to that point had only figured as such, began from the beginning of the Azdak ballad on (p. 213) to be ‘The Singer together with his musicians’, and this is oddly enough the only hint anywhere in the play or Brecht’s notes that he may be required to perform Azdak’s part, though Brecht seems to have taken this for granted in the production.
The Ironshirts’ action in dragging Azdak to the gallows was added in 1954; previously they had been slapping him and Schauva genially on the shoulder. The Fat Prince’s (the boyar Rajok’s) first speech was altered and expanded in the rewriting for the second script; at the same time the chatter of the Ironshirts (p. 209) emphasizing their awareness of their (momentary) political importance was also added. Some small changes were made to heighten the dialogue where the Nephew pronounces his verdict (p. 211), both in the rewriting and in 1954. After the first two of Azdak’s cases (respectively the doctor and Ludovica) the stage direction showing Azdak on his travels (p. 217) along the Military Highway and the two accompanying verses of the Azdak ballad were introduced in 1954. The presence of Ironshirts behind Azdak’s throne each time, with their flag as a tangible sign of support for him, was an addition on the first script, as was also the appearance of the Fat Prince’s head on one of their lances (p. 220).
6. The Chalk Circle
In the first script there is a song near the beginning of the scene (after the Cook starts praying, p. 223) which was thereafter omitted:
SINGER softly:
The people say: the poor need luck
They won’t get far by using their heads.
They won’t grow fat by the work of their hands.
Therefore, it is said
God has devised for them games of chance
And the dog races. Likewise God
In his unremitting care for his poor folk
See to it that the tax inspectors sometimes slip.
For the poor need luck.
All through there are two elements missing from this version—the threat which the wounded corporal represents to Grusha, and Simon’s confession that he is the father of the child. Instead Simon alleges that it was the son of one of his comrades. Then after the entry of the Governor’s Wife, the First Lawyer goes on from his condemnation of the judge as ‘about the lowest’ (p. 226) to say
I insist you settle this matter out of court.
GOVERNOR’S WIFE: As you wish.
FIRST LAWYER: In view of the size of the estate which the child is inheriting, what do a few piastres count here and there? On a nod from her he strolls over to Katya: A thousand piastres. Seeing Katya’s look of uncertainty: I am authorized to offer you a thousand piastres if the case can be kept from coming to court.
THE COOK: Holy Mary, a thousand piastres!
FIRST LAWYER strutting off: You see what your friends think.
KATYA: Are they trying to offer me money for Michael?
THE COOK: And they’d certainly go higher.
VOLODYA darkly: A meal that doesn’t fill you makes you hungry, they say.
FIRST LAWYER coming back: Well, what about that thousand?
GOVERNOR’S WIFE: Is she being brazen enough to think it over? Crosses to Katya: You shameless person, don’t you know you’ve to bow when I speak to you?
KATYA bows deeply, then: I can’t sell him, Milady.
GOVERNOR’S WIFE: What? You call that selling, when you’ve got to return what you stole? You thief, you know it’s not yours!
VOLODYA sees Katya hesitating; at attention: I attest that this is the child of my comrade Illo Toboridze, Mrs Anastasia Sashvili, sir.
GOVERNOR’S WIFE: Aren’t you one of the palace guard? How dare you lie to me, you swine?
VOLODYA: Straight from the horse’s mouth, sir, as the saying goes. The Governor’s Wife is speechless.
Ironshirts have entered the courtyard and the Adjutant has been whispering to one of them. The Second Lawyer tugs the Governor’s Wife’s sleeve and whispers something to her.
THE COOK: They wouldn’t be offering money if they weren’t frightened of Azdak’s favouring you. He goes by faces.
All this was dropped in the second script, which contained the present short bridge passage to cover the cut.
The first part of the actual hearing, up to Simon’s testimony, was retyped after the first script, everything between Grusha’s ‘He’s mine’ (p. 228) and the middle of the Second Lawyer’s speech beginning ‘Thanks, Your Worship’ (p. 229) being new. Originally Grusha was followed by the Second Lawyer saying
Excuse me, Maxim Maximovitch, but the court wants facts. My lord,...
FIRST LAWYER: My dear Pavlov Pavlovitch, I would have thought my address...
SECOND LAWYER: Is dispensable, my dear Maxim Maximovitch. My lord, by an unfortunate chain of circumstances, this child, [etc.]
This means that all reference to the Abashvili (or Sashvili) estates was lacking from the original scene, since the same is true of their mention in the Second Lawyer’s speech later on p. 235. Much of the backchat between Azdak and Grusha likewise comes from the second script, which first introduced Grusha’s long diatribe starting ‘You drunken onion’ (p. 232) and ending ‘than swinging from the gallows’ (below). Her passage too with the Governor’s Wife (p. 234) is a product of that script, but from then on till the final dance the first version has survived very largely intact. It ends with the Singer’s final verses in a slightly different line arrangement, and without the ironic qualifying word ‘almost’, which was an addition to the second script. An epilogue follows, but was evidently written later; its use was to be optional, and it is not included in the third script or any of the published versions other than the Materialien zu Brechts ‘Der k
aukasische Kreidekreis’ (Suhrkamp-Verlag, Frankfurt, 1966), from which the following translation has been drawn:
EPILOGUE
(ad libitum)
The ring of spectators from the two collective farms becomes visible. There is polite applause.
PEASANT WOMAN RIGHT: Arkady Tcheidse, you slyboots, friend of the valley-thieves, how dare you compare us members of the Rosa Luxemburg collective with people like that Natella Abashvili of yours, just because we think twice about giving up our valley?
SOLDIER LEFT to the old man right, who has stood up: What are you looking over there for, comrade?
THE OLD MAN RIGHT: Just let me look at what I’m to give up. I won’t be able to see it again.
THE PEASANT WOMAN LEFT: Why not? You’ll be coming to call on us.
THE OLD MAN RIGHT: If I do I mayn’t be able to recognize it.
KATO THE AGRONOMIST: You’ll see a garden.
THE OLD MAN RIGHT beginning to smile: May God forgive you if it’s not one.
They all get up and surround him, cheering.
3. PROLOGUE FROM THE FIRST SCRIPT (1944)
Public square of a Caucasian market town, with peasants and tractor drivers of two collectivized villages seated in a circle, smoking and drinking wine; among them a delegate from the planning commission in the capital, a man in a leather jacket. There is much laughter.
Bertolt Brecht: Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder 7 Page 35
