A poetic light is cast on the episode, which Szechwan regards as highly humorous, by the utterances of a water seller who claims that Li Gung’s initial capital had indeed been a present from three gods, who told him that they had come to Szechwan to search for a good person, and also appeared more than once in his dreams to ask how the good person was faring. He claims that the three judges before whom the secret was finally unmasked were those same gods.
Whatever the real nature of the gods in question, they will no doubt have been somewhat surprised to find out in what way, in Szechwan, one sets about the problem of being a good person.
[GW Schriften zum Theater, pp. 1157–61. Typescript is dated September 15, 1939, and in effect resumes the state of the story when Brecht abandoned it in order to write Mother Courage.]
WORKING PLAN
1. swamped
the little boat presented by the gods quickly fills with unfortunates to the point of capsizing / a family is given lodging / the former owners looked after / former suppliers arrive with demands / the landlady wants a guarantee /
2. crisis and advertisement
the cousin arrives to disentangle things / the family are handed over to the police / the suppliers paid off / the landlady placated / but as nastiness is neither a substitute for capital nor a shield against the powerful an advertisement must be drafted to get li gung a well-to-do husband.
3. love
quarrel about li gung’s profession / she is off to an assignation with a well-to-do suitor / meets the unemployed pilot schan who is about to hang himself / comforts him / falls in love with him and buys him a glass of water from sun the water carrier /
4. the flier has to fly
sun’s hand is broken / li gung tells of her love and buys a shawl / the barber falls desperately in love with her / but she discovers sun’s wound and tries to find witnesses / without success / she offers to perjure herself / the carpet dealer and his wife overhear her talking to schan’s mother about a job for schan which will cost 400 yen / they offer to guarantee the shop / the flier has to fly /
5. love triumphs
the cousin finds schan the money / sells the already mortgaged business to the landlady / gets to know schan and sees through him / talks things over with the barber / sun is disappointed / li gung should have a chance to do good / schan and the barber address the audience / li gung decides for schan /
6. the wedding
schan wants to get married and sell out / everybody is waiting for the cousin / the carpet dealers hurry in and are calmed by li gung / whenever li gung is present her cousin is not /
7. maternal joys
maternal joys / schan’s mother / the guarantee / the garbage pail / the carpenter / li gung’s little son will be looked after by her cousin /
8. the tobacco factory
the carpenter’s children are hauling bales of tobacco / schan gets a job and distinguishes himself as foreman / song of the tobacco workers /
9. the rumour
rain / the landlady / schan makes a discovery / the monarchs smoke and the mob assembles / the police act /
10. the trial
the gods appear in the role of judges / the tobacco king is scared / the trial / the dénouement / the gods depart on a cloud /
[From Werner Hecht (ed.): Materialien zu Brechts ‘Der gute Mensch von Sezuan,’ Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1968, pp. 22–23. This is a typical big structural plan, probably dating from the summer of 1940 and used for the main work on the play, with the ten scenes set out in ten vertical columns across a wide sheet of paper. Under each Brecht has pencilled further notes and suggestions, of which Hecht provides a photographic reproduction and a transcription.]
UNDATED NOTES
1. Elements of the ‘Good Person of Szechwan’
The gods’ investigative commission
0, 10
A person’s only friend: himself. The double role
4a
The good one takes the matter in hand; the bad one takes the matter in hand
1,2/4,5/5,6/7/8
Evil must come that good may come of it
1,2/4,5/5,6/7/8
The ‘cousin’ is always supposed to arrive just for a moment, or just once more, but in the end only he is the only one.
1,4,7
The gods don’t find a good person, this is the best they can find
9/10
Lao Go’s realisation of Schan’s badness fails to cure Li Gung of her love for him.
5
The way of the little people: either up or down
10
The good person on trial: the gods on trail
10
2. Scenic elements of the ‘Good Person of Szechwan’
How hard it is for a believer to give his gods what they want
0
How quickly goodness destroys a life
1
How quickly toughness builds a life up again
2
The good person seeks a helper and finds one that can be helped
3
Unfortunately only the cousin can help the loved one
4
But the cousin reveals the loved one’s evil side. This of course is no help to the lover
5
Where Li Gung goes Lao Go cannot go
6
To help Li Gung’s little son the cousin must sacrifice many other people’s little sons
7
When Li Gung makes a promise Lao Go keeps his word
8
Has Lao Go murdered his cousin Li Gung?
9
The gods cross-examine the murderer of their good person
10
3. The good deeds of Li Gung
(i)
Sheltering a family
(ii)
Rescuring a desperate man
(iii)
Giving false evidence for a victim
(iv)
Confidence in the loved one
(v)
Confidence is not disappointed
(vii)
Underwriting ambition
(viii)
Everything for the child
4. The misdeeds of Lao Go
(ii)
Landing a family in prison
(iv)
Discrediting the victim
(v)
Letting down the underwriters
(vi)
Planning a ‘marriage of convenience’
(vii)
Acquiring cheap premises
(viii)
Exploiting children
(ix)
Exploiting the loved one (The Tobacco Queen)
5. It is bad
[From Jan Knopf (ed.): Brechts Guter Mensch von Sezuan. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, 1982, pp. 102–104.]
LI GUNG’S BIG SPEECH ABOUT THE PUNISHMENT IMPOSED BY THE GODS FOR FAILING TO EAT MEAT
The battles for food
Caused dreadful crimes. The brother
Drove his sister from the table. Married couples
Grabbed the plates from one another’s hands. For one bit of meat
Son betrayed mother. Thus a sect arose
Which believed fasting would bring salvation. They said
None but the abstemious would remain human. He who longed to eat
Would inevitably decline into an animal. For a while
The best of them looked on the riches of our universe
As noxious filth. Then the gods stepped in.
Angered by this contempt for their gifts, they proclaimed the death penalty
For abstention. You could watch
How the non-eaters collapsed and grew hideous
And he who failed to eat meat died. To escape this terrible malady
People who fell on their food all the more greedily
Crime increased.
[From Werner Hecht (ed.): Materialien zu Brechts ‘Der gute Mensch von Sezuan’. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, 1968, pp. 93–4. Cut passage included with an incomplete working
typescript of summer 1940.]
FROM BRECHT’S JOURNAL
making minor corrections to The Good Person is costing me as many weeks as writing the scenes did days. not easy, given the definite objective, to imbue the tiny sub-scenes with that element of irresponsibility, accident, transistoriness which we call ‘life.’ moreover in the end there is a basic question to be settled: how to handle the li gung – lao go problem. one can either (a) extend the parable aspect so as to have a straightforward conflict, gods – li gung – lao go, which would keep it all on a moral plane and allow two conflicting principles (‘two souls’) to figure separately, or else (b) have a plain story about how li gung masquerades as her cousin and to that end makes use of the experiences and qualities which her gutter existence has brought out in her. in fact only (b) is possible unless one is to abandon mrs. shin’s discovery (scene 7), her conversation with the pregnant lao go and the whole theme of how this pregnancy makes the double game impossible to maintain. the transformation scene before the curtain (4a) is not in any way mystical but merely a technical solution in terms of mime and a song. where the difficulty becomes acute is wherever lao go directly addresses the audience the question is whether he ought not to do this using li gung’s voice and consequently her attitude too. at bottom it all depends on how scene 5 is handled. this is where lao go must make some remark to explain his change of attitude. however, he has no confidant, nor can he make a confidant of the audience – not as lao go. What is more, li gung’s collapse at the end of that scene is harder to understand if the solution adopted is (b) rather than (a). the only possible explanation is that here too she is being addressed as li gung. when you come down to it the elements good and evil are too segregated for a realistic drama of masquerade. an occasional slip would be unavoidable. the most realistic scene in this respect is the ninth. A further consideration could be that li gung has to make strenuous efforts to play the part of lao go and is no longer capable of appearing unpleasant when dressed in her own clothes and before the eyes of those who know and address her as li gung. herein lies an important lesson: how easy it is for her to be good and how hard to be evil.
[Bertolt Brecht Arbeitsjournal, vol. 1, 1938–42, Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1973, pp. 144–5. From the entry for August 9, 1940, roughly seven weeks after the completion of the first script and (obviously) before the changing of the characters’ names. ‘Two souls’ is the Faustian concept also cited in St Joan of the Stockyards’.]
THE GOOD PERSON OF SZECHWAN
Prologue
Three gods enter the city of Szechwan. They are looking for a good person, having heard a rumour to the effect that to be good on this earth has become difficult. Aided by an obliging water seller they make the acquaintance of a good person, to wit the poor prostitute Chen Teh. Even she, however, complains that she finds it almost impossible to respect all the commandments of the gods, because she is so badly off. In order to give her a chance, the gods make her a present of money, convey their best wishes and leave her.
1
The good Chen Teh uses the gods’ present of money to fit out a small tobacco shop. Concerned from the outset to obey the gods’ commandments, to help her neighbours, to put her own interests second and to satisfy every request, no matter how far-fetched, from her none too good-natured fellow humans, she finds her shop close to riun the very evening after it has opened. A family of eight has chosen to take refuge there. To keep out further cadgers her “visitors’” cynically advise her to invent a cousin who will supposedly be a hard man and the real owner of the shop. By bedtime there is no room in her own shop for Chen Teh, and she has to go away.
2
Next morning, greatly to the “visitors’” astonishment, the door opens and an extremely hard-looking young business man comes into the shop. He introduces himself as Chen Teh’s cousin. Politely but firmly he invites the family to leave the premises, as this is where his cousin must conduct her business. When they prove reluctant to go he promptly summons the police, who gaol one or two of the family’s members on some trivial charge. To justify himself to the audience he demonstrates that they were bad people: certain of the sacks which the family has left behind contain opium. – The friendly relations that have grown up between the cousin and the police bear fruit at once. A grateful policeman draws his attention to the flattering interest being taken in his pretty cousin by the prosperous barber Chu Fu from across the way. He is prepared to help set up an assignation in the public park. The cousin expresses interest: Chen Teh is clearly incompetent to run the shop without some protection, and he himself has to go off again and will probably not be able to come back.
3
We see Chen Teh in the park on her way to her assignation with the wealthy barber. Under a tree she sees, to her horror, a down-at-heel young man about to hang himself. He tells her that he is an unemployed pilot and is unable to raise the $500 needed to get him a pilot’s job in Peking. A shower of rain forces Chen Teh to take shelter under his tree. A tender conversation ensues. For the first time Chen Teh samples the joy of a man-woman relationship unclouded by material interests. And before she goes home she has promised the pilot to help him get the Peking job. She thinks her cousin may be able to provide the $500. Radiant with joy, she tells her confidant the water seller that in setting out to meet a man who might be able to help her she met a man she is able to help.
Interlude
Before the eyes of the audience Chen Teh transforms herself into her cousin Chui Ta. As she sings a song to explain how impossible it is to perform good deeds without toughness and force she is meantime donning costume and mask of the evil Chui Ta.
4
Chen Teh has asked her friend, the pilot Sun, to come to her shop. In place of the girl he finds her cousin Chui Ta. The latter says he is prepared to provide the $500 for the Peking job, which he reckons a sound financial basis for Sun and Chen Teh. He has asked Mi Tzu to come, a lady tobacco wholesaler who at once offers $300 for the shop. Since Sun evidently has no hesitations the deal is soon agreed. He is radiant as he pockets the $300. Admittedly there is the problem of finding the remaining $200. The cousin’s somewhat unscrupulous solution is to make money from the opium which the family of eight have left behind in Chen Teh’s shop. Picture his horror, however, not to mention astonishment, when it emerges as a result of a more or less accidental question that the pilot is not thinking of taking the girl to Peking with him. He of course breaks off all further negotiations. The pilot is not so easily dealt with. Not only does he fail to return the $300 he has been given, but he also expresses himself easily confident of getting the balance from the girl, since she is blindly obsessed with him. Triumphantly he leaves the shop in order to wait for her outside. Chui Ta, whom anger and despair have driven to distraction, sends for Chu Fu the barber and tells him that his cousin’s unbridled goodness has been the ruin of her, so that she needs a powerful patron right away. The infatuated barber is prepared to discuss the young lady’s problems ‘over a small supper for two.’ As Chui Ta goes off ‘to notify his cousin’ the pilot Sun smells trouble and reappears in the shop. When Chen Teh emerges from the back room for her outing with the barber she is confronted by Sun. He reminds her of their love; he recalls that wet evening in the park where they first met. Poor Chen Teh! All that Chui Ta has found out about the pilot’s bare-faced egotism is washed away by Chen Teh’s feelings of love. She leaves, not with the barber her clever cousin has designated, but with the man she loves.
Bertolt Brecht: Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder 6 Page 34
