Bertolt Brecht: Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder 4

by Bertolt Brecht

  [BFA 23, pp. 404–5. This outwardly impersonal account of Egon Monk’s rehearsals for the November 1952 production appears to have been written by Brecht himself. It forms part of his ‘Dialectics in the Theatre’, for which see Brecht on Theatre, pp. 281–2.]

  Editorial Notes

  It was in September 1936 that Slatan Dudow wrote to Brecht suggesting that he should write a play about the Spanish Civil War which had just broken out. The work seems to have overlapped with the writing of the first five scenes of Fear and Misery of the Third Reich, and it too was typed out and dated 24 August 1937, nearly a year after Dudow’s letter. By then Franco’s troops had taken Bilbao and Santander and were on their way to conquering the whole northwest corner of the country. Originally the play had been titled Generals over Bilbao, which suggests that most of the writing must have been done between 19 April – the date given for the action in one version of the script – and 18 June, when Bilbao itself fell. The title however was not changed to the present one till the scripts were ready, when the location too was altered from the Basque coast to that of Andalucia in the far south.

  The play is based on motifs from J.M. Synge’s Riders to the Sea (1904).

  There are two of Brecht’s characteristic outline schemes. One, seemingly the earlier, lists eleven episodes:

  1 the brother visiting, the food ships are on the way

  2 the conversation over cards hunger

  3 manuela. theresa goes to tell juan

  4 search for rifles

  5 the tearing of the flag

  6 the priest

  7 old mrs perez. the women in the window

  9 where is juan?

  10 here is juan

  11 three rifles for bilbao

  The other, seven-episode scheme slightly changes the order, thus:

  1 the brother’s visit

  2 mistrustful, she catches her brother and her son bent over her dead husband’s case of rifles, she tears up the flag in which the rifles are packed

  3 the card game

  4 where is juan?

  5 he that taketh the sword shall perish by the sword

  6 here is juan

  7 the departure

  In the text as typed the names of the mother and her son were Theresa Pasqual and Fernando. Brecht changed them first to Mrs Pasqual and José, then to the Mother and the Boy, as now. On what looks like a final script the present title has been written on the cover, while in the opening stage direction ‘Basque’ has been amended to ‘Andalusian’ for the fisherman’s house and ‘Pasqual’ changed to ‘Carrar’. The prologue and epilogue (pp. 360–2) suggest that Brecht later thought of Theresa as Maria and shifted the setting up to Catalonia, but these changes were never carried out.

  The play was premièred in October 1937 in Paris, directed by Slatan Dudow and with Helene Weigel in the title role. After this there were fourteen further productions before 1945, notably in Denmark, Sweden and Prague. It remained one of the plays most often performed in Brecht’s lifetime and was especially popular with amateur and student groups. It was first published as a ‘Sonderdruck’ or advance offprint from the second volume of the collected Malik edition of Brecht’s works, which was printed in Prague a bare year before the Nazis moved in. The offprint was dated 1937, the complete volume March 1938. The former was prefaced by Brecht’s poem ‘The actress in exile’ (BFA 14, p. 355), which is dedicated to Helene Weigel:

  Now she is making up. In the white cubicle

  She sits hunched on the wretched stool.

  With easy gestures

  She puts on her greasepaint before the mirror.

  Carefully she wipes from her face

  All individuality: the slightest sensation

  Will change it. Now and again

  She lets the noble and delicate shoulders

  Fall forward, as with those who do

  Hard work. She is already wearing the coarse blouse

  With the patched elbow. Her canvas shoes

  Are still on the dressing table.

  When she has finished she

  Asks eagerly if the drum has arrived

  Which is to create the noise of gunfire

  And if the big net is

  Already hanging. Then she stands up, small figure

  Great fighter

  Ready to don the canvas shoes and show

  How an Andalusian fisherman’s wife

  Fights the generals.

  Glossary/Historical Notes (for Fear and Misery and Señora Carrar)

  Almería: Spanish coastal town, shelled by German fleet on 31 May 1937.

  Aryan: Of Indo-European origin. Term properly used of languages, but serving in Nazi race theory to denote a superior Nordic Germanic breed of human.

  BDM: League of German Maidens. Nazi girls’ organisation.

  Brown: Nazi colour. Brown House: party HQ in Munich, cradle of the movement. Brownshirts: the SA.

  Ersatz: Substitute. A term much used of synthetic materials, whose use was forced on the Nazis by economic problems.

  Goebbels, Josef: Nazi Propaganda Minister (suicide 1945).

  Goering, Hermann: Nazi Economics Minister (suicide 1946).

  Kautzky, Karl: Austrian Socialist leader/theorist of Social-Democracy and opponent of Lenin.

  Labour Service: Conscripted labour force run on quasi-military lines.

  Ley, Dr: Nazi Labour Minister.

  Oranienburg: Early concentration camp near Berlin, better known as Sachsenhausen.

  Queipo de Llano: Spanish Nationalist general. Principal Franco propagandist.

  Racial profanation (Rassenschande): Sexual relations between Aryans and Jews (or Blacks), prohibited in 1934.

  Radio General: Queipo de Llano, q.v.

  Scharführer: Nazi paramilitary officer’s rank.

  Silesia: South-eastern province of Germany, now partly incorporated into Poland.

  Strength through Joy (Kraft durch Freude): Nazi travel and leisure organisation, directed to the workers. Subhumans (Untermenschen): Term used of Slavs, Jews, Blacks and other ‘non-Aryans’.

  Thälmann, Ernst: German Communist Party secretary, imprisoned and executed by the Nazis. Gave his name to German anti-Fascist forces in the Spanish Civil War.

  Thyssen: Dynasty of Rhineland heavy industrialists, who flourished before, during and after Fascism.

  United Front: Short-lived Communist policy of alliance with Socialist rank and file, c. 1934.

  Völkischer Beobachter: Nazi Party daily paper.

  Winter Aid. Nazi relief organisation, distributing clothing and food parcels to the poor.

  DANSEN and

  HOW MUCH IS YOUR IRON?

  Text by Brecht

  NOTE [FOR ‘HOW MUCH IS YOUR IRON?’]

  This little play must be performed in slapstick style. The iron dealer must have a wig with hair that can be made to stand on end; the shoes and cigar are enormous. The backdrop should if possible be plastered with quotations from Scandinavian statesmen.

  [‘Note’ to Was kostet das Eisen, BFA 24, p. 257, for the première, August 1939, in the polytechnic at Tollare, near Stockholm.]

  Editorial Notes

  These two agitprop one-acters, with extremely close references to the contemporary political situation, were written in spring and early summer 1939. Dansen may have been started before Brecht left Denmark (April 1939), with a view to performance by a Danish workers’ theatre group with whom he had contact through Ruth Berlau. The plays were completed together in June, when the Brechts were living on Lidingö near Stockholm, in response to the opportunity – mediated by Henry Peter Matthis and Ruth Berlau – to work with a Swedish amateur theatre group. Only How Much Is Your Iron? was actually performed, with Ruth Berlau as director and in a mixed Danish/Swedish translation. Since Brecht himself was not supposed to take any part in political activities while living in Sweden, he gave the author’s name as John Ken, an echo of his early ‘Ballad of Hannah Cash’. The first script, entitled Little Deals in Iron
(Kleine Geschäfte mit Eisen), was dated by Margarete Steffin ‘Lidingö 2 vi 1939’. About this time Brecht wrote a number of essays on amateur political theatre.

  A fragmentary scene suggests that there was to have been a third playlet, set in the house of Norsen the Norwegian. Dansen and Svendson call to see him, to the sound of thunder and the glow of a distant fire. He reproaches them with giving in so easily and failing to make a threefold alliance against the stranger/customer which would certainly have kept him out. The stranger/customer then appears wearing a steel helmet, takes over the meeting and forces them to make an alliance, but under his protection and in order to carry out his wishes. The three thereupon shake hands.

  Presumably history intervened. The Norsen piece was not finished, Dansen (so far as we know) not performed. None the less he rounded off the latter with three brief dialogues that seem to have been designed as a framework for it, introducing each of the three successive scenes. They go thus:

  Two Scandinavians sitting over breakfast.

  1

  THE OPTIMIST: You are an incorrigible pessimist.

  THE PESSIMIST: And you are an incorrigible optimist.

  THE OPTIMIST: If only you wouldn’t always turn up here with your prophecies just as I am sitting having a meal!

  THE PESSIMIST: When else am I to turn up? You’re always sitting having a meal.

  THE OPTIMIST: But every time I listen to you I lose my appetite.

  THE PESSIMIST: Mine goes every time I see you.

  THE OPTIMIST gives an irritated grunt.

  THE PESSIMIST: It’s bound to end badly. Look at what has happened.

  THE OPTIMIST: What has happened?

  THE PESSIMIST: Shall I tell you a little story to remind you? Eh?

  THE OPTIMIST: All right.

  2

  THE PESSIMIST: Was that, or was that not how it was?

  THE OPTIMIST: An extremely pessimistic view. And a very uncharitable picture of Dansen. Not a word about his undisputed love of freedom, etc., etc.

  THE PESSIMIST: My dear fellow! I was positively flattering Dansen. Now comes his big moment.

  THE OPTIMIST: Really? That sounds promising.

  THE PESSIMIST: Let me just go on with the story.

  3

  THE OPTIMIST: Well?

  THE PESSIMIST: Well what?

  THE OPTIMIST: Well, what’s wrong with that contract? Suppose I go on with the story this time? I’ll show you how the contract is going to work out. You’ll be amazed.

  THE PESSIMIST: I certainly will. Just watch out!

  THE TRIAL OF LUCULLUS

  Texts by Brecht

  LUCULLUS’S TROPHIES

  At the beginning of the year 63 AD Rome was full of unrest. In a series of protracted campaigns Pompey had conquered Asia for the Romans, and now they were filled with fear as they waited for the victor to return. Following his victory of course not only Asia but Rome too was his to do what he liked with.

  On one of those days of tension, a short, thin man issued from a palace situated in the vast gardens along the Tiber and walked as far as the marble steps to meet a visitor. He was the former general Lucullus, and his visitor (who had come on foot) was the poet Lucretius.

  In his time the old general had launched the Asiatic campaign, but thanks to a variety of intrigues Pompey had managed to ease him out of his command. Pompey knew that in many people’s eyes Lucullus was the real conqueror of Asia, and so the latter had every reason to view the victor’s arrival with alarm. He was not receiving all that many visits in those days.

  The general greeted the poet warmly and led him into a small room where he could take some refreshment. The poet however ate nothing but a few figs. His health was poor. His chest troubled him, he could not stand the spring mists.

  At first the conversation contained no reference to political matters, not one word. There was some airing of philosophical questions.

  Lucullus expressed reservations about the treatment of the gods in Lucretius’s didactic poem On the Nature of Things. He considered it was dangerous simply to write off religious feeling as superstition. Religious feeling and morality were the same. Renouncing the one meant renouncing the other. Such superstitious notions as are refutable are bound up with other notions whose value cannot be proved but which are none the less needed etc., etc.

  Lucretius naturally differed and the old general tried to support his views by describing a dream which he had had during one of his Asiatic campaigns – in point of fact the last. ‘It was after the battle of Gasiura. Our position was pretty desperate. We had been counting on some quick victories. Triarus, my deputy at that time, had led his reserves into an ambush. I was forced to extricate him at once or all would have been lost. This at the very moment when the army was becoming dangerously infected with insubordination due to prolonged holdups over pay.

  ‘I was shockingly overworked, and one afternoon I nodded off over the map and had a dream which I will now recount to you.

  ‘We had established our camp by a big river, the Halys, which was in full spate, and I dreamed that I was sitting in my tent at night working on a plan which would definitely destroy my enemy Mithridates. The river was then impassable, and in my dream it split Mithridates’ army in two. If I went ahead and attacked the part on our side of the river it would get no help from the part on the other side.

  ‘Morning came. I paraded the army and saw that the proper sacrifices were carried out before my legions. Since I had had a word with the priest the omens proved exceptionally favourable. I made a great speech in which I referred to our unusually good opportunity to destroy the enemy, to the backing given us by the gods who had filled the river, to the splendidly propitious omens which proved that the gods were looking forward to the battle etc., etc. As I spoke a strange thing happened.

  ‘I was standing fairly high up and had a good view of the plain behind our ranks. Not all that far away I could see the smoke going up from Mithridates’ camp fires. In between the two armies lay fields; the corn in them was already quite tall. To one side, close by the river, was a farm that was about to get flooded. A peasant family was engaged in rescuing its household possessions from the low house.

  ‘Suddenly I saw the peasants waving in our direction. Some of my legionaries apparently heard them shouting and turned round. Four or five men began moving towards them, at first slowly and uncertainly, then breaking into a run.

  ‘But the peasants pointed in the opposite direction. I could see what they meant. A wall of earth had been banked up to our right. The water had undermined it and it was threatening to collapse.

  ‘All this I saw as I went on speaking. It gave me an idea.

  ‘I thrust out my arm and pointed at the wall so that all eyes were turned towards it, raised my voice and said: “Soldiers, this is the hand of the gods! They have ordered the river to break down the enemy’s dyke. In the gods’ name, charge!”

  ‘My dream of course was not entirely clear, but I distinctly remember that moment as I stood in the middle of the whole army and paused for effect while they watched the crumbling dyke.

  ‘It was very brief. Suddenly, with no transition, hundreds of soldiers began running towards the dyke.

  ‘Likewise four or five who had already hastened to the peasants’ assistance started shouting back to us as they helped the family drag the cattle from their stalls. All I could hear was “The dyke! the dyke!”.

  ‘And now there were thousands running that way.

  ‘Those standing behind me ran past me till finally I was swept along too. It was a stream of men, rolling forward against a stream of water.

  ‘I called to the nearest bystanders – by-runners, more like – “On to glory!” “Right, on to the dyke!”, they enthusiastically yelled back as if they had not understood me. “How about the battle?” I yelled. “Later!” they assured me.

  ‘I stood in the way of one disorganised cohort.

  ‘“I command you to halt”, I shouted peremptorily.


  ‘Two or three of them actually halted. One was a tall fellow with a twisted chin, and to this day I have not forgotten him even though I only saw him in a dream. Turning to his comrades he said “Who’s this?”. And it was not mere insolence; he honestly meant it. And equally honestly, as I could see, the others replied “No idea”. Then they all ran on towards the dyke.

  ‘For a short while I stood there alone. Beside me the sacrifices still smouldered on the field altars. But even the priests were following the soldiers down to the river, I saw. A bit more slowly of course, on account of their being fatter.

  ‘Yielding to a preternaturally strong impulse I decided that I too would examine the dyke. Vaguely I felt the thing would have to be organised. I walked along, a prey to conflicting feelings. But soon I broke into a run because I was worried that the operation might be badly directed and the dyke still collapse. This, I suddenly realised, would mean the loss not only of the farm buildings but also of the fields with the half-grown corn. I had, you see, already been infected by everyone else’s feelings.

  ‘When I got there however everything was under control. The fact that our legionaries were equipped with spades for revetting the camp perimeter was a great help. No one thought twice about sticking his sword into the fascines to reinforce them. Shields were used for bringing up earth.