Bertolt Brecht: Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder 4
Page 42
Of brazen statues dragged through
A roaring sea of people! Remember the spectacle!
Think of the coins for the children
And the wine and sausages
As he drove through the city
In the golden chariot.
He, the mighty, the undefeated
The terror of both Asias
Darling of Rome and of the gods.
(2) Add to ‘In the Schoolbooks’:
Sextus conquers Pontus.
And you, Flaccus, conquer the three regions of Gaul.
But you, Quintilian
Cross over the Alps.
(3) Add to ‘The Reception’:
Where, at least, can Lasus my cook be?
A man always able to whip up a little titbit
Out of nothing at all!
If, for example, they had sent him to meet me –
For he is down here too –
I should feel more at home. Oh, Lasus!
Your lamb with the bayleaves and dill!
Cappadocian roast game! Your lobsters from Pontus!
And your Phrygian cakes with bitter berries!
(4) Add to ‘The Reception’:
THE WOMAN:
They’re calling me.
You’ll have to get through as best you can Newcomer.
(5) Add to ‘Choice of Sponsor’:
Silence.
THE JUDGE OF THE DEAD:
Unhappy man! Great names
No longer arouse terror down here.
Here
They can threaten no more. Their utterances
Are counted as lies. Their deeds
Are not recorded. And their fame
To us is like smoke showing
That a fire has once raged.
Shadow, your attitude reveals That mighty enterprises
Are connected with your name.
The enterprises
Are unknown here.
(6) In scene 8, ‘The Frieze is Produced’, substitute after ‘we expect nothing’:
LUCULLUS:
You jurymen of the dead, observe my frieze.
A captured king, Tigranes of Pontus.
His strange-eyed queen. Look at her lovely thighs.
A man with a cherry tree, eating a cherry.
Two girls with a tablet, on it the names of fifty-three cities.
A dying legionary, greeting his general.
My cook with a fish!
CHORUS:
O see, this is how they build themselves monuments
With stony figures of vain sacrifice
To speak or keep silence above.
Lifeless witnesses, those who have been conquered
Robbed of breath, silenced, forgotten
Must face the daylight for their conqueror’s sake
Willing to keep silent and willing to speak.
THE COURT CRIER:
Shadow, the jury take
Note of your triumphal frieze.
They wish to know more about your
Triumphs than your frieze can tell.
They suggest that all those should
Be called who have been portrayed by you
On your frieze.
THE JUDGE OF THE DEAD:
Let them be called.
Always
The victor writes the history of the vanquished.
He who beats
Distorts the faces of the beaten. The weaker
Depart from this world and
The lies remain. Down here we
Have no need of your stones. So many
Of those who crossed your path, General, are with us
Down here – instead of the portrayal
We call those portrayed. We reject the stones
For the shadows themselves.
LUCULLUS:
I object.
I wish not to see them.
VOICES OF THE THREE CITIES:
The victims of General Lucullus
And his Asiatic campaigns!
The shadows of those portrayed on the triumphal frieze emerge from the background and stand opposite the frieze.
[This concludes ‘The Frieze is Produced’. The remainder of p. 282 is cut.]
(7) Add third verse in scene 9, ‘The Hearing’:
Fearfully I looked around
Shrieking for my maidens
While the maidens fearfully
Shrieked from out the bushes.
We were all assaulted.
After the trial performance which the Ministry of Education organised in the Berlin State Opera two interpolations were made as a result of thoroughgoing discussions. The first shows why the king (who in this version appears as a shadow, not merely as a figure on the frieze) has survived a trial similar to that which Lucullus will not.
(8) In ‘The Hearing’, after Lucullus’s ‘Was especially ruthless’, cut the next five lines and substitute:
The silver whose production he favoured
Did not pass through him to the people.
THE TEACHER to the king:
Why then
Are you here amongst us, King?
THE KING:
Because I built cities
Because I defended them when you
Romans demanded them from us.
THE TEACHER:
Not we, him!
THE KING:
Because, to defend my country, I summoned
Man, wife and child
In hedgerow and waterhole
With axe, billhook and ploughshare
By day, by night
By their speech, by their silence
Free or captive
In face of the enemy
In face of death.
THE TEACHER:
I propose that we all
Rise to our feet before this witness
And in honour of those
Who defended their cities.
The jurors rise.
LUCULLUS:
What sort of Romans are you?
Your enemy gets your plaudits!
I did not act for myself
I acted on orders
I was sent by
Rome.
THE TEACHER:
Rome! Rome! Rome!
Who is Rome?
Were you sent by the masons who built her?
Were you sent by the bakers and fishermen
And the peasants and the carters
And the gardeners who feed her?
Was it the tailors and the furriers
And the weavers and the sheepshearers who clothe her?
Were you sent by the marble-polishers
And the wool-dyers who beautify her?
Or were you sent by the tax-farmers
And the silver merchants and the slave dealers
And the bankers of the Forum who plunder her?
Silence.
LUCULLUS:
Whoever sent me:
Rome won
Fifty-three cities, thanks to me.
THE TEACHER:
And where are they?
Jurors, let us question the cities.
TWO YOUNG GIRLS WITH A TABLET:
With streets and people and houses …
[Then continue as on p. 285.]
(9) In ‘The Hearing is Continued’ the next six lines are cut, p. 293.
(10) The Versuche edition of 1951 tacitly substituted a new last scene (14, ‘The Judgement’) for that in our (1940) text entitled ‘The Wheat and the Chaff’. Here it is. The warriors’ chorus was subsequently interpolated in this at (11).
Scene 14
THE JUDGEMENT
THE COURT CRIER:
And up jumps the jurywoman, formerly a fishwife in the market.
THE FISHWIFE:
And have you still got
A penny left in those bloody hands? Does the murderer
Bribe the court with the booty?
THE TEACHER:
A cherry tree! That conquest
&n
bsp; Could have been made
With just one man!
But he sent eighty thousand down here.
THE BAKER:
How much
Must they pay up there
For a glass of wine and a bun?
THE COURTESAN:
Must they always put their skins
On sale in order to sleep with a woman?
THE FISHWIFE:
Yes, into oblivion with him!
THE TEACHER:
Yes, into oblivion with him!
THE BAKER:
Yes, into oblivion with him!
THE COURT CRIER:
And they look at the farmer
Who praised the cherry tree:
Farmer, what do you say?
Silence.
THE FARMER:
Yes, into oblivion with him!
THE JUDGE OF THE DEAD:
Yes, into oblivion with him! For
With all this violence and conquest
Only one realm is extended:
The Realm of Shadows.
THE JURORS:
And already
Our grey underworld
Is full of half-lived lives. Yet here
We have no ploughs for strong arms, nor
Hungry mouths, when above
You have so many of both. What except dust
Can we heap over the
Slaughtered eighty thousand? And you up there
Need homes! How often still
Shall we meet them on our paths which lead nowhere
And hear their terrible eager questions – what
Is the summer like this year, and the autumn
And the winter?
THE COURT CRIER:
And the legionaries on the frieze
Move and cry out:
[(11) Insert chorus of the legionaries (the warriors), see below.]
THE COURT CRIER:
And the slaves who drag the frieze
Move and cry out:
THE SLAVES:
Yes, into oblivion with him! How long
Shall he and his kind sit
Inhumanly above other humans and raise Lazy hands and fling peoples
Against each other in bloody warfare?
How long shall we
And our kind endure them?
ALL:
Yes, into oblivion with him and into oblivion
With all like him!
THE COURT CRIER:
And from the high bench they rise up
The spokesmen of the world-to-be
The world with many hands, to take
The world with many mouths, to eat –
The eagerly gathering
Gladly living world-to-be.
(11) The subsequent interpolation comes near the end of the new final scene, where the warriors who fell in his Asiatic campaigns join in Lucullus’s condemnation.
THE WARRIORS:
In the murderer’s tunic
In the ravager’s plunder gang
We fell
The sons of the people.
Yes, into oblivion with him!
Like the wolf
Who breaks into the herd
And has to be destroyed
We were destroyed
In his service.
Yes, into oblivion with him!
Had we but
Left the aggressor’s service!
Had we but
Joined with the defenders!
Into oblivion with him!
The Condemnation of Lucullus
OPERA BY
PAUL DESSAU AND BERTOLT BRECHT
Translator: H.R. HAYS
Characters:
LUCULLUS, a Roman general (tenor)
Figures on the Frieze:
THE KING (bass)
THE QUEEN (soprano)
TWO CHILDREN (soprano and mezzo)
TWO LEGIONARIES (basses)
LASUS, cook to Lucullus (tenor)
THE CHERRY-TREE BEARER (baritone)
Jury of the Dead:
THE FISHWIFE (contralto)
THE COURTESAN (mezzo)
THE TEACHER (tenor)
THE BAKER (bass)
THE FARMER (bass)
TERTULLIA, an old woman (mezzo)
THREE ROMAN WOMEN (sopranos)
VOICES OF THE THREE WOMEN HERALDS
THE JUDGE OF THE DEAD (high bass)
VOICE OF A WOMAN COMMENTATOR
THE COURT CRIER
THREE HERALDS
TWO GIRLS
TWO MERCHANTS
TWO WOMEN
TWO PLEBEIANS
A DRIVER
Chorus of the crowd; soldiers, slaves, shadows, children
1
THE FUNERAL PROCESSION
Noise of a great crowd.
FIRST HERALD:
Hark, the great Lucullus is dead!
The general who conquered the East
Who overthrew seven kings
Who filled our city of Rome with riches.
SECOND HERALD:
Before his catafalque
Borne by soldiers
Walk the most distinguished men of mighty Rome
With covered faces, beside him
Walk his philosopher, his advocate
And his charger.
SONG OF THE SOLDIERS CARRYING THE CATAFALQUE:
Hold it steady, hold it shoulder-high.
See that it does not waver in front of thousands of eyes
For now the Lord of the Eastern Earth
Betakes himself to the shadows. Take care, do not stumble.
That flesh and metal you bear
Has ruled the world.
THIRD HERALD:
Before him
They drag a tremendous frieze
Setting forth his deeds and destined to be his tombstone.
Once more
The entire people pays its respects to an amazing lifetime
Of victory and conquest
And they remember his former triumphal processions.
SONG OF THE THREE ROMAN WOMEN:
Think of the powerful, think of the unbeatable
Think of the terror of the two Asias
And favourite of Rome and the gods
As he rode through the city on the golden waggon
Bringing you foreign kings and foreign animals!
Think of the coins for the children
And the wine and the sausages!
As he rode through the city
On the golden waggon
He the unbeatable, he the powerful
He the terror of the two Asias
Favourite of Rome and the gods!
SLAVES DRAGGING THE FRIEZE:
Careful, do not stumble!
You who haul the frieze with the scene of triumph
Ay, though the sweat runs down to your eyelids
Still keep your hands to the stone! Think, if you drop it
It might crumble to dust.
A GIRL:
See the red plume! No, the big one.
ANOTHER GIRL:
He squints.
FIRST MERCHANT:
All the senators.
SECOND MERCHANT:
All the tailors too.
FIRST MERCHANT:
Why no, this man has pushed on even to India.
SECOND MERCHANT:
But he was finished long ago
I’m sorry to say.
FIRST MERCHANT:
Greater than Pompey
Rome would have been lost without him.
Enormous victories.
SECOND MERCHANT:
Mostly luck.
FIRST WOMAN:
My Reus
Perished in Asia.
All this fuss won’t bring him back to me.
FIRST MERCHANT:
Thanks to this man
Many a man made a fortune.
SECOND WOMAN:
My brother’s boy too never came home again.
FIRST MERCHANT
:
Everyone knows what Rome reaped, thanks to him
In fame alone.
FIRST WOMAN:
Without their lies
Nobody would walk into the trap.
FIRST MERCHANT:
Heroism, alas
Is dying out.
FIRST PLEBEIAN:
When
Will they spare us this twaddle about fame?
SECOND PLEBEIAN:
Three legions in Cappadocia
Not one left to tell the tale.
A DRIVER:
Can
I get through here?
SECOND WOMAN:
No, it’s closed off.
FIRST PLEBEIAN:
When we bury our generals
Oxcarts must have patience.
SECOND WOMAN:
They dragged my Pulcher before the judge:
Taxes due.
FIRST MERCHANT:
We can say
Except for him Asia would not be ours today.
FIRST WOMAN:
Has tunnyfish jumped in price again?
SECOND WOMAN:
Cheese too.
The noise of the crowd increases.
FIRST HERALD:
Now
They pass through the arch of triumph
Which the city has built for her great son.
The women hold their children high. The mounted men
Press back the ranks of the spectators.
The street behind the procession lies deserted.
For the last time
The great Lucullus has passed through it.
SECOND HERALD:
The procession has disappeared. Now
The street is full again. From the obstructed side-alleys
The carters drive out with their oxcarts. The crowd
Returns to its business, chattering. Busy Rome
Goes back to work.
2
THE BURIAL
CHORUS:
Outside, on the Appian Way
Stands a little structure, built ten years before
Meant to shelter the great man
In death.
Before it, the crowd of slaves that drags the triumphal frieze
Turns in.
Then the little rotunda with the boxtree hedge receives it. The catafalque and the frieze are carried in by soldiers and slaves. After the catafalque has been set down the vast frieze is placed outside the tomb. The soldiers are given the command ‘Fall out!’ and move away.
3
DEPARTURE OF THE LIVING
CHORUS OF SOLDIERS:
So long, Lakalles.
Now we’re quits, old goat.
Out of the boneyard
Up with the glass!
Fame isn’t everything
You’ve got to live too.
Who’ll come along?
Down by the dock
There’s wine and song. You weren’t in step.
I’ll come along.
Be sure of that.
Who’ll pay the bill?
They’ll chalk it up.
Look at his grin!
I’m off to the cattle market.
To the little brunette? Hey, we’ll come along.