Brecht Collected Plays: 3: Lindbergh's Flight; The Baden-Baden Lesson on Consent; He Said Yes/He Said No; The Decision; The Mother; The Exception & the ... St Joan of the Stockyards (World Classics)
Page 44
PEOPLE (below, to God): D’you mind keeping your cigar smoke down?
A MAN: It’s getting dreadfully cold again.
THE OLD GENTLEMAN: Just listen. Shut up!
A WOMAN: Who’s that fellow with the starched collar? I bet you’re warm enough under that topcoat.
SECOND WOMAN: What’s he doing down here in any case?
THE OLD GENTLEMAN: If my face doesn’t fit I can go away.
A MAN: Stop! Stay there! Let’s know where you’re from.
THE OLD GENTLEMAN: I’m having no truck with you. Rude people.
WOMAN: He started walking, and now he’s running like a ferret. What kind of dirt is he trying to pick up?
Joan comes down.
PEOPLE: Your companion has left you, Miss.
JOAN: Has he? (She goes off to look for him, returns alone.) I couldn’t catch up with him. He’s got a longer stride than me, and he’s scared.
An anonymously typed outline for scene 10, leading up to Joan’s death against the background of the blazing city, reintroduces God under His proper name once more. It starts -
Major Snyder’s last effort to stop God being driven out of Chicago for good and all. He asks the removal men to wait a few hours before taking away the furniture; he also pacifies the bandsmen, who think they are not going to be paid.
Mauler then appears ‘dirty, shattered, full of new awareness, liberated and happy’ and pushes his way to the penitents’ bench. He confesses and Snyder breaks down, asking where all his money has got to?
There must be a way of showing that it is money alone that thinks and that survives. However, ‘the happy end begins’ and God comes back to hear Mauler tell Slift and the others his plan for burning the surplus livestock. Two short fragments affirm God’s ignorance of such matters:
I oughtn’t to come back, but last night I learnt a lesson. Conditions are truly wretched. (He is given soup.) How kind. Forgive the intrusion. Am I intruding? Of course I am all-knowing. But the prices on the exchange are more than I can foresee. Nobody can do that.
The second is headed ‘God’s outburst’ and goes:
I’ve been reading a book about the trade cycle. It says crises depend on natural laws. But tell me, surely I’m supposed to know something about those? Absolutely not! I’ve never had anything whatever to do with economics. Economics just doesn’t exist for me. I’ve never interfered with it and I don’t propose to.
A passage of dialogue fleshes this out:
Snyder, Mauler and a stockbreeder are talking to The Old Gentleman.
SNYDER: This is Mr Pierpont Mauler, our beloved meat king.
THE OLD GENTLEMAN: Delighted.
SNYDER: Mr Mauler has a suggestion to make to You for the benefit of the general welfare.
MAULER: I don’t wish to give offence, but before discussing details with You I would like to ask where You stand on the labour question.
THE OLD GENTLEMAN: Er.
MAULER: So where do You stand?
THE OLD GENTLEMAN: Well, that’s a strictly economic problem.
MAULER: Thank You. And now to the details.
Sound of whispering.
There is a prolonged conversation in the course of which The Old Gentleman’s initial head-shaking starts changing to a nod of acquiescence.
THE BLACK STRAW HATS:
See, He shakes His head!
See, He doesn’t like it!
Oh, we must leave our happy home
The organ and the penitents’ bench, yes we too
Are economically at risk.
Oh, if only His glance would fall on us!
THE STOCK BREEDERS:
At least He has abandoned
That terrible head-shaking! If only He would agree
And we could go back bearing the happy message:
‘The price of meat is going up!’
If only He would look across at us!
SNYDER:
Thank God! He is nodding! Everything is for the best
Both for Him and for us.
[All these and other incomplete scenes and passages are published in Gisela Bahr’s ‘edition suhrkamp’ volume Bertolt Brecht. Die heilige Johanna der Schlachthöfe. Bühnenfassung, Fragmente, Variante (Frankfurt a/M, 1971).]
Final scene of the stage script
Much as in Caspar Neher’s stage design for the finale of Happy End, which likewise centres on the chorus ‘Hosanna Rockefeller’, the setting here is not the refurbished mission house of all subsequent versions, but as follows:
In the background are big illuminated church windows portraying Rockefeller and Mauler. A screen depicts a steer being burned.
[Snyder and Joan deliver their opening verses, but the two policemen do not appear. Nor does Mauler speak until the last page of the play. Instead the chorus of Black Straw Hats have other stanzas as a counterpoint to Joan’s speeches, thus after ‘entrusted to me’ on p. 304:]
So at last we’re almost there
So we fold our hands in prayer
May God bless us every day
Moth-like by His light attracted.
As a human here she acted
So it’s here she lost her way.
[continuing with the words later given to Mauler, from ‘Man with his high-flown’ (p. 305). Then Joan’s speech ‘The factories are humming again’, followed by the chorus:]
Man should moderate his pacing
Deserts match the planets’ motions
And the coasts define the oceans.
All depends which way one’s facing!
[Thence approximately as now from ‘I spoke in all’ to ‘When cash and spirit wed’. Then the cattle raise their voice:]
FIVE OXEN:
Food can only come our way
When your hunger needs relief,
Sympathise with us, we pray:
Eat more
Beef!
[Thence as now from Joan’s ‘One thing I’ve learned!’ (p. 305) to ‘a better world’, followed by Snyder’s announcement of her illness (p. 308). Then Joan continues ‘For there is a gulf’ to ‘ceased to know each other’. The first verse of ‘Hosanna Rockefeller’ is sung, leading on to ‘Those at the bottom’ and ‘Any building that goes up’, in reverse order to our text. From ‘Be good! Be wise!’ (p. 307) to ‘Word of God’ (p. 307) is omitted, as are Slift’s three lines. Joan therefore continues ‘So anyone down here’ to ‘until he croaks’, followed by verse two of the chorus, then her ‘And those preachers’ followed by verse three. Then, in lieu of the loudspeaker slogans,]
During the third verse the girls have been trying to make Joan eat a plate of soup. She twice pushes it away. The third time she takes hold of it, raises it up and tips the soup out. Then she collapses. [Snyder announces her death, as on p. 310, then the cattle are heard again:]
FOUR PIGS:
You are people, we are gammon
God says you can’t be mistaken
If you go on eating bacon
And serving Mammon!
THE BUTCHERS:
Man, two warring souls reside
Deep down in you!
Once you realise that’s true
One must be the other’s bride!
WORKERS:
If no food can come our way
And you bring us no relief
We who want to live must pray
There’ll be jobs for man and wife.
Buy us!
BUTCHERS:
And what is it binds us so?
It’s love!
What unites us, friend and foe?
It’s love!
Love that the calf feels for its butcher
Love of the butcher for his calf.
Love that leaves the mean man richer
And makes him laugh.
Calf and butcher see the picture:
Both go straying off the path.
Both alike depend on science
God’s prescribed to make them big.
Hence the permanent a
lliance
Between Christian, ox and pig.
THE BLACK STRAW HATS:
He whose mouth’s not just a slot that
Stays tight shut to higher things
Let him use the mouth he’s got that
Sometimes eats but often sings.
[continuing ‘Selling and buying’ as on p. 307. Then the Packers and Stockbreeders speak the first of the three closing stanzas (‘Mankind’s inbuilt’) followed by Mauler’s ‘A razor-sharp dichotomy’; but instead of the last stanza as we now have it, they all speak the quatrain:]
May to link them both together
Become his aim
Merge their qualities for ever
Pig and human just the same.
During the closing stanzas we come to see the basis on which all are standing: the whole stage is being carried by a dark mass of workers. End of Act Five.
From the stage script to the Versuche edition of 1932
Apart from the different last scene and the introduction of the scene titles, the 1932 publication is very largely the same as the stage script of the previous year. It is also to a great extent the final version, since the amendments for the Malik edition were not very substantial and of doubtful value to the play, and the editors of the extensive new ‘Berlin and Frankfurt’ edition of 1988 have accordingly decided to use it in lieu of the hitherto canonical GW text. Perhaps the articulation is slightly less clear than in the stage script, since the sub-scenes – notably in Joan’s first and third ‘descents into the depths’ are not distinguished by letters nor are the scenes grouped into Acts. It adds the brief scene 2(b) ‘P. Mauler’, the singing of ‘Watchful, be watchful’ from Happy End in scene 2(d) and rearranges the latter so as to end with the Black Straw Hats’ chorus and Joan’s last line as now.
Scenes 3, 4 and 5 are practically unchanged. In Scene 6 Joan’s simile ‘the way we’d catch a cricket’ is added after ‘We’d lure him out of his hole’ on p. 247 echoing the scene title (which is also new). Her singing of the Brandy-peddler’s (or Grog-seller’s) song from Happy End while Mauler is thinking on p. 248 is now omitted. An earlier suggestion that she should sing the Sailors’ Song from the same work had been dropped.
In scene 7 there is some uncertainty as to the number of Packers mentioned, but clearly in fact they are four. Scene 8 has some small changes and rearrangement of lines but is essentially unaltered. Joan’s dream speech in 9(a) loses its last sentence: ‘I am/Hungry’, and she speaks it alone. 9(b) is unchanged. 9(c) was previously much longer; Jackson seems to be a leftover from Happy End who is otherwise replaced by Snyder. The episode ends with the start of a new theme: the four lines where Joan and A Worker discuss the Communists as the only people doing anything. This is expanded slightly in the Malik text.
9(d), the Livestock Exchange, is unchanged and constitutes the final version. In 9(e), Another Part of the Yards, where Joan is given the strike letter, she now appears before the Workers’ Leader speaks; she is looking for ways to help something to happen. The Leader’s speech itself is rewritten, and close to the final text, though Mrs Luckerniddle is not yet present. 9(f) also is barely changed, apart from the resetting of some verse passages to read as prose. In 9(g), the Stockyards, the exchanges between Joan and the Reporters are new, and lead into her speech about ‘the system’ which was previously near the end of 9(c). The noise of shooting and the appearance of the arrested workers are pushed back towards the end of the episode, along with a new verse exchange about the use of force (which Joan discourages and the workers think inevitable). This too is subsequently expanded. 9(h) with Mauler and his two detectives remains the same all through. In the ‘Deserted section’ which follows as 9(i), Joan has to hear two workers saying that ‘the communists were right’ and that not all the messages can have been delivered, before hearing her ‘Voices’ as in the stage script. In the final (GW) version a different 9(i) is inserted, and the ‘Voices’ episode follows the same encounter with the two workers as 9(j) ‘Another section’, bringing the scene to an end.
The penultimate Scene 10 in the mission house is virtually unchanged right through, apart from some minor rearrangements, up to the beginning of the Black Straw Hats’ ‘Welcome’ chorus on p. 299. This is the point in the stage script where the final canonisation scene begins. In the Versuche version the chorus is included, and is followed by an additional episode ‘Stockyards. Area outside the Lennox plant’s warehouses’, which ends with Joan falling in a faint. In the Malik edition this episode becomes scene XI and a new, even shorter episode which follows it (where workers with lanterns identify Mrs Luckerniddle’s body) is scene XII. In GW these two additions are strung together as scene 11, (a) and (b). The texts remain the same, and in each case the final ‘Death and Canonisation’ scene follows, numbered 11, XIII or 12.
The final scene was largely rewritten for Versuche, and thereafter not changed. It is as given in our text.
Svendborg amendments and additions
The need to make further changes around 1937 was presumably due partly to the proposed Copenhagen production and partly to the preparation of the new Malik edition. At the same time Brecht evidently did feel some obligation to strengthen the hand of the workers’ spokesmen and distinguish between socialist gradualism and the more militant attitude of the Communists. It also seems likely that his exile from the German theatre made him want to write a better part for Helene Weigel, who had played Mrs Luckerniddle in the 1932 radio production. She is the character whose unseen husband fell into one of Mauler’s rendering tanks in scene 4, apart from which she barely figures in the stage script except when eating the twenty (implicitly cannibalistic) canteen meals she is given as compensation. Now she becomes a political activist and Communist sympathiser for whose dead body the workers in the new scene XII send out a search party – a rather sketchy Chicago equivalent to Pelagea Vlassova, the part played by Weigel in Brecht’s The Mother. The mixture of these conflicting features hardly displays conviction: an awkward piece of dramaturgical cross-breeding.
Presumably to stress the husband’s fate, Mauler’s aide Slift in scene 3 describes the ‘new system’ of killing hogs in a verse speech based clearly on the account in chapter III of The Jungle. Other touches are introduced to emphasise Joan’s failure to deliver the workers’ letter of warning during the strike. Not all Joan’s hesitations are new, however, nor every reference to Communism or Bolschewismus; some are suggested in the Versuche or even the stage script. But the new role given to Mrs Luckerniddle in the second half of the play does seem designed to make Socialist reformism appear more suicidal, the language of the ending more bitterly farcical, and Joan’s eventual canonisation that much more ironic.
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This edition first published in Great Britain in 1997 by Methuen Drama
by arrangement with Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main
Reissued with a new cover 1998
Lindbergh’s Flight, The Baden-Baden Lesson on Consent, He Said Yes/He Said No, The Decision,
The Mother, The Exception and the Rule and The Horatians and the Curiatians first published in these
translations in Great Britain in hardback in 1997 by Methuen Drama Ltd.
Reprinted by Bloomsbury Methuen Drama 2013
St Joan of the Stockyards first published in this translation in Great Britain in
hardback and paperback in 1991 by Methuen London Ltd.
Introduction and editorial notes © 1991, 1997 by Methuen Drama
Copyright in the original plays is as follows:
Lindbergh’s Flight: Original work entitled Der Flug der Lind
berghs
© Bertolt-Brecht-Erben/Suhrkamp Verlag 1959
Translation © Bertolt-Brecht-Erben 1997
The Baden-Baden Lesson on Consent: Original work entitled Das Badener Lehrstück vom Einverständnis
© Bertolt-Brecht-Erben/Suhrkamp Verlag 1955
Translation © Bertolt-Brecht-Erben 1997
He Said Yes: Original work entitled Der Jasager
© Bertolt-Brecht-Erben/Suhrkamp Verlag 1955
Translation © Bertolt-Brecht-Erben 1997
He Said No: Original work entitled Der Neinsager
© Bertolt-Brecht-Erben/Suhrkamp Verlag 1955
Translation © Bertolt-Brecht-Erben 1997
The Decision: Original work entitled Die Massnahme
© Bertolt-Brecht-Erben/Suhrkamp Verlag 1955
Translation © Bertolt-Brecht-Erben 1997
The Mother: Original work entitled Die Mutter
© Bertolt-Brecht-Erben/Suhrkamp Verlag 1957
Translation © Bertolt-Brecht-Erben 1997
The Exception and the Rule: Original work entitled Die Ausnahme und die Regel
© Bertolt-Brecht-Erben/Suhrkamp Verlag 1957
Translation © Bertolt-Brecht-Erben 1997
The Horatians and the Curiatians: Original work entitled Die Horatier and die Kuriatier
© Bertolt-Brecht-Erben/Suhrkamp Verlag 1957
Translation © Bertolt-Brecht-Erben 1997
St Joan of the Stockyards: Original work entitled Die Heilige Johanna der Schlachthöfe
© 1955 by Bertolt-Brecht-Erben/Suhrkamp Verlag
Translation © Bertolt-Brecht-Erben 1991
Acknowledgement is due to George Allen & Unwin (Publishers) Ltd for permission to publish the translation and adaptation
made by Brecht of Arthur Waley’s English translation of Taniko from The Nō Plays of Japan
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