Brecht Collected Plays: 5: Life of Galileo; Mother Courage and Her Children (World Classics)

by Bertolt Brecht

THE FIRST SECRETARY: The first carnival since the plague years. All Italy’s great families are represented here tonight. The Orsinis, the Villanis, the Nuccolis, the Soldanieris, the Canes, the Lecchis, the d’Estes, the Colombinis …

  SECOND SECRETARY interrupting: Their Eminences Cardinals Bellarmin and Barberini.

  Enter Cardinal Bellarmin and Cardinal Barberini. They are holding sticks with the masks of a lamb and a dove over their faces.

  BARBERINI pointing at Galileo: The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.’ So says Solomon, and what does Galileo say?

  GALILEO: When I was so high – he indicates with his hand – your Eminence, I stood on a ship and called out The shore is moving away.’ Today I realise that the shore was standing still and the ship moving away.

  BARBERINI: Ingenious, ingenious – what our eyes see, Bellarmin, in other words the rotation of the starry heavens, is not necessarily true – witness the ship and the shore. But what is true – i.e. the rotation of the earth – cannot be perceived. Ingenious. But his moons of Jupiter are a tough nut for our astronomers to crack. Unfortunately I once studied some astronomy, Bellarmin. It sticks to you like the itch.

  BELLARMIN: We must move with the times, Barberini. If new star charts based on a new hypothesis help our mariners to navigate, then they should make use of them. We only disapprove of such doctrines as run counter to the Scriptures. He waves toward the ballroom in greeting.

  GALILEO: The Scriptures … ‘He that withholdeth corn, the people shall curse him.’ Proverbs of Solomon.

  BARBERINI: ‘A prudent man concealeth knowledge.’ Proverbs of Solomon.

  GALILEO: ‘Where no oxen are the crib is clean: but much increase is by the strength of the ox.’

  BARBERINI: ‘He that ruleth his spirit is better than he that taketh a city.’

  GALILEO: ‘But a broken spirit drieth the bones.’ Pause.‘Doth not wisdom cry?’

  BARBERINI: ‘Can one go upon hot coals, and his feet not be burned?’ – Welcome to Rome, Galileo my friend. You know its origins? Two little boys, so runs the legend, were given milk and shelter by a she-wolf. Since that time all her children have had to pay for their milk. The she-wolf makes up for it by providing every kind of pleasure, earthly and heavenly, ranging from conversations with my friend Bellar-min to three or four ladies of international repute; let me point them out to you …

  He takes Galileo upstage to show him the ballroom. Galileo follows reluctantly.

  BARBERINI: No? He would rather have a serious discussion. Right. Are you sure, Galileo my friend, that you astronomers aren’t merely out to make astronomy simpler for yourselves? He leads him forward once more. You think in circles and ellipses and constant velocities, simple motions such as are adapted to your brains. Suppose it had pleased God to make his stars more like this? With his finger he traces an extremely complicated course at an uneven speed. What would that do to your calculations?

  GALILEO: Your Eminence, if God had constructed the world like that – he imitates Barberini’s course – then he would have gone on to construct our brains like that, so that they would regard such motions as the simplest. I believe in men’s reason.

  BARBERINI: I think men’s reason is not up to the job. Silence. He’s too polite to go on and say he thinks mine is not up to the job.

  Laughs and walks back to the balustrade.

  BELLARMIN: Men’s reason, my friend, does not take us very far. All around us we see nothing but crookedness, crime and weakness. Where is truth?

  GALILEO angrily: I believe in men’s reason.

  BARBERINI to the secretaries: You needn’t take this down; it’s a scientific discussion among friends.

  BELLARMIN: Think for an instant how much thought and effort it cost the Fathers of the Church and their countless successors to put some sense into this appalling world of ours. Think of the brutality of the landowners in the Campagna who have their half-naked peasants flogged to work, and of the stupidity of those poor people who kiss their feet in return.

  GALILEO: Horrifying. As I was driving here I saw …

  BELLARMIN: We have shifted the responsibility for such occurrences as we cannot understand – life is made up of them – to a higher Being, and argued that all of them contribute to the fulfilment of certain intentions, that the whole thing is taking place according to a great plan. Admittedly this hasn’t satisfied everybody, but now you come along and accuse this higher Being of not being quite clear how the stars move, whereas you yourself are. Is that sensible?

  GALILEO starts to make a statement: I am a faithful son of the Church …

  BARBERINI: He’s a terrible man. He cheerfully sets out to convict God of the most elementary errors in astronomy. I suppose God hadn’t got far enough in his studies before he wrote the Bible; is that it? My dear fellow …

  BELLARMIN: Wouldn’t you also think it possible that the Creator had a better idea of what he was making than those he has created?

  GALILEO: But surely, gentlemen, mankind may not only get the motions of the stars wrong but the Bible too?

  BELLARMIN: But isn’t interpreting the Bible the business of Holy Church and her theologians, wouldn’t you say?

  Galileo is silent.

  BELLARMIN: You have no answer to that, have you? He makes a sign to the secretaries: Mr Galilei, tonight the Holy Office decided that the doctrine of Copernicus, according to which the sun is motionless and at the centre of the cosmos, while the earth moves and is not at the centre of the cosmos, is foolish, absurd, heretical and contrary to our faith. I have been charged to warn you that you must abandon this view.

  GALILEO: What does this mean?

  From the ballroom boys can be heard singing a further verse of the madrigal.

  I said: This lovely springtime cannot last

  So pluck your roses before May is past.

  Barberini gestures Galileo not to speak till the song is finished. They listen.

  GALILEO: And the facts? I understand that the Collegium Romanum had approved my observations.

  BELLARMIN: And expressed their complete satisfaction, in terms very flattering to you.

  GALILEO: But the moons of Jupiter, the phases of Venus …

  BELLARMIN: The Holy Congregation took its decision without going into such details.

  GALILEO: In other words, all further scientific research …

  BELLARMIN: Is explicity guaranteed, Mr Galilei. In line with the Church’s view that it is impossible for us to know, but legitimate for us to explore. He again greets a guest in the ballroom. You are also at liberty to treat the doctrine in question mathematically, in the form of a hypothesis. Science is the rightful and much-loved daughter of the Church, Mr Galilei. None of us seriously believes that you want to shake men’s faith in the Church.

  GALILEO angrily: What destroys faith is invoking it.

  BARBERINI: Really? He slaps him on the shoulder with a roar of laughter. Then he gives him a keen look and says in a not unfriendly manner: Don’t tip the baby out with the bathwater, Galileo my friend. We shan’t. We need you more than you need us.

  BELLARMIN: I cannot wait to introduce Italy’s greatest mathematician to the Commissioner of the Holy Office, who has the highest possible esteem for you.

  BARBERINI taking Galileo’s other arm: At which he turns himself back into a lamb. You too, my dear fellow, ought really to have come disguised as a good orthodox thinker. It’s my own mask that permits me certain freedoms today. Dressed like this I might be heard to murmur: If God didn’t exist we should have to invent him. Right, let’s put on our masks once more. Poor old Galileo hasn’t got one. They put Galileo between them and escort him into the ballroom.

  FIRST SECRETARY: Did you get that last sentence?

  SECOND SECRETARY: Just doing it. They write rapidly. Have you got that bit where he said he believes in men’s reason?

  Enter the Cardinal Inquisitor.

  THE INQUISITOR: Did the conversation take place? />
  FIRST SECRETARY mechanically: To start with Mr Galilei arrived with his daughter. She has become engaged today to Mr … The Inquisitor gestures him not to go on. Mr Galilei then told us about the new way of playing chess in which, contrary to all the rules, the pieces are moved right across the board.

  THE INQUISITOR with a similar gesture: The transcript. A secretary hands him the transcript and the cardinal sits down and skims through it. Two young ladies in masks cross the stage; they curtsey to the cardinal.

  ONE YOUNG LADY: Who’s that?

  THE OTHER: The Cardinal Inquisitor.

  They giggle and go off. Enter Virginia, looking around for something.

  THE INQUISITOR from his corner: Well, my daughter?

  VIRGINIA gives a slight start, not having seen him: Oh, your Eminence …

  Without looking up, the Inquisitor holds out his right hand to her. She approaches and kisses his ring.

  THE INQUISITOR: A splendid night. Permit me to congratulate you on your engagement. Your future husband comes from a distinguished family. Are you staying long in Rome?

  VIRGINIA: Not this time, your Eminence. A wedding takes so much preparing.

  THE INQUISITOR: Ah, then you’ll be returning to Florence like your father. I am glad of that. I expect that your father needs you. Mathematics is not the warmest of companions in the home, is it? Having a creature of flesh and blood around makes all the difference. It’s easy to get lost in the world of the stars, with its immense distances, if one is a great man.

  VIRGINIA breathlessly: You are very kind, your Eminence. I really understand practically nothing about such things.

  THE INQUISITOR: Indeed? He laughs. In the fisherman’s house no one eats fish, eh? It will tickle your father to hear that almost all your knowledge about the world of the stars comes ultimately from me, my child. Leafing through the transcript: It says here that our innovators, whose acknowledged leader is your father – a great man, one of the greatest – consider our present ideas about the significance of the dear old earth to be a little exaggerated. Well, from Ptolemy’s time – and he was a wise man of antiquity – up to the present day we used to reckon that the whole of creation – in other words the entire crystal ball at whose centre the earth lies – measured about twenty thousand diameters of the earth across. Nice and roomy, but not large enough for innovators. Apparently they feel that it is unimaginably far-flung and that the earth’s distance from the sun – quite a respectable distance, we always found it – is so minute compared with its distance from the fixed stars on the outermost sphere that our calculations can simply ignore it. So who can say that the innovators themselves aren’t living on a very grand scale?

  Virginia laughs. So does the Inquisitor.

  THE INQUISITOR: True enough, there are a few gentlemen of the Holy Office who have started objecting, as it were, to such a view of the world, compared with which our picture so far has been a little miniature such as one might hang round the neck of certain young ladies. What worries them is that a prelate or even a cardinal might get lost in such vast distances and the Almighty might lose sight of the Pope himself. Yes, it’s very amusing, but I am glad to know that you will remain close to your great father whom we all esteem so highly, my dear child. By the way, do I know your Father Confessor …?

  VIRGINIA: Father Christophorus of Saint Ursula.

  THE INQUISITOR: Ah yes, I am glad that you will be going with your father. He will need you; perhaps you cannot imagine this, but the time will come. You are still so young and so very much flesh and blood, and greatness is occasionally a difficult burden for those on whom God has bestowed it; it can be. No mortal is so great that he cannot be contained in a prayer. But I am keeping you, my dear child, and I’ll be making your fiance jealous and maybe your father too by telling you something about the stars which is possibly out of date. Run off and dance; only mind you remember me to Father Christophorus. Virginia makes a deep bow and goes.

  8

  A conversation

  Galileo, feeling grim,

  A young monk came to visit him.

  The monk was born of common folk.

  It was of science that they spoke.

  In the Florentine Ambassador’s palace in Rome Galileo is listening to the little monk who whispered the papal astronomer’s remark to him after the meeting of the Collegium Romanum.

  GALILEO: Go on, go on. The habit you’re wearing gives you the right to say whatever you want.

  THE LITTLE MONK: I studied mathematics, Mr Galilei.

  GALILEO: That might come in handy if it led you to admit that two and two sometimes makes four.

  THE LITTLE MONK: Mr Galilei, I have been unable to sleep for three days. I couldn’t see how to reconcile the decree I had read with the moons of Jupiter which I had observed. Today I decided to say an early mass and come to you.

  GALILEO: In order to tell me Jupiter has no moons?

  THE LITTLE MONK: No. I have managed to see the wisdom of the decree. It has drawn my attention to the potential dangers for humanity in wholly unrestricted research, and I have decided to give astronomy up. But I also wanted to explain to you the motives which can make even an astronomer renounce pursuing that doctrine any further.

  GALILEO: I can assure you that such motives are familiar to me.

  THE LITTLE MONK: I understand your bitterness. You have in mind certain exceptional powers of enforcement at the Church’s disposal.

  GALILEO: Just call them instruments of torture.

  THE LITTLE MONK: But I am referring to other motives. Let me speak about myself. My parents were peasants in the Campagna, and I grew up there. They are simple people. They know all about olive trees, but not much else. As I study the phases of Venus I can visualise my parents sitting round the fire with my sister, eating their curded cheese. I see the beams above them, blackened by hundreds of years of smoke, and I see every detail of their old worn hands and the little spoons they are holding. They are badly off, but even their misfortunes imply a certain order. There are so many cycles, ranging from washing the floor, through the seasons of the olive crop to the paying of taxes. There is a regularity about the disasters that befall them. My father’s back does not get bent all at once, but more and more each spring he spends in the olive groves; just as the successive childbirths that have made my mother increasingly sexless have followed well-defined intervals. They draw the strength they need to carry their baskets sweating up the stony tracks, to bear children and even to eat, from the feeling of stability and necessity that comes of looking at the soil, at the annual greening of the trees and at the little church, and of listening to the Bible passages read there every Sunday. They have been assured that God’s eye is always on them – probingly, even anxiously – that the whole drama of the world is constructed around them so that they, the performers, may prove themselves in their greater or lesser roles. What would my people say if I told them that they happen to be on a small knob of stone twisting endlessly through the void round a second-rate star, just one among myriads? What would be the value or necessity then of so much patience, such understanding of their own poverty? What would be the use of Holy Scripture, which has explained and justified it all – the sweat, the patience, the hunger, the submissiveness – and now turns out to be full of errors? No: I can see their eyes wavering, I can see them letting their spoons drop, I can see how betrayed and deceived they will feel. So nobody’s eye is on us, they’ll say. Have we got to look after ourselves, old, uneducated and worn-out as we are? The only part anybody has devised for us is this wretched, earthly one, to be played out on a tiny star wholly dependent on others, with nothing revolving round it. Our poverty has no meaning: hunger is no trial of strength, it’s merely not having eaten: effort is no virtue, it’s just bending and carrying. Can you see now why I read into the Holy Congregation’s decree a noble motherly compassion; a vast goodness of soul?

  GALILEO: Goodness of soul! Aren’t you really saying that there’s nothing for them, t
he wine has all been drunk, their lips are parched, so they had better kiss the cassock? Why is there nothing for them? Why does order in this country mean the orderliness of a bare cupboard, and necessity nothing but the need to work oneself to death? When there are teeming vineyards and cornfields on every side? Your Campagna peasants are paying for the wars which the representative of gentle Jesus is waging in Germany and Spain. Why does he make the earth the centre of the universe? So that the See of St Peter can be the centre of the earth! That’s what it is all about. You’re right, it’s not about the planets, it’s about the peasants of the Campagna. And don’t talk to me about the beauty given to phenomena by the patina of age! You know how the Margaritifera oyster produces its pearl? By a mortally dangerous disease which involves taking some unassimilable foreign body, like a grain of sand, and wrapping it in a slimy ball. The process all but kills it. To hell with the pearl, give me the healthy oyster. Virtues are not an offshoot of poverty, my dear fellow. If your people were happy and prosperous they could develop the virtues of happiness and prosperity. At present the virtues of exhaustion derive from exhausted fields, and I reject them. Sir, my new pumps will perform more miracles in that direction than all your ridiculous superhuman slaving. – ‘Be fruitful and multiply’, since your fields are not fruitful and you are being decimated by wars. Am I supposed to tell your people lies?

  THE LITTLE MONK much agitated: We have the highest of all motives for keeping our mouths shut – the peace of mind of the less fortunate.

  GALILEO: Would you like me to show you a Cellini clock that Cardinal Bellarmin’s coachman brought round this morning? My dear fellow, authority is rewarding me for not disturbing the peace of mind of people like your parents, by offering me the wine they press in the sweat of their countenance which we all know to have been made in God’s image. If I were to agree to keep my mouth shut my motives would be thoroughly low ones: an easy life, freedom from persecution, and so on.

  THE LITTLE MONK: Mr Galilei, I am a priest.

  GALILEO: You’re also a physicist. And you can see that Venus has phases. Here, look out there! He points at the window. Can you see the little Priapus on the fountain next the laurel bush? The god of gardens, birds and thieves, rich in two thousand years of bucolic indecency. Even he was less of a liar. All right, let’s drop it. I too am a son of the Church. But do you know the eighth Satire of Horace? I’ve been rereading it again lately, it acts as a kind of counterweight. He picks up a small book. He makes his Priapus speak – a little statue which was then in the Esquiline gardens. Starting: