from
Life of Galileo
by
Bertolt Brecht

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Foreword by Richard Foreman

Life of Galileo

Category:

drama

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Foreword to Life of Galileo
by Richard Foreman

Copyright © Richard Foreman, 2008

[...] I concluded that as a rule, most people watching a play do so by identifying with story and character, thereby transforming the onstage event as they are watching it, obscuring its reality with the distorting lens of personal involvement and emotional commitment to a breathlessly awaited outcome.

And it was Brecht who provided backup for this theory, justifying my obsession that to highlight the “art” of theater (or anything else) was to savor above all the “facts” of performance set before one in each perceived moment of presence onstage. Brecht’s message was to believe in a kind of theater in which the viewer never abandons the lucid self in a wash of feeling.

Topic:

Theater

text checked (see note) Jul 2009

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Life of Galileo

collaborator: M. Steffin
translated by John Willett

Copyright © Arvid Englind Teaterforlag, a.b., 1940
Copyright renewed Stefan S. Brecht, 1967
Copyright © Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main, 1955
Translation of play copyright © Stefan S. Brecht, 1980

Scene I

Galileo:
[...] What is written in the old books is no longer good enough. For where faith has been enthroned for a thousand years doubt now sits. Everyone says: right, that’s what it says in the books, but let’s have a look for ourselves.

Topic:

Books (general)

Procurator:
[...] As you know, courses in mathematics do not attract new students. Mathematics, so to speak, is an unproductive art. Not that our Republic doesn’t esteem it most highly. It may not be so essential as philosophy or so useful as theology, but it nonetheless offers infinite pleasures to its adepts.

Topic:

Mathematics

Procurator:
[...] Consider the conditions that surround us. The slavery under whose whips the sciences in certain places are groaning. Whips cut from old leather bindings. Nobody there needs to know how a stone falls, merely what Aristotle wrote about it. Eyes are only for reading with. Why investigate falling bodies, when it’s the laws governing grovelling bodies that count?

Galileo:
Yes, I am dissatisfied, and that’s what you’d be paying me for if you had any brains. Because I’m dissatisfied with myself. But instead of doing that you force me to be dissatisfied with you. I admit I enjoy doing my stuff for you gentlemen of Venice in your famous arsenal and in the shipyards and cannon foundries. But you never give me the time to follow up the hunches which come to me there and which are important for my branch of science. That way you muzzle the threshing ox.

Scene 3

Galileo:
[...] Look, Sagredo, I believe in Humanity, which means to say I believe in human reason. If it weren’t for that belief each morning I wouldn’t have the power to get out of bed.

Sagredo:
Then let me tell you something. I don’t. Forty years spent among human beings has again and again brought it home to me that they are not open to reason. Show them a comet with a red tail, scare them out of their wits, and they’ll rush out of their houses and break their legs. But try making one rational statement to them, and back it up with seven proofs, and they’ll just laugh at you.

Galileo:
That’s quite untrue, and it’s a slander. I don’t see how you can love science if that’s what you believe. Nobody who isn’t dead can fail to be convinced by proof.

Sagredo:
How can you imagine their pathetic shrewdness has anything to do with reason?

Galileo:
I’m not talking about their shrewdness. I know they call a donkey a horse when they want to sell it and a horse a donkey when they want to buy. That’s the kind of shrewdness you mean. But the horny-handed old woman who gives her mule an extra bundle of hay on the eve of a journey, the sea captain who allows for storms and doldrums when laying in stores, the child who puts on his cap once they have convinced him that it may rain: these are the people I pin my hopes to, because they all accept proof. Yes, I believe in reason’s gentle tyranny over people. Sooner or later they have to give in to it. Nobody can go on indefinitely watching me—he drops a pebble on the ground—drop a pebble, then say it doesn’t fall. No human being is capable of that. The lure of a proof is too great. Nearly everyone succumbs to it; sooner or later we all do. Thinking is one of the chief pleasures of the human race.

Galileo:
[...] Copernicus, don’t forget, wanted them to believe his figures; but I only want them to believe their eyes. If the truth is too feeble to stick up for itself then it must go over to the attack. I’m going to take them by the scruff of the neck and force them to look through this telescope.

Sagredo:
Galileo, I see you embarking on a frightful road. It is a disastrous night when mankind sees the truth. And a delusive hour when it believes in human reason. What kind of person is said to go into things with his eyes open? One who is going to his doom. How could the people in power give free rein to somebody who knows the truth, even if it concerns the remotest stars? Do you imagine the Pope will hear the truth when you tell him he’s wrong, and not just hear that he’s wrong?

Scene 4

Galileo:
Gentlemen, to believe in the authority of Aristotle is one thing, tangible facts are another. You are saying that according to Aristotle there are crystal spheres up there, so certain motions just cannot take place because the stars would penetrate them. But suppose those motions could be established? Mightn’t that suggest to you that those crystal spheres don’t exist? Gentlemen, in all humility I ask you to go by the evidence of your eyes.

Mathematician:
My dear Galileo, I may strike you as very old-fashioned, but I’m in the habit of reading Aristotle now and again, and there, I can assure you, I trust the evidence of my eyes.

Galileo:
I am used to seeing the gentlemen of the various faculties shutting their eyes to every fact and pretending that nothing has happened. I produce my observations and everyone laughs: I offer my telescope so they can see for themselves, and everyone quotes Aristotle.

Federzoni:
The fellow had no telescope.

Mathematician:
That’s just it.

Philosopher:
If Aristotle is going to be dragged in the mud—that’s to say an authority recognized not only by every classical scientist but also by the chief fathers of the church—then any prolonging of this discussion is in my view a waste of time. I have no use for discussions which are not objective. Basta.

Topics:

Authority

Evidence

Scene 6

The Second Astronomer:
[...] It all started when we began reckoning so many things—the length of the solar year, the dates of solar and lunar eclipses, the position of the heavenly bodies—according to the tables established by Copernicus, who was a heretic.

A Monk:
Which is better, I ask you: to have an eclipse of the moon happen three days later than the calendar says, or never to have eternal salvation at all?

Topic:

Values

The Very Old Cardinal:
[...] I am told that this Mr. Galilei moves mankind away from the centre of the universe and dumps it somewhere on the edge. Clearly this makes him an enemy of the human race. We must treat him as such. Mankind is the crown of creation, as every child knows, God’s highest and dearest creature. How could He take something so miraculous, the fruit of so much effort, and lodge it on a remote, minor, constantly elusive star? Would he send His Son to such a place?

Scene 7

Galileo:
How can you go on playing old-style chess? Cramped, cramped. Nowadays the play is to let the chief pieces roam across the whole board. The rooks like this—he demonstrates—and the bishops like that and the Queen like this and that. That way you have enough space and can plan ahead.

First Secretary:
It wouldn’t go with our small salaries, you know. We can only do moves like this.

Galileo:
You’ve got it wrong, my friend, quite wrong. If you live grandly enough you can afford to sweep the board. One has to move with the times, gentlemen. Not just hugging the coasts; sooner or later one has to venture out.

Note (Hal’s):
This is a cute image, but demonstrates Brecht’s disinterest in facts if they interfere with his preconceptions. (Oddly, that’s the very attitude he’s criticizing in this play.)

The modern moves, with broader scope, for the chess queen and bishop were indeed becoming popular in Galileo’s time, but except for castling (conceptually and historically treated as a privilege of the king), the rook move of modern chess was standard for a millennium prior to Galileo.

— end note

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 explicitly guaranteed, Mr. Galilei. In line with the Church’s view that it is impossible for us to know, but legitimate for us to explore. 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:
What destroys faith is invoking it.

Scene 8

The Little Monk:
[...] 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?

The Little Monk:
But don’t you think that the truth will get through without us, so long as it’s true?

Galileo:
No, no, no. The only truth that gets through will be what we force through: the victory of reason will be the victory of people who are prepared to reason, nothing else.

Topic:

Truth

Scene 9

Galileo:
Listen to me: someone who doesn’t know the truth is just thick-headed. But someone who does know it and calls it a lie is a crook.

Topic:

Lies

Galileo:
One of the main reasons why the sciences are so poor is that they imagine they are so rich. It isn’t their job to throw open the door to infinite wisdom but to put a limit to infinite error.

Topic:

Science

Galileo:
[...] Our new thoughts call for people who work with their hands. Who else cares about knowing the causes of things? People who only see bread on their table don’t want to know how it got baked; that lot would sooner thank God than thank the baker. But the people who make the bread will understand that nothing moves unless it has been made to move.

Topic:

Labor

Galileo:
[...] My object is not to establish that I was right but to find out if I am. Abandon hope, I say, all ye who enter on observation. They may be vapours, they may be spots, but before we assume they are spots—which is what would suit us best—we should assume that they are fried fish. In fact we shall question everything all over again. And we shall go forward not in seven-league boots but at a snail’s pace. And what we discover today we shall wipe off the slate tomorrow and only write it up again once we have again discovered it. And whatever we wish to find we shall regard, once found, with particular mistrust.

Topic:

Science

Scene 12

The Pope:
I am not going to have the multiplication table broken. No!

The Inquisitor:
Ah, it’s the multiplication table, not the spirit of insubordination and doubt: that’s what these people will tell you. But it isn’t the multiplication table. No, a terrible restlessness has descended on the world. It is the restlessness of their own brain which these people have transferred to the unmoving earth. They shout ‘But look at the figures’. But where do their figures come from? Everybody knows they originate in doubt. These people doubt everything. Are we to base human society on doubt and no longer on faith? [...] Given the weakness of their flesh and their liability to excesses of all kinds, what would the effect be if they were to believe in nothing but their own reason, which this maniac has set up as the sole tribunal? They would start by wondering if the sun stood still over Gibeon, then extend their filthy scepticism to the offertory box. Ever since they began voyaging across the seas—and I’ve nothing against that—they have placed their faith in a brass ball they call a compass, not in God. This fellow Galileo was writing about machines even when he was young. With machines they hope to work miracles. What sort? God anyhow is no longer necessary to them, but what kind of miracle is it to be? The abolition of top and bottom, for one. They’re not needed any longer. Aristotle, whom they otherwise regard as a dead dog, has said—and they quote this—that once the shuttle weaves by itself and the plectrum plays the zither of its own accord, then masters would need no apprentice and lords no servants. And they think they are already there.

Scene 13

Andrea:
Unhappy the land that has no heroes!

[... Multiple speeches intervene before this reply. ...]

Galileo:
No. Unhappy the land where heroes are needed.

Topic:

Heroes

Scene 14

Galileo:
[...] Even a wool merchant has not only to buy cheap and sell dear but also to ensure that the wool trade continues unimpeded. The pursuit of science seems to me to demand particular courage in this respect. It deals in knowledge procured through doubt. Creating knowledge for all about all, it aims to turn all of us into doubters. Now the bulk of the population is kept by its princes, landlords and priests in a pearly hate of superstition and old saws which cloak what these people are up to. The poverty of the many is as old as the hills, and from pulpit and lecture platform we hear that it is as hard as the hills to get rid of. Our new art of doubting delighted the mass audience. They tore the telescope out of our hands and trained it on their tormentors, the princes, landlords and priests. [...] If the scientists, brought to heel by self-interested rulers, limit themselves to piling up knowledge for knowledge’s sake, then science can be crippled and your new machines will lead to nothing but new impositions. You may in due course discover all that there is to discover, and your progress will nonetheless be nothing but a progress away from mankind. The gap between you and it may one day become so wide that your cry of triumph at some new achievement will be echoed by a universal cry of horror. —As a scientist I had a unique opportunity. In my day astronomy emerged into the market place. Given this unique situation, if one man had put up a fight it might have had tremendous repercussions. Had I stood firm the scientists could have developed something like the doctors’ Hippocratic oath, a vow to use their knowledge exclusively for mankind’s benefit. As things are, the best that can be hoped for is a race of inventive dwarfs who can be hired for any purpose.

Topic:

Galileo

text checked (see note) Jul 2009

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