Brecht Collected Plays: 5: Life of Galileo; Mother Courage and Her Children (World Classics) (17 page)

FEDERZONI
: We’re starting up the earth-round-the-sun act again.

ANDREA
hums:

It’s fixed, the Scriptures say. And so

Orthodox science proves.

The Holy Father grabs its ears, to show

It’s firmly held. And yet it moves.

Andrea, Federzoni and the little monk hurry to the work table and clear it
.

ANDREA
: We might find that the sun goes round too. How would that suit you, Marsili?

LUDOVICO
: What’s the excitement about?

MRS SARTI
: You’re not going to start up that devilish business again, surely, Mr Galilei?

GALILEO
: Now I know why your mother sent you to me. Barberini in the ascendant! Knowledge will become a passion and research an ecstasy. Clavius is right, those sunspots interest me. Do you like my wine, Ludovico?

LUDOVICO
: I told you I did, sir.

GALILEO
: You really like it?

LUDOVICO
stiffly:
I like it.

GALILEO
: Would you go so far as to accept a man’s wine or his daughter without asking him to give up his profession? What has my astronomy got to do with my daughter? The phases of Venus can’t alter my daughter’s backside.

MRS SARTI
: Don’t be so vulgar. I am going to fetch Virginia.

LUDOVICO
holding her back:
Marriages in families like ours are not based on purely sexual considerations.

GALILEO
: Did they stop you from marrying my daughter for eight years because I had a term of probation to serve?

LUDOVICO
: My wife will also have to take her place in our pew in the village church.

GALILEO
: You think your peasants will go by the saintliness of their mistress in deciding whether to pay rent or not?

LUDOVICO
: In a sense, yes.

GALILEO
: Andrea, Fulganzio, get out the brass reflector and the screen! We will project the sun’s image on it so as to protect our eyes; that’s your method, Andrea.
Andrea and the little monk fetch reflector and screen
.

LUDOVICO
: You did sign a declaration in Rome, you know, sir, saying you would have nothing more to do with this earth-round-the-sun business.

GALILEO
: Oh that. In those days we had a reactionary pope.

MRS SARTI
: Had! And His Holiness not even dead yet!

GALILEO
: Almost. Put a grid of squares on the screen. We will do this methodically. And then we’ll be able to answer their letters, won’t we, Andrea?

MRS SARTI
: ‘Almost’ indeed. The man’ll weigh his pieces of ice fifty times over, but as soon as it’s something that suits his book he believes it blindly.
The screen is set up
.

LUDOVICO
: If His Holiness does die, Mr Galilei, irrespective who the next pope is and how intense his devotion to the sciences, he will also have to take into account the devotion felt for him by the most respected families in the land.

THE LITTLE MONK
: God made the physical world, Ludovico; God made the human brain; God will permit physics.

MRS SARTI
: Galileo, I am going to say something to you. I have watched my son slipping into sin with all those ‘experiments’ and ‘theories’ and ‘observations’ and there was nothing I could do about it. You set yourself up against the authorities and they have already warned you once. The highest cardinals spoke to you like a sick horse. That worked for a
time, but then two months ago, just after the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, I caught you secretly starting your ‘observations’ again. In the attic. I didn’t say much but I knew what to do. I ran and lit a candle to St Joseph. It’s more than I can cope with. When I get you on your own you show vestiges of sense and tell me you know you’ve got to behave or else it’ll be dangerous; but two days of experiments and you’re just as bad as before. If I choose to forfeit eternal bliss by sticking with a heretic that’s my business, but you have no right to trample all over your daughter’s happiness with your great feet.

GALILEO
gruffly:
Bring the telescope.

LUDOVICO
: Giuseppe, take our luggage back to the coach.
The servant goes out
.

MRS SARTI
: She’ll never get over this. You can tell her yourself.
Hurries off, still carrying the jug
.

LUDOVICO
: I see you have made your preparations. Mr Galilei, my mother and I spend three quarters of each year on our estate in the Campagna, and we can assure you that our peasants are not disturbed by your papers on Jupiter and its moons. They are kept too busy in the fields. But they could be upset if they heard that frivolous attacks on the church’s sacred doctrines were in future to go unpunished. Don’t forget that the poor things are little better than animals and get everything muddled up. They truly are like beasts, you can hardly imagine it. If rumour says a pear has been seen on an apple tree they will drop their work and hurry off to gossip about it.

GALILEO
:
interested:
Really?

LUDOVICO
: Beasts. If they come up to the house to make some minor complaint or other, my mother is forced to have a dog whipped before their eyes, as the only way to recall them to discipline and order and a proper respect. You, Mr Galilei, may see rich cornfields from your coach as you pass, you eat our olives and our cheese, without a thought, and you have no idea how much trouble it takes to produce them, how much supervision.

GALILEO
: Young man, I do not eat my olives without a
thought.
Roughly:
You’re holding me up.
Calls through the door:
Got the screen?

ANDREA
: Yes. Are you coming?

GALILEO
: You whip other things than dogs for the sake of discipline, don’t you, Marsili?

LUDOVICO
: Mr Galilei. You have a marvellous brain. Pity.

THE LITTLE MONK
amazed:
He’s threatening you.

GALILEO
: Yes, I might stir up his peasants to think new thoughts. And his servants and his stewards.

FEDERZONI
: How? None of them can read Latin.

GALILEO
: I might write in the language of the people, for the many, rather than in Latin for the few. 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. Your sister pressing olives, Fulganzio, won’t be astounded but will probably laugh when she hears that the sun isn’t a golden coat of arms but a motor: that the earth moves because the sun sets it moving.

LUDOVICO
: You will always be the slave of your passions. Make my excuses to Virginia; I think it will be better if I don’t see her.

GALILEO
: Her dowry will remain available to you, at any time.

LUDOVICO
: Good day.
He goes
.

ANDREA
: And our kindest regards to all the Marsilis.

FEDERZONI
: Who command the earth to stand still so their castles shan’t tumble down.

ANDREA
: And the Cenzis and the Villanis!

FEDERZONI
: The Cervillis!

ANDREA
: The Lecchis!

FEDERZONI
: The Pirleonis!

ANDREA
: Who are prepared to kiss the pope’s toe only if he uses it to kick the people with!

THE LITTLE MONK
likewise at the instruments:
The new pope is going to be an enlightened man.

GALILEO
: So let us embark on the examination of those spots on the sun in which we are interested, at our own risk and without banking too much on the protection of a new pope.

ANDREA
interrupting:
But fully convinced that we shall dispel Mr Fabricius’s star shadows along with the sun vapours of Paris and Prague, and establish the rotation of the sun.

GALILEO
: Somewhat convinced that we shall establish the rotation of the sun. 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 that 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. So we shall approach the observation of the sun with an irrevocable determination to establish that the earth does
not
move. Only when we have failed, have been utterly and hopelessly beaten and are licking our wounds in the profoundest depression, shall we start asking if we weren’t right after all, and the earth does go round.
With a twinkle:
But once every other hypothesis has crumbled in our hands then there will be no mercy for those who failed to research, and who go on talking all the same. Take the cloth off the telescope and point it at the sun!

He adjusts the brass reflector
.

THE LITTLE MONK
: I knew you had begun working on this. I knew when you failed to recognise Mr Marsili.
In silence they begin their observations. As the sun’s flaming image appears on the screen Virginia comes running in in her wedding dress
.

VIRGINIA
: You sent him away, Father.

She faints. Andrea and the little monk hurry to her side
.

GALILEO
: I’ve got to know.

10

During the next decade Galileo’s doctrine spreads among the common people. Ballad-singers and pamphleteers everywhere take up the new ideas. In the carnival of 1632 many Italian cities choose astronomy as the theme of their guilds’ carnival processions.

A half-starved couple of fairground people with a baby and a five-year-old girl enter a market-place where a partly masked crowd is awaiting the carnival procession. The two of them are carrying bundles, a drum and other utensils
.

THE BALLAD-SINGER
drumming:
Honoured inhabitants, ladies and gentlemen! To introduce the great carnival procession of the guilds we are going to perform the latest song from Florence which is now being sung all over north Italy and has been imported by us at vast expense. It is called: Ye horrible doctrine and opinions of Messer Galileo Galilei, physicist to the court, or A Foretaste of ye Future.
He sings:

When the Almighty made the universe

He made the earth and then he made the sun.

Then round the earth he bade the sun to turn –

That’s in the Bible, Genesis, Chapter One.

And from that time all creatures here below

Were in obedient circles meant to go.

So the circles were all woven:

Around the greater went the smaller

Around the pace-setter the crawler

On earth as it is in heaven.

Around the pope the cardinals

Around the cardinals the bishops

Around the bishops the secretaries

Around the secretaries the aldermen

Around the aldermen the craftsmen

Around the craftsmen the servants

Around the servants the dogs, the chickens and the beggars.

That, good people, is the Great Order of things, ordo ordinum as the theologians call it, regula aeternis, the rule of rules; but what, dear people, happened?

Sings:

Up stood the learned Galilei

(Chucked away the Bible, whipped out his telescope, took a quick look at the universe.)

And told the sun ‘Stop there.

From now the whole creatio dei

Will turn as I think fair:

The boss starts turning from today

His servants stand and stare.’

Now that’s no joke, my friends, it is no matter small.

Each day our servants’ insolence increases

But one thing’s true, pleasures are few. I ask you all:

Who wouldn’t like to say and do just as he pleases?

Honourable inhabitants, such doctrines are utterly impossible.

He sings:

The serf stays sitting on his arse.

This turning’s turned his head.

The altar boy won’t serve the mass

The apprentice lies in bed.

No, no, my friends, the Bible is no matter small

Once let them off the lead indeed all loyalty ceases

For one thing’s true, pleasures are few. I ask you all:

Who wouldn’t like to say and do just as he pleases?

Good people all, kindly take a glance at the future as foretold by the learned Doctor Galileo Galilei:

Two housewives standing buying fish

Don’t like the fish they’re shown

The fishwife takes a hunk of bread

And eats them up alone.

The mason clears the building site

And hauls the builders’ stone.

And when the house is finished quite

He keeps it as his own.

Can such things be, my friends? It is no matter small

For independent spirit spreads like foul diseases.

But one thing’s true, pleasures are few. I ask you all:

Who wouldn’t like to say and do just as he pleases?

The tenant gives his landlord hell

Not caring in the least.

His wife now feeds her children well