Brecht Collected Plays: 1: Baal; Drums in the Night; In the Jungle of Cities; Life of Edward II of England; & 5 One Act Plays: "Baal", "Drums in the Night", "In the Jungle of Ci (World Classics) (51 page)

In 1919 the scene is rewritten. It is a bedroom in the summer, and several phrases of the dialogue survive into the final version. It is now Baal who says, ‘Do you realize we’ve got no money?’ The cabaret is not mentioned.

In 1922 there is no song, and the scene is set out of doors in May, as we have it.

[7] In 1918 there is an unnamed compère instead of Mjurk. There is no Lupu and no mention of the agreement about schnaps. The dialogue is differently phrased, but the only major differences from the ultimate version are: (1) the irruption of a group of Young Artists, who tell Baal: ‘Your latest poem in the
Phoebus
is good, but too affectedly simple – Princess Ebing’s taking an interest in you. She’s hot stuff. Lucky fellow!’; (2) the song which Baal sings, dressed in tails and a child’s sailor hat, which goes roughly:

If a woman’s hips are ample

Then I want her in the hay

Skirt and stockings all a-rumple

(cheerfully) – for that’s my way.

If the woman bites in pleasure

Then I wipe it clean with hay

My mouth and her lap together

(thoroughly) – for that’s my way.

If the woman goes on loving

When I feel too tired to play

I just smile and go off waving

(amiably) – for that’s my way.

The 1919 version is textually the same, except for the replacement of ‘Compère’ by ‘Nigger John’ throughout. For Nigger John, see below.

In 1922 Mjurk, Lupu, and the final song make their appearance. There is a typescript of the song dated 21 January 1920.

[8] Basically the same in all versions.

[15] 1918 and 1919 (slightly lengthened) versions show Ekart talking about his pale-faced girl as an experience of the past; Baal goes to sleep while he is talking about her. The poem which Baal recites to him is not the ‘Drowned Girl’ (as in the 1922 text) but ‘The Song of the Cloud in the Night’ (in the collected poems).

[17] In 1918 the scene is set outside a country tavern. The text is almost word for word the same as in the final version, apart from some slight variations in the poem ‘Death in the Forest’, until what is now the end of the scene. Thereupon Baal says ‘I’ll go and get one’ (i.e., a woman), and breaks into the dance which has started inside the tavern. There is almost a fight with the man whose
partner Baal pulls away from him, then Baal suddenly crumples and leaves.

In 1919 the setting becomes ‘Maple Trees in the Wind’, and the dance episode is detached to make a separate short scene, which Brecht dropped in the third version.

[18] The 1918 and 1919 versions are almost identical apart from the absence of Johannes from the former and certain differences in the arrangement of the verses. Baal here arrives, on the top of his form, having sold a book of his poems to a publisher. ‘I want meat! What’s your name, kids, and what’s your price? I’m as choosy as a vicar. But watch what I can do. I’ll pay for everything!’ He orders champagne (in the final version there is an allusion to this left after the third verse of the Ballad) and, with Luise on his knee (who does not yet look like Sophie) sings an obscene, blasphemous, and largely untranslatable song about the Virgin. Watzmann, whose character was even then unexplained, sings in lieu of ‘The trees come in avalanches’:

When the hatred and venom he’s swallowed

Are more than his gullet can take

He may well draw a knife from his pocket

And languidly sever his neck.

At the end of the scene, before Baal attacks Ekart, Ekart tries to get Luise off his lap, saying, ‘Oh, rubbish! Gentlemen! Let’s drink to fair shares between brothers!’

There is a draft of January 1920 showing the waitress with Sophie’s features and Baal a wreck, as in the 1922 text, which also substitutes the new dialogue between Baal and Ekart at the end.

[20] The dialogue between the two policemen is little changed. In 1918 and 1919 three other professions are attributed to Baal: gardener, city clerk, and journalist. Those of roundabout proprietor, woodcutter, and millionairess’s lover only appear in the 1922 version.

[22] This scene has remained essentially unchanged from the 1918 version, apart from Baal’s last speech, which both there and in 1919 runs:

Dear God. Gone.
Groans
. It’s not so simple. My God, it’s not so simple. If only I. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Not much help. Dear God.
Dear
God.
Feverishly
: Mother! Send Ekart away! Oh, Mary! The sky’s so damned near. Almost touch it. My heart’s thumping. One. Two. Three. Four.
Whimpers, then alt of a sudden, loudly
: I can’t. I won’t. It’s stifling here.
Quite distinctly
: It must be clear outside. I want to.
Raising himself with difficulty
. Baal, I want to go out.
Sharply
: I’m not a rat.
He tumbles off the bed, and falls
. Hell. Dear God! As far as the door!
He crawls to the threshold
. Stars … hm.
He crawls out
.

In the 1922 version the five invocations of God and one of Mary are replaced by the three invocations of ‘Dear Baal’.

Other scenes:—

Seven further scenes were cut or telescoped with others when Brecht revised the play in 1919. Two of these represent a loss to the narrative: 9, which shows Baal arrested on Corpus Christi day because he is drunkenly outraged by the cutting of branches for the procession, and scene 11, where a theatre review which he has written is rejected by the manager of his newspaper, and the editor then sacks him. The main points of the other five scenes (which elaborate the affairs with Emmy and Johanna, show him being visited in prison by his mother, and later forcing an unnamed girl to sell herself for him) are incorporated in or anticipated by other changes.

There are three new long scenes in the 1919 revision, and five others of which two appear in this version only. The long ones are [10] the scene over the body of the dead woodcutter Teddy, [13] the Bolleboll-Gougou scene, and [9] Baal’s pretence of buying bulls. The two scenes subsequently cut are scene 8, immediately following the first Sophie scene, where the barman Nigger John offers Baal (in a top hat) a job in his cabaret; and scene 19, preceding the ‘Death in the Forest’ scene, where Baal, Ekart and a new girl called Anna try to get a night’s lodging. A man opens his window and says that Anna can come in his room and the others sleep in the hay.

ANNA
: I’m so frightened. I don’t want to be alone.

BAAL
: You won’t be alone.

The man says he can offer them soup with milk and fresh bread. ‘The young lady gets the cream, hahaha.’

ANNA
: I must do whatever you want, but I’m sure it’s not right.

BAAL
: Nonsense. Warmth is right and soup is right. Get on in! You’ve been a burden so far; now you can make yourself useful.

The other new scenes are [12], where Baal and Ekart abandon the pregnant Sophie; an early version of [11], with Baal and Ekart in a hut in the winter; and the very short [14], in the undergrowth by the river, where Baal says, ‘I don’t care for women any longer …’

In the 1922 text the position of all these new scenes is changed relatively to the basic framework. Four more are added, of which [4 ii], where the two sisters visit Baal’s room, is the most substantial. [5] with the drunk tramp restores the point of one of the scenes cut in 1919. [16] is the scene with Ekart’s pale red-haired girl, now very much part of the present. [19] is Baal’s brief passage across the stage ‘10° East of Greenwich’. Nine scenes are cut, including the two 1919 additions mentioned above and the detached (quarrel at the dance) episode of [17]. The others are two scenes with Baal’s mother, who is thus eliminated from the play (one, originally scene 4, showing her reprimanding her son for his drunkenness, the other preceding the last tavern scene and showing her on her deathbed); a scene following the cabaret episode, with Baal arrested by the police in a café; and the next scene after that, with Baal in prison being reasoned with by a clergyman:

CLERGYMAN
: You’re sinking deeper all the time.

BAAL
: Thanks to my immense weight. But I enjoy it. I’m going down. Aren’t I? But I’m doing all right, aren’t I? Am I going off course? Am I a coward? Am I trying to stave off the consequences? Am I scared of you? Death and I are friends. Hardship’s my whore. I’m humbler than you.

CLERGYMAN
: You’re too light to go under. You cheerful bankrupt.

BAAL
: Sometimes I’m like a diver whose cables and breathing tubes have been cut, going for a walk all alone in the depths.

CLERGYMAN
: Nothing is so terrible as loneliness. Nobody is alone with us. We are all brothers.

BAAL
: Being alone has so far been my strength. I don’t want a second man in my skin …

Finally, two short scenes are deleted near the end of the play: one with a moralizing Baal interrupting lovers on a park bench, the other between [20] and [21], where Baal, on the run at night, tries vainly to get a peasant girl to walk with him.

This later typescript is published in the second of Dieter Schmidt’s volumes, and is subtitled ‘Dramatic Biography by Bertolt Brecht. (Stage adaptation of “Baal”.)’ It consists of the nine basic scenes in shortened and largely rewritten form, plus [12] and [19], and a new short scene only found in this version (scene 9 below). All except scene I are given titles. Some of the names are spelt differently. The play begins with seven verses of the Hymn (verses 1, 2, 4, and the last four) sung by Baal, who then leaves the stage.

Scene 1. Room with dining table.

Enter Mäch, Emilie Mäch, Johannes Schmidt, Dr Piller, Baal
.

MÄCH
while Baal stands eating at the buffet
: I think I may claim to have been the first to foresee your path to those heights of fame for which born geniuses are predestined. Genius has always suffered persecution; as it listens in its unworldly way to higher voices it is brought down to the cold realities of the world. I would like to think that my salon had been the first to welcome you, before the distinction of the Kleist Prize snatches you away from us. Will you have a glass of wine? …

Johannes says that Baal sings his poems to the taxi-drivers.

MÄCH
: Fantastic.

EMILIE:

With cynical penury of airy poems

Of an orange-flavoured bitterness

Chilled on ice, black Malayan

Hair over the eyes! O opium smoke! …

Is that really by you?

JOHANNES
: That’s Herr Baal’s. They generally give him three glasses of kirsch for each song. And one glass for a look at the special instrument he invented, which he says posterity will know as Baal’s original tin-stringed banjo.

MÄCH
: Fantastic.

JOHANNES
: It’s in a café at a goods station.

EMILIE
: I suppose you’ve read a great deal?

MÄCH
: Just let him eat in peace for the moment. Let him recover. Art’s hard work too, you know. Help yourself to brandy, Hennessy, it’s all there.

EMILIE
: You live in a garage?

BAAL:
64a Holzstrasse.

MÄCH
: Fantastic. Weren’t you a mechanic?

EMILIE:

In wind-crazed huts of light paper

O you bitterness and gaiety of the world

When the moon, that soft white animal

Falls out of colder skies.

Apart from one remark of Baal’s, who announces: ‘In the year 1904 Joseph Mäch gives Baal a light for his cigar,’ the last two-thirds of the scene are close to our version from after the last remark of the Young Lady (on p. 8) to the end. Then the Servant is cut (as in 1922) and, after Johannes has asked if he may visit Baal, Emilie says: ‘I don’t know. I like him. He needs looking after.’ Then a new closing speech from Baal:

It’s raining. At the time of the Flood they all went into the ark. All the animals, by agreement. The only time the creatures of this world have ever agreed about anything. They really all did come. But the ichthyosaurus didn’t. Everybody said he should get on board, but he was very busy just then. Noah himself warned him the Flood was coming. But he quietly said, ‘I don’t believe it’. He was universally unpopular when he drowned. Ah yes, they all said, the ichthyosaurus won’t be coming. He was the oldest beast of them all, well qualified by his great experience to say whether such a thing as a Flood was or was not feasible. It’s very possible that if a similar situation ever arises I shan’t get on board either.

Baal’s Unhesitating Abuse of Divine Gifts.

Scene 2. Garage.

The tone is drier, but essentially the scene is a condensed version of the Baal-Johannes scene as we have it, except that it ends with Baal saying not ‘you should avoid it’ but ‘I think you should bring her to me’.

Baal Abuses his Power over a Woman.

Scene 3. ‘Pub.’

Baal, Eckart, a tart. Taxi-drivers at the bar
.

ECKART
: I’m on the move. I’ve had just about enough of this town. Last night I slept with this lady and realized that I’m too grown up for that sort of thing. My advice is to hang all ovaries on the hook once and for all. I’m for freedom of movement till one’s forty-five. Plato says the same if I’m not mistaken.

BAAL
: Where are you going?

ECKART
: The South of France, I think. Apart from anything else they seem to have a different type of town there. The plan is different, to start with, because there’s enough light and that guarantees order. Are you coming?

BAAL
: Got any money?

ECKART
: Up to a point.

BAAL
: Enough for a train?

ECKART
: Enough for feet.

BAAL
: When are you off?

ECKART
: Today. I’m leaving this pub at eleven-thirty.