Brecht Collected Plays: 5: Life of Galileo; Mother Courage and Her Children (World Classics) (19 page)

THE POPE
: That’s very bad taste; I shall tell him.

THE INQUISITOR
: He agitates some of them and bribes others. The north Italian ports are insisting more and more that they must have Mr Galilei’s star charts for their ships. We’ll have to give in to them, material interests are at stake.

THE POPE
: But those star charts are based on his heretical theories. They presuppose certain motions on the part of the heavenly bodies which are impossible if you reject his doctrine. You can’t condemn the doctrine and accept the charts.

THE INQUISITOR
: Why not? It’s the only way.

THE POPE
: This shuffling is getting on my nerves. I cannot help listening to it.

THE INQUISITOR
: It may speak to you more persuasively than I can, your Holiness. Are all these people to leave here with doubt in their hearts?

THE POPE
: After all the man is the greatest physicist of our time, the light of Italy, and not just any old crank. He has friends. There is Versailles. There’s the Viennese Court. They’ll call Holy Church a cesspool of decomposing prejudices. Hands off him!

THE INQUISITOR
: Practically speaking one wouldn’t have to push it very far with him. He is a man of the flesh. He would give in immediately.

THE POPE
: He enjoys himself in more ways than any man I
have ever met. His thinking springs from sensuality. Give him an old wine or a new idea, and he cannot say no. But I won’t have any condemnation of the physical facts, no war cries of ‘Up the Church’ ‘Up Reason’. I let him write his book on condition that he finished it by saying that the last word lay with faith, not science. He met that condition.

THE INQUISITOR
: But how? His book shows a stupid man, representing the view of Aristotle of course, arguing with a clever one who of course represents Mr Galilei’s own; and which do you think, your Holiness, delivers the final remark?

THE POPE
: What did you say? Well, which of them expresses our view?

THE INQUISITOR
: Not the clever one.

THE POPE
: Yes, that is an impertinence. All this stamping in the corridors is really unbearable. Is the whole world coming here?

THE INQUISITOR
: Not the whole of it but its best part.
Pause. The Pope is now in his full robes
.

THE POPE
: At the very most he can be shown the instruments.

THE INQUISITOR
: That will be enough, your Holiness. Instruments are Mr Galilei’s speciality.

13

Before the Inquisition, on June 22nd 1633, Galileo recants his doctrine of the motion of the earth

June twenty-second, sixteen thirty-three

A momentous day for you and me.

Of all the days that was the one

An age of reason could have begun.

In the Florentine ambassador’s palace in Rome. Galileo’s pupils are waiting for news. Federzoni and the little monk are
playing new-style chess with its sweeping moves. In one corner Virginia kneels saying the Ave Maria
.

THE LITTLE MONK
: The Pope wouldn’t receive him. No more discussions about science.

FEDERZONI
: That was his last hope. It’s true what he told him years back in Rome when he was still Cardinal Barberini:

We need you. Now they’ve got him.

ANDREA
: They’ll kill him. The Discorsi will never get finished.

FEDERZONI
gives him a covert look:
You think so?

ANDREA
: Because he’ll never recant.

Pause
.

THE LITTLE MONK
: You keep getting quite irrelevant thoughts when you can’t sleep. Last night for instance I kept on thinking, he ought never to have left the Venetian Republic.

ANDREA
: He couldn’t write his book there.

FEDERZONI
: And in Florence he couldn’t publish it.

Pause
.

THE LITTLE MONK
: I also wondered if they’d let him keep his little stone he always carries in his pocket. His proving stone.

FEDERZONI
: You don’t wear pockets where they’ll be taking him.

ANDREA
shouting:
They daren’t do that! And even if they do he’ll not recant. ‘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.’

FEDERZONI
: I don’t believe it either and I wouldn’t want to go on living if he did it. But they do have the power.

ANDREA
: Power can’t achieve everything.

FEDERZONI
: Perhaps not.

THE LITTLE MONK
softly:
This is his twenty-fourth day in prison. Yesterday was the chief hearing. And today they’re sitting on it.
Aloud, as Andrea is listening:
That time I came to see him here two days after the decree we sat over there and he showed me the little Priapus by the sundial in the garden – you can see it from here – and he compared his own work with a poem by Horace which cannot be altered either. He talked about his sense of beauty, saying that was what
forced him to look for the truth. And he quoted the motto ‘Hieme et aestate, et prope et procul, usque dum vivam et ultra’. And he was referring to truth.

ANDREA
to the little monk:
Have you told him the way he stood in the Collegium Romanum when they were testing his tube? Tell him!
The little monk shakes his head
. He behaved just as usual. He had his hands on his hams, thrust out his tummy and said ‘I would like a bit of reason, please, gentlemen.’

Laughing, he imitates Galileo
.

Pause
.

ANDREA
referring to Virginia:
She is praying that he’ll recant.

FEDERZONI
: Leave her alone. She’s been all confused ever since they spoke to her. They brought her father confessor down from Florence.

The individual from the Grand-Ducal palace in Florence enters
.

INDIVIDUAL
: Mr Galilei will be here shortly. He may need a bed.

FEDERZONI
: Have they released him?

INDIVIDUAL
: It is expected that Mr Galilei will recant around five o’clock at a full sitting of the Inquisition. The great bell of St Mark’s will be rung and the text of his recantation will be proclaimed in public.

ANDREA
: I don’t believe it.

INDIVIDUAL
: In view of the crowds in the streets Mr Galilei will be brought to the garden gate here at the back of the palace.

Exit
.

ANDREA
suddenly in a loud voice:
The moon is an earth and has no light of its own. Likewise Venus has no light of its own and is like the earth and travels round the sun. And four moons revolve round the planet Jupiter which is on a level with the fixed stars and is unattached to any crystal sphere. And the sun is the centre of the cosmos and motionless, and the earth is not the centre and not motionless. And he is the one who showed us this.

THE LITTLE MONK
: And no force will help them to make what has been seen unseen.

Silence
.

FEDERZONI
looks at the sundial in the garden:
Five o’clock.
Virginia prays louder
.

ANDREA
: I can’t wait any more. They’re beheading the truth.
He puts his hands over his ears, as does the little monk. But the bell is not rung. After a pause filled only by Virginia’s murmured prayers, Federzoni shakes his head negatively. The others let their hands drop
.

FEDERZONI
hoarsely:
Nothing. It’s three minutes past the hour.

ANDREA
: He’s holding out.

THE LITTLE MONK
: He’s not recanting.

FEDERZONI
: No. Oh, how marvellous for us!

They embrace. They are ecstatically happy
.

ANDREA
: So force won’t do the trick. There are some things it can’t do. So stupidity has been defeated, it’s not invulnerable. So man is not afraid of death.

FEDERZONI
: This truly is the start of the age of knowledge. This is the hour of its birth. Imagine if he had recanted.

THE LITTLE MONK
: I didn’t say, but I was worried silly. O ye of little faith!

ANDREA
: But I knew.

FEDERZONI
: Like nightfall in the morning, it would have been.

ANDREA
: As if the mountain had said ‘I’m a lake’.

THE LITTLE MONK
kneels down weeping:
Lord, I thank thee.

ANDREA
: But today everything is altered. Man, so tormented, is lifting his head and saying ‘I can live’. Such a lot is won when even a single man gets to his feet and says No.
At this moment the bell of Saint Mark’s begins to toll. All stand rigid
.

VIRGINIA
gets up:
The bell of Saint Mark’s. He is not damned!
From the street outside we hear the crier reading Galileo’s recantation:

CRIER’S VOICE
: ‘I, Galileo Galilei, teacher of mathematics and physics in Florence, abjure what I have taught, namely that
the sun is the centre of the cosmos and motionless and the earth is not the centre and not motionless. I foreswear, detest and curse, with sincere heart and unfeigned faith, all these errors and heresies as also any error and any further opinion repugnant to Holy Church.’

It grows dark
.

When the light returns the bell is still tolling, but then stops. Virginia has left. Galileo’s pupils are still there
.

FEDERZONI
: You know, he never paid you for your work. You could never publish your own stuff or buy yourself new breeches. You stood for it because it was ‘working for the sake of science’.

ANDREA
loudly:
Unhappy the land that has no heroes!

Galileo has entered, so completely changed by his trial as to be almost unrecognisable. He has heard Andrea’s remark. For a few moments he stands at the gate waiting to be greeted. When he is not, and his pupils back away from him, he goes slowly and, on account of his bad eyes, uncertainly forward till he finds a stool and sits down
.

ANDREA
: I can’t look at him. Get him away.

FEDERZONI
: Calm down.

ANDREA
yells at Galileo:
Wine-pump! Snail-eater! Did you save your precious skin?
Sits down:
I feel ill.

GALILEO
quietly:
Give him a glass of water.

The little monk fetches Andrea a glass of water from outside. The others do nothing about Galileo, who sits on his stool and listens. Outside the crier’s voice can again be heard in the distance
.

ANDREA
: I think I can walk with a bit of help.

They escort him to the door. At this juncture Galileo starts to speak
.

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

A reading before the curtain:

Is it not obvious that a horse falling from a height of three or four ells will break its legs, whereas a dog would not suffer any damage, nor would a cat from a height of eight or nine ells, nor a cricket from a tower nor an ant even if it were to fall from the moon? And just as smaller animals
are comparatively stronger than larger ones, so small plants too stand up better: an oak tree two hundred ells high cannot sustain its branches in the same proportion as a small oak tree, nor can nature let a horse grow as large as twenty horses or produce a giant ten times the size of man unless it changes all the proportions of the limbs and especially of the bones, which would have to be strengthened far beyond the size demanded by mere proportion. – The common assumption that large and small machines are equally durable is apparently erroneous.

Galileo. Discorsi.

14

1633—1642. Galileo Galilei lives in a house in the country near Florence, a prisoner of the Inquisition till he dies. The ‘Discorsi’

A large room with table, leather chair and globe. Galileo, old now and half blind, is carefully experimenting with a bent wooden rail and a small ball of wood. In the antechamber sits a monk on guard. There is a knock at the door. The monk opens it and a peasant comes in carrying two plucked geese. Virginia emerges from the kitchen. She is now about forty years old
.

THE PEASANT
: They told me to deliver these.

VIRGINIA
: Who? I didn’t order any geese.

THE PEASANT
: They told me to say it was someone passing through.
Virginia looks at the geese in amazement. The monk takes them from her and examines them dubiously. Then he gives them back to her, satisfied, and she carries them by their necks to Galileo in the large room
.

VIRGINIA
: Somebody passing through has sent us a present.

GALILEO
: What is it?

VIRGINIA
: Can’t you see?

GALILEO
: No.
He walks over
. Geese. Any name on them?

VIRGINIA
: No.

GALILEO
takes one of the geese from her:
Heavy. I could eat some of that.

VIRGINIA
: Don’t tell me you’re hungry again; you’ve just had your supper. And what’s wrong with your eyes this time? You should have been able to see them from where you are.

GALILEO
: You’re in the shadow.

VIRGINIA:
I’m not in the shadow.
She takes the geese out
.