Brecht Collected Plays: 5: Life of Galileo; Mother Courage and Her Children (World Classics) (8 page)

GALILEO
: Look, I proved to you …

ANDREA
: But last night I realised that if the earth turned that way I’d be hanging head downwards every night, and that’s a fact.

GALILEO
takes an apple from the table:
Right, now this is the earth.

ANDREA
: Don’t keep on taking that sort of example, Mr Galilei. They always work.

GALILEO
putting back the apple:
Very well.

ANDREA
: Examples always work if you’re clever. Only I can’t lug my mother round in a chair like you did me. So you see it’s a rotten example really. And suppose your apple is the earth like you say? Nothing follows.

GALILEO
laughing:
You just don’t want to know.

ANDREA
: Pick it up again. Why don’t I hang head downwards at night, then?

GALILEO
: Right: here’s the earth and here’s you standing on it.
He takes a splinter from a piece of firewood and sticks it into
the apple
. Now the earth’s turning round.

ANDREA
: And now I’m hanging head downwards.

GALILEO
: What d’you mean? Look at it carefully. Where’s your head?

ANDREA
pointing:
There. Underneath.

GALILEO
: Really?
He turns it back:
Isn’t it in precisely the same position? Aren’t your feet still underneath? You don’t stand like this when I turn it, do you?
He takes out the splinter and puts it in upside down
.

ANDREA
: No. Then why don’t I notice it’s turning?

GALILEO
: Because you’re turning with it. You and the air above you and everything else on this ball.

ANDREA
: Then why does it look as if the sun’s moving?

GALILEO
turns the apple and the splinter round again:
Right: you’re seeing the earth below you; that doesn’t change, it’s always underneath you and so far as you’re concerned it doesn’t move. But then look what’s above you. At present the lamp’s over your head, but once I’ve turned the apple what’s over it now; what’s above?

ANDREA
turns his head similarly:
The stove.

GALILEO
: And where’s the lamp?

ANDREA
: Underneath.

GALILEO
: Ha.

ANDREA
: That’s great: that’ll give her something to think about.
Enter Ludovico Marsili, a rich young man
.

GALILEO
: This place is getting like a pigeon loft.

LUDOVICO
: Good morning, sir. My name is Ludovico Marsili.

GALILEO
reading his letter of introduction:
So you’ve been in Holland?

LUDOVICO
: Where they were all speaking about you, Mr Galilei.

GALILEO
: Your family owns estates in the Campagna?

LUDOVICO
: Mother wanted me to have a look-see, find out what’s cooking in the world and all that.

GALILEO
: And in Holland they told you that in Italy, for instance, I was cooking?

LUDOVICO
: And since Mother also wanted me to have a look-see in the sciences …

GALILEO
: Private tuition: ten scudi a month.

LUDOVICO
: Very well, sir.

GALILEO
: What are your main interests?

LUDOVICO
: Horses.

GALILEO
: Ha.

LUDOVICO
: I’ve not got the brains for science, Mr Galilei.

GALILEO
: Ha. In that case we’ll make it fifteen scudi a month.

LUDOVICO
: Very well, Mr Galilei.

GALILEO
: I’ll have to take you first thing in the morning. That’ll be your loss, Andrea. You’ll have to drop out of course. You don’t pay, see?

ANDREA
: I’m off. Can I have the apple?

GALILEO
: Yes.

Exit Andrea
.

LUDOVICO
: You’ll have to be patient with me. You see, everything in the sciences goes against a fellow’s good sound commonsense. I mean, look at that queer tube thing they’re selling in Amsterdam. I gave it a good looking-over. A green leather casing and a couple of lenses, one this way –
he indicates a concave lens
– and the other that way –
he indicates a convex lens
. One of them’s supposed to magnify and the other reduces. Anyone in his right mind would expect them to cancel out. They don’t. The thing makes everything appear five times the size. That’s science for you.

GALILEO
: What appears five times the size?

LUDOVICO
: Church spires, pigeons, anything that’s a long way off.

GALILEO
: Did you yourself see church spires magnified in this way?

LUDOVICO
: Yes, sir.

GALILEO
: And this tube has two lenses?
He makes a sketch on
a piece of paper
. Did it look like that?
Ludovico nods
. How old’s this invention?

LUDOVICO
: Not more than a couple of days, I’d say, when I left Holland; at least that’s how long it had been on the market.

GALILEO
almost friendly:
And why does it have to be physics? Why not horsebreeding?

Enter Mrs Sarti unobserved by Galileo
.

LUDOVICO
: Mother thinks you can’t do without a bit of science. Nobody can drink a glass of wine without science these days, you know.

GALILEO
: Why didn’t you pick a dead language or theology? That’s easier.
Sees Mrs Sarti
. Right, come along on Tuesday morning.
Ludovico leaves
.

GALILEO
: Don’t give me that look. I accepted him.

MRS SARTI
: Because I caught your eye in time. The procurator of the university is out there.

GALILEO
: Show him in, he matters. There may be 500 scudi in this. I wouldn’t have to bother with pupils.
Mrs Sarti shows in the procurator. Galileo has finished dressing, meanwhile jotting down figures on a piece of paper
.

GALILEO
: Good morning. Lend us half a scudo.
The procurator digs a coin out of his purse and Galileo gives it to Sarti
. Sarti, tell Andrea to go to the spectacle-maker’s and get two lenses: there’s the prescription.
Exit Mrs Sarti with the paper
.

PROCURATOR
: I have come in connection with your application for a rise in salary to 1000 scudi. I regret that I cannot recommend it to the university. 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.

GALILEO
busy with his papers:
My dear fellow, I can’t manage on 500 scudi.

PROCURATOR
: But, Mr Galilei, your week consists of two two-hour lectures. Given your outstanding reputation you can certainly get plenty of pupils who can afford private lessons. Haven’t you got private pupils?

GALILEO
: Too many, sir. I teach and I teach, and when am I supposed to learn? God help us, I’m not half as sharp as those gentlemen in the philosophy department. I’m stupid. I understand absolutely nothing. So I’m compelled to fill the gaps in my knowledge. And when am I supposed to do that? When am I to get on with my research? Sir, my branch of knowledge is still avid to know. The greatest problems still find us with nothing but hypotheses to go on. Yet we keep asking ourselves for proofs. How am I to provide them if I can only maintain my home by having to take any thickhead who can afford the money and din it into him that parallel lines meet at infinity?

PROCURATOR
: Don’t forget that even if the Republic pays less well than certain princes it does guarantee freedom of research. In Padua we even admit Protestants to our lectures. And give them doctors’ degrees too. In Mr Cremonini’s case we not only failed to hand him over to the Inquisition when he was proved, proved, Mr Galilei – to have made irreligious remarks, but actually granted him a rise in salary. As far as Holland Venice is known as the republic where the Inquisition has no say. That should mean something to you, being an astronomer, that’s to say operating in a field where for some time now the doctrines of the church have hardly been treated with proper respect.

GALILEO
: You people handed Mr Giordano Bruno over to Rome. Because he was propagating the ideas of Copernicus.

PROCURATOR
: Not because he was propagating the ideas of Mr Copernicus, which anyway are wrong, but because he was not a Venetian citizen and had no regular position here. So you needn’t drag in the man they burned. Incidentally, however free we are, I wouldn’t go around openly citing a name like his, which is subject to the express anathema of the church: not even here, not even here.

GALILEO
: Your protection of freedom of thought is pretty good business, isn’t it? By showing how everywhere else the Inquisition prevails and burns people, you get good teachers cheap for this place. You make up for your attitude to the Inquisition by paying lower salaries than anyone.

PROCURATOR
: That’s most unfair. What use would it be to you to have limitless spare time for research if any ignorant monk in the Inquisition could just put a ban on your thoughts? Every rose has its thorn, Mr Galilei, and every ruler has his monks.

GALILEO
: So what’s the good of free research without free time to research in? What happens to its results? Perhaps you’d kindly show this paper about falling bodies to the gentlemen at the Signoria –
he indicates a bundle of manuscript
– and ask them if it isn’t worth a few extra scudi.

PROCURATOR
: It’s worth infinitely more than that, Mr Galilei.

GALILEO
: Sir, not infinitely more, a mere 500 scudi more.

PROCURATOR
: What is worth scudi is what brings scudi in. If you want money you’ll have to produce something else. When you’re selling knowledge you can’t ask more than the buyer is likely to make from it. Philosophy, for instance, as taught by Mr Colombe in Florence, nets the prince at least 10,000 scudi a year. I know your laws on falling bodies have made a stir. They’ve applauded you in Prague and Paris. But the people who applaud don’t pay Padua University what you cost it. You made an unfortunate choice of subject, Mr Galilei.

GALILEO
: I see. Freedom of trade, freedom of research. Free trading in research, is that it?

PROCURATOR
: Really, Mr Galilei, what a way of looking at it! Allow me to tell you that I don’t quite understand your flippant remarks. Our Republic’s thriving foreign trade hardly strikes me as a matter to be sneered at. And speaking from many years of experience as procurator of this university I would be even more disinclined to speak of scientific research in what I would term with respect, so frivolous a manner.
While Galileo glances longingly at his work table:
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 laws governing grovelling bodies that count? Contrast the infinite joy with which our Republic welcomes your ideas, however daring they may be. Here you have a chance to research, to work. Nobody supervises you, nobody suppresses you. Our merchants know the value of better linen in their struggle with their competitors in Florence; they listen interestedly to your cry for better physics, and physics in turn owes much to their cry for better looms. Our most prominent citizens take an interest in your researches, call on you, get you to demonstrate your findings: men whose time is precious. Don’t underrate trade, Mr Galilei. Nobody here would stand for the slightest interference
with your work or let outsiders make difficulties for you. This is a place where you can work, Mr Galilei, you have to admit it.

GALILEO
in despair:
Yes.

PROCURATOR
: As for the material aspects: why can’t you give us another nice piece of work like those famous proportional compasses of yours, the ones that allow complete mathematical dunces to trace lines, reckon compound interest on capital, reproduce a land survey on varying scales and determine the weight of cannon balls?

GALILEO
: Kids’ Stuff.

PROCURATOR
: Here’s something that fascinated and astonished our top people and brought in good money, and you call it kids’ stuff. I’m told even General Stefano Gritti can work out square roots with your instrument.

GALILEO
: A real miracle. – All the same, Priuli, you’ve given me something to think about. Priuli, I think I might be able to let you have something of the kind you want.
He picks up the paper with the sketch
.

PROCURATOR
: Could you? That would be the answer.
Gets up:
Mr Galilei, we realise that you are a great man. A great but dissatisfied man, if I may say so.

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. I am 46 years old and have achieved nothing that satisfies me.