Brecht Collected Plays: 5: Life of Galileo; Mother Courage and Her Children (World Classics) (14 page)

Nobody dares tell him
.

THE MONK
: Your Eminence must be taken home.
The old man is assisted out. All leave the hall, worried. A little monk from Clavius’s committee of experts pauses beside Galileo
.

THE LITTLE MONK
confidentially:
Mr Galilei, before he left
Father Clavius said: Now it’s up to the theologians to see how they can straighten out the movements of the heavens once more. You’ve won.
Exit
.

GALILEO
tries to hold him back: It
has won. Not me: reason has won.

The little monk has already left. Galileo too starts to go. In the doorway he encounters a tall cleric, the Cardinal Inquisitor, who is accompanied by an astronomer. Galileo bows. Before going out he whispers a question to the guard at the door
.

GUARD
whispers back:
His Eminence the Cardinal Inquisitor.
The astronomer leads the Cardinal Inquisitor up to the telescope
.

7

But the Inquisition puts Copernicus’s teachings on the Index (March 5th, 1616)

When Galileo was in Rome

A cardinal asked him to his home.

He wined and dined him as his guest

And only made one small request.

Cardinal Bellarmin’s house in Rome. A ball is in progress. In the vestibule, where two clerical secretaries are playing chess and making notes about the guests, Galileo is received with applause by a small group of masked ladies and gentlemen. He arrives accompanied by his daughter Virginia and her fiance Ludovico Marsili
.

VIRGINIA
: I’m not dancing with anybody else, Ludovico.

LUDOVICO
: Your shoulder-strap’s undone.

GALILEO
:

Fret not, daughter, if perchance

You attract a wanton glance.

The eyes that catch a trembling lace

Will guess the heartbeat’s quickened pace.

Lovely woman still may be Careless with felicity.

VIRGINIA
: Feel my heart.

GALILEO
puts bis band on her heart:
It’s thumping.

VIRGINIA
: I’d like to look beautiful.

GALILEO
: You’d better, or they’ll go back to wondering whether it turns or not.

LUDOVICO
: Of course it doesn’t turn.
Galileo laughs
. Rome is talking only of you. But after tonight, sir, they will be talking about your daughter.

GALILEO
: It’s supposed to be easy to look beautiful in the Roman spring. Even I shall start looking like an overweight Adonis.
To the secretaries:
I am to wait here for his Eminence the Cardinal.
To the couple:
Go off and enjoy yourselves.
Before they leave for the hall offstage Virginia again comes running back
.

VIRGINIA
: Father, the hairdresser in the Via del Trionfo took me first, and he made four other ladies wait. He knew your name right away.
Exit
.

GALILEO
to the secretaries as they play chess:
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.
He makes a small move
.

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.
The very old cardinal from the previous scene crosses the stage, led by his
monk. He notices Galileo, walks past him, turns round hesitantly and greets him. Galileo sits down. From the ballroom boys’ voices are heard singing Lorenzo di Medici’s famous poem on transience
,

I who have seen the summer’s roses die

And all their petals pale and shrivelled lie

Upon the chilly ground, I know the truth:

How evanescent is the flower of youth.

GALILEO
: Rome – A large party?

THE FIRST SECRETARY
: The first carnival since the plague years. All Italy’s great families are represented here tonight. The Orsinis, the Villanis, the Nuccolis, the Soldanieris, the Canes, the Lecchis, the d’Estes, the Colombinis …

SECOND SECRETARY
interrupting:
Their Eminences Cardinals Bellarmin and Barberini.

Enter Cardinal Bellarmin and Cardinal Barberini. They are holding sticks with the masks of a lamb and a dove over their faces
.

BARBERINI
pointing at Galileo:
The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.’ So says Solomon, and what does Galileo say?

GALILEO
: When I was so high –
he indicates with his hand
– your Eminence, I stood on a ship and called out The shore is moving away.’ Today I realise that the shore was standing still and the ship moving away.

BARBERINI
: Ingenious, ingenious – what our eyes see, Bellarmin, in other words the rotation of the starry heavens, is not necessarily true – witness the ship and the shore. But what is true – i.e. the rotation of the earth – cannot be perceived. Ingenious. But his moons of Jupiter are a tough nut for our astronomers to crack. Unfortunately I once studied some astronomy, Bellarmin. It sticks to you like the itch.

BELLARMIN
: We must move with the times, Barberini. If new star charts based on a new hypothesis help our mariners to navigate, then they should make use of them. We only disapprove of such doctrines as run counter to the Scriptures.
He waves toward the ballroom in greeting
.

GALILEO
: The Scriptures … ‘He that withholdeth corn, the people shall curse him.’ Proverbs of Solomon.

BARBERINI
: ‘A prudent man concealeth knowledge.’ Proverbs of Solomon.

GALILEO
: ‘Where no oxen are the crib is clean: but much increase is by the strength of the ox.’

BARBERINI
: ‘He that ruleth his spirit is better than he that taketh a city.’

GALILEO
: ‘But a broken spirit drieth the bones.’
Pause
.‘Doth not wisdom cry?’

BARBERINI
: ‘Can one go upon hot coals, and his feet not be burned?’ – Welcome to Rome, Galileo my friend. You know its origins? Two little boys, so runs the legend, were given milk and shelter by a she-wolf. Since that time all her children have had to pay for their milk. The she-wolf makes up for it by providing every kind of pleasure, earthly and heavenly, ranging from conversations with my friend Bellar-min to three or four ladies of international repute; let me point them out to you …

He takes Galileo upstage to show him the ballroom. Galileo follows reluctantly
.

BARBERINI
: No? He would rather have a serious discussion. Right. Are you sure, Galileo my friend, that you astronomers aren’t merely out to make astronomy simpler for yourselves?
He leads him forward once more
. You think in circles and ellipses and constant velocities, simple motions such as are adapted to your brains. Suppose it had pleased God to make his stars more like this?
With his finger he traces an extremely complicated course at an uneven speed
. What would that do to your calculations?

GALILEO
: Your Eminence, if God had constructed the world like that –
he imitates Barberini
’s
course
– then he would have gone on to construct our brains like that, so that they would regard such motions as the simplest. I believe in men’s reason.

BARBERINI
: I think men’s reason is not up to the job. Silence. He’s too polite to go on and say he thinks mine is not up to the job.

Laughs and walks back to the balustrade
.

BELLARMIN
: Men’s reason, my friend, does not take us very far. All around us we see nothing but crookedness, crime and weakness. Where is truth?

GALILEO
angrily:
I believe in men’s reason.

BARBERINI
to the secretaries:
You needn’t take this down; it’s a scientific discussion among friends.

BELLARMIN
: Think for an instant how much thought and effort it cost the Fathers of the Church and their countless successors to put some sense into this appalling world of ours. Think of the brutality of the landowners in the Campagna who have their half-naked peasants flogged to work, and of the stupidity of those poor people who kiss their feet in return.

GALILEO
: Horrifying. As I was driving here I saw …

BELLARMIN
: We have shifted the responsibility for such occurrences as we cannot understand – life is made up of them – to a higher Being, and argued that all of them contribute to the fulfilment of certain intentions, that the whole thing is taking place according to a great plan. Admittedly this hasn’t satisfied everybody, but now you come along and accuse this higher Being of not being quite clear how the stars move, whereas you yourself are. Is that sensible?

GALILEO
starts to make a statement:
I am a faithful son of the Church …

BARBERINI
: He’s a terrible man. He cheerfully sets out to convict God of the most elementary errors in astronomy. I suppose God hadn’t got far enough in his studies before he wrote the Bible; is that it? My
dear
fellow …

BELLARMIN
: Wouldn’t you also think it possible that the Creator had a better idea of what he was making than those he has created?

GALILEO
: But surely, gentlemen, mankind may not only get the motions of the stars wrong but the Bible too?

BELLARMIN
: But isn’t interpreting the Bible the business of Holy Church and her theologians, wouldn’t you say?

Galileo is silent
.

BELLARMIN
: You have no answer to that, have you?
He makes a sign to the secretaries:
Mr Galilei, tonight the Holy Office decided that the doctrine of Copernicus, according to which the sun is motionless and at the centre of the cosmos, while the earth moves and is not at the centre of the cosmos, is foolish, absurd, heretical and contrary to our faith. I have been charged to warn you that you must abandon this view.

GALILEO
: What does this mean?

From the ballroom boys can be heard singing a further verse of the madrigal
.

I said: This lovely springtime cannot last

So pluck your roses before May is past.

Barberini gestures Galileo not to speak till the song is finished. They listen
.

GALILEO
: And the facts? I understand that the Collegium Romanum had approved my observations.

BELLARMIN
: And expressed their complete satisfaction, in terms very flattering to you.

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 explicity guaranteed, Mr Galilei. In line with the Church’s view that it is impossible for us to know, but legitimate for us to explore.
He again greets a guest in the ballroom
. 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
angrily:
What destroys faith is invoking it.

BARBERINI
: Really?
He slaps him on the shoulder with a roar of laughter. Then he gives him a keen look and says in a not unfriendly manner:
Don’t tip the baby out with the bathwater, Galileo my friend.
We
shan’t. We need you more than you need us.

BELLARMIN
: I cannot wait to introduce Italy’s greatest mathematician to the Commissioner of the Holy Office, who has the highest possible esteem for you.

BARBERINI
taking Galileo’s other arm:
At which he turns himself back into a lamb. You too, my dear fellow, ought really to have come disguised as a good orthodox thinker. It’s my own mask that permits me certain freedoms today. Dressed like this I might be heard to murmur: If God didn’t exist we should have to invent him. Right, let’s put on our masks once more. Poor old Galileo hasn’t got one.
They put Galileo between them and escort him into the ballroom
.

FIRST SECRETARY
: Did you get that last sentence?

SECOND SECRETARY
: Just doing it.
They write rapidly
. Have you got that bit where he said he believes in men’s reason?

Enter the Cardinal Inquisitor
.

THE INQUISITOR
: Did the conversation take place?

FIRST SECRETARY
mechanically:
To start with Mr Galilei arrived with his daughter. She has become engaged today to Mr …
The Inquisitor gestures him not to go on
. Mr Galilei then told us about the new way of playing chess in which, contrary to all the rules, the pieces are moved right across the board.

THE INQUISITOR
with a similar gesture:
The transcript.
A secretary hands him the transcript and the cardinal sits down and skims through it. Two young ladies in masks cross the stage; they curtsey to the cardinal
.