Brecht Collected Plays: 5: Life of Galileo; Mother Courage and Her Children (World Classics) (9 page)

PROCURATOR
: I mustn’t interrupt you any longer.

GALILEO
: Thank you.

Exit the Procurator
.

Galileo is left alone for a moment or two and begins to work
.

Then Andrea hurries in
.

GALILEO
working:
Why didn’t you eat the apple?

ANDREA
: I need it to convince her that it turns.

GALILEO
: Listen to me, Andrea: don’t talk to other people about our ideas.

ANDREA
: Why not?

GALILEO
: The big shots won’t allow it.

ANDREA
: But it’s the truth.

GALILEO
: But they’re forbidding it. – And there’s something more. We physicists may think we have the answer, but that doesn’t mean we can prove it. Even the ideas of a great man like Copernicus still need proving. They are only hypotheses. Give me those lenses.

ANDREA
: Your half scudo wasn’t enough. I had to leave my coat. As security.

GALILEO
: How will you manage without a coat this winter?
Pause. Galileo arranges the lenses on the sheet with the sketch on it
.

ANDREA
: What’s a hypothesis?

GALILEO
: It’s when you assume that something’s likely, but haven’t any facts. Look at Felicia down there outside the basket-maker’s shop breastfeeding her child: it remains a hypothesis that she’s giving it milk and not getting milk from it, till one actually goes and sees and proves it. Faced with the stars we are like dull-eyed worms that can hardly see at all. Those old constructions people have believed in for the last thousand years are hopelessly rickety: vast buildings most of whose wood is in the buttresses propping them up. Lots of laws that explain very little, whereas our new hypothesis has very few laws that explain a lot.

ANDREA
: But you proved it all to me.

GALILEO
: No, only that that’s how it could be. I’m not saying it isn’t a beautiful hypothesis; what’s more there’s nothing against it.

ANDREA
: I’d like to be a physicist too, Mr Galilei.

GALILEO
: That’s understandable, given the million and one questions in our field still waiting to be cleared up.
He has gone to the window and looked through the lenses. Mildly interested:
Have a look through that, Andrea.

ANDREA
: Holy Mary, it’s all quite close. The bells in the
campanile very close indeed. I can even read the copper letters:
GRACIA DEI

GALILEO
: That’ll get us 500 scudi.

2

Galileo presents the Venetian Republic with a new invention

No one’s virtue is complete:

Great Galileo liked to eat.

You will not resent, we hope

The truth about his telescope.

The great arsenal of Venice, alongside the harbour
.

Senators, headed by the Doge. To one side, Galileo’s friend Sagredo and the fifteen-year-old Virginia Galilei with a velvet cushion on which rests a two-foot-long telescope in a crimson leather case. On a dais, Galileo. Behind him the telescope’s stand, supervised by Federzoni the lens-grinder
.

GALILEO
: Your Excellency; august Signoria! In my capacity as mathematics teacher at your university in Padua and director of your great arsenal here in Venice I have always seen it as my job not merely to fulfil my exalted task as a teacher but also to provide useful inventions that would be of exceptional advantage to the Venetian Republic. Today it is with deep joy and all due deference that I find myself able to demonstrate and hand over to you a completely new instrument, namely my spyglass or telescope, fabricated in your world-famous Great Arsenal on the loftiest Christian and scientific principles, the product of seventeen years of patient research by your humble servant.
Galileo leaves the dais and stands alongside Sagredo. Applause. Galileo bows
.

GALILEO
softly to Sagredo:
Waste of time.

SAGREDO
softly:
You’ll be able to pay the butcher, old boy.

GALILEO
: Yes, they’ll make money on this.
He bows again
.

PROCURATOR
steps on to the dais:
Your Excellency, august Signoria! Once again a glorious page in the great book of the arts is inscribed in a Venetian hand.
Polite applause
. Today a world-famous scholar is offering you, and you alone, a highly marketable tube, for you to manufacture and sell as and how you wish.
Louder applause
. What is more, has it struck you that in wartime this instrument will allow us to distinguish the number and types of the enemy’s ships at least two hours before he does ours, with the result that we shall know how strong he is and be able to choose whether to pursue, join battle or run away?
Very loud applause
. And now, your Excellency, august Signoria, Mr Galileo invites you to accept this instrument which he has invented, this testimonial to his intuition, at the hand of his enchanting daughter.

Music. Virginia steps forward, bows and hands the telescope to the Procurator, who passes it to Federzoni. Federzoni puts it on the stand and focusses it. Doge and Senators mount the dais and look through the tube
.

GALILEO
softly:
I’m not sure how long I’ll be able to stick this circus. These people think they’re getting a lucrative plaything, but it’s a lot more than that. Last night I turned it on the moon.

SAGREDO
: What did you see?

GALILEO
: The moon doesn’t generate its own light.

SAGREDO
: What?

SENATORS
: I can make out the fortifications of Santa Rosita, Mr Galilei. – They’re having their dinner on that boat. Fried fish. Makes me feel peckish.

GALILEO
: I’m telling you astronomy has stagnated for the last thousand years because they had no telescope.

SENATOR
: Mr Galilei!

SAGREDO
: They want you.

SENATOR
: That contraption lets you see too much. I’ll have to tell my women they can’t take baths on the roof any longer.

GALILEO
: Know what the Milky Way consists of?

SAGREDO
: No.

GALILEO
: I do.

SENATOR
: One should be able to ask 10 scudi for a thing like that, Mr Galilei.
Galileo bows
.

VIRGINIA
leading Ludovico up to her father:
Ludovico wants to congratulate you, Father.

LUDOVICO
embarrassed:
I congratulate you, sir.

GALILEO
: I’ve improved it.

LUDOVICO
: Yes, sir. I see you’ve made the casing red. In Holland it was green.

GALILEO
turning to Sagredo:
I’ve even begun to wonder if I couldn’t use it to prove a certain theory.

SAGREDO
: Watch your step.

PROCURATOR
: Your 500 scudi are in the bag, Galileo.

GALILEO
disregarding him:
Of course I’m sceptical about jumping to conclusions.

The Doge, a fat unassuming man, has come up to Galileo and is trying to address him with a kind of dignified awkwardness
.

PROCURATOR
: Mr Galilei, His Excellency the Doge.
The Doge shakes Galileo’s hand
.

GALILEO
: Of course, the 500! Are you satisfied, your Excellency?

DOGE
: I’m afraid our republic always has to have some pretext before the city fathers can do anything for our scholars.

PROCURATOR
: But what other incentive can there be, Mr Galilei?

DOGE
smiling:
We need that pretext.

The Doge and the Procurator lead Galileo towards the Senators, who gather round him. Virginia and Ludovico slowly go away
.

VIRGINIA
: Did I do all right?

LUDOVICO
: Seemed all right to me.

VIRGINIA
: What’s the matter?

LUDOVICO
: Nothing, really. I suppose a green casing would have been just as good.

VIRGINIA
: It strikes me they’re all very pleased with Father.

LUDOVICO
: And it strikes me I’m starting to learn a thing or two about science.

3

10 January 1610. Using the telescope, Galileo discovers celestial phenomena that confirm the Copernican system. Warned by his friend of the possible consequences of his research, Galileo proclaims his belief in human reason

January ten, sixteen ten:

Galileo Galilei abolishes heaven.

Galileo’s study in Padua. Night. Galileo and Sagredo at the telescope, wrapped in heavy overcoats
.

SAGREDO
looking through the telescope, half to himself:
The crescent’s edge is quite irregular, jagged and rough. In the dark area, close to the luminous edge, there are bright spots. They come up one after the other. The light starts from the spots and flows outwards over bigger and bigger surfaces, where it merges into the larger luminous part.

GALILEO
: What’s your explanation of these bright spots?

SAGREDO
: It’s not possible.

GALILEO
: It is. They’re mountains.

SAGREDO
: On a star?

GALILEO
: Huge mountains. Whose peaks are gilded by the rising sun while the surrounding slopes are still covered by night. What you’re seeing is the light spreading down into the valleys from the topmost peaks.

SAGREDO
: But this goes against two thousand years of astronomy.

GALILEO
: It does. What you are seeing has been seen by no mortal except myself. You are the second.

SAGREDO
: But the moon can’t be an earth complete with mountains and valleys, any more than the earth can be a star.

GALILEO
: The moon can be an earth complete with mountains and valleys, and the earth can be a star. An ordinary celestial body, one of thousands. Take another look. Does the dark part of the moon look completely dark to you?

SAGREDO
: No. Now that I look at it, I can see a feeble ashy-grey light all over it.

GALILEO
: What sort of light might that be?

SAGREDO
: ?

GALILEO
: It comes from the earth.

SAGREDO
: You’re talking through your hat. How can the earth give off light, with all its mountains and forests and waters; it’s a cold body.

GALILEO
: The same way the moon gives off light. Both of them are lit by the sun, and so they give off light. What the moon is to us, we are to the moon. It sees us sometimes as a crescent, sometimes as a half-moon, sometimes full and sometimes not at all.

SAGREDO
: In other words, there’s no difference between the moon and earth.

GALILEO
: Apparently not.

SAGREDO
: Ten years ago in Rome they burnt a man at the stake for that. His name was Giordano Bruno, and that is what he said.

GALILEO
: Exactly. And that’s what we can see. Keep your eye glued to the telescope, Sagredo, my friend. What you’re seeing is the fact that there is no difference between heaven and earth. Today is 10 January 1610. Today mankind can write in its diary: Got rid of Heaven.

SAGREDO
: That’s frightful.

GALILEO
: There is another thing I discovered. Perhaps it’s more appalling still.

MRS SARTI
quietly:
Mr Procurator.

The Procurator rushes in
.

PROCURATOR
: I’m sorry to come so late. Do you mind if I speak to you alone?

GALILEO
: Mr Sagredo can listen to anything I can, Mr Priuli.

PROCURATOR
: But you may not exactly be pleased if the gentleman hears what has happened. Unhappily it is something quite unbelievable.

GALILEO
: Mr Sagredo is quite used to encountering the unbelievable when I am around, let me tell you.

PROCURATOR
: No doubt, no doubt.
Pointing at the telescope:
Yes, that’s the famous contraption. You might just as well throw it away. It’s useless, utterly useless.

SAGREDO
who has been walking around impatiently:
Why’s that?

PROCURATOR
: Are you aware that this invention of yours which you said was the fruit of seventeen years of research can be bought on any street corner in Italy for a few scudi? Made in Holland, what’s more. There is a Dutch merchantman unloading 500 telescopes down at the harbour at this very moment.

GALILEO
: Really?

PROCURATOR
: I find your equanimity hard to understand, sir.

SAGREDO
: What are you worrying about? Thanks to this instrument, let me tell you, Mr Galilei has just made some revolutionary discoveries about the universe.

GALILEO
laughing:
Have a look, Priuli.

PROCURATOR
: And let me tell you it’s quite enough for me to have made my particular discovery, after getting this unspeakable man’s salary doubled, what’s more. It’s a pure stroke of luck that the gentlemen of the Signoria, in their confidence that they had secured the republic a monopoly of this instrument, didn’t look through it and instantly see an ordinary streetseller at the nearest corner, magnified to the power of seven and hawking an identical tube for twice nothing.
Galileo laughs resoundingly
.