Brecht's Galileo: Its Development from Ideational into Ideological Theater

BRECHT'S GAL/LEO: ITS DEVELOPMENT FROM IDEATIONAL INTO IDEOLOGICAL THEATER* OF ALL OF BRECHT'S WORKS, perhaps his Leben des Galilei has caused greatest consternation among critics, and for several reasons. Gunter Rohrmoser finds it can be classified neither as tragedy, history, parable, nor as a didactic play.! Walter Weideli calls it "the most finished example" of epic theater,2 which it clearly is not, if Brecht's own remarks on it are taken into consideration. In a diary entry of February 25, 1939, three months after completion of the work, the author noted: The Life of Galileo is technically a great step backward, like Senora Carrar's Rifles. All too opportunistic. The play would have to be completely re-written in order to attain this 'breeze, which comes from new shores,' this rosy dawn of science. Everything more direct, without the interieurs, the 'atmosphere: the empathy....3 And still, even though Brecht worked and reworked the play, he appears never to have been satisfied with it.4 Critics disagree, too, on the number of versions which exist. Peter Demetz, in reviewing Mittenzwei's Brecht, chides the latter for claiming there are basically only two versions, the original of 1938 and a second of 1945 which Brecht worked out with Charles Laughton for performance in English in the U.S.A. According to Mittenzwei, the published version in the author's Stucke is but a retranslation into German of the 1945 play, and Demetz attempts to disprove this by comparing excerpts from the two plays,5 the earlier of which *Read before the 64th Annual Meeting of the Philological Association of the Pacific Coast on November 26, 1966 in Berkeley, California. Since then Gerhard Szezesny's D'as Leben des Galilei und der Fall Brecht has been published (Frankfurt and Berlin: Verlag Ullstein). Szezesny, who goes into greater detail, comes to conclusions similar to those of this paper. 1 Gunter Rohrmoser, "Brecht's 'Galileo'" in Brecht, A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Peter Demetz (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1962), p. 125 f. 2 Walter Weideli, The Art of Bertolt Brecht (New York: New York University Press, 1963), p. 109 (hereafter referred to as Brecht). 3 Quoted in Ernst Schumacher, "Brecht's Galilei: Form und Einfiihlung," Sinn und Form (Berlin [East]: Rutten & Loening, 1960), 4. Heft, p. 510 (hereafter referred to as Brecht's Galilez). 4 Hans Egon Holthusen, "Versuch uber Brecht," in his Kritisches Verstehen (Munchen: R. Piper & Co. Verlag, 1961), pp. 90 f. (hereafter referred to as Brecht). 5 Peter Demetz, "Die kritische Brechtforschung beginnt," Die Zeit, Hamburg (October 11, 1963), p. 12. 410 1969 BRECHT'S Galileo 411 appears in Eric Bentley's Seven Plays of Bertolt Brecht (New York: Grove Press Inc., 1961, hereafter referred to as Seven Plays). A glance at Urecht's Aufbau einer Rolle-Laughton, which has been published along with a text identical with that contained in the Stucke and a description of Ernst Busch's treatment of the role in East Berlin, could conceivably settle the controversy. There Brecht writes: L. displayed in a most striking and occasionally brutal wayan indifference toward the "book," which the playwright could not always muster. What we put together, was a text, the performance was all important. Impossible, to bring him around to the translation of parts, which the playwright eliminated in favor of the planned performance, which, however, he wanted to save for the book! The important thing was the theatrical event, the text merely had to make it possible; the wearing away of the text took place in the performance, it disappeared in it like powder in fireworks 1'6 It must have been a unique occasion for Brecht-his encounter with Hindemith had ended in hostility-here he was to work with an artist both congenial and as strong-willed as himself. When and if a truly critical edition of his works is published, the interested reader will be able to see how much of the 1956 text is translation from the Laughton version and how much was added to further "alienate" Galileo for the East Berlin performance. The original text or one very close to it, which was...