Bertolt Brecht’s “The Life of Galileo” Is the Changing Consciousness of the World: Responsibility of the Intellectual to Defend His or Her Beliefs In The Face Of Opposition from Established Authorities

Brecht in 1954

The key to Bertolt Brecht’s theatre is the changing consciousness of the world. By this Brecht the most influential German dramatist and theoretician of the theater in the 20th century meant first of all the transforming of social relationship — what he referred to as social overhaul. After the overhaul of society which occurred in German Democratic Republic, Brecht spoke, particularly in his last years, of the transformation of the world, which had become even more urgent because of the possibilities and necessities of the dialectical process. "The theatre of the scientific age,” he wrote, “is in a position to make dialectics into a source of enjoyment.” (Brecht on theatre: The Development of an Aesthetics). 

Social dialectics in moral level results in a moral paradox which is at the root of Brecht’s theatre. It arises throughout his plays from the clash between ends and means, between the intention and the affect, between the individual and the world. The Communist agent who has to be cruel to be kind; Mother Courage who has to deny one child to save another; or Galileo, whose unscrupulous dishonesty makes his research possible but whose betrayal of the truth takes science out of the street and into the service either of a court or of a private study — this increasing and organizing differentiation in the presentation of people and their relationship according to their need, choice and end with each other subtly develops in the community a strength which it needs for larger change. This is theatre as a consciousness which does not merely picture the world but produces it: as Lenin remarked, “Human consciousness not only reflects the objective world but also creates it.”

Leben des Galilei (1955; Galileo, 1947) deals with the responsibility of the intellectual to defend his or her beliefs in the face of opposition from established authorities, in Galileo’s case the Roman Catholic Church. In life of Galileo in particular this reflection of objective world & ultimately the creation of “new ethics” of the “new world” is quite apparent. It is the changing “human consciousness’ of Andrea, the nearest & dearest disciple of Galileo, though whom the dialectically synthesized character of Galileo & the characteristics of the “new age” are projected. Through his verbal repartee with Galileo a light is thrown on Galileo’s theme of research: “everything moves”. Galileo further says, “Where belief has prevailed for a thousand years, doubt now prevails”. “...a great desire has arisen to fathom the causes of all things’. / “And then it may happen that a suspicion arises, for new experience/makes the established truth open to question. Doubt spreads/And then one day a man thoughtfully strikes it out/From the record of knowledge. (In praise of Doubt, Brecht). Now Andrea sings a song almost like Greek chorus with Galileo, the iconoclast ‘man” of this play:

“Oh happy morning of beginning

Oh scent of winds from new and distant shores”.

 

Galileo

But Andrea is not mature enough to interpret the cosmic mobility as the symbol of coming of a new age — the age of commercialism marked by rotation of money & property contrasted to the feudalism which is marked by stativity of property due to its landed interest. In fact regarding “Copernicus and his rotation” he says, “It’s very difficult and I’m only eleven next October.” In his nascent consciousness science is still a magic, the practical demonstration of which to his mother “will amaze her”. But Galileo wants to dispel the magic charm surrounding the scientific perception of Andrea because Andrea is the representative of the new generation for whom, according to Galileo, “there are always new things...to do”. So Galileo is “teaching him to see” and with Andrea a whole generation is being taught to see. But the tragedy is that, in the last scene when the manuscript is being smuggled out of the country by this very Andrea, the boys playing at the frontier— the boys who would have been Galileo’s audience — are talking of devils & witches. Both thing happen a way of continuing science, and a way of detaching it from ordinary life. This social duality is the mirror reflection of Galileo’s own character which is farther affirmed by the fact when Galileo drops out Andrea for the sake of 15 scudi given by Ludovico. Actually Galileo has a complex consciousness in which not only this but also that must be said. But Andrea does not suffer from any such complex duality of character. He is as loyal to science as to Galileo. When Galileo says The authorities have forbidden them, Andrea can easily rep ‘But they’re the truth’; again he can easily sacrifice his coat to his mentor:

“The half scudo was not enough. I had to leave my coat behind. Pledge “Ardrea probably can’t separate science from Galileo. His loyalty to both is so deep that towards the end of the first scene he declares: I should like be physicist too, Signor Galilee.

Galileo, too, spiritually depends upon Ardrea as the representative of coming generation. As soon as he finds a new element through his telescope he says, “I want to see something that nobody besides us has seen since the world began. Ardrea is not only able to experience & appreciate a scientific discovery first but also has the capacity to undo the Ptolemaic hoax — his fighting with Cosimo on the point of mobility of cosmos & consequently breaking of the model of Ptolemaic system is symbolic foregrounding of the refusal of that system by time itself. Besides, for Andrea the hierarchical structure is fluid, so he can equate himself with the Duke.

Andrea reappears on the stage as a young man. Science is now no more magic to him. It has become part of his life. He now investigates sun spots another important discovery of Galileo. “I have seen a spot, as big as a fly, swept away like a cloudlet.” Then he asks, “Why don’t we investigate the spots, Signor Galilee?” Galileo’s diplomatic reply — “Rome has permitted by reputation to grow because I have remained silent” can’t satisfy him. That’s why he again asks as a ‘Deplorable child’, ‘Do you think these spots have anything to do with this matter?” Andrea becomes alter ego of Galileo’s that part which suffers from compromise of other part. At this point, Brecht’s stage direction says, “Galileo does not answer.’ But we think Galileo can’t answer.

Galileo, the man, has to be silent for the sake of Galileo, the scholar. He is both one of the greatest scientists of all times, and a man governed by his instincts. In his own words, “It’s when I’m eating that I get most inspiration.” But his urge to go on with his researches is his basic instinct — the expression of his essential self. That is why as soon as it is reported that Cardinal Barberini, a man of science, is going to be the next Pope, Galileo starts his solar experiments with new hope. Now Andrea is happy because he has found his idol again in his niche’. He hymns a song almost like chorus: The Bible says the earth stands still, my dears/A fact which every learned doctor proves :1 The Holy Father grabs it by the ears/And holds it hard and fast.

— And yet it moves”. Federzoni asks, “Who command the earth to stand still so that their castles don’t come tumbling down!” Andrea replies, “And the Ceneis and the Villain”, “The Lecchis” — the great landowning families — according to Andrea, “who are only willing to kiss Pope’s feet if he’ll trample down the people with them.” The suggestion is that they will all, in their class interests, join together against anything that encourages the peasants to think for themselves. That’s why in this scene-viii Virginia’s betrothed, Ludovico, breaks off the engagement. Ludivico is a landowner, and Counts on the authority of religion to keep his peasants properly submissive.

The landed interests are on the side of the Church. In the feudally and hierarchically organized Church, which owing about a third of the land in every country, occupied a position of tremendous power in the feudal organization. Besides, the clergy was the only educated class. Therefore, “Jurisprudence, natural science, philosophy” to quote Marx, “everything was dealt with according to whether its content agreed or disagreed with the doctrines of the Church” (Juristic Socialism). That’s why Andrea & Galileo are elated at the enthronement of the new Pope who might help in the officialisation of truth. From the womb of Church based feudalism, however, a new class appeared at that time in opposition to the big land ownership. “The Catholic world outlook”, again to quote Marx, “fashioned on the pattern of feudalism, was no longer adequate for this new class and its conditions of production and exchange” (Ibid). This newer class are on Galileo’s side. Galileo is popular among them because of his utilitarianisation of science. They are mentioned here and there : the navigators who want better charts and instruments, the linen merchants who want better looms, Federzoni the lens-maker, Vanni the iron-founder, who says, “You have friends throughout the world of commerce” and offers help to Galileo and the glass-cutter whose help he tries to take. Everyone who understands instruments and machines, and can make use of his inventions, knows it is nonsense that truth in physics cannot make truth in fact. Nevertheless, this new class remained for a long time captive in the bonds of almighty theology.

In the following scene the idea that earth moves round the sun, has been taken up by the peoples as a theme for the carnival. They treat it as a huge joke against the established authorities and all the old notions of decorum. If Galileo can change the order of heaven by the decentralization of the earth from the Ptolemaic cosmos, they seem to imply, why should and could not they dethroned the Papal institution from social order? This thought is suggested, rather than explicitly stated, in the comic songs & dances of shopkeepers, workmen, beggars & servants. But Galileo himself, of course, has never suggested this; the notion suggests itself to the uneducated populace. In Galileo a common man and a scholar always vies with each other. When Galileo, the man thinks of the commercial productivity of telescope, then, Galileo, the scholar, considers the scientific potential of the same. The common man in him fears to be tortured even for the sake of truth; on the other hand the scholar has to stick to the point of cosmic mobility in order to reestablish the Copernican fact socially. So again a moral paradox takes place — what will Galileo do? Will he recant? Will he forget, “How laboriously the new truth was fought for!/What sacrifices it cost/How difficult it was to see/that things were thus and not thus.” (In praise of Doubt, Brecht). Andrea has unquestioned faith on his icon of heroism. He says, “he will never recant.” But Brecht doesn’t want so. Again in this crucial juncture of the play like Greek chorus he shouts suddenly, “And the sun is the centre of the universe and motionless in its place and the earth is not the centre and it is not motionless. And he is the one who showed it to us.” Once Galileo said, “He who does not know the truth is merely an idiot, but he who knows it and calls it a lie, is a criminal.” Andrea reminds us this, too, in scene-xi and comments, “Force has not prevailed.., man is not afraid of death.” But tragically enough Galileo is afraid of death — the very show of instruments of force has prevailed over him. Galileo recants. The icon of hero is crushed by the organized machinery. Andrea screams at him ‘Wine bag! Snail-eater! Have you saved your precious skin?” Galileo has forgotten the lines “You who are a leader of men, do not forget/That you are that because you doubted other leaders” (In praise of Doubt, Brecht). So Andrea “cannot look at him. He must go.”

Galileo seems to be a criminal not only for his betrayal of the truth but also in frustrating the fate of his comrades. Andrea in the next scene informs us, “Federzoni is once again grinding lenses in some shop in Milan”, “Fulganzio, and our little monk, has given up research and has returned to the bosom of the Church” and Andrea cannot become a physicist. One recantation has shattered several lives. “There is no greater crime than leaving” to quote from Brecht, “In friends what do you count on?...only on this : they’re not leaving”. (There is no greater crime than leaving, Brecht). But did Galileo leave his research of science, too? No, it can’t be possible. Science is the nucleus of his existence. So even in his imprisonment he continues to work and search for truth for the sake of truth only, at the cost of his decaying eyesight, without any hope that one day posterity will find out his Discorsi. Such a devoted son of science can’t forget the deceit committed by himself to his mother. Once his reply to Andrea’s cry: “Pity the country that has no heroes” was “Pity the country that needs heroes.” Years later when the same disciple visits him for the last time before going to Holland, he hands him the manuscript which his recantation has enabled him to complete. This disciple, thinking that he understands at last the motive of his recantation, hails Iim as a hero, but Galileo who knew clearly what he meant when he deplored that fact country should require heroes, refuses Andrea’s praise, for he can already anticipate the terrible import of his action. He sees himself as a criminal because he “surrendered” his knowledge, according to him, “to those in power, to use, or not to use, or to misuse, just as suited their purposes”. But Brecht himself says, as a playwright should. : ‘In spite of all he is a hero — and in spite of all — he becomes a criminal.

Actually Galileo is neither a hero nor a criminal — he is the cunning scientist of the new age, an age in which it is ‘better tainted than empty.” This is “new science new ethics.” Galileo’s progressive thesis was that God is “in us or no where”. Church forced to establish a reactionary anti-thesis that earth is the centre of the universe. Through the clash of thesis and anti-thesis the synthesis is achieved; according to Marx, ‘It was secularization the theological outlook. Human right took the place of dogma, of divine right, the state took the place of the Church”. (On Religion, Karl Marx) State for its own benefit brings up scientists like Galileo who under the shelter of the state at once enjoys delicious goose & scientific research. But neither science nor the dialectics of historical materialism can stop in a certain point of synthesis. Human civilization proceeds through the negation of negation. After the negation of Church, there should be the negation of state under whose power, “new machines will represent nothing but new means of oppression”. “The movements of the stars have become clearer; but to the mass of the people the movements ot their masters are still incalculable.” Again a socioeconomic conflict will take place between the re-thesis of capitalist master & re-anti-thesis of oppressed mass. After this the final synthesis will be achieved. But this historical probability is growing in the womb of posterity. To end with Andrea: “We are really only at the beginning.”

 Ardhendu De

References:

1. Life of Galileo - Wikipedia. (n.d.). Life of Galileo - Wikipedia. Retrieved November 15, 2018, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_of_Galileo

2. The Life of Galileo | play by Brecht. (n.d.). Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved November 15, 2018, from https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Life-of-Galileo

3. Bertolt Brecht The Life Of Galileo : SANWAL : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive. (n.d.). Internet Archive. Retrieved November 15, 2018, from https://archive.org/details/bertolt-brecht-the-life-of-galileo