Galileo's life

First Edition

In the first edition of the play "The Life of Galileo" was written by Brecht in exile in Denmark ^[2] ; at the end of November 1938 he noted in his “work journal” that he had completely written “The Life of Galileo” for three weeks ^[3] ; however, in 1939 the play was finalized ^[4] .

According to the playwright himself, during the reconstruction of the Ptolemaic system of the universe, he was assisted by assistants to Niels Bohr , who worked at that time on the problem of nuclear fission ^[5] . Learning from them about the fission of the uranium nucleus carried out by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann in Berlin at the end of 1938, Brecht, unlike physicists, gave this discovery a positive interpretation and in the spring of 1939 put the words into Galileo’s mouth: “As long as the greatest discoveries that can immensely increase the happiness of people, huge parts of this world are immersed in darkness ” ^[4] . In this first edition, before handing the manuscript “ Discorsi ” to the student, Galileo said that science cannot tolerate in its ranks people who are not ready to stand up for reason: “It must be shameful to drive them away, for it seeks not to miss one truth, in the world of lies she would have no support ” ^[6] .

At the beginning of the play, Galileo proclaimed the onset of “new times” - the preface to the first edition indicates that its main theme was the reaction , which in history inevitably follows any “new times” ^[7] :

In 1940, the play was reproduced on a glass-copy by the publishing house of Peter Zurkamp for theatrical and rolling purposes ^[2] . The premiere of the first edition of The Life of Galileo took place on September 9, 1943 in Zurich 's Schauspielhaus directed by Leonard Stäckel; Theo Otto designed the play, the music for it was written by Hans Eisler ^{[2] [K 1]} .

Brecht proceeded from the fact that the famous words of Galileo “ And yet it spins! »Were not actually spoken; accordingly, they were absent from the play, Galileo renounced his ideas without any reservations ^[9] . Nevertheless, as it soon became clear, the original version of the play left the possibility of false interpretations, from the author’s point of view: “Some physicists,” Brecht wrote, “told me, and, moreover, very approvingly, that Galileo’s refusal from his teachings, despite some“ hesitation “, is depicted in the play as a perfectly reasonable step, since it gave him the opportunity to continue his scientific work and pass it on to his offspring. If they were right, this would mean the failure of the author ” ^[10] .

Second Edition

In 1945-1946, in the United States , working with actor Charles Lawton to translate the play into English, Brecht made significant changes to it: he deleted all remarks, remarks, even some episodes that could have a positive interpretation of Galileo’s behavior ^{[2 ]} . In the midst of this work, nuclear bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki - Brecht himself believed that not so much the changes he made as the nuclear bomb “illuminated Galileo’s conflict with the authorities with a new, bright light” ^[5] . In any case, in this new edition, Brecht added the words in the final monologue of Galileo: “... The gap between you and humanity can be so enormous that one fine day your triumphant cry for a new discovery will be met with a cry of horror” ^[11] . According to Ernst Schumacher , in the second edition, compared with the first, Brecht more clearly highlighted the "contradictions of progress and reaction in society" ^[12] .

In the "American" edition of "The Life of Galileo" was first staged in July 1947 at the Coronet Theater in Los Angeles, directed by Joseph Losey , with the active participation of the author himself; Galileo was played by Lawton ^{[K 2]} . According to the testimony of Charles Chaplin , the Los Angeles “cinema colony” performance seemed too much theatrical ^{[13] [14]} . As Brecht himself wrote, both in Los Angeles and a little later in New York , at the experimental theater of the American National Theater Academy ( Maxine Elliott's Theater ) ^{[K 3]} , Galileo's Life was played in small theaters, with a full house , but had bad press; due to the large number of actors employed in the performance, the profit was very modest, and as a result, the American production of the play “never went beyond the scope of the experiment” ^[15] . Extremely pleased with the performance, Brecht left a detailed, picture after picture, description of Lawton-Galileo ^[16] . As for D. Losey, he returned to the play in 1975, when it had already received worldwide recognition, - he made a film called " Galileo " ^{[K 4]} .

The Life of Galileo, its second edition, was translated into Russian by Lev Kopelev in 1957 ^[2] .

• Galileo Galilei
• Andrea Sarti
• Mrs. Sarti, housekeeper of Galilee, mother of Andrea
• Ludovico Marsili, a rich young man
• Priuli, Curator of the University of Padua
• Sagredo, friend of Galileo
• Virginia, daughter of Galileo
• Federzoni, lens grinder, Galileo's assistant
• Cosimo de Medici, Grand Duke of Florence
• Pater Christopher Clavius, astronomer
• Little monk
• Cardinal Inquisitor
• Cardinal Barberini, aka Pope Urban VIII
• Cardinal Bellarmine
• Filippo Mucius, scientist
• Gaffone, rector of the University of Pisa

The action takes place in Italy in the XVII century, in Padua and Florence , for 28 years. At the beginning of the play, Galileo Galileo is 46 years old; in his house, except for the daughter of Virginia, there lives a housekeeper - Mrs. Sarty with her son Andrea. Scientific studies do not bring income to Galileo: mathematics, says the curator of the University of Padua, "is not as necessary as philosophy, and not as useful as theology" ^[18] . Scientists in the Republic of Venice are protected from the Inquisition, but they get pennies, and Galileo makes a living by teaching mathematics to wealthy students, inventing new devices, “toys” like a proportional compass or machine, such as a water pump, but his true passion is astronomy . It seems to him that “new times” have come and that humanity is about to break out of the closed system of the universe created by Ptolemy . In his free time, he devotes to the still forbidden teaching of Copernicus the most grateful of his students - the young Andrea Sarti.

A rich young man, Ludovico Marsili, appears in Galileo’s house, ready to take lessons, but only at the insistence of his parents: “in the sciences, after all, everything is always not as it should be according to common human mind” ^[19] . From him, Galileo learns about the new invention of the Dutch masters - a small magnifying tube. According to the descriptions of Ludovico, the scientist creates a telescope , with the help of which he detects phenomena in heaven that confirm the teachings of Copernicus. However, the friend of Galileo Sagredo does not share his enthusiasm - those in power cannot leave a person who owns the truth free: “The day when a person reveals the truth is unhappy, he is blinded the moment he believes in the mind of the human race” ^[20] .

But Galileo believes in the human mind and in the power of evidence - having no means for his scientific work, in search of wealthy patrons, he moves from a free Venetian republic to a more conservative Florence and becomes an adviser to the court of Duke Cosimo II of Medici . Here, with the help of a telescope, he tries to show the court scientists the stars whose movement refutes the existing ideas about the structure of the Universe . But scientists in response cite Aristotle, authoritative for the Catholic Church. And no matter how much Galileo begs them to trust their own eyes, scientists leave without ever looking through a telescope.

Galileo’s attempts to prove that the system of the universe, according to which the world revolves around the Earth, is incorrect, lead him to a conflict with the church; the cardinal inquisitor inclines his daughter Virginia to his side. Galileo is gaining new hope by the accession to the Holy See, under the name of Urban VIII , Cardinal Barberini, a mathematician: “We will live to see the time when we don’t have to look around like a criminal, saying that two or two are four” ^[21] .

Galileo’s teachings, meanwhile, are widely spread among the people: street singers and pamphletists pick up new ideas, use astronomical themes in the design of carnival processions. However, the plague and unsuccessful wars that undermine faith, and finally, the Reformation, prompt the church to tighten the fight against dissent . Cosimo Medici turns away from Galileo, Pope Urban VIII at first tries to save him, but in the end yields to the arguments of the Cardinal Inquisitor, having expressed only one relief for Galileo: they will not torture him - they will only show him instruments of torture.

The demonstration of the instruments of torture is enough to break Galileo: the large bell of St. Mark's Cathedral solemnly announces the renunciation of the world famous scientist. Disappointed Andrea, his beloved student, curses the teacher: “The country that has no heroes is unhappy!” - “No! The country that needs heroes is unhappy, ”says Galileo ^[22] .

Abandoned by the student, he continues, under the supervision of the monks, his research. Ten years pass; Before leaving abroad, Andrea Sarti, a well-known scientist himself, comes to the former teacher to say goodbye. Galileo asks him to take out a copy of the manuscript from the country, on which he secretly worked in recent years. In Andrea's eyes, this work justifies Galileo's abdication, but the scientist himself does not find and does not seek excuses.

In his essay written in 1947, “Lafton plays Galileo,” Brecht argued that the talk in his play is “not at all that you should firmly stand your ground while you think you're right” ^[23] . Copernicus did not stand his ground, he allowed seditious thoughts to be announced only after his death, but no one reproaches him with this - Galileo, according to Brecht, committed a crime against science, "when he led his science to the struggle and betrayed it in the course of this struggle" ^{[ 23]} . However, the first German edition, published in 1955, was accompanied by a note: "The play" The Life of Galileo "was written in exile in Denmark, in 1938-1939. Newspapers published a report on the fission of the uranium atom by German physicists ” ^[24] - thereby, as Ilya Fradkin noted, the author hinted at the connection of the design of the play with the problems of atomic physics ^{[to clarify ]} , although there is no evidence that Brecht at the end of 1930- He foresaw the creation of a nuclear bomb, and this connection was least seen in the first, Danish version of the play ^{[4] [2]} .

The assertion that "The Life of Galileo" - about the responsibility of scientists to society, wandered from article to article ^{[25] [26]} ; despite the fact that the play’s conflict - renunciation of one’s knowledge, one’s goal, one’s self, in the end, under the threat of physical torture ^{[27] [28]} - had nothing to do either with the problem of the creators of the nuclear bomb, or with the later “ Oppenheimer’s business, ”but he explicitly echoed the events that were open and public at the end of the 1930s in Moscow open processes ^[29] . According to some evidence, Brecht himself spoke about this in 1956, during rehearsals of the play at the Berliner Ensemble Theater ^{[30] [31]} . In those same years, in the incomplete composition “Me-Ti. The Book of Changes ”Brecht, as if on behalf of a Chinese philosopher, tried to figure out what was happening in the USSR, and, with all the caution of judgments, wrote about open processes:“ ... If they demand from me that I (without proof) believe in something provable , then this is the same as requiring me to believe in something unprovable. I won’t do it ... With an unsubstantiated process, he caused damage to the people ” ^[32] .

Lev Kopelev in his book on Brecht noted how different Galileo performed by Ernst Bush in the play “ Berliner Ensemble ” differed from Galileo Lawton: “The differences,” he wrote, “are paradoxical at first glance: Lafton is a rich American, apolitical and cheerful to carelessness - unconditionally condemns the apostate Galileo, does not allow any condescension to the cowardly glutton and self-lover ... Bush is the son of a worker from northern Germany, brought up in Puritan traditions, a convinced communist, experienced severe deprivation and deadly oppression assumptions, - it turns out to be condescending to the great scientist, broken by the base forces of self-preservation - fear and selfish calculations ... The bottom line is that Bush has a different attitude to the scientific work of Galileo and to his ability to “enjoy thinking”. Lafton felt this as a spontaneous passion, almost identical to carnal. But Bush is attracted by a revolutionary thinker, a brave, stubborn seeker of truth ” ^[33] .

The political subtext of the play was pointed out in 1964 by I. Fradkin in his comments on “The Life of Galileo” - to the best of the possibilities censored by him: the first edition of the play differed from the later ones precisely in that Galileo’s condemnation was still not so unequivocal in it, since Brecht “I had in mind the complicated and sometimes cunning tactics that the underground fighters (in particular, anti-fascists in the Third Empire ) have to resort to” ^[2] . About the same twenty years later, Ernst Schumacher wrote: “... Brecht showed how it is possible to spread the truth even after defeat - precisely by cunning” ^[4] . Yuri Lyubimov directed The Life of Galileo at the Taganka Theater in 1966 - at the same time that more eminent cultural figures signed the Letter of Twenty-Five and the Letter of Thirteen Against Stalin's Rehabilitation. And although he directed a later version of the play, the director softened Galileo’s condemnation: it was a play primarily about “an unfortunate country that needs heroes,” - Lyubimov found out precisely in the Life of Galileo a domestic conflict. Like Marianna Stroeva , who wrote in a review of the play: “Alas, his dilemmas are too alive” ^[27] . During the years of perestroika, the same idea was expressed more frankly by Yuri Barboy , recalling how Ernst Bush played Galileo in 1957: “... Galileo is not alone in making a choice and betraying his goal; A Bush citizen “tries on” the same radical choice for himself and his contemporaries ” ^[28] .

In terms of form, Brecht himself called the “Life of Galileo” a “opportunistic” play: in comparison with the “ Caucasian Cretaceous Circle ”, which experts consider the most consistent embodiment of the theory of “ epic theater ” ^[34] , “The Life of Galileo” seems quite traditional, in it there are practically no methods with which Brecht achieved the “ effect of excitement ” ^[35] ; в ней нет даже обычных для Брехта зонгов , расширяющих временные и пространственные рамки пьесы, включающих в неё самого автора, — в «Жизни Галилея» автор присутствует лишь в небольших стихотворных эпиграфах к картинам.

At the same time, Pavel Markov noted that “The Life of Galileo” is very difficult for a stage decision: there is no intrigue in it, there are no major events that can attract the attention of the audience. The play consists of completely self-contained scenes, united, in accordance with the principles of the “epic theater”, not with a plot in the usual sense of the word, but with an author’s thought, and with the thought of “looking for” —the viewer should follow it, according to Brecht’s intention ^{[ 36]} . With this feature, “The Life of Galileo” makes especially high demands on the actors, primarily the performer of the main role: the Brecht Galileo has too few “experiences” for him to capture the audience by means of a psychological theater. Here, Brecht, like in no other play, needs a thinking actor who is able to interest the audience with the development of author’s thought ^[36] .

Outwardly, “The Life of Galileo” is like an ordinary biographical drama; it is not a parabola , like many other Brecht plays; he strictly adhered to the historical outline, in remarks he accurately dated the main events of Galileo's life; but he warned against a literal interpretation of the plot, in particular, in one of the commentaries to the play he wrote: “It is very important for theaters to know that if the production of this play is directed mainly against the Catholic Church, its power of influence will be significantly lost. ... It is in our day that it would be extremely risky to put the seal of the struggle against religion on Galileo’s struggle for freedom of science. This would in the most undesirable way distract attention from the present, by no means ecclesiastical reactionary authority ” ^[37] . The author’s interpretation of the plot is different in different editions of the play, but Brecht’s thought was always directed to current events ^[38] , and this theater, which remained in the subtext, should have been revealed by the theater ^[ 300 ^] . “The staging of this play,” wrote Ilya Fradkin, “can be achieved only by large theaters with bright acting personalities” ^[2] .

The Life of Galileo at the Brecht Theater

In Germany, the play was first staged by Friedrich Zima in Cologne - the premiere took place in May 1955 ^{[2] [K 5]} . In the same year, Brecht began staging Life of Galileo at the Berliner Ensemble Theater, which he created, entrusting the main role to his beloved actor Ernst Bush . He made some notes in the text of the play, in particular, completely deleted picture V (Plague) and picture XV, in which Andrea Sarti takes Galileo's manuscript across the border, apparently guided by the same considerations as in the "American" edition: not to heroize Galileo and not to give an occasion to interpret his renunciation as a rational act, committed in the interests of science ^[2] . These notes, as well as some changes to the text, some consider it purely directorial, others give reason to talk about the third, “Berlin” version of the play ^[1] . Thus, E. Schumacher believed that the refinements made by Brecht in Galileo's final self-condemnation brought the play closer to the urgent problems of science: the production of the play in Berlin was conceived shortly after the testing of the hydrogen bomb ^[39] .

The interpretation of the image of the protagonist was also connected with this actualization: judging by the surviving rehearsal records, Brecht wanted Galileo to be both a “perfect scoundrel” and a “hero” who, through the fault of a society that considers creativity as a crime, becomes a criminal himself; he saw Galileo “gluttonous and carnal, sinful and down to earth”, torn between two vices - “science and gluttony” ^[40] . Such an interpretation was opposed by Bush, who for a long time refused to play the play at all ^{[41] [42]} . The audience eventually saw another Galileo, who, along with L. Kopelev, also noted Y. Yuzovsky during the theater’s tour in Russia: “Galileo Bush loves life, but not necessarily in its low, consumer version, but more in the high, in the creative “Bush doesn’t want to humiliate his hero in vain ... We found the notorious“ gluttony ”in the play only once, when Galileo drinks milk with pleasure, paying tribute to his qualities ...” ^[43] .

Was such Galileo a violation of the author’s will, or did Bush (along with Erich Engel , originally invited to co-lead) manage to convince the author, in any case, in May 1956, seriously ill Brecht wrote to Bush: “... I am very sorry that I could not participate in the final formation of the image of your Galileo. Especially after the last rehearsal of the final scene, I saw that you, I am convinced, are creating a magnificent image! ” ^[44]

Galileo Bush, in the first scenes - a full-blooded, life-giving man of the Renaissance , endowed, according to the critic, with the special gift of “feeling good on the earth” ^[43] , in the final scene he seemed devastated, indifferent to everything, incapable of rejoicing - a man long ago lost the meaning of life; even the secret work on the manuscript, which Andrea had taken abroad, could not return his lost wash. Unlike Lawton, Bush told the story of Galileo as a tragedy ^[26] .

Brecht did not see the performance; the production after his death was completed by old associate Erich Engel. At the premiere on January 15, 1957, artists were bowed 60 times; the famous theater critic G. Iering called the play “a historic milestone, which may be a turning point in the life of German theater” ^[45] . Galileo Bush in the same detail as once Brecht - Galileo Laughton, described by Hans Eisler , and after the theater’s tour in Moscow and Leningrad in 1957, Ilya Fradkin ^[46] . The Galileo’s Life opened in May with the theater’s tour: “We saw the performance,” wrote P. Markov in those days, “carefully and lovingly decorated in every detail of it ... The director knows unmistakably at what point in action the spectator should pay special attention. She does not allow on stage a single extra accessory. Accurate and very simple decorative design - polished brown high walls - leaves a wide, spacious stage area free and only a few mean details of the atmosphere convey the atmosphere of the era. Stage scenes are also expediently, sparingly, but correctly constructed ... Stage images, up to episodic ones, are developed with the same thoroughness and meticulous exactingness that are characteristic of the performance as a whole ” ^{[26] [K 6]} .

The performance “Berliner Ensemble” received international recognition, and Brecht’s play has not left the stage since ^[2] ; The Brecht Theater also turned to it again and again: in 1971, “The Life of Galilee” was staged by Fritz Bennevitz ^{[47] [K 7]} ; in 1978, M. Weckvert and J. Tenschert staged, under the title "Galileo Galilei", the earliest Danish version of the play ^{[48] [41] [K 8]} .

Galileo's Life on Taganka

The most famous production of “Life of Galileo” in the USSR is the performance of Yuri Lyubimov at the Taganka Theater , with Vladimir Vysotsky in the title role. The premiere in the young but already conquered Moscow theater took place on May 17, 1966 ^{[27] [K 9]} . Precisely because this performance, staged at the end of the " thaw ", was more likely to respond to the pressing problems of Soviet reality, Lyubimov refrained from unambiguous condemnation of the protagonist. He recalled Brecht’s words that a good performance was like a colloquium ^[51] - on Taganka two choirs, a boys’s choir and a monk’s choir, argued about Galileo ^[27] . And not only argued about him, but also tried to influence him: some called for a compromise, others for a fight. If Brecht wrote a play without zongs, then Lyubimov included zongs in his play - to Brecht’s poems that had nothing to do with the play, as well as R. Kipling , N. Korzhavin , and E. Evtushenko ^[49] . The court, according to the critic, turned out to be “biased, even desperate”, less thoughtful, but more tragic than Brecht wanted ^[27] .

Even more decisively than Bush, Lyubimov refused the Lawtonian interpretation of the image and, accordingly, his explanation of the reasons for Galileo’s renunciation ^[27] . In the performance of Vysotsky Galileo, it was least possible to blame the exorbitant tendency to “earthly pleasures”, he led a harsh, almost Spartan life, he was more likely to reject old wine than a new thought ^[27] . Lyubimov thus shifted the emphasis from personal causes (individual weaknesses) to external ones - the upcoming reaction. The accusation, according to the critic, was redirected: the problem is not only and not so much in the weakness of Galileo-man, but in the strength of the conditional “church” ^{[27] [52]} . “This is being proved,” wrote M. Stroeva in 1966, “the playwright’s thought develops on stage. And gradually, step by step, the feeling of stiffness, lack of freedom, a hanging threat grows. But not Prometheus is bound. The scientist’s plebeianism gets a double meaning: together with the strength of the people, Galileo acquires his weakness, shares his faith and his prejudices, experiences his ups and downs ... ” ^[27]

Other productions in Russia

In 1975, V. Bogomolov staged "The Life of Galileo" at the Moscow Art Theater , with Andrei Popov in the title role; but there was no such resonance as the performance of Yu. Lyubimov ^[53] .

Long before Lyubimov, in 1960, Ruben Agamirzyan created a radio show in Leningrad with the music of Andrei Petrov ; Galileo was played by Yuri Tolubeyev ^{[K 10]} , and in 1965 the same director staged the play on Leningrad TV, with Efim Kopelyan as Galileo.

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• Kopelev L.Z. Brecht. - M .: Young Guard, 1965 .-- 432 p. - ( ZHZL ). - 65,000 copies.
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• Turner C. Life of Galileo: between contemplation and the command to participate // The Cambridge Companion to Brecht / Edited by Peter Thomson and Glendyr Sacks. — Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. — С. 143—159 . — ISBN 978-0-521-67384-6 .

• Life of Galileo (inaccessible link) . Theater on the Taganka . Date of treatment November 30, 2014. Archived July 28, 2011.(unspecified)