Guy Yedwab

Galileo

The disparity between Brecht's theory and stage practice has been at the heart of debates about

Brecht's work—Brecht was confronted about the subject in a crucial interview late in his life by

Friedrich Wolf—Galileo is often at the heart of this discussion. On the one hand, Galileo seems like a

classic Aristotelian play, an “imitation of events that evoke fear and pity” (Poetics 20). On the other

hand, Galileo employs the “alienation effect” which Brecht describes as “stopp[ing] the spectator from

losing himself in the character completely...” (Brecht 93). For me, this raises the questions: is Galileo

more in line with Brecht's epic theater, or can it be called an Aristotelian drama; and how can we

account for this contradiction? What I'm going to be arguing about in the pages which follow is that the

'contradiction' is as embedded in the theory as it is in the play and ultimately points toward a revision in

Brecht's thinking.

On the one hand, Galileo is structured along Aristotelian lines evoking “fear and pity” (Poetics

20). The selection of Galileo as a heroic character in the play may have been motivated, as Eric Bently

says, by the publication in 1937 of the German translation of The Star Gazer, a 'fictional biography' of

Galileo written by Zsolt de Harsányi (Galileo 153). According to its review in TIME Magazine, the

Galileo depicted in The Star Gazer is a heroically stubborn science-driven man; this is the Galileo of

the popular imagination. To a degree, Brecht's Galileo delivers on the image of that Galileo. Upon

confirming that the moon is like the Earth, and that the Earth revolves around the sun, Galileo decides

to bring his science to the Court of Florence, despite Sagredo's warnings. “Ten years ago a man was

burned at the stake for saying that...A moment ago, when you were at the telescope, I saw you tied to a

stake, and when you said you believed in proof, I smelt burning flesh!” (Galileo 63-65). Galileo does

respond to the threats against his life; “I shall enjoy taking them by the scruff of the neck and making

them look through the telescope... I am going to Florence.” (Galileo 65). His actions are marked by

courage because at least initially he puts his principles above his own life. Those principles are the
principles of humanism: “I believe in the human brain.” (Galileo 78). When asked by Sagredo where

God is in his system of the universe, he answers, “Within ourselves—or nowhere.” (Galileo 63).

Therein lies the empathy: we feel most connected to Galileo because he seems least alienated by the

distance of time; he seems the most rational.

The same anachronism of Galileo's existence helps prompts us to fear for him; Sagredo's

invocation of Giordano Bruno's immolation at the stake reminds the audience of the cost of Galileo's

principles. The tension between Galileo's humanist ideals and society's theocentric views becomes the

central dramatic tension of the play. In almost each scene, Galileo is confronted with more temptations

to abandon science. These tensions reveal Galileo's hamartia: his need for human comforts. In Scene

One, he finds himself asking the Curator for money, saying, “My good sir, how can I make ends meet

on five hundred scudi?” (Galileo 53). The Curator does not show any mercy; he merely demands that

Galileo produce some form of a product; this leads Galileo to steal the telescope from Ludovico. Scene

Two begins with the short poem in the narration, “No one's virtue is complete:/Great Galileo liked to

eat./You will not resent, we hope,/The truth about his telescope.” (Galileo 55). His enemies are aware

of his hubris, and they use it to lever his downfall. The inquisitor says, “He is a man of the flesh. He

would weaken at once,” and the new Pope replies, “He has more enjoyment in him than any man I ever

saw. He loves eating and drinking and thinking. To excess. ... He cannot say no to an old wine or a new

thought.” (Galileo 109-110). This hamartia, although it leads to Galileo's downfall, is another endearing

aspect of Galileo. The audience pities that he is forced to choose between his epicurean delights and his

intellectual delights; he holds them equally dear, but the situation has forced him to choose between

one and the other. We fear, because we do not know what price Galileo will pay. And, after the manner

of the Greek tragedy, he pays many prices: years of house arrest, alienation from Andrea, loss of

eyesight. In scene 12, we can observe a number of formal elements other than fear. Nowhere else is

there a clearer example of what Brecht meant when he said that Aristotelian drama has its “eyes on the

finish.” (Brecht 34). The scene leads toward crisis, as Andrea, Federzoni, and the Little Monk wait in
fear for three pages wondering if Galileo will recant. The scene afterwards contains another Aristotelian

element: recognition. When Galileo presents Andrea with “Discorsi,” Andrea and the audience forgive

Galileo: “You shielded the truth from the oppressor...we cried 'Your hands are stained!' You say: 'better

stained than empty!” (Galileo 121). But Galileo is in the midst of recognition, he recognizes the price

he has had to pay, and recognizes his faults. “I sold out... blessed be our bargaining, white-washing,

death-fearing community! ... I have betrayed my profession. Any man who does what I have done must

not be tolerated in the ranks of science.” (Galileo 122-124). But despite his recognition and the low end

to which he was brought, Andrea forgives Galileo; the audience pities Galileo for his unnecessary guilt

which he holds past the point of its necessity. In these ways, Brecht uses pity and fear, hamartia, and

recognition to present the tragedy of a heroic figure, much as Aristotle describes in his Poetics.

On the other hand, it is impossible to ignore the way Brecht does alienate us from Galileo, both

in simple and complicated ways. The loathsome side to Galileo is especially clear when for money he

steals Ludovico's telescope and markets it as his own invention. But a much more complicated use of

alienation in the play corresponds to what Brecht describes in “Alienation Effects in Chinese

Acting,” Brecht discusses there Bourgeois theatre's representation of the “eternal... human”: “Its story

is arranged in such a way as to create 'universal situations that allow Man with a capital M to express

himself: man of every period and every colour.” (Brecht 96-97). He is rebelling against the Aristotelian

ideal of “consistency of character” and the organic development of scenes. Galileo, as a character,

demonstrates inconsistency. Although one of his virtues which makes him appeal to the audience is his

principled defense of science, he often betrays the opposite sentiments. In one scene, he gives his

courageous response that he will go to Florence despite Sagredi's warnings; in another scene, when

Federzoni asks “whether you can afford to remain silent,” Galileo replies, “I cannot afford to be

smoked on a wood fire like a ham.” (Galileo 89). In one passage, Galileo refers to the duty of scientists

to share their discoveries: “'He that withholdeth corn, the people shall curse him.'” (Galileo 77). Yet in

a later scene, he says, “I have written a book about the mechanics of the firmament, that is all. What
they do or don't do with it is not my concern.” (Galileo 106). These shifting opinions make it difficult

for an audience to empathize with Galileo, as well as providing the “historical” Galileo that Brecht

believes is necessary. This also reveals irrational, fear-based motives for his seemingly rational thought;

and since his rationality is one of the qualities which brings the audience into empathy with him,

disrupting his rational thought alienates the audience from him.

Given this tension between a Galileo who is to be pitied and feared for, and a Galileo who

disables the empathy of the audience through unrepentant anti-social acts, the question we need to ask

is: is Galileo more Aristotelian or Brechtian? Overall, it seems more Aristotelian. In one essay entitled

“Theater For Pleasure Or Theater For Instruction,” Brecht delineates between the response a dramatic

theater-goer has to a play as opposed to an epic theater-goer.“The dramatic theatre's spectator says: Yes,

I have felt like that too—Just like me—it's only natural...The epic theatre's spectator says: ... That's

extraordinary, hardly believable—I laugh when they weep, I weep when they laugh.” (Brecht 71).

Viewed using this delineation, the average theater-goer is more likely to respond to Galileo in the first

way. Even those Brechtian elements that repulse the theatre-goer from Galileo the character can be seen

as drawing the audience further into the drama. One of the points which Brecht associates with

Aristotle is that in Aristotelian drama, “eyes [are] on the finish” (Brecht 37). Often these repulsive

attributes of Galileo serve to drive toward the finish, especially through Scene 12, leading up to the

announcement that Galileo has recanted. The question is not what is happening onstage, but rather,

what will happen at the end of it? Although from a Brechtian perspective, the historical 'ending' is

already known to the audience, the Aristotelian perspective asks: will Galileo cave in to his hamartia, or

will his integrity survive through to the end? For these reasons, Galileo seems more Aristotelian

overall.

So far, I've really argued that whatever Brecht says in his essays this is an Aristotelian play, but

I'm now going to explain instead why the question is misconceived and the contradiction not between

play and theory but within the theory itself. As I suggested at the beginning when I alluded to Wolf's
interview, these discussions of Brechtian adherence (or failure to adhere) to his own positions began in

his lifetime, and many of his later essays offer qualifications on his earlier works. In fact, Mordecai

Gorelik once said, "It was characteristic that he would brood for weeks or months over any rent in his

thought-fabric until he could knit it back into unity. Later on, when I pointed out to him that his own

writing contained suspense and climax, he remarked, airily, “'Is that what you mean? That's so

elementary that I take it for granted.” (Brecht 162). The Wolf interview I alluded to earlier, “Formal

Problems Arising from the Theatre's New Content,” deals with the question: how does Brecht account

for the contradiction between his disavowal of Aristotelian drama and the Aristotelian elements in his

plays? Brecht's response merely seems to deepen the contradiction: “It is not true, though it is

sometimes suggested, that epic theatre... proclaims the slogan: 'Reason this side, Emotion (feeling)

that.” (Brecht 227) This is a surprising statement, considering that the essay “The Modern Theatre Is

The Epic Theatre,” most commonly cited as the manifesto of epic theatre, has two columns, one for

“dramatic theater” and the other for “epic theater,” and feeling is in the dramatic column and thought is

in the epic column. Even later, Brecht acknowledged this contradiction: in the notes to Strittmatter's

play Katzgraber, which he directed, he makes a straightforward admission: “So far as theory goes I

offend against the inflexible rule that the proof of the pudding is in the eating—which happens to be

one of my own favorite principles... My whole theory is much naiver than people think, or than my way

of putting it allows them to suppose.” (Brecht 248). He is admitting that that his theories are not

entirely reflected in his plays, because his theory is not clearly articulated. But in the Katzgraber notes,

Brecht also says:

“I wanted to take the principle that it was not just a matter of interpreting
the world but of changing it, and apply that to the theatre. The changes,
...were all changes within the framework of the theatre, so that of course a
whole mass of old rules remained wholly unaltered. ...I think the root of
the trouble was that my plays have to be properly performed if they are to
be effective, so that for the sake of (oh dear me!) a non-Aristotelian
dramaturgy I had to outline (calamity!) an epic theatre” (Brecht 248).
As he said to Gorelick earlier, he is saying here that his theories have been misinterpreted. In fact, soon

afterwards, he began to formulate a new theater which he termed the “dialectical theatre” (Brecht 282).

He writes: “'epic theatre' is too formal a term for the kind of theatre aimed at (and to some extent

practiced). Epic theatre is a prerequisite for these contributions, but... The term must ...be reckoned

inadequate...” (Brecht 282). These important realizations may in fact be what the experience of putting

epic theater theory into practice taught Brecht; certainly our understanding of Brechtian plays could be

posited along similar lines. Brecht's life, as a maturing process: it begins with the inflammatory, anti-

Aristotelian tracts such as “The Modern Theatre Is The Epic Theatre” and “Alienation Effects in

Chinese Acting,” continues through a brief Aristotelian phase represented by the play Senor Carrara's

Rifles which he himself called “Aristotelian” in his private journal, and ends with the Dialectical

Theater. Galileo, in fact, can be seen as a more 'mature' Brechtian piece; rather than abandoning

Aristotle in favor of his own theory, he places the two within the play in points of conflict.

Thematically, this occurs in Galileo; it is interesting to observe that one of the Greek scientists whose

outmoded thoughts Galileo struggles against is, in fact, Aristotle. One of the philosophers who Galileo

confronts says that Galileo must be wrong because “his new stars would have broken the outer crystal

sphere—which we know of on the authority of Aristotle. I am sorry.” Federezoni replies, “He had no

telescope” and Galileo adds, “'Truth is the daughter of Time, not of authority.' The sum of our

knowledge is pitiful” (Galileo 68). But although Galileo is mournful of the lack of progress, he does

speak with respect of the Greek period, of the “same high curiosity which was the true glory of ancient

Greece” (Galileo 69). He also disproves Aristotle's theory of why ice floats, demonstrating that ice is

able to divide water and, therefore, lighter than water. Yet his attitude toward Aristotle is not that of a

blasphemer in violent disagreement; rather, he is merely showing that with his own testing he can move

farther. This may, in fact, be Brecht's relationship with Aristotle; he is using the content of Galileo to

speak to his struggle against Aristotle, rather than his form.