Galileo

Just like Brecht to have his finger so on the pulse of the historic past, his present and his future which has arrived as our present. Could probably benefit from some judicious cutting for modern audiences, but filled with challenging ideas. Worth the read, surely worth a production.

Recently, the American Psychological Association discovered, to its general embarrassment, that a good number its members had collaborated with Pentagon- and CIA-sponsored torturers--or practitioners of "enhanced interrogation." The psychologists had provided expert advice about levels of endurance, psychological techniques for cracking resistance, and so on. To its credit, the APA formally condemned such collaboration. But the whole sordid incident reminds us (as if we need reminding) that when men and women of science allow their knowledge to be misused, either out of cowardice or misguided patriotism, science can become a horrible tool for exploitation and destruction. This, in a nutshell, is the central theme of Brecht's second version of "Galileo." The play is one of Brecht's best. Written with a nondidactic hand, the play is anything but dreary socialist realism. At times funny and at other times incredibly sad, the sober message that it is the scientist's responsibility to make sure that his or her discoveries are used properly runs throughout. In abjuring his physics under threats from the Inquisition, Brecht's Galileo displays moral cowardice: first, because he allows established power to usurp his discoveries, and second because he lets down the people who could most profit from his specific discoveries as well as the spirit of unfettered inquiry that generated them. As Galileo says at one point in the play, "The practice of science would seem to call for valor." Several reviewers have remarked that the introduction by Eric Bentley is long-winded and have accordingly reduced their rating for the book. This strikes me as odd for two reasons. First, presumably one purchases "Galileo" to read Brecht, not attached commentary. If the commentary is good, that's just a bonus. But the center of attention surely is the play itself. Second, for all his long-windedness, Bentley's thesis is cogent and, I think, important: that historical drama properly seeks to shed light on its own time by appealing to past events. It's not important that Brecht reinvents Galileo for his play. After all, he isn't writing history. What's significant is the way in which Galileo becomes a symbol that can shed light on our own understanding of science and moral responsibility. Truth ought never to be reduced simply to fact. _________ * Galileo's final self-judgment, Scene 13 (p. 124).

The pressures that the established order can bring to bear on those who want to move outside the status quo are enormous. In the end those in charge can grind down the best of men with the most worthy knowledge to disseminate. That is the story that the master communist playwright Bertolt Brecht brings here about the pressures to recant brought on Galileo by the Catholic Church in the 1500's. And for what crime? For merely bringing out facts about the nature of the world and its place in the universe that are taken as commonplaces, even by children, today. Brecht himself certainly knew about such pressures. Although in public, at least, Brecht was a fairly orthodox Stalinist he had his private moments of doubt. Certainly some of the themes in his plays stretch the limits of the orthodox `socialist realist' cultural program. Thus the strongest part of the play is the struggle between an individual who is onto something new about the world and an institution that saw that such a discovery would wreak havoc on its claims to centrality. Every once in a while a section of humankind turns inward on itself like that and here the Church was no exception. Damn, the fight against such obscurantism is the price that we pay for some sense of human progress. Except, as in the case of the Catholic Church, it should not have taken 300 years to admit the error. Know this. We have to defend the Galileos of the world against the rise of obscurantism. And in this play Brecht has done his part to honor that commitment.

Bertolt Brecht's "the Life of Galileo" is perhaps one of his best known plays which came to define the Epic Drama genre of the 20th century. Written in America after Brecht fled the Nazi uprising in Germany, "the Life of Galileo" takes a bold stance about science and scientific discovery in a time when Atomic Theory and the development of an Atomic Bomb were making people consider what may happen when something good (atomic energy) are made into something bad (atomic bombs). Though this version is the revised edition to the play (Brecht had written two previous versions that he changed) it still captures the spirit of Epic drama and the social/political issues can be deduced by Brecht's portrayl of Galileo.

Brecht is genius of modern literature and plays. His epic style works well for this play, and it is one of the best plays written in this century. AMAZING!!