The Life of Galileo by Bertolt Brecht: A Critical Analysis

Undoubtedly Brecht altered his view of Galileo and the historical importance of his scientific

discoveries under the influence of the atomic bomb which was dropped on Hiroshima during

the creation of Galileo. Brecht could not ignore the fact the atomic bomb with its fateful

possibilities was a product of the science founded by Galileo at the beginning of the scientific

age.

Galileo interests Brecht not as a character but as a case.

The arrangement and execution of the play permit us to interpret Galileo’s behaviour in

recanting under pressure from the Inquisition as the manifestation of a rational cunning,

which accommodate itself to the powerful only formally and seemingly, in order to be able to

undermine their authority more effectively. For the fact that Galileo does not fear death under

all circumstances indeed is ready to face it if the execution of his experiment requires it, is

proved by his attitude during the plague: he passionately continues his experiments despite

constant mortal danger. He had proved repeatedly that he only judged the forces and powers

of the world functionally, insofar as they were advantageous or detrimental to his researches.

Decisive however is the way in which Brecht has Galileo maintains a hedonistic view of life

and binds obsessive joy in experimentation and discovery.

Teaching a new science in a new way, he practices a new human attitude in a world which

turns out to be both needful and capable of change.

From Brecht’s humane, even radically anthropological position, the question of a new age is

identical with the possibility of developing a new type of human existence and establishing it

in the face of the resistant tradition.

Galileo cannot fulfill the historical heroic role in which his pupils would like to see him

because he is unable to transcend, and hopelessly falls victim to, the law of human frailty.
The artistic method which Brecht follows in Galileo does not develop suspense out of what is

represented, but rather out of the relationship in which the mode of representation stands to

the factual events.

Traditional drama tends to concentrate on elements advancing the action; Brecht however

assumes the “epic” narrative attitude of a painter of moves concerned with completeness of

material. The audience, called as witnesses are driven to a reconsideration of the events.

Brecht’s dramaturgy prove how impossible it is to stop the dialectic of the whole process by a

one-sided solution that transcends history.

The theme of Galileo is the process of discovering truth.

Galileo’s failure illustrates a fundamental failing of the Marxist historical dialectic. The

materialistic view of history is in principle in capable of producing an ethic of political

action.

Galileo is the story of a recantation before a tyrannical threat, such as Brecht was forced of

perhaps freely consented to make himself in 1953.

Brecht himself says,

“In view of the situation one can scarcely be bent on either simply praising Galileo or simply

condemning him.”

“As in one view humanity is saved by the grace and death of Christ, so in Brecht’s by the life

and disgrace of Galileo, humanity is damned. Galileo is nothing more nor less than Brecht’s

Antichrist. He is the God who failed us” -Harold Hobson

In his habitually exaggerating fashion, Brecht does imply at this instant that a whole epoch of

European history turns on one man’s failure.

that an intense demand for heroic courage has been made, it is also possible to see what is

gained by taking an adaptive course. The new unwillingness to impose or suggest single

answers characterizes Brecht in Galileo.

The play’s basic concern is not an accurate historical rendition of the life of Galileo, but an

episodic exploration of the possibilities open to an individual of participating in and

contributing to movement and change in the larger domains that surround him.

The life of Galileo is not, thus, a given centre of the worlds in which Galileo participates. It is

a selected centre, one chosen by the author and privileged by the play; the basis of that

privilege is imply that it is a valuable centre to posit for the pragmatic aims of the play.

The Life of Galileo seeks to establish links that run from the creativity of the individual to the

continuity of the cosmos.

Brecht’s famed table of contrasts depicting differences between his theatre and established

theatre:

Dramatic theatre Epic theatre

Plot Narrative

Implicates the spectator in a stage situation Turns the spectator into an observer

Wears down his capacity for action Arouses his capacity for action

Provides him with sensations Forces him to take decisions

Experience Picture of the world

The spectator is involved in something He is made to face something

Suggestion Argument

Instinctive feelings are preserved Brought of the point of recognition

The spectator in the thick of it, shares the He stands outside, studies
 experience.

The human being is taken for granted The human being is the object of inquiry

He is alterable He is alterable and able to alter

Eyes on the finish Eyes on the course

One scene makes another Each scene for itself

Growth Montage

Lineal development In curves

Man as a fixed point Man as a process

Thought determines being Social being determines thought

Feeling reason

This table does not show absolute antitheses but mere shifts of accent.

Brecht’s most radical revision of the audience’s role in the theatre – the audience is not just to

be offered a fixed set of options to choose between; it is to be led towards a recognition of a

mode of enquiry that enables it to construct its own choices.

The course of action that Brecht favours is this: the playwright must offer a structured mode

of performance and the society must manifest a structured mode of organization; but the

audience is to retain a certain degree of freedom by being offered a perspective that is not

restricted to any single one of them. The plays offer not only instances of problems and likely

solutions but also examples of how to think about problem contemplation and solution

construction. The epic theatrical events provides a divergent perspective which offers the

audience a degree of freedom to put things together for itself.

The audience is asked to weigh differing perspectives, to choose among them, and, if

necessary, invent new ones. Brecht calls the ability he wishes the audience to exercise

‘complex seeing’- the capacity to recognize, invent and apply competing perspectives to
issues arising within any domain by turning quickly to the edges of the domain and to the

relationships it contracts there with contiguous domains.

Brecht’s attempts at historicizing reality is infact an attempt to judge “a particular social

system from another social systems point of view.”

Brecht’s theories thus give the whole issue of mimesis in the theatre a subtle twist.

Brecht’s concern lay in helping people to find out for themselves rather than to find out for

them.

Life of Galileo is an enquiry into the relationships among three major domains- that of the

planets and the stars, that of the Catholic society in Italy and that of the life of Galileo Galilei.

The differing rates of motion in these three spheres provide competing perspectives to the

play and govern its major thematic conflicts. The audience, left without a last word on

anything is thus forced to set about constructing its own ‘last word’ from the action of the

play as a whole.

The play sets out to interweave its three major domains by introducing a sequence of scenes

in terms of the 3 domains.

The central clash in the play seems, at first glance, to be that b/w two social institutions-

science and the Catholic Church- over the status of empirical knowledge. Galileo, the

spokesman for science, aspires to give it the privileged status of unqualified and unqualifiable

value. The Cardinals, the spokesmen of the Church, seek to give the Church the same status.

The resulting clash is then variously seen as a clash b/w reason and belief, or b/w new truths

and old errors, or b/w doubt and faith.