Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) lived at a time when Europe was going through the most massive economic, political, and social changes. He witnessed two world wars, the revolutions in Austria, Germany, Hungary in 1917-1918, the uprising of communism in Russia, fascism in Italy, Nazism in Germany and the Cold War between the United States and Russia (Geary 2). In the 1930s, the Nazi Party became increasingly popular in Germany. In 1934, Adolf Hitler took control of Germany and became Führer and Chancellor of the Reich (Gray 90). Brecht, a proponent of Marxism and a socialist writer, became an obvious target of the Nazi German government. When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, Brecht was exiled from Germany and his books were banned. During his exile from 1938 to 1945, he wrote five masterpieces which established his reputation abroad: Mother Courage and her children (1939/1941), The Life of Galileo (1938/1943), The Good Wife of Setzuan (1940/1943), Mr. Puntila and His Servant Matti (1941), and The Caucasian Chalk Circle (1944-1945). These pieces are slightly different from his earlier propagandist and anti-Nazi works, in which his Marxist views are outspoken. They depict the behavior of human beings and ask the audience to question what they would do in a similar situation (Gray 109). In The Life of Galileo, Brecht used real historical figures and set the play in the past to distance his audience. Although the play deals with issues that occurred in 17th century Italy, it deals with Brecht's contemporary times. Brecht historicized Galileo's life to get his audience to think about what they see on stage and to make objective judgments about the characters' behavior. He also used the play to mask his political views to avoid direct problems in this politically and socially turbulent time.Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why violent video games should not be banned"? Get the original essay The Life of Galileo is the story of Galileo's struggle against the Catholic Church, which held all political power in the 17th century Italy. Brecht wrote the play chronologically, beginning with forty-six-year-old Galileo. He is a professor at the University of Padua, he is not rich and he lives with his daughter Virginia, his housekeeper Mrs. Sarti and Mrs. Sarti's son, Andrea. Galileo attempts to prove the theories of Copernicus, a study of the earth revolving around the sun. His findings, however, conflict with the Church's doctrine that the Earth is the center of the universe. The Church claims that its teaching offends the cosmic order proclaimed by the Church and disrupts its political power in society. The Pope accepts that he is the subject of an investigation by the Inquisition. Although Galileo was eager to learn the truth and show it to the world, he recanted in 1633 when he was shown instruments of torture. His students despise his cowardice and abandon him. Until the end of his life, Galileo was guarded by the Inquisition and forbidden to write and publish. However, he secretly continues his research, completes The Discorsi and gives the book to his former student, Andrea, to smuggle abroad. There are three versions of The Life of Galileo: the “Danish” version, the “American” version, and the “Berlin” version. The Danish version was written in 1938 in Denmark and performed in Zurich in 1943. The plot of the play is more or less the same, but it focuses on "the struggle between Galileo and the authorities" (Wilson 146). The character of Galileo is different from the American and Berlin versions in that he is a herowho shrewdly recanted and accepted the authority of the Church in order to be able to complete the Discorsi. Brecht, however, changed his attitude towards Galileo during World War II. In 1944, he wrote the American version in collaboration with Charles Laughton, an English actor in Hollywood. This version is shorter than the Danish version, and Brecht changed some incidental characters and modified Galileo after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Galileo, at first a hero who thwarts the Inquisition, becomes a coward who betrays his people because he is afraid of physical pain. However, Brecht was not satisfied with the American version. Laughton, who did not share Brecht's experience of exile and flight, eliminated many passages about the oppression of the truth in Germany. Brecht said: The most incisive changes in the structure of entire scenes or even in the work itself were made solely to facilitate the forward movement of the action. . . L. (Laughton) treated the “printed text” with a revealing, sometimes brutal indifference that the playwright was rarely able to share. What we created was a script; performance was everything. It was impossible to persuade him to translate passages which the playwright was prepared to omit from the production, but which he nevertheless wished to keep for the "book". The most important was the stage representation, of which the text was only the means, the vehicle: the text was exhausted in the production, it was consumed like the powder of a firework. (Stern 137) Due to his dissatisfaction with the American version, Brecht revised the play with the help of Elisabeth Hauptmann, Benno Beson, and Ruth Berlau in 1953 in Berlin. This version was first performed by the Berliner Ensemble in 1957. The Berlin version, which Hill calls an "enriched and refined second version" (113), restored many elements of the Danish version that Laughton had cut, but the character of Galileo remains identical to the American version. Although The Life of Galileo is a historical play, it is not intended to simply show Galileo's life as a scientist. Claude Hill explains in his book Bertolt Brecht: “A playwright rarely, if ever, aims simply for complete accuracy when choosing historical material; it must be judged according to other criteria” (114). Although the play is set in Italy in the 17th century, it is a play about the playwright's times, not just Galileo's. The emergence of totalitarianism in Europe in the early 20th century, particularly in Germany, Italy and Russia, led to a series of political and social changes around the world. Governments impose values ​​and restrictions on populations in order to keep them under their control. Individuality and freedom have been suppressed by these governments to achieve a “higher” goal and political ideology. The Nazi government successfully indoctrinated its people into believing that its political and social policies would bring the country into what Brecht called the "New Age" ("Foreword" 213) and that Germany would no longer suffer from the economic depression and loss of cultural pride. caused by the First World War. People blindly believed and listened to what the government told them to do without questioning the government's true intentions. In the foreword to The Life of Galileo, Brecht said: “And yet these disappointed men can still continue to exist in a new age, an age of great upheaval. Only, they know nothing about new eras” (“Foreward” 214). It is clear that Brecht used the play to reflect what was happening in the contemporary world. Galileo is consideredas a revolutionary scientist who laid the foundation for the development of scientific research (Britannica). He discovered and proved that the Earth did not stand still, but revolved around the sun. Even though he had the potential to show "the dawn of a new age" ("Portrait" 217) to the world, he recanted before the Church and left the people to blindly follow the teaching of the Church. People who lived under Hitler's Germany in the 1930s were in a very similar situation. The public believed everything the government told them without questioning whether it was true. Brecht says: Today, the conception of the new is itself distorted. The Old and the Very Old, which now enter the arena, proclaim themselves new, or they are considered new. When the Old or the Very Old are put back in a new way. . . . The "new", for example, is the war system, while the "old", it is said, is an economic system, proposed but never put into practice, which makes wars superfluous. In the new system, society is entrenched in classes; and the old one, they say, is the desire to abolish classes. The hopes of humanity are not so much discouraged in these times; they are rather circuitous. (“Foreword” 214-215) Through his presentation of the character of Galileo and his story of recantation, Brecht wanted his audience to question the totalitarian government. In the play, the Church fears that Galileo's radical discovery will upset its power and change the world order. He prefers a more stable world that maintains his authority even if its people would have to live in illusion. Although he desires to change the world, Galileo betrays his people by admitting that the Church is right simply because he wants to live. His retraction delays the process of scientific development for years. Brecht, a committed Marxist writer, believed that “questioning, the refusal to accept anything as fixed” (Needle and Thomson 79) is necessary to improve human social conditions. By presenting Galileo's weakness, he made his audience understand that something else could have been done to change what happened in the 17th century. In the same way, they could also take action to make a difference in their own society. In addition to showing the image of people being forced to believe those in positions of authority, Brecht also argued that the government's attempt to suppress knowledge and truth would be futile (Wilson 147). In the first Danish version of The Life of Galileo, Galileo realizes that death or resistance to authority would not make the Church accept his discovery. He retracts and the Inquisition thinks he will stop his research. However, he continues and secretly completes the Discorsi. Because of his retraction, he has the opportunity to smuggle the book overseas, thus spreading the truth that the Earth revolves around the sun. Ultimately, knowledge and truth trump the ideological impositions of the Church. Brecht experienced a similar situation to Galileo when Hitler came to power in 1933 and Brecht was forced into exile, with all of his works banned in Germany (Socialist Review). However, Brecht believed that Hitler's censorship would eventually become unnecessary, so he continued to write. Brecht wanted to fight against lies and ignorance and raise awareness among his audience about the ills of society. He believed that the truth would ultimately defeat totalitarianism. The latest version of The Life of Galileo still focuses on the playwright's time. If the Danish version represents the playwright's society in the 1930s, the American version represents his society in the1940s. In 1941, Brecht left for the United States and arrived in Los Angeles, where he settled in Santa Monica, near Hollywood. With the help of Charles Laughton, he wrote the "American" English version of The Life of Galileo in 1944-47 (the American version is simply called Galileo). Laughton played the role of Galileo in the 1947 Los Angeles premiere and later in the New York production. The American version is much shorter than the original Danish version. Brecht also changed Galileo's character by changing the reason he completed the Discorsi to "more like the result of habit than a deliberate act of defiance" (Hill 116). The reason Brecht changed the reason for Galileo's recantation was the atomic bombings of the 1940s. In his book Unvarnished Picture of a New Age: Preamble to the American Version, Brecht writes: The "atomic" age has come to an end. debut in Hiroshima in the middle of our work. Overnight, the biography of the founder of the new system of physics read differently. The infernal effect of the great bomb placed the conflict between Galileo and the authorities of his time in a new and sharper light. (224) It is clear that Brecht wanted to use The Life of Galileo to reflect his times. In his latest versions, Brecht raises the question of the role of science and scientists in relation to humanity. When Galileo presented the telescope as his new discovery to the Venetian court, his student Ludovico, who had told him about this new instrument in Amsterdam, declared: “I am beginning to understand science” (Brecht and Laughton 58). Ludovico scorns the fact that Galileo claims the instrument as his own creation. Brecht believed that some scientists would allow the bourgeoisie to use the results of their research for any purpose because it would allow them to earn a decent living. Even though Galileo uses the telescope to show the world what the Earth looks like, the Venetian government uses it in its naval battles with other countries and states. A scientific invention that aims to bring good to humanity becomes a weapon that destroys lives. The atomic bombs made Brecht realize that the nuclear age was also a product of Galileo's discoveries, for it was he who brought the world into a new "scientific era" in the 17th century. He then presented Galileo as a traitor to humanity because he was the "root" of the atomic bomb. According to Brecht, scientists were unaware of the morality behind their research. In a draft foreword to the play, he condemns scientists who fail to realize their moral values ​​as scientists. Brecht writes: The bourgeois distinguish science from the consciousness of the scientist, setting it up as an island of independence so as to be able in practice to interweave it with politics, economics and ideology. The object of the scientific researcher is “pure” research; the product of this research is not so pure. The formula E = mc2 is conceived as eternal, unrelated to anything. So other people can make the connection: Suddenly, the city of Hiroshima became very ephemeral. Scientists denounce the irresponsibility of machines. ("Drafts" 220) Brecht believes that scientists have gradually become a tool in the service of people who can afford to pay for inventions and research. In the last scene, Galileo says to Andrea: “I have surrendered my knowledge to the powers that be, to use it, no, not to use it, to abuse it, as suits their purposes. I have betrayed my profession” (Brecht and Laughton). 124). Scientists, who were supposed to invent a better life and bring truth to human beings, were inventing terrible weapons thatwere destroying lives and pushing the world to its end due to their selfish needs. Although it is clear that there are similarities between the playwright's time and Galileo's time, why did Brecht choose to write a historical play rather than a fictional piece? Why did Brecht invent (or reinvent) the character of a historical figure? Eric Bentley, a well-known Brecht scholar, explains: Brecht became interested in the historical Galileo at a time when he was preoccupied with his friends and comrades back in Germany and somehow managed to continue working . At the forefront of his thoughts was the underground political worker who was plotting to overthrow Hitler's regime. (14-15)In the first version of the play, Galileo says: “be careful when you travel through Germany with the truth under your cloak! » (Bentley 15). Brecht understood that the only way to express the truth in Germany in the 1930s was to hide it. He wrote “Writing the Truth: Five Difficulties” before completing the first version of The Life of Galileo. The five difficulties of writing the truth, according to Brecht, are the courage to write it, the desire to recognize it, the skill to handle it as a weapon, the judgment to select those in whose hands it will be effective and the need for cunning to spread it among the many. Brecht believed that these five difficulties constituted “formidable problems for writers living under fascism” (“Writing” 133). In the essay, he particularly develops the fifth difficulty, the need to be “cunning” to write the truth. He lived in a time of oppression where people could not freely speak the truth, in public or private, because they would be in great danger. Even Brecht had to flee his home country because his works expressed a political opinion opposed to Hitler's government. He says in his essay: “Lenin wanted to prevent exploitation and oppression on the island of Sakhalin, but he had to be wary of the tsarist police” (“Writing” 143). At that time, many European governments, particularly in Germany, censored all documents that went against their political and social policies. This became extremely difficult for writers who wanted to tell the truth to the people. Brecht, however, believed that if a writer used clever devices, then "many things that cannot be said in Germany about Germany can be said about Austria" ("Writing" 143 ). Brecht suggested that a writer could inspire his audience to think objectively about government by writing a play about other places or areas that share similarities with the situation in contemporary society. Brecht's Life of Galileo, in this case, presents a critical situation that occurred in the 17th century, with which its audience could draw an analogy in their own society. Only by writing cunningly can a writer spread the truth in a time where oppression exists. Brecht thought that The Life of Galileo was “technically a big step backward” (Kellner 287) because he failed to emotionally distance his audience from pity. towards Galilee. However, he used historicification, another famous epic technique, to allow his audience to reflect on the situation and Galileo's actions with appropriate socialist values. Historicification is a dramatic writing device consisting of situating the action of a play in the historical past to establish parallels with a contemporary event (Dictionary of Theater). Brecht often sets his plays in the past or in a foreign country, such as Setzuan's The Good Wife is set in China and Mother Courage and Her Children is set during. 22(2002): 145.