Ideas in Motion

By T.E.K.

GALILEO by Bertolt Brecht

As the eye of greed seals the fate of Mother Courage, the lens of the telescope determines the destiny of Galileo. Apart from Socrates' drinking the hemlock, the most vivid martyrdom of truth in the memory of civilized Western man is Galileo's recantation before the Italian Inquisition. The difference between the two is that Socrates could have fled from Athens and refused to do so, and Galileo could have refused to recant but chose to do so. Out of Galileo's dilemma and choice, Brecht fashioned a play of high moral intelligence and lasting pertinence. Unlike some of Brecht's obsessively didactic works, Galileo proceeds by the Socratic method, endlessly posing questions and revealing contradictions, the dramatic equivalent of reality confronting illusion. What is the moral responsibility of the scientist vis-`a-vis the state or, in Galileo's case, the church? Brecht has Galileo (Laurence Luckinbill) castigate himself toward the end of the play for a failure of integrity: "If only I had resisted! If only the scientists could have developed something like the Hippocratic oath of the physicians, a vow to use their knowledge for the welfare of humanity alone. As it now stands, the best one can hope for is a race of inventive dwarfs who can be hired for anything."

But is scientific truth too high a price to pay for sowing the agony of doubt in the minds of common folk? The Little Monk (Rudy Caringi) describes the pain his poor parents would suffer if the earth were no longer the center of the universe and man the paragon of God's eye: "There will be no meaning in their misery. Hunger will simply mean not having eaten, rather than being a test of strength. Hard work will simply be bending and lugging, and not be a virtue." To which Galileo replies: "I can see your people's divine patience but where is their divine wrath?"

It is strangely appropriate that this barbed play of ideas is being presented in Columbia University's Havemayer Hall, where some of the physicists whose equations produced the atomic bomb once lectured. The cast is able, and Luckinbill is imposing as the skeptic son of rationalism. This is an auspicious debut for the New York Actors' Theater.

-T.E.K.

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