Galileo

Rating:
Summary: Galileo
Review: After reading this play it makes you appreciate how much freedom is in our world now. I think Bertolt Brecht did a good job of showing the dangers of being a researcher in those olden days. It was actually kinda scary how the church would rather kill people to keep their high figures then accept the truth. Many people were scared of the truth. I was proud of Galileo who kept on researching even thought he knew there would be consequences. There was some bad parts of the play however, at some parts it was extremely hard to follow due to the language in which the characters speak in and some times you had no idea what was going on. I recommend this book to someone who wants to learn more about Galileo or to someone who wants to learn about how the churched ruled everyone's life.

Rating:
Summary: Galileo
Review: After reading this play it makes you appreciate how much freedom is in our world now. I think Bertolt Brecht did a good job of showing the dangers of being a researcher in those olden days. It was actually kinda scary how the church would rather kill people to keep their high figures then accept the truth. Many people were scared of the truth. I was proud of Galileo who kept on researching even thought he knew there would be consequences. There was some bad parts of the play however, at some parts it was extremely hard to follow due to the language in which the characters speak in and some times you had no idea what was going on. I recommend this book to someone who wants to learn more about Galileo or to someone who wants to learn about how the churched ruled everyone's life.

Rating:
Summary: This is tripe
Review: Anybody who would recommend this as a history book is completely unaware of the true history. Brecht may have been using dramatic license or he may have had an axe to grind with the Catholic Church. Either way, this is NOT an accurate historical account. Any person who would suggest it as such is guilty of what Brecht and revisionists accuse the Church of doing: suppressing the truth to further their personal agenda.

Rating:
Summary: This is tripe
Review: Anybody who would recommend this as a history book is completely unaware of the true history. Brecht may have been using dramatic license or he may have had an axe to grind with the Catholic Church. Either way, this is NOT an accurate historical account. Any person who would suggest it as such is guilty of what Brecht and revisionists accuse the Church of doing: suppressing the truth to further their personal agenda.

Rating:
Summary: Good play, bad packaging
Review: Bertolt Brecht, Galileo (Grove Press, 1952)

Publishers who put out "literature" (perhaps I should capitalize the L) have felt it necessary for the past half-century or so to include long-winded dissections of the texts as a part of their editions. No mind is paid, seemingly, to whether these long-winded dissections contain major plot spoilers (they almost always do). Add Eric Bentley's interminable preface to the Grove Press edition of Brecht's Galileo to the list. Perhaps Grove assumes anyone reading the thing will either have already read the play or will be so turned off by Belntley's wooden prose style that they won't read far enough to get to the spoilers. My advice: go the second route. And book publishers, if you're putting essays in your editions, PLEASE put them AFTER the actual text, so the novice reader of a given work will be able to approach it without the coloring of another reader's analysis.

Bentley spends forty-odd pages discussing the historical inaccuracies of Brecht's Galileo and the two extant versions of the text (though Bentley says both are presented in the Grive edition, this is not the case; from his comments, I gather this is the second version of the play, completed after WW2 [the first was completed in 1937]). Bentley goes on forever about the socialist qualities of Galileo, and whether the scientist makes a worthy Marxist hero, both in the reader's eyes and in Brecht's. Whether anyone outside those writing a paper for a Marxist lit class would care doesn't seem to have crossed his mind. Brecht is one of the few authors who is capable of taking a political statement and couching it in such writing as to make the statement itself visible only to those looking for it; Galileo's Marxism, or lack of same, doesn't hit the reader in the face with a dead herring (or a dropped pebble, as 'twere) throughout the text. Commendable, especially for as fervent a Marxist as was Brecht. Here is a man who never let the message overtake the medium, and scads of modern authors could do with repeated readings of this text to get a handle on what it is they're doing wrong.

Bentley aside, the play itself is certainly worth the reader's time. Galileo is presented from the time of his first findings with which Mother Church took offense until twenty years after his recantation. While the play mainly focuses on Galileo and how his own views toward his work affect him and those around him, we're not allowed to go away without understanding how those views also affected the Italian society around him; as with all things, the subversion to be found in Galileo's discovery that the Earth revolves around the Sun instead of vice-versa seeps into the public mind, much to the Church's dismay. But at its heart, the play is about the man himself and those around him. Galileo himself, historically accurate or not, is a convincing character, and his family, friends, and supporters are also very well-drawn (with the arguable exception of his daughter, who never seems to really flesh out and become a believable human being; her actions and reactions are predictable and wooden). Whatever the message underlying, and whether the reader agrees with it or not, Galileo is first and foremost a decent piece of drama. Leave Bentley's preface until after you've drawn your own conclusions. ** 1/2 (**** for the play, zero for Bentley's comments)

Rating:
Summary: Good play, bad packaging
Review: Bertolt Brecht, Galileo (Grove Press, 1952)

Publishers who put out "literature" (perhaps I should capitalize the L) have felt it necessary for the past half-century or so to include long-winded dissections of the texts as a part of their editions. No mind is paid, seemingly, to whether these long-winded dissections contain major plot spoilers (they almost always do). Add Eric Bentley's interminable preface to the Grove Press edition of Brecht's Galileo to the list. Perhaps Grove assumes anyone reading the thing will either have already read the play or will be so turned off by Belntley's wooden prose style that they won't read far enough to get to the spoilers. My advice: go the second route. And book publishers, if you're putting essays in your editions, PLEASE put them AFTER the actual text, so the novice reader of a given work will be able to approach it without the coloring of another reader's analysis.

Bentley spends forty-odd pages discussing the historical inaccuracies of Brecht's Galileo and the two extant versions of the text (though Bentley says both are presented in the Grive edition, this is not the case; from his comments, I gather this is the second version of the play, completed after WW2 [the first was completed in 1937]). Bentley goes on forever about the socialist qualities of Galileo, and whether the scientist makes a worthy Marxist hero, both in the reader's eyes and in Brecht's. Whether anyone outside those writing a paper for a Marxist lit class would care doesn't seem to have crossed his mind. Brecht is one of the few authors who is capable of taking a political statement and couching it in such writing as to make the statement itself visible only to those looking for it; Galileo's Marxism, or lack of same, doesn't hit the reader in the face with a dead herring (or a dropped pebble, as 'twere) throughout the text. Commendable, especially for as fervent a Marxist as was Brecht. Here is a man who never let the message overtake the medium, and scads of modern authors could do with repeated readings of this text to get a handle on what it is they're doing wrong.

Bentley aside, the play itself is certainly worth the reader's time. Galileo is presented from the time of his first findings with which Mother Church took offense until twenty years after his recantation. While the play mainly focuses on Galileo and how his own views toward his work affect him and those around him, we're not allowed to go away without understanding how those views also affected the Italian society around him; as with all things, the subversion to be found in Galileo's discovery that the Earth revolves around the Sun instead of vice-versa seeps into the public mind, much to the Church's dismay. But at its heart, the play is about the man himself and those around him. Galileo himself, historically accurate or not, is a convincing character, and his family, friends, and supporters are also very well-drawn (with the arguable exception of his daughter, who never seems to really flesh out and become a believable human being; her actions and reactions are predictable and wooden). Whatever the message underlying, and whether the reader agrees with it or not, Galileo is first and foremost a decent piece of drama. Leave Bentley's preface until after you've drawn your own conclusions. ** 1/2 (**** for the play, zero for Bentley's comments)

Rating:
Summary: There is genius, and Then there is GENIUS
Review: 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!!

Rating:
Summary: ** 1/2 (**** for the play, zero for Bentley's comments)
Review: Galileo is presented from the time of his first findings with which Mother Church took offense until twenty years after his recantation. While the play mainly focuses on Galileo and how his own views toward his work affect him and those around him, we're not allowed to go away without understanding how those views also affected the Italian society around him; as with all things, the subversion to be found in Galileo's discovery that the Earth revolves around the Sun instead of vice-versa seeps into the public mind, much to the Church's dismay. But at its heart, the play is about the man himself and those around him. Galileo himself, historically accurate or not, is a convincing character, and his family, friends, and supporters are also very well-drawn (with the arguable exception of his daughter, who never seems to really flesh out and become a believable human being; her actions and reactions are predictable and wooden). Whatever the message underlying, and whether the reader agrees with it or not, Galileo is first and foremost a decent piece of drama. Leave Bentley's preface until after you've drawn your own conclusions.

Rating:
Summary: Galileo
Review: So maybe it's not completely accurate. I just read this book for a class I have to take. I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it. It wasn't the dry, boring piece of literature I had expected. It's really a book to read - maybe not multiple times, but at least once. It has an important message, and is presented in a reasonably interesting way.

Rating:
Summary: A deformed history lesson.
Review: When is it wrong to tell the truth? As in many of Bertolt Brecht's plays, the author uses historical analogies to address the social and political problems of his own time. I the case of Galileo, Brecht saw a simularity between the physicist's submitting to the Church authorities' demand for recanation with the situation in WWII Germany in which the scientists were turning over their knowledge to aid the Nazi effort. Galileo is considered a masterpiece and one of the most relevant plays of the 20th century, and I agree. I beleive Galileo was a remarkable play and deserves to be enjoyed by people all over the world