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diff --git a/25732-h/25732-h.htm b/25732-h/25732-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0e22a23 --- /dev/null +++ b/25732-h/25732-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,5123 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust', by H. B. Cotterill. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + + body {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;} + .frontend { text-align: center; font-size: 85%} + .transnote {margin: 2em 5% 1em 5%; font-size: 90%; padding: 0.5em 1em 0.5em 1em; + border: solid 1px silver; margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%;} + .correction {text-decoration: none; border-bottom: thin dotted red;} + a.correction:hover {text-decoration: none;} + .hang {text-indent: -3em; margin-left: 3em;} + + p {margin-top: .75em; text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em;} + + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {text-align: center; clear: both;} + + hr {width: 33%; margin-top: 1.5em; margin-bottom: 1.5em; + margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; clear: both;} + + table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;} + td {vertical-align: top;} + + .pagenum { position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: 70%; + text-align: right;} + + .blockquot{margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%;} + + .center {text-align: center;} + .right {text-align: right;} + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .poem {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;} + .poem br {display: none;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem span.i0 {display: block; margin-left: 0em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i2 {display: block; margin-left: 2em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i3 {display: block; margin-left: 3em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i4 {display: block; margin-left: 4em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i8 {display: block; margin-left: 8em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i9 {display: block; margin-left: 9em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i10 {display: block; margin-left: 10em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i14 {display: block; margin-left: 14em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i16 {display: block; margin-left: 16em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + + + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +Project Gutenberg's The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust', by H. B. Cotterill + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' + +Author: H. B. Cotterill + +Release Date: June 9, 2008 [EBook #25732] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FAUST-LEGEND AND GOETHE'S FAUST *** + + + + +Produced by Thierry Alberto, Henry Craig and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + + + + +<div class="transnote"> +<h3>Transcriber's Note:</h3> + +<p>Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in +this text. For a complete list, please see <a href="#tnote">the bottom of +this document.</a></p> + +<p>The symbol for a trochee on page <a href="#Page_134">134</a> is shown like this: —∪</p></div> + + + + + +<h1>THE FAUST-LEGEND<br /> +AND GOETHE'S 'FAUST'</h1> + +<h3>BY</h3> + +<h2>H. B. COTTERILL</h2> + +<p class='center'>EDITOR OF GOETHE'S 'IPHIGENIE'<br /> +SCHILLER'S 'LAGER' 'REFLECTIONS<br /> +FROM THE NIBELUNGENLIED' DANTE'S<br /> +'INFERNO' ETC.</p> + +<p class='center'>LONDON<br /> +GEORGE G. HARRAP & COMPANY<br /> +9 PORTSMOUTH STREET KINGSWAY W.C.<br /> +1912</p> + +<p class='frontend'>BALLANTYNE & COMPANY, LTD.<br /> +<span class="smcap">Tavistock Street, Covent Garden</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">London</span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span></p> +<h2>PREFACE</h2> + + +<p>These lectures have been given perhaps +half a dozen times, in England, in Switzerland +and in Germany. On allowing them to +appear in print I should perhaps apologize +to my readers for the somewhat free and +familiar style in which parts of them are +written; but even if I had the time to recast +them into a more serious form I should be +unwilling to do so, for there is surely enough +ponderous literature on the subject, and +although some may resent in a book what +often helps to make a lecture attractive, I +think I can rely on the fact that many +people agree with the dictum of Horace:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i10"><i>Ridiculum aeri</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Fortius et melius magnas plerumque secat res,</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>or, as Milton has it:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8"><i>Joking decides great things</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Stronger and better oft than earnest can.</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Almost the only change that I have made +in my MS. has been the substitution or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span> +addition of an English translation in +numerous places where I had formerly +quoted the German original. On some +occasions, when first writing the lectures, +I very probably used the English version +of <i>Faust</i> by Bayard Taylor, but I have not +the book at present at hand and cannot feel +quite certain whether any of the verse +translations are not my own. The little +book makes of course no pretence to be +a contribution to critical or biographical +literature. It is meant especially for those +who wish to know something more about +the story of Faust and about Goethe's +play, and who, because their knowledge of +German does not suffice or for other reasons, +are unable to study the subject in any more +satisfactory way.</p> + + +<p class='right'>H. B. C.</p> + +<p> <span class='smcap'>freiburg im breisgau</span><br /> +<i> August 1912</i></p> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span></p> +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="toc"> +<tr><td align='left'></td><td align='right'><span class="smcap">PAGE</span></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>THE OLD FAUST LEGEND</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_9">9</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>GOETHE'S 'FAUST' (<span class="smcap">Part I.</span>)</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_56">56</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>GOETHE'S 'FAUST' (<span class="smcap">Part II.</span>)</td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_109">109</a></td></tr> +</table></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span></p> +<h2>I</h2> + +<h3>THE OLD FAUST-LEGEND</h3> + + +<p>All of us have probably experienced the +fact that it is possible to have been familiar +for a long time with some great work of +imagination—some poem or picture—to +have learnt to love it almost as if it were a +living person, to imagine that we understand +it and appreciate it fully, even to fancy that +it has a special message, a deeper meaning, +for us than for almost any one else, and +then to come across somebody—some commentator +perhaps—who informs us that our +uncritical appreciation is quite worthless, +mere shallow sentiment, and that until we +can accurately analyze and formulate the +Idea which the artist endeavoured to incorporate +in his work, and classify the diverse +manifestations of this Idea as subjective, +objective, symbolical, allegorical, dramatical-psychological +or psychological-dramatical,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span> +we are not entitled to hold, far less to express, +any opinion on the subject.</p> + +<p>When I realised that I had undertaken +to lecture on <i>Faust</i>, I thought it my duty to +study Goethe's German commentators—some +of them at least; for to study all +would consume a lifetime. A few of the +works of these commentators I already +possessed—some, I am sorry to say, with +their pages yet uncut. Others I procured, +following the advice of German friends well +versed in the matter. I set to work on what +was presumably the best of these commentaries. +As I laboured onwards, page after +page, I found myself from time to time +turning back to the title of the book. Sure +enough, it was <i>Ueber Goethe's Faust</i>. I +laboured on—the suspicion deepening at +every turn of the page that perhaps the +binder might have bound up the wrong text +under the title <i>Ueber Goethe's Faust</i>. At +the fifty-third page I came to a dead stop. +Except quite incidentally neither Goethe +nor Faust had as yet been mentioned. These +fifty-three pages had been entirely devoted +to what seemed to my rather unmetaphysical +mind a not very luminous or edifying dissertation +on the difference between <i>Ansicht</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span> +and <i>Einsicht</i>—between mere Opinion and +true critical Insight; and, as far as I could +discover, the only conclusion as yet arrived +at was that the writer possessed an exclusive +monopoly in the last-mentioned article.</p> + +<p>But I will not inflict upon you any +further description of my tusslings with +Teutonic interpreters of <i>Faust</i>—with their +<i>egos</i> and <i>non-egos</i>, their moral-æsthetic +symbolisms and so on. Let us leave them +to the tender mercies of Goethe himself, +who was not sparing of his ridicule in regard +to his commentators, nor, alas, at times in +regard to his countrymen. 'Of all nations,' +he says, 'the Germans understand me least.... Such +people make life a burden by their +abstruse thoughts and their <i>Ideas</i>, which +they hunt up in all directions and insist on +discovering in everything.... They come +and ask <i>me</i> what "Ideas" <i>I</i> have incorporated +in my <i>Faust</i>. Just as if I myself +knew!—or could describe it, even if I did +know!' Of course Goethe's great poem +contains an Idea, if by that word we mean in +a poem what we mean by <i>life</i> in anything +living; but it is not by dissection and +analysis that we shall discover it. 'He who +wishes,' says Goethe in <i>Faust</i>, 'to examine<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span> +and describe anything living first does his +best to expel the life. Then he has got the +dead parts in his hand; but what is wanting +is just the spiritual bond.' It is my purpose—a +purpose not easy of fulfilment—to avoid +this method of dissection and to place +before you living realities, not anatomical +specimens.</p> + +<p>But before we plunge <i>in medias res</i> and +grapple our present subject, namely the old +Faust-legend, I should like to say just a few +words in order to show from what standpoint +I think we should regard Goethe as a +poet and a thinker—for that he is great both +as a poet and as a thinker cannot be denied.</p> + +<p>Goethe describes his own philosophy as +the philosophy of action. He believed in +impulse, in inspiration, in action, rather +than in reflexion, analysis and logic. 'Reflect +not!' he makes Iphigenie exclaim—'Reflect +not! Grant freely, as thou feel'st!' And +in one of his Epigrams he says:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Yes, that's the right way,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>When we cannot say</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>How we think. True thought</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Comes as a gift, unsought.</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Such theory of inspiration is thoroughly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span> +Greek, reminding one of Plato's 'muse-inspired +madman' and of what Sophocles is +related to have said to Aeschylus; 'Thou, +Aeschylus, always dost the right thing—but +unconsciously (<span class='correction' title='all ouk eidôs ge'>ἀλλ΄ οὐκ εἰδώϛ γε</span>).' Thus +it was also with Goethe. All intellectual +hobbies and shibboleths, all this endless +wearisome discussion and dissection and +analysis and criticism and bandying about of +<i>opinion</i>, which is the very life-breath of +modern intellectual existence and modern +journalistic literature, Goethe rejected, as +Plato had done in his <i>Phaedrus</i>, where he +makes Socrates call such things 'rotten +soul-fodder.'</p> + +<p>'The whole! The whole!' was Goethe's +frequent exclamation—'life! action! being!—the +living whole, not the dead parts!' He +was for ever decrying mere thought, mere +intellect, mere cleverness. And yet of all +moderns what greater intellect, what greater +thinker, can we name than Goethe himself? +Seldom, perhaps never, has there existed a +mortal so many-sided. 'In such manifold +directions'—he wrote to his friend Jacobi—'does +my nature move, that I cannot be +satisfied with <i>one</i> single mode of thought. +As poet and artist I am polytheist; as a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span> +student of Nature I am pantheist. When I +need a God for my personal nature, as a +moral and spiritual human being, He also +exists for me. Heaven and earth are such +an immense realm that it can only be +grasped by the collective intelligence of all +intelligent beings.' Such 'collective intelligence' +Goethe perhaps more nearly possessed +than any other human being has +done. The lordly pleasure-house which he +built for his soul was such as Tennyson +describes (and his words refer of course to +Goethe):</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Full of great rooms and small the palace stood,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i2"><i>All various, each a perfect whole</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>From living Nature, fit for every mood</i><br /></span> +<span class="i2"><i>And change of my still soul.</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And wonderfully true are those other +lines of Tennyson—but rather bitter, as +perhaps was to be expected of Tennyson +when he was describing a great character +with which he had so little sympathy:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>I take possession of man's mind and deed.</i><br /></span> +<span class="i2"><i>I care not what the sects may brawl.</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>I sit as God holding no form of creed,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i2"><i>But contemplating all.</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>To Goethe all things, both in Nature and in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span> +Art were but transitory reflexions of the +real and eternal. 'Alles vergängliche ist +nur ein Gleichnis'—all things transitory +are but a parable, an allegory of truth and +reality—such are some of the last words of +his great Poem; and thus too he regarded +his own poetry. 'I have,' he said, 'always +regarded all that I have produced as merely +symbolic, and I did not much care whether +what I made were pots or dishes.' Even +that life-poem of his, <i>Faust</i>, which he +planned and began as a young man of about +twenty-five, and the last lines of which he +wrote a few months before his death, aged +eighty-two, only represents (as indeed do all +great works of art) <i>one</i> aspect of belief—or +perhaps I should rather say a certain number +of truth's innumerable aspects, none of them +claiming to afford a full vision, and not a few +of them apparently contradictory; for, as +both Plato and Shakespeare tell us, truth +cannot be directly stated: it lies, as it were, in +equipoise between contradictory statements:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>For no thought is contented. The better sort,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>As thoughts of things divine ... do set the word</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Against the word.</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p><i>Faust</i> does not claim to be a universal<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span> +Gospel, nor to offer a final solution of the +riddle of existence. It makes no attempt +to pile up Pelions on Ossas—to scale heaven +with the Babel-towers of the human reason. +It merely holds up a mirror in which we see +reflected certain views of truth, such as +presented themselves to Goethe from some +of his intellectual heights. To regard it +and judge it otherwise—to analyse its Idea—to +insist on discovering its Moral—to +compare it with some little self-contained +system of theory or dogma which we ourselves +may have finally accepted—and to +condemn Goethe as a prophet of lies because, +viewing truth from such diverse standpoints +(many of them perhaps quite inaccessible for +us) he may seem at times to ignore some +of our pet formulæ—this, I think, would +convict us of a lamentable lack of wisdom and +humility. And if at times we feel pained by +what may seem irreverent, let us remember +that Goethe wrote also these words: 'With +many people who have God constantly on +their tongues He becomes a phrase, a mere +name uttered without any accompanying +idea. If they were penetrated by God's +greatness, they would rather be dumb and +for very reverence not dare to name Him.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span></p> + +<p>Goethe accepted not without a certain +amount of pride the title given him by some +of his contemporaries—that of 'the last of +the Heathen.' But which of us will doubt +the sincerity or fail to be touched by the +humility of his words: 'And yet perhaps +I am such a Christian as Christ Himself +would wish me to be.'</p> + +<p>There are doubtless but very few (and I +confess that I am not one of these select +few) who can accept Goethe in all his many-sidedness. +We ordinary mortals are incapable +of such Protean versatility and are +sure to find points, often many and important +points, where we are strongly repelled +by his teachings and his personality. +The idealist is scandalized by his vigorous +realism, the realist and materialist by his +idealism, the dogmatist by his free thought, +the free-thinker by his reverence towards +religion, while the scientific expert is apt +to regard him as a mere poet, oblivious or +ignorant of the fact that, although without +scientific training, besides propounding +theories on Colour which were for a time +accepted by leading authorities on that subject +and besides making a discovery which +had escaped the investigations of professional<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span> +Anatomists (that of the intermaxillary +bone), Goethe was the discoverer of a law, +that of the metamorphosis of leaves and +flowers, which may be said to have almost +revolutionised the science of Botany.</p> + +<p>Let us now turn to our subject and +attempt to trace to its first sources this +strange and suggestive legend of Faust, +the great Magician.</p> + +<p>And first, we shall see our way more +clearly if we consider what is really the +nature of that magic, or black art, which +played such an important part in the +medieval imagination.</p> + +<p>Perhaps we may say that by 'magic' +was denoted that art by which one was +supposed to gain a knowledge of, and a +power over, the prime elements of Nature +and its cosmic potencies, so as to be able to +combine and use them independently of +natural laws. It is this power that Faust +in Goethe's play longs to attain:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8"><i>... To find the force</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>That binds the world and guides its course,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Its germs and vital powers explore</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>And peddle with worthless words no more.</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>In almost every age and nation we find<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span> +a vital Power, an ordering Force, recognised +as present in the natural world, and the +human mind seems ever prone to believe +such Power to have affinity to human +nature and to be, so to speak, open to a +bargain. The fetish priest, the rain doctor, +the medicine-man, the Hindu yogi, the +Persian Mage, the medieval saint, and countless +miracle-workers in every age, have ever +believed themselves to be, whether by force +of will, or by ecstatic contemplation, or by +potent charms, in communion with the +great Spirit of Nature, or with mighty +cosmic influences—with Powers of Light +or of Darkness; with Oromasdes or Arimanes, +Brahma or Siva, Jehovah or Baal; +with Zoroastrian Devs, Persian Genii, +guardian angels or attendant demons; with +the Virgin Queen of heaven—whether as +Selene, Astarte, Hecate, or the Madonna; +with the Prince of the powers of this world—with +or without his horns and his cloven +foot.</p> + +<p>Not only among the heathen—the orientals +and Egyptians—but also among the +Chosen People we find the priests attesting +their favour with the Deity, and asserting +the truth of their religion, by what we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span> +may call orthodox magic. We all remember +how Aaron's rod, in the form of +an orthodox snake, swallowed up the +unorthodox rod-snakes of the Egyptian +sorcerers, and how Elijah attested the +power of the true God by calling down fire +from heaven in his contest with the priests +of the Sun-god Baal. King Solomon too +was for many ages credited with magic +powers and was regarded in medieval +times as the great authority in matters of +wizardry.</p> + +<p>Among the Greeks, although mysteries +and witches played no small part in the old +religion and survived long in popular superstition, +magic was thrust into the background +by the poetic and philosophic +Hellenic imagination. The powers of +Nature were incorporated in the grand and +beautiful human forms of the Olympian +gods, or in the dread shapes of the Infernal +deities. But even among those of the +Greeks who were raised far above the +ordinary superstitions of the populace we +find many traces of mysticism and magic, +as for example in connexion with oracles, +with divine healing, with the efficacy of +images and other sacred objects, and especially +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span>in connexion with Orphic and other +Mysteries. And, while for the most part +Greek philosophy was rather imaginative +than mystic, still we encounter the genuine +mystic element in such Greek sages as +Empedocles and Pythagoras, both of whom +assumed the priestly character and seem to +have laid claim to supernatural powers. +Empedocles indeed, it is said, gave himself +out to be a deity exiled from heaven, and +was apparently worshipped as such. According +to a not very trustworthy legend +he threw himself into the crater of Mount +Etna—perhaps in order thus to solve the +mystery of existence. Pythagoras is said +by some to have met his death at the +hands of the people of Crotona, who set +fire to his house and burnt him alive +with many of his disciples. Goethe evidently +alludes to Pythagoras (as well perhaps +as to John Huss and others who +found their death at the stake) in some +well-known lines, which may be roughly +thus translated:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>The few that truth's deep mystery have learned</i><br /></span> +<span class="i2"><i>And could not keep it in their hearts concealed,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i2"><i>But to the mob their inner faith revealed,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Have evermore been crucified and burned.</i><br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span></div></div> + +<p>We now come to Christianity. In the +early ages of the Church the final appeal +seems to have been an appeal to miracles, +and we find the apostles and their followers +claiming the sole right of working miracles +in the name of the one true God and anathematizing +all other wonder-workers as in +league with Satan. We all remember +Elymas the Sorcerer struck blind by St. +Paul, and the adversary of St. Peter, Simon +the Mage, around whom first gathered the +myths which lived so long in the popular +imagination and many of which we shall +meet with in the legend of Dr. Faust.</p> + +<p>This Simon, the Magus or Sorcerer, who +bewitched the people of Samaria, and was +looked upon as 'the great power of God,' is +said in the <i>Acts of the Apostles</i> to have been +converted by St. Philip and to have +brought upon himself a severe rebuke from +St. Peter for offering to purchase with +money the gift of wonder-working. In +about the third century the legend of +Simon Magus, as related by Clement of +Alexandria, seems to have already incorporated +in a mythical form the discords of +the early Church, and especially the feud +between the Jewish Christians, followers of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span> +St. Peter, and the Gentile proselytes, +followers of St. Paul. Indeed Simon the +Sorcerer was in course of time regarded by +some as having been identical with St. +Paul—that is to say, it was believed that +St. Paul had been none other but Simon +Magus in disguise. The voice heard at St. +Paul's conversion and the light by which +for a season he was struck blind were alleged +to have been feats of wizardry by which he, +a wolf in sheep's clothing, stole his way into +the true fold in order to introduce discord +and to betray the Church to the Gentiles.</p> + +<p>St. Peter, the true Simon, is said to have +followed the false Simon from city to city, +out-rivalling his Satanic miracles by orthodox +miracles, until at length they reached +Rome. Here Simon Magus by his magic +arts succeeded in flying up into the sky in +the presence of the Emperor and his court, +but at the word of Peter the charm was +broken and the wizard fell to earth and was +killed.</p> + +<p>But, besides this, the so-called Gnostic +heresy introduced other elements into the +legend. These Gnostics were a sect that +arose in the early times of Christianity. +They pretended to a special insight into<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span> +the divine nature, and combined Platonic +and oriental theories with Christian dogmas. +They tried to convert the story of the +Redemption into a cosmological myth, and +regarded the human person of Christ as +a kind of phantom—a magic apparition. +Some of these Gnostics seem to have +accepted Simon Magus as the 'Power of +God'—as the Logos, or divine Reason, by +which the world was created (or reduced +from chaos to an ordered Cosmos). From +this a curious myth arose. This Logos, or +creative Power, was identified with the +Sun-god, as the source of life, and as Sun-god +was united to the Moon-goddess, +Selene. Now the words Helen and Selene +are connected in Greek, and Helen of Troy +was accepted by these Gnostics as a +mythical form of the goddess of the moon. +Hence it came that in the Gnostic form of +the Simon Magus legend he was married to +Helen of Troy, and this notion found its +way into the old Faust-legend, and is used +by Goethe in that exceedingly wonderful +and beautiful part of his great poem which +is called the <i>Helena</i>.</p> + +<p>After the suppression of Gnostic and +other early heresies came the contest of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span> +now united and politically powerful Church +against the outer world of heathendom. +While retaining for herself what we may +call a monopoly in orthodox magic the +Church condemned as in league with the +devil <i>all</i> speculation, whether theological or +scientific—the one as leading to heresy, the +other to sensual ends, such as riches, fame, +and those lusts of the flesh and that pride +of intellect which were fatal to the contemplative +and ascetic ideals of medieval +Christianity.</p> + +<p>It was not among Teuton and Celtic +savages but among the learned adherents of +the old Greek philosophy that the Church +in those earlier days found her most dangerous +and obstinate adversaries. Plato and +Aristotle (whose tenets the Christian +Schoolmen afterwards endeavoured to harmonize +with the teaching of the Gospel) +were at first brought forward to oppose the +new religion, these doctrines of Greek +philosophy being largely supplemented by +mystic ideas derived from oriental sources. +It was however Pythagoras, the great +Greek-Italian philosopher of the sixth +century <span class="smcap">b.c.</span>, the predecessor and to some +extent the inspirer of Socrates and Plato,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span> +who was most generally accepted as the +rival of St. Paul. It was his mystical +doctrines of Number and Harmony, of the +Unit and the Triad, which were most often +marshalled against the Christian doctrine of +the Unity and Trinity of the Godhead. +Indeed it even seems that Pythagoras was +believed by some of these adversaries of +Christianity to be the incarnation of Deity +(as had been believed in his lifetime) and to +be the friend and saviour of mankind, like +Prometheus of old, who was said to have +given his life for the human race devoted to +destruction by the anger of an offended +God.</p> + +<p>No wonder that, embittered by such +opponents, the Church launched her anathema +against all the profane learning of +the day—all study of the ancient heathen +philosophers and poets. The gods of +Olympus became synonymous with demons +and monsters of the Christian hell, as we +see in Dante and in such old legends as +that of the Hill of Venus. Plato and +Aristotle, and even Homer, were put on +the index. Virgil especially was regarded +as a dangerous wizard—although in another +age he was honoured almost as a prophet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span> +and a foreteller of the Messiah. I remember +that many years ago, when I was +searching for Virgil's tomb on Posilipo near +Naples, I was informed by a contadino, +of whom I had asked my way, that Virgil +('Marone,' as he called him) was a great +magician. The man knew nothing of +Virgil as poet. Probably Virgil's account +of the descent of Aeneas into the lower +world, and that strange <i>Eclogue</i> of his, the +<i>Pollio</i>, in which possibly a Sibylline +prophecy of the coming of a Messiah is +reproduced, may have credited him with +magic lore, and may also have invested him +for a time with almost the dignity of a +canonical Minor Prophet.</p> + +<p>Now, during these ante-Reformation ages +the Roman Church claimed, as I have said, +a monopoly in orthodox magic. She could +send a soul to hell, or by rites and exorcism +she could save the sinner from his compact +with Satan, as one sees in such legends as +those of Merlin, of Tannhäuser, of Robert +the Devil, and of that Theophilus who was +converted by flowers sent him from Paradise +by the Virgin-Martyr St. Dorothea. Of +another Theophilus, an eastern monk of +perhaps the sixth century, we are told that,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span> +like Faust, he made a written compact with +the devil, but repented and was saved by the +Virgin Mary, who snatched the fatal document +from the devil's claws and gave it back +to the penitent.</p> + +<p>But there is one early example of the +wizard-legend where the magician is saved +from his pact with Satan not so much by the +counter-charms of the Church as by the +purity and steadfastness of Christian maidenhood, +and for this reason I think the poet +Shelley is right in regarding this legend as +'the true germ of Goethe's <i>Faust</i>.' It is the +story of Cyprian and Justina, who were +among the many victims of the persecution of +the Christians by Diocletian, about 300 <span class="smcap">a.d.</span> +Cyprian was a sorcerer of Antioch whose +diabolical arts failed to overcome the sanctity +of Justina. He confessed himself conquered +and withdrew into the desert as a Christian +hermit. The story has been dramatized by +the Spanish poet Calderon in his <i>Magico +Prodigioso</i>, a part of which has been finely +translated by Shelley. The beautiful picture +of St. Justina by Moretto, where Cyprian is +kneeling before her and a white unicorn, the +symbol of chastity, is crouching in the foreground, +is well known.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span></p> + +<p>With the Reformation another spirit arose +and legends took a different form. In the +Protestant world the orthodox magic of the +Roman Church lost its saving power and was +regarded as no less diabolic than all other +black art. He was irretrievably lost who +had once given over his soul to magic and +the devil (and the devil was at this time, as +we know, a very real personage—real enough +to have an inkpot hurled at his head by +Luther). The revival at the Renaissance of +speculation and research, combined as it was +with all kinds of fantastic hopes of discovering +prime matter, the 'Philosopher's stone,' +and elixirs of life, bred in the popular superstition +a mysterious awe and attached to +almost all scientific investigation the epithet +'black,' or diabolic, as opposed to the 'white +art' of holding communion with good spirits. +Alchemy and astrology (words meaning +merely what we call chemistry and astronomy) +became words of hellish import, and +he who practised these arts was in league +with Satan. Thus were regarded such men +as Lully, Roger Bacon, the Abbot Tritheim, +and (perhaps best known of all, at least to all +readers of Browning) Bombastes Paracelsus, +the contemporary of Faust, born at Einsiedeln, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span>between Brunnen and the lake of +Zürich, in the year 1493.</p> + +<p>Thus the sixteenth-century form of our +legend is of the most tragic character. In the +oldest Faust-legend, which first took shape +in this century, there is no hint of his being +saved. And another of its characteristics is its +strong anti-papal tendency. The devil appears +in the guise of a monk, and even as Mahomet +or Antichrist in the guise of the Pope himself.</p> + +<p>But the Renaissance (if not the Reformation) +introduced another, entirely new and +most important, element into the legend—one +which enabled Goethe to use the +sulphurous old myth as the subject for a +great poem. Not only was there a renaissance +of learning, but also of art—an intense +longing for both Knowledge and Beauty. To +<i>know</i> everything—to learn the inner secret +of Nature—to understand, as Faust longed to +understand,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i8"><i>The inmost force</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>That binds the world and guides its course—</i></span> +</div></div> + +<p>this yearning after perfection by Knowledge +was one of the fruits of the Renaissance. +The other was the yearning to gain perfection +by means of <i>feeling</i>, by the ecstatic contemplation +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span>of and communion with perfect +Beauty—'to love infinitely and be loved,' as +Aprile says in Browning's <i>Paracelsus</i>. These +two impulses, the one toward Knowledge +and the other toward Love, were doubtless +awakened by the study of Aristotle, that +'master of those who know,' and of Plato's +doctrine of the soul's love-inspired yearnings +for Truth and Beauty and for communion +with the Perfect and the Eternal.</p> + +<p>I have called them <i>two</i> impulses, and +to the mind they must ever appear distinct, +nay sometimes contrary; but I need +not remind you how Christianity teaches us +to reconcile the ancient feud between the +mind and the heart—between Knowledge +and Love. You may perhaps remember +how Dante, to intimate to us that there can +be no true knowledge without love and no +true love without knowledge, speaks of the +Cherubim and the Seraphim as ideally the +same, and tells us that the Seraphs, who love +most, also know most.</p> + +<p>Both these impulses are noble and awaken +our sympathy.</p> + +<p>Now, in order that <i>tragic</i> art may have its +effect it must possess what Aristotle calls +<span class='correction' title='pathos'>πάθοσ</span>, so that we may be able to sympathize<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> +with the sufferer. Thus, for instance, Milton +enlists our sympathies even with his Satan, +and it is perhaps because we cannot sympathize +in any way with Dante's Lucifer that +many feel repelled by the terrible creation. +But even in the oldest of the Faust-legends, +and far more of course in Goethe's <i>Faust</i>, we +are attracted by a 'pathetic' element, viz., +the unsatisfied and insatiable longing of a +human soul for Knowledge—for Truth—and +its still intenser yearnings after ideal Beauty.</p> + +<p>Thus, even the Faust of the older sixteenth-century +legend, although he ultimately falls +a victim to the devil, has noble and high +impulses by which we feel strongly attracted. +He is lost, not through these impulses, these +yearnings for knowledge, but through his +magic, and his sensual life. In spite of more +than one fit of remorse he is unable to free +himself from the lusts of the flesh; he is +obliged to sign a second bond with Mephisto +and is dragged down ever lower into the +abyss, until the jaws of hell open and swallow +him up—while the Faust of Goethe's poem +gains strength through many an error and +many a grievous fall, gradually shakes off +the diabolic influence and rising on the stepping-stones +of his dead self is finally rescued<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span> +by God's mercy and reaches the higher +spheres of another life.</p> + +<p>How infinitely grander—how illimitable +in its vistas—the subject becomes when thus +treated by a great poet we all must feel. +And even if we cannot with a whole heart +accept as a true Gospel what (in spite of +Goethe's admission that God's mercy was a +necessary factor) seems to be a gospel of +<i>self-salvation</i>, we should not forget that this +picture of a man pressing on in his own +strength amidst the lusts of the flesh and the +errors of the mind is perhaps the noblest and +grandest kind of picture that dramatic art +can offer us—that of the human will in +its struggle against destiny. In any case, I +think, we cannot refuse our sympathy for +these yearnings and searchings for truth +amidst error. Do you remember what +Lessing said about such longings? 'If God'—he +said—'should hold Truth itself in His +right hand, and in His left the longing for +Truth, and should say to me <i>Choose!</i> I +would humbly fall down before His left hand +and say: <i>Father, pure Truth is for Thee +alone. Give me the longing for Truth, though +it be attended with never-ending error.</i>'</p> + +<p>There seems no doubt that a man named<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span> +Johann Faust, renowned for his learning +and credited with magical powers, actually +did exist—probably about 1490 to 1540. +(He was therefore a contemporary of Paracelsus, +and also of Luther, Charles V., +Henry VIII. and Raphael.) Several notices +of this Dr. Johann Faust occur in writers of +the period. One of the most circumstantial +is by the friend and biographer of Melanchthon, +who himself seems to have met Faust. +But the various myths that gathered round +the magician were, it seems, first published +in a continuous narrative in 1587, that is +about fifty years after his death. This is the +old <i>Frankfurter Faustbuch</i>, of which only +one perfect specimen is now known to exist. +It is, I believe, in Leipzig. A mutilated +copy is in the Vienna Library.</p> + +<p>One day, when to escape for a time from +the German commentators above mentioned +I had gone out for a walk, I found my way to +the old Wasserkirche—now the Free Library +of the city of Zürich, and here I discovered +a facsimile reprint of this old Frankfurt +Faust-book. As this is the oldest and most +authentic basis of all later forms of the story +and is doubtless the one which (as well as +the puppet-play on the subject) Goethe used<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span> +as the ground-plan for his poem, I perhaps +cannot do better than give a brief abstract +of its contents.</p> + +<p>It is written in quaint old German and is +interspersed with many pious comments, +biblical quotations and Latin words and +phrases, and now and then it breaks out +into doggerel verse. The editor (Spiess by +name) tells us that he publishes the book +'as a warning to all Christians and sensible +people to avoid the terrible example of +Doctor Faustus.' He evidently takes the +thing very seriously and has purposely (as +he says) omitted all 'magic formulæ,' lest +'any should by this Historia be incited to +inquisitiveness and imitation.' Johann Faust, +according to this version, was born at Roda, +a village near Weimar. (Other versions say +at Knittlingen in Würtemberg.) His parents +were honest God-fearing peasants. His +great abilities induced a rich relation in +Wittenberg to adopt and educate him. He +studied theology at Wittenberg (known to +us all through Hamlet and Luther) and also +at Cracow, outrivalling all competitors and +gaining the title of Doctor of Theology. +But he had not only a 'teachable and quick' +but also a 'foolish, silly, inquisitive' head,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> +and neglecting the Bible became a 'Speculator' +and prided himself more on being an +Astrologus and a Mathematicus than a +Theologus. As the old chronicler expresses +it, he 'took to himself eagle's wings and +desired to search out the reasons of all in +heaven and on earth.'</p> + +<p>He now takes to 'Zauberei'—magic. +Where four roads meet in the Spessart +Wald, a forest near Wittenberg, he inscribes +mystic circles and performs incantations for +the purpose of summoning the devil. After +all kinds of fearful apparitions and noises, by +which Faust is almost terrified to death, a +demon appears in the shape of a 'grey +monk.' Faust invites him to visit him at +his house in Wittenberg. The demon visits +him there and tells him of all the horrors of +hell. But Faust persists in his plan and +makes a second rendezvous with the demon, +who has now procured leave from his lord +and master Lucifer to offer his services and +attendance. The compact is made. The +demon is to serve him for twenty-four years. +Faust is to renounce Christianity and to +hate all Christians, and at the end of twenty-four +years he is to belong to the demon 'to +have power, rule and dominion over his soul,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span> +body, flesh, blood, and possessions, and that +for all eternity.' This compact has to be +signed with blood. Faust pierces his hand, +and the blood flows out and forms the words +'O homo fuge!'—'O man, escape!'—but +Faust, though alarmed, is not deterred. It +is now agreed that the demon shall appear, +whenever summoned, in the form of a +Franciscan monk. He then reveals his name: +Mephistopheles, or, as the old legend gives +it, Meph<i>o</i>stoph<i>i</i>les—the meaning of which +is probably 'not loving the light'—<span class='correction' title='mê phôs philôn'>μὴ ϕῶϛ φιλῶν</span>—a +compound which you may rightly +remark must have been concocted by a +rather second-rate Greek scholar.</p> + +<p>After a season of dissipation, during which +Faust is supplied with all the luxuries that +he desires—wine stolen from ducal, electoral, +and episcopal cellars, soft and costly raiment +from the draperies and naperies of Nürnberg +and Frankfurt and so on (he had, for +instance, only to open his window and call +any bird, goose, turkey, or capon, and it +would at once fly in, ready roasted)—getting +tired of this kind of thing he falls +in love and wishes to marry. But Mephisto +angrily tells him that marriage is a thing +pleasing to God and against the terms of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span> +the compact. You will notice here the +Lutheran and anti-papal tendency—marriage +being a thing pleasing to God in itself, and +any compact being devilish which forbade it, +as in the case of priests and monks.</p> + +<p>Then follow long discussions and disputations +between Faust and Mephisto on the +creation of the world, on hell and heaven, +and on black art and astrology. None of us +may be in a position to question a demon's +accuracy with regard to how affairs stand in +Hades, but Mephisto gives a very unorthodox +account of the creation—or rather he +denies that there was any creation. Matter +according to his theory (and it is a theory +of some modern scientists and not only of +medieval demons)—matter is eternal and self-existent—uncreated, +or self-created, whatever +that may mean. Incited by these +descriptions, and by his 'foolish silly inquisitive +head,' Faust demands that he should +pay a visit to both hell and heaven.</p> + +<p>For the journey to Hell the services of +Beelzebub have to be requisitioned. The +devilish worm, as the old writer calls +Beelzebub, places Faust in a chair or +pannier made of bones, hoists the chair +on to his back and plunges (like Empedocles) +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span>into a volcano. Faust is nearly +stifled to death. He sees all kinds of +griffins and monsters and great multitudes +of spirits tormented in the flames—among +them emperors, kings and princes. Then +in a deep sleep he is brought home and laid +on his bed. 'This Historia and recount of +what he saw in hell,' says the old chronicler, +'hath Doctor Faustus himself written down +with his own hand, and after his death it +was found lying in a sealed book.' After this +(about ten years of the twenty-four having +already elapsed) he is taken up to heaven +by Mephisto in a chariot drawn by +dragons—not of course to the Empyrean, +the abode of God, but up as far as the fixed +stars (the eighth sphere). He finds the sun, +which before he had believed to be only as +big as the bottom of a cask, to be far +larger than the earth, and the planets to be +as large as the earth, and the clouds of the +upper sky to be as dense and hard as rocks +of crystal. From these regions the earth +looks as small as the 'yolk in an egg.' He +sees all the kingdoms of the earth—Europe, +Asia, and Africa (not America, although +America was discovered by Columbus in +1492, about the date of Faust's birth).<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span></p> + +<p>In the sixteenth year Faust wishes to +pay a visit to the chief cities and countries +of the world. Mephisto changes himself +into a horse—'with wings like a dromedary.' +It is, I believe, not generally supposed +that a dromedary has wings; but I +suppose the old chronicler must have +confused a camel and an ostrich, thinking +of the name which some Greek authors +give to the ostrich, namely <i>stroutho-camelos</i> +or 'sparrow-camel.'</p> + +<p>On the back of his sparrow-camel horse +Faust is carried through the air to many +lands and cities and at length reaches +Rome, and visits the Pope, on whom he +and Mephisto (both being invisible) play +various practical jokes, blowing in his face, +snatching his food away at meals and so on, +till the Supreme Pontiff orders all the bells +in Rome to be rung in order to exorcise +the evil spirits by whom he is haunted. At +Constantinople they befool the Sultan with +magic tricks. Mephisto disguises himself in +the official robes of the Pope and persuades +the Sultan that he is Mahomet (another +cut at the Pope, as Antichrist), while +Faust installs himself in the Sultan's +palace and enjoys life and finally floats up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span> +into the air and disappears. They then visit +Egypt, India, Africa, and other places, including +the Garden of Eden and Britain.</p> + +<p>Britain is described (rightly perhaps) as +'very damp—abounding in water and in +metals....' 'Here also is to be found,' adds +our chronicler, 'the stone of God, which +Doctor Faustus brought thence.' What he +means by the stone of God is, I suppose, +the so-called Philosopher's stone—used for +the manufacture of money out of any worthless +substance. Faust might have found a +good deal of this stone of God without +leaving Germany and seems to have left a +considerable amount of it behind in Britain.</p> + +<p>Part III of the Faust-book relates his +'feats of nigromancy at the courts of +Potentates' and elsewhere, and his 'terrible +end and departure.' At Innsbruck, in the +presence of Charles V. and his court +he summons up the shades of Alexander +the Great and his consort, I suppose +Roxana, the beautiful Bactrian princess. +You may be interested to learn that +Alexander the Great was a 'well-built stout +little man with a thick yellow-red beard, +red cheeks, and eyes like a basilisk,' and +that the old chronicler, quite after the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span> +fashion of the modern purveyor for ladies' +journals, informs us that Roxana wore a +dress entirely of blue velvet trimmed with +gold pieces and pearls.</p> + +<p>The following chapters strike one as hardly +in the same key with the rest of the book. +They relate feats which remind one rather of +Baron Münchhausen. Faust swallows up a +wagon of hay and a team of horses that get +in his way. He makes stag-antlers grow on +the head of a nobleman—saws off his own +foot to give it as security for a loan +borrowed from a Jew (reminding one of +Shylock and his 'pound of flesh')—treats +students to wine magically procured (as in +the scene in Auerbach's cellar in Goethe's +poem)—cuts off people's heads and sends +them to the barber to be shaved, and then +replaces them (a most useful invention)—makes +flowers appear in vases (like modern +spiritualists or Indian jugglers)—and lets +flowers and grapes flourish in his garden at +Christmas-time. His most important feat +is summoning up (as he does in Goethe's +poem) the shade of Helen of Troy. You +will wish for a description of Helen—at +least of her dress. She appeared in a +splendid robe of black-purple ... her hair,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span> +of a glorious golden hue, hung down to her +knees—she had coal-black eyes, a lovely +face, and a round head, her lips red as +cherries, with a little mouth and a neck like +a white swan, cheeks red as a rosebud, and +a tall straight figure.</p> + +<p>A fit of remorse now seizes our magician. +He is visited by a pious old man who nearly +persuades him to repent and break his bond +with the devil. But Mephisto is too +cunning for him, and induces him to sign a +new compact with his blood, promising to +procure him Helen. For (as is also the +case in Goethe's poem) Faust himself has +fallen violently in love with the phantom +that he had raised. By the help of +Mephistopheles Helen herself—or one of +her 'doubles' which play a part in Greek +mythology—is summoned up, and lives +with Faust as his wife. (At his death she, +and their son, Justus Faust, disappear.)</p> + +<p>In the last year he is overwhelmed with +terrible despair, which is deepened by the +mockeries of the demon. On the last +evening he invites his friends to supper +at the village Rimlich, near Wittenberg. +After the supper, he addresses his companions +in a speech of intense and pathetic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span> +remorse, praying that God will save his soul +though his body is forfeit to the devil. He +tells them that at the stroke of twelve the +demon will come to fetch him. He begs +them to go quietly to bed, and not to +be alarmed if they hear a great uproar. At +midnight a mighty wind sweeps over the +house, and a terrible hissing is heard as +of innumerable serpents. Faust's cries for +help gradually die away. They rush into +the supper room and find him torn to pieces—eyes, +brains, and teeth scattered in all +directions. 'After this,' says our chronicler, +'it was so uncanny in the house that no +man dared live in it. Doctor Faust also +appeared in person to his Famulus (assistant) +Wagner by night, and related to him +many still more weird and mysterious +things.... And thus endeth the whole and +truthful Historia and Magic of Dr. Faust, +from which every Christian man should +take warning, and specially those who are +of a presumptuous, proud, curious and +obstinate mind and head, that they may flee +from all Magic, Incantation, and other +works of the devil. Amen! This I wish +for each and every one from the ground +of my heart. Amen! Amen!'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span></p> + +<p>The great popularity of this original +Faust-book led to the publication of many +other versions of the story. In the very next +year a Faust-book in rime appeared. In some +of these versions Mephisto has a very bad +time of it, Faust setting him all kinds of +impossible tasks—such as writing the name +of Christ or painting a crucifix, or taking him +on Good Friday to Jerusalem—until the +demon begs for his release, offering to give +back the written compact. In Strassburg at +a shooting competition Faust's magic bullet +strikes Mephisto, who 'yells out again and +again' in pain. In a Dutch version, where +the demon has the name 'Jost,' Faust +amuses himself by throwing a bushel of corn +into a thorn hedge late at night, when poor +'Jost' is tired to death, and bids him pick up +every grain in the same way as in the old +story Venus vents her malice on Psyche. +The most important German version was +that by Widmann—an amplification of the +old Faust-book. There also appeared a life +of Faust's Famulus (assistant), Christopher +Wagner, whom the devil attends in the +form of an ape. Of one of these versions +(I think Widmann's) there appeared about +1590 an English translation, which was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span> +supplemented by various English ballads on +the same subject, and it was an Englishman—Shakespeare's +great contemporary, the +poet Christopher Marlowe—who was himself, +as you know, a man of Faust-like +temperament, and not unlike him in his fate—being +killed in a drunken brawl—who +first <i>dramatized</i> the story. His brilliant and +lurid play, 'The Tragical History of Dr. +Faustus' follows very closely most of the +details given in the German Faust-books. +Its poetical beauties (and they are many) +are unfortunately, as Hallam rightly remarks, +intermingled with a great deal of coarse +buffoonery. Possibly he had to consult the +taste of his public in introducing such a large +ingredient of this buffoon element—taken +from what I called the Münchhausen portion +of the old legend. Patriotic German commentators +sometimes deny that Goethe knew +Marlowe's play (though he knew Shakespeare +well), but I think there is no doubt +that the opening monologue of Marlowe's +play inspired the more famous, though +scarcely finer, opening scene of Goethe's +drama. 'Theology, adieu!' Faustus exclaims, +taking up a book of magic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a></span>—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>These metaphysics of magicians,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>And necromantic books are heavenly ...</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>All things that move between the quiet poles</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Shall be at my command—Emperors and kings</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Are but obey'd in their several provinces,...</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>But</i> his <i>dominion that excels in</i> this<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Stretcheth as far as doth the mind of man.</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>A sound magician is a mighty god.</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Here, Faustus, tire thy brains to gain a deity.</i></span> +</div></div> + +<p>His agony of despair at the last moment +is very finely depicted, and there are not a +few passages in the play which, for beauty of +expression and thought, are truly Shakespearean. +Some of you possibly know the +magnificent lines addressed to Helen of +Troy, which begin thus:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Was this the face that launched a thousand ships,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>And burnt the topless towers of Ilium—</i></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and the lines which seem to allude to the +identification of Helen with Selene, the +Moon-goddess—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>O thou art fairer than the evening air</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars.</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>When he appeared to hapless Semele;</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>More lovely than the monarch of the sky,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>In wanton Arethusa's azur'd arms.</i></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Marlowe's play was written about 1590. +Now it is asserted that about this time<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span> +English travelling players visited Germany, +and perhaps introduced there Marlowe's +drama; and possibly <i>this</i> was the beginning +of the German 'puppet-plays' on the subject +of Faust. I do not feel quite sure about it. +Faust puppet-plays seem to have existed +almost simultaneously with the old Faust-books, +and there is even the trace of one +<i>before</i> the oldest Faust-book; at least in the +archives of the University of Tübingen an +entry has been unearthed in which in 1587 +two students were condemned to the 'Karzer,' +or 'Black hole,' for composing a 'Puppenspiel' +on the subject of Dr. Faust.</p> + +<p>In these Puppenspiele (puppet-shows) the +comic element largely prevails and is kept +up by the comic figure Kasperle, a buffoon or +'Hanswurst' of the same character as the +Italian Pulcinella, the progenitor of our +English 'Punch.' As might be expected, +these puppet-shows introduced a great many +variations of the story, most of them a +mixture of tragedy and comedy. In one a +raven brings the contract from the devil for +Faust to sign. One of the conditions is that +for twenty-four years Faust is not to <i>wash</i>, or +comb his hair or cut his nails—like Struwwelpeter. +When Faust attempts to embrace<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span> +Helen she turns into a snake—and when he +is finally carried off by the demon, Kasperle +gives (what Euripides is accused of sometimes +giving) a comic turn to the tragic +catastrophe by cracking jokes.</p> + +<p>For about 150 years after Marlowe no +attempt was made by any German writer +to use the subject artistically. Indeed +during this period Germany, devastated by +the Thirty Years War and afterwards by +French literary influence, produced no +literature worthy of mention, and what +writers it possessed were not such as would +be likely to perceive the poetic material +contained in a popular puppet-show.</p> + +<p>But the legend had taken firm hold on +the popular imagination and when Goethe +was a boy (he was born in 1749) he saw a +Faust-puppenspiel at Frankfurt, and afterwards +at Strassburg, when he was a young +man of about twenty. He was at this time +evidently also familiar with the old <i>Faustbuch</i> +itself, and it was then (about 1770) that he +seems to have first conceived the idea of the +drama which he sealed up as finished sixty +years later (1831), a few months before his +death.</p> + +<p>Goethe's early manhood coincided with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span> +that period in German thought and literature +which is called the 'Sturm und Drang'—that +is the Storm and Stress—period. +The subject of Faust, the attraction of +which had for so long lain dormant, appealed +powerfully to the adherents of this +new school, with their gospel of the divine +rights of the human heart and of genius, +with their wild passionate graspings after +omniscience, their Titanic heaven-storming +aspirations after the unattainable and indescribable. +Lessing himself, though never +a genuine Sturm und Drang writer, began +a <i>Faust</i>, and when Goethe began his drama +a new <i>Faust</i>, it is said, was being announced +in almost every quarter of Germany. Someone +(I think it was Bayard Taylor) has +reckoned up <i>twenty-nine Fausts</i> that were +actually published in Germany while Goethe +was working at his. Some one else (I think +Ludwig von Arnim) has said: 'Not enough +<i>Fausts</i> are yet written. Every one should +write one. There is as much room for +them as for straight lines in the circumference +of a circle'—which, as you know, +is conceived by geometricians to consist of +an infinite number of infinitely small straight +lines.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span></p> + +<p>None of these twenty-nine <i>Fausts</i> are, +as far as I know, of any value or interest +except the unfinished play by Lessing, +which, as it was written while Goethe was +still a lad, and seems to have been only +printed in fragments at some later date, +can hardly come under Bayard Taylor's +list. From these fragments it is clear that +Lessing meant to save Faust's soul, if not +his body. Toward the end of the last +act, when the devils are triumphing over +their apparent victory and the possession of +Faust's body, a voice from heaven is heard: +'Triumph not! Ye have not won the +battle over human nature and human knowledge. +The Deity has not given to man +the noblest impulses in order to bring him +to eternal misery. What you imagine you +possess is only a phantom.'</p> + +<p>Although we cannot tell for certain how +Lessing meant to solve the problem, I think +it is almost certain that Faust was to work out +his own salvation amidst error and sin much +as Goethe's Faust does. Before attempting +(as I shall do on other occasions) to give a +description of the two parts of Goethe's +poem—in attempting which I shall keep as +closely as I can to the original and to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span> +questions arising directly out of Goethe's +own words—it will be useful and interesting +to consider the most striking points in which +his <i>Faust</i> differs essentially from all its predecessors, +except perhaps Lessing's—and +Lessing, although he struck the new chord, +did not resolve it. But this is a subject +involving many and far-reaching questions, +which, if they are to be solved at all, are +not to be solved by theory and dogma. I +shall therefore endeavour to state the case +as simply and as objectively as possible, +avoiding metaphysical cobwebs and giving +the <i>ego</i> and <i>non-ego</i> a wide berth. I shall +content myself in most cases with merely +pointing out the doctrine apparently +preached by Goethe (reminding you now +and then that even his own seemingly +categorical dogmas were to him merely +temporary forms of thought) and shall prefer +to let much justify its existence as an +integral part of the living whole rather +than to expel the life by dissection and +to examine the dead parts through the +spectacles of a commentator.</p> + +<p>In my next lecture, after a brief consideration +of these preliminary questions, +I shall try to describe the first Part of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span> +drama—a task of more than common difficulty, +for the story is familiar to many of +you, and a bare rehearsal of the action of +the play would prove wearisome, while any +attempt to communicate by means of translation +the wonderful beauty and force of +Goethe's words is almost bound to prove a +failure.</p> + +<p>In my third lecture I shall treat the second +Part of the play, the action of which is far +less generally known. It is not often read +and is seldom seen on the stage. Indeed it +was not written for the stage and does not +lend itself to ordinary dramatic and operatic +purposes, as the first Part does with its +Gretchen episode. It embraces too huge +a circle—a circle within which lie all the +possibilities of human life. It is a kind of +framework for all the tragedies and comedies +and epics and lyrics ever conceived, or conceivable. +What unity it has is not of the +stage or the dramatic Unities. But nevertheless +on the stage it produces effects +which impress one with the sense of an +imaginative power of an extraordinary kind.</p> + +<p>Many years ago, when it was being given +in the Dresden theatre, I saw it performed +four or five times and I remember noticing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span> +the wonderful attraction that it had for +minds of a certain class (and no very limited +class), while for others it was just such an +unintelligible farrago of wearisome 'Zeug' +as Dante's <i>Paradiso</i> and Beethoven's <i>Ninth +Symphony</i> are sometimes said to be.</p> + +<p>I believe it is the fashion with certain +critics (especially with those who have read +it superficially) to speak of the Second Part +of Goethe's <i>Faust</i>, as they do of <i>Paradise +Regained</i>, with a certain superciliousness, +as a superfluous excrescence, the artistically +almost worthless product of a mind that +had worked itself out and had exhausted +its 'Idea.'</p> + +<p>The truth is that the <i>first</i> Part is only +the merest fragment, and although the +subject of Faust is endless and can never +be fully treated in any one work of art (the +whole poem 'necessarily remaining a fragment,' +as Goethe himself said), nevertheless +the <i>second</i> Part does solve in one of many +possible ways the problem left unsolved by +the first half of the poem, namely the final +attainment of peace and happiness by the +human soul, and it is one of the noblest +monuments of the human intellect existing +in the literature of the world.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span></p> + +<p>Indeed it is, I think, still more than this. +It is not merely a monument of intellect +but of poetic imagination, and I am much +inclined to believe that the <i>Paradiso</i> of +Dante and the Second Part of Goethe's +<i>Faust</i> are perhaps two of the best, the +most infallible, touchstones for discovering +whether we really possess what Tennyson +calls the 'poetic heart'—not a trumpery +æsthetic imitation but the genuine article.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span></p> +<h2>II</h2> + +<h3>GOETHE'S 'FAUST'</h3> + +<h3>PART I</h3> + + +<p>When Goethe wrote to Schiller announcing +his intention of once more taking up his +unfinished <i>Faust</i>, Schiller replied: 'My +head grows dizzy when I think of it. The +subject of Faust appears to supply such an +infinity of material.... I find no circle +large enough to contain it.' Goethe +answered: 'I expect to make my work at +this barbarous composition, this <i>Fratze</i> [<i>i.e.</i> +caricature, as he often called it] less difficult +than you imagine. I shall throw a sop +to exorbitant demands rather than try to +satisfy them. The whole will always remain +a fragment'—a fragment, perhaps we may +add, in the same sense as even the grandest +Gothic building may be said to be only a +part of the infinitely great ideal Gothic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span> +structure which will never be seen on earth, +whereas in the Parthenon we have, or rather +the Athenians in the days of Pericles had, +something final and complete, something +which will tolerate no addition.</p> + +<p>If Schiller's head grew dizzy at the thought +of a Faust-drama, I fear that one who has +no Schiller head on his shoulders may prove +a poor guide among the precipices and +ravines of Goethe's life-poem, where the +path is often very steep and slippery. But +I will do my best; and perhaps I had better +treat our subject as I proposed. At first I +shall point out a little more distinctly some +of the characteristics which distinguish +Goethe's drama from the earlier versions +of the story. Then I shall try to guide you +steadily and rapidly through the action of +the first Part, offering whatever comment +may seem useful, and now and then perhaps +asking you to step aside from the track in +order to get a peep over some of the aforementioned +precipices.</p> + +<p>As we have already seen, one great difference +between Goethe's <i>Faust</i> and many +older versions of the story (including Marlowe's +play, but excluding Lessing's fragment) +is the fact that the sinner is saved.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span></p> + +<p>Shortly before his death, in 1832, Goethe +wrote to Wilhelm v. Humboldt: 'Sixty +years ago, when as a young man I first +conceived the idea of my <i>Faust</i>, the whole +plan of it lay clearly before me.' From the +first therefore Goethe had conceived the +second Part as integral to his poem. He +knew that, if he were to write a <i>Faust</i> at +all, Faust must be saved.</p> + +<p>We have already arrived at the edge of +one of those precipices of which I spoke—Faust +must be saved. But what did +Goethe mean, or, to ask a fairer question, +what do we ourselves mean, by being <i>saved</i>? +No formula of words seems able to provide +us with a satisfactory answer. We can +indeed use metaphors drawn from the +universe of Time and Space—we can speak +of 'another world' and of a 'future life'—but +as soon as we attempt to conceive +such existence <i>sub specie aeternitatis</i> our +imagination fails: to use the metaphor +of Socrates, we are dazzled by the insupportable +radiance of the eternal and +infinite, and seek to rest our eyes by +turning them toward shadows, reflexions, +images: we accept the beautiful image—the +enigma (as St. Paul calls it) or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span> +allegory—of a heaven in some far interspace +of world and world.</p> + +<p>As a poet, and especially as a dramatic +poet, Goethe, if he treated the subject at +all, was compelled to accept some imaginative +conception of a future life, and he +could scarcely accept any other but that +which was in keeping with the old legend—that +heaven of angels and saints and +penitents which was the converse of the +legendary hell and its fiends. Whether +however he was justified by the principles +of true dramatic art in his attempt to +depict his imaginative conception and to +place on the stage a representation of +heaven may be doubted. Certainly the +effect of Goethe's picture, especially when +seen on the stage, is such that one cannot +but wish some other solution might have +been devised, and one feels as if one understood +better than before why it was that +Shakespeare's dramatic instinct allowed no +such lifting of the veil. You remember +the last words of the dying Hamlet: 'The +rest is silence.'</p> + +<p>Thus far therefore we have come: by +Faust being saved it is meant that he escapes +from the fiend and reaches heaven,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span> +reaches the 'higher spheres' of existence, as +Goethe expresses it.</p> + +<p>But the mere fact of his being saved does +not form the essential difference between +this drama and earlier versions of the story. +The point of real importance is that he is +not saved in a downward course by the +intervention of some <i>deus ex machina</i>, some +orthodox counter-charm. His course is not +downward. His yearnings are not for +bodily ease and sensual enjoyment but for +truth—truth, not to be attained by speculation +or scientific research but by action +and feeling—by struggling onward through +error and sin, and by gaining purification +and strength from trial and suffering and +resistance to evil; so that evil itself is a +means to his salvation and Mephistopheles +an instrument of good. Rising on the +stepping-stones of his dead self he finds at +last a certain measure of peace and is in the +end reunited to her whose earthly happiness +he had indeed ruined but whose love his +heart has never forgotten. Indeed it is her +love that is allowed to guide him ever +aright and to draw him up to higher +spheres.</p> + +<p>When we once realize this we also realize<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span> +how meaningless, or how indescribably less +full of meaning, the poem would be without +its second Part. And yet many, when they +speak of Goethe's <i>Faust</i>, mean merely the +first Part—or perhaps merely the little +episode of Gretchen given in Gounod's +opera.</p> + +<p>I spoke of Goethe's gospel of self-salvation. +Since doing so I have recalled to +memory some words of his which may seem +to refute me. In reference to the song of +the angels at the end of the poem he wrote +as follows: 'These verses contain the key +of Faust's salvation: namely, in Faust himself +an ever higher and purer aspiration, +and from above eternal love coming to his +help; and they are in harmony with our +religious conceptions, according to which +we cannot attain to heaven by our own +strength unless it is helped by divine grace.'</p> + +<p>It is true that <i>after death</i> Faust's soul is +saved from the demons and is carried up to +heaven by God's angels, but Goethe's drama +is mainly the drama of Faust's earthly life, +and from the 'Prologue in Heaven,' where, +as it seems, the Deity undertakes <i>not</i> to +help him, but leaves him to fight the battle +entirely in his own strength, until the last<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span> +moment of his earthly existence there is no +hint whatever, I think, of anything but self-salvation. +On no occasion does he show +the slightest sense of his own helplessness +or of dependence on God's mercy. As for +<i>remorse</i>, Goethe regarded it as a false +emotion and as unworthy of a man. +Although the perfect balance of his mind +and his respect for much that he could not +himself accept saved him from the almost +brutal insouciance of such a form of expression +he would probably have agreed +with Walt Whitman, who tells us that +animals should serve us as an example +because 'they do not lie awake in the dark +and weep for their sins; they do not make +me sick discussing their duty to God.'</p> + +<p>Let us however dismiss criticism and turn +to what Goethe as poet has given us—perhaps +the noblest picture that dramatic +art can give: that of a man striving onward +and upward in his own strength, confronting +(as Goethe says in reference to +Shakespeare's plays) the inexorable course +of the universe with the might of human +will. We might take as the Alpha and +Omega of <i>Faust</i> these two lines from the +poem:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span></p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Es irrt der Mensch so lang er strebt,</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Nur rastlos betätigt sich der Mann,</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>the sense of which is that human nature +must ever err as long as it strives, but that +true manhood is incessant striving.</p> + +<p>It is a noble picture—perhaps the noblest +conceivable. You remember Browning's +lines:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>One who never turned his back but marched breast forward,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i2"><i>Never doubted clouds would break,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i8"><i>Sleep to wake.</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>It will have already become evident what +abstruse and insoluble questions present +themselves—rise, as it were, like ghosts of +many an ancient creed, on every side, as +soon as we have crossed the threshold of +this great Mausoleum of human thought +and imagination. There is the spectre of +the great Mystery of existence—of Life and +Death and Eternity; and that of the Knowledge +of Good and Evil; and that of Evil +itself—a phantom assuming at times such a +visible and substantial shape and then dissolving +into thin air as mere negation. And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[64]</a></span> +this Mephistopheles—are we to regard him +as a self-existent genuine demon of a genuine +Hell, or as our own mind's shadow? Is he +something external, something that we can +avoid, something that we can put to flight +by resisting and get entirely free of—or has +each one of us signed with the blood of his +human nature a compact with some such +spiritual power, with the demonic element +within him, with that spirit of negation, of +cynicism, of cold unideal utilitarian worldly-wisdom +which mocks at faith and love and +every high and tender impulse—that part +of our nature which, when some poor +girl is sinking in the abyss, prompts us to +answer our heart's appeal with the sneer of +Mephistopheles: 'She isn't the first!'? Surely +we can well understand the scorn and +contempt which Faust feels for this demon +companion of his. 'What canst thou, poor +devil, give me?' he exclaims—'Was the +human spirit's aspiration Ever understood +by such as thou!'</p> + +<p>The real action of the play begins with +the celebrated monologue of Faust. But +this is preceded by a <i>Dedication</i>, by the +<i>Prelude in the theatre</i>, and by the <i>Prologue in +Heaven</i>, added at various periods of Goethe's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a></span> +life. The <i>Prelude</i> consists of a scene between +a poet, a theatrical director and a 'comic +person.' It is merely a clever skit in which +Goethe has a hit at the public and those +who supply it with so-called drama. It has +no organic connexion with the play. The +<i>Prologue in Heaven</i> begins with the songs +of the three Archangels—sonorous verses of +majestic harmony, like some grand overture +by Bach or Handel. These verses are, I +think, meant to intimate the great harmonious +order and procession of the natural and +moral universe, as Pythagoras intimated +them by his 'Music of the Spheres'—those +eternal laws against which man, that tiny +microcosm, so vainly strives.</p> + +<p>Mephistopheles now enters, as in the Book +of Job Satan is described entering God's +presence, and, just as it happens in the +Bible, the Lord asks him if he knows Faust, +and, as in the case of Job, it is God himself +who not only allows but seems even to +challenge the demon to try his powers, +foretelling his failure although promising no +help to Faust. 'It is left to thee,' says the +Lord to Mephistopheles. 'Draw this aspiring +spirit from his fountain-head and lead him +downward on thy path, if thou canst gain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span> +a hold upon him, and stand ashamed when +thou shalt have to confess that a good man +amidst his dim impulses is well conscious of +the right way.'</p> + +<p>That which distinguishes this scene from +the similar scene in <i>Job</i> is its irreverence. +Indeed one might almost call it flippancy, +and few would deny that at times this +flippancy is painful to them. The only +excuse that I can find for it is that, rightly +or wrongly, Goethe meant us to be pained. +I believe that here Mephistopheles represents +especially that element in human nature +which is perhaps the meanest and most +disgusting of all, namely flippant and vulgar +irreverence, and although we may not agree +with John Wesley's definition of man as +'half brute, half devil,' most of us will +probably allow that a certain part of our +nature (that part which Mephistopheles +seems to represent) is capable of an irreverence +and a vulgarity of which the devil +himself might almost be ashamed.</p> + +<p>The monologue with which the action of +the play begins strikes at once the new chord +and gives us the leading motive—one so +entirely different from that of the old legend—so +indescribably nobler than that which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span> +is given in the opening monologue of +Marlowe's play. But the old framework is +still there. Faust renounces book-learning +and betakes himself to magic.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>I've studied now philosophy,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Jurisprudence and medicine,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>And e'en, alas, theology</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>From end to end with toil and teen,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>And here I stand with all my lore,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Poor fool, no wiser than before.</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>No dog would live thus any more!</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Therefore to magic I have turned,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>If that through spirit-word and power</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Many a secret may be learned</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>That I may find the inner force</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Which binds the world and guides its course,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Its germs and vital powers explore</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>And peddle with worthless words no more.</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Disgusted with the useless quest after that +science which deals only with phenomena +and their material causes, he turns to magic, +as he does in the old legend; but it is here no +diabolic medieval wizardry which shall enable +him to summon the devil, for, as we shall see, +Faust does not summon the devil; Mephistopheles +comes to him uncalled. Goethe has +merely used this motive of magic to intimate +attainment of perfect knowledge of Nature +through the might of genius—that revelation<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span> +of the inner secrets of the universe which he +himself, in what he calls the 'Titanic, +heaven-storming' period of his life, believed +to be attainable by human genius in communion +with Nature.</p> + +<p>'Nature and Genius' was the watchword +of the followers of Rousseau and the apostles +of the Sturm und Drang gospel—a return to +and communion with Nature, such as Wordsworth +preached and practised, and such as +Byron also preached but did not practise. +Only to the human spirit in full communion +with the spirit of Nature, of which it is a +part, are revealed her mysteries. All other +means, as Faust tells us, are useless.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Mysterious even in the open day</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Nature within her veil withdraws from view.</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>What to thy spirit she will not display</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Cannot be wrenched from her with crowbar or with screw.</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Faust turns from his dreary little world of +books and charts and retorts and skeletons. +He opens the window and gazes at the +moon floating in her full glory through the +heaven. His heart is filled with a yearning +to be 'made one with Nature,' and in words +which remind one of certain lines of Wordsworth +he exclaims:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span></p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>O might I on some mountain height,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Encircled in thy holy light,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>With spirits hover round crags and caves,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>O'er the meadows float on the moonlight's waves.</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Then, turning from Nature, he casts once +more a look around his dreary cell:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Ah me, this dungeon still I see,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>This drear accursèd masonry,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Where e'en the welcome daylight strains</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>But duskly through the painted panes,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Hemmed in by many a toppling heap</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Of books worm-eaten, grey with dust,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Which to the vaultèd ceiling creep</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Against the smoky paper thrust,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>With glasses, boxes, round me stacked</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>And instruments together hurled,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Ancestral lumber stuffed and packed—</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Such is my world! And what a world!...</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Alas! In living Nature's stead,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Where God his human creatures set,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>In smoke and mould the fleshless dead</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>And bones of beasts surround me yet.</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>He takes up the book of the Mystic +astrologer Nostradamus and sees in it the +sign, or cipher, of the universe. As he +gazes a wondrous vision reveals itself: the +mystic lines of the cipher seem to live and +move and to form one living whole; and in +spirit he beholds the Powers of Nature<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span> +ascending and descending and reaching to +each other golden vessels filled with the +waters of life and wafting with their wings +blessing and harmony through the universe.</p> + +<p>And yet from this vision he turns away +dissatisfied:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>What wondrous vision! yet a vision only!</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Where shall I grasp thee, Nature infinite?</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>And from this cipher of the material universe, +this vision of inconceivable immensity +and infinite diversity, the human spirit which +is not content with the dead bones of science +and has entered into communion with Nature +cannot but turn away dissatisfied—and even +with despair. Let me try to illustrate this +in a more matter-of-fact way.</p> + +<p>The human mind discovers, let us say, +that the earth is not the centre of the +universe; that the sun is larger than the +'bottom of a cask,' as in the old legend Faust +discovered it to be; that there are other +worlds quite as large as ours; that this earth +of ours is a good deal smaller than the sun +and actually revolves round it; that even +the sun itself is not the centre of the universe +but one of many suns—one of the countless +stars in that enormous starry wreath that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span> +surrounds us, and which we call the Milky +Way. And we direct our telescopes to this +Milky Way and find that what we took for +nebula is for the most part an accumulation +of countless millions of suns, each perhaps +with its planets. Then, as we sweep the +sky with our glass, we discover numberless +little wreath-like spiral cloudlets, and find +that they also are just such wreaths of countless +millions of suns and solar systems, and +that these seemingly tiny wreaths are revolving +round some central body or system, +which itself must revolve round some other, +and that again round another ... until +imagination fails. Is there, we ask, some +final centre of all? some unmoved source of +motion? Or is the material universe infinite?</p> + +<p>Then we turn our gaze in another direction +and we find in the tiniest grain of sand +countless millions of molecules whose atoms +(or electrons), it is said, are in perpetual +motion, revolving like the stars. Are then +(we ask) the stars themselves nothing but +molecules? Is the whole material universe +nothing but some grain of sand on the shore +of the ocean of eternity?</p> + +<p>We turn away dazzled, and we rest our +eyes, as Socrates was wont to say, on images,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span> +on reflexions. We try to make the mystery +intelligible, or at least to pacify the reason +by throwing it some such sop as the theory +that 'Size is only relative,' or that 'Space is +only a mode of consciousness' and therefore +nothing real in itself. Or we lull the mind +to sleep with imaginative metaphors and +speak (as Plato did) of the Central Fire of +Hestia, the Hearth and Home of the Universe, +or we call that mysterious unmoved +centre of all motion the Throne of God. +Thus we try to lay the spectre of infinite +Space.</p> + +<p>Or consider Time instead of Space. In a +single second how many waves of light +are supposed to enter the eye? About +500 billions I believe. And of these waves +some 500 would not exceed the breadth of +a hair. Now any being to whom these +tiny waves were as slow as the ripples +on a pond are to us would live our human +life of three score years and ten in the +hundredth part of <i>his</i> second, while a being +on one of those great worlds of space revolving +but once in long æons around its +centre would live—if his life were measured +as ours—millions of our years. Here again, +in our dazzlement, we have recourse to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a></span> +metaphor and theory: we lay the spectre of +Time by explaining it away as merely a +'mode' and as therefore of no objective +reality. In other words, dazed and outworn +by the incomprehensible infinities of Time +and Space we console ourselves with the +theory that it is all a mere phenomenon, a +projection of our own mind, and with Faust +we exclaim</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>What wondrous vision! yet a vision only!</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and in the words of a still greater master of +magic than Faust himself we despairingly +add that</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4"><i>like the baseless fabric of this vision,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>The solemn temples, the great globe itself,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Yea all that it inherit, shall dissolve</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>As dreams are made of.</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>From the cipher of the vast material +universe, the Macrocosm, we turn away, +as Faust did, with unsatisfied yearnings. +Whither then shall we turn? Where shall +we grasp Nature—not the empty vision, but +the warm living form? It is in our own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span> +heart that we find a refuge from the infinities +of Space and Time—in that human heart +by which we live, in its tenderness, its joys, +its fears. Here, and here alone, we find +those ultimate facts of existence which need +no explanation, and which we accept just as +they are, without any questionings. Here +we find an infinite universe—no less infinite +than that of Space and Time—the universe +of feeling.</p> + +<p>From the cipher of the Macrocosm Faust +turns to that of the Earth-spirit, the spirit of +human life and feeling. He is filled with a +sudden, passionate yearning to share in the +joys and the sorrows and the aspirations and +the strivings of humanity:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Thou, Spirit of the Earth, art nearer.</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>I feel my powers loftier, clearer,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>I glow, as drunk with new-made wine;</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>New strength I feel out in the world to dare,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>The woes of earth, the bliss of earth to bear,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>To fight my way, though storms around me lash,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Nor know dismay amid the shipwreck's crash.</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>He calls upon this Earth-spirit, the Spirit +of human life. He bends all the might of +his human will to draw him down from his +sphere. 'Come!' he exclaims. 'Thou +must! Thou must!—e'en should it cost<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span> +my life!' Enveloped in blinding flame the +Spirit of life appears. At the apparition +Faust cowers back terrified and turns his +face away. But it is only for the moment. +Stung by the contemptuous words of the +phantom he answers: 'Shall I yield to <i>thee</i>, +Spectre of flame? 'Tis I, 'tis Faust, thine +equal!' The human Mind claims equality +with the Spirit of earthly life. But the +phantom exclaims: 'Thou art akin to the +spirit that thou comprehendest—not to me!'—and +disappears. Faust has yet to learn +a lesson that the mind of man can never +learn of itself, the real nature and meaning +of human life. But he has beheld the +vision of life, he has received the baptism of +fire. Henceforth he is to fight his way +through the storms of life and passion—to +pass onward and upward and at last to rise +to 'higher spheres'; and amidst the fierce and +insidious assaults of flesh and devil we shall +see that he looks for strength and guidance +to this Spirit that appeared to him in the +blinding vision of living empyreal flame.</p> + +<p>Scarcely has the Earth-spirit vanished +when, with a timid knock, there enters +Faust's <i>famulus</i>, or assistant, Wagner. He +has heard Faust's voice and from its excited<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span> +tones has concluded that he is practising +declamation—reciting perhaps a Greek play. +The poor amiable dryasdust literary and +scientific worm-grubber, whose maxim of +life is <i>Zwar weiss ich viel, doch möcht' ich +Alles wissen</i> (I know indeed a good deal, +but I want to know <i>Everything</i>), wishes to +profit from a lesson in elocution. A scene +follows in which the contrast is graphically +depicted between this half lovable, half contemptible +scientific bookworm and Faust's +Titanic heaven-storming aspirations after +absolute truth. When he is once more +left alone, longing to face the mystery of +life but crushed by the contempt of the +Earth-spirit, Faust is seized by despair. He +shrinks from encountering life, with its +delusive joys, its pitiless injustice and its +arbitrary fate. He resolves to seek certainty—to +solve the riddle of life by death. As +he moves the cup of poison to his lips there +comes floating through the air the chime of +bells and, perhaps from some near chapel, +the hymn of Easter morn:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Joy unto mortals! Christ is arisen!</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>He pauses. Memories of childhood sweep +over him, and he yields to the sweet voices<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span> +that call him back from the threshold of the +unseen.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Sound on sweet hymns of heaven! As gentle rain</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>My tears are falling. Earth hath me again.</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Thus Faust escapes the cowardly act of +suicide and gains new strength through the +awakening, for a time at least, of the consciousness, +which had slumbered within him +since the unreasoning days of childhood, +that there is that beyond life which alone +makes life worth having.</p> + +<p>The next scene shows us Faust already +in contact with human nature, as represented +by holiday crowds flocking out of +the town into the woods and adjacent +villages at Eastertide. Those who know +Germany well will feel the art with which +Goethe at once transports us into the +midst of a Germanic Feiertag in spring-time, +with its bright sunlight, its throngs +of townspeople streaming into the country—happy +and merry without vulgar rowdyism; +the smugly dressed apprentice and +the servant-girl in her Sonntagsputz; the +pert student and the demure Bürgermädchen +with her new Easter hat and her voluminous-waisted +Frau Mama; the sedate school-master +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span>or shopkeeper, leading his toddling +child; sour-faced officials; grey-locked and +spectacled professors and 'town-fathers' +discussing the world's news or some local +grievance—all flocking countryward, with +some Waldhaus or Forsthaus Restaurant +as their ultimate goal. And those who +know Frankfurt will recognize the scene +at once: up there above Sachsenhausen, +on the road to the pine-woods and the +Jägerhaus, from which one sees the whole +city lying below one, with its great Dom +and its medieval gates—the river Main +gliding through its midst and glittering away +westward toward the Rhine; and in the +far background the Taunus range and the +dark Feldberg.</p> + +<p>Amidst this scene, externally still the +more than middle-aged German professor +(he must be fifty-seven or so) but with a +heart full of newly wakened yearnings for +human life with all its joys and passions, +Faust wanders, trying to feel sympathy +with all these multitudinous human beings, +attracted perhaps here and there, but evidently +for the most part repelled and discouraged. +He has yet to learn that a love +for and a knowledge of humanity, such as he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span> +finally reaches, must begin with love for +and knowledge of <i>one</i> human heart.</p> + +<p>As he and Wagner return toward the +city Faust gives vent to his pent-up feelings—pours +contempt on his own book-learning +and wasted life and expresses his yearnings +for Nature, and the longing of his spirit for +wings to fly away into the infinite:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>For in each soul is born the rapture</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Of yearning upward, and away,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>When o'er our heads, lost in the azure,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>The lark sends down her thrilling lay,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>When over crags and pine-clad highlands</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>The poising eagle slowly soars,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>And over plains and lakes and islands</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>The crane sails by to other shores.</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Whereat Wagner exclaims:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>I've had myself at times an odd caprice,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>But never yet such impulses as these.</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>The woods and fields soon get intensely flat,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>And as for flight—I never longed for that!</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Poor dear Wagner, how well one seems to +know thee, with thy purblind spectacled +eyes peering into fusty books and parchments, +or bending over thy crucibles and +retorts! Truly a novel and interesting sight +it would be to see <i>thee</i> assuming wings. In<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span> +thy philosophy there is naught but dreams +of elixirs of life or homunculi. Thy highest +aspiration nowadays would be to find the +mechanical equivalent of thought—to prove +that Shakespeare's and Dante's imagination +was due only to a slightly abnormal movement +of brain-molecules—to find some +method of measuring faith, hope and charity +in foot-pounds and thine own genius in +electric volts. Thou wouldst live and die, +as other eminent scientists of these latter +days have done, in the certain hope and +faith of demonstrating irrefutably that this +curious phenomenon which we call 'life' +is nothing but the chemical action set +up by the carbonic acid and ammonia +of the protoplasm.</p> + +<p>As they walk and talk there appears a +black dog ranging to and fro through a field, +as if on the track of game. Ever nearer and +nearer he circles, and in his wake, as it +appears to Faust, trails a flickering phosphorescent +gleam. But Wagner ridicules +the idea as an optical delusion. <i>He</i> sees +nothing but an ordinary black poodle. +'Call him,' he says, 'and he'll come fawning +on you, or sit up and do his tricks, or jump +into the water after sticks.' The poodle<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span> +follows them—and makes himself at home +by the stove in Faust's study.</p> + +<p>Faust has thus, after his first contact with +the outer world of humanity, returned once +more to his cell—to the little world of his +own thoughts and feelings. He finds himself +once more amidst his piled-up books, his +crucibles and retorts, his bones and skulls. +He lights his lamp and feels the old familiar +glow of intellectual satisfaction. <i>But the +poodle is there.</i> Faust has brought home +with him something that will now haunt him +to the last moment of his life. There has +been awakened in his nature the germ of that +acorn (to use Goethe's metaphor with regard +to Hamlet) that will soon strike root and +shatter the vase in which it is planted.</p> + +<p>At present he is almost unconscious of this +new presence. He is buried in thought, and +his thoughts lead him toward the question +of Revelation. He is drawn to take up a +Bible and turns, with a mind full of metaphysical +curiosity, to the passage 'In the +beginning was the <span class='correction' title='logos'>λόγος</span>—the Word.' More +than once there comes from the poodle a +growl of disapprobation. Faust threatens to +turn him out, and proceeds with his biblical +criticism.... 'In the beginning was the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span> +<span class='correction' title='logos'>λόγος</span>.' How shall he translate <span class='correction' title='logos'>λόγος</span>? It +cannot mean merely a 'word.' ... A word +must have meaning, <i>thought</i>—and thought +is nothing without <i>act</i>.... So this 'Word,' +this 'Logos,' must be translated as Act or +Deed.</p> + +<p>These speculations are interrupted by +horrible growlings, barks, and howlings. As +Faust looks towards the poodle he sees it +rapidly swelling up into a monstrous form—huger +than an elephant or hippopotamus, with +fiery eyes and enormous tusks in its gaping +mouth. He tries to exorcise the phantom +with 'Solomon's key' and other magic +formulæ, and at length, when he threatens it +with the mystic formula of the Trinity, it +dissolves into mist, and out of the mist steps +forth Mephistopheles, dressed as a 'travelling +scholar'—an itinerant professor, or quack +doctor.</p> + +<p>I find that some commentators accuse +Goethe of dramatic inconsistency and of +interrupting the sequence of the action, +because he makes Faust for a time return to +his old speculations, and because Mephistopheles +does not at once appear in the shape +with which we are so familiar—with his 'red +gold-trimmed dress and mantle of stiff silk<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span> +and the cock-feathers in his hat,' the type of +the dissolute man-about-town of the period. +To me it seems very natural that, dispirited +by his first contact with the outer world—unable +to feel any real sympathy with the +rollicking and sleek self-sufficiency of that +holiday crowd, Faust should turn again to +reflexion and speculation, and that when he +is in this depressed and metaphysical mood +the demonic element in his nature should first +present itself—and that too in the disguise of +an itinerant professor. For is it not the case +that to many of us the devil <i>has</i> come first +just at such a time and in just such disguise?</p> + +<p>Questioned as to his name and personality, +Mephisto defines himself (he too being in a +metaphysical mood) as 'the spirit of negation,' +and as 'a part of that power which +always wills evil and always works good'—'a +part of that darkness which alone existed +before the creation of light'—and he expresses +the hope that, as light is dependent for its +existence on the material world, both it and +the world will ere long return to chaos and +darkness. I have already touched upon this +question of Evil as merely negative—merely +a part of the whole—and will not detain you +further over it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span></p> + +<p>Mephistopheles now wishes to take his +leave, promising to visit Faust again. 'Visit +me as you like,' says Faust, 'and now—there is +the window! there's the door! or the chimney +is at your service.' But the devil must go +out by the same way as he has entered, and on +the threshold to keep out evil spirits Faust has +painted a mystic pentagram, a figure with five +points, the outer angle of which, being inaccurately +drawn, had left a gap through which +Mephisto had slipped in; but being once in, +as in a mouse-trap, he cannot get out again.</p> + +<p>As Faust now seems inclined to keep him +prisoner, Mephistopheles summons spirits, +who sing Faust to sleep. Then he calls a rat +to gnaw a gap in the pentagram, and escapes.</p> + +<p>When, in the next scene, Mephistopheles +again appears, Faust is in a very different +state of mind, and Mephistopheles is also in a +different shape. He is decked out with silken +mantle and with cock-feathers in his hat, +ready for any devilry. Faust is in the depths +of morbid despair and bitterness at the +thought of life:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>'What from the world have I to gain?—</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0">Thou must renounce! renounce! refrain!<br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Such is the everlasting song</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>That fills our ears our whole life long ...</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>With horror day by day I wake</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>And weeping watch the morning break</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>To think that each returning sun</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Shall see fulfilled no wish of mine—not one.'</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>He vows he would rather die. 'And yet,' +sarcastically remarks Mephisto, 'some one a +night or two ago did not drink a certain +brown liquid.' Stung by the sarcasm, Faust +breaks out into curses against life, against +love and hope, and faith ... and 'cursed be +patience most of all!'</p> + +<p>Here is the devil's opportunity. 'Life is +yours yet, and all its pleasures. Of what's +beyond you nothing know. Give up all this +morbid thinking, these dreams and self-delusions! +Be a man! Enjoy life! Plunge +into pleasures of the senses! I will be +your guide and show you the life worth +living!'</p> + +<p>In an ecstasy of embitterment and +despair, though fully conscious that such +a life can never bring him satisfaction +and happiness, Faust exclaims: 'What +wilt <i>thou</i>, poor devil, give me? Was +the human spirit, in its aspirations, ever +understood by such as <i>thou</i>?... And +yet—hast thou the food that never satiates—hast +thou red gold—hast thou love,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span> +passionate faithless love—hast thou the +fruits that rot before one plucks them—hast +thou the fruits of that tree of +sensual pleasure which daily puts forth new +blossoms—then done! I accept.' 'But if,' +he adds (and, alas, I must give merely the +sense of these noble verses—for all translation +is so unutterably flat)—'if I ever lay +myself on the bed of idle self-content, if +ever thou canst fool me with these +phantoms of the senses, if ever I say to the +passing moment, <i>Stay; thou art so fair!</i>—then +let my life be ended. This wager I +offer thee.' 'Topp!' ('Done!') exclaims +Mephistopheles; and, as you know, the compact +is signed by Faust with his own blood.</p> + +<p>You will observe that here there is no +mention, as in the old legend, of any term +of years—the compact is <i>for life</i>. Of what +may come after this life Faust makes no +mention in his wager. He expressly says +that all he cares about, all he can know, is +<i>this</i> life, and that he will hear nothing about +any future life. This may be agnosticism +or whatever else we like to call it, but it is +not formally selling one's soul, with or +without one's body, for a <i>future</i> life and +for all eternity.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span></p> + +<p>Moreover Faust has <i>not</i> summoned the +devil. The devil has come to him—is +indeed a part of him. He does <i>not</i> league +himself with a hell-fiend for the sake of +worldly power or fame or sensual enjoyment, +of which he speaks with contempt. +He only offers to come forward into the +battle of life and of passions to test the +nobler powers and the deeper beliefs and +the yet dim aspirations of his better nature +against the powers of evil, against what he +calls the 'cold devil's-fist' of negation and +cynicism and disbelief, against the brute +within the man.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Thou hearest me! I do not speak of joy—</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>I dedicate myself to passion—pleasure—pain—</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Enamour'd hate, and rapture of disdain.</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>What's highest or what's lowest I will know,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>And heap upon my bosom weal and woe.</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Footsteps are now heard approaching. +It is one of Faust's scholars. Faust 'has +no heart to meet him'—and no wonder. He +goes; and Mephistopheles, throwing around +him Faust's professorial mantle and placing +the professorial cap upon his head, awaits +the scholar. The scene which ensues, in +which Mephisto gives the young aspirant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span> +for knowledge his diabolic advice and his +diabolic views on Science, Logic, Metaphysics, +Medicine and even Theology—would +offer ample material for a very long +course of lectures; but as it is one which is +not closely connected with the main action +of the play it will have to be omitted. +The scholar retires—his poor young head +whirling round like a mill-wheel with the +advice he has received and carrying away +his album, in which the devil has inscribed +his favourite text 'Ye shall be as gods, +knowing good and evil.' Then Faust +re-enters, Mephistopheles spreads out his +silken cape, and on it the two fly away +through the air on their adventures—first +through the small and then the greater +world—first the world of personal feelings +and passions, then the greater world (is it +really greater?) of art and politics and +Humanity.</p> + +<p>Faust had said, as you remember,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>What wilt thou, poor devil, give me?</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Was the human spirit, in its aspirations</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Ever understood by such as thou?</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>This is the leading motive of all that +follows. With ever-deepening disgust and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span> +contempt Faust, in his quest for truth +through the jungles and quagmires of +human passions, follows his guide. If ever +Faust seems to catch sight of any far-off +vision of eternal truth and beauty—as he +does at times in his love for Gretchen, and +again in his passion for ideal beauty in +Helen, and once again in that devotion to +the cause of Humanity which finally allows +him to express a satisfaction in life, and +thus causes his life to end—if ever Faust +shows any sign of real interest or satisfaction, +it is just <i>then</i> that Mephistopheles +displays most clearly his utter inability +to understand the 'human spirit in its +aspirations'; and it is <i>then</i> that he shows +most plainly his own diabolic nature, pouring +out his cynical contempt and gnashing +his teeth at what he deems Faust's +irrational disgust for all those bestialities +that seem to him (Mephistopheles) the +sweetest joys of existence.</p> + +<p>His very first attempt is a dead failure. +He has carried Faust off through the air to +Leipzig, and here he brings him into what +to the Mephisto-nature doubtless seems +highly desirable and entertaining company—to +the 'sing-song' (as I believe it is called<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span> +in England) of tippling brawling students. +The scene is Auerbach's Cellar, a well-known +Leipzig 'Kneipe'—a kind of Wine +taproom or Bodega. Among these brawling +comic-songsters Mephistopheles is in his +element, and he treats them to a comic ditty:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Of old there lived a king,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i2"><i>Who had a great big flea</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>As dear as any thing,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i2"><i>Or any son, could be ...</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and so on. We need not linger over the +repulsive scene—so graphically described.</p> + +<p>Finally Mephistopheles bores holes in the +table and draws wine from them.</p> + +<p>The students come to handicuffs over +it; they spill the wine, and it turns into +flame.</p> + +<p>Amidst their drunken uproar Faust and +Mephistopheles disappear.</p> + +<p>During the whole of this scene Faust +<i>speaks no single word</i>, except a curt but polite +greeting on entering the Cellar and an appeal +to Mephistopheles to take him away from +this 'scene of swinish bestiality.' How +different from the part that Faust plays in +the old story where he himself, not Mephistopheles, +joins in the revelry and buffoonery!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span></p> + +<p>Auerbach's Cellar existed till lately, +though the house above it had been rebuilt. +It was the original 'Keller' that is mentioned +in the old legend. In it were to be seen two +old pictures (with the date 1525). One +represented Faust sitting at table with +students; in the other he is flying off +through the door astride on a wine cask.</p> + +<p>A weird scene now ensues: the Witches' +Kitchen.</p> + +<p>Faust had asked how it was possible for +him, the thought-worn grey-haired professor, +to care for, or take part in, what +Mephistopheles looked upon as 'life.' +Mephistopheles therefore takes him to a +witch, from whom he is to receive a magic +draught that will 'strip off some thirty +years from his body,' so that he becomes a +young, man of, say, about twenty-seven. +This scene in the Witches' Kitchen is sometimes +said to represent allegorically a long +course of dissipation through which Mephistopheles +takes Faust, and which of course +could not be represented otherwise without +extending the action of the play beyond all +reasonable limits. It is true that, after the +draught Faust's character seems considerably +changed for the worse. He develops a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span> +recklessness and a licentiousness which +scandalize even Mephistopheles himself, +who tells him that he is 'almost as bad as a +Frenchman.'</p> + +<p>Whether we should understand it thus, +or not, I do not feel quite sure, but anyhow +we have in future—to the end of the first +Part—to take into account the fact that, +although loathing all such swinish sensuality +as that of tippling students, and hating +all forms of mean selfishness and cunning +and hypocrisy, Faust is (as so often is the +case with otherwise noble and lovable men) +open to assault at that point where, as +nowhere else, the sensuous and ideal in our +human nature seem to touch and coalesce.</p> + +<p>When they enter the Witch is not at +home. In the midst of the kitchen is a +large cauldron, and at its side, skimming +it and seeing that it does not run over is +a Meerkatze—a kind of female ape. The +Meerkater, or male ape, squats by the fire, +warming himself, and near by are several +young apes. Mephistopheles is enraptured +at the sight of the 'tender pretty beasts,' +but Faust finds them more disgusting than +anything he has ever seen.</p> + +<p>The apes perform all kinds of antics and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span> +chatter a weird medley of half sense, half +nonsense, in which one can dimly discern +satirical allusions to various forms of the +literary, political, and religious cant of +Goethe's generation.</p> + +<p>The animals enthrone Mephistopheles in a +chair, give him a feather brush for a sceptre, +and offer him a broken crown, which he is to +glue together with 'sweat and blood.' It is +like some horrid nightmare. We feel as if +we were going mad; and so does Faust himself. +But suddenly he catches sight of a +magic mirror, in which he sees a form of +ravishing beauty—not that of Gretchen or +Helen, but some form of ideal loveliness. He +stands there entranced.</p> + +<p>But at this moment the cauldron boils +over. A great flame shoots up the chimney. +With a scream the witch comes clattering +down, and launches curses at the intruders—not +recognising the devil in his costume as +modern roué. He abuses her roundly and +tells her that his horns, tail and cloven hoof +are gone out of fashion, modern culture +having tabooed them; and he forbids her to +address him as Satan. That name is not up-to-date: +he is now 'der Herr Baron.'</p> + +<p>With a hocus-pocus of incantations she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span> +brews the magic draught, which Faust drinks. +He is then hurried away by Mephistopheles +back into the world of humanity.</p> + +<p>We have now come to the story of Margarete +or Gretchen, which by many, perhaps +by most, is looked upon as constituting the +main subject of Goethe's <i>Faust</i>. It is doubtless +the part which attracts one, which appeals +to one's <i>heart</i>, more than any other, and it +forms by itself a pathetic little tragedy. The +story itself is merely the old sad story of +passion, weakness and misery, which has +been told thousands of times in all ages and +all languages.</p> + +<p>It would be worse than useless to endeavour +by any dissecting process to discover +how by some act of creative power Goethe +has inspired this little story with such +wondrous vitality that there is probably in +all literature scarcely any character that lives +for us, that seems so real, as Gretchen. +Possibly to feel this one needs a knowledge +of the original poem and an acquaintance +not only with that Germany which is +generally known to the English visitor, but +also with just that class of which Gretchen +is typical, and with just those little ways +and those forms of expression which are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span> +peculiar to that class and to the part of +Germany to which Gretchen belonged. +Every single word that she utters is so absolutely +true to nature that we seem to hear the +voice of some real living Gretchen, and can +hardly believe that she merely exists in our +imagination. This may perhaps be asserted +of other poetic creations; but I confess that +I know no other, not even in Shakespeare, +that produces on me quite the same kind of +illusion. Homer's Nausicaa, the Antigone +and Electra of Sophocles, Rosalind, Miranda, +Imogen, Portia, Cordelia—all these live for +me, but not quite as Gretchen. Their +presence I feel as something living, but a +little visionary. Gretchen I can see, and +hear and almost touch. I need not recount +at length her story, for it is too well known. +I need only recall to you memories of certain +facts and scenes: that first meeting in the +street; the mysterious presents from the unknown +lover; the meeting in the neighbour's +garden and Gretchen's innocent prattlings +about her home life; Faust's growing passion, +and the vain battlings of his higher nature; +the insidious promptings and cynical ridicule +of his demonic companion; the song of +Gretchen at her spinning-wheel; her loving<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span> +anxiety as to Faust's religious opinions, and +his celebrated confession of faith; the sleeping +draught by which Gretchen causes the +death of her mother; her shame, remorse +and despair; Gretchen kneeling with her +gift of tear-sprent flowers before the Virgin's +image; the return of her brother, the young +soldier, Valentin, and <i>his</i> death—stabbed by +her lover (or rather by Mephisto) at night +beneath her window, and cursing her as he +dies; the scene in the Cathedral; the pealing +organ and the solemn tones of the Dies Irae +mingling with the terrible words of the +accusing spirit, till Gretchen sinks fainting to +the ground.</p> + +<p>And where is Faust? He has fled. The +avengers of blood are on his track. His selfish +passion has been the cause of death to +Gretchen's mother and brother and has +brought ruin on her—to end in madness, +infanticide and the block.</p> + +<p>I have often wondered whether the limitations +of art might not allow the possibility of +some drama on the same lines as <i>Faust</i> in +which he might be saved by the purity and +nobility of womanhood, as in the story of +Cyprian and Justina, instead of, as here, +using the ruin of a poor girl as a stepping-stone +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span>in his career of self-salvation. Or, what +if he had felt such horror and remorse at her +fate that he had broken his compact and freed +himself from the demon? It will be said, +perhaps, that this would have been undramatic +and that such a view is merely +sentimental and subversive of all true art. +But, once more, what if he had bravely stood +by Gretchen, or had even shared her fate +when she refused to be saved by him?</p> + +<p>Anyhow, Goethe did not choose any of +these methods; and if he had done so we +should have had no second Part of <i>Faust</i>—nor +indeed our next scene, the <i>Walpurgisnacht</i>.</p> + +<p>Pursued not only by the avengers of blood +but by the avenging furies of his own conscience, +Faust has plunged into a reckless +life and experiences those after-dreams of +intellectual and æsthetic extravagance which +so often follow such riotous living. This +period—that of sensual riot and æsthetic +dalliance—Goethe has, I think, symbolized +by two wild and curious scenes, the <i>Walpurgisnacht</i> +and Oberon's Wedding, a kind +of 'after-dream' of the <i>Walpurgisnacht</i>.</p> + +<p>The connexion of these scenes with the +main action of the play has puzzled many<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span> +critics, especially the curious Intermezzo +which follows the <i>Walpurgisnacht</i>, the +'Golden Wedding of Oberon and Titania,' a +kind of dream-vision, or rather nightmare, in +which besides the fairies of Shakespeare's +fairyland, besides will-o'-the-wisps and +weather-cocks and shooting stars, numerous +authors, philosophers and artists and other +characters appear, including Goethe himself +as the 'Welt-kind.' This scene was not +originally written for <i>Faust</i>, but Goethe +inserted it (I imagine) as an allegorical +picture of over-indulgence in æstheticism and +intellectualism (the 'opiate of the brain,' as +Tennyson calls it)—a vice into which one is +apt to be seduced by the hope of deadening +pain of heart. Although not written for the +play, this Intermezzo cannot be said to be +superfluous, for the subject of <i>Faust</i> is one +that admits of almost any imaginative conception +that is descriptive of the experiences +of human nature in its quest of truth.</p> + +<p>But let us return to the <i>Walpurgisnacht</i>. +On the 1st of May a great festival was held +by the ancient Druids, who on the preceding +night used to perform on the mountains their +terrible sacrifices, setting ablaze huge wickerwork +figures filled with human beings.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span> +Hence in later times the superstition arose +that on this night witches ghouls and fiends +held their revels on the Brocken, or Blocksberg, +in the Harz mountains. The name of +Saint Walpurga (an English nun, who came +to Germany in the eighth century) became +associated with this Witches' Sabbath, as the +1st of May was sacred to her. To this midnight +orgy of the <i>Walpurgisnacht</i> Mephistopheles +takes Faust.... They are lighted on +their toilsome ascent of the Blocksberg by a +will-o'-the-wisp. A vast multitude of witches +and goblins are flocking to the summit; the +midnight air resounds with their shrieks and +jabberings; weird lights flash from every +quarter, revealing thronging swarms of +ghoulish shapes and dancing Hexen. The +trees themselves are dancing. The mountains +nod. The crags jut forth long snouts +which snort and blow. Amid the crush and +confusion Faust has to cling fast to his guide. +Once the two get parted, and Mephistopheles +is in anxiety lest he should lose Faust entirely, +the idea being, I suppose, that sometimes +a human being outruns the devil +himself in the orgies of sensuality. At last +they reach the dancers. Mephistopheles is +here in his element and joins in the dances<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span> +with eagerness, bandying jokes with the old +hags and flirting with the younger witches. +Nor does Faust seem at all disinclined to +follow suit. He however desists dismayed +when, as he is dancing with a witch of seductive +loveliness, a red mouse jumps out of her +mouth.</p> + +<p>At length, when Mephisto, who finds it +getting too hot even for him, comes again +to Faust, he discovers him silently gazing +at a weird sight—one that might well +have sobered him. 'Look!' says Faust:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>'Look! seest thou not in the far distance there,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Standing alone, that child, so pale and fair?</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>She seems to move so slowly, and with pain,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>As if her feet were fettered by a chain.</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>I must confess, I almost seem to trace</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>My poor good Gretchen in her form and face.'</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Mephistopheles answers:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>'Let her alone! It's dangerous to look.</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>It's a mere lifeless ghoul, a spectre-spook.</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Such bogeys to encounter is not good;</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Their rigid stare freezes one's very blood,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>And one is often almost turned to stone.</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Medusa's head, methinks, to thee is known!'</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But Faust will not be convinced. It <i>is</i> +Gretchen—his 'poor good Gretchen' as he +calls her. And what is that red bleeding<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span> +gash around her neck? What terrible +thought does it suggest!</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>'How strange that round her lovely neck,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>That narrow band of red is laid</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>No broader than a knife's keen blade!'</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>'Quite right!' answers Mephistopheles +with a ghastly joke—</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>'Quite right! I plainly see it's so.</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Perseus cut off her head, you know.</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>She often carries it beneath her arm.'</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>He hurries Faust away. But soon these +terrible presentiments are realized. Faust +learns—how we are not told—that Gretchen +is in prison, and condemned to death on the +scaffold; for in her madness—yes, surely +in madness—she has drowned her own +child.</p> + +<p>Instead of attempting to describe what +follows, I shall offer a literal prose translation +of some parts of the concluding scene, asking +you to supply by your imagination, as best +you may, the power and harmony of Goethe's +wonderful verse.</p> + + +<div class="blockquot"> + +<p class='center'><i>A gloomy day. Open country.</i><br /> +<span class="smcap">Faust</span> <i>and</i> <span class="smcap">Mephistopheles</span>. <span class="smcap">Faust</span> <i>is speaking</i>.<br /> +</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Faust</span>. In misery! In despair! Piteously +wandering day after day o'er the face of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span> +earth,—and now imprisoned! That sweet unhappy +being shut up in a dungeon, as a criminal, and +exposed to horrible torments! Has it come to +<i>this</i>!—to this!... Treacherous, villainous spirit! +and <i>this</i> thou hast concealed from me!... Stand +there, stand, and roll thy devilish eyes in fury! +Imprisoned! In hopeless misery! Delivered over +to evil spirits and the heartless verdict of mankind!... And +<i>thou</i> meantime hast lulled me +with loathsome dissipation ... thou hast hidden +from me her ever-deepening despair, and hast +suffered her to perish helplessly.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Meph</span>. She isn't the first.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Faust</span>. Dog! Abominable monster! Turn him, +O Infinite Spirit, turn this reptile back into his dog-shape ... that +he may crawl on his belly before +me ... that I may trample the abandoned wretch +underfoot. Not the first!... Woe! Woe not to be +grasped by any human soul, that <i>more</i> than <i>one</i> +should sink into this abyss of misery—that the <i>first</i>, +in her writhing agony before the eyes of the All-merciful, +should not have made satisfaction for the +guilt of all others. The misery of this <i>one</i> pierces +with agony my deepest soul—and <i>thou</i> calmly +grinnest at the fate of thousands!</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Meph</span>. Here we are again, at the end of our wits!—where +the common sense of you mortals loses its +hold and snaps. Why dost thou make fellowship +with us, if thou canst not carry it through? Wilt +thou fly, and art not secure from dizziness? Did we +thrust ourselves upon thee, or thou thyself upon us?</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Faust</span>. Gnash not thy ravening teeth at me! I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span> +loathe thee! Mighty, glorious Spirit—thou who +didst deign to appear to me, and knowest my heart +and soul, why dost thou fetter me to this satellite of +shame, who revels in evil and gluts himself on +destruction?</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Meph</span>. Hast thou done?</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Faust</span>. Save her, or woe to thee! The most +terrible curse on thee for thousands of years!</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Meph</span>. I cannot loose the bonds of the avenger—cannot +undo his bolts. <i>Save her!</i>... Who was +it that ruined her ... I or thou?</p> + +<p class='right'>[<span class="smcap">Faust</span> <i>glares wildly round him.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Meph</span>. Wilt thou grasp after a thunderbolt? +'Tis well that it was not given to you miserable +mortals!...</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Faust</span>. Take me to her! She <i>shall</i> be free!... Take +me to her, I say, and liberate her!</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Meph</span>. I will take thee to her—and do what +I <i>can</i> do. Listen! Have I all power in heaven +and on earth?—I will becloud the jailer's senses. +Then do thou get possession of the keys, and lead +her forth with human hand. I will keep watch.—The +magic steeds will be at hand ... I will carry +you off. So much lies in my power.</p> + +<hr style='width: 35%;' /> + +<p class='hang'><i>Night. The open country</i>. <span class="smcap">Faust</span> <i>and</i> <span class="smcap">Mephistopheles</span> +<i>galloping past on black horses. They +pass a group of witches busy round their +cauldron. They reach the prison. Within is +heard the voice of</i> <span class="smcap">Gretchen</span> <i>singing an old +plaintive ballad.</i> <span class="smcap">Faust</span> <i>listens:</i></p> + +<p>'She dreams not' (he says) 'that her loved one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span> +is listening, and hears her chains rattle and the +straw as it rustles.'</p> + +<p class='right'>[<i>He unlocks the prison door and steps in.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Gretchen</span> (<i>crouching into her bed of straw</i>). Woe, +woe—they are coming! Bitter death!</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Faust</span>. Hush! hush! I am come to free thee.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Gretchen</span> (<i>grovelling before him</i>). If thou art a +man, O pity my distress!</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Faust</span>. Thou wilt awaken the watchmen with +thy cries. [<i>He seizes her chain to unlock it.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Gretchen</span> (<i>kneeling</i>). Who has given you, heads-man, +this power over me? You have come for me +already at midnight. Pity me, and let me live! +Is to-morrow morning not soon enough? And I am +still so young—and I must die! Fair was I too, +and that was my ruin. Pity me! What harm +have I ever done to thee! I never saw thee before +in all my life.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Faust</span>. Can I endure this misery?</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Gretchen</span>. I am wholly in your power. But let +me first suckle my child. I held it in my bosom all +the night. They took it from me, to vex me, and +<i>now</i> they say I've killed it.... And I shall never +be happy any more!</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Faust</span> (<i>kneels beside her</i>). He that loves thee +kneels before thee.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Gretchen</span>. O let us kneel and call upon the +saints. But ... ah!... Look!... Under those +steps, under the threshold, hell is flaming. The +Evil One is raging there so furiously. Listen, how +he roars and thunders!</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Faust</span>. Gretchen! Gretchen!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Gretchen</span> (<i>listening</i>). That was the voice of my +friend! Where is he? I heard him call.... Right +through the howling and uproar of hell, +through the horrid laughter of the devils, I +recognized that sweet loving tone.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Faust</span>. It is I.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Gretchen</span>. Thou!... O say it once more! +(<i>Clasping him.</i>) It is! it is he! Where is now +all my pain? Where is the anguish of the dungeon +and the chain?</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Faust</span>. Come! Come with me!</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Gretchen</span>. O stay!... I am so happy at thy +side.... What! not one kiss!... Ah, woe, +thy lips are cold. Where is all thy love? Who +has stolen it from me?</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Faust</span>. Come! Follow!... Be courageous, +loved one! Come with me!</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Gretchen</span>. Thou art loosening my chain.... Know'st +thou, my friend, <i>whom</i> thou art releasing?</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Faust</span>. Come, come! Night is already on the +wane.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Gretchen</span>. My mother I have killed. I have +drowned my child. Was it not given to thee and +to me? Yes, to thee too.... And thou art really +here! Thou! I can scarce believe it. Give me thy +hand—thy dear hand! <i>Ah</i>, but it is wet. Wipe +it, wipe it! It looks like blood upon it. O God, +what hast thou done! Put up thy sword, I beg +thee! Put it away!</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Faust</span>. Let the past be past. Thou art killing me.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Gretchen</span>. No—<i>thou</i> must live!... I will tell +thee about the graves that thou must provide<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[106]</a></span> to-morrow. +Give mother the best place, and brother +close to her—and me a little on one side ... only +not too far away. And lay the little one in my +bosom.... No one else shall lie with me. To +cling to thy side, that was once such sweet blissful +joy ... but I seem no longer able ... as if I +had to force myself, and as if thou didst thrust me +back.... And yet it <i>is</i> thou, and thou look'st so +kind and good.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Faust</span>. If thou feel'st that it is I, then come!</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Gretchen</span>. Out <i>there</i>?</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Faust</span>. To freedom!</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Gretchen</span>. I dare not. For me there is no hope +more. What is the use to flee? They are lurking +after me.... It's so wretched to have to beg, and +that too with a bad conscience. It's so wretched to +wander about in strange lands ... and they'll +catch me all the same.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Faust</span>. I shall be with thee.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Gretchen</span>. <i>Quick! Quick!</i> Save it! Save my +child!... Onward! Right up that path alongside +the stream ... over the bridge ... there!... into +the wood.... There! to the left! there, +where the plank lies—in the pond! Catch hold of +it! Catch it! It's rising!... It's struggling! +Save it! save it!</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Faust</span>. Bethink thyself! One step and thou art +free!</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Gretchen</span>. If only we were over that hill!... There's +mother sitting there on a stone. (Ah! +what was that, like an icy hand, grasping my hair?) ... She +sits and wags with her head—she does not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span> +beckon or nod to us ... her head droops so heavily. +Yes, she slept so long, and she will wake no more. +She slept that we might have joy. Ah, those were +happy times!</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Faust</span>. No entreaty avails—no words are of use. +I shall have to carry thee away. [<i>Seizes hold of her.</i></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Gretchen</span>. <i>Let me go!</i> I will not suffer violence. +Seize not hold of me so murderously. All <i>else</i> I did +for <i>love</i> of thee.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Faust</span>. The day is dawning! Dearest! dearest!</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Gretchen</span>. <i>Day?</i> Yes—the day is coming! The +last day is dawning! It was to have been my wedding +day. Woe to my wreath! But what is, must be! +We shall see each other again ... but not at the +dance! The crowd is thronging.... One hears +no word.... The square, the streets, cannot +contain them.... The bell is tolling—the staff is +broken.... They seize me! They bind me fast! +I am being dragged already to the block! Each +feels the axe at his own neck as its keen blade +flashes down on <i>mine</i> ... and the world lies dark +and silent as the grave.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Faust</span>. O that I never had been born!</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Meph</span>. (<i>appears at the door</i>). Come! or you are +lost!... Foolish, useless hesitation—delaying and +gossiping! My horses are shuddering and the +morning twilight breaks.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Gretchen</span> (<i>seeing</i> <span class="smcap">Mephistopheles</span>). What is this +that rises from the ground? He! <i>He!</i> Send him +away! What does <i>he</i> want at this holy spot?</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Meph</span>. (<i>to</i> <span class="smcap">Faust</span>). Come! come! or I shall leave +you in the lurch.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span></p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Gretchen</span>. I am thine, Father—save me! Ye +angels, holy cohorts, encamp around me and defend +me! (<i>To</i> <span class="smcap">Faust</span>.) Heinrich, I shrink from thee in +horror.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Meph</span>. She is judged.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Voice from Above</span>. She is saved.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Meph</span>. <i>to</i> <span class="smcap">Faust</span>. Here! to me!</p> + +<p class='right'>[<i>Disappears with</i> <span class="smcap">Faust</span>.</p> + +<p class='hang'>[<span class="smcap">A Voice from Within</span>—<i>the voice of</i> <span class="smcap">Gretchen</span>—<i>calls +on the name of him she once loved—of +him who has robbed her of happiness and +life itself. Fainter and fainter it calls, then +dies away into silence.</i></p></div> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span></p> +<h2>III</h2> + +<h3>GOETHE'S 'FAUST'</h3> + + +<h3>PART II</h3> + + +<p>The picture which Goethe has given us in +<i>Faust</i> is in its main outlines the picture of +Goethe's own life. The Faust of Part I is +the Goethe of early days—of the Sturm +und Drang period—the Goethe of <i>Werther's +Leiden</i>, of <i>Götz</i>, of <i>Prometheus</i>, of +Gretchen, Lotte, Annette, Friederike and +Lili; the Faust of the earlier scenes of +Part II is Goethe at the ducal court of +Weimar; the Faust of the <i>Helena</i> is +Goethe in Italy, Goethe at Bologna, standing +in ecstatic veneration before what was +then believed to be Raphael's picture of +St. Agatha, or wandering through the Colosseum +at Rome, or writing his <i>Iphigenie</i> on +the shores of the Lago di Garda; and the +Faust of the last act of all is Goethe<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span> +reconciled to life and finding a certain +measure of peace and happiness in his +home, in the sympathy of his good-natured +but unrefined wife and of others whom he +loved, as well as in his scientific and +philosophical studies—until he seals up the +<span class="smcap">ms.</span> of his great poem and (to use his +own words) 'regards his life-work as ended +and rests in the contemplation of the past,' +and then, a few months later, passes away +from earth, murmuring as he dies 'More +light!'</p> + +<p>It will be remembered that at the end of +Part I Faust is dragged away by Mephistopheles +and leaves poor Gretchen to her +doom. The fatal axe has now fallen. +Gretchen is dead.</p> + +<p>In the opening scene of Part II we find +him 'lying on a grassy bank, worn out +and attempting to sleep.' A considerable +time has evidently elapsed—a time doubtless +of bitter grief and of the fiercest +accusation against his evil counsellor, that +part of his human nature which is represented +by Mephistopheles and from which +even in the last hour of his life (as we shall +see) he confesses it to be impossible wholly +to free himself:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span></p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Dämonen, weiss ich, wird man schwerlich los.</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Das geistig-strenge Band is nicht zu trennen.</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>'From demons it is, I know, scarce +possible to free oneself. The spiritual bond +is too strong to break.'</p> + +<p>But it is not from grief or self-accusation +that Faust is to gain new inspiration. It is +from the healing power of Nature—in which +Goethe believed far more than in remorse.</p> + +<p>The scene amidst which Faust is now +lying reminds one of some Swiss valley. +The rising sun is pouring a flood of golden +light over the snow-fields of the distant +mountains and down from the edge of an +overhanging precipice is falling a splendid +cataract, such as the Reichenbach or the +Staub-bach, amidst whose spray gradually +forms itself, as the sunshine touches it, an +iridescent bow, brightening and fading, but +hanging there immovable. Through this +scene are flitting elfin forms—Ariel and his +fays—singing to the liquid tones of Aeolian +harps and lapping Faust's world-worn +senses in the sweet harmonies of Nature, +tenderly effacing the memories of the past +and inspiring him with new hopes and new +strength to face once more the battle of +life.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span></p> + +<p>He watches the rising sun, but blinded +by excess of light he turns away, unable to +gaze upon the flaming source of life, as erst +he had turned from the apparition of the +Earth-spirit. He seeks to rest his dazzled +eyes in reflected light (a metaphor used, as +you may remember, also by Socrates in the +parable of the Cave)—in the sun-lit mountain +slopes, the pine-woods and the glittering +walls of rock, and in the colours of the +foam-bow suspended amidst the spray of the +swift down-thundering cataract. In the +ever-changing colours but motionless form +of this bow hanging over the downward +rush of the torrent Faust finds a symbol +of human life suspended with its ever-varying +hues above the stream of time.</p> + +<p>It is one of the truest and the most +beautiful of all similitudes, this of pure +sunlight refracted and broken into colours, +symbolizing the One and the Many, the +perfect and the imperfect, the eternal and +the temporal. Doubtless you are already +thinking of Shelley's magnificent lines:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>The One remains, the Many change and pass;</i><br /></span> +<span class="i2"><i>Heaven's light for ever shines, Earth's shadows fly,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i2"><i>Stains the white radiance of eternity.</i><br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span></div></div> + +<p>Into such variegated scene of reflected +and refracted light Faust is now entering. +He has passed through the 'little world' of +personal feeling—the world of the One, +of the heart, and he is entering what +Mephistopheles calls the 'greater world' +(for greater it appears to be from the +Mephistophelean standpoint)—the world of +the 'many,' of politics and ethics and art +and literature and society—the world whose +highest ideal is success, or, at the best, the +'greatest good of the greatest number' and +the evolution of that terrible ghoul the +so-called Super-man.</p> + +<p>It is at the court of a German Kaiser +that Faust first makes trial of this so-called +greater world. The young monarch has +lately returned from Italy, where, as was +once customary, he had been crowned by +the Pope with the iron Lombard crown. +By his extravagances he has already +emptied the imperial coffers. His Chancellor, +his Treasurers, his Paymasters are all +at the verge of despair, and the Empire is +on the brink of bankruptcy. To add to +these misfortunes (perhaps the greatest of +them in the opinion of the young Kaiser) +the court-fool has tumbled downstairs and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span> +has broken his neck; so at least it is +believed; but cats and fools have a way of +falling on their feet, and this fool turns up +again later. Meanwhile however Mephistopheles +presents himself and is accepted as +a <i>locum tenens</i>. To him the Kaiser turns +for advice, and Mephistopheles proposes a +clever expedient—meant as a satire on +modern systems of finance and State +security. He suggests that, as the land +belongs to the Kaiser, and as in the ground +there are doubtless great quantities of +hidden treasures, buried in olden times, the +Kaiser should, on the security of these +hidden and as yet undiscovered treasures, +issue 'promises to pay'—in other words +paper money. This is done, and suddenly +the imperial court, in spite of its empty +coffers, finds itself in affluence. The young +Kaiser, delighted at the opportunity of +indulging his taste for display and extravagance, +decides on holding a masquerade, +such as he had lately witnessed at the +Roman Carneval.</p> + +<p>The description of this great court +masquerade occupies a considerable space in +Goethe's drama, and is generally looked upon +by the commentators as one of the least<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span> +successful parts of <i>Faust</i>. The question is, +how are we to estimate <i>success</i> in such a +matter? For myself I confess that I +find this masquerade scene tedious and +irksome, and can with difficulty read it +through; but is not this just the effect that +Goethe wished to produce? Is not this +just the effect that society, with all its +masquerades and mummeries, inevitably +produces on any one who, like Faust and +with Faust's ideals and aspirations, is +making trial of life in order to discover +under what conditions it is worth living? +Instead of telling us in so many words that +Faust makes trial of all the pomps and +vanities of fashionable society and finds +them utterly empty and ridiculous, fatal to +all true life and disgusting to all true manliness, +Goethe gives us a picture of this +tiresome foolish scene, with all its absurdities +and falsities and trumpery grandeurs, +amidst which our friend Mephistopheles is so +entirely in his element, and where Faust, with +evident self-contempt and disgust, forces +himself for a moment to play a part. The +various elements of fashionable society—and, +as a contrast, certain very unfashionable +elements—are introduced under the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[116]</a></span> +disguise of these masked figures. Marketable +belles and heiresses in the guise of +flower-girls offer their charms and their +fortunes in the form of flowers and fruits to +the highest bidder. The anxious mother is +there with her daughters, hoping that +among so many fools <i>one</i> may be at last +secured. Idlers, parasites, toadies, club-frequenters +and diners-out are there in the +masks of court-fools, and buffoons. The +working man, the trade-unionist and the +striker, comes marching amidst this scene +of revelry, forcing his way through the +ranks of consternated society, roughly +asserting the sole nobility of labour and +demanding the overthrow of the aristocrat +and the capitalist—no new cry, as you see! +Indeed it is as old as Rome and Athens +and Babylon—as old, almost, as humanity +itself. Then appear the Graces, symbols of +the refinements and elegancies of life, and +the Fates, symbolizing the powers of Order +and Law, and the Furies, the types of revolution +and war, and a huge elephant, the +incorporation of the unwieldy State or +Public, reminding one of the 'Leviathan' +of the philosopher Hobbes, and +Thersites (that evil-tongued mischief-maker<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span> +described by Homer) representing society-scandal +and calumny. Then comes a +chariot whose charioteer is a beautiful boy, +representing art or poetry. He is the +same Euphorion whom we shall meet later +as the son of Faust and Helen, and +identical with Byron. On the chariot is +enthroned Faust as Plutus the God of +Money, and behind him as groom or +armour-bearer sits Mephisto, an emaciated +hollow-eyed apparition denoting Avarice. +Nymphs, Fauns, Satyrs and Gnomes—types +of the powers of Nature—attend the +car and do homage to the God of Money. +The gnomes offer to show their master +Plutus a subterranean treasure-horde of +molten gold. He approaches too close and +his beard catches fire. In a few moments +an immense conflagration spreads through +the crowds of revellers, which would have +ended in a terrible catastrophe (such as +had actually happened at the French court +shortly before Goethe wrote this scene, and +such as happened some fifteen years ago +in Paris at some bazaar) had not Faust with +the help of Mephistopheles extinguished the +flames by the aid of magic.</p> + +<p>The young Kaiser now demands from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span> +Faust that he shall give the court a display +of his magic arts. He commands him to +raise the shades of Paris and Helen. +Faust applies to Mephisto, but he professes +himself unable to raise the shades of +classical heroes and heroines. 'This heathen +Greek folk,' he says, 'have their own hell +and their own devils. <i>I</i> have no power +over them. Still—there <i>is</i> a means.' +He then tells Faust that he will have to +descend to the 'Mothers,' 'die Mütter,' +mysterious deities (mentioned by Greek +authors) as worshipped in Sicily and +dwelling in the inmost depths of the +universe, at the very heart of Nature, +beyond the conditions of Time and Space. +He who will raise the shade of Helen, or +ideal beauty, must descend first to the +'Mothers'—must enter the realm of the +spiritual, the unconditioned, the ideal, to +which there is no defined road, and to +which even <i>thought</i> cannot guide him. He +must surrender himself in <i>contemplation</i> and +sink to the very centre of the world of +appearances. Mephistopheles gives Faust a +key, which glows and emits flames as he +grasps it. Holding this key he will sink +down to the realm of the Mothers, where<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span> +he will find a glowing tripod (the symbol of +that Triad or Trinity which plays so large a +part in the old Pythagorean philosophy and +in more than one religion). This tripod he +is to touch with the key, and it will rise with +him to the surface of the earth.</p> + +<p>The imperial court is assembled. A +stage has been erected. The court astrologer +announces the play and Mephistopheles +is installed in the prompter's box. +All is in expectation and excitement. +Then on the stage is seen rising from the +ground the form of Faust attended by the +tripod. He touches the tripod with the +glowing key. A dense mist of incense +arises, and as it clears away is seen—Paris. +His appearance is greeted by the enthusiastic +comments of the court ladies, young +and old, and criticized by the men courtiers—with +evident jealousy. Helen then appears, +and the comments and criticisms are reversed, +female jealousy now having its turn. +Faust stands entranced at the loveliness of +Helen. In spite of the angry protests of +Mephistopheles from the prompter's box, +who tells him to keep to his rôle and not to +be taken in by a mere phantom of his own +raising. Faust, unable any longer to control +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span>himself when Paris attempts to carry +off Helen, rushes forward to rescue her. A +great explosion takes place and all is +darkness. Faust has fallen senseless to the +ground. Mephistopheles picks him up +and carries him away—with contemptuous +remarks.</p> + +<p>At the beginning of the next act we find +Faust lying, still insensible, on his bed in his +old room, where we first met him—his professor's +study. His daring attempt to grasp +ideal beauty has ended, as it often does end, +and as it ended in Goethe's own case, in +failure of a sudden and explosive nature. He +is now to have an experience of a different +nature. During the years while he has been +making his first trial of the outer world, his +old Famulus, Wagner, now professor in +Faust's place, has been devoting <i>his</i> whole +time and energies to realising that dream of +science—the chemical production of life.</p> + +<p>It is, says Professor Romanes, 'the dream +of modern science that a machine <i>may</i> finally +be constructed so elaborate in its multiple +play of forces that it would begin to show +evidences of consciousness and mind'—mind +and motion being, according to certain +modern scientists, identical. Curiously<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span> +enough a scientist of the same name—Wagner—who +lived in the last century, did, +like Faust's Famulus Wagner, in the same +way devote his life to the production of a +living organism—a 'homunculus'—in the +conviction, as he asserted, that 'in course of +time chemistry is bound to succeed in producing +organic bodies and in creating a human +being by means of crystallization'—an assertion +not very different from that of a still more +trustworthy scientist, for Professor Huxley +himself has told us that he lived in 'the hope +and the faith that in course of time we shall +see our way from the constituents of the +protoplasm to its properties,' <i>i.e.</i> from +carbonic acid, water, and ammonia to that +mysterious thing which we call vitality or +life—from the molecular motion of the brain +to Socratic wisdom, Shakespearean genius, +and Christian faith, hope and charity.</p> + +<p>In the background of the stage we see +Faust still lying insensible on his bed. +Mephistopheles comes forward muttering +sarcastic comments on Faust's foolish +infatuation. 'He whom Helen paralyzes,' he +says, 'doesn't come to his wits again so soon.' +He then pulls the bell. The windows rattle +and the walls shake, as with earthquake.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span> +Wagner's terrified Famulus appears. He +says that his master, the Herr Professor, has +locked himself up for days and nights together +in his laboratory; that he is engaged +in a most delicate and important operation, +namely that of manufacturing a human +being, and he really cannot be disturbed. +Mephistopheles however sends him back to +demand admittance. Meanwhile he dons +Faust's professorial costume, which he finds +hanging in its old place but infested with +legions of moths, which buzz around him +piping welcome to their old mate. Then he +takes his seat in Faust's professorial chair, +and the same scholar enters to whom as a +timid 'Fuchs,' or freshman, Mephistopheles +had in the first Part of the play given his +diabolic advice as to the choice of a profession. +The scholar is <i>now</i>, after a course of +University education, a match for the devil +himself. He flouts poor Mephisto as a dried-up +old pedant, not up to date with the new +generation's æsthetic and literary self-conceits, +or with its contempt for its elders—and +for everything else except its own precious +self. 'Youth and its genius,' he exclaims, +'are the only things of value; as soon as one +is thirty years of age he's just as good as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span> +dead ... and it would be far better if all +people at thirty were knocked on the head'; +and he storms out of the room. Mephistopheles +consoles himself with the fact that the +devil is old enough to have seen a good many +such new generations, with all their absurdities, +their up-to-date fads and follies, pass +away and give place to other forms of still +more up-to-date and self-conceited absurdity.</p> + +<p>Mephisto now enters the laboratory, +where Wagner is intently engaged in watching +his chemical compound gradually crystallizing +within a huge glass retort. As he +watches, the outlines of a diminutive human +being—a mannikin or 'homunculus'—become +visible and rapidly gain distinct form. +A tiny voice is heard issuing from the glass +retort and addressing Wagner as 'Daddy' +and Mephistopheles as 'Cousin'; and it is to +the presence of this 'Cousin,' we may infer, +rather than to his scientific 'Daddy' that the +Homunculus really owes his existence. With +the connivance of Mephistopheles, the Mannikin, +still in his glass retort, slips from the +enamoured paternal grasp of Wagner, and +floats through the air into the adjacent room, +hovering above Faust, who is still asleep on +his couch.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span></p> + +<p>As it hovers above the sleeper it begins to +sing—to describe ravishing dreamland scenery—inspiring +Faust with visions of sensuous +loveliness. It then bids Mephistopheles +wrap Faust in his magic mantle and prepare +for an aerial flight.... 'Whither?' asks +Mephistopheles. '<i>To Greece!</i>' is the +answer: to the Pharsalian plain in Thessaly; +and in spite of the protests of Mephistopheles +(who has no taste for the land of classic art) +he is forced to obey. The sleeping form of +Faust is borne aloft, the Mannikin leading +the way like a will-o'-the-wisp, gleaming +within his glass retort. '<i>Und ich?</i>' exclaims +poor old Wagner in piteous accents. '<i>Ach, +du!</i>' says Homunculus, '<i>Du bleibst zu +Hause—!</i>' 'You just stop at home, and grub +away among your musty manuscripts, and +work away at your protoplasms and your +elixirs of life.' Thus, guided by the Homunculus, +Faust and Mephistopheles set forth on +their aerial journey to ancient Greece—to +the land where the ideals of art have found +their highest realization—in quest of Helen, +the supreme type of all that the human mind +has conceived as beautiful.</p> + +<p>It is often asked, and I think <i>we</i> may +fairly ask, what Goethe meant to symbolize<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span> +by his Homunculus. You will have noticed +that his material components (as the carbonic +acid and ammonia of Professor +Huxley's protoplasm) are supplied by his +scientific 'Daddy,' but that the 'tertia vis,' +that third power or 'spiritual bond' which +combines his material components, is supplied +by the supernatural presence of +Mephistopheles. I believe this Homunculus +to be a symbol of poetic genius or +imagination, which uses the material supplied +by plodding pedantry—by critical +research, antiquarianism, scholarship, and +science—slips from the hands of its poor +enamoured Daddy, and flies off to the land +of idealism. Here, as we shall see, the +Mannikin breaks free from his glass retort +and is poured out like phosphorescent light +on the waves of the great ocean.</p> + +<p>But the quest for Helen, for ideal beauty, +leads through scenes haunted by forms of +weird and terrible nature—those forms in +which the human imagination, as it gradually +gains a sense of the supernatural and a sense +of art, first incorporated its conceptions—forms, +first, of hideous and terrific character: +monstrous idols of Eastern and Egyptian +superstition, Griffins, and Sphinxes, and bull-headed +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span>Molochs, and horned Astartes, and +many-breasted Cybeles, till in the Hellenic +race it rose to the recognition of the beautiful +and bodied forth divinity in the human form +divine, and found its highest ideal of beauty +in Helen, divinely fair of women. This +phase in Faust's development—this stage in +his quest for beauty and truth—this delirium +of his 'divine madness,' as Plato calls our +ecstasy of yearning after ideal beauty, is +symbolized by the classical <i>Walpurgisnacht</i>. +(You remember the other <i>Walpurgisnacht</i>—that +on the Blocksberg—which I described +before.)</p> + +<p>Guided by the Mannikin, Faust and +Mephistopheles arrive at the Pharsalian +fields—the great plain of Thessaly, renowned +for the battle of Pharsalus, in +which Caesar conquered Pompey—renowned +too as the classic ground of witches and +wizards. Griffins, Sphinxes and Sirens meet +them. They can tell Faust nothing about +Helen, but they direct him to Cheiron the +Centaur (a link, as it were, between the +monstrous forms of barbarous oriental +imagination and Hellenic art). Cheiron the +Centaur has himself borne Helen on his +back, and excites Faust's passion by the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span> +description of her beauty. He takes Faust +to the prophetess Manto, daughter of the +old blind Theban prophet Teiresias, and she +conducts him to a dark fissure—a Bocca +dell' Inferno—at the foot of Mount Olympus, +such as that which you may have seen in +the Sibyl's cave on Lake Avernus; and +here (as once Orpheus did in search of +Eurydice) he descends to the realms of the +dead to seek the help of Persephone, Queen +of Hades, in his quest for Helen. Meanwhile +Mephisto has found that in spite of +his distaste for classic art and beauty there +are elements in the classical witches' sabbath +not less congenial to him than those of the +Blocksberg with its northern and more +modern types of devilry and bestiality. +He is enchanted with the ghoulish vampire +Empusa and the monster Lamia, half-snake +half-woman, and at length finds <i>his</i> ideal +of beauty in the loathsome and terrible +Phorkyads, daughters of Phorkys, an old +god of the sea. The Phorkyads are sometimes +described as identical with, sometimes +as sisters of, the Gorgons, and represent the +climax of all that Greek imagination has +created of the horrible. The three sisters +are pictured in Greek mythology as possessing +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span>between them only one eye and one +tooth, which they pass round for use. They +dwelt in outer darkness, being too terrible +for sun or moon to look upon. Even +Mephistopheles is at first a little staggered +by the sight, but he soon finds himself on +familiar terms with them and ends by +borrowing the form of one of them (she +becoming for the time absorbed into her +two sisters)—for as medieval devil he has no +right of entrée into that classical scene in +which he and Faust are now to play their +parts. It is therefore in the form of a +Phorkyad or Gorgon that Mephisto will +appear when we next meet him.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile the Homunculus has found +congenial spirits among the sea-nymphs and +sirens on the shores of the Aegean. He +longs to gain freedom from his glass, in +which he is still imprisoned. Nereus the +sea-god is unable to help him, but sends +him to his father Proteus, the great ocean +prophet, who bears him out into the midst +of the ocean. Here Galatea the sea-goddess +(identical with Aphrodite, the sea-born +symbol of the beauty of the natural-world) +passes by in her chariot drawn by dolphins +and surrounded by Nereids. The Homunculus +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span>in an ecstasy of love dashes himself +against her chariot. The glass is shattered +and he is poured forth in a stream of phosphorescent +light over the waves—thus being +once more made one with Nature.</p> + +<p>The theory that <i>water</i> was the prime +element, a theory advocated especially by +the old Ionic philosopher Thales, was held +by Goethe, who was a 'sedimentarist' in +geological matters, and in this classical +<i>Walpurgisnacht</i> he has introduced, much to +the annoyance of many critics, a dispute +between Thales and other sages on the +question whether the formation of the world +was due to fire or water.</p> + +<p>We have now reached that part of <i>Faust</i> +which is known as the <i>Helena</i>. It was +written before the rest of Part II, though +doubtless when he wrote it Goethe had +already conceived the general outline of the +whole poem. Of the wonderful versatility +of Goethe's genius no more striking example +can be given than the sudden and +complete change of scene, and not only +scene but ideas and feelings, by which +we are transported from the age of Luther +and the court of a German Kaiser and +the laboratory of a modern scientist back<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span>—some +3500 years or so—to the age of +the Trojan war.</p> + +<p>Instead of extravagance and grotesqueness, +instead of the diversity, the rich +ornamentation, the heaven-soaring pinnacles +and spires of Gothic imagination—we +have in the <i>Helena</i> sculpturesque +repose, simplicity, dignity and proportion. +It is as if we had been suddenly transported +from some Gothic cathedral to the +Parthenon, or to Paestum.</p> + +<p>I know no poet who in any modern +language has reproduced as Goethe has +done in his <i>Iphigenie</i> and in the <i>Helena</i> +not only the external form but also the +spirit of Hellenic literature. While reading +the <i>Helena</i> we feel ourselves under the +cloudless Grecian sky; we breathe the +Grecian air with Helen herself.</p> + +<p>The scene is laid before the palace of +Menelaus at Sparta. Helen, accompanied +by a band of captive Trojan maidens, has +been disembarked at the mouth of the river +Eurotas by Menelaus, on his return from +Troy, and has been sent forward to Sparta +to make preparation for the arrival of her +husband and his warriors. Once more after +those long eventful years since she had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span> +fled to Troy with Paris she stands as in a +dream before her own palace-home, dazed +and wearied, her mind distraught with +anxious thoughts; for during the long +wearisome return across the Aegean sea her +husband Menelaus has addressed no friendly +word to her, but seemed gloomily revolving +in his heart some deed of vengeance. She +knows not if she is returning as queen, or as +captive, doomed perhaps to the fate of a +slave.</p> + +<p>She enters the palace alone. After a few +moments she reappears, horror-struck and +scarce able to tell what she has seen. +Crouching beside the central hearth she has +found a terrible shape—a ghastly haggard +thing, like some phantom of hell. It has +followed her. It stands there before her on +the threshold of her palace. In terrible +accents this Gorgon-like monster denounces +her, recounting all the ruin that by her fatal +beauty she had wrought, interweaving into +the story the various legends connected with +her past life—those mysterious legends that +connect Helen not only with Paris and +Menelaus but with Theseus and Achilles +and with Egypt—legends of a second +phantom-Helen, the 'double' of that Helen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span> +whom Menelaus has carried home from +Troy—until alarmed and distracted, doubting +her own identity, overwhelmed by +anxiety about the future and by terror at +the grisly apparition, she seems herself to be +in truth fading away into a mere phantom, +and sinks senseless to the ground. After a +fierce altercation between the chorus of +captive maidens and the Gorgon-shape (in +whom you will have recognized our old +friend Mephistopheles) Helen returns to +consciousness. Then the Phorkyad-Mephistopheles +tells her that the preparations +which she has been ordered to make are in +view of a sacrifice to be performed on the +arrival of Menelaus and that she herself +(Helen) is the destined victim.</p> + +<p>In despair Helen appeals to the Gorgon +for advice, who bids her take refuge in the +neighbouring mountains of Arcadia, where +a robber chieftain has his stronghold. Under +the guidance of Mephisto, who raises a thick +mist, she and her maidens escape. They +climb the mountain; the mists rise and +they find themselves before the castle of a +medieval bandit-prince, and it is Faust +himself who comes forth to greet her and to +welcome her as his queen and mistress.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span> +Faust, the symbol of the Renaissance and +modern art, welcomes to his castle the ideal +of Greek art and beauty.</p> + +<p>The stately Greek measures now give way +to the love-songs of Chivalry and Romance—to +the measures of the Minnesinger and the +Troubadour. Faust kneels in homage before +the impersonation of ideal beauty, and Helen +feels that she is <i>now</i> no longer a mere ideal, +a mere phantom. She clings to her new, +unknown lover, as to one who will make her +realize her own existence. It is an allegory +of modern art—the art of Dante, Giotto, +Raphael, Shakespeare and Goethe—receiving +as its queen the ideal of Greek imagination +and inspiring, as it were, the cold statue +with the warm vitality of a higher conception +of chivalrous love and perfect womanhood.</p> + +<p>I have mentioned how the stately Greek +measures in the <i>Helena</i> give way to the +metres of Romance and Chivalry. Perhaps +it may be well to explain some of these +various metres.</p> + +<p>The scene opens, as you know, with +Helen's dignified and beautiful speech:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Bewundert viel und viel gescholten Helena.</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>That is the well-known <i>iambic trimeter</i>, <i>i.e.</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span> +the metre of six feet (twelve syllables) used +in all the speeches in Greek tragedy.</p> + +<p>Thus the <i>Oedipus Tyrannos</i> of Sophocles +begins:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class='correction' title='O tekna, Kadmou tou palai nea trophê'>Ὦ τέκνα͵ Καδμου τοῦ πάλαι νέα τροϕὴ</span><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>and so on. It has twelve syllables, mostly +(iambics) as in our blank verse. But blank +verse has only ten syllables: 'I cannot tell +what you and other men.' If one adds two +syllables one gets the Greek iambic verse, +thus: 'I cannot tell what you and other +men believe.' The Chorus in the <i>Helena</i> +uses various rhythms such as are found in +the choruses of Greek tragedy:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4"><i>Schweige, schweige,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Missblickende, missredende du!</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Aus so grässlichen, einzahnigen</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Lippen was enthaucht wohl</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Solchem furchtbaren Greuelschlund!</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Then Mephistopheles, as the Phorkyad, when +Helen falls fainting, addresses her suddenly +in another measure—a longer verse, such as +is sometimes used by the Greek tragedians +and comedians when something new occurs +in the play. It is called a <i>tetrameter</i>, and +consists of fifteen syllables (mostly —∪, called<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span> +trochees). Thus, in Greek, <span class='correction' title='oi gerontes oi palaioi memphomestha tê polei'>οἱ γέροντες +οἱ παλαιοὶ μεμΦὄμεσθα τῇ πόλει</span>—and in German:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Tritt hervor aus flüchtigen Wolken hohe Sonne dieses Tags—</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>or the fine lines spoken by Helen:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Doch es ziemet Königinnen, allen Menschen ziemt es wohl,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Sich zu fassen, zu ermannen, was auch drohend überrascht.</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>When Faust appears he begins to speak +at once in modern blank verse of ten +syllables, such as we know in Milton and +Shakespeare and Schiller. One might have +expected him to speak in some earlier +romantic measure, to have used perhaps the +metre of the old Nibelungenlied, as in</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Es ist in alten Mähren wunders viel geseit,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Von Heleden lobebären, von grosser Arebeit,</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>which is supposed to date from about 1150; +or in Dante's <i>terza rima</i>, of about 1300, as</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2"><i>Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita.</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>But blank verse is after all the metre <i>par +excellence</i> of the Renaissance, that is of the +revival of Greek influence, and Goethe +chose it for this reason.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span></p> + +<p>Now the Watchman Lynceus ('the keen-eyed,' +as the word means—and you perhaps +remember him as the watchman of the +Argonauts on the good ship Argo) represents +here the early pre-Renaissance poets +of Italy and Provence and Germany—the +Troubadours and Trouvères and Minnesinger, +who were so surprised and dazzled +by the sudden sunrise of the Renaissance +with its wonderful new apparition of Greek +art that they (as Lynceus in <i>Faust</i>) failed +to announce its coming; and therefore +Lynceus here speaks in a kind of early +Troubadour metre, with <i>rime</i>. In classical +poetry there is no rime. They did not like +it; they even ridiculed it. For instance +Cicero, the great orator, once tried to write +poetry, and produced a line that said +'O fortunate Rome, when I was consul!' +This was not only conceited of him but +unfortunately the line contained a rime and +this rime brought down an avalanche of +ridicule on his head. 'O fortunatam natam +me consule Romam' was this unfortunate +line. Rime was probably first adopted by +the monks in their medieval Latin hymns +and was used by the Troubadours and early +Italian poets when they began to write i<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span>n +the vulgar tongue. Dante uses it in his +canzoni and sonnets and ballads, as well of +course as in his great poem. So it is quite +right to make Lynceus speak in rime. +Helen of course has never heard rime +before, and she turns to Faust and asks +him what it is that sounds so strange and +beautiful in this song of Lynceus; and she +wants to know how <i>she</i> too can learn the art. +So Faust tells her just to try and the rimes +will come of their own accord. But I will +quote the passage, for it is very pretty; and +I will add a rough translation.</p> + +<div class='blockquot'> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;"><i>Doch wünscht' ich Unterricht warum die Rede</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;"><i>Des Manns mir seltsam klang, seltsam und freundlich—</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;"><i>Ein Ton scheint sich dem and'ren zu bequemen;</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;"><i>Und hat ein Wort zum Ohre sich gesellt,</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;"><i>Ein andres kommt, dem ersten liebzukosen....</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;"><i>So sage denn, wie spräch' ich auch so schön.</i></span><br /> +<br /> +<span class="smcap">Faust</span>. <i>Das ist gar leicht—es muss vom Herzen geh'n.</i><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;"><i>Und wenn die Brust von Sehnsucht überfliesst</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;"><i>Man sieht sich um, und fragt....</i></span><br /> +<br /> +<span class="smcap">Helen</span>. <i>wer mitgeniesst.</i><br /> +<br /> +<span class="smcap">Faust</span>. <i>Nun schaut der Geist nicht vorwärts, nicht zurück—</i><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;"><i>Die Gegenwart allein ...</i></span><br /> +<br /> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span><span class="smcap">Helen</span>. <i>ist unser Glück—</i><br /> +<br /> +<span class="smcap">Faust</span>. <i>Schatz ist sie, Hochgewinn, Besitz und Pfand.</i><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;"><i>Bestätigung, wer gibt sie?</i></span><br /> +<br /> +<span class="smcap">Helen</span>. <i>Meine Hand.</i><br /> +<br /> +(<span class="smcap">Helen</span>. <i>I fain would ask thee why the watchman's song</i><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;"><i>So strangely sounded—strange but beautiful.</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;"><i>Tones seemed to link themselves in harmony.</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;"><i>One word would come and nestle in the ear,</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;"><i>Then came another and caressed it there.</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;"><i>But say—how can I also learn the art?</i></span><br /> +<br /> +<span class="smcap">Faust</span>. <i>Quite easily—one listens to one's heart,</i><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;"><i>And when its longings seem too great to bear</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;"><i>We look around for one ...</i></span><br /> +<br /> +<span class="smcap">Helen</span>. <i>our joy to share.</i><br /> +<br /> +<span class="smcap">Faust</span>. <i>Not past nor future loving hearts can bless,</i><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;"><i>The</i> present—</span><br /> +<br /> +<span class="smcap">Helen</span>. <i>is alone our happiness.</i><br /> +<br /> +<span class="smcap">Faust</span>. <i>Before the prize of beauty, lo I stand,</i><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 3em;"><i>But who assures the prize to me?</i></span><br /> +<br /> +<span class="smcap">Helen</span>. <i>My hand!</i>)<br /> +</div> + +<p>In the midst of this life of chivalrous love +and romance Faust and Helen pass a period +of ecstatic bliss. But, as Goethe himself +found, such ecstasies are only a passing phase. +The end comes inevitably and suddenly. +A son is born to them, Euphorion by name +(the name of the winged son of Helen and +Achilles, according to one legend). He is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span> +no common human child. As a butterfly +from its chrysalis he bursts at once into +fully developed existence. He is of enchanting +beauty but wild and capricious; spurning +the common earth he climbs ever higher +and higher amidst the mountain crags, singing +ravishing melodies to his lyre. He +reaches the topmost crag and casts himself +into the air. A flame flickers upwards, and +the body of a beautiful youth 'in which one +seems to recognize a well-known form' falls +to the ground, at the feet of Faust and +Helen.</p> + +<p>Euphorion symbolizes modern poetry, +and the well-known form is that of Byron. +For a moment the body lies there; it then +dissolves in flame, which ascends to heaven, +and a voice is heard calling on Helen to +follow.</p> + +<p>Yes, she must follow. As flame she +must return to her home in the Empyrean—the +home of ideal beauty and all other +ideals. However much we strive to realize +ideal beauty in art or in our lives, however +we may hold it to our hearts as a warm +and living possession, it always escapes our +grasp. The short-lived winged child of +poetic inspiration gleams but for a moment<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span> +and disappears, as a flame flickering back +to its native empyrean. And she, the +mother, she too must follow, leaving us +alone to face the stern reality of life and of +death.</p> + +<p>In the embrace of Faust Helen melts +away into thin air, leaving in his arms her +robe and veil. These change into a cloud, +which envelops him, raises him into the air +and bears him also away. The Phorkyad +picks up Euphorion's lyre and mantle; he +steps forward and addresses the audience, +assuring them that in the leavings of poetic +genius he has got enough to fit out any +number of modern poets, and is open to a +bargain. He then swells up to a gigantic +height, removes the Gorgon-mask, and +reveals himself as Mephistopheles once +more the northern modern devil; and the +curtain falls.</p> + +<p>When it rises for the Fourth Act we see +a craggy mountain peak before us. A cloud +approaches, and deposits Faust on the topmost +crag. It lingers for a time, assuming +wondrous shapes and then gradually melts +away into the blue. Faust gazes at it. In +its changing outlines he seems to discern +first the regal forms of Olympian goddesses,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span> +of Juno, of Leda—then of Helen. But +they fade away and, ere it disappears, the +cloud assumes the likeness of that other +half-forgotten human form which once had +aroused in his heart that which he now feels +to have been a love far truer and deeper than +all his passion for ideal beauty—that 'swiftly +felt and scarcely comprehended' love for a +human heart which, as he now confesses to +himself, 'had it been retained would have +been his most precious possession.'</p> + +<p>A seven-league boot now passes by—followed +in hot haste by another. Out of the +boots steps forth Mephistopheles. He asks +contemptuously if Faust has had enough of +heroines and all such ideal folly. He cannot +understand why Faust is still dissatisfied +with life. Surely he has seen enough of its +pleasures. He advises him, if he is weary +of court life, to build himself a Sultan's +palace and harem and live in retirement—as +Tiberius did on the island of Capri. +'Not so,' answers Faust. 'This world of +earthly soil Still gives me room for greater +action. I feel new strength for nobler +toil—Toil that at length shall bring me +satisfaction.'</p> + +<p>He has determined to devote the rest of his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span> +life to humanity, to the good of the human +race. It is a project with which Mephistopheles +naturally has little sympathy. But +he is forced to acquiesce, and, being bound +to serve Faust even in this, he suggests a +plan. The young Kaiser is at present in +great difficulties. He is hard pressed by a +rival Emperor—a pretender to the Imperial +crown. Mephisto will by his magic arts +secure the Kaiser the victory over this +pretender, and then Faust will claim as +recompense a tract of country bordering on +the ocean. Here by means of canals and +dykes, dug and built by demonic powers, +Faust is to reclaim from the sea a large +region of fertile country and to found a +kind of model republic, where peace and +prosperity and every social and political +blessing shall find a home. The plan is +carried out. At the summons of Mephistopheles +appear three gigantic warriors by +whose help the battle is won, and Faust +gains his reward—the stretch of land on +the shore of the ocean. And he is not the +only gainer. The Archbishop takes the +opportunity of extracting far more valuable +concessions of land from the young Kaiser +as penance for his having associated himself<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span> +with powers of darkness. The prelate even +extracts the promise of tithes and dues from +all the land still unclaimed by Faust. As +Mephistopheles aptly remarks, the Church +seems to have a good digestion.</p> + +<p>Many years are now supposed to elapse. +Faust has nearly completed his task of +expelling the sea and founding his ideal +state. What had been a watery waste is +now like the garden of Eden in its luxuriant +fertility. Thousands of industrious happy +mortals have found in this new country +a refuge and a home. Ships, laden with +costly wares, throng the ports. On an +eminence overlooking the scene stands the +castle of Faust, and not far off are a cottage +and a chapel. On this scene the last act +opens. A wanderer enters. He is seeking +the cottage which once used to stand here, +on the very brink of the ocean. It was here +that he was shipwrecked: here, on this very +spot, the waves had cast him ashore: here +stands still the cottage of the poor old +peasant and his wife who had rescued him +from death. But now the sea is sparkling +in the blue distance and beneath him +spreads the new country with its waving +cornfields. He enters the cottage and is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span> +welcomed by the poor old couple (to whom +Goethe has given the names Philemon and +Baucis, the old peasant and his wife who, +according to the Greek legend, were the +only Phrygians who offered hospitality to +Zeus, the King of the Gods, as he was +wandering about in disguise among mortals).</p> + +<p>Faust comes out on to the garden terrace +of his castle. He is now an old man—close +upon a hundred years of age. He gazes +with a feeling of happiness and satisfaction +at the scene that lies below him—the wide +expanse of fertile land, the harbours and +canals filled with shipping. Suddenly the +bell in the little chapel begins to ring for +Vespers.</p> + +<p>Faust's happiness is in a moment changed +into bitterness and anger. This cottage, +this chapel, this little plot of land are as +thorns in his side: they are the Naboth's +vineyard which he covets and which alone +interferes with his territorial rights. He +has offered large sums of money, but the +peasant will not give up his home.</p> + +<p>Mephistopheles and his helpers (the same +three gigantic supernatural beings who took +part in the battle) appear. Faust vents his +anger and chagrin with regard to the peasant<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span> +and the irritating ding-dong-dell of the +vesper bell. He commissions Mephistopheles +to persuade the peasant to take the money +and to make him turn out of his wretched +hut. Mephistopheles and his mates go to +carry out the order. A few moments later +flames are seen to rise from the cottage and +chapel. Mephistopheles returns to relate +that the peasant and the wanderer proved +obstinate: in the scuffle the wanderer had +been killed; the cottage had caught fire, +and old Philemon and his wife had both +died of terror.</p> + +<p>Faust turns upon Mephistopheles with +fierce anger and curses him. 'I meant +exchange!' he exclaims. 'I meant to <i>make +it good with money</i>! I meant not robbery +and murder. I curse the deed. Thou, not +I, shalt bear the guilt.'</p> + +<p>Here I do not find it easy to follow +Faust's line of argument. Fair exchange +is certainly said to be no robbery—but this +theory of 'making everything good with +money' is one which the average foreigner +is apt to attribute especially to the average +Britisher, and it does not raise Faust in +one's estimation. I suppose he thinks he +is doing the poor old couple a blessing in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span> +disguise by ejecting them out of their +wretched hovel and presenting them with a +sum of money of perhaps ten times its value.</p> + +<p>Possibly Goethe means it to be a specimen +of the kind of mistake that well-meaning +theoretical philanthropists are apt to commit +with their Juggernaut of Human Progress. +Faust is filled with great philanthropic ideas—but +perhaps he is a little apt to ignore +the individual. Anyhow his better self +'meant not robbery and murder' and is +perhaps quite justified in cursing its demonic +companion and giving him the whole of +the guilt.</p> + +<p>The scene changes. It is midnight. Faust, +sleepless and restless, is pacing the hall in +his castle. Outside, on the castle terrace, +appear four phantom shapes clothed as +women in dusky robes. They are Want, +Guilt, Care, and Need. The four grey sisters +make halt before the castle. In hollow, +awe-inspiring tones they recite in turn their +dirge-like strains: they chant of gathering +clouds and darkness, and of their brother—Death. +They approach the door of the +castle hall. It is shut. Within lives a rich +man, and none of them may enter, not even +Guilt—none save only Care. She slips<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span> +through the keyhole. Faust feels her unseen +presence.</p> + +<p>'Is any one here?' he asks.</p> + +<p>'The question demandeth <i>Yes</i>!'</p> + +<p>'And thou ... who art thou?'</p> + +<p>''Tis enough that I am here.'</p> + +<p>'Avaunt!'</p> + +<p>'I am where I should be.'</p> + +<p>Faust defies the phantom. She, standing +there invisible, recites in tones like the knell +of a passing-bell the fate of a man haunted +by Care: how he gradually loses sight of his +high ideals and wanders blindly amid the +maze of worldly illusions—how he loses +faith and joy—how he starves amidst plenty—has +no certain aim in life—burdening himself +and others, breathing air that chokes +him, living a phantom life—a dead thing, +a death-in-life—supporting himself on a hope +that is no hope, but despair—never content, +never resigned, never knowing what he +should do, or what he himself wishes.</p> + +<p>'Accursed spectres!' exclaims Faust. +'Thus ye ever treat the human race. From +demons, I know, it is scarce possible to free +oneself. But <i>thy</i> power, O Care—so great +and so insidious though it be, I will <i>not</i> +recognize it!'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span></p> + +<p>'So <i>feel</i> it now!' answers the phantom. +'Throughout their whole existence men are +mostly <i>blind</i>—So let it be at last with +thee!'</p> + +<p>She approaches, breathes in Faust's face, +and he is struck blind.</p> + +<p>He stands there dazed and astounded. +Thick darkness has fallen upon him. At +last he speaks:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Still deeper seems the night to surge around me,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>But in my inmost spirit all is light.</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>I'll rest not till the finished work has crown'd me.</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>God's promise—that alone doth give me might.</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>He hastens forth, groping his way in +blindness, to call up his workmen. His life +is ending and he must end his work. It is +midnight, but the light within him makes +him think the day has dawned. In the +courtyard there are awaiting him Mephistopheles +and a band of Lemurs—horrible +skeleton-figures with shovels and torches. +They are digging his grave. Faust mistakes +the sound for that of his workmen, +and incites them to labour. He orders the +overseer, Mephistopheles, to press on with +the work ... to finish the last great moat—or +'Graben.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span></p> + +<p>'<i>Man spricht</i>,' answers Mephistopheles +<i>sotto voce</i>,</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>'Man spricht, wie man mir Nachricht gab,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Von keinem</i> Graben—<i>doch vom Grab.'</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>It is no moat, no Graben, that is now +being dug, but a grave—a Grab.</p> + +<p>Standing on the very verge of his grave, +Faust, reviewing the memories of his long +life, feels that <i>at last</i>, though old and +blind, with no more hopes in earthly existence, +he has won peace and happiness in +having worked for others and in having +given other human beings a measure of +independence and of that true liberty and +happiness which are gained only by honest +toil. He alone truly <i>possesses</i> and can <i>enjoy</i> +who has made a thing his own by earning it.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Yes, to this thought I hold with firm persistence;</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>The last result of wisdom stamps it true;</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>He only earns his freedom and existence</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Who daily conquers them anew.</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>And such a throng I fain would see—</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Would stand on a free soil, with people free.</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Standing there, on the very edge of his +new-dug grave he blesses the present +moment and bids it stay. The fatal words +are spoken and according to the compact +his life must end.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span></p> + +<p>He sinks lifeless to the ground. The +Lemurs lay him in the open grave. +Mephistopheles, triumphant, looks on and +exclaims:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>No joy could sate him, no delight suffice.</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>To grasp at empty shades was his endeavour.</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>The latest, poorest emptiest moment—this—</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Poor fool, he tried to hold it fast for ever.</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Me he resisted in such vigorous wise;</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>But Time is lord—and there the old man lies!</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>The clock stands still.</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>'Stands still,' repeats a voice from heaven, +'still, silent, as the midnight.' 'It is +finished,' says Mephistopheles. 'Nay. 'Tis +but past,' answers the voice. 'Past!' exclaims +Mephistopheles; 'how <i>past</i> and yet +not <i>finished</i>?' ... He is enraged at the +suspicion that life, though past, may not +be <i>finished</i>—that Faust's human soul may +<i>yet</i> elude that hell to which he destines it ... that +of annihilation.</p> + +<p>The Lemurs group themselves round the +grave and chant with hollow voices, such as +skeletons may be supposed to have, a funeral +dirge. Meantime Mephistopheles is busy +summoning his demons to keep watch over +the dead body, lest the soul should escape like +a mouse, or flicker up to heaven in a little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span> +flamelet. Hideous forms of demons, fat +and thin, with straight and crooked horns, +tusked like boars and with claws like +vultures, come thronging in, while the jaw +of hell opens itself, showing in the distance +the fiery city of Satan.</p> + +<p>At this moment a celestial glory is seen +descending from heaven and voices of +angels are heard singing a song of triumph +and salvation. They approach ever nearer—Mephistopheles +rages and curses, but in +vain. They come ever onward, casting +before them roses, the flowers of Paradise, +which burst in flame and scorch the demons, +who, rushing at their angelic adversaries +with their hellish prongs and forks and +launching vainly their missiles of hell-fire, +are hurled back by an invisible power and +gradually driven off the stage, plunging in +hideous ruin and combustion down headlong +into the jaws of hell.</p> + +<p>Mephistopheles alone remains, foaming +in impotent rage. He is surrounded by +the choir of white-robed angels. He +stands powerless there, while they gather +to themselves Faust's immortal part and +ascend amidst songs of triumph to heaven.</p> + +<p>Some of us, perhaps most of us—in certain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span> +moods at least—feel inclined to close the +book here, as we do with <i>Hamlet</i> at the +words 'the rest is silence.' And this feeling +is all the stronger when we have +witnessed the stage decorator's pasteboard +heaven, where Apostles and Fathers are +posed artistically in rather perilous situations +amid rocks and pine-trees, or balance +themselves with evident anxiety mid-air +on pendent platforms representing clouds. +Altogether this stage-heaven is a very +uncomfortable and depressing kind of +place.</p> + +<p>But when read in Goethe's poem and +regarded as an allegorical vision the scene +has a certain impressive grandeur, and some +of the hymns of adoration and triumph are +of exceeding beauty.</p> + +<p>This Scene in Heaven opens with the +songs of the three great Fathers, the Pater +Ecstaticus, Pater Profundus, and Pater +Seraphicus, symbolizing the three stages +of human aspiration, namely ecstasy, +contemplation and seraphic love. The +Seraphic Father is of course St. Francis of +Assisi. In heaven, as he did on earth, he +sings of the revelation of Eternal Love.</p> + +<p>Angels are now seen ascending and bearing +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a></span>Faust's immortal part, and as they rise +they sing:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>The noble spirit now is free</i><br /></span> +<span class="i2"><i>And saved from evil scheming.</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Whoe'er aspires unweariedly</i><br /></span> +<span class="i2"><i>Is not beyond redeeming,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>And if he feels the grace of Love</i><br /></span> +<span class="i2"><i>That from on high is given</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>The blessed hosts that wait above</i><br /></span> +<span class="i2"><i>Shall welcome him to heaven.</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>His yet unawakened soul is greeted by the +heavenly choirs and by the three penitents, +the Magdalene, the woman of Samaria and +St. Mary of Egypt.</p> + +<p>Then appears 'timidly stealing forth' +the glorified form of her who on earth was +called Gretchen. In words that remind one +of her former prayer of remorse and despair +in the Cathedral she offers her petition to the +Virgin:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2"><i>O Mary, hear me!</i><br /></span> +<span class="i2"><i>From realms supernal</i><br /></span> +<span class="i2"><i>Of light eternal</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Incline thy countenance upon my bliss!</i><br /></span> +<span class="i2"><i>My loved, my lover,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i2"><i>His trials over</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>In yonder world, returns to me in this.</i><br /></span> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span></div></div> + +<p>The Virgin in her glory appears. She +addresses Gretchen:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Come, raise thyself to higher spheres!</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>For he will follow when he feels thee near.</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Gretchen soars up to the higher heaven, +and the soul of Faust, now awakening to +consciousness, rises also heavenward following +her, while the chorus of angels sings, in +words the beauty and power of which I +dare not mar by translation, telling how all +things earthly are but a vision, and how in +heaven the imperfect is made perfect and +the inconceivable wins attainment, and how +that which leads us upward and heavenward +is immortal love.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><i>Alles Vergängliche</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Ist nur ein Gleichnis;</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Das Unzulängliche,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Hier wird's Ereignis;</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Das Unbeschreibliche,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Hier ist's getan;</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Das Ewig-weibliche</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Zieht uns hinan.</i><br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<div class='transnote'> +<a name="tnote" id="tnote"></a><h3>Transcriber's Notes:</h3> + +<p>Page <a href="#Page_15">15</a>: Full stop added after "dishes"</p> + +<p>Page <a href="#Page_117">117</a>: "happended" amended to "happened"</p> + +<p>Page <a href="#Page_128">128</a>: closing quote mark added after 'double'</p> + +<p>Hyphenation has generally been standardized. However, when +hyphenated and unhyphenated versions of a word each occur +an equal number of times, both versions have been retained +(out-rivalling/outrivalling; up to date/up-to-date).</p></div> + + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust', by +H. B. 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