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diff --git a/25732-8.txt b/25732-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4d80e68 --- /dev/null +++ b/25732-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,3519 @@ +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 + + + + + + + +------------------------------------------------------------+ + | Transcriber's Note: | + | | + | Obvious typographical errors have been corrected in | + | this text. For a complete list, please see the bottom of | + | this document. | + | The symbol for a trochee on page 134 is shown like this: | + | - U | + | Text printed using the Greek alphabet in the original book | + | is shown as follows: [Greek: logos] | + +------------------------------------------------------------+ + + + + +THE FAUST-LEGEND +AND GOETHE'S 'FAUST' + +BY + +H. B. COTTERILL + +EDITOR OF GOETHE'S 'IPHIGENIE' +SCHILLER'S 'LAGER' 'REFLECTIONS +FROM THE NIBELUNGENLIED' DANTE'S +'INFERNO' ETC. + +LONDON +GEORGE G. HARRAP & COMPANY +9 PORTSMOUTH STREET KINGSWAY W.C. +1912 + +BALLANTYNE & COMPANY, LTD. +TAVISTOCK STREET, COVENT GARDEN +LONDON + + + + +PREFACE + + +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: + + Ridiculum aeri + Fortius et melius magnas plerumque secat res, + +or, as Milton has it: + + Joking decides great things + Stronger and better oft than earnest can. + +Almost the only change that I have made in my MS. has been the +substitution or 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 +_Faust_ 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. + +H. B. C. + +FREIBURG IM BREISGAU +_August 1912_ + + + + +CONTENTS + + PAGE + +THE OLD FAUST LEGEND 9 + +GOETHE'S 'FAUST' (PART I.) 56 + +GOETHE'S 'FAUST' (PART II.) 109 + + + + +I + +THE OLD FAUST-LEGEND + + +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, we are not +entitled to hold, far less to express, any opinion on the subject. + +When I realised that I had undertaken to lecture on _Faust_, 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 _Ueber Goethe's Faust_. 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 _Ueber Goethe's Faust_. 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 _Ansicht_ and _Einsicht_--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. + +But I will not inflict upon you any further description of my tusslings +with Teutonic interpreters of _Faust_--with their _egos_ and _non-egos_, +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 _Ideas_, which they hunt up in all directions and insist on +discovering in everything.... They come and ask _me_ what "Ideas" _I_ +have incorporated in my _Faust_. 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 _life_ in +anything living; but it is not by dissection and analysis that we shall +discover it. 'He who wishes,' says Goethe in _Faust_, 'to examine 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. + +But before we plunge _in medias res_ 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. + +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: + + Yes, that's the right way, + When we cannot say + How we think. True thought + Comes as a gift, unsought. + +Such theory of inspiration is thoroughly 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 ([Greek: all' ouk eidôs ge]).' 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 _opinion_, which is the very life-breath of modern +intellectual existence and modern journalistic literature, Goethe +rejected, as Plato had done in his _Phaedrus_, where he makes Socrates +call such things 'rotten soul-fodder.' + +'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 _one_ +single mode of thought. As poet and artist I am polytheist; as a +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): + + Full of great rooms and small the palace stood, + All various, each a perfect whole + From living Nature, fit for every mood + And change of my still soul. + +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: + + I take possession of man's mind and deed. + I care not what the sects may brawl. + I sit as God holding no form of creed, + But contemplating all. + +To Goethe all things, both in Nature and in 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, _Faust_, 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) _one_ 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: + + For no thought is contented. The better sort, + As thoughts of things divine ... do set the word + Against the word. + +_Faust_ does not claim to be a universal 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.' + +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.' + +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 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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + + ... To find the force + That binds the world and guides its course, + Its germs and vital powers explore + And peddle with worthless words no more. + +In almost every age and nation we find 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. + +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 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. + +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 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: + + The few that truth's deep mystery have learned + And could not keep it in their hearts concealed, + But to the mob their inner faith revealed, + Have evermore been crucified and burned. + +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. + +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 _Acts of +the Apostles_ 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 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. + +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. + +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 +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 _Helena_. + +After the suppression of Gnostic and other early heresies came the +contest of the 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 _all_ 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. + +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 B.C., the predecessor and to some extent the +inspirer of Socrates and Plato, 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. + +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 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 _Eclogue_ of his, the +_Pollio_, 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. + +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, 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. + +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 _Faust_.' It is the story of +Cyprian and Justina, who were among the many victims of the persecution +of the Christians by Diocletian, about 300 A.D. 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 _Magico Prodigioso_, 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. + +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, between Brunnen and the lake of Zürich, in the year +1493. + +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. + +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 _know_ everything--to +learn the inner secret of Nature--to understand, as Faust longed to +understand, + + The inmost force + That binds the world and guides its course-- + +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 +_feeling_, by the ecstatic contemplation of and communion with perfect +Beauty--'to love infinitely and be loved,' as Aprile says in Browning's +_Paracelsus_. 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. + +I have called them _two_ 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. + +Both these impulses are noble and awaken our sympathy. + +Now, in order that _tragic_ art may have its effect it must possess what +Aristotle calls [Greek: pathos], so that we may be able to sympathize +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 _Faust_, 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. + +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 by God's mercy and +reaches the higher spheres of another life. + +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 _self-salvation_, 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 _Choose!_ I would humbly fall +down before His left hand and say: _Father, pure Truth is for Thee +alone. Give me the longing for Truth, though it be attended with +never-ending error._' + +There seems no doubt that a man named 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 _Frankfurter Faustbuch_, 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. + +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 as the ground-plan for his poem, I perhaps cannot +do better than give a brief abstract of its contents. + +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, 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.' + +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, 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_o_stoph_i_les--the +meaning of which is probably 'not loving the light'--[Greek: mê phôs +philôn]--a compound which you may rightly remark must have been +concocted by a rather second-rate Greek scholar. + +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 +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. + +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. + +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) 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). + +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 _stroutho-camelos_ or 'sparrow-camel.' + +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 into the air and disappears. They then visit Egypt, +India, Africa, and other places, including the Garden of Eden and +Britain. + +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. + +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 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. + +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, 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. + +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.) + +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 +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!' + +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 +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 _dramatized_ 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-- + + These metaphysics of magicians, + And necromantic books are heavenly ... + All things that move between the quiet poles + Shall be at my command--Emperors and kings + Are but obey'd in their several provinces,... + But _his_ dominion that excels in _this_ + Stretcheth as far as doth the mind of man. + A sound magician is a mighty god. + Here, Faustus, tire thy brains to gain a deity. + +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: + + Was this the face that launched a thousand ships, + And burnt the topless towers of Ilium-- + +and the lines which seem to allude to the identification of Helen with +Selene, the Moon-goddess-- + + O thou art fairer than the evening air + Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars. + Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter + When he appeared to hapless Semele; + More lovely than the monarch of the sky, + In wanton Arethusa's azur'd arms. + +Marlowe's play was written about 1590. Now it is asserted that about +this time English travelling players visited Germany, and perhaps +introduced there Marlowe's drama; and possibly _this_ 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 _before_ 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. + +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 _wash_, or comb his hair or cut his nails--like Struwwelpeter. +When Faust attempts to embrace 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. + +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. + +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 +_Faustbuch_ 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. + +Goethe's early manhood coincided with 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 _Faust_, and when Goethe began his drama a new _Faust_, +it is said, was being announced in almost every quarter of Germany. +Someone (I think it was Bayard Taylor) has reckoned up _twenty-nine +Fausts_ that were actually published in Germany while Goethe was working +at his. Some one else (I think Ludwig von Arnim) has said: 'Not enough +_Fausts_ 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. + +None of these twenty-nine _Fausts_ 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.' + +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 questions arising directly out +of Goethe's own words--it will be useful and interesting to consider the +most striking points in which his _Faust_ 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 _ego_ and +_non-ego_ 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. + +In my next lecture, after a brief consideration of these preliminary +questions, I shall try to describe the first Part of the 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. + +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. + +Many years ago, when it was being given in the Dresden theatre, I saw it +performed four or five times and I remember noticing 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 _Paradiso_ and Beethoven's _Ninth Symphony_ +are sometimes said to be. + +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 +_Faust_, as they do of _Paradise Regained_, 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.' + +The truth is that the _first_ 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 _second_ 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. + +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 _Paradiso_ of Dante and the Second Part of Goethe's +_Faust_ 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. + + + + +II + +GOETHE'S 'FAUST' + +PART I + + +When Goethe wrote to Schiller announcing his intention of once more +taking up his unfinished _Faust_, 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 _Fratze_ [_i.e._ 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 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. + +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. + +As we have already seen, one great difference between Goethe's _Faust_ +and many older versions of the story (including Marlowe's play, but +excluding Lessing's fragment) is the fact that the sinner is saved. + +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 +_Faust_, 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 _Faust_ at all, Faust must be saved. + +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 _saved_? 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 _sub specie aeternitatis_ 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 allegory--of +a heaven in some far interspace of world and world. + +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.' + +Thus far therefore we have come: by Faust being saved it is meant that +he escapes from the fiend and reaches heaven, reaches the 'higher +spheres' of existence, as Goethe expresses it. + +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 _deus ex machina_, 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. + +When we once realize this we also realize 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 _Faust_, mean merely the +first Part--or perhaps merely the little episode of Gretchen given in +Gounod's opera. + +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.' + +It is true that _after death_ 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 _not_ to help him, but leaves +him to fight the battle entirely in his own strength, until the last +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 +_remorse_, 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.' + +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 _Faust_ these two lines from the poem: + + Es irrt der Mensch so lang er strebt, + +and + + Nur rastlos betätigt sich der Mann, + +the sense of which is that human nature must ever err as long as it +strives, but that true manhood is incessant striving. + +It is a noble picture--perhaps the noblest conceivable. You remember +Browning's lines: + + One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, + Never doubted clouds would break, + Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, + Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, + Sleep to wake. + +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 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!' + +The real action of the play begins with the celebrated monologue of +Faust. But this is preceded by a _Dedication_, by the _Prelude in the +theatre_, and by the _Prologue in Heaven_, added at various periods of +Goethe's life. The _Prelude_ 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 +_Prologue in Heaven_ 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. + +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 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.' + +That which distinguishes this scene from the similar scene in _Job_ 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. + +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 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. + + I've studied now philosophy, + Jurisprudence and medicine, + And e'en, alas, theology + From end to end with toil and teen, + And here I stand with all my lore, + Poor fool, no wiser than before. + No dog would live thus any more! + Therefore to magic I have turned, + If that through spirit-word and power + Many a secret may be learned + That I may find the inner force + Which binds the world and guides its course, + Its germs and vital powers explore + And peddle with worthless words no more. + +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 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. + +'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. + + Mysterious even in the open day + Nature within her veil withdraws from view. + What to thy spirit she will not display + Cannot be wrenched from her with crowbar or with screw. + +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: + + O might I on some mountain height, + Encircled in thy holy light, + With spirits hover round crags and caves, + O'er the meadows float on the moonlight's waves. + +Then, turning from Nature, he casts once more a look around his dreary +cell: + + Ah me, this dungeon still I see, + This drear accursèd masonry, + Where e'en the welcome daylight strains + But duskly through the painted panes, + Hemmed in by many a toppling heap + Of books worm-eaten, grey with dust, + Which to the vaultèd ceiling creep + Against the smoky paper thrust, + With glasses, boxes, round me stacked + And instruments together hurled, + Ancestral lumber stuffed and packed-- + Such is my world! And what a world!... + Alas! In living Nature's stead, + Where God his human creatures set, + In smoke and mould the fleshless dead + And bones of beasts surround me yet. + +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 +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. + +And yet from this vision he turns away dissatisfied: + + What wondrous vision! yet a vision only! + Where shall I grasp thee, Nature infinite? + +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. + +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 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? + +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? + +We turn away dazzled, and we rest our eyes, as Socrates was wont to say, +on images, 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. + +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 _his_ 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 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 + + What wondrous vision! yet a vision only! + +and in the words of a still greater master of magic than Faust himself +we despairingly add that + + like the baseless fabric of this vision, + The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, + The solemn temples, the great globe itself, + Yea all that it inherit, shall dissolve + And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, + Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff + As dreams are made of. + +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 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. + +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: + + Thou, Spirit of the Earth, art nearer. + I feel my powers loftier, clearer, + I glow, as drunk with new-made wine; + New strength I feel out in the world to dare, + The woes of earth, the bliss of earth to bear, + To fight my way, though storms around me lash, + Nor know dismay amid the shipwreck's crash. + +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 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 _thee_, 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. + +Scarcely has the Earth-spirit vanished when, with a timid knock, there +enters Faust's _famulus_, or assistant, Wagner. He has heard Faust's +voice and from its excited 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 _Zwar weiss +ich viel, doch möcht' ich Alles wissen_ (I know indeed a good deal, but +I want to know _Everything_), 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: + + Joy unto mortals! Christ is arisen! + +He pauses. Memories of childhood sweep over him, and he yields to the +sweet voices that call him back from the threshold of the unseen. + + Sound on sweet hymns of heaven! As gentle rain + My tears are falling. Earth hath me again. + +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. + +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 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. + +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 finally reaches, must begin with love +for and knowledge of _one_ human heart. + +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: + + For in each soul is born the rapture + Of yearning upward, and away, + When o'er our heads, lost in the azure, + The lark sends down her thrilling lay, + When over crags and pine-clad highlands + The poising eagle slowly soars, + And over plains and lakes and islands + The crane sails by to other shores. + +Whereat Wagner exclaims: + + I've had myself at times an odd caprice, + But never yet such impulses as these. + The woods and fields soon get intensely flat, + And as for flight--I never longed for that! + +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 _thee_ assuming wings. In 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. + +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. _He_ 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 follows them--and makes +himself at home by the stove in Faust's study. + +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. _But +the poodle is there._ 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. + +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 [Greek: +logos]--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 [Greek: logos].' How +shall he translate [Greek: logos]? It cannot mean merely a 'word.' ... A +word must have meaning, _thought_--and thought is nothing without +_act_.... So this 'Word,' this 'Logos,' must be translated as Act or +Deed. + +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. + +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 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 +_has_ come first just at such a time and in just such disguise? + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + + 'What from the world have I to gain?-- + _Thou must renounce! renounce! refrain!_ + Such is the everlasting song + That fills our ears our whole life long ... + With horror day by day I wake + And weeping watch the morning break + To think that each returning sun + Shall see fulfilled no wish of mine--not one.' + +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!' + +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!' + +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 _thou_, poor devil, give me? Was the human spirit, +in its aspirations, ever understood by such as _thou_?... And yet--hast +thou the food that never satiates--hast thou red gold--hast thou love, +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, _Stay; thou art so +fair!_--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. + +You will observe that here there is no mention, as in the old legend, of +any term of years--the compact is _for life_. 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 _this_ 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 _future_ life and for all eternity. + +Moreover Faust has _not_ summoned the devil. The devil has come to +him--is indeed a part of him. He does _not_ 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. + + Thou hearest me! I do not speak of joy-- + I dedicate myself to passion--pleasure--pain-- + Enamour'd hate, and rapture of disdain. + What's highest or what's lowest I will know, + And heap upon my bosom weal and woe. + +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 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. + +Faust had said, as you remember, + + What wilt thou, poor devil, give me? + Was the human spirit, in its aspirations + Ever understood by such as thou? + +This is the leading motive of all that follows. With ever-deepening +disgust and 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 _then_ that Mephistopheles displays +most clearly his utter inability to understand the 'human spirit in its +aspirations'; and it is _then_ 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. + +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 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: + + Of old there lived a king, + Who had a great big flea + As dear as any thing, + Or any son, could be ... + +and so on. We need not linger over the repulsive scene--so graphically +described. + +Finally Mephistopheles bores holes in the table and draws wine from +them. + +The students come to handicuffs over it; they spill the wine, and it +turns into flame. + +Amidst their drunken uproar Faust and Mephistopheles disappear. + +During the whole of this scene Faust _speaks no single word_, 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! + +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. + +A weird scene now ensues: the Witches' Kitchen. + +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 recklessness and a +licentiousness which scandalize even Mephistopheles himself, who tells +him that he is 'almost as bad as a Frenchman.' + +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. + +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. + +The apes perform all kinds of antics and 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. + +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. + +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.' + +With a hocus-pocus of incantations she brews the magic draught, which +Faust drinks. He is then hurried away by Mephistopheles back into the +world of humanity. + +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 _Faust_. It is doubtless the part which attracts one, which +appeals to one's _heart_, 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. + +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 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 +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 _his_ 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. + +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. + +I have often wondered whether the limitations of art might not allow the +possibility of some drama on the same lines as _Faust_ 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 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? + +Anyhow, Goethe did not choose any of these methods; and if he had done +so we should have had no second Part of _Faust_--nor indeed our next +scene, the _Walpurgisnacht_. + +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 _Walpurgisnacht_ and Oberon's Wedding, a kind of +'after-dream' of the _Walpurgisnacht_. + +The connexion of these scenes with the main action of the play has +puzzled many critics, especially the curious Intermezzo which follows +the _Walpurgisnacht_, 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 _Faust_, 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 _Faust_ is one that admits of +almost any imaginative conception that is descriptive of the experiences +of human nature in its quest of truth. + +But let us return to the _Walpurgisnacht_. 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. 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 _Walpurgisnacht_ +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 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. + +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: + + 'Look! seest thou not in the far distance there, + Standing alone, that child, so pale and fair? + She seems to move so slowly, and with pain, + As if her feet were fettered by a chain. + I must confess, I almost seem to trace + My poor good Gretchen in her form and face.' + +Mephistopheles answers: + + 'Let her alone! It's dangerous to look. + It's a mere lifeless ghoul, a spectre-spook. + Such bogeys to encounter is not good; + Their rigid stare freezes one's very blood, + And one is often almost turned to stone. + Medusa's head, methinks, to thee is known!' + +But Faust will not be convinced. It _is_ Gretchen--his 'poor good +Gretchen' as he calls her. And what is that red bleeding gash around +her neck? What terrible thought does it suggest! + + 'How strange that round her lovely neck, + That narrow band of red is laid + No broader than a knife's keen blade!' + +'Quite right!' answers Mephistopheles with a ghastly joke-- + + 'Quite right! I plainly see it's so. + Perseus cut off her head, you know. + She often carries it beneath her arm.' + +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. + +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. + + + +_A gloomy day. Open country._ + +_FAUST and MEPHISTOPHELES. FAUST is speaking._ + + FAUST. In misery! In despair! Piteously wandering day after + day o'er the face of the 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 _this_!--to + this!... Treacherous, villainous spirit! and _this_ 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 _thou_ meantime hast lulled me with + loathsome dissipation ... thou hast hidden from me her + ever-deepening despair, and hast suffered her to perish + helplessly. + + MEPH. She isn't the first. + + FAUST. 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 _more_ than _one_ + should sink into this abyss of misery--that the _first_, 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 _one_ pierces with agony my + deepest soul--and _thou_ calmly grinnest at the fate of + thousands! + + MEPH. 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? + + FAUST. Gnash not thy ravening teeth at me! I 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? + + MEPH. Hast thou done? + + FAUST. Save her, or woe to thee! The most terrible curse on + thee for thousands of years! + + MEPH. I cannot loose the bonds of the avenger--cannot undo + his bolts. _Save her!_... Who was it that ruined her ... I + or thou? + +[_FAUST glares wildly round him._ + + MEPH. Wilt thou grasp after a thunderbolt? 'Tis well that it + was not given to you miserable mortals!... + + FAUST. Take me to her! She _shall_ be free!... Take me to + her, I say, and liberate her! + + MEPH. I will take thee to her--and do what I _can_ 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. + + * * * * * + + _Night. The open country. FAUST and MEPHISTOPHELES + 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 GRETCHEN singing an old + plaintive ballad. FAUST listens:_ + + 'She dreams not' (he says) 'that her loved one is + listening, and hears her chains rattle and the straw as it + rustles.' + +[_He unlocks the prison door and steps in._ + + GRETCHEN (_crouching into her bed of straw_). Woe, woe--they + are coming! Bitter death! + + FAUST. Hush! hush! I am come to free thee. + + GRETCHEN (_grovelling before him_). If thou art a man, O + pity my distress! + + FAUST. Thou wilt awaken the watchmen with thy cries. [_He + seizes her chain to unlock it._ + + GRETCHEN (_kneeling_). 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. + + FAUST. Can I endure this misery? + + GRETCHEN. 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 _now_ they say I've killed it.... + And I shall never be happy any more! + + FAUST (_kneels beside her_). He that loves thee kneels + before thee. + + GRETCHEN. 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! + + FAUST. Gretchen! Gretchen! + + GRETCHEN (_listening_). 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. + + FAUST. It is I. + + GRETCHEN. Thou!... O say it once more! (_Clasping him._) It + is! it is he! Where is now all my pain? Where is the anguish + of the dungeon and the chain? + + FAUST. Come! Come with me! + + GRETCHEN. 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? + + FAUST. Come! Follow!... Be courageous, loved one! Come with + me! + + GRETCHEN. Thou art loosening my chain.... Know'st thou, my + friend, _whom_ thou art releasing? + + FAUST. Come, come! Night is already on the wane. + + GRETCHEN. 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! _Ah_, 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! + + FAUST. Let the past be past. Thou art killing me. + + GRETCHEN. No--_thou_ must live!... I will tell thee about + the graves that thou must provide 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 _is_ thou, and + thou look'st so kind and good. + + FAUST. If thou feel'st that it is I, then come! + + GRETCHEN. Out _there_? + + FAUST. To freedom! + + GRETCHEN. 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. + + FAUST. I shall be with thee. + + GRETCHEN. _Quick! Quick!_ 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! + + FAUST. Bethink thyself! One step and thou art free! + + GRETCHEN. 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 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! + + FAUST. No entreaty avails--no words are of use. I shall have + to carry thee away. [_Seizes hold of her._ + + GRETCHEN. _Let me go!_ I will not suffer violence. Seize not + hold of me so murderously. All _else_ I did for _love_ of + thee. + + FAUST. The day is dawning! Dearest! dearest! + + GRETCHEN. _Day?_ 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 _mine_ ... and the world lies dark and + silent as the grave. + + FAUST. O that I never had been born! + + MEPH. (_appears at the door_). Come! or you are lost!... + Foolish, useless hesitation--delaying and gossiping! My + horses are shuddering and the morning twilight breaks. + + GRETCHEN (_seeing MEPHISTOPHELES_). What is this that rises + from the ground? He! _He!_ Send him away! What does _he_ + want at this holy spot? + + MEPH. (_to FAUST_). Come! come! or I shall leave you in the + lurch. + + GRETCHEN. I am thine, Father--save me! Ye angels, holy + cohorts, encamp around me and defend me! (_To FAUST._) + Heinrich, I shrink from thee in horror. + + MEPH. She is judged. + + VOICE FROM ABOVE. She is saved. + + MEPH. _to_ FAUST. Here! to me! + +[_Disappears with FAUST._ + + [_A VOICE FROM WITHIN--the voice of GRETCHEN--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._ + + + + +III + +GOETHE'S 'FAUST' + + +PART II + + +The picture which Goethe has given us in _Faust_ 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 _Werther's +Leiden_, of _Götz_, of _Prometheus_, 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 _Helena_ 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 _Iphigenie_ on the shores +of the Lago di Garda; and the Faust of the last act of all is Goethe +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 MS. 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!' + +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. + +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: + + Dämonen, weiss ich, wird man schwerlich los. + Das geistig-strenge Band is nicht zu trennen. + +'From demons it is, I know, scarce possible to free oneself. The +spiritual bond is too strong to break.' + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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: + + The One remains, the Many change and pass; + Heaven's light for ever shines, Earth's shadows fly, + Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, + Stains the white radiance of eternity. + +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. + +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 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 +_locum tenens_. 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. + +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 successful parts of _Faust_. The +question is, how are we to estimate _success_ 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 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 _one_ 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 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. + +The young Kaiser now demands from 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_ have no +power over them. Still--there _is_ 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 _thought_ cannot guide him. He must +surrender himself in _contemplation_ 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 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. + +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 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. + +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 _his_ whole time and energies to realising that dream +of science--the chemical production of life. + +It is, says Professor Romanes, 'the dream of modern science that a +machine _may_ 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 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.e._ 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. + +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. 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 _now_, 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 +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. + +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. + +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. '_To Greece!_' +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. '_Und ich?_' exclaims poor old Wagner in piteous +accents. '_Ach, du!_' says Homunculus, '_Du bleibst zu Hause--!_' '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. + +It is often asked, and I think _we_ may fairly ask, what Goethe meant to +symbolize 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. + +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 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 _Walpurgisnacht_. (You remember the other +_Walpurgisnacht_--that on the Blocksberg--which I described before.) + +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 +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 _his_ 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 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. + +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 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. + +The theory that _water_ 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 +_Walpurgisnacht_ 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. + +We have now reached that part of _Faust_ which is known as the _Helena_. +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--some 3500 years or so--to the age of the +Trojan war. + +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 _Helena_ 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. + +I know no poet who in any modern language has reproduced as Goethe has +done in his _Iphigenie_ and in the _Helena_ not only the external form +but also the spirit of Hellenic literature. While reading the _Helena_ +we feel ourselves under the cloudless Grecian sky; we breathe the +Grecian air with Helen herself. + +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 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. + +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 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. + +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. Faust, the symbol of the +Renaissance and modern art, welcomes to his castle the ideal of Greek +art and beauty. + +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 _now_ 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. + +I have mentioned how the stately Greek measures in the _Helena_ give way +to the metres of Romance and Chivalry. Perhaps it may be well to explain +some of these various metres. + +The scene opens, as you know, with Helen's dignified and beautiful +speech: + + Bewundert viel und viel gescholten Helena. + +That is the well-known _iambic trimeter_, _i.e._ the metre of six feet +(twelve syllables) used in all the speeches in Greek tragedy. + +Thus the _Oedipus Tyrannos_ of Sophocles begins: + + [Greek: Ô tekna, Kadmou tou palai nea trophê] + +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 _Helena_ uses various rhythms such as are found in the choruses +of Greek tragedy: + + Schweige, schweige, + Missblickende, missredende du! + Aus so grässlichen, einzahnigen + Lippen was enthaucht wohl + Solchem furchtbaren Greuelschlund! + +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 _tetrameter_, and consists of fifteen +syllables (mostly - U, called trochees). Thus, in Greek, [Greek: oi +gerontes oi palaioi memphomestha tê polei]--and in German: + + Tritt hervor aus flüchtigen Wolken hohe Sonne dieses Tags-- + +or the fine lines spoken by Helen: + + Doch es ziemet Königinnen, allen Menschen ziemt es wohl, + Sich zu fassen, zu ermannen, was auch drohend überrascht. + +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 + + Es ist in alten Mähren wunders viel geseit, + Von Heleden lobebären, von grosser Arebeit, + +which is supposed to date from about 1150; or in Dante's _terza rima_, +of about 1300, as + + Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita. + +But blank verse is after all the metre _par excellence_ of the +Renaissance, that is of the revival of Greek influence, and Goethe chose +it for this reason. + +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 +_Faust_) failed to announce its coming; and therefore Lynceus here +speaks in a kind of early Troubadour metre, with _rime_. 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 in 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 _she_ 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. + + Doch wünscht' ich Unterricht warum die Rede + Des Manns mir seltsam klang, seltsam und freundlich-- + Ein Ton scheint sich dem and'ren zu bequemen; + Und hat ein Wort zum Ohre sich gesellt, + Ein andres kommt, dem ersten liebzukosen.... + So sage denn, wie spräch' ich auch so schön. + +FAUST. Das ist gar leicht--es muss vom Herzen geh'n. + Und wenn die Brust von Sehnsucht überfliesst + Man sieht sich um, und fragt.... + +HELEN. wer mitgeniesst. + +FAUST. Nun schaut der Geist nicht vorwärts, nicht zurück-- + Die Gegenwart allein ... + +HELEN. ist unser Glück-- + +FAUST. Schatz ist sie, Hochgewinn, Besitz und Pfand. + Bestätigung, wer gibt sie? + +HELEN. Meine Hand. + +(HELEN. I fain would ask thee why the watchman's song + So strangely sounded--strange but beautiful. + Tones seemed to link themselves in harmony. + One word would come and nestle in the ear, + Then came another and caressed it there. + But say--how can I also learn the art? + +FAUST. Quite easily--one listens to one's heart, + And when its longings seem too great to bear + We look around for one ... + +HELEN. our joy to share. + +FAUST. Not past nor future loving hearts can bless, + The _present_-- + +HELEN. is alone our happiness. + +FAUST. Before the prize of beauty, lo I stand, + But who assures the prize to me? + +HELEN. My hand!) + +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 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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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, 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.' + +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.' + +He has determined to devote the rest of his 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 +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. + +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 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). + +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. + +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. + +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 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. + +Faust turns upon Mephistopheles with fierce anger and curses him. 'I +meant exchange!' he exclaims. 'I meant to _make it good with money_! I +meant not robbery and murder. I curse the deed. Thou, not I, shalt bear +the guilt.' + +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 disguise by ejecting them out of their wretched +hovel and presenting them with a sum of money of perhaps ten times its +value. + +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. + +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 through the keyhole. Faust feels +her unseen presence. + +'Is any one here?' he asks. + +'The question demandeth _Yes_!' + +'And thou ... who art thou?' + +''Tis enough that I am here.' + +'Avaunt!' + +'I am where I should be.' + +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. + +'Accursed spectres!' exclaims Faust. 'Thus ye ever treat the human race. +From demons, I know, it is scarce possible to free oneself. But _thy_ +power, O Care--so great and so insidious though it be, I will _not_ +recognize it!' + +'So _feel_ it now!' answers the phantom. 'Throughout their whole +existence men are mostly _blind_--So let it be at last with thee!' + +She approaches, breathes in Faust's face, and he is struck blind. + +He stands there dazed and astounded. Thick darkness has fallen upon him. +At last he speaks: + + Still deeper seems the night to surge around me, + But in my inmost spirit all is light. + I'll rest not till the finished work has crown'd me. + God's promise--that alone doth give me might. + +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.' + +'_Man spricht_,' answers Mephistopheles _sotto voce_, + + 'Man spricht, wie man mir Nachricht gab, + Von keinem _Graben_--doch vom Grab.' + +It is no moat, no Graben, that is now being dug, but a grave--a Grab. + +Standing on the very verge of his grave, Faust, reviewing the memories +of his long life, feels that _at last_, 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 _possesses_ and can _enjoy_ +who has made a thing his own by earning it. + + Yes, to this thought I hold with firm persistence; + The last result of wisdom stamps it true; + He only earns his freedom and existence + Who daily conquers them anew. + And such a throng I fain would see-- + Would stand on a free soil, with people free. + +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. + +He sinks lifeless to the ground. The Lemurs lay him in the open grave. +Mephistopheles, triumphant, looks on and exclaims: + + No joy could sate him, no delight suffice. + To grasp at empty shades was his endeavour. + The latest, poorest emptiest moment--this-- + Poor fool, he tried to hold it fast for ever. + Me he resisted in such vigorous wise; + But Time is lord--and there the old man lies! + The clock stands still. + +'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 _past_ and yet +not _finished_?' ... He is enraged at the suspicion that life, though +past, may not be _finished_--that Faust's human soul may _yet_ elude +that hell to which he destines it ... that of annihilation. + +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 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. + +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. + +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. + +Some of us, perhaps most of us--in certain moods at least--feel +inclined to close the book here, as we do with _Hamlet_ 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. + +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. + +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. + +Angels are now seen ascending and bearing Faust's immortal part, and as +they rise they sing: + + The noble spirit now is free + And saved from evil scheming. + Whoe'er aspires unweariedly + Is not beyond redeeming, + And if he feels the grace of Love + That from on high is given + The blessed hosts that wait above + Shall welcome him to heaven. + +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. + +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: + + O Mary, hear me! + From realms supernal + Of light eternal + Incline thy countenance upon my bliss! + My loved, my lover, + His trials over + In yonder world, returns to me in this. + +The Virgin in her glory appears. She addresses Gretchen: + + Come, raise thyself to higher spheres! + For he will follow when he feels thee near. + +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. + + Alles Vergängliche + Ist nur ein Gleichnis; + Das Unzulängliche, + Hier wird's Ereignis; + Das Unbeschreibliche, + Hier ist's getan; + Das Ewig-weibliche + Zieht uns hinan. + + +--------------------------------------------------------------+ + | Transcriber's Notes: | + | | + | Page 15: Full stop added after "dishes" | + | Page 117: "happended" amended to "happened" | + | Page 128: closing quote mark added after 'double' | + | | + | 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). | + +--------------------------------------------------------------+ + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust', by +H. B. 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