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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe at
age 69, by Joseph Karl Stieler.
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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
(Encyclopaedia Britannica)
born Aug. 28, 1749, Frankfurt am Main [Germany]
died March 22, 1832, Weimar, Saxe-Weimar
German poet, novelist, playwright, andnatural philospoher,
the greatest figure of the German Romantic period and of
German literature as a whole.
One of the giants of world literature, Goethe was perhaps
the last European to attempt the mastery and many-sidedness
of the great Renaissance personalities: critic, journalist,
painter, theatre manager, statesman, educationalist, natural
philosopher. The bulk and diversity of his output is in
itself phenomenal: his writings on science alone fill about
14 volumes. In the lyric vein he displayeda command of a
unique variety of theme and style; in fiction he ranged from
fairy tales, which have proved a quarry for psychoanalysts,
through the poetic concentration of his shorter novels and
Novellen (novellas) to the “open,” symbolic form of Wilhelm
Meister; in the theatre, from historical, political, or
psychological plays in prose through blank-verse drama to
his Faust , one of the masterpieces of modern literature. He
achieved in his 82 years a wisdom often termed Olympian,
even inhuman; yet almost to the end he retained a
willingness to let himself be shaken to his foundations by
love or sorrow. He disciplined himself to a routine that
might armour him against chaos; yet he never lost the power
of producing magical short lyrics in which the mystery of
living,loving, and thinking was distilled into sheer
transparency.
And at the last there was granted him a gift, uncanny even
to himself, of tapping at will the springs of creativity in
order to complete the work he had carried with him for 60
years. When, a few months before his death, he sealed his
Faust, he bequeathed it with ironic resignation to the
critics of posterity to discover its imperfections. Its
final couplet, “Das Ewig-Weibliche/Zieht uns hinan”
(“Eternal Womanhead/Leads us on high”), epitomizes his own
feeling about the central polarity of human existence: woman
was to him at once man's energizer and his civilizer, source
of creative life and focus of the highest endeavours of both
mind and spirit.
There was in Goethe a natural, if not always painless, swing
between poles of existence often thought to be mutually
exclusive and an innate commitment to change and process.And,
in the last letter he was to write, he rounded off what has
sometimes been called his greatest work, his life, by
setting the seal of his approval on a mode of growth that
sees the art of living as the intensification of inborn
talents through a judicious surrender to the natural rhythm
of opposing tendencies.
Early life and influences
Goethe came of middle-class stock, the Bürgertum that he
never ceased to praise as a breeding ground of the finest
culture. His father, Johann Kaspar Goethe, was of north
German extraction. A retired lawyer, he was able to lead a
life of cultured leisure, travelling in Italy and amassing a
well-stocked library and picture gallery in his handsomely
furnished house. Goethe's mother, Katharine Elisabeth Textor,
was the daughter of a Bürgermeister (mayor) of Frankfurt;
she opened up to her son valued connections with the
patriciate of the free city. Thus even in his heredity
Goethe unites those opposing tendencies that have always
prevailed in German lands: the intellectual and moral rigour
of the north and the easygoing artistic sensuousness of the
south. Of eight children, only Wolfgang, the firstborn, and
his sister, Cornelia, survived.
In his autobiography, Dichtung und Wahrheit (“Poetry and
Truth”), Goethe left an unforgettable picture of a happy
childhood. Here are set out with acute psychological insight
the emotional complexities of his bond with Cornelia, which
found expression in numerous portrayals of the
brother–sister relationship in his works; his passionate
attachment to a barmaid, Gretchen, which foreshadowed the
rejection pattern of many of his loves; the broadening of
outlook that came with French occupation during the Seven
Years' War; the coronation of Joseph II in the Frankfurt
Römer, with its indelible impressions of medieval
pageantry;and the fervent religiosity of Pietistic circles,
which led him to declaim F.G. Klopstock's Messias
(“Messiah”) as a kind of Lenten exercise, to write a prose
epic on Joseph and a poem on Christ's descent into hell. The
French army had brought itsown troupe of actors, and their
performances intensified a passion for the stage, first
kindled in him by his grandmother's gift of a puppet
theatre, and inspired a lifelong devotion to Racine. A love
of things English was fostered by friendship with a young
clothier from Leeds (Goethe's paternal grandfather was a
fashionable tailor) with whom Cornelia, seeing herself as
the heroine of a Richardsonian novel, fell hopelessly in
love. Wolfgang's reaction was the inception of a novel in
letters, a kind of linguistic exercise in which four
brothers correspond in different languages.
In October 1765 Goethe was sent to study law at his
father'sold University of Leipzig, though he himself would
have preferred to read classics in the newly founded
university at Göttingen, where English influence prevailed.
In Leipzig, or “little Paris” as he calls it in Faust, by
contrast, a world of elegance and fashion made the young
provincial feel like a fish out of water. The Frenchifying
influence of the critic J.C. Gottsched still dominated the
theatre and provided a repertory of the best plays of
contemporary Europe. But C.F. Gellert, poet and author of
fables and hymns, now in the heyday of his fame, presented
the new sensibility of Edward Young, Laurence Sterne, and
Samuel Richardson. Goethe praised Gellert's lectures as “the
foundation of German moral culture” and learned from them
invaluable lessons in epistolary style and in social
conduct. Gellert's literary influence was reinforced by the
robust elegance and ironic sagacity of the novels, tales,
and epics of C.M. Wieland. Wieland's work was brought to
Goethe's notice by A.F. Oeser, a friend and teacher of the
archaeologist and art historian J.J. Winckelmann, who
profoundly influenced European fashions in art. From Oeser,
Goethe learned a loveof Greek art and two things that stood
him in good stead all his life: to use his eyes and to
master the craft of whatever he undertook. A visit to
Dresden, “the Florence of the north,” as the poet and critic
J.G. Herder called it, opened his eyes to the splendours of
Rococo architecture as well as classical statuary. Nor was
music neglected in his education; a new 18th-century concert
society, under the direction of the musician and composer
J.A. Hiller, provided splendid performances, which became
world famous as the Gewandhaus concerts.
The literary harvest of Goethe's Leipzig period manifested
itself in a songbook written in the prevailing Rococo
mode—songs praising love and wine in the manner of the Greek
poet Anacreon. Appropriately titled Das Leipziger Liederbuch
(The Leipzig Song Book), it was ostensibly inspired by the
daughter of the wine merchant at whose tavern he took his
midday meal. But neither his 1766–67 poems Das Buch Annette
(“The Book Annette”; as he called her in Rococo fashion) nor
the Neue Lieder (“New Songs”) of 1769 made any pretense of
real passion. Yet it was in connection with these literary
trifles that he subsequently made the famous and much abused
statement that all his works were “fragments of a great
confession.” The same note is struck in two plays written in
alexandrine verse (a 12-syllable iambic line borrowed from
the French), Die Launedes Verliebten (“The Mood of the
Beloved”) and a more sombre farce, Die Mitschuldigen (“The
Accomplices”), which foreshadows the psychological
preoccupations of later works. From then on, Rococo was one
element in Goethe's repertoire, to be drawn on as occasion
demanded. It was to reappear in the setting of Torquato
Tasso and Die Wahlverwandtschaften (Elected Affinities); he
was to pay tribute to its charm in Anakreons Grab (“Anacreon's
Grave”; 1806) and amalgamate it with Eastern influence in
enchanting poems of the West-östlicher Divan (“Divan of East
and West”).
Works of the storm and stress period
Goethe's stay in Leipzig was cut short by severe illness,
andby the autumn of 1768 he was back home. A long
convalescence fostered introspection and religious
mysticism. He played with alchemy, astrology, and occult
philosophy, all of which left their mark on Faust. On his
recovery it was decided that he should pursue legal studies
in Strassburg as a first stage on the way to Paris and the
Grand Tour (never actually completed). His stay there proved
a turning point for his whole life and work. In this German
capital of a French province, he experienced a reaction
against the cosmopolitan atmosphere of Leipzig and under the
impact of the great cathedral proclaimed his conversion to
the Gothic German ideal. More decisive still was the
influence of J.G. Herder, who spent the winter of 1770–71
there undergoing treatment for his eyes. From him Goethe
learned the role played by touch, the haptic sense, in the
growth of the mind; a new view of the artist as a creator
fashioning forms expressive of feeling; a new theoryof
poetry as the original and most vital language of man; the
virtues of a new style, that of the Volkslied (folk song)
and the poetry of “primitive” peoples as enshrined in the
Bible, the epics of Homer, and the poems attributed
(falsely) to Ossian, a 3rd-century Celtic poet. It is this
new sense of felt immediacy, and of the plasticity of his
linguistic medium, that informs the lyrics Goethe wrote to
one of his early loves, Friederike Brion, the pastor's
daughter of Sesenheim. They mark the beginning of a new
epoch in the German lyric. Such poems as “Mailied” (“May
Song”) and “Willkommen und Abschied” (“Welcome and
Farewell”) are still the most popular, though not the
greatest, of his Lieder. The latter, especially in its
revised form of 1790, touchingly expresses the guilt he felt
that this time he himself had the role of deserter and
rejecter, and the whole idyll as recounted in Dichtung und
Wahrheit reveals that cross-fertilization of life and
literature that he increasingly saw as a potent factor in
human development.
If, as Herder maintained, energy was one of the marks of
poetry, it was clearly in the passions acted out on the
stage that it could find its most vital expression. And
where more vital than in the colossal figures of the “Gothic
Shakespeare”? In writing the Geschichte Gottfriedens von
Berlichingen mit der eisernen Hand dramatisiert (1771;
“TheDramatized History of Gottfried von Berlichingen of the
Iron Hand”), Goethe was deliberately vying with Shakespeare.
For the real Götz, who died two years before Shakespeare was
born, was near enough in time to represent that bustling
spacious 16th century, the animal vitality of which
contrasted so forcibly with the straitlaced affectations of
Goethe's own day. With the publication in 1773 of Götz von
Berlichingen , a radically tautened version of that
“History,” the Shakespeare cult was launched, and the Sturm
und Drang(storm and stress) movement was provided with its
first major work of genius. The manifesto of the movement,
heralded by Goethe's enthusiastic Rede zum Schakespears Tag
(“Conversation from Shakespeare's Day”), had appeared after
Goethe's return to Frankfurt in August 1771. “Von deutscher
Art und Kunst” (“Concerning German Natureand Art”), as it
was called, contained a defense of German nationality by the
historian J.M. Möser, two essays by Herder championing
Ossian and Shakespeare, and a rhapsody on Gothic
architecture by Goethe.
Though ostensibly in practice as a lawyer, the young poet
now found himself caught up in a whirl of literary and
social duties—helping to edit the Frankfurter Gelehrte
Anzeigen (“Frankfurt Scholarly Reviews”), for instance—and
it was to break loose from this that he left for Wetzlar,
seat of the supreme court of the Empire. But again
literature won the day over law, and an impassioned yet
self-ironic ode in free verse, “Wandrers Sturmlied”
(“Wanderer's Storm Song”), is testimony both to a recently
inspired admiration for Pindar, the greatest lyric poet of
ancient Greece, and to a hesitant certainty that he himself
might be destined for greatness. And in Wetzlar he
experienced a new passion, this time for a girl safely out
of reach from the start, Charlotte Buff. Her betrothed,
Johann Christian Kestner, showed great understanding until,
as it seemed to him, he found the affair exposed to public
gaze in Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (The Sorrows of Young
Werther; 1774).
But much besides the Wetzlar experience had gone into the
making of this novel: Herder's scathing comments on his
young pupil's lack of formal- and self-mastery; the recent
indictment by G.E. Lessing of the Neoplatonic doctrine of
artistic creation in Emilia Galotti; a passing attraction to
Maximiliane, the daughter of the German novelist Sophie von
La Roche, who probably endowed his heroine with her black
eyes. And it was only when Kestner reported the suicide of a
Wetzlar acquaintance who had killed himself out of hopeless
love that all this was precipitated into a plot. If Werther
took the world by storm it was because, in Thomas Carlyle's
words, it gave expression to “the nameless unrest and
longing discontent which was then agitating every bosom.”
But this first novel is no sentimental tearjerker. Nor is
disappointed love its real theme. It is rather what the 18th
century called Enthusiasm: the fatal effects of a
predilectionfor absolutes, whether in love, art, society, or
the realm of thought. The mind that conceived its symmetry,
wove its intricate linguistic patterns, and handled the
subtle differentiation of hero and narrator was moved by a
formal as well as a personal passion. Even the title has
been trivialized in translation: Sorrows (instead of
“Sufferings”) obscures the allusion to the Passion of Christ
and individualizes what Goethe himself thought of as a
“general confession,” in a tradition going back to St.
Augustine.
Besides Werther and Götz, the period 1771–75 saw the
appearance of a number of magnificent hymns—lyrical or
dramatic, according to whether the influence of Pindar or
Shakespeare prevailed—“Cäsar,” “Mahomets Gesang” (“Mahomet's
Singing”), “Der Ewige Jude” (“The Eternal Jew”),
“Prometheus,” “Sokrates,” “Satyros,” “Der Wandrer” (“The
Wanderer”); the inception of Egmont and Faust (this
so-called Urfaust, or “original” version of Faust, was
discovered by a lucky chance in 1887); the completion of
Clavigo , a play of more “regular” form on a theme of the
French playwright Beaumarchais, and of Stella (1775), with
its conciliatory ending of a mariage à trois, subsequently
conventionalized into tragedy. Two operettas, Erwin und
Elmire and Claudine von Villa Bella, reflect a return to the
elegance of Rococo inspired by Goethe's betrothal to Lili
Schönemann, daughter of a rich banker, who moved in
fashionable circles that were soon to prove unbearably
restrictive to the young Stürmer und Dränger. From the
conflicts of this love he took refuge, as so often, in
nature; and in a poem written on the lake of Zürich, “Auf
dem See” (“On the Lake”), created the first of those many
short lyrics in which language of radiant simplicity is made
the vehicle of inexhaustible significance. With his
departure for Weimar in November 1775, the engagement was
allowed to lapse.
The mature years at Weimar
Going to Weimar was the major turning point of Goethe's
life. He went on a visit to the reigning duke, Charles
Augustus. It remained his home—despite Napoleon's invitation
to Paris—until his death there on March 22, 1832. From now
on, mastery of life became his chief concern; and Wilhelm
Meisters Lehrjahre (Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship ;
1824), the title he eventually gave his next novel
(1795–96), suggests the long apprenticeship such mastery
involves. He served his own in the innumerable and ever
increasing official duties the young duke heaped on his
willing shoulders until, as indispensable minister of the
little state, he was inspecting mines, superintending
irrigation schemes, and even organizing the issue of
uniforms to its tiny army.
He served his apprenticeship, too, in his passionate
devotionto the wife of a court official, Charlotte von
Stein. For the first time he found himself in love with a
woman who could also meet him on the intellectual plane.
From the 1,500 or so letters he wrote her we can see her
become the guiding principle of his life, teaching him the
graces of society, dominating the details of his daily
existence, engaging his imagination and desire, yet
insisting on a relation governed by decorum and conventional
virtue. She would be his sister and nothing more, and the
sublimation she increasingly enforced on him, though
irksome, could inspire the almost psychoanalytical probings
of “Warum gabst du uns die tiefen Blicke?” (“Why did you
give us the deep glances?”), the tortures of Orestes and
their assuagement by Iphigenie, the delicate one-act play,
Die Geschwister (“Brother and Sister”; 1776), and such
well-loved lyrics as “An den Mond” (“To the Moon”), “Der
Becher” (“The Cup”), “Jägers Abendlied” (“Hunter's Evening
Song”), “Seefahrt” (“Sea Journey”), and the two exquisite
“Wandrers Nachtlieder” (“Wanderer's Night Songs”).
In these and other poems of this period—“Grenzen der
Menschheit” (“Limits of Mankind”), “Gesang der Geister über
den Wassern” (“Singing of the Spirits over the Water”), “Das
Göttliche” (“The Divine”), “Harzreise im Winter” (“Journey
in the Harz Mountains in Winter”), “Ilmenau”—nature has
ceased to be a mere reflection of man's moods and has become
something existing in its own right, a setting for an idea
or a force indifferent, even hostile to him. This new
“objectivity” is in tune with Goethe's growing scientific
preoccupations. Yet such is his versatility that he could,
when he chose, revert to the temper of “Der König in Thule”
(“The King in Thule”; written in 1774) and compose ballads
such as “Erlkönig” (“King of the Elves”) or “Der Fischer”
(“The Fisherman”), in which nature bears the projection of
unconscious forces; while a number of Singspiele, or musical
plays, betoken his readiness and ability to provide light
entertainment for the court. Der Triumph der Empfindsamkeit
(“The Triumph of Sensibility”) even satirizes the
sensibility his own Werther had helped to foster.
But neither the cares of state nor those of a frustrating
love affair were conducive to the peace and leisure required
to complete works of such magnitude as Egmont, Faust, Tasso,
and Iphigenie (a prose version of this last was sufficiently
advanced to be put on before the court in 1779 with Goethe
himself in the role of Orestes). And in September 1786, in
dramatic secrecy and with the haste of one pursued, he set
out on his long-postponed Italian journey. This flight was
at once a death and a rebirth. And it was in these terms
that he wrote of it in his letters. He sought the renewal of
himself, both as man and artist, and so deliberately cut
himself off from his emotional, literary, and cultural past,
scorning the “Gothic follies” he had once acclaimed,
rejecting Juliet's tomb in Verona in favour of the Greek
steles in the museum, finding delight in Palladio's churches
rather than in San Marco or the doge's palace, devoting
barely three hours to Florence, and ignoring completely the
medieval glories of Assisi for the sake of its temple of
Minerva, feverishly bent on arriving in Rome, “capital of
the ancient world,” but seeing even that as a prelude to
Magna Graecia, to the temples of Paestum, and the revelation
of classical grandeurin Sicily, “key to the whole,” a
prelude to the world of Homer, which he recaptured in a
glorious dramatic fragment, Nausikaa (1787). And just as he
sought and found the Urmensch, or archetypal man, in the
forms of Greek antiquity, so in these landscapes there came
to his mind the extension of this idea to plants as well. In
his literary work these pursuits led to the creation of
beings who are individual manifestations but of a clearly
discernible type; tothemes that are universal and timeless
but treated in a highly differentiated way; to the measured
cadences of verse that are yet vibrant with personal
passion.
This new conception of form is apparent in the revision of
the four plays he had taken with him to Italy. Faust, Ein
Fragment (“Faust, a Fragment”), published in 1790, is quite
clearly, by its excisions as well as its additions, a step
in the direction of the stupendous cultural symbol the play
would eventually become rather than any attempt to weld into
dramatic unity the sharply individualized episodes of the
original version, the Urfaust. Egmont, though not actually
cast into verse, is raised to the level of poetic drama not
by virtue of its frequent iambic rhythms but by a thickening
of the verbal texture, so that when music finally takes over
it seems the inevitable culmination of a gradual convergence
and sudden contraction of themes rather than the “salto
mortale (i.e., somersault) into the world of opera” Schiller
was to dub it. By such means, the personal and the political
aspects of the problem become completely interfused—Egmont
and his beloved Klärchen, the most lovable characters Goethe
ever created, are embodiments of an inner freedom that is a
heightened form of the easygoing independence of the
Netherlands people—and what had started as a dramatic
portrayal of a daemonic individual is transformed into a
tragedy of the very idea of freedom, of its fate in a world
ruled not just by calculation or intrigue but by
unpredictable conjunctures of persons and events.
In Torquato Tasso such linguistic density is carried to
lengths possible only in verse. Goethe spoke of having
expended a positively “unlawful care” on it. But this is not
inappropriate to a play about a poet, an artist whose
mediumis the ordinary vehicle of communication between men.
The tragic conflict here arises from misunderstandings about
the various modes of language, and the temperamental clashes
are presented as concomitants of this rather than as the
prime focus of interest (though there is enough psychology
to justify the description by the French writer Mme de Staël
of Goethe as “le Racine de l'Allemagne”). The slightness of
the outward action in Torquato Tasso has been much
criticized, but it can be justified in a study of the
“poetical character” per se—a creature for whom “any little
vexation grows in five minutes into a theme for Sophocles.”
By placing him in a society that, far from being indifferent
or hostile, cherishes him and values his work, Goethe has
thrown into sharpest relief the incurable “discrepancy”
between poet and world, and this rift is not healed by
Tasso'sdiscovery that even the extremes of anguish can be
transmuted into imperishable verse.
But it was perhaps Iphigenie auf Tauris (1787) that
benefitted most from his encounter with classical antiquity.
And yet Schiller was right in calling it “astonishingly
modern and un-Greek.” Like Tasso, it too treats of the
problems of communication: of the unforeseeable power of
words once they are released into the world; of the double
face of language, which conceals as much as it reveals; of
truth, whose opposite is not just an outright lie but the
withholding of self. But it treats, too, of man's power to
free himself from his myths by recognizing them as
projections of his own unconscious, of his power to break
the chain of events that seems to determine his present
(symbolized in the monotonously regular crime sequence of
the race of Tantalus) by a reorientation of outlook. The
conciliatory ending, which Euripides contrived by the sudden
appearanceof the goddess Athena, here comes with the
apparent suddenness of new insight: the words of the oracle
are susceptible to a different interpretation. In its
synthesis of Greek and Christian values, its elevation of
the physical to the spiritual through the identification of
Iphigenie with the divine sister, Diana, this play
represents the highest achievement of 18th-century humanism.
The chief lyrical product of the Italian journey was the
Römische Elegien (“Roman Elegies”; written 1788–89). In
their plastic beauty and unabashed sensuality, their
blending of erotic tenderness with an enhanced sense of our
cultural heritage, these pagan, highly civilized poems are
unique in any modern language. Had they been written in
themetre of Byron's Don Juan, Goethe acknowledged, they
might easily have been offensive; but the classical distichs
(couplets) lend them that veil of aesthetic distance that
reveals even as it shrouds. The true begetter of these
elegies was not some passing Roman amour but Christiane
Vulpius, daughter of a humble official, whom Goethe had
taken into heart and home soon after his return from Italy
in April 1788. Christiane bore him several children; but it
was not until 1806, when life and property were threatened
by the French invasion, that the nonconformist eventually
conformed and in grateful recognition of its indissoluble
bonds regularized their union in the eyes of society.
His first Italian journey finally brought home to Goethe
that,for all his interest and talent, he was not destined to
be a painter. Despite diligent practice with his artist
friends in Rome, he was never able to master this medium to
the point at which it became expressive of his deepest
feeling, and with rare exceptions his numerous drawings have
no more than the charm of a sensitive amateur. But his
abiding preoccupation with the visual arts left an indelible
mark on his literary as well as his scientific work and gave
added precision to his many critical and aesthetic essays.
And it was on this first visit to Italy, too, that he
finally reached the decision that he must shed his
administrative duties and devote himself henceforth to his
true vocation of literature and science.
A return visit to Italy in 1790 brought nothing but
disappointment, and a restlessness aggravated by the
revolutionary events in the outer world. The Epigramme.
Venedig 1790. (“Venetian Epigrams of 1790”) reflect
something of this discontent. In 1792 Goethe accompanied his
duke on the disastrous campaign into France, was present at
the battle of Valmy, and wrote up his experiences in two
still very readable war books, Campagne in Frankreich 1792
and Belagerung von Mainz (“Siege of Mainz”). His
liberal-conservative attitudes found expression in Reineke
Fuchs (“Reynard the Fox”), a recasting of the Low German
satire, the Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten
(“Conversations of German Emigrants”), and three plays. Der
Gross-Cophta, Die Aufgeregten (“The Agitated”), and Der
Bürgergeneral (“The Citizen General”), which, though
artistically unsuccessful, are of interest in being among
the few examples of political literature produced by German
poets. But it was only as the French Revolution receded that
he was able to transmute its overwhelming actuality into
timeless poetry. It still forms the background of his
Homeric treatment of the refugee problem, Hermann und
Dorothea (1797). It fills the whole canvas of Die Natürliche
Tochter (“The Natural Daughter”; 1804). Planned as a trilogy
but never completed, this was Goethe's final reckoning with
the greatest event of his time. Beneath the coolness of its
formalperfection there stirs a profound concern with
revolutionary phenomena, with the role of death and
destruction in the perpetuation of social and cultural, no
less than of natural, forms of life.
Schiller and the classical ideal
The human and spiritual isolation in which Goethe found
himself on his return from Italy was unexpectedly relieved
by the development of a friendship with Schiller. His
acceptance of a formal invitation to contribute to a new
journal, Die Horen (1795–97; “The Horae”), called forth
Schiller's now-famous letter of August 23, 1794, in which,
with marvelous insight, he summed up Goethe's whole
existence. Here, it seemed to him, was the very embodiment
of the naive poet—but consciously naive, moving from feeling
to reflection and then transforming reflection back into
feeling, concepts of the mind back into percepts of the
senses. It was this conscious assent to a mode of thinking
different from Schiller's own more abstractive reflection
thatmade possible their immensely fruitful partnership, and
the four volumes of their daily correspondence offer not
only an invaluable commentary on the ideals and achievements
of the greatest period of German literature but astonishing
insight into the processes of artistic creation. Some of the
works Goethe produced during the next few years are
embodiments of their classical ideal. Hermann und Dorothea,
one of the best loved, is his attempt to “produce a Greece
from within.” In it he claimed to have “separated the purely
human from the dross.” The characters are types—except
forthe hero and heroine, they have no proper names, and even
theirs are symbolic—and like those of the Odyssey they
vindicate peace and home and the domestic virtues. Yet, as
always in Goethe's works, these are shown as never secure
for long, as constantly in need of being fostered by man's
efforts to be human and humane. In the Helena act of Faust,
Part II, in which the meeting and mating of Faust and Helen
ofTroy marks the synthesis of paganism and Christianity, of
Greece and Germany, he captured the Greek spirit so
successfully that competent critics hold that if translated
into Attic Greek it might well pass for a lost fragment of
the Athenian stage.
A never completed epic, Achilleis, is his last attempt to
“be a Greek after his own fashion.” Other works of this
period are in tune with Schiller's growing conviction that
the only future for literature in a world that increasingly
clamoured for the naturalistic and the tendentious lay in a
hermetic closing of the poetic world by a frank introduction
of symbolic devices. Wilhelm Meisters Theatralische Sendung
(“Wilhelm Meister'sTheatrical Mission”; a manuscript of this
version turned up in1910) is now widened to a vocation for
life, a theme dear to the heart of Schiller, who had himself
just completed a treatise Über die ästhetische Erziehung des
Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen (1795; “On the Aesthetic
Education of Man in a Series of Letters”) and wholly in tune
with their joint conviction that art, though not the
handmaid of either truth or morality, has nevertheless its
own peculiar part to play in making better men and better
citizens. Fictional realism is now blended with abstraction;
characterization, however psychologically acute,
subordinated to an overall poetic significance; and the
presence in a novel of contemporary society of such
mysteriously compelling figures as the Harper and Mignon
seems to justify Goethe's claim that his novel is
“thoroughly symbolic.”
It was Schiller, too, who turned his thoughts to the
continuation of Faust and discerned the difficulties
involved in reconciling this “barbarous composition” with
their classical ideal, in blending the evident seriousness
of its “idea” with that element of “play” that was the
prerequisite of the art of the future. By his insistence on
such problems, he inspired the fictional framework of
Faust's “Prelude on the Stage” no less than the
philosophical framework of the “Prologue in Heaven.” If, in
spite of such indications, the world insisted on reading
Faust, Part I (1808) as a love story, which stamped its
author as a Romantic, it was because at this stage the
almost unbearable pathos of the Gretchen tragedy had not yet
found its place in the wider tragedy of Western man.
Goethe and Schiller blamed the failure of the journals in
which they strove to propagate their ideals of art and
literature (Goethe's Propyläen, 1798–1800, was a
quasi-successor to Schiller's Horen) on the indifference of
anuncultivated public and vented their disappointment in
Xenien, approximately 400 mordant distichs in the manner of
Martial. A more positive reply to their detractors was a
wonderful harvest of ballads. Goethe's own—“Der Schatzgräber”
(“The Treasure Digger”), “Die Braut von Korinth” (“The Bride
from Corinth”), “Der Zauberlehrling” (“The Sorcerer's
Apprentice”)—differ from his earlier ones in that man rather
than nature now holds sway. The “white” magic of reflection
is consciously, even ironically, introduced. And in the
ballad, with its blend of lyric, epic, and dramatic
elements, Goethe now discerned the Urei, or archetypal form,
of poetry by analogy with the Urpflanze (archetypal plants)
he had discovered in the vegetable world.
Goethe's relation to the Romantics
With Schiller's death in 1805, Goethe felt he had lost “the
half of his existence,” and he wrote a magnificent tribute
to his great friend in Epilog zu Schillers Glocke (“Epilogue
to Schiller's Bells”). His intellectual loneliness was eased
in some measure by his relations to the new school of
Romantics then flourishing in Jena, for they had much in
common. Friedrich von Schlegel had begun his career with a
book extolling Greek culture and gone on to praise the
Orientas the summit of Romantic thought and poetry. His
brother Wilhelm's absorption in form and metre was after
Goethe's own heart, and he could not be indifferent to their
enthusiastic praise of Wilhelm Meister or to Novalis'
description of him as “the viceregent of poetry upon earth.”
In Bettina Brentano, daughter of his old love, Maximiliane
von La Roche, he found an ardent response to both his genius
and his humanity, and her Briefwechsel Goethes mit einem
Kinde (1835; “Goethe's Correspondence with a Child”) remains
one of the most readable books in German literature,
whatever doubts may be cast on its reliability. Though
Goethe decried the Romantics as “forced talents,”
amateurishly oblivious of the virtues of form, though he
deplored their catholicizing tendencies, their uncritical
addiction to all things medieval, their attempts to blur the
literary genres and confuse the boundaries between art and
life, he yet remained open to many of their enthusiasms,
even letting himself be moved to a renewed interest in
Gothic architecture. And in Die Wahlverwandtschaften (1809)
he drew heavily for his thematic material upon their
preoccupation with “the night-side of nature,” with the
animal, magnetic affinities that attract human beings to
each other, as elements are attracted in the chemical world.
But this novel offers no support at all for a superstitious
surrender to forces natural or supernatural, for a subhuman
abdication of moral responsibility. Catastrophe follows
inexorably upon the arbitrary interpretation of signs and
portents; the heroine enters upon a path of renunciation
thatbrings her near sainthood; marriage may be presented
with ruthless realism as “a synthesis of impossibilities,”
but it remains nevertheless “the beginning and end of all
civilization.” The Romantics were here taught a lesson of
social behaviour—and of artistic form. The narrative is
conducted with a serene impartiality, and all the classical
values of plasticity, restraint, and symmetry are brought to
bear on a subject that is sensational to the point of
improbability.
By their translations—Romanticism is translation, Clemens
Brentano declared—the Romantics were opening up the literary
treasures of the world, and Weltliteratur was to become one
of Goethe's most treasured concepts. Its aim was, as he put
it, to advance civilization by encouraging mutual
understanding and respect—whether through translation or
criticism (his own attempts to interpret Serbianpoetry to
the Germans is an excellent example of this latter) or
through the blending of different literary traditions. Two
great ballads, “Der Gott und die Bajadere” (“God and the
Dancing Girl”) and “Paria” (“Outcast”), and two exquisite
cycles, the late and lesser known Chinesisch-Deutsche Jahres-
und Tageszeiten (“Chinese-German Hours and Seasons”; 1830)
and the West-östlicher Divan (1819), are hisown outstanding
attempts to marry East with West. This latter is a book of
love in all its aspects—tender, playful, sensuous, ironic,
wise, and wanton—all of it irradiated by that quality of
Geist—of intellect, spirit, wit—which he discerned as “the
predominant passion” of Persian poetry. His living muse this
time, Marianne, the young wife of his friend von Willemer,
was perhaps the most completely satisfying of all his loves,
so attuned to him in spirit that she could even take a hand
in the creation of some of these poems.
The last decade
But the world vision of the aging poet did not only find
expression in a silent communing with the past. In his last
years, Goethe found himself a world figure, and little
Weimar became a Mecca that drew a constant stream of
pilgrims from both the Old World and the New. Reports of his
stiffness and reserve in the face of almost daily invasions
are far outweighed by the testimony of those to whom he
showed warmth, understanding, an insatiable curiosity
aboutwhat was going on in the outside world, and an abiding
openness to the present and the future. This is nowhere
moreapparent than in Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre (1821–29;
“Wilhelm Meister's Travels”), with its commitment to social
and technological progress (what he would most like to see
before he died, Goethe once said, was the completion of
thePanama and Suez canals), to a type of education better
adapted to modern specialization than the old humanistic
studies, to a world no longer centred wholly in Europe—a
major “complication” of his plot is a resettlement plan for
emigrants in the land of the future (“Amerika, du hast es
besser!” [“America, you are better off!”]). Wilhelm Meister
points the truth that mastery of life is not conferred at
the end of the “apprentice years” and henceforth an
inalienable possession, but a ceaseless wandering in which
the goal turns out to be the way, and the way the goal.
At first sight the subtitle, Die Entsagenden (“The
Renunciants”), seems curiously at odds with such
purposefulunrest. But renunciation for Goethe implies no
passive resignation to the status quo. It is a growing
acceptance of the limits imposed by life itself, limits
arising from the nature of space and time and from the
conflict of interests and potentialities. The apparent
formlessness of the novel reflects the duality of its title.
It meanders, its narrative interspersed with tales,
anecdotes, episodes and maxims, having but the loosest
connection with the plot but a formal, if often
subterranean, connection with the poetic significance. These
interpolations, like the increasingly symbolic characters,
display the whole spectrum of human modes of renunciation.
The “whole man” is here representednot by any single
individual but by a constellation of many, and the informing
principle is the spatial one of configuration rather than
the temporal one of succession.
Faust, too, is often decried as formless, though the climate
ofcriticism is now more propitious to the discovery of its “law.”The
array of lyric, epic, dramatic, operatic, and balletic
elements, of almost every known metre, from doggerel through
terza rima (an Italian form of iambic verse consisting of
stanzas of three lines) to six-foot trimeter (a line of
verse consisting of three measures), of styles ranging from
Greek tragedy through medieval mystery, baroque allegory,
Renaissance masque, commedia dell'arte, and the “temerities
of the English stage,” to something akin to the modern
revue, all suggest a deliberate attempt to make these
various forms a vehicle of cultural comment rather than any
failure to create a coherent form of his own. And thecontent
with which Goethe invests his forms bears this out. He draws
on an immense variety of cultural material—theological,
mythological, philosophical, political, economic,
scientific, aesthetic, musical, literary—for the more
realistic Part I no less than for the more symbolic Part
II(first published posthumously in 1832): if Faust's wooing
of Helena in the “Classic-Romantic Phantasmagoria” (as the
first publication of the scene in 1827 called it) is
accomplished by teaching her the unfamiliar delights of
rhymed verse, his seduction of Gretchen is firmly set in the
long tradition of erotic mysticism going back to the Song of
Solomon. The Faust myth is here made the medium of a
profoundly serious but highly ironic commentary on our
cultural heritage, presented not as historical
pageant—Faust's “progress” from his 18th- to 16th-century
beginnings back through the Middle Ages and classical
antiquity to the origins of life, and beyond that to the
“Mothers,” timeless source of all forms of being, annuls the
historical time sequence—but as a drama of the diverse
potentialities that coexist in Western civilization.
This Faust, unlike his creator, is the very type of Western
man, with two souls warring within his breast and a
restlesslyinquiring spirit. To the 19th century his
ceaseless striving seemed a good thing in itself. To a
generation shocked into doubts about progress and the value
of action, the disastrous consequences of his attempts to
experience “the weal and woe of all mankind” (the libido
sciendi of Marlowe'sFaustus is here but briefly indulged and
as swiftly transcended) loom larger than the quotable
“message” of any of the speeches, and his ultimate
“salvation” becomes correspondingly suspect. Yet the love
that bears his mortal remains to “higher spheres” does not
mitigate the ironic defeat of his highest mortal endeavour.
If the seal of approval is set on a spirit that has eluded
Mephisto's every effort to lull him into sloth, the evil
into which it led him is notcondoned. It needs the combined
intercession of human wisdom and human suffering, human
innocence and human experience, before compassionate verdict
is passed on the erring and straying of this soul “in
ferment.” Indeed, none of Goethe's conciliatory endings,
except that of Iphigenie, really removes the sting of
tragedy. Critics have tended to excuse or deplore them by
reference to his own konziliante Natur (his “conciliatory
nature”). But at least as relevant is his preoccupation with
the form of Greek trilogies and tetralogies and his
unorthodox interpretation of Aristotle's catharsis as an
effect only likely to be produced in the spectator if there
is a corresponding element of “reconciliation” in the
structure of the play itself. The apotheosis of the hero,
whether Faust's, Egmont's, or Ottilie'sin the
Wahlverwandtschaften, is always set in a context reminiscent
of a theophany and of the ritual origins of tragedy.
Nor can his interest in the cathartic effect of music be
ignored. Unlike the German Romantic poet Novalis, for
whommusic was “the key to the universe,” Goethe was
profoundly aware of its dual nature and as suspicious as
Plato of its orgiastic power. As in every art he looked for
the taming of the Dionysiac by the Apolline, nowhere more
movingly symbolized than by the taming of the lion through
the piping of the little child in his Novelle of 1828, a
theme he had already discussed with Schiller as far back as
1797. And increasingly he turned to music for assuagement of
his own suffering. His Trilogie der Leidenschaft (“Trilogy
of Passion”; 1823–27) is at once the lyrical precipitate of
an oldman's anguished love for a girl of 18 and a tribute to
the cathartic effect of this “heavenly art,” which restores
to life even as it soothes. His Zauberflöte, Zweiter Teil is
a tribute to his favourite Mozart's Magic Flute: Mozart
would, he thought, have been the ideal composer for Faust.
And one of the comforts of his later years was an intimate
friendship with the composer K.F. Zelter, whose most
brilliant pupil, the young Mendelssohn, afforded him hours
of musical delight and deepened his musical
understanding—though he never succeeded in reconciling him
to the daemonic aspects of Beethoven's music.
By common consent, Faust is one of the supreme, if as yet
unclassified, achievements of literature. But there were
moments when Goethe rated his scientific work higher than
all his poetry. His predilection for his Farbenlehre
(“Theory of Colour”; 1805–10) has something of the love of a
parent for a problem child, and nothing is easier than for
the physicist to pick holes in his systematic attempt to
prove Newton wrong, or for the psychologist to find the
cause of hisstubbornness in his sense of mathematical
inadequacy or in his neurotic attachment to the doctrine
that light is one and indivisible and never to be explained
by any theory of particles. On the other hand, the
usefulness of the Psycho-Physiological Section, together
with his study Entoptische Farben (“Entoptic Images”), is
generally acknowledged, while the Historical Section is
something of a pioneer work in the writing of the history of
science. His work in botany and biology is less
controversial. His Metamorphose der Pflanzen (“Attempt to
Explain the Metamorphosis of Plants”; 1790) is a model of
presentation, and the drawings in it are a botanist's
delight. His main thesis, that all the parts of the plant
are modifications of a type-leaf, has met with a measure of
acceptance, though his categorical neglect of the root is
regarded as an unscientific exclusion of a possible area of
relevance. His hypothesis of atype-plant, by contrast,
commands no interest among orthodox botanists today. His
discovery in 1784, arrived at independently even if he was
not the first to make it, of a recognizable os
intermaxillare (the premaxilla of modern anatomists) in the
human species was yet another result of his sustained quest
for unity and continuity in nature and caused Darwin to hail
him as a forerunner.
But what makes for the continuing interest of Goethe's
science is not his discoveries: he could not always claim
priority for them at the time, nor was he in the least
interested in doing so. It is his insight into his methods
of arriving at them. Few have been as aware of the mental
processes involved in the study of natural phenomena; few
have been more alive to the hazards that beset the
scientist,at every level, from sheer observation to the
construction of a theory; and few have been more conscious
of the unwittingtheorizing involved in even the simplest act
of perception. And no one has argued more convincingly that
the only way of coping with this inescapable involvement of
the observer in the phenomena to be observed is to let
“knowledge of self” develop with “knowledge of world.”
Such scrupulous awareness of his own mental operations was,
of course, of paramount importance in morphology, the
science Goethe founded and named. Morphology, as he
understood it, was the systematic study of formation and
transformation—whether of rocks, clouds, colours, plants,
animals, or the cultural phenomena of human society—as these
present themselves to sentient experience. He did not
propose it as a substitute for the quantitative sciences,
which break down forms as we know them and by converting
them into mathematical terms ensure a measure of prediction
and control. He was not, contrary to common belief, opposed
to analysis—one of his favourite maxims was that analysis
and synthesis must alternate as naturally as breathing in
and breathing out—and his only objection to physics was its
increasing tendency to claim monopoly of understanding. What
he was aiming at was rather a humanizing supplement, an
understanding of nature in all itsqualitative
manifestations; and one of his most impassionedpleas is for
a concert of all the sciences, a cooperation of all types of
method and mind.
This impulse, to find a scientific as well as an aesthetic
corrective to the inevitably esoteric tendencies of
specialization, is nowhere more apparent than in his two
elegies on plant and animal metamorphosis in which he tries
to present to imagination and feeling what has been
understood by the mind. They eventually took their place in
a cycle of philosophical poems entitled Gott und Welt (“God
and World”). Though no orthodox believer, Goethe was by no
means the pure pagan the 19th-century critics liked to
imagine. Spinoza's pantheism certainly struck a
sympatheticchord, for the Deist idea of a God who, having
created the world, then left it to revolve, was repugnant to
him. But he was and remained a grateful heir of the
Christian tradition—bibelfest, rooted in the Bible—as his
language constantly proclaims. And it was from this centre
that he extended sympathetic understanding to all other
religions, seeking their common ground without destroying
their individual excellences, seeing them as different
manifestations of an Ur, or archetypal, religion and thus
giving expression, in this field as elsewhere, to the
essentially morphological temper of his mind. “Panentheism”
has been proposed as a more exact term for his belief in a
divinity at once immanent and transcendent, and he rebuked
those who tried to confine him to one mode of thought by
saying that as poet he was polytheist, as scientist
pantheist, and that when, as a moral being, he had need of a
personal God, “that too had been taken care of.” This was
one of the meanings he attached to the biblical text: “In my
father's house are many mansions.”
Appraisal
A day will come, Carlyle predicted in a letter to Ralph
Waldo Emerson, when “you will find that this sunny-looking
courtly Goethe held veiled in him a Prophetic sorrow deep as
Dante's.” And since World War II there have been many
attempts to replace the image of the serene optimist by that
of the tortured skeptic. The one is as inadequate as the
other—as inadequate as T.S. Eliot's conclusion that he was
sage rather than poet—though this is perhaps inevitable when
a writer is such a master of his own medium that even his
prose proves resistant to translation. Even his Werther knew
that the realities of existence are rarely to be grasped by
Either-Or. And the reality of Goethe himself certainly
eludes any such attempt. If he was a skeptic, and he often
was, he was a hopeful skeptic. He looked deep into the
abyss, but he deliberately emphasized life and light. He
livedlife to the full at every level, but never to the
detriment of the civilized virtues. He remained closely in
touch with the richness of his unconscious mind, but he shed
on it the light of reflection without destroying the
spontaneity of its processes. He was, as befits a son of the
Enlightenment, wholly committed to the adventure of science;
but he stood in awe and reverence before the mystery of the
universe. Goethe nowhere formulated a system of thought. He
was asimpatient of the sterilities of logic chopping as of
the inflations of metaphysics, though he acknowledged his
indebtedness to many philosophers, including Kant. But here
again he was not to be confined. Truth for him lay not in
compromise but in the embracing of opposites. And this is
expressed in the form of his Maximen (“maxims”), which,
together with his Gespräche (“conversations”), contain the
sum of his wisdom. As with proverbs, one can always find
among them a twin that expresses the complementary opposite.
And they have something of the banality of proverbs too. But
it is, as André Gide observed, “une banalitésupérieure.”
What makes it “superior” is that the thought hasbeen felt
and lived and that the formulation betrays this. Andfor all
his specialized talents, there was a kind of “superior
banality” about Goethe's life. If he himself felt it was
“symbolic” and worth presenting as such in a series of
autobiographical writings, it was not from arrogance but
from a realization that he was an extraordinarily ordinary
man in whom ordinary men might see themselves reflected. Not
an ascetic, a mystic, a saint, or a recluse, not a Don Juan
or a poet's poet but one who to the best of his ability had
tried to achieve the highest form of l'homme moyen sensuel—which
is perhaps what Napoleon sensed when aftertheir meeting in
Erfurt he uttered his famous “Voilà un homme!”
Elizabeth M. Wilkinson
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Goethe in the Roman Campagna (1786) by Johann Heinrich Wilhelm
Tischbein.
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The Sorrows of Young Werther
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1749-1832
The Sorrows of Young Werther, the novel which first made Goethe
internationally famous, tells a story of a young man afflicted
by a rather extreme dose of eighteenth-century sensibility:
Werther is a case study of over-reliance on emotion,
imagination, and close introspection. Our hero is sent to the
fictional village of Walheim on family business where he meets
and promptly falls in love with Lotte. This attractive young
woman, meanwhile, is engaged to another, the rational and rather
dull local official Albert. Once established, this triangle
places Werther at a complete impasse, and the impossibility of a
happy resolution drives him to take his own life. Part of the
novel's intrigue has always been its loose relation to actual
events: Goethe's relationship with Charlotte Buff, who was
engaged to his close friend Kestner, and the love-related
suicide of another friend, Karl Jerusalem (who borrowed pistols
from an unsuspecting Kestner for the deed). Another element of
the novel's success was its effective use of the epistolary
form. The narrative unfolds initially through Werther's letters
to a single correspondent. When Werther's psychological state
deteriorates, a fictive editor steps in, and the last part of
the novel is his arrangement of Werther's final scraps and
notes. The novel struck a powerful chord in its own time, and
its appearance was followed by what can only be called Werther
mania: would-be Werthers wore his trademark bluejacket and
yellow waistcoat, there was even Werther eau-de-cologne and
china depicting scenes from the novel. Legend also has it that
there were copy-cat suicides, which alarmed Goethe, since his
depiction of Werther was more critical than laudatory. The novel
was extensively revised in 1787 for a second version, which has
become the basis for most modern editions.
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Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1749-1832
Despite Goethe's forbidding stature, this is a delightful novel.
Goethe is engagingly worldly and wry, telling a story of
intellectual development and education with warmth, in what is
often considered the classic example of the bildungsroman.
Initially disillusioned by unrequited love, Wilhelm Meister
travels forth on various adventures, and joins a group of
itinerant players which affords him apprenticeship in life.
Offering a group portrait of the life of theater, much imbued
with Shakespeare, the novel celebrates and then undermines the
theatrical vocation. The humane realism of the early parts of
the novel deepens and modulates into something altogether more
unusual once the surfaces of theatricality and social
performance are penetrated, and mysterious characters hint at a
different kind of literary symbolism and intellectual
purpose.Goethe builds a richly ironic account of human
self-development across its knowingly flimsy plot structure,
somehow combining the ironizing good humor of Fielding's Tom
Jones with something more philosophical. Not to be confused with
Wilhelm Meister's Travels, this novel is especially recommended
reading for deluded thespians and wannabe aesthetes.
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Elective Affinities
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1749-1832
The phrase "elective affinities" is both precise and rich with
ambiguity. It evokes a condition ripe with emotional and
romantic possibilities. When Goethe chose Wahiverwandtschaften
as his title, however, it was a technical term used solely in
chemistry. That it subsequently came to have the connotations it
does— both in German and in English—is in large part due to the
power of Goethe's elegantly rigorous novel.
Using both a scientific configuration of desire and the
symbolism of nature, Goethe's novel is a complex, yet measured
and smoothly impersonal exploration of love. The marriage of
Charlotte and Eduard is used to examine the perceptions of
morality, fidelity, and self-development inscribed deeply within
the concept of love. When this marriage is interrupted and
challenged by the advent of the Captain and Ottilie, the state
of marriage takes on a pastoral hue, at once idyllic and unreal.
Through the reserved courtship between Charlotte and the Captain
and the consuming passion forged between Eduard and Ottilie, the
novel lingers on the irresistible chaos of desire.
The novel was condemned at first for its immoral thesis that
love had a chemical origin. But it is rather a sustained
reflection on the complications arising out of human intercourse
and demonstrates the ways in which our experience of other
people makes our experience of love and desire fluid and
unreliable. Just as love cannot be caught and immobilized in
marriage, desire cannot rest with one person.
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FAUST
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Type of work: Dramatic poem
Author: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)
Type of plot: Philosophical allegory
Time of plot: Timeless
Locale: The world
First published: 1790-1831
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A seminal work in the Romantic Movement, Faust dissects the
philosophical problem of human damnation brought about by the desire for
knowledge and personal happiness. A basically good man and a man of
genius, Faust sells his soul to the Devil in a contract stipulating that
only when he finds an experience so great that he wishes it to endure
forever can the Devil take his soul. He finally reaches his goal, but
the experience is one in which he helps his fellow man. Thus
Mephistopheles loses despite his efforts.
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Principal Characters
Faust (foust), a perpetual scholar with an insatiable mind and a
questing spirit. The middle-aged Faust, in spite of his enthusiasm for a
newly discovered source of power in the sign of the macrocosm, finds his
intellectual searches unsatisfactory and longs for a life of experiences
in the world of man. On the brink of despair and a projected suicide, he
makes a wager with the Devil that if he ever lies on his bed of
slothfulness or says of any moment in life, "Stay thou art so fair," at
that moment will he cease to be. He cannot be lured by the supernatural,
the sensual, the disembodied spiritual, but he does weaken in the
presence of pure beauty and capitulates to humanitarian action. He
displays himself as a sensual man in his deep love for Gretchen
(Margarete), only to be goaded to murder by her brother, who sees not
selfless love in their actions, but only sin. Faust aspires to the love
of Helen of Troy, but he is finally disconsolate when she appears. As an
old man he returns to his early vision of being a man among men. working
and preparing for a better world to be lived here on earth. His death is
not capitulation, though he thinks at this point man can cry "stay," and
he has never taken his ease or been tempted by a life of sloth. His
death is his victory and his everlasting life is to be lived
resourcefully among the creators.
Mephistopheles (mef-rstof's-lez), the Devil incarnate and Lucifer in
disguise of dog and man. Portrayed here as a sophisticate, cynic, and
wit, he is most persuasive and resourceful. He works magic, manages
miracles, creates spirits and situations for Faust's perusal and
delectation. His persistence is the more remarkable for the ability of
Faust to withstand and refute, though Mephistopheles often expresses
resentment. Somehow more attractive than God and the archangels, he
powerfully represents the positive force of evil in its many and
attractive guises.
Gretchen, sometimes called Margarete, an innocent, beautiful young
maiden. A foil for the Devil, Gretchen remarkably personifies womanly
love without blemish or fear. She gives herself to Faust, who swears he
cannot molest her, with an earthy abandon and remains for a time
unearthly innocent in her raptures, until the forces for morality
convince her she has sinned deeply and that she must pay first by
destroying her child and then by being sacrificed to the state,
suffering death for her transgressions. Brooding over her brother's
death, she refuses solace from her lover.
Valentin, a soldier and Gretchen's brother, killed by Faust with the aid
of Mephistopheles.
Wagner (vag'nsr), Faust's attendant, an unimaginative pedant. Serving as
a foil for Faust, Wagner expresses himself in scholarly platitudes and
learns only surface things. He aspires not to know all things but to
know a few things well, or at least understandably; the unobtainable he
leaves to Faust. He serves as the Devil's advocate, however, in the
temptation of Faust by helping Mephistopheles create Homunculus.
Homunculus (ho-mung'kyoo-lss), a disembodied spirit of learning. This
symbol of man's learning, mind separated from reality, interprets for
Mephistopheles, and accurately, what Faust is thinking. The spirit
discloses Faust's near obsession with ideal beauty, and thus Faust was
given the temptress, Helen of Troy.
Helen of Troy, who appears as a wraith at first and then with form.
Representing the classical concept of eternal or ideal beauty,
aesthetic, complete, Helen very nearly succeeds where Gretchen failed.
She finally seems to Faust only transitory beauty, no matter how
mythological and idealized. After this final experience Faust denounces
such hypothetical pursuits and returns to deeds.
Dame Mar the Schwerdtlein, Gretchen's neighbor and friend, an unwitting
tool in the girl's seduction.
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The Story
While three archangels were singing the praise of God's lofty works,
Mephistopheles, the Devil, appeared and said that he found conditions on
earth to be bad. The Lord tacitly agreed that man had his weaknesses,
but He slyly pointed out that His servant Faust could not be swayed from
the path of righteousness. Mephistopheles made a wager with the Lord
that Faust could be tempted from his faithful service. The Lord knew
that He could rely on the righteous integrity of Faust, but that
Mephistopheles could lead Faust downward if he were able to lay hold of
Faust's soul. Mephistopheles considered Faust a likely victim, for Faust
was trying to obtain the unobtainable.
Faust was not satisfied with all the knowledge he had acquired. He
realized man's limits, and he saw his own insignificance in the great
macrocosm. In this mood, he went for a walk with his servant, Wagner,
among people who were not troubled by thoughts of a philosophical
nature. In such a refreshing atmosphere, Faust was able to feel free and
to think clearly. Faust told Wagner of his two souls, one which clung to
earthly things and another which strove toward supersensual things that
could never be attained as long as his soul resided within his fleshly
body. Feeling so limited in his daily life and desiring to learn the
meaning of existence, Faust was ready to accept anything which would
take him to a new kind of life.
Mephistopheles recognized that Faust was ready for his attack. In the
form of a dog, Mephistopheles followed Faust to his home when the
scholar returned to his contemplation of the meaning of life. After
studying the Bible, he concluded that man's power should be used to
produce something useful. Witnessing Faust's struggle with his ideas,
the dog stepped forth in his true identity. But Faust remained unmoved
by the arguments of Mephistopheles.
The next time Mephistopheles came, he found Faust much more receptive to
his plot. Faust had decided that, although his struggles were divine, he
had produced nothing to show for them. Faust was interested in life on
this earth. At Mephistopheles' suggestion that he could peacefully enjoy
a sensual existence, Faust declared that if ever he could lay himself in
sloth and be at peace with himself, or if ever Mephistopheles could so
rule him with flattery that he became self-satisfied, then let that be
the end of Faust. But Faust had also renounced all things that made life
worthwhile to most men. So he further contracted with Mephistopheles
that if ever he found experience so profound that he would wish it to
endure, then Faust would cease to be. This would be a wager, not the
selling of a soul.
After two trials Mephistopheles had failed to tempt Faust with cheap
debauchery. The next offering he presented was love for a woman. First
Faust was brought to the Witch's Kitchen, where his youth was restored.
Then a pure maiden, Gretchen, was presented to Faust, but when he saw
her in her own innocent home, he vowed he could not harm her.
Mephistopheles wooed the girl with caskets of jewels which she thought
came from Faust, and Faust was so tempted that he returned to Gretchen.
She surrendered herself to him as a fulfillment of her pure love.
Gretchen's brother convinced her that her act was a shameful one in the
eyes of society. Troubled by Gretchen's grief, Faust finally killed her
brother. Gretchen at last felt the full burden of her sin.
Mephistopheles showed Faust more scenes of debauchery, but Faust's
spirit was elevated by the thought of Gretchen and he was able to
overcome the evil influence of the devil. Mephistopheles had hoped that
Faust would desire the moment of his fulfillment of love to endure.
However, Faust knew that enduring human love could not satisfy his
craving. He regretted Gretchen's state of misery, and he returned to
her; but she had killed her child and would not let her lover save her
from the death to which she had been condemned.
Mephistopheles brought Faust to the emperor, who asked Faust to show him
the most beautiful male and female who had ever existed—Paris, and Helen
of Troy. Faust produced the images of these mythological characters, and
at the sight of Helen, his desire to possess her was so strong that he
fainted, and Mephistopheles brought him back in a swoon to his own
laboratory. Mephistopheles was unable to comprehend Faust's desire for
the ideal beauty that Helen represented.
With the help of Wagner, Mephistopheles created a formless spirit of
learning, Homunculus, who could see what was going on in Faust's mind.
Homunculus, Mephistopheles, and Faust went to Greece, where
Mephistopheles borrowed from the fantastic images of classical mythology
one of their grotesque forms. With Mephistopheles' intervention, a
living Helen was brought to Faust. It seemed now, with the attainment of
this supreme joy of beauty in Helen, that Faust would cry for such a
moment to linger forever, but he soon realized that the enjoyment of
transitory beauty was no more enduring than his other experiences.
With a new knowledge of himself, Faust returned to his native land.
Achievement was now his goal, as he reaffirmed his earlier pledge that
his power should be used to produce something useful to man. The
mystical and magical powers which Faust had once held were banished so
that he could stand before nature alone. He obtained a large strip of
swamp land and restored it to productivity.
Many years passed. Now old and blind, Faust realized he had created a
vast territory of land occupied by people who would always be active in
making something useful for themselves. Having participated in this
achievement, Faust beheld himself as a man standing among free and
active people as one of them. At the moment when he realized what he had
created, he cried out for this moment, so fair to him, to linger on.
Faust had emerged from a self-centered egoist into a man who saw his
actions as a part of a creative society.
He realized that life could be worth living, but in that moment of
perception he lost his wager to Mephistopheles. The devil now claimed
Faust's soul, but in reality he too had lost the wager. The Almighty was
right. Although Faust had made mistakes in his life, he had always
remained aware of goodness and truth.
Seeing his own defeat, Mephistopheles attempted to prevent the ascension
of Faust's soul to God. Angels appeared to help Faust, however, and he
was carried to a place in Heaven where all was active creation—exactly
the kind of afterlife that Faust would have chosen.
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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe "Faust"
Illustrations by Harry Clarke
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Critical Evaluation
Faust, Goethe's masterwork, virtually summarizes his entire career,
stretching from the passionate storm and stress of his youth through his
classical phase in his middle years and ending with his mature
philosophical style. Its composition occupied him from the time of his
first works in the 1770s until his death in 1832, and each of its
various sections reveals new interests and preoccupations, as well as
different stylistic approaches. Yet the work as a whole possesses a
unity that testifies to the continuing centrality of the Faust subject
in Goethe's mind.
The first scenes composed, those of Faust in his study and the Gretchen
scenes, embody the spirit of the twenty-three-year-old Goethe, full of
university parodies on the one hand and titanic projects on the other, a
desire to fathom the depths of knowledge, to pass beyond all
limitations, typical of the brilliant young writers of this period. In
fact, Faust was originally one of a planned series of dramas about
heroic figures who transgress society's rules—Julius Caesar, Prometheus,
and Gotz von Ber-lichingen among them.
Goethe stresses the tragedy of the scholar whose emotional life is not
fulfilled and who quests after limitless knowledge, only to find himself
frustrated by mortal limitations. The scenes with Gretchen provide for
an emotional release, but leave Faust with a sense of guilt for the
destruction of purity. The theme of the unwed mother was a popular one
among young poets of this period, and represented a revolt against
traditional bourgeois values, giving occasion for much social criticism.
In the Gretchen scenes, Goethe, who as a student himself had romances
with simple small-town girls, evokes great sympathy for Gretchen, who
acts always out of sincere emotion and desires only the good. His theme
of the corruption of all human questing because of the inherent
imperfections of man's knowledge and will receives here its first
expression, though with no philosophical elaboration. Neither Faust nor
Gretchen wills evil, yet evil comes through Mephistopheles, who in his
every utterance is the cynic, opposed to Faust's idealist hopes and
exposing the coarse reality that in his view is the sole aspect of man's
life on earth. When Faust was first published as a fragment in 1790,
these elements, dating back to the 1770s, constituted the work.
Between 1797 and 1806, under Schiller's encouragement, Goethe returned
to Faust and created the Prologue in Heaven and the pact with
Mephistopheles, both of which are crucial to the philosophical aspect of
the work. Mephistopheles is no longer the absolute opponent of God, but
is included in the divine framework; he is a necessary force in
creation, a gadfly. The Faust action now becomes a wager between God and
Mephistopheles, which God necessarily must win. Thus the old blood
contract between Faust and Mephistopheles must make Faust deny his very
nature by giving up his quest for ever higher satisfactions, by giving
him a moment of absolute fulfillment. Damnation, for Goethe, is the
cessation of man's striving toward the absolute, and this striving is
good, no matter what mistakes man makes in his limited understanding.
This is made clear in the Prologue: God recognizes that man will err as
long as he strives, but He states that only by seeking after the
absolute, however confusedly, can man fulfill his nature. Mephistopheles
sees only the confusion, the futility of the results, and the coarseness
of man's life. He is blind to the visionary, poetic quality of Faust,
the quality which animates his quest. This relationship established in
part 1 will continue until the end of the play. In each episode, Faust
begins with an idealistic vision of what he seeks, but he never attains
it. Seen externally, Mephistopheles is always right—it is only
internally that Faust's quest has meaning.
In the original Faust story, Faust meets Helen of Troy, and this episode
occupied Goethe in the period of his fascination with the classical
world. The third act of part 2 is the union of Faust, the northern,
modern, Romantic quester, with Helen, representative of classical
harmony and ideal beauty. In this act, Goethe imitates first the style
of Greek tragedy, then brings Faust and Helen together in an idyllic
realm of fantasy filled with music. This music—Goethe actually wanted an
operatic interlude— underlines the purely aesthetic nature of this
experience. Helen cannot be the end of Faust's seeking; their
relationship can exist only in the mythical Arcadia, where reality,
symbolized perhaps by Helen's husband, Menelaus, cannot intrude. The act
was subtitled "Classic-Romantic Phantasmagoria," and Goethe followed it
immediately with a scene in which Faust sees visions of Helen and
Gretchen and is drawn toward the latter in spite of Helen's ideal
perfection. Gretchen, however tragic, is real.
The final sections of Faust were composed between 1825 and 1831. In
them, Faust's appearances at court are developed and the final scenes of
Faust's redemption return to the framework established in the Prologue.
Faust's last days are still unsatisfied and his quest is as violent as
ever—his merchant ships turn to piracy and a gentle old couple are
killed to make room for his palace. But his final vision is that of all
humanity, striving onward to turn chaos to order, seeking a dimly
imagined goal which is represented in the final scene by an endless
stairway. Here, on the path toward the Divine, Faust is to continue to
strive, and his life is redeemed by divine love, represented by
Gretchen, who in spite of her crimes is also here, a penitent, praying
for Faust. On earth all is transitory and insufficient. Only from the
point of view of the Divine does all the confused striving attain
meaning—meaning which was, in fact, implicit in the stanzas of the three
archangels sung at the opening of the work, 12,000 lines earlier.
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Faust
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Portrait of Goethe
by Eugene
Delacroix
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TRANSLATED BY ANNA
SWANWICK
NEW YORK: P.F. COLLIER & SON COMPANY, 1909–14
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Mephistopheles dans les airs
illustration by Eugene Delacroix
NIGHT
A high vaulted
narrow Gothic chamber. FAUST,
restless, seated at his desk.
FAUST
I HAVE, alas! Philosophy, |
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Medicine,
Jurisprudence too, |
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And to my cost
Theology, |
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With ardent labour,
studied through. |
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And here I stand,
with all my lore, |
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Poor fool, no wiser
than before. |
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Magister, doctor
styled, indeed, |
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Already these ten
years I lead, |
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Up, down, across,
and to and fro, |
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My pupils by the
nose,—and learn, |
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That we in truth
can nothing know! |
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That in my heart
like fire doth burn. |
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’Tis true I’ve more
cunning than all your dull tribe, |
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Magister and
doctor, priest, parson, and scribe; |
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Scruple or doubt
comes not to enthrall me, |
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Neither can devil
nor hell now appal me— |
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Hence also my heart
must all pleasure forego! |
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I may not pretend,
aught rightly to know, |
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I may not pretend,
through teaching, to find |
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A means to improve
or convert mankind. |
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Then I have neither
goods nor treasure, |
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No worldly honour,
rank, or pleasure; |
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No dog in such
fashion would longer live! |
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Therefore myself to
magic I give, |
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In hope, through
spirit-voice and might, |
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Secrets now veiled
to bring to light, |
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That I no more,
with aching brow, |
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Need speak of what
I nothing know; |
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That I the force
may recognise |
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That binds
creation’s inmost energies; |
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Her vital powers,
her embryo seeds survey, |
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And fling the trade
in empty words away. |
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O full-orb’d moon,
did but thy rays |
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Their last upon
mine anguish gaze! |
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Beside this desk,
at dead of night, |
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Oft have I watched
to hail thy light: |
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Then, pensive
friend! o’er book and scroll, |
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With soothing
power, thy radiance stole! |
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In thy dear light,
ah, might I climb, |
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Freely, some
mountain height sublime, |
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Round mountain
caves with spirits ride, |
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In thy mild haze
o’er meadows glide, |
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And, purged from
knowledge-fumes, renew |
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My spirit, in thy
healing dew! |
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Woe’s me! still
prison’d in the gloom |
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Of this abhorr’d
and musty room! |
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Where heaven’s dear
light itself doth pass, |
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But dimly through
the painted glass! |
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Hemmed in by
volumes thick with dust, |
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Worm-eaten, hid
’neath rust and mould, |
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And to the high
vault’s topmost bound, |
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A smoke-stained
paper compassed round; |
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With boxes round
thee piled, and glass, |
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And many a useless
instrument, |
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With old ancestral
lumber blent— |
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This is thy world!
a world! alas! |
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And dost thou ask
why heaves thy heart, |
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With tighten’d
pressure in thy breast? |
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Why the dull ache
will not depart, |
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By which thy
life-pulse is oppress’d? |
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Instead of nature’s
living sphere, |
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Created for mankind
of old, |
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Brute skeletons
surround thee here, |
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And dead men’s
bones in smoke and mould. |
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Up! Forth into the
distant land! |
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Is not this book of
mystery |
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By Nostradamus’
proper hand, |
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An all-sufficient
guide? Thou’lt see |
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The courses of the
stars unroll’d; |
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When nature doth
her thoughts unfold |
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To thee, thy soul
shall rise, and seek |
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Communion high with
her to hold, |
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As spirit doth with
spirit speak! |
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Vain by dull poring
to divine |
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The meaning of each
hallow’d sign. |
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Spirits! I feel you
hov’ring near; |
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Make answer, if my
voice ye hear! (He opens the book and
perceives the sign of the Macrocosmos.) |
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Faust dans son cabinet
illustration
by Eugene Delacroix
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Ah! at this
spectacle through every sense, |
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What sudden ecstasy
of joy is flowing! |
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I feel new rapture,
hallow’d and intense, |
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Through every nerve
and vein with ardour glowing. |
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Was it a god who
character’d this scroll, |
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The tumult in my
spirit healing, |
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O’er my sad heart
with rapture stealing, |
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And by a mystic
impulse, to my soul, |
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The powers of
nature all around revealing. |
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Am I a God? What
light intense! |
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In these pure
symbols do I see, |
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Nature exert her
vital energy. |
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Now of the wise
man’s words I learn the sense; |
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“Unlock’d
the spirit-world doth lie, |
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Thy sense
is shut, thy heart is dead! |
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Up scholar,
lave, with courage high, |
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Thine
earthly breast in the morning-red!” (He
contemplates the sign.) |
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How all things live
and work, and ever blending, |
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Weave one vast
whole from Being’s ample range! |
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How powers
celestial, rising and descending, |
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Their golden
buckets ceaseless interchange! |
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Their flight on
rapture-breathing pinions winging, |
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From heaven to
earth their genial influence bringing, |
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Through the wild
sphere their chimes melodious ringing! |
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A wondrous show!
but ah! a show alone! |
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Where shall I grasp
thee, infinite nature, where? |
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Ye breasts, ye
fountains of all life, whereon |
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Hang heaven and
earth, from which the withered heart |
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For solace yearns,
ye still impart |
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Your sweet and
fostering tides—where are ye—where? |
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Ye gush, and must I
languish in despair? (He turns over the
leaves of the book impatiently, and perceives
the sigh of the Earth-spirit.) |
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How all unlike the
influence of this sign! |
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Earth-spirit, thou
to me art nigher, |
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E’en now my
strength is rising higher, |
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E’en now I glow as
with new wine; |
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Courage I feel,
abroad the world to dare, |
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The woe of earth,
the bliss of earth to bear, |
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With storms to
wrestle, brave the lightning’s glare, |
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And mid the
crashing shipwreck not despair. |
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Clouds gather over
me— |
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The moon conceals
her light— |
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The lamp is
quench’d— |
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Vapours are rising—Quiv’ring
round my head |
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Flash the red
beams—Down from the vaulted roof |
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A shuddering horror
floats, |
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And seizes me! |
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I feel it, spirit,
prayer-compell’d, ’tis thou |
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Art hovering near! |
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Unveil thyself! |
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Ha! How my heart is
riven now! |
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Each sense, with
eager palpitation, |
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Is strain’d to
catch some new sensation! |
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I feel my heart
surrender’d unto thee! |
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Thou must! Thou
must! Though life should be the fee! (He
seizes the book, and pronounces mysteriously the
sign of the spirit. A ruddy flame flashes up;
the spirit appears in the flame.) |
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Faust et Wagner
illustration
by Eugene Delacroix
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SPIRIT
Who calls me? |
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FAUST (turning
aside)
Dreadful shape! |
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SPIRIT
With might, |
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Thou hast compelled
me to appear, |
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Long hast been
sucking at my sphere, |
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And now— |
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FAUST
Woe’s me! I cannot bear thy sight! |
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SPIRIT
To see me thou dost breathe thine invocation, |
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My voice to hear,
to gaze upon my brow; |
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Me doth thy strong
entreaty bow— |
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Lo! I am here!—What
cowering agitation |
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Grasps thee, the
demigod! Where’s now the soul’s deep cry? |
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Where is the
breast, which in its depths a world conceiv’d |
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And bore and
cherished? which, with ecstacy, |
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To rank itself with
us, the spirits, heaved? |
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Where art thou,
Faust? whose voice I heard resound, |
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Who towards me
press’d with energy profound? |
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Art thou he?
Thou,—who by my breath art blighted, |
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Who, in his
spirit’s depths affrighted, |
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Trembles, a crush’d
and writhing worm! |
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FAUST
Shall I yield, thing of flame, to thee? |
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Faust, and thine
equal, I am he! |
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SPIRIT
In the currents of life, in action’s storm, |
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I float and
I wave |
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With
billowy motion! |
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Birth and
the grave |
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A limitless
ocean, |
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A constant
weaving |
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With change
still rife, |
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A restless
heaving, |
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A glowing
life— |
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Thus time’s
whirring loom unceasing I ply, |
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And weave the
life-garment of deity. |
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FAUST
Thou, restless spirit, dost from end to end |
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O’ersweep the
world; how near I feel to thee! |
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SPIRIT
Thou’rt like the spirit, thou dost comprehend, |
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Not me! (Vanishes.) |
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FAUST
Not thee? |
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Whom then? |
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I, Gods own image! |
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And not rank with
thee! (A knock.) |
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Oh death! I know
it—’tis my famulus— |
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My fairest fortune
now escapes! |
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That all these
visionary shapes |
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A soulless
groveller should banish thus! (WAGNER in his
dressing gown and night-cap, a lamp in his hand.
FAUST turns round
reluctantly.) |
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WAGNER
Pardon! I heard you here declaim; |
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A Grecian tragedy
you doubtless read? |
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Improvement in this
art is now my aim, |
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For now-a-days it
much avails. Indeed |
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An actor, oft I’ve
heard it said, as teacher, |
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May give
instruction to a preacher. |
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FAUST
Ay, if your priest should be an actor too, |
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As not improbably
may come to pass. |
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WAGNER
When in his study pent the whole year through, |
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Man views the
world, as through an optic glass, |
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On a chance
holiday, and scarcely then, |
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How by persuasion
can he govern men? |
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FAUST
If feeling prompt not, if it doth not flow |
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Fresh from the
spirit’s depths, with strong control |
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Swaying to rapture
every listener’s soul, |
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Idle your toil; the
chase you may forego! |
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Brood o’er your
task! Together glue, |
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Cook from another’s
feast your own ragout, |
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Still prosecute
your paltry game, |
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And fan your
ash-heaps into flame! |
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Thus children’s
wonder you’ll excite, |
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And apes’, if such
your appetite; |
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But that which
issues from the heart alone, |
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Will bend the
hearts of others to your own. |
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WAGNER
The speaker in delivery will find |
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Success alone; I
still am far behind. |
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FAUST
A worthy object still pursue! |
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Be not a hollow
tinkling fool! |
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Sound
understanding, judgment true, |
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Find utterance
without art or rule; |
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And when in earnest
you are moved to speak, |
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Then is it needful
cunning words to seek? |
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Your fine
harangues, so polish’d in their kind, |
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Wherein the shreds
of human thought ye twist, |
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Are unrefreshing as
the empty wind, |
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Whistling through
wither’d leaves and autumn mist! |
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WAGNER
Oh God! How long is art, |
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Our life how short!
With earnest zeal |
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Still as I ply the
critic’s task, I feel |
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A strange
oppression both of head and heart. |
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The very means how
hardly are they won, |
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By which we to the
fountains rise! |
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And haply, ere one
half the course is run, |
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Check’d in his
progress, the poor devil dies. |
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FAUST
Parchment, is that the sacred fount whence roll |
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Waters, he
thirsteth not who once hath quaffed? |
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Oh, if it gush not
from thine inmost soul, |
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Thou has not won
the life-restoring draught. |
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WAGNER
Your pardon! ’tis delightful to transport |
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Oneself into the
spirit of the past, |
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To see in times
before us how a wise man thought, |
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And what a glorious
height we have achieved at last. |
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FAUST
Ay truly! even to the loftiest star! |
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To us, my friend,
the ages that are pass’d |
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A book with seven
seals, close-fasten’d, are; |
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And what the spirit
of the times men call, |
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Is merely their own
spirit after all, |
|
Wherein, distorted
oft, the times are glass’d. |
|
Then truly, ’tis a
sight to grieve the soul! |
|
At the first glance
we fly it in dismay; |
|
A very lumber-room,
a rubbish-hole; |
|
At best a sort of
mock-heroic play, |
|
With saws
pragmatical, and maxims sage, |
|
To suit the puppets
and their mimic stage. |
|
|
|
WAGNER
But then the world and man, his heart and brain! |
|
Touching these
things all men would something know. |
|
|
|
FAUST
Ay! what ’mong men as knowledge doth obtain! |
|
Who on the child
its true name dares bestow? |
|
The few who
somewhat of these things have known, |
|
Who their full
hearts unguardedly reveal’d, |
|
Nor thoughts, nor
feelings, from the mob conceal’d, |
|
Have died on
crosses, or in flames been thrown.— |
|
Excuse me, friend,
far now the night is spent, |
|
For this time we
must say adieu. |
|
|
|
WAGNER
Still to watch on I had been well content, |
|
Thus to converse so
learnedly with you. |
|
But as to-morrow
will be Easter-day, |
|
Some further
questions grant, I pray; |
|
With diligence to
study still I fondly cling; |
|
Already I know
much, but would know everything. (Exit.) |
|
Faust, Mephistopheles et le barbet
illustration
by Eugene Delacroix
|
|
|
FAUST (alone)
How him alone all hope abandons never, |
|
To empty trash who
clings, with zeal untired, |
|
With greed for
treasure gropes, and, joy-inspir’d, |
|
Exults if
earth-worms second his endeavour. |
|
|
|
And dare a voice of
merely human birth, |
|
E’en here, where
shapes immortal throng’d intrude? |
|
Yet ah! thou
poorest of the sons of earth, |
|
For once, I e’en to
thee feel gratitude. |
|
Despair the power
of sense did well-nigh blast, |
|
And thou didst save
me ere I sank dismay’d, |
|
So giant-like the
vision seem’d, so vast, |
|
I felt myself
shrink dwarf’d as I survey’d! |
|
|
|
I, God’s own image,
from this toil of clay |
|
Already freed, with
eager joy who hail’d |
|
The mirror of
eternal truth unveil’d, |
|
Mid light effulgent
and celestial day:— |
|
I, more than
cherub, whose unfetter’d soul |
|
With penetrative
glance aspir’d to flow |
|
Through nature’s
veins, and, still creating, know |
|
The life of
gods,—how am I punish’d now! |
|
One thunder-word
hath hurl’d me from the goal! |
|
|
|
Spirit! I dare
not lift me to thy sphere. |
|
What though my
power compell’d thee to appear, |
|
My art was
powerless to detain thee here. |
|
In that great
moment, rapture-fraught, |
|
I felt myself
so small, so great; |
|
Fiercely didst
thrust me from the realm of thought |
|
Back on
humanity’s uncertain fate! |
|
Who’ll teach me
now? What ought I to forego? |
|
Ought I that
impulse to obey? |
|
Alas! our every
deed, as well as every woe, |
|
Impedes the
tenor of life’s onward way! |
|
|
|
E’en to the noblest
by the soul conceiv’d, |
|
Some feelings cling
of baser quality; |
|
And when the goods
of this world are achiev’d, |
|
Each nobler aim is
termed a cheat, a lie. |
|
Our aspirations,
our soul’s genuine life, |
|
Grow torpid in the
din of earthly strife. |
|
Though youthful
phantasy, while hope inspires, |
|
Stretch o’er the
infinite her wing sublime, |
|
A narrow compass
limits her desires, |
|
When wreck’d our
fortunes in the gulf of time. |
|
In the deep heart
of man care builds her nest, |
|
O’er secret woes
she broodeth there, |
|
Sleepless she rocks
herself and scareth joy and rest; |
|
Still is she wont
some new disguise to wear, |
|
She may as house
and court, as wife and child appear, |
|
As dagger, poison,
fire and flood; |
|
Imagined evils
chill thy blood, |
|
|
|
And what thou
ne’er shall lose, o’er that dost shed the tear. |
|
I am not like
the gods! Feel it I must; |
|
I’m like the
earth-worm, writhing in the dust, |
|
Which, as on
dust it feeds, its native fare, |
|
Crushed ’neath
the passer’s tread, lies buried there. |
|
|
|
Is it not dust,
wherewith this lofty wall, |
|
With hundred
shelves, confines me round; |
|
Rubbish, in
thousand shapes, may I not call |
|
What in this
moth-world doth my being bound? |
|
Here, what doth
fail me, shall I find? |
|
Read in a thousand
tomes that, everywhere, |
|
Self-torture is the
lot of human-kind, |
|
With but one mortal
happy, here and there? |
|
Thou hollow skull,
that grin, what should it say, |
|
But that thy brain,
like mine, of old perplexed, |
|
Still yearning for
the truth, hath sought the light of day. |
|
And in the twilight
wandered, sorely vexed? |
|
Ye instruments,
forsooth, ye mock at me,— |
|
With wheel, and
cog, and ring, and cylinder; |
|
To nature’s portals
ye should be the key; |
|
Cunning your wards,
and yet the bolts ye fail to stir. |
|
Inscrutable in
broadest light, |
|
To be unveil’d by
force she doth refuse, |
|
What she reveals
not to thy mental sight, |
|
Thou wilt not wrest
me from her with levers and with screws. |
|
Old useless
furnitures, yet stand ye here, |
|
Because my sire ye
served, now dead and gone. |
|
Old scroll, the
smoke of years dost wear, |
|
So long as o’er
this desk the sorry lamp hath shone. |
|
Better my little
means hath squandered quite away, |
|
Than burden’d by
that little here to sweat and groan! |
|
Wouldst thou
possess thy heritage, essay, |
|
By use to render it
thine own! |
|
What we employ not,
but impedes our way, |
|
That which the hour
creates, that can it use alone! |
|
But wherefore to
yon spot is riveted my gaze? |
|
Is yonder flasket
there a magnet to my sight? |
|
Whence this mild
radiance that around me plays, |
|
As when, ’mid
forest gloom, reigneth the moon’s soft light? |
|
|
|
Hail precious
phial! Thee, with reverent awe, |
|
Down from thine old
receptacle I draw! |
|
Science in thee I
hail and human art. |
|
Essence of
deadliest powers, refin’d and sure, |
|
Of soothing
anodynes abstraction pure, |
|
Now in thy master’s
need thy grace impart! |
|
I gaze on thee, my
pain is lull’d to rest; |
|
I grasp thee,
calm’d the tumult in my breast; |
|
The flood-tide of
my spirit ebbs away; |
|
Onward I’m summon’d
o’er a boundless main, |
|
Calm at my feet
expands the glassy plain, |
|
To shores unknown
allures a brighter day. |
|
|
|
Lo, where a car of
fire, on airy pinion, |
|
Comes floating
towards me! I’m prepar’d to fly |
|
By a new track
through ether’s wide dominion, |
|
To distant spheres
of pure activity. |
|
This life intense,
this godlike ecstasy— |
|
Worm that thou art
such rapture canst thou earn? |
|
Only resolve with
courage stern and high, |
|
Thy visage from the
radiant sun to turn! |
|
Dare with
determin’d will to burst the portals |
|
Past which in
terror others fain would steal! |
|
Now is the time,
through deeds, to show that mortals |
|
The calm sublimity
of gods can feel; |
|
To shudder not at
yonder dark abyss, |
|
Where phantasy
creates her own self-torturing brood, |
|
Right onward to the
yawning gulf to press, |
|
Around whose narrow
jaws rolleth hell’s fiery flood; |
|
With glad resolve
to take the fatal leap, |
|
Though danger
threaten thee, to sink in endless sleep! |
|
Pure crystal
goblet! forth I draw thee now, |
|
From out thine
antiquated case, where thou |
|
Forgotten hast
reposed for many a year! |
|
Oft at my father’s
revels thou didst shine, |
|
To glad the earnest
guests was thine, |
|
As each to other
passed the generous cheer. |
|
The gorgeous brede
of figures, quaintly wrought, |
|
Which he who
quaff’d must first in rhyme expound, |
|
Then drain the
goblet at one draught profound, |
|
Hath nights of
boyhood to fond memory brought. |
|
I to my neighbour
shall not reach thee now, |
|
Nor on thy rich
device shall I my cunning show. |
|
Here is a juice,
makes drunk without delay; |
|
Its dark brown
flood thy crystal round doth fill; |
|
Let this last
draught, the product of my skill, |
|
My own free choice,
be quaff’d with resolute will, |
|
A solemn festive
greeting, to the coming day! (He places the
goblet to his mouth.) (The ringing of
bells, and choral voices.) |
|
Mephistopheles apparaissant a Faust
illustration
by Eugene Delacroix
|
|
|
Chorus of ANGELS
Christ is arisen! |
|
Mortal, all
hail to thee, |
|
Thou whom
mortality, |
|
Earth’s sad
reality, |
|
Held as in
prison. |
|
|
|
FAUST
What hum melodious, what clear silvery chime |
|
Thus draws the
goblet from my lips away? |
|
Ye deep-ton’d
bells, do ye with voice sublime, |
|
Announce the solemn
dawn of Easter-day? |
|
Sweet choir! are ye
the hymn of comfort singing, |
|
Which one around
the darkness of the grave, |
|
From seraph-voices,
in glad triumph ringing, |
|
Of a new covenant
assurance gave? |
|
|
|
Chorus of WOMEN
We, his true-hearted, |
|
With spices and
myrrh, |
|
Embalmed the
departed, |
|
And swathed him
with care; |
|
Here we
conveyed Him, |
|
Our Master, so
dear; |
|
Alas! Where we
laid Him, |
|
The Christ is
not here, |
|
|
|
Chorus of ANGELS
Christ is arisen! |
|
Blessed the
loving one, |
|
Who from
earth’s trial throes, |
|
Healing and
strengthening woes, |
|
Soars as from
prison. |
|
|
|
FAUST
Wherefore, ye tones celestial, sweet and strong, |
|
Come ye a dweller
in the dust to seek? |
|
Ring out your
chimes believing crowds among, |
|
The message well I
hear, my faith alone is weak; |
|
From faith her
darling, miracle, hath sprung. |
|
Aloft to yonder
spheres I dare not soar, |
|
Whence sound the
tidings of great joy; |
|
And yet, with this
sweet strain familiar when a boy, |
|
Back it recalleth
me to life once more. |
|
Then would
celestial love, with holy kiss, |
|
Come o’er me in the
Sabbath’s stilly hour, |
|
While, fraught with
solemn meaning and mysterious power, |
|
Chim’d the
deep-sounding bell, and prayer was bliss; |
|
A yearning impulse,
undefin’d yet dear, |
|
Drove me to wander
on through wood and field; |
|
With heaving breast
and many a burning tear, |
|
I felt with holy
joy a world reveal’d. |
|
Gay sports and
festive hours proclaim’d with joyous pealing, |
|
This Easter hymn in
days of old; |
|
And fond
remembrance now doth me, with childlike feeling, |
|
Back from the last,
the solemn step, withhold. |
|
O still sound on,
thou sweet celestial strain! |
|
The tear-drop
flows,-Earth, I am thine again! |
|
|
|
Chorus of DISCIPLES
He whom we mourned as dead, |
|
Living and
glorious, |
|
From the dark
grave hath fled, |
|
O’er death
victorious; |
|
Almost creative
bliss |
|
Waits on his
growing powers; |
|
Ah! Him on
earth we miss; |
|
Sorrow and
grief are ours. |
|
Yearning he
left his own, |
|
Mid sore annoy; |
|
Ah! we must
needs bemoan. |
|
Master, thy
joy! |
|
|
|
Chorus of ANGELS
Christ is arisen, |
|
Redeem’d from
decay. |
|
The bonds which
imprison |
|
Your souls,
rend away! |
|
Praising the
Lord with zeal, |
|
By deeds that
love reveal, |
|
Like brethren
true and leal |
|
Sharing the
daily meal, |
|
To all that
sorrow feel |
|
Whisp’ring of
heaven’s weal, |
|
Still is the
master near, |
|
Still is he
here! |
|
|
|
BEFORE
THE GATE |
|
|
|
Promenaders of
all sorts pass out. |
|
|
|
ARTISANS
Why choose ye that direction, pray? |
|
|
|
OTHERS
To the hunting-lodge we’re on our way. |
|
|
|
THE
FIRST
We towards the mill are strolling on. |
|
|
|
A MECHANIC
A walk to Wasserhof were best. |
|
|
|
A SECOND
The road is not a pleasant one. |
|
|
|
THE
OTHERS
What will you do? |
|
|
|
A THIRD
I’ll join the rest. |
|
|
|
A FOURTH
Let’s up to Burghof, there you’ll find good
cheer, |
|
The prettiest
maidens and the best of beer, |
|
And brawls of a
prime sort. |
|
|
|
A FIFTH
You scapegrace! How; |
|
Your skin still
itching for a row? |
|
Thither I will not
go, I loathe the place. |
|
|
|
SERVANT
GIRL
No, no! I to the town my steps retrace. |
|
|
|
ANOTHER
Near yonder poplars he is sure to be. |
|
|
|
THE
FIRST
And if he is, what matters it to me! |
|
With you he’ll
walk, he’ll dance with none but you, |
|
And with your
pleasures what have I to do? |
|
|
|
THE
SECOND
To-day he will not be alone, he said |
|
His friend would be
with him, the curly-head. |
|
|
|
STUDENT
Why how those buxom girls step on! |
|
Come, brother, we
will follow them anon. |
|
Strong beer, a
damsel smartly dress’d, |
|
Stinging
tobacco,—these I love the best. |
|
|
|
BURGHER’S
DAUGHTER
Look at those handsome fellows there! |
|
’Tis really
shameful, I declare, |
|
The very best
society they shun, |
|
After those servant
girls forsooth, to run. |
|
|
|
SECOND
STUDENT (to the
first)
Not quite so fast! for in our rear, |
|
Two girls, well-dress’d,
are drawing near; |
|
Not far from us the
one doth dwell, |
|
And sooth to say, I
like her well. |
|
They walk demurely,
yet you’ll see, |
|
|
|
|
|
That they will let us join
them presently. |
|
|
|
THE
FIRST
Not I! restraints of all kinds I detest. |
|
Quick! let us catch the
wild-game ere it flies, |
|
The hand on Saturday the
mop that plies, |
|
Will on the Sunday fondle
you the best. |
|
|
|
BURGHER
No, this new Burgomaster, I like him not, God knows, |
|
Now, he’s in office, daily
more arrogant he grows; |
|
And for the town, what doth
he do for it? |
|
Are not things worse from
day to day? |
|
To more restraints we must
submit; |
|
And taxes more than ever
pay. |
|
|
|
BEGGAR (sings)
Kind gentleman and ladies fair, |
|
So rosy-cheek’d and
trimly dress’d, |
|
Be pleas’d to listen to
my prayer, |
|
Relieve and pity the
distress’d. |
|
Let me not vainly sing
my lay! |
|
His heart’s most glad
whose hand is free. |
|
Now when all men keep
holiday, |
|
Should be a harvest-day
to me. |
|
|
|
ANOTHER
BURGHER
On holidays and Sundays naught know I more inviting |
|
Than chatting about war and
war’s alarms, |
|
When folk in Turkey, up in
arms, |
|
Far off, are ’gainst each
other fighting. |
|
We at the window stand, our
glasses drain, |
|
And watch adown the stream
the painted vessels gliding |
|
Then joyful we at eve come
home again, |
|
And peaceful times we
bless, peace long-abiding. |
|
|
|
THIRD
BURGHER
Ay, neighbour! So let matters stand for me! |
|
There they may scatter one
another’s brains, |
|
And wild confusion round
them see— |
|
So here at home in quiet
all remains! |
|
|
|
OLD
WOMAN (to the BURGHERS’
DAUGHTERS) |
|
|
|
Heyday! How smart! The
fresh young blood! |
|
Who would not fall in love
with you? |
|
Not quite so proud! ’Tis
well and good! |
|
And what you wish, that I
could help you to. |
|
|
|
BURGHER’S
DAUGHTER
Come, Agatha! I care not to be seen |
|
Walking in public with
these witches. True, |
|
My future lover, last St.
Andrew’s E’en, |
|
In flesh and blood she
brought before my view. |
|
|
|
ANOTHER
And mine she show’d me also in the glass, |
|
A soldier’s figure, with
companions bold; |
|
I look around, I seek him
as I pass, |
|
In vain, his form I nowhere
can behold. |
|
|
|
SOLDIERS
Fortress with turrets |
|
And walls high in air, |
|
Damsel disdainful, |
|
Haughty and fair, |
|
There be my prey! |
|
Bold is the venture, |
|
Costly the pay! |
|
|
|
Hark how the trumpet |
|
Thither doth call us, |
|
Where either pleasure |
|
Or death may befall us. |
|
Hail to the tumult! |
|
Life’s in the field! |
|
Damsel and fortress |
|
To us must yield. |
|
Bold is the venture, |
|
Costly the pay! |
|
Gaily the soldier |
|
Marches away. |
|
Mephistopheles recevant l'ecolier
illustration by
Eugene Delacroix
|
|
|
FAUST AND
WAGNER
|
|
|
|
FAUST
Loosed from their fetters are streams and rills |
|
Through the gracious
spring-tide’s all-quickening glow; |
|
Hope’s budding joy in the
vale doth blow; |
|
Old Winter back to the
savage hills |
|
Withdraweth his force,
decrepid now. |
|
Thence only impotent icy
grains |
|
Scatters he as he wings his
flight, |
|
Striping with sleet the
verdant plains; |
|
But the sun endureth no
trace of white; |
|
Everywhere growth and
movement are rife, |
|
All things investing with
hues of life: |
|
Though flowers are lacking,
varied of dye, |
|
Their colours the motley
throng supply. |
|
Turn thee around, and from
this height, |
|
Back to the town direct thy
sight. |
|
Forth from the hollow,
gloomy gate, |
|
Stream forth the masses, in
bright array. |
|
Gladly seek they the sun
to-day; |
|
The Lord’s Resurrection
they celebrate: |
|
For they themselves have
risen, with joy, |
|
From tenement sordid, from
cheerless room, |
|
From bonds of toil, from
care and annoy, |
|
From gable and roof’s
o’er-hanging gloom, |
|
From crowded alley and
narrow street, |
|
And from the churches’
awe-breathing night, |
|
All now have come forth
into the light. |
|
Look, only look, on nimble
feet, |
|
Through garden and field
how spread the throng, |
|
How o’er the river’s ample
sheet, |
|
Many a gay wherry glides
along; |
|
And see, deep sinking in
the tide, |
|
Pushes the last boat now
away. |
|
E’en from yon far hill’s
path-worn side, |
|
Flash the bright hues of
garments gay. |
|
Hark! Sounds of village
mirth arise; |
|
This is the people’s
paradise. |
|
Both great and small send
up a cheer; |
|
Here am I man, I feel it
here. |
|
|
|
WAGNER
Sir Doctor, in a walk with you |
|
There’s honour and
instruction too; |
|
Yet here alone I care not
to resort, |
|
Because I coarseness hate
of every sort. |
|
This fiddling, shouting,
skittling, I detest; |
|
I hate the tumult of the
vulgar throng; |
|
They roar as by the evil
one possess’d, |
|
And call it pleasure, call
it song. |
|
|
|
PEASANTS(under
the linden-tree)
|
|
Mephistopheles dans la taverne des etudiants
illustration
by Eugene Delacroix
|
|
|
|
Dance and song
|
|
|
|
The shepherd for the
dance was dress’d, |
|
With ribbon, wreath, and
coloured vest, |
|
A gallant show
displaying. |
|
And round about the
linden-tree, |
|
They footed it right
merrily. |
|
Juchhe! Juchhe! |
|
Juchheisa! Heisa! He! |
|
So fiddle-bow was braying |
|
|
|
Our swain amidst the
circle press’d, |
|
He push’d a maiden trimly
dress’d, |
|
And jogg’d her with his
elbow; |
|
The buxom damsel turn’d
her head, |
|
“Now that’s a stupid
trick!” she said |
|
Juchhe! Juchhe! |
|
Juchheisa! Heisa! He! |
|
Don’t be so rude, good
fellow! |
|
|
|
Swift in the circle they
advanced, |
|
They danced to right, to
left they danced, |
|
And all the skirts were
swinging. |
|
And they grew red, and
they grew warm, |
|
Panting, they rested arm
in arm, |
|
Juchhe! Juchhe! |
|
Juchheisa! Heisa! He! |
|
To hip their elbow
bringing. |
|
|
|
Don’t make so free! How
many a maid |
|
Has been betroth’d and
then betray’d; |
|
And has repented after! |
|
Yet still he flatter’d
her aside, |
|
And from the linden, far
and wide, |
|
Juchhe! Juchhe! |
|
Juchheisa! Heisa! He! |
|
Rang fiddle-bow and
laughter. |
|
|
|
OLD
PEASANT
Doctor, ’tis really kind of you, |
|
To condescend to come this
way, |
|
A highly learned man like
you, |
|
To join our mirthful throng
to-day. |
|
Our fairest cup I offer
you, |
|
which we with sparkling
drink have crown’d, |
|
And pledging you, I pray
aloud, |
|
That every drop within its
round, |
|
While it your present
thirst allays, |
|
May swell the number of
your days. |
|
|
|
FAUST
I take the cup you kindly reach, |
|
Thanks and prosperity to
each! (The crowd gather round in a circle.) |
|
|
|
OLD
PEASANT
Ay, truly! ’tis well done, that you |
|
Our festive meeting thus
attend; |
|
You, who in evil days of
yore, |
|
So often show’d yourself
our friend! |
|
Full many a one stands
living here, |
|
Who from the fever’s deadly
blast, |
|
Your father rescu’d, when
his skill |
|
The fatal sickness stay’d
at last. |
|
A young man then, each
house you sought, |
|
Where reign’d the mortal
pestilence. |
|
Corpse after corpse was
carried forth, |
|
But still unscath’d you
issued thence. |
|
Sore then your trials and
severe; |
|
The Helper yonder aids the
helper here. |
|
|
|
ALL
Heaven bless the trusty friend, and long |
|
To help the poor his life
prolong! |
|
Faust cherchant a seduire Marguerite
illustration
by Eugene Delacroix
|
|
|
|
FAUST
To Him above in homage bend, |
|
Who prompts the helper and
Who help doth send. (He proceeds with WAGNER.) |
|
|
|
WAGNER
What feelings, great man, must thy breast inspire, |
|
At homage paid thee by this
crowd! Thrice blest |
|
Who from the gifts by him
possessed |
|
Such benefit can draw! The
sire |
|
Thee to his boy with
reverence shows; |
|
They press around, inquire,
advance, |
|
Hush’d is the fiddle,
check’d the dance. |
|
Where thou dost pass they
stand in rows, |
|
And each aloft his bonnet
throws, |
|
But little fails and they
to thee, |
|
As though the Host came by,
would bend the knee. |
|
|
|
FAUST
A few steps further, up to yonder stone! |
|
Here rest we from our walk.
In times long past, |
|
Absorb’d in thought, here
oft I sat alone, |
|
And disciplin’d myself with
prayer and fast. |
|
Then rich in hope, with
faith sincere, |
|
With sighs, and hands in
anguish press’d, |
|
The end of that sore
plague, with many a tear, |
|
From heaven’s dread Lord, I
sought to wrest. |
|
The crowd’s applause
assumes a scornful tone. |
|
Oh, could’st thou in my
inner being read, |
|
How little either sire or
son, |
|
Of such renown deserves the
meed! |
|
My sire, of good repute,
and sombre mood, |
|
O’er nature’s powers and
every mystic zone, |
|
With honest zeal, but
methods of his own, |
|
With toil fantastic loved
to brood; |
|
His time in dark alchemic
cell, |
|
With brother adepts he
would spend, |
|
And there antagonists
compel, |
|
Through numberless receipts
to blend. |
|
A ruddy lion there, a
suitor bold, |
|
In tepid bath was with the
lily wed. |
|
Thence both, while open
flames around them roll’d, |
|
Were tortur’d to another
bridal bed. |
|
Was then the youthful queen
descried |
|
With varied colours in the
flask;— |
|
This was our medicine; the
patients died, |
|
“Who were restored?” none
cared to ask. |
|
With our infernal mixture
thus, ere long, |
|
These hills and peaceful
vales among, |
|
We rag’d more fiercely than
the pest; |
|
Myself the deadly poison
did to thousands give; |
|
They pined away, I yet must
live, |
|
To hear the reckless
murderers blest. |
|
|
|
WAGNER
Why let this thought your soul o’ercast? |
|
Can man do more than with
nice skill, |
|
With firm and conscientious
will, |
|
Practise the art
transmitted from the past? |
|
If thou thy sire dost
honour in thy youth, |
|
His lore thou gladly wilt
receive; |
|
In manhood, dost thou
spread the bounds of truth, |
|
Then may thy son a higher
goal achieve. |
|
|
|
FAUST
How blest, in whom the fond desire |
|
From error’s sea to rise,
hope still renews! |
|
What a man knows not, that
he doth require, |
|
And what he knoweth, that
he cannot use. |
|
But let not moody thoughts
their shadow throw |
|
O’er the calm beauty of
this hour serene! |
|
In the rich sunset see how
brightly glow |
|
Yon cottage homes, girt
round with verdant green! |
|
Slow sinks the orb, the day
in now no more; |
|
Yonder he hastens to
diffuse new life. |
|
Oh for a pinion from the
earth to soar, |
|
And after, ever after him
to strive! |
|
Then should I see the world
below, |
|
Bathed in the deathless
evening-beams, |
|
The vales reposing, every
height a-glow, |
|
The silver brooklets
meeting golden streams. |
|
The savage mountain, with
its cavern’d side, |
|
Bars not my godlike
progress. Lo, the ocean, |
|
Its warm bays heaving with
a tranquil motion, |
|
To my rapt vision opes its
ample tide! |
|
But now at length the god
appears to sink; |
|
A new-born impulse wings my
flight, |
|
Onward I press, his
quenchless light to drink, |
|
The day before me, and
behind the night, |
|
The pathless waves beneath,
and over me the skies. |
|
Fair dream, it vanish’d
with the parting day! |
|
Alas! that when on
spirit-wing we rise, |
|
No wing material lifts our
mortal clay. |
|
But ’tis our inborn
impulse, deep and strong, |
|
Upwards and onwards still
to urge our flight, |
|
When far above us pours its
thrilling song |
|
The sky-lark, lost in azure
light, |
|
When on extended wing amain |
|
O’er pine-crown’d height
the eagle soars, |
|
And over moor and lake, the
crane |
|
Still striveth towards its
native shores. |
|
|
|
WAGNER
To strange conceits oft I myself must own, |
|
But impulse such as this I
ne’er have known: |
|
Nor woods, nor fields, can
long our thoughts engage, |
|
Their wings I envy not the
feather’d kind; |
|
Far otherwise the pleasures
of the mind, |
|
Bear us from book to book,
from page to page! |
|
Then winter nights grow
cheerful; keen delight |
|
Warms every limb; and ah!
when we unroll |
|
Some old and precious
parchment, at the sight |
|
All heaven itself descends
upon the soul. |
|
|
|
FAUST
Thy heart by one sole impulse is possess’d; |
|
Unconscious of the other
still remain! |
|
Two souls, alas! are lodg’d
within my breast, |
|
Which struggle there for
undivided reign: |
|
One to the world, with
obstinate desire, |
|
And closely-cleaving
organs, still adheres; |
|
Above the mist, the other
doth aspire, |
|
With sacred vehemence, to
purer spheres. |
|
Oh, are there spirits in
the air, |
|
Who float ’twixt heaven and
earth dominion wielding, |
|
Stoop hither from your
golden atmosphere, |
|
Lead me to scenes, new life
and fuller yielding! |
|
A magic mantle did I but
possess, |
|
Abroad to waft me as on
viewless wings, |
|
I’d prize it far beyond the
costliest dress, |
|
Nor would I change it for
the robe of kings. |
|
|
|
WAGNER
Call not the spirits who on mischief wait! |
|
Their troop familiar,
streaming through the air, |
|
From every quarter threaten
man’s estate, |
|
And danger in a thousand
forms prepare! |
|
They drive impetuous from
the frozen north, |
|
With fangs sharp-piercing,
and keen arrowy tongues; |
|
From the ungenial east they
issue forth, |
|
And prey, with parching
breath, upon thy lungs; |
|
If, waft’d on the desert’s
flaming wing, |
|
They from the south heap
fire upon the brain, |
|
Refreshment from the west
at first they bring, |
|
Anon to drown thyself and
field and plain. |
|
In wait for mischief, they
are prompt to hear; |
|
With guileful purpose our
behests obey; |
|
Like ministers of grace
they oft appear, |
|
And lisp like angels, to
betray. |
|
But let us hence! Grey eve
doth all things blend, |
|
The air grows chill, the
mists descend! |
|
’Tis in the evening first
our home we prize— |
|
Why stand you thus, and
gaze with wondering eyes? |
|
What in the gloom thus
moves you? |
|
|
|
FAUST
Yon black hound |
|
See’st thou, through corn
and stubble scampering round? |
|
|
|
WAGNER
I’ve mark’d him long, naught strange in him I see! |
|
|
|
FAUST
Note him! What takest thou the brute to be? |
|
|
|
WAGNER
But for a poodle, whom his instinct serves |
|
His master’s track to find
once more. |
|
|
|
FAUST
Dost mark how round us, with wide spiral curves, |
|
He wheels, each circle
closer than before? |
|
And, if I err not, he
appears to me |
|
A line of fire upon his
track to leave. |
|
|
|
WAGNER
Naught but a poodle black of hue I see; |
|
’Tis some illusion doth
your sight deceive. |
|
|
|
FAUST
Methinks a magic coil our feet around, |
|
He for a future snare doth
lightly spread. |
|
|
|
WAGNER
Around us as in doubt I see him shyly bound, |
|
Since he two strangers
seeth in his master’s stead. |
|
Mephistopheles se presente chez Marthe
illustration
by Eugene Delacroix
|
|
|
FAUST
The circle narrows, he’s already near! |
|
|
|
WAGNER
A dog dost see, no spectre have we here; |
|
He growls, doubts, lays him
on his belly, too, |
|
And wags his tail—as dogs
are wont to do. |
|
|
|
FAUST
Come hither, Sirrah! join our company! |
|
|
|
WAGNER
A very poodle, he appears to be! |
|
Thou standest still, for
thee he’ll wait; |
|
Thou speak’st to him, he
fawns upon thee straight; |
|
Aught thou mayst lose,
again he’ll bring, |
|
And for thy stick will into
water spring. |
|
|
|
FAUST
Thou’rt right indeed; no traces now I see |
|
Whatever of a spirit’s
agency. |
|
’Tis training—nothing more. |
|
|
|
WAGNER
A dog well taught |
|
E’en by the wisest of us
may be sought. |
|
Ay, to your favour he’s
entitled too, |
|
Apt scholar of the
students, ’tis his due! (They enter the gate of the
town.) |
|
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