Volume 14 / Act 5 — THE FAUST LEGEND FROM MARLOWE TO GOETHE
Reading edition
By KUNO FRANCKE, PH.D., LL.D., LITT.D.
Professor of the History of German Culture, Harvard University
The Faust legend is a conglomerate of anonymous popular traditions, largely of medieval origin, which in the latter part of the sixteenth century came to be associated with an actual individual of the name of Faustus whose notorious career during the first four decades of the century, as a pseudo-scientific mountebank, juggler and magician can be traced through various parts of Germany. The Faust Book of 1587, the earliest collection of these tales, is of prevailingly theological character. It represents Faust as a sinner and reprobate, and it holds up his compact with Mephistopheles and his subsequent damnation as an example of human recklessness and as a warning to the faithful.
From this Faust Book, that is from its English translation, which appeared in 1588, Marlowe took his tragedy of Dr. Faustus (1589; published 1604). In Marlowe's drama Faust appears as a typical man of the Renaissance, as an explorer and adventurer, as a superman craving for extraordinary power, wealth, enjoyment, and worldly eminence. The finer emotions are hardly touched upon. Mephistopheles is the medieval devil, harsh and grim and fierce, bent on seduction, without any comprehension of human aspirations. Helen of Troy is a she-devil, and becomes the final means of Faust's destruction. Faust's career has hardly an element of true greatness. None of the many tricks, conjurings and miracles, which Faust performs with Mephistopheles' help, has any relation to the deeper meaning of life. From the compact on to the end hardly anything happens which brings Faust inwardly nearer either to heaven or hell. But there is a sturdiness of character and stirring intensity of action, with a happy admixture of buffoonery, through it all. And we feel something of the pathos and paradox of human passions in the fearful agony of Faust's final doom.
The German popular Faust drama of the seventeenth century and its outgrowth the puppet plays, are a reflex both of Marlowe's tragedy and the Faust Book of 1587, although they contain a number of original scenes, notably the Council of the Devils at the beginning. Here again, the underlying sentiment is the abhorrence of human recklessness and extravagance. In some of these plays, the vanity of bold ambition is brought out with particular emphasis through the contrast between the daring and dissatisfied Faust and his farcical counterpart, the jolly and contented Casperle. In the last scene, while Faust in despair and contrition is waiting for the sound of the midnight bell which is to be the signal of his destruction, Casperle, as night watchman, patrols the streets of the town, calling out the hours and singing the traditional verses of admonition to quiet and orderly conduct.
To the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, then, Faust appeared as a criminal who sins against the eternal laws of life, as a rebel against holiness who ruins his better self and finally earns the merited reward of his misdeeds. He could not appear thus to the eighteenth century. The eighteenth century is the age of Rationalism and of Romanticism. The eighteenth century glorifies human reason and human feeling. The right of man and the dignity of man are its principal watchwords. Such an age was bound to see in Faust a champion of freedom, nature, truth. Such an age was bound to see in Faust a symbol of human striving for completeness of life.
It is Lessing who has given to the Faust legend this turn. His Faust, unfortunately consisting only of a few fragmentary sketches, is a defense of Rationalism. The most important of these fragments, preserved to us in copies by some friends of Lessing's, is the prelude, a council of devils. Satan is receiving reports from his subordinates as to what they have done to bring harm to the realm of God. The first devil who speaks has set the hut of some pious poor on fire; the second has buried a fleet of usurers in the waves. Both excite Satan's disgust. "For," he says, "to make the pious poor still poorer means only to chain him all the more firmly to God"; and the usurers, if, instead of being buried in the waves, they had been allowed to reach the goal of their voyage, would have wrought new evil on distant shores. Much more satisfied is Satan with the report of a third devil who has stolen the first kiss from a young innocent girl and thereby breathed the flame of desire into her veins; for he has worked evil in the world of the spirit and that means much more and is a much greater triumph for hell than to work evil in the world of bodies. But it is the fourth devil to whom Satan gives the prize. He has not done anything as yet. He has only a plan, but a plan which, if carried out, would put the deeds of all the other devils into the shade—the plan "to snatch from God his favorite." This favorite of God is Faust, "a solitary, brooding youth, renouncing all passion except the passion for truth, entirely living in truth, entirely absorbed in it." To snatch him from God—that would be a victory, over which the whole realm of night would rejoice. Satan is enchanted; the war against truth is his element. Yes, Faust must be seduced, he must be destroyed. And he shall be destroyed through his very aspiration. "Didst thou not say, he has desire for knowledge? That is enough for perdition!" His striving for truth is to lead him into darkness. Under such exclamations the devils break up, to set about their work of seduction; but, as they are breaking up, there is heard from above a divine voice: "Ye shall not conquer."
It cannot be denied that Goethe's earliest Faust conception, the so-called Ur-Faust of 1773 and '74, lacks the wide sweep of thought that characterizes these fragments of Lessing's drama. His Faust of the Storm and Stress period is essentially a Romanticist. He is a dreamer, craving for a sight of the divine, longing to fathom the inner working of nature, drunk with the mysteries of the universe. But he is also an unruly individualist, a reckless despiser of accepted morality; and it is hard to see how his relation with Gretchen, which forms by far the largest part of the Ur-Faust, can lead to anything but a tragic catastrophe. Only Goethe's second Faust conception, which sets in with the end of the nineties of the eighteenth century, opens up a clear view of the heights of life.
Goethe was now in the full maturity of his powers, a man widely separated from the impetuous youth of the seventies whose Promethean emotions had burst forth with volcanic passion. He had meanwhile become a statesman and a philosopher. He had come to know in the court of Weimar a model of paternal government, conservative yet liberally inclined, and friendly to all higher culture. He had found in his truly spiritual relation to Frau von Stein a safe harbor for his tempestuous feelings. He had been brought face to face, during his sojourn in Italy, with the wonders of classic art. The study of Spinoza and his own scientific investigations had confirmed him in a thoroughly monistic view of the world and strengthened his belief in a universal law which makes evil itself an integral part of the good. The example of Schiller as well as his own practical experience had taught him that the untrammelled living out of personality must go hand in hand with incessant work for the common welfare of mankind. All this is reflected in the completed Part First of 1808; it finds its most comprehensive expression in Part Second, the bequest of the dying poet to posterity.
Restless endeavor, incessant striving from lower spheres of life to higher ones, from the sensuous to the spiritual, from enjoyment to work, from creed to deed, from self to humanity—this is the moving thought of Goethe's completed Faust. The keynote is struck in the "Prologue in Heaven." Faust, so we hear, the daring idealist, the servant of God, is to be tempted by Mephisto, the despiser of reason, the materialistic scoffer. But we also hear, and we hear it from God's own lips, that the tempter will not succeed. God allows the devil free play, because he knows that he will frustrate his own ends. Faust will be led astray—"man errs while he strives"; but he will not abandon his higher aspirations; through aberration and sin he will find the true way toward which his inner nature instinctively guides him. He will not eat dust. Even in the compact with Mephisto the same ineradicable optimism asserts itself. Faust's wager with the devil is nothing but an act of temporary despair, and the very fact that he does not hope anything from it shows that he will win it. He knows that sensual enjoyment will never give him satisfaction; he knows that, as long as he gives himself up to self-gratification, there will never be a moment to which he would say: "Abide, thou art so fair!" From the outset we feel that by living up to the very terms of the compact, Faust will rise superior to it; that by rushing into the whirlpool of earthly experience and passion, his being will be heightened and expanded.
And thus, everything in the whole drama, all its incidents and all its characters, become episodes in the rounding out of this grand, all-comprehensive personality. Gretchen and Helena, Wagner and Mephisto, Homunculus and Euphorion, the Emperor's court and the shades of the Greek past, the broodings of medieval mysticism and the practical tasks of modern industrialism, the enlightened despotism of the eighteenth century and the ideal democracy of the future—all this and a great deal more enters into Faust's being. He strides on from experience to experience, from task to task, expiating guilt by doing, losing himself and finding himself again. Blinded in old age by Dame Care, he feels a new light kindled within. Dying, he gazes into a far future. And even in the heavenly regions he goes on ever changing into new and higher and finer forms. It is this irrepressible spirit of striving which makes Goethe's Faust the Bible of modern humanity.
INTRODUCTION TO FAUST
BY CALVIN THOMAS, LL.D.
Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures, Columbia University
The central theme of Goethe's Faust may be put in the form of a question thus: Shall a man hate life because it does not match his dreams, or shall he embrace it eagerly and try to make the best of it as a social being? Goethe's answer is at once scientific and religious, which partly explains its vital interest for the modern man. To be sure, his answer is given at the end of a long symbolic poem which contains much that is not exactly relevant to the main issue. It must never be forgotten that Faust is not the orderly development of a thesis in ethics, but a long succession of imaginative pictures. Some of them may seem too recondite and fantastic to meet our present-day demand for reality, but on the whole the poem deals with vital issues of the human spirit. At the end of it Faust arrives at a noble view of life, and his last words undoubtedly tell how Goethe himself thought that a good man might wish to end his days—unsated with life to the final moment, and expiring in an ecstasy of altruistic vision.
Goethe was about twenty years old when his imagination began to be haunted by the figure of the sixteenth century magician Doctor Faust. In 1772 or 1773 he commenced writing a play on the subject, little thinking of course that it would occupy him some sixty years. The old legend is a story of sin and damnation. Faust is represented as an eager student impelled by intellectual curiosity to the study of magic. From the point of view of the superstitious folk who created the legend this addiction to magic is itself sinful. But Faust is bad and reckless. By the aid of his black art he calls up a devil named (in the legend) Mephostophiles with whom he makes a contract of service. For twenty-four years Faust is to have all that he desires, and then his soul is to go to perdition. The contract is carried out. With the Devil as comrade and servant he lords it over time and space, feeds on the fat of the land, travels far and wide, and does all sorts of wonderful things. At the end of the stipulated time the Devil gets him.
From the very beginning of his musings on the theme Goethe thought of Faust as a man better than his reputation; as a misunderstood truth-seeker who had dared the terrors with which the popular imagination invested hell, in order that he might exhaust the possibilities of this life. Aside from his desire of transcendental knowledge and wide experience, there was a third trait of the legendary Faust which could hardly seem to Goethe anything but creditable to human nature: his passion for antique beauty. According to the old story Faust at one time wishes to marry; but as marriage is a Christian ordinance and he has forsworn Christianity, the Devil gives him, in place of a lawful wife, a fantom counterfeit of Helena, the ancient Queen of Beauty. The lovely fantom becomes Faust's paramour and bears him a remarkable son called Justus Faustus.
What wonder if the young Goethe, himself disappointed with book-learning, eager for life, and beset by vague yearnings for mystic insight into the nature of things, saw in Faust a symbol of his own experience? But as soon as he began to identify himself with his hero it was all up with Faust's utter damnableness: a young poet does not plan to send his own soul to perdition. At the same time, he could not very well imagine him as an out-and-out good man, since that would have been to turn the legend topsy-turvy. The league with the Devil, who would of course have to be conceived as in some sense or other an embodiment of evil, was the very heart of the old story.
At first Goethe planned his drama on lines that had little to do with traditional ideas of good and bad, heaven and hell, God and Devil. Faust is introduced as a youngish professor who has studied everything and been teaching for some ten years, with the result that he feels his knowledge to be vanity and his life a dreary routine of hypocrisy. He resorts to magic in the hope of—what? It is important for the understanding of the poem in its initial stages to bear in mind that Faust is not at first a votary of the vulgar black art which consists in calling up bad spirits and doing reprehensible things by their assistance. Further on he shows that he is a master of that art too, but at first he is concerned with "natural magic," which some of the old mystics whom Goethe read conceived as the highest and divinest of sciences. The fundamental assumption of natural magic is that the universe as a whole and each component part of it is dominated by an indwelling spirit with whom it is possible for the magician to get into communication. If he succeeds he becomes "like" a spirit—freed from the trammels of the flesh, a partaker of divine knowledge and ecstatic happiness.
Pursuing his wonderful vagaries by means of a magic book that has come into his possession, Faust first experiments with the "sign" of the Macrocosm, but makes no attempt to summon its presiding genius, that is, the World-spirit. He has a wonderful vision of the harmonious Cosmos, but it is "only a spectacle," whereas he craves food for his soul. So he turns to the sign of the Earth-spirit, whom he feels to be nearer to him. By an act of supreme daring he utters the formula which causes the Spirit to appear in fire—grand, awe-inspiring, terrible. A colloquy ensues at the end of which the Spirit rebuffs the presumptuous mortal with the words: "Thou art like the spirit whom thou comprehendest, not like me"—and disappears. The meaning is that Faust, who knows very little of the Earth, having always led the narrow life of a brooding scholar in one little corner of it, is not fit for intimacy with the mighty being who presides over the entire planet, with its rush and change, its life and death, its vast and ceaseless energy. He must have a wider experience. How shall he get it?
It is a moot question whether Goethe at first conceived Mephistopheles as the Earth-spirit's envoy, sent for the express purpose of showing Faust about the world, or whether the Devil was thought of as coming of his own accord. Be that as it may, Faust is an experience-drama, and the Devil's function is to provide the experience. And he is a devil, not the Devil, conceived as the bitter and malignant enemy of God, but a subordinate spirit whose business it is, in the world-economy, to spur man to activity. This he does partly by cynical criticism and opposition, but more especially by holding out the lures of the sensual life. At first Mephistopheles was not thought of as working solely for a reward in the shape of souls captured for eternity, but as playing his part for the diabolical pleasure of so doing. In the course of time, however, Goethe invested him more and more with the costume and traits of the traditionary Devil.
After the Earth-spirit's rebuff Faust is in despair. He has set all his hope on help from the spirit-world, and the hope has failed. His famulus Wagner, a type of the ardent and contented bookworm, comes in to get instruction on the art of public speaking, and Faust lays down the law to him. After Wagner's exit Faust is hopelessly despondent. After a mournful arraignment of life he is about to swallow a cup of poison that he has concocted, when his hand is staid by the first notes of the Easter celebration in a neighboring church. It reminds him of his happy youth when he, too, believed.
The coming day is Easter Sunday. Faust and Wagner take an afternoon walk together and witness the jollity of the common people. As they are about to return home at nightfall they pick up a casual black dog that has been circling around them. Arrived in his comfortable study, Faust feels more cheerful. In a mood of religious peace he sets about translating a passage of the New Testament into German. The dog becomes uneasy and begins to take on the appearance of a horrid monster. Faust sees that he has brought home a spirit and proceeds to conjure the beast. Presently Mephistopheles emerges from his canine disguise in the costume of a wandering scholar. Faust is amused. He enters into conversation with his guest and learns something of his character. A familiar acquaintance ensues, and one day the Devil finds him once more in a mood of bitter despair, advises him to quit the tedious professorial life, and offers to be his comrade and servant on a grand tour of pleasure. After some bickering they enter into a solemn agreement according to which Faust's life is to end whenever he shall "stretch himself on a bed of ease," completely satisfied with the passing moment, and shall say to that moment, "Pray tarry, thou art so fair."
We see that the Devil can win in only one way, namely, by somehow making Faust a contented sensualist. On the other hand, Faust may win in either of two ways. First, he might conceivably go on to his dying day as a bitter pessimist at war with life. In that event he would certainly never be content with the present moment. Secondly, he may outgrow his pessimism, but never come to the point where he is willing to check the flight of Time; when, that is, he shall have no more plans, hopes, dreams, that reach into the future and seem worth living for. The question is, then, whether Mephistopheles, by any lure at his command, can subdue Faust's forward-ranging idealism. The Devil expects to win; Faust wagers his immortal soul that the Devil will not win. In the old story the Devil appears promptly at the end of the twenty-four years, puts his victim to death, and takes possession of his soul. Goethe's Mephistopheles is a gentleman of culture for whom such savagery would be impossible. He will wait until his comrade dies a natural death and then put in his claim in the Devil's fashion; and it will be for the Lord in heaven to decide the case.
Such is the scheme of the drama, but after the compact is made we hear no more of it until just before the end of the Second Part. The action takes the form of a long succession of adventures undertaken for the sake of experience. Duty, obligation, routine, have been left behind. Faust has nothing to do but to go about and try experiments—first in the "little world" of humble folk (the remainder of Part First), and then in the "great world" of court life, government, and war (the Second Part).
By way of beginning Faust is taken to Auerbach's Cellar, where four jolly companions are assembled for a drinking-bout. He is simply disgusted with the grossness and vulgarity of it all. He is too old—so the Devil concludes—for the rôle he is playing and must have his youth renewed. So they repair to an old witch, who gives Faust an elixir that makes him young again. The scene in the witch's kitchen was written in Italy in 1788, by which time Goethe had come to think of his hero as an elderly man. The purpose of the scene was to account for the sudden change of Faust's character from brooding philosopher to rake and seducer. Of course the elixir of youth is at the same time a love-philter.
Then come the matchless scenes that body forth the short romance of Margaret, her quick infatuation, her loss of virgin honor, the death of her mother and brother, her shame and misery, her agonizing death in prison. Here we are in the realm of pure realism, and never again did Goethe's art sound such depths of tragic pathos. The atmosphere of the love-tragedy is entirely different from that of the Faust-legend. Mephistopheles as the abettor of Faust's amorous passion has no need of magic. The rôle of Faust—that of a man pulled irresistibly by sexual passion, yet constantly tormented by his conscience—is repulsive, but very human. As he stands before the prison gate he says that "the whole sorrow of mankind" holds him in its grip. But this is a part of what he wished for. He wished for universal experience—to feel in his own soul all the weal and all the woe of humankind. At the end of the First Part he has drained the cup of sin and suffering.
Imbedded in the love-tragedy is one scene which will seem out of tune with what has just been said—the Walpurgis Night. Here we are back again in the atmosphere of the legend, with its magic, its witchcraft, its gross sensuality. We hardly recognize our friend Faust when we find him dancing with naked witches and singing lewd songs on the Brocken. The scene was written in 1800 when Goethe had become a little cynical with respect to the artistic coherence of Faust and looked on it as a "monstrosity." It was a part of the early plan that Faust should add to the burden of his soul by frivolously deserting Margaret in the shame of her approaching motherhood and spending some time in gross pleasures. The visit to the Witches' Sabbath on the Brocken was afterward invented to carry out this idea. In itself the idea was a good one; for if Faust was to drain the cup of sorrow, the ingredient of self-contempt could not be left out of the bitter chalice. A sorrow's crown of sorrow is not so much remembering happier things as remembering that the happy state came to an end by one's own wrongdoing. Still, most modern readers will think that Goethe, in elaborating the Brocken scene as an interesting study of the uncanny and the vile, let his hero sink needlessly far into the mire.
At the beginning of the Second Part Goethe does not reopen the book of crime and remorse with which the First Part closes. He needs a new Faust for whom that is all past—past, not in the sense of being lightly forgotten, but built into his character and remembered, say, as one remembers the ecstasy and the pain of twenty years ago. So he ushers him directly into the new life over a bridge of symbolism. The restoring process which in real life takes many years he concentrates into a single night and represents it as the work of kindly nocturnal fairies and the glorious Alpine sunrise. Faust awakens healed and reinvigorated, and the majesty of Nature inspires in him a resolve to "strive ever onward toward the highest existence."
But these fine words convey a promise which is not at once fulfilled. Like the most of us, Faust does not long continue to abide on the Alpine heights of his own best insight and aspiration. The comrade is at hand who interrupts his lonely communion with the spirit of the mountains and draws him away to the Emperor's court, where the pair soon ingratiate themselves as wonder-workers. They so please his Majesty with their marvelous illusions that they are regularly installed at court as purveyors of amusement. The first demand that is made on them is that they produce, for the entertainment of the court, the shades of the supremely beautiful Paris and Helena. To this end Mephistopheles devises the elaborate hocus-pocus of the Mothers. He sends Faust away to the vasty and viewless realm of the Ideal, instructing him how to bring thence a certain wonderful tripod, from the incense of which the desired forms can be made to appear. The show proceeds successfully, so far as the spectators are concerned, but an accident happens. Faust has been cautioned by his partner not to touch the fantom forms. But the moon-struck idealist falls in love with the beautiful Helena and, disregarding orders, attempts to hold her fast. The consequence is an explosion; the spirits vanish, and Faust receives an electric shock which paralyzes all his bodily functions. He is now in a trance; there is nothing left of him but a motionless body and a mute soul, dreaming of Helena. Mephistopheles pretends to be very much disgusted, but he knows where to go for help.
At the beginning of the second act we return to the old study that was deserted years ago. Faust's former famulus, Dr. Wagner, has now become a world-renowned professor and is engaged in a great experiment, namely, in the production of a chemical man. By the aid of Mephisto's magic the experiment is quickly brought to a successful issue, and Homunculus—one of Goethe's whimsically delightful creations—emerges into being as an incorporeal radiant man in a glass bottle. The wonderful little fellow at once comprehends Faust's malady and prescribes that he be taken to the land of his dreams. So away they go, the three of them, to the Classical Walpurgis Night, which is celebrated annually on the battle-field of Pharsalus in Thessaly. As soon as Faust's feet touch classic soil he recovers his senses and sets out with enthusiasm to find Helena. After some wandering about among the classic fantoms he falls in with Chiron the Centaur, who carries him far away to the foot of Mount Olympus and leaves him with the wise priestess Manto, who escorts him to the Lower World and secures the consent of Queen Persephone to a temporary reappearance of Helena on earth.
Meanwhile Mephistopheles, delighted to find on classic ground creatures no less ugly than those familiar to him in the far Northwest, enters, seemingly by way of a lark, into a curious arrangement with the three daughters of Phorkys. These were imagined by the Greeks as hideous old hags who lived in perpetual darkness and had one eye and one tooth which they used in common. Mephistopheles borrows the form, the eye, and the tooth of a Phorkyad and transforms himself very acceptably into an image of the Supreme Ugliness. In that shape he-she manages the fantasmagory of the third act. As for the third member of the expedition to Thessaly, Homunculus, he is possessed by a consuming desire to "begin existence," that is, to get a body and become a full-fledged member of the genus Homo. His wanderings in search of the best place to begin take him out into the Aegean Sea, where he is entranced by the beauty of the scene. In an ecstasy of prophetic joy he dashes his bottle to pieces against the shell-chariot of the lovely sea-nymph Galatea and dissolves himself with the shining animalculae of the sea. There he is now—coming up to the full estate of manhood by the various stages of protozoon, amoeba, mollusc, fish, reptile, bird, mammal, Man. It will take time, but he has no need to hurry.
Then follows the third act, a classico-romantic fantasmagoria, in which Faust as medieval knight, ruling his multitudinous vassals from his castle in Arcadia, the fabled land of poetry, is wedded to the classic Queen of Beauty. It is all very fantastic, but also very beautiful and marvelously pregnant in its symbolism. But at last the fair illusion comes to an end. Euphorion, the child of Helena and Faust, the ethereal, earth-spurning Genius of Poesy, perishes in an attempt to fly, and his grief-stricken mother follows him back to Hades. Nothing is left to Faust but a majestic, inspiring memory. He gathers the robe of Helena about him, and it bears him aloft and carries him, high up in the air and far above all that is vulgar, back to Germany. His vehicle of cloud lands him on a mountain-summit, where he is soon joined by Mephistopheles, who puts the question, What next? We are now at the beginning of Act IV. Faust proceeds to unfold a grand scheme of conflict with the Sea. On his flight he has observed the tides eternally beating in upon the shore and evermore receding, all to no purpose. This blind waste of energy has excited in him the spirit of opposition. He proposes to fight the sea by building dikes which shall hold the rushing water in check and make dry land of the tide-swept area. Mephistopheles enters readily into his plans. They help the Emperor to win a critical battle, and by way of reward Faust receives a vast tract of swampy sea-shore as his fief.
In Act V the great scheme has all been carried out. What was a watery desolation has been converted into a potential paradise. Faust is a great feudal lord, with a boundless domain and a fleet of ships that bring him the riches of far-away lands. But thus far he has simply been amusing himself on a grand scale. He has thought always mainly of himself. He has courted experience, among other things the experience of putting forth his power in a contest with the sea and performing a great feat of engineering. But it has not brought him a satisfaction in which he can rest. And he has not become a saint. An aged couple, who belong to the old régime and obstinately refuse to part with the little plot of ground on which they have lived for years, anger him to the point of madness. He wants their land so that he may build on it a watch-tower from which to survey and govern his possessions. He sends his servitor to remove them to a better home which he has prepared for them. But Mephistopheles carries out the order with reckless brutality, with the consequence that the old people are killed and their cottage burned to the ground. Thus Faust in his old age—by this time he is a hundred years old—has a fresh burden on his conscience. As he stands on the balcony of his palace at midnight, surveying the havoc he has unintentionally wrought, the smoke of the burning cottage is wafted toward him and takes the form of four gray old women. One of them, Dame Care, slips into the rich man's palace by way of the keyhole and croons in his ear her dismal litany of care. Faust replies in a fine declaration of independence, beginning—
The circle of the Earth is known to me, What's on the other side we can not see.
As Dame Care leaves him she breathes on his eyelids and makes him blind. But the inner light is not quenched. His hunger for life still unabated, he summons up all his energy and orders out an army of workmen to complete a great undertaking on which he has set his heart. On the edge of his domain, running along the distant foot-hills, is a miasmatic swamp which poisons the air and renders the land uninhabitable. He proposes to drain the swamp and thus create a home for millions yet to come.
His imagination ranges forward, picturing a free, industrious, self-reliant people swarming on the land that he has won from the sea and made fit for human uses. In the ecstasy of altruistic emotion he exclaims: "Such a throng I would fain see, standing with a free people on a free soil; I might say to the passing moment, 'Pray tarry, thou art so fair.' The traces of my earthly life can not pass away in eons." That same instant he sinks back to earth—dying.
Is there in all literature anything finer, grander, more nobly conceived? What follows—the conflict of the angels and devils for the final possession of Faust's soul—need not detain us long. We know how that will turn out. Indeed, the shrewd old Devil, while he goes through the form of making a stiff fight for what he pretends to think his rights, knows from the first that his is a losing battle. While he is watching the body of Faust to see where the soul is going to escape, the angels appear in a glory, bearing roses as their only weapon. With these they put the Devil and his minions to rout and bear away the dead man's soul to the Holy Mountain, singing their triumphal chant—
Wer immer strebend sich bemüht, Den können wir erlösen.
THE TRAGEDY OF FAUST
DRAMATIS PERSONÆ
Characters in the Prologue for the Theatre.
THE MANAGER. THE DRAMATIC POET. MERRYMAN.
Characters in the Prologue in Heaven.
THE LORD. RAPHAEL} GABRIEL} The Heavenly Host. MICHAEL} MEPHISTOPHELES.
Characters in the Tragedy.
FAUST. MEPHISTOPHELES. WAGNER, a Student. MARGARET. MARTHA, Margaret's Neighbor. VALENTINE, Margaret's Brother. OLD PEASANT. A STUDENT. ELIZABETH, an Acquaintance of Margaret's. FROSCH } BRANDER } Guests in Auerbach's Wine Cellar. SIEBEL } ALTMAYER }
Witches, old and young; Wizards, Will-o'-the-Wisp, Witch Peddler, Protophantasmist, Servibilis, Monkeys, Spirits, Journeymen, Country-folk, Citizens, Beggar, Old Fortune-teller, Shepherd, Soldier, Students, etc.
In the Intermezzo.
OBERON. TITANIA. ARIEL. PUCK, ETC., ETC.
DEDICATION
Ye wavering shapes, again ye do enfold me, As erst upon my troubled sight ye stole; Shall I this time attempt to clasp, to hold ye? Still for the fond illusion yearns my soul? Ye press around! Come then, your captive hold me, As upward from the vapory mist ye roll; Within my breast youth's throbbing pulse is bounding, Fann'd by the magic breath your march surrounding.
Shades fondly loved appear, your train attending, And visions fair of many a blissful day; First-love and friendship their fond accents blending, Like to some ancient, half-expiring lay; Sorrow revives, her wail of anguish sending Back o'er life's devious labyrinthine way, And names the dear ones, they whom Fate bereaving Of life's fair hours, left me behind them grieving.
They hear me not my later cadence singing, The souls to whom my earlier lays I sang; Dispersed the throng, their severed flight now winging; Mute are the voices that responsive rang. For stranger crowds the Orphean lyre now stringing, E'en their applause is to my heart a pang; Of old who listened to my song, glad hearted, If yet they live, now wander widely parted.
A yearning long unfelt, each impulse swaying, To yon calm spirit-realm uplifts my soul; In faltering cadence, as when Zephyr playing, Fans the Æolian harp, my numbers roll; Tear follows tear, my steadfast heart obeying The tender impulse, loses its control; What I possess as from afar I see; Those I have lost become realities to me.
PROLOGUE FOR THE THEATRE
MANAGER. DRAMATIC POET. MERRYMAN
MANAGER Ye twain, in trouble and distress True friends whom I so oft have found, Say, for our scheme on German ground, What prospect have we of success? Fain would I please the public, win their thanks; They live and let live, hence it is but meet. The posts are now erected, and the planks, And all look forward to a festal treat. Their places taken, they, with eyebrows rais'd, Sit patiently, and fain would be amaz'd. I know the art to hit the public taste, Yet ne'er of failure felt so keen a dread; True, they are not accustomed to the best, But then appalling the amount they've read. How make our entertainment striking, new, And yet significant and pleasing too? For to be plain, I love to see the throng, As to our booth the living tide progresses; As wave on wave successive rolls along, And through heaven's narrow portal forceful presses; Still in broad daylight, ere the clock strikes four, With blows their way toward the box they take; And, as for bread in famine, at the baker's door, For tickets are content their necks to break. Such various minds the bard alone can sway, My friend, oh work this miracle today!
POET
Oh of the motley throng speak not before me, At whose aspect the Spirit wings its flight! Conceal the surging concourse, I implore thee, Whose vortex draws us with resistless might. No, to some peaceful heavenly nook restore me, Where only for the bard blooms pure delight, Where love and friendship yield their choicest blessing, Our heart's true bliss, with godlike hand caressing.
What in the spirit's depths was there created, What shyly there the lip shaped forth in sound; A failure now, with words now fitly mated, In the wild tumult of the hour is drown'd; Full oft the poet's thought for years hath waited Until at length with perfect form 'tis crowned; What dazzles, for the moment born, must perish; What genuine is posterity will cherish.
MERRYMAN
This cant about posterity I hate; About posterity were I to prate, Who then the living would amuse? For they Will have diversion, ay, and 'tis their due. A sprightly fellow's presence at your play, Methinks should also count for something too; Whose genial wit the audience still inspires, Knows from their changeful mood no angry feeling; A wider circle he desires, To their heart's depths more surely thus appealing. To work, then! Give a master-piece, my friend; Bring Fancy with her choral trains before us, Sense, reason, feeling, passion, but attend! Let folly also swell the tragic chorus.
MANAGER
In chief, of incident enough prepare! A show they want, they come to gape and stare. Spin for their eyes abundant occupation, So that the multitude may wondering gaze, You by sheer bulk have won your reputation, The man you are all love to praise. By mass alone can you subdue the masses, Each then selects in time what suits his bent. Bring much, you something bring for various classes, And from the house goes every one content. You give a piece, abroad in pieces send it! 'Tis a ragout—success must needs attend it; 'Tis easy to serve up, as easy to invent. A finish'd whole what boots it to present! Full soon the public will in pieces rend it.
POET
How mean such handicraft as this you cannot feel! How it revolts the genuine artist's mind! The sorry trash in which these coxcombs deal, Is here approved on principle, I find.
MANAGER
Such a reproof disturbs me not a whit! Who on efficient work is bent, Must choose the fittest instrument. Consider! 'tis soft wood you have to split; Think too for whom you write, I pray! One comes to while an hour away; One from the festive board, a sated guest; Others, more dreaded than the rest, From journal-reading hurry to the play. As to a masquerade, with absent minds, they press, Sheer curiosity their footsteps winging; Ladies display their persons and their dress, Actors unpaid their service bringing. What dreams beguile you on your poet's height? What puts a full house in a merry mood? More closely view your patrons of the night! The half are cold, the half are rude. One, the play over, craves a game of cards; Another a wild night in wanton joy would spend. Poor fools the muses' fair regards Why court for such a paltry end? I tell you, give them more, still more, 'tis all I ask, Thus you will ne'er stray widely from the goal; Your audience seek to mystify, cajole;— To satisfy them—that's a harder task. What ails thee? art enraptured or distressed?
POET
Depart! elsewhere another servant choose. What! shall the bard his godlike power abuse? Man's loftiest right, kind nature's high bequest, For your mean purpose basely sport away? Whence comes his mastery o'er the human breast, Whence o'er the elements his sway, But from the harmony that, gushing from his soul, Draws back into his heart the wondrous whole? With careless hand when round her spindle, Nature Winds the interminable thread of life; When 'mid the clash of Being every creature Mingles in harsh inextricable strife; Who deals their course unvaried till it falleth, In rhythmic flow to music's measur'd tone? Each solitary note whose genius calleth, To swell the mighty choir in unison? Who in the raging storm sees passion low'ring? Or flush of earnest thought in evening's glow? Who every blossom in sweet spring-time flowering Along the loved one's path would strow? Who, Nature's green familiar leaves entwining, Wreathes glory's garland, won on every field? Makes sure Olympus, heavenly powers combining? Man's mighty spirit, in the bard reveal'd!
MERRYMAN
Come then, employ your lofty inspiration, And carry on the poet's avocation, Just as we carry on a love affair. Two meet by chance, are pleased, they linger there, Insensibly are link'd, they scarce know how; Fortune seems now propitious, adverse now, Then come alternate rapture and despair; And 'tis a true romance ere one's aware. Just such a drama let us now compose. Plunge boldly into life-its, depths disclose! Each lives it, not to many is it known, 'Twill interest wheresoever seiz'd and shown; Bright pictures, but obscure their meaning: A ray of truth through error gleaming, Thus you the best elixir brew, To charm mankind, and edify them too. Then youth's fair blossoms crowd to view your play, And wait as on an oracle; while they, The tender souls, who love the melting mood, Suck from your work their melancholy food; Now this one, and now that, you deeply stir, Each sees the working of his heart laid bare. Their tears, their laughter, you command with ease, The lofty still they honor, the illusive love. Your finish'd gentlemen you ne'er can please; A growing mind alone will grateful prove.
POET
Then give me back youth's golden prime, When my own spirit too was growing, When from my heart th' unbidden rhyme Gush'd forth, a fount for ever flowing; Then shadowy mist the world conceal'd, And every bud sweet promise made, Of wonders yet to be reveal'd, As through the vales, with blooms inlaid, Culling a thousand flowers I stray'd. Naught had I, yet a rich profusion! The thirst for truth, joy in each fond illusion. Give me unquell'd those impulses to prove;— Rapture so deep, its ecstasy was pain, The power of hate, the energy of love, Give me, oh give me back my youth again!
MERRYMAN
Youth, my good friend, you certainly require When foes in battle round are pressing, When a fair maid, her heart on fire, Hangs on your neck with fond caressing, When from afar, the victor's crown, To reach the hard-won goal inciteth; When from the whirling dance, to drown Your sense, the nights carouse inviteth. But the familiar chords among Boldly to sweep, with graceful cunning, While to its goal, the verse along Its winding path is sweetly running; This task is yours, old gentlemen, today; Nor are you therefore less in reverence held; Age does not make us childish, as folk say, It finds us genuine children e'en in eld.
MANAGER
A truce to words, mere empty sound, Let deeds at length appear, my friends! While idle compliments you round, You might achieve some useful ends. Why talk of the poetic vein? Who hesitates will never know it; If bards ye are, as ye maintain, Now let your inspiration show it. To you is known what we require, Strong drink to sip is our desire; Come, brew me such without delay! Tomorrow sees undone, what happens not today; Still forward press, nor ever tire! The possible, with steadfast trust, Resolve should by the forelock grasp; Then she will never let go her clasp, And labors on, because she must. On German boards, you're well aware, The taste of each may have full sway; Therefore in bringing out your play, Nor scenes nor mechanism spare! Heaven's lamps employ, the greatest and the least, Be lavish of the stellar lights, Water, and fire, and rocky heights, Spare not at all, nor birds, nor beast. Thus let creation's ample sphere Forthwith in this our narrow booth appear, And with considerate speed, through fancy's spell, Journey from heaven, thence through the world, to hell!
PROLOGUE IN HEAVEN
THE LORD. THE HEAVENLY HOSTS. Afterward MEPHISTOPHELES
The three Archangels come forward
RAPHAEL
The Sun, in ancient guise, competing With brother spheres in rival song, With thunder-march, his orb completing, Moves his predestin'd course along; His aspect to the powers supernal Gives strength, though fathom him none may; Transcending thought, the works eternal Are fair as on the primal day.
GABRIEL
With speed, thought baffling, unabating, Earth's splendor whirls in circling flight; Its Eden-brightness alternating With solemn, awe-inspiring night; Ocean's broad waves in wild commotion, Against the rocks' deep base are hurled; And with the spheres, both rock and ocean Eternally are swiftly whirled.
MICHAEL
And tempests roar in emulation From sea to land, from land to sea, And raging form, without cessation, A chain of wondrous agency, Full in the thunder's path careering, Flaring the swift destructions play; But, Lord, Thy servants are revering The mild procession of thy day.
THE THREE
Thine aspect to the powers supernal Gives strength, though fathom thee none may; And all thy works, sublime, eternal, Are fair as on the primal day.
MEPHISTOPHELES
Since thou, O Lord, approachest us once more, And how it fares with us, to ask art fain, Since thou hast kindly welcom'd me of yore, Thou see'st me also now among thy train. Excuse me, fine harangues I cannot make, Though all the circle look on me with scorn; My pathos soon thy laughter would awake, Hadst thou the laughing mood not long forsworn. Of suns and worlds I nothing have to say, I see alone mankind's self-torturing pains. The little world-god still the self-same stamp retains, And is as wondrous now as on the primal day. Better he might have fared, poor wight, Hadst thou not given him a gleam of heavenly light; Reason he names it, and doth so Use it, than brutes more brutish still to grow. With deference to your grace, he seems to me Like any long-legged grasshopper to be, Which ever flies, and flying springs, And in the grass its ancient ditty sings. Would he but always in the grass repose! In every heap of dung he thrusts his nose.
THE LORD
Hast thou naught else to say? Is blame In coming here, as ever, thy sole aim? Does nothing on the earth to thee seem right?
MEPHISTOPHELES
No, Lord! I find things there, as ever, in sad plight. Men, in their evil days, move my compassion; Such sorry things to plague is nothing worth.
THE LORD
Know'st thou my servant, Faust?
MEPHISTOPHELES
The doctor?
THE LORD
Right.
MEPHISTOPHELES
He serves thee truly in a wondrous fashion. Poor fool! His food and drink are not of earth. An inward impulse hurries him afar, Himself half conscious of his frenzied mood; From heaven claimeth he the fairest star, And from the earth craves every highest good, And all that's near, and all that's far, Fails to allay the tumult in his blood.
THE LORD
Though in perplexity he serves me now, I soon will lead him where more light appears; When buds the sapling, doth the gardener know That flowers and fruit will deck the coming years!
MEPHISTOPHELES
What wilt thou wager? Him thou yet shall lose, If leave to me thou wilt but give, Gently to lead him as I choose!
THE LORD
So long as he on earth doth live, So long 'tis not forbidden thee. Man still must err, while he doth strive.
MEPHISTOPHELES
I thank you; for not willingly I traffic with the dead, and still aver That youth's plump blooming cheek I very much prefer. I'm not at home to corpses; 'tis my way, Like cats with captive mice to toy and play.
THE LORD
Enough! 'tis granted thee! Divert This mortal spirit from his primal source; Him, canst thou seize, thy power exert And lead him on thy downward course, Then stand abash'd, when thou perforce must own, A good man in his darkest aberration, Of the right path is conscious still.
MEPHISTOPHELES
'Tis done! Full soon thou'lt see my exultation; As for my bet no fears I entertain. And if my end I finally should gain, Excuse my triumphing with all my soul. Dust he shall eat, ay, and with relish take, As did my cousin, the renownèd snake.
THE LORD
Here too thou'rt free to act without control; I ne'er have cherished hate for such as thee. Of all the spirits who deny, The scoffer is least wearisome to me. Ever too prone is man activity to shirk, In unconditioned rest he fain would live; Hence this companion purposely I give, Who stirs, excites, and must, as devil, work. But ye, the genuine sons of heaven, rejoice! In the full living beauty still rejoice! May that which works and lives, the ever-growing, In bonds of love enfold you, mercy-fraught, And Seeming's changeful forms, around you flowing, Do ye arrest, in ever-during thought!
[Heaven closes, the, Archangels disperse.]
MEPHISTOPHELES (alone)
The ancient one I like sometimes to see, And not to break with him am always civil; 'Tis courteous in so great a lord as he, To speak so kindly even to the devil.