this so-called greater world. The young monarch has lately returned from
Italy, where, as was once customary, he had been crowned by the Pope
with the iron Lombard crown. By his extravagances he has already emptied
the imperial coffers. His Chancellor, his Treasurers, his Paymasters are
all at the verge of despair, and the Empire is on the brink of
bankruptcy. To add to these misfortunes (perhaps the greatest of them in
the opinion of the young Kaiser) the court-fool has tumbled downstairs
and has broken his neck; so at least it is believed; but cats and fools
have a way of falling on their feet, and this fool turns up again later.
Meanwhile however Mephistopheles presents himself and is accepted as a
_locum tenens_. To him the Kaiser turns for advice, and Mephistopheles
proposes a clever expedient--meant as a satire on modern systems of
finance and State security. He suggests that, as the land belongs to the
Kaiser, and as in the ground there are doubtless great quantities of
hidden treasures, buried in olden times, the Kaiser should, on the
security of these hidden and as yet undiscovered treasures, issue
'promises to pay'--in other words paper money. This is done, and
suddenly the imperial court, in spite of its empty coffers, finds itself
in affluence. The young Kaiser, delighted at the opportunity of
indulging his taste for display and extravagance, decides on holding a
masquerade, such as he had lately witnessed at the Roman Carneval.
The description of this great court masquerade occupies a considerable
space in Goethe's drama, and is generally looked upon by the
commentators as one of the least successful parts of _Faust_. The
question is, how are we to estimate _success_ in such a matter? For
myself I confess that I find this masquerade scene tedious and irksome,
and can with difficulty read it through; but is not this just the effect
that Goethe wished to produce? Is not this just the effect that society,
with all its masquerades and mummeries, inevitably produces on any one
who, like Faust and with Faust's ideals and aspirations, is making trial
of life in order to discover under what conditions it is worth living?
Instead of telling us in so many words that Faust makes trial of all the
pomps and vanities of fashionable society and finds them utterly empty
and ridiculous, fatal to all true life and disgusting to all true
manliness, Goethe gives us a picture of this tiresome foolish scene,
with all its absurdities and falsities and trumpery grandeurs, amidst
which our friend Mephistopheles is so entirely in his element, and where
Faust, with evident self-contempt and disgust, forces himself for a
moment to play a part. The various elements of fashionable society--and,
as a contrast, certain very unfashionable elements--are introduced under
the disguise of these masked figures. Marketable belles and heiresses
in the guise of flower-girls offer their charms and their fortunes in
the form of flowers and fruits to the highest bidder. The anxious mother
is there with her daughters, hoping that among so many fools _one_ may
be at last secured. Idlers, parasites, toadies, club-frequenters and
diners-out are there in the masks of court-fools, and buffoons. The
working man, the trade-unionist and the striker, comes marching amidst
this scene of revelry, forcing his way through the ranks of consternated
society, roughly asserting the sole nobility of labour and demanding the
overthrow of the aristocrat and the capitalist--no new cry, as you see!
Indeed it is as old as Rome and Athens and Babylon--as old, almost, as
humanity itself. Then appear the Graces, symbols of the refinements and
elegancies of life, and the Fates, symbolizing the powers of Order and
Law, and the Furies, the types of revolution and war, and a huge
elephant, the incorporation of the unwieldy State or Public, reminding
one of the 'Leviathan' of the philosopher Hobbes, and Thersites (that
evil-tongued mischief-maker described by Homer) representing
society-scandal and calumny. Then comes a chariot whose charioteer is a
beautiful boy, representing art or poetry. He is the same Euphorion whom
we shall meet later as the son of Faust and Helen, and identical with
Byron. On the chariot is enthroned Faust as Plutus the God of Money, and
behind him as groom or armour-bearer sits Mephisto, an emaciated
hollow-eyed apparition denoting Avarice. Nymphs, Fauns, Satyrs and
Gnomes--types of the powers of Nature--attend the car and do homage to
the God of Money. The gnomes offer to show their master Plutus a
subterranean treasure-horde of molten gold. He approaches too close and
his beard catches fire. In a few moments an immense conflagration
spreads through the crowds of revellers, which would have ended in a
terrible catastrophe (such as had actually happened at the French court
shortly before Goethe wrote this scene, and such as happened some
fifteen years ago in Paris at some bazaar) had not Faust with the help
of Mephistopheles extinguished the flames by the aid of magic.
The young Kaiser now demands from Faust that he shall give the court a
display of his magic arts. He commands him to raise the shades of Paris
and Helen. Faust applies to Mephisto, but he professes himself unable to
raise the shades of classical heroes and heroines. 'This heathen Greek
folk,' he says, 'have their own hell and their own devils. _I_ have no
power over them. Still--there _is_ a means.' He then tells Faust that he
will have to descend to the 'Mothers,' 'die Muetter,' mysterious deities
(mentioned by Greek authors) as worshipped in Sicily and dwelling in the
inmost depths of the universe, at the very heart of Nature, beyond the
conditions of Time and Space. He who will raise the shade of Helen, or
ideal beauty, must descend first to the 'Mothers'--must enter the realm
of the spiritual, the unconditioned, the ideal, to which there is no
defined road, and to which even _thought_ cannot guide him. He must
surrender himself in _contemplation_ and sink to the very centre of the
world of appearances. Mephistopheles gives Faust a key, which glows and
emits flames as he grasps it. Holding this key he will sink down to the
realm of the Mothers, where he will find a glowing tripod (the symbol
of that Triad or Trinity which plays so large a part in the old
Pythagorean philosophy and in more than one religion). This tripod he is
to touch with the key, and it will rise with him to the surface of the
earth.
The imperial court is assembled. A stage has been erected. The court
astrologer announces the play and Mephistopheles is installed in the
prompter's box. All is in expectation and excitement. Then on the stage
is seen rising from the ground the form of Faust attended by the tripod.
He touches the tripod with the glowing key. A dense mist of incense
arises, and as it clears away is seen--Paris. His appearance is greeted
by the enthusiastic comments of the court ladies, young and old, and
criticized by the men courtiers--with evident jealousy. Helen then
appears, and the comments and criticisms are reversed, female jealousy
now having its turn. Faust stands entranced at the loveliness of Helen.
In spite of the angry protests of Mephistopheles from the prompter's
box, who tells him to keep to his role and not to be taken in by a mere
phantom of his own raising. Faust, unable any longer to control himself
when Paris attempts to carry off Helen, rushes forward to rescue her. A
great explosion takes place and all is darkness. Faust has fallen
senseless to the ground. Mephistopheles picks him up and carries him
away--with contemptuous remarks.
At the beginning of the next act we find Faust lying, still insensible,
on his bed in his old room, where we first met him--his professor's
study. His daring attempt to grasp ideal beauty has ended, as it often
does end, and as it ended in Goethe's own case, in failure of a sudden
and explosive nature. He is now to have an experience of a different
nature. During the years while he has been making his first trial of the
outer world, his old Famulus, Wagner, now professor in Faust's place,
has been devoting _his_ whole time and energies to realising that dream
of science--the chemical production of life.
It is, says Professor Romanes, 'the dream of modern science that a
machine _may_ finally be constructed so elaborate in its multiple play
of forces that it would begin to show evidences of consciousness and
mind'--mind and motion being, according to certain modern scientists,
identical. Curiously enough a scientist of the same name--Wagner--who
lived in the last century, did, like Faust's Famulus Wagner, in the same
way devote his life to the production of a living organism--a
'homunculus'--in the conviction, as he asserted, that 'in course of time
chemistry is bound to succeed in producing organic bodies and in
creating a human being by means of crystallization'--an assertion not
very different from that of a still more trustworthy scientist, for
Professor Huxley himself has told us that he lived in 'the hope and the
faith that in course of time we shall see our way from the constituents
of the protoplasm to its properties,' _i.e._ from carbonic acid, water,
and ammonia to that mysterious thing which we call vitality or
life--from the molecular motion of the brain to Socratic wisdom,
Shakespearean genius, and Christian faith, hope and charity.
In the background of the stage we see Faust still lying insensible on
his bed. Mephistopheles comes forward muttering sarcastic comments on
Faust's foolish infatuation. 'He whom Helen paralyzes,' he says,
'doesn't come to his wits again so soon.' He then pulls the bell. The
windows rattle and the walls shake, as with earthquake. Wagner's
terrified Famulus appears. He says that his master, the Herr Professor,
has locked himself up for days and nights together in his laboratory;
that he is engaged in a most delicate and important operation, namely
that of manufacturing a human being, and he really cannot be disturbed.
Mephistopheles however sends him back to demand admittance. Meanwhile he
dons Faust's professorial costume, which he finds hanging in its old
place but infested with legions of moths, which buzz around him piping
welcome to their old mate. Then he takes his seat in Faust's
professorial chair, and the same scholar enters to whom as a timid
'Fuchs,' or freshman, Mephistopheles had in the first Part of the play
given his diabolic advice as to the choice of a profession. The scholar
is _now_, after a course of University education, a match for the devil
himself. He flouts poor Mephisto as a dried-up old pedant, not up to
date with the new generation's aesthetic and literary self-conceits, or
with its contempt for its elders--and for everything else except its own
precious self. 'Youth and its genius,' he exclaims, 'are the only things
of value; as soon as one is thirty years of age he's just as good as
dead ... and it would be far better if all people at thirty were knocked
on the head'; and he storms out of the room. Mephistopheles consoles
himself with the fact that the devil is old enough to have seen a good
many such new generations, with all their absurdities, their up-to-date
fads and follies, pass away and give place to other forms of still more
up-to-date and self-conceited absurdity.
Mephisto now enters the laboratory, where Wagner is intently engaged in
watching his chemical compound gradually crystallizing within a huge
glass retort. As he watches, the outlines of a diminutive human being--a
mannikin or 'homunculus'--become visible and rapidly gain distinct form.
A tiny voice is heard issuing from the glass retort and addressing
Wagner as 'Daddy' and Mephistopheles as 'Cousin'; and it is to the
presence of this 'Cousin,' we may infer, rather than to his scientific
'Daddy' that the Homunculus really owes his existence. With the
connivance of Mephistopheles, the Mannikin, still in his glass retort,
slips from the enamoured paternal grasp of Wagner, and floats through
the air into the adjacent room, hovering above Faust, who is still
asleep on his couch.
As it hovers above the sleeper it begins to sing--to describe ravishing
dreamland scenery--inspiring Faust with visions of sensuous loveliness.
It then bids Mephistopheles wrap Faust in his magic mantle and prepare
for an aerial flight.... 'Whither?' asks Mephistopheles. '_To Greece!_'
is the answer: to the Pharsalian plain in Thessaly; and in spite of the
protests of Mephistopheles (who has no taste for the land of classic
art) he is forced to obey. The sleeping form of Faust is borne aloft,
the Mannikin leading the way like a will-o'-the-wisp, gleaming within
his glass retort. '_Und ich?_' exclaims poor old Wagner in piteous
accents. '_Ach, du!_' says Homunculus, '_Du bleibst zu Hause--!_' 'You
just stop at home, and grub away among your musty manuscripts, and work
away at your protoplasms and your elixirs of life.' Thus, guided by the
Homunculus, Faust and Mephistopheles set forth on their aerial journey
to ancient Greece--to the land where the ideals of art have found their
highest realization--in quest of Helen, the supreme type of all that the
human mind has conceived as beautiful.
It is often asked, and I think _we_ may fairly ask, what Goethe meant to
symbolize by his Homunculus. You will have noticed that his material
components (as the carbonic acid and ammonia of Professor Huxley's
protoplasm) are supplied by his scientific 'Daddy,' but that the 'tertia
vis,' that third power or 'spiritual bond' which combines his material
components, is supplied by the supernatural presence of Mephistopheles.
I believe this Homunculus to be a symbol of poetic genius or
imagination, which uses the material supplied by plodding pedantry--by
critical research, antiquarianism, scholarship, and science--slips from
the hands of its poor enamoured Daddy, and flies off to the land of
idealism. Here, as we shall see, the Mannikin breaks free from his glass
retort and is poured out like phosphorescent light on the waves of the
great ocean.
But the quest for Helen, for ideal beauty, leads through scenes haunted
by forms of weird and terrible nature--those forms in which the human
imagination, as it gradually gains a sense of the supernatural and a
sense of art, first incorporated its conceptions--forms, first, of
hideous and terrific character: monstrous idols of Eastern and Egyptian
superstition, Griffins, and Sphinxes, and bull-headed Molochs, and
horned Astartes, and many-breasted Cybeles, till in the Hellenic race it
rose to the recognition of the beautiful and bodied forth divinity in
the human form divine, and found its highest ideal of beauty in Helen,
divinely fair of women. This phase in Faust's development--this stage in
his quest for beauty and truth--this delirium of his 'divine madness,'
as Plato calls our ecstasy of yearning after ideal beauty, is symbolized
by the classical _Walpurgisnacht_. (You remember the other
_Walpurgisnacht_--that on the Blocksberg--which I described before.)
Guided by the Mannikin, Faust and Mephistopheles arrive at the
Pharsalian fields--the great plain of Thessaly, renowned for the battle
of Pharsalus, in which Caesar conquered Pompey--renowned too as the
classic ground of witches and wizards. Griffins, Sphinxes and Sirens
meet them. They can tell Faust nothing about Helen, but they direct him
to Cheiron the Centaur (a link, as it were, between the monstrous forms
of barbarous oriental imagination and Hellenic art). Cheiron the Centaur
has himself borne Helen on his back, and excites Faust's passion by the
description of her beauty. He takes Faust to the prophetess Manto,
daughter of the old blind Theban prophet Teiresias, and she conducts him
to a dark fissure--a Bocca dell' Inferno--at the foot of Mount Olympus,
such as that which you may have seen in the Sibyl's cave on Lake
Avernus; and here (as once Orpheus did in search of Eurydice) he
descends to the realms of the dead to seek the help of Persephone, Queen
of Hades, in his quest for Helen. Meanwhile Mephisto has found that in
spite of his distaste for classic art and beauty there are elements in
the classical witches' sabbath not less congenial to him than those of
the Blocksberg with its northern and more modern types of devilry and
bestiality. He is enchanted with the ghoulish vampire Empusa and the
monster Lamia, half-snake half-woman, and at length finds _his_ ideal of
beauty in the loathsome and terrible Phorkyads, daughters of Phorkys, an
old god of the sea. The Phorkyads are sometimes described as identical
with, sometimes as sisters of, the Gorgons, and represent the climax of
all that Greek imagination has created of the horrible. The three
sisters are pictured in Greek mythology as possessing between them only
one eye and one tooth, which they pass round for use. They dwelt in
outer darkness, being too terrible for sun or moon to look upon. Even
Mephistopheles is at first a little staggered by the sight, but he soon
finds himself on familiar terms with them and ends by borrowing the form
of one of them (she becoming for the time absorbed into her two
sisters)--for as medieval devil he has no right of entree into that
classical scene in which he and Faust are now to play their parts. It is
therefore in the form of a Phorkyad or Gorgon that Mephisto will appear
when we next meet him.
Meanwhile the Homunculus has found congenial spirits among the
sea-nymphs and sirens on the shores of the Aegean. He longs to gain
freedom from his glass, in which he is still imprisoned. Nereus the
sea-god is unable to help him, but sends him to his father Proteus, the
great ocean prophet, who bears him out into the midst of the ocean. Here
Galatea the sea-goddess (identical with Aphrodite, the sea-born symbol
of the beauty of the natural-world) passes by in her chariot drawn by
dolphins and surrounded by Nereids. The Homunculus in an ecstasy of
love dashes himself against her chariot. The glass is shattered and he
is poured forth in a stream of phosphorescent light over the waves--thus
being once more made one with Nature.
The theory that _water_ was the prime element, a theory advocated
especially by the old Ionic philosopher Thales, was held by Goethe, who
was a 'sedimentarist' in geological matters, and in this classical
_Walpurgisnacht_ he has introduced, much to the annoyance of many
critics, a dispute between Thales and other sages on the question
whether the formation of the world was due to fire or water.
We have now reached that part of _Faust_ which is known as the _Helena_.
It was written before the rest of Part II, though doubtless when he
wrote it Goethe had already conceived the general outline of the whole
poem. Of the wonderful versatility of Goethe's genius no more striking
example can be given than the sudden and complete change of scene, and
not only scene but ideas and feelings, by which we are transported from
the age of Luther and the court of a German Kaiser and the laboratory of
a modern scientist back--some 3500 years or so--to the age of the
Trojan war.
Instead of extravagance and grotesqueness, instead of the diversity, the
rich ornamentation, the heaven-soaring pinnacles and spires of Gothic
imagination--we have in the _Helena_ sculpturesque repose, simplicity,
dignity and proportion. It is as if we had been suddenly transported
from some Gothic cathedral to the Parthenon, or to Paestum.
I know no poet who in any modern language has reproduced as Goethe has
done in his _Iphigenie_ and in the _Helena_ not only the external form
but also the spirit of Hellenic literature. While reading the _Helena_
we feel ourselves under the cloudless Grecian sky; we breathe the
Grecian air with Helen herself.
The scene is laid before the palace of Menelaus at Sparta. Helen,
accompanied by a band of captive Trojan maidens, has been disembarked at
the mouth of the river Eurotas by Menelaus, on his return from Troy, and
has been sent forward to Sparta to make preparation for the arrival of
her husband and his warriors. Once more after those long eventful years
since she had fled to Troy with Paris she stands as in a dream before
her own palace-home, dazed and wearied, her mind distraught with anxious
thoughts; for during the long wearisome return across the Aegean sea her
husband Menelaus has addressed no friendly word to her, but seemed
gloomily revolving in his heart some deed of vengeance. She knows not if
she is returning as queen, or as captive, doomed perhaps to the fate of
a slave.
She enters the palace alone. After a few moments she reappears,
horror-struck and scarce able to tell what she has seen. Crouching
beside the central hearth she has found a terrible shape--a ghastly
haggard thing, like some phantom of hell. It has followed her. It stands
there before her on the threshold of her palace. In terrible accents
this Gorgon-like monster denounces her, recounting all the ruin that by
her fatal beauty she had wrought, interweaving into the story the
various legends connected with her past life--those mysterious legends
that connect Helen not only with Paris and Menelaus but with Theseus and
Achilles and with Egypt--legends of a second phantom-Helen, the 'double'
of that Helen whom Menelaus has carried home from Troy--until alarmed
and distracted, doubting her own identity, overwhelmed by anxiety about
the future and by terror at the grisly apparition, she seems herself to
be in truth fading away into a mere phantom, and sinks senseless to the
ground. After a fierce altercation between the chorus of captive maidens
and the Gorgon-shape (in whom you will have recognized our old friend
Mephistopheles) Helen returns to consciousness. Then the
Phorkyad-Mephistopheles tells her that the preparations which she has
been ordered to make are in view of a sacrifice to be performed on the
arrival of Menelaus and that she herself (Helen) is the destined victim.
In despair Helen appeals to the Gorgon for advice, who bids her take
refuge in the neighbouring mountains of Arcadia, where a robber
chieftain has his stronghold. Under the guidance of Mephisto, who raises
a thick mist, she and her maidens escape. They climb the mountain; the
mists rise and they find themselves before the castle of a medieval
bandit-prince, and it is Faust himself who comes forth to greet her and
to welcome her as his queen and mistress. Faust, the symbol of the
Renaissance and modern art, welcomes to his castle the ideal of Greek
art and beauty.
The stately Greek measures now give way to the love-songs of Chivalry
and Romance--to the measures of the Minnesinger and the Troubadour.
Faust kneels in homage before the impersonation of ideal beauty, and
Helen feels that she is _now_ no longer a mere ideal, a mere phantom.
She clings to her new, unknown lover, as to one who will make her
realize her own existence. It is an allegory of modern art--the art of
Dante, Giotto, Raphael, Shakespeare and Goethe--receiving as its queen
the ideal of Greek imagination and inspiring, as it were, the cold
statue with the warm vitality of a higher conception of chivalrous love
and perfect womanhood.
I have mentioned how the stately Greek measures in the _Helena_ give way
to the metres of Romance and Chivalry. Perhaps it may be well to explain
some of these various metres.
The scene opens, as you know, with Helen's dignified and beautiful
speech:
Bewundert viel und viel gescholten Helena.
That is the well-known _iambic trimeter_, _i.e._ the metre of six feet
(twelve syllables) used in all the speeches in Greek tragedy.
Thus the _Oedipus Tyrannos_ of Sophocles begins:
[Greek: O tekna, Kadmou tou palai nea trophe]
and so on. It has twelve syllables, mostly (iambics) as in our blank
verse. But blank verse has only ten syllables: 'I cannot tell what you
and other men.' If one adds two syllables one gets the Greek iambic
verse, thus: 'I cannot tell what you and other men believe.' The Chorus
in the _Helena_ uses various rhythms such as are found in the choruses
of Greek tragedy:
Schweige, schweige,
Missblickende, missredende du!
Aus so graesslichen, einzahnigen
Lippen was enthaucht wohl
Solchem furchtbaren Greuelschlund!
Then Mephistopheles, as the Phorkyad, when Helen falls fainting,
addresses her suddenly in another measure--a longer verse, such as is
sometimes used by the Greek tragedians and comedians when something new
occurs in the play. It is called a _tetrameter_, and consists of fifteen
syllables (mostly - U, called trochees). Thus, in Greek, [Greek: oi
gerontes oi palaioi memphomestha te polei]--and in German:
Tritt hervor aus fluechtigen Wolken hohe Sonne dieses Tags--
or the fine lines spoken by Helen:
Doch es ziemet Koeniginnen, allen Menschen ziemt es wohl,
Sich zu fassen, zu ermannen, was auch drohend ueberrascht.