ten syllables, such as we know in Milton and Shakespeare and Schiller.
One might have expected him to speak in some earlier romantic measure,
to have used perhaps the metre of the old Nibelungenlied, as in
Es ist in alten Maehren wunders viel geseit,
Von Heleden lobebaeren, von grosser Arebeit,
which is supposed to date from about 1150; or in Dante's _terza rima_,
of about 1300, as
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita.
But blank verse is after all the metre _par excellence_ of the
Renaissance, that is of the revival of Greek influence, and Goethe chose
it for this reason.
Now the Watchman Lynceus ('the keen-eyed,' as the word means--and you
perhaps remember him as the watchman of the Argonauts on the good ship
Argo) represents here the early pre-Renaissance poets of Italy and
Provence and Germany--the Troubadours and Trouveres and Minnesinger, who
were so surprised and dazzled by the sudden sunrise of the Renaissance
with its wonderful new apparition of Greek art that they (as Lynceus in
_Faust_) failed to announce its coming; and therefore Lynceus here
speaks in a kind of early Troubadour metre, with _rime_. In classical
poetry there is no rime. They did not like it; they even ridiculed it.
For instance Cicero, the great orator, once tried to write poetry, and
produced a line that said 'O fortunate Rome, when I was consul!' This
was not only conceited of him but unfortunately the line contained a
rime and this rime brought down an avalanche of ridicule on his head. 'O
fortunatam natam me consule Romam' was this unfortunate line. Rime was
probably first adopted by the monks in their medieval Latin hymns and
was used by the Troubadours and early Italian poets when they began to
write in the vulgar tongue. Dante uses it in his canzoni and sonnets
and ballads, as well of course as in his great poem. So it is quite
right to make Lynceus speak in rime. Helen of course has never heard
rime before, and she turns to Faust and asks him what it is that sounds
so strange and beautiful in this song of Lynceus; and she wants to know
how _she_ too can learn the art. So Faust tells her just to try and the
rimes will come of their own accord. But I will quote the passage, for
it is very pretty; and I will add a rough translation.
Doch wuenscht' ich Unterricht warum die Rede
Des Manns mir seltsam klang, seltsam und freundlich--
Ein Ton scheint sich dem and'ren zu bequemen;
Und hat ein Wort zum Ohre sich gesellt,
Ein andres kommt, dem ersten liebzukosen....
So sage denn, wie spraech' ich auch so schoen.
FAUST. Das ist gar leicht--es muss vom Herzen geh'n.
Und wenn die Brust von Sehnsucht ueberfliesst
Man sieht sich um, und fragt....
HELEN. wer mitgeniesst.
FAUST. Nun schaut der Geist nicht vorwaerts, nicht zurueck--
Die Gegenwart allein ...
HELEN. ist unser Glueck--
FAUST. Schatz ist sie, Hochgewinn, Besitz und Pfand.
Bestaetigung, wer gibt sie?
HELEN. Meine Hand.
(HELEN. I fain would ask thee why the watchman's song
So strangely sounded--strange but beautiful.
Tones seemed to link themselves in harmony.
One word would come and nestle in the ear,
Then came another and caressed it there.
But say--how can I also learn the art?
FAUST. Quite easily--one listens to one's heart,
And when its longings seem too great to bear
We look around for one ...
HELEN. our joy to share.
FAUST. Not past nor future loving hearts can bless,
The _present_--
HELEN. is alone our happiness.
FAUST. Before the prize of beauty, lo I stand,
But who assures the prize to me?
HELEN. My hand!)
In the midst of this life of chivalrous love and romance Faust and Helen
pass a period of ecstatic bliss. But, as Goethe himself found, such
ecstasies are only a passing phase. The end comes inevitably and
suddenly. A son is born to them, Euphorion by name (the name of the
winged son of Helen and Achilles, according to one legend). He is no
common human child. As a butterfly from its chrysalis he bursts at once
into fully developed existence. He is of enchanting beauty but wild and
capricious; spurning the common earth he climbs ever higher and higher
amidst the mountain crags, singing ravishing melodies to his lyre. He
reaches the topmost crag and casts himself into the air. A flame
flickers upwards, and the body of a beautiful youth 'in which one seems
to recognize a well-known form' falls to the ground, at the feet of
Faust and Helen.
Euphorion symbolizes modern poetry, and the well-known form is that of
Byron. For a moment the body lies there; it then dissolves in flame,
which ascends to heaven, and a voice is heard calling on Helen to
follow.
Yes, she must follow. As flame she must return to her home in the
Empyrean--the home of ideal beauty and all other ideals. However much we
strive to realize ideal beauty in art or in our lives, however we may
hold it to our hearts as a warm and living possession, it always escapes
our grasp. The short-lived winged child of poetic inspiration gleams but
for a moment and disappears, as a flame flickering back to its native
empyrean. And she, the mother, she too must follow, leaving us alone to
face the stern reality of life and of death.
In the embrace of Faust Helen melts away into thin air, leaving in his
arms her robe and veil. These change into a cloud, which envelops him,
raises him into the air and bears him also away. The Phorkyad picks up
Euphorion's lyre and mantle; he steps forward and addresses the
audience, assuring them that in the leavings of poetic genius he has got
enough to fit out any number of modern poets, and is open to a bargain.
He then swells up to a gigantic height, removes the Gorgon-mask, and
reveals himself as Mephistopheles once more the northern modern devil;
and the curtain falls.
When it rises for the Fourth Act we see a craggy mountain peak before
us. A cloud approaches, and deposits Faust on the topmost crag. It
lingers for a time, assuming wondrous shapes and then gradually melts
away into the blue. Faust gazes at it. In its changing outlines he seems
to discern first the regal forms of Olympian goddesses, of Juno, of
Leda--then of Helen. But they fade away and, ere it disappears, the
cloud assumes the likeness of that other half-forgotten human form which
once had aroused in his heart that which he now feels to have been a
love far truer and deeper than all his passion for ideal beauty--that
'swiftly felt and scarcely comprehended' love for a human heart which,
as he now confesses to himself, 'had it been retained would have been
his most precious possession.'
A seven-league boot now passes by--followed in hot haste by another. Out
of the boots steps forth Mephistopheles. He asks contemptuously if Faust
has had enough of heroines and all such ideal folly. He cannot
understand why Faust is still dissatisfied with life. Surely he has seen
enough of its pleasures. He advises him, if he is weary of court life,
to build himself a Sultan's palace and harem and live in retirement--as
Tiberius did on the island of Capri. 'Not so,' answers Faust. 'This
world of earthly soil Still gives me room for greater action. I feel new
strength for nobler toil--Toil that at length shall bring me
satisfaction.'
He has determined to devote the rest of his life to humanity, to the
good of the human race. It is a project with which Mephistopheles
naturally has little sympathy. But he is forced to acquiesce, and, being
bound to serve Faust even in this, he suggests a plan. The young Kaiser
is at present in great difficulties. He is hard pressed by a rival
Emperor--a pretender to the Imperial crown. Mephisto will by his magic
arts secure the Kaiser the victory over this pretender, and then Faust
will claim as recompense a tract of country bordering on the ocean. Here
by means of canals and dykes, dug and built by demonic powers, Faust is
to reclaim from the sea a large region of fertile country and to found a
kind of model republic, where peace and prosperity and every social and
political blessing shall find a home. The plan is carried out. At the
summons of Mephistopheles appear three gigantic warriors by whose help
the battle is won, and Faust gains his reward--the stretch of land on
the shore of the ocean. And he is not the only gainer. The Archbishop
takes the opportunity of extracting far more valuable concessions of
land from the young Kaiser as penance for his having associated himself
with powers of darkness. The prelate even extracts the promise of tithes
and dues from all the land still unclaimed by Faust. As Mephistopheles
aptly remarks, the Church seems to have a good digestion.
Many years are now supposed to elapse. Faust has nearly completed his
task of expelling the sea and founding his ideal state. What had been a
watery waste is now like the garden of Eden in its luxuriant fertility.
Thousands of industrious happy mortals have found in this new country a
refuge and a home. Ships, laden with costly wares, throng the ports. On
an eminence overlooking the scene stands the castle of Faust, and not
far off are a cottage and a chapel. On this scene the last act opens. A
wanderer enters. He is seeking the cottage which once used to stand
here, on the very brink of the ocean. It was here that he was
shipwrecked: here, on this very spot, the waves had cast him ashore:
here stands still the cottage of the poor old peasant and his wife who
had rescued him from death. But now the sea is sparkling in the blue
distance and beneath him spreads the new country with its waving
cornfields. He enters the cottage and is welcomed by the poor old
couple (to whom Goethe has given the names Philemon and Baucis, the old
peasant and his wife who, according to the Greek legend, were the only
Phrygians who offered hospitality to Zeus, the King of the Gods, as he
was wandering about in disguise among mortals).
Faust comes out on to the garden terrace of his castle. He is now an old
man--close upon a hundred years of age. He gazes with a feeling of
happiness and satisfaction at the scene that lies below him--the wide
expanse of fertile land, the harbours and canals filled with shipping.
Suddenly the bell in the little chapel begins to ring for Vespers.
Faust's happiness is in a moment changed into bitterness and anger. This
cottage, this chapel, this little plot of land are as thorns in his
side: they are the Naboth's vineyard which he covets and which alone
interferes with his territorial rights. He has offered large sums of
money, but the peasant will not give up his home.
Mephistopheles and his helpers (the same three gigantic supernatural
beings who took part in the battle) appear. Faust vents his anger and
chagrin with regard to the peasant and the irritating ding-dong-dell of
the vesper bell. He commissions Mephistopheles to persuade the peasant
to take the money and to make him turn out of his wretched hut.
Mephistopheles and his mates go to carry out the order. A few moments
later flames are seen to rise from the cottage and chapel.
Mephistopheles returns to relate that the peasant and the wanderer
proved obstinate: in the scuffle the wanderer had been killed; the
cottage had caught fire, and old Philemon and his wife had both died of
terror.
Faust turns upon Mephistopheles with fierce anger and curses him. 'I
meant exchange!' he exclaims. 'I meant to _make it good with money_! I
meant not robbery and murder. I curse the deed. Thou, not I, shalt bear
the guilt.'
Here I do not find it easy to follow Faust's line of argument. Fair
exchange is certainly said to be no robbery--but this theory of 'making
everything good with money' is one which the average foreigner is apt to
attribute especially to the average Britisher, and it does not raise
Faust in one's estimation. I suppose he thinks he is doing the poor old
couple a blessing in disguise by ejecting them out of their wretched
hovel and presenting them with a sum of money of perhaps ten times its
value.
Possibly Goethe means it to be a specimen of the kind of mistake that
well-meaning theoretical philanthropists are apt to commit with their
Juggernaut of Human Progress. Faust is filled with great philanthropic
ideas--but perhaps he is a little apt to ignore the individual. Anyhow
his better self 'meant not robbery and murder' and is perhaps quite
justified in cursing its demonic companion and giving him the whole of
the guilt.
The scene changes. It is midnight. Faust, sleepless and restless, is
pacing the hall in his castle. Outside, on the castle terrace, appear
four phantom shapes clothed as women in dusky robes. They are Want,
Guilt, Care, and Need. The four grey sisters make halt before the
castle. In hollow, awe-inspiring tones they recite in turn their
dirge-like strains: they chant of gathering clouds and darkness, and of
their brother--Death. They approach the door of the castle hall. It is
shut. Within lives a rich man, and none of them may enter, not even
Guilt--none save only Care. She slips through the keyhole. Faust feels
her unseen presence.
'Is any one here?' he asks.
'The question demandeth _Yes_!'
'And thou ... who art thou?'
''Tis enough that I am here.'
'Avaunt!'
'I am where I should be.'
Faust defies the phantom. She, standing there invisible, recites in
tones like the knell of a passing-bell the fate of a man haunted by
Care: how he gradually loses sight of his high ideals and wanders
blindly amid the maze of worldly illusions--how he loses faith and
joy--how he starves amidst plenty--has no certain aim in life--burdening
himself and others, breathing air that chokes him, living a phantom
life--a dead thing, a death-in-life--supporting himself on a hope that
is no hope, but despair--never content, never resigned, never knowing
what he should do, or what he himself wishes.
'Accursed spectres!' exclaims Faust. 'Thus ye ever treat the human race.
From demons, I know, it is scarce possible to free oneself. But _thy_
power, O Care--so great and so insidious though it be, I will _not_
recognize it!'
'So _feel_ it now!' answers the phantom. 'Throughout their whole
existence men are mostly _blind_--So let it be at last with thee!'
She approaches, breathes in Faust's face, and he is struck blind.
He stands there dazed and astounded. Thick darkness has fallen upon him.
At last he speaks:
Still deeper seems the night to surge around me,
But in my inmost spirit all is light.
I'll rest not till the finished work has crown'd me.
God's promise--that alone doth give me might.
He hastens forth, groping his way in blindness, to call up his workmen.
His life is ending and he must end his work. It is midnight, but the
light within him makes him think the day has dawned. In the courtyard
there are awaiting him Mephistopheles and a band of Lemurs--horrible
skeleton-figures with shovels and torches. They are digging his grave.
Faust mistakes the sound for that of his workmen, and incites them to
labour. He orders the overseer, Mephistopheles, to press on with the
work ... to finish the last great moat--or 'Graben.'
'_Man spricht_,' answers Mephistopheles _sotto voce_,
'Man spricht, wie man mir Nachricht gab,
Von keinem _Graben_--doch vom Grab.'
It is no moat, no Graben, that is now being dug, but a grave--a Grab.
Standing on the very verge of his grave, Faust, reviewing the memories
of his long life, feels that _at last_, though old and blind, with no
more hopes in earthly existence, he has won peace and happiness in
having worked for others and in having given other human beings a
measure of independence and of that true liberty and happiness which are
gained only by honest toil. He alone truly _possesses_ and can _enjoy_
who has made a thing his own by earning it.
Yes, to this thought I hold with firm persistence;
The last result of wisdom stamps it true;
He only earns his freedom and existence
Who daily conquers them anew.
And such a throng I fain would see--
Would stand on a free soil, with people free.
Standing there, on the very edge of his new-dug grave he blesses the
present moment and bids it stay. The fatal words are spoken and
according to the compact his life must end.
He sinks lifeless to the ground. The Lemurs lay him in the open grave.
Mephistopheles, triumphant, looks on and exclaims:
No joy could sate him, no delight suffice.
To grasp at empty shades was his endeavour.
The latest, poorest emptiest moment--this--
Poor fool, he tried to hold it fast for ever.
Me he resisted in such vigorous wise;
But Time is lord--and there the old man lies!
The clock stands still.
'Stands still,' repeats a voice from heaven, 'still, silent, as the
midnight.' 'It is finished,' says Mephistopheles. 'Nay. 'Tis but past,'
answers the voice. 'Past!' exclaims Mephistopheles; 'how _past_ and yet
not _finished_?' ... He is enraged at the suspicion that life, though
past, may not be _finished_--that Faust's human soul may _yet_ elude
that hell to which he destines it ... that of annihilation.
The Lemurs group themselves round the grave and chant with hollow
voices, such as skeletons may be supposed to have, a funeral dirge.
Meantime Mephistopheles is busy summoning his demons to keep watch over
the dead body, lest the soul should escape like a mouse, or flicker up
to heaven in a little flamelet. Hideous forms of demons, fat and thin,
with straight and crooked horns, tusked like boars and with claws like
vultures, come thronging in, while the jaw of hell opens itself, showing
in the distance the fiery city of Satan.
At this moment a celestial glory is seen descending from heaven and
voices of angels are heard singing a song of triumph and salvation. They
approach ever nearer--Mephistopheles rages and curses, but in vain. They
come ever onward, casting before them roses, the flowers of Paradise,
which burst in flame and scorch the demons, who, rushing at their
angelic adversaries with their hellish prongs and forks and launching
vainly their missiles of hell-fire, are hurled back by an invisible
power and gradually driven off the stage, plunging in hideous ruin and
combustion down headlong into the jaws of hell.
Mephistopheles alone remains, foaming in impotent rage. He is surrounded
by the choir of white-robed angels. He stands powerless there, while
they gather to themselves Faust's immortal part and ascend amidst songs
of triumph to heaven.
Some of us, perhaps most of us--in certain moods at least--feel
inclined to close the book here, as we do with _Hamlet_ at the words
'the rest is silence.' And this feeling is all the stronger when we have
witnessed the stage decorator's pasteboard heaven, where Apostles and
Fathers are posed artistically in rather perilous situations amid rocks
and pine-trees, or balance themselves with evident anxiety mid-air on
pendent platforms representing clouds. Altogether this stage-heaven is a
very uncomfortable and depressing kind of place.
But when read in Goethe's poem and regarded as an allegorical vision the
scene has a certain impressive grandeur, and some of the hymns of
adoration and triumph are of exceeding beauty.
This Scene in Heaven opens with the songs of the three great Fathers,
the Pater Ecstaticus, Pater Profundus, and Pater Seraphicus, symbolizing
the three stages of human aspiration, namely ecstasy, contemplation and
seraphic love. The Seraphic Father is of course St. Francis of Assisi.
In heaven, as he did on earth, he sings of the revelation of Eternal
Love.
Angels are now seen ascending and bearing Faust's immortal part, and as
they rise they sing:
The noble spirit now is free
And saved from evil scheming.
Whoe'er aspires unweariedly
Is not beyond redeeming,
And if he feels the grace of Love
That from on high is given
The blessed hosts that wait above
Shall welcome him to heaven.
His yet unawakened soul is greeted by the heavenly choirs and by the
three penitents, the Magdalene, the woman of Samaria and St. Mary of
Egypt.
Then appears 'timidly stealing forth' the glorified form of her who on
earth was called Gretchen. In words that remind one of her former prayer
of remorse and despair in the Cathedral she offers her petition to the
Virgin:
O Mary, hear me!
From realms supernal
Of light eternal
Incline thy countenance upon my bliss!
My loved, my lover,
His trials over
In yonder world, returns to me in this.
The Virgin in her glory appears. She addresses Gretchen:
Come, raise thyself to higher spheres!
For he will follow when he feels thee near.
Gretchen soars up to the higher heaven, and the soul of Faust, now
awakening to consciousness, rises also heavenward following her, while
the chorus of angels sings, in words the beauty and power of which I
dare not mar by translation, telling how all things earthly are but a
vision, and how in heaven the imperfect is made perfect and the
inconceivable wins attainment, and how that which leads us upward and
heavenward is immortal love.
Alles Vergaengliche
Ist nur ein Gleichnis;
Das Unzulaengliche,
Hier wird's Ereignis;
Das Unbeschreibliche,
Hier ist's getan;
Das Ewig-weibliche
Zieht uns hinan.
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| Transcriber's Notes: |
| |
| Page 15: Full stop added after "dishes" |
| Page 117: "happended" amended to "happened" |
| Page 128: closing quote mark added after 'double' |
| |
| Hyphenation has generally been standardized. However, when |
| hyphenated and unhyphenated versions of a word each occur |
| an equal number of times, both versions have been retained |
| (out-rivalling/outrivalling; up to date/up-to-date). |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+