Christ is arisen!
Joy to the Mortal,
Whom the ruinous,
Creeping, hereditary
Infirmities wound round.
Dr. Hedge has come nearer than any one to reconciling meaning and melody
thus:--
"Christ has arisen!
Joy to our buried Head!
Whom the unmerited,
Trailing, inherited
Woes did imprison."
The present translator, without losing sight of the fact that "the Mortal"
means Christ, has taken the liberty (constrained by rhyme,--which is
sometimes more than the _rudder_ of verse,) of making the congratulation
include Humanity, as incarnated in Christ, "the second Adam."
In the closing Chorus of Angels, the translator found that he could best
preserve the spirit of the five-fold rhyme:--
"Thätig ihn preisenden,
Liebe beweisenden,
Brüderlich speisenden,
Predigend reisenden,
Wonne verheissenden,"
by running it into three couplets.]
[Footnote 11: The prose account of the alchymical process is as follows:--
"There was red mercury, a powerfully acting body, united with the tincture
of antimony, at a gentle heat of the water-bath. Then, being exposed to
the heat of open fire in an aludel, (or alembic,) a sublimate filled its
heads in succession, which, if it appeared with various hues, was the
desired medicine."]
[Footnote 12: "Salamander, &c." The four represent the spirits of the
four elements, fire, water, air, and earth, which Faust successively
conjures, so that, if the monster belongs in any respect to this mundane
sphere, he may be exorcized. But it turns out that he is beyond and
beneath all.]
[Footnote 13: Here, of course, Faust makes the sign of the cross, or holds
out a crucifix.]
[Footnote 14: "Fly-God," _i.e._ Beelzebub.]
[Footnote 15: The "Drudenfuss," or pentagram, was a pentagonal figure
composed of three triangles, thus:
[Illustration]
[Footnote 16: Doctor's Feast. The inaugural feast given at taking a
degree.]
[Footnote 17: "Blood." When at the first invention of printing, the art
was ascribed to the devil, the illuminated red ink parts were said by the
people to be done in blood.]
[Footnote 18: "The Spanish boot" was an instrument of torture, like the
Scottish boot mentioned in Old Mortality.]
[Footnote 19: "Encheiresin Naturæ." Literally, a handling of nature.]
[Footnote 20: Still a famous place of public resort and entertainment. On
the wall are two old paintings of Faust's carousal and his ride out of the
door on a cask. One is accompanied by the following inscription, being two
lines (Hexameter and Pentameter) broken into halves:--
"Vive, bibe, obgregare, memor
Fausti hujus et hujus
Pnæ. Aderat clauda haec,
Ast erat ampla gradû. 1525."
"Live, drink, be merry, remembering
This Faust and his
Punishment. It came slowly
But was in ample measure."]
[Footnote 21:_Frosch, Brander_, &c. These names seem to be chosen with an
eye to adaptation, Frosch meaning frog, and Brander fireship. "Frog"
happens also to be the nickname the students give to a pupil of the
gymnasium, or school preparatory to the university.]
[Footnote 22: Rippach is a village near Leipsic, and Mr. Hans was a
fictitious personage about whom the students used to quiz greenhorns.]
[Footnote 23: The original means literally _sea-cat_. Retzsch says, it is
the little ring-tailed monkey.]
[Footnote 24: One-time-one, _i.e._ multiplication-table.]
[Footnote 25: "Hand and glove." The translator's coincidence with Miss
Swanwick here was entirely accidental. The German is "thou and thou,"
alluding to the fact that intimate friends among the Germans, like the
sect of Friends, call each other _thou_.]
[Footnote 26: The following is a literal translation of the song referred
to:--
Were I a little bird,
Had I two wings of mine,
I'd fly to my dear;
But that can never be,
So I stay here.
Though I am far from thee,
Sleeping I'm near to thee,
Talk with my dear;
When I awake again,
I am alone.
Scarce is there an hour in the night,
When sleep does not take its flight,
And I think of thee,
How many thousand times
Thou gav'st thy heart to me.]
[Footnote 27: Donjon. The original is _Zwinger_, which Hayward says is
untranslatable. It probably means an old tower, such as is often found in
the free cities, where, in a dark passage-way, a lamp is sometimes placed,
and a devotional image near it.]
[Footnote 28: It was a superstitious belief that the presence of buried
treasure was indicated by a blue flame.]
[Footnote 29: Lion-dollars--a Bohemian coin, first minted three centuries
ago, by Count Schlick, from the mines of Joachim's-Thal. The one side
bears a lion, the other a full length image of St. John.]
[Footnote 30: An imitation of Ophelia's song: _Hamlet_, act 14, scene 5.]
[Footnote 31: The Rat-catcher was supposed to have the art of drawing rats
after him by his whistle, like a sort of Orpheus.]
[Footnote 32: Walpurgis Night. May-night. Walpurgis is the female saint
who converted the Saxons to Christianity.--The Brocken or Blocksberg is
the highest peak of the Harz mountains, which comprise about 1350 square
miles.--Schirke and Elend are two villages in the neighborhood.]
[Footnote 33: Shelley's translation of this couplet is very fine:
("_O si sic omnia!_")
"The giant-snouted crags, ho! ho!
How they snort and how they blow!"]
[Footnote 34: The original is _Windsbraut_, (wind's-bride,) the word used
in Luther's Bible to translate Paul's _Euroclydon_.]
[Footnote 35: One of the names of the devil in Germany.]
[Footnote 36: One of the names of Beelzebub.]
[Footnote 37: "The Talmudists say that Adam had a wife called Lilis before
he married Eve, and of her he begat nothing but devils."
_Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy_.
A learned writer says that _Lullaby_ is derived from "Lilla, abi!" "Begone
Lilleth!" she having been supposed to lie in wait for children to kill
them.]
[Footnote 38: This name, derived from two Greek words meaning _rump_ and
_fancy_, was meant for Nicolai of Berlin, a great hater of Goethe's
writings, and is explained by the fact that the man had for a long time a
violent affection of the nerves, and by the application he made of leeches
as a remedy, (alluded to by Mephistopheles.)]
[Footnote 39: Tegel (mistranslated _pond_ by Shelley) is a small place a
few miles from Berlin, whose inhabitants were, in 1799, hoaxed by a ghost
story, of which the scene was laid in the former place.]
[Footnote 40: The park in Vienna.]
[Footnote 41: He was scene-painter to the Weimar theatre.]
[Footnote 42: A poem of Schiller's, which gave great offence to the
religious people of his day.]
[Footnote 43: A literal translation of _Maulen_, but a slang-term in
Yankee land.]
[Footnote 44: Epigrams, published from time to time by Goethe and Schiller
jointly. Hennings (whose name heads the next quatrain) was editor of the
_Musaget_, (a title of Apollo, "leader of the muses,") and also of the
_Genius of the Age_. The other satirical allusions to classes of
notabilities will, without difficulty, be guessed out by the readers.]
[Footnote 45: "_Doubt_ is the only rhyme for devil," in German.]
[Footnote 46: The French translator, Stapfer, assigns as the probable
reason why this scene alone, of the whole drama, should have been left in
prose, "that it might not be said that Faust wanted any one of the
possible forms of style."]
[Footnote 47: Literally the _raven-stone_.]
[Footnote 48: The _blood-seat_, in allusion to the old German custom of
tying a woman, who was to be beheaded, into a wooden chair.]
* * * * *
P. S. There is a passage on page 84, the speech of Faust, ending with the
lines:--
Show me the fruit that, ere it's plucked, will rot,
And trees from which new green is daily peeping,
which seems to have puzzled or misled so much, not only English
translators, but even German critics, that the present translator has
concluded, for once, to depart from his usual course, and play the
commentator, by giving his idea of Goethe's meaning, which is this: Faust
admits that the devil has all the different kinds of Sodom-apples which he
has just enumerated, gold that melts away in the hand, glory that vanishes
like a meteor, and pleasure that perishes in the possession. But all these
torments are too insipid for Faust's morbid and mad hankering after the
luxury of spiritual pain. Show me, he says, the fruit that rots _before_
one can pluck it, and [a still stronger expression of his diseased craving
for agony] trees that fade so quickly as to be every day just putting
forth new green, only to tantalize one with perpetual promise and
perpetual disappointment.