The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 01

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

DEDICATIONYe 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 sendingBack o'er life's devious labyrinthine way,And names the dear ones, they whom Fate bereavingOf 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 obeyingThe 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 distressTrue 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 waitedUntil 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 theyWill 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 regardsWhy 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, NatureWinds the interminable thread of life;When 'mid the clash of Being every creatureMingles 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 floweringAlong 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 rhymeGush'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 requireWhen 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 drownYour sense, the nights carouse inviteth.But the familiar chords amongBoldly to sweep, with graceful cunning,While to its goal, the verse alongIts 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 sphereForthwith 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, competingWith brother spheres in rival song,With thunder-march, his orb completing,Moves his predestin'd course along;His aspect to the powers supernalGives strength, though fathom him none may;Transcending thought, the works eternalAre fair as on the primal day.

GABRIEL

With speed, thought baffling, unabating,Earth's splendor whirls in circling flight;Its Eden-brightness alternatingWith 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 oceanEternally are swiftly whirled.

MICHAEL

And tempests roar in emulationFrom 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 reveringThe mild procession of thy day.

THE THREE

Thine aspect to the powers supernalGives 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 soUse it, than brutes more brutish still to grow.With deference to your grace, he seems to meLike 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 blameIn 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