The Project Gutenberg eBook of Library Of The World's Best Literature Ancient And Modern, Vol. XVI.

He cannot grasp them; and then turning from the great Cosmos, he thinks he may at least dare to invoke the spirit of our own mother planet Earth. But to Faust, with eyes bleared with the dust of the study, to Faust, living in his own speculations or in dogmatic systems, the aspect of the Earth Spirit—a living fire—is terrible. He falls back upon himself almost despairing, when the famulus Wagner enters. What Werner was to the idealist Wilhelm Meister, Wagner is to the idealist Faust: the mere scraping together of a little hoard of barren facts contents Wagner; such grief, such despair as Faust's, are for this Philistine of learning impossible. And then the fragment of 1790 passes on to Mephistopheles. Whether or not Goethe found the features of his critical demon in Herder (as Grimm supposes), and afterwards united these to the more pronounced likeness in his friend Mephistopheles Merck, matters little. Whether Herder and Merck had been present or not, Goethe would have found Mephistopheles in his own heart. For the contrast between the idealist Faust and the realist Mephistopheles exists in some form or other in almost every great creation of Goethe. It is the contrast between Werther and Albert, between Tasso and Antonio, between Edward and the Captain. Sometimes the nobler spirit of worldliness is dwelt on, as in the case of Antonio; sometimes the cold, hard, cynical side, as in the case of Mephistopheles. The theme of Faust as originally conceived was the turning of an idealist from his own private thoughts and dreams to the real world; from all that is unnatural,—systems, speculations, barren knowledge,—to nature and the founts of life; from the solitary cell to the company of men; to action, beauty, life, and love. If he can really succeed in achieving this wisely and well, Faust is saved. He is delivered from solitude, the inane of speculation, the vagueness of idealism, and made one with the band of his toiling fellows. But to accompany him there is the spirit of base worldliness, the realist, the cynic, who sees the meaner side of all that is actual, who if possible will seduce Faust into accepting the world apart from that elevating spirit which ennobles actual life, who will try to baffle and degrade Faust by degrading all that he now seeks,—action and beauty and life and love.

It is Goethe himself who is at odds with himself,—the realist Goethe set over against the idealist Goethe; and Mephistopheles is the base realist, the cynic whose endeavor is to mar the union of high poetry and high prose in human life, which union of high poetry with high prose Goethe always looked upon as the true condition of man's activity. In the Prologue in Heaven, written when Schiller had persuaded Goethe to take up the threads of his play, the Lord speaks of Faust as his servant. Mephistopheles wagers that he will seduce Faust from his allegiance to the Highest. The Lord does not wager; he knows:—

"Though now he serve me in a maze of doubt,
Yet I will lead him soon where all is clear;
The gardener knows, when first the bushes sprout,
That bloom and fruit will deck the riper year."

These vague passionate longings of Faust after truth and reality and life and love are not evil; they are good: they are as yet indeed but the sprouting of the immature leaf and bud, but the Lord sees in these the fruit that is to be. Therefore let Mephistopheles, the spirit of negation, try his worst, and at the last discover how an earnest striver's ways are justified by God. Faust may wander, err, fall, grievously offend,—"as long as man lives, man errs;" but for him who ever strives upward, through all his errors, there is redemption in the end.

The poem belongs to its epoch. Faust is the idealist, Mephistopheles is the realist, of the eighteenth century. Faust aspires to nature and freedom like one who had drunk deeply of Rousseau. Mephistopheles speaks like a degraded disciple of Voltaire, who has lost his master's positive faith in the human reason. Goethe can accept as his own neither the position of Voltaire nor that of Rousseau; but actually he started in life as an antagonist of Voltaire and a disciple of Rousseau, and in like manner his Faust starts on his career as one who longs for a "return to nature." While from merely negative criticism nothing virtuous can be born, the vague longings of one who loves and hopes promise measureless good.

Faust's vast aspirations, then, are not sinful; they only need to be limited and directed to suitable ends. It is as God's servant that he goes forth with the Demon from his study to the world. And Mephistopheles's first attempt to degrade Faust is a failure. In the orgy of Auerbach's cellar, while the boisterous young bloods clash their glasses, the old scholar sits silent, isolated, ashamed. It is only by infecting his blood with the witch's poison that Mephistopheles can lay hold of the spirit of Faust even for a time; and had he not seen in the mirror that vision of Helena, whom he rightly loves, and whom indeed he needs, he could not have put to his lips the filthy brewage of the witch. But now indeed he is snared; the poison rages in his veins; for one hour he is transformed into what the world basely calls a man of pleasure. Yet Faust is not wholly lost: his better self, the untrained, untamed idealist, begins to reassert its power; the fumes of the poison dissipate themselves. Guilty though he be, his love of Margaret is not what Mephistopheles requires that it should be: it is not calculating, egoistic, cynical, nor dull, easeful, and lethargic. It is not the crime of an experienced worldling nor of a dull, low liver: it is the crime of one whose unwise heart and untaught imagination delude him; and therefore though his fall be deep, it is not fatal. The wrong he has wrought may be blind and terrible as that of Othello to Desdemona; but it is not the serpentine stinging of an Iago or a Mephistopheles.

So through anguish and remorse Faust is doing off the swathe-bands of delusion, learning to master his will, learning his own heart, learning the meaning of existence: he does not part from his ideal self, his high aspirations, his ardent hopes; he is rather transforming these into realities; he is advancing from dreams to facts, so that in the end, when his life becomes a lofty prose, it may be interpenetrated by a noble poetry.

It were long to trace the history of Faust through the ever purifying and ascending scale of energies exhibited in the Second Part of the drama. Affairs of State, science, art, war—all that Goethe had known by experience—appear in this encyclopædic poem. One word, however, must be said respecting the 'Helena.' It is a mistake to view this central portion of the Second Part as solely or chiefly an allegory of the wedlock of classic and romantic art. As science is shown to form a needful part of Faust's turning from the inane of metaphysics to the positive world, so from the Greek spirit he learns sanity and strength; the deliverance of the ideal man in Faust is aided by the beauty and the healthfulness of classic art. Through beauty, as Schiller tried to show in his letters on 'Æsthetic Culture,' we attain to freedom. Faust is not an artist, but a man; Helena is but one of the spirits whose influence is needed to make him real and elevated. It is she who qualifies him for achieving practical work in a high, ideal spirit.

The Fourth Act of the Second Part is wholly concerned with practical work. What is this which engages the student of the metaphysic cell, who had gone through the four Faculties, and is now once again grown old? What is this? Only well-defined and useful activity. He has rescued some acres of arable land from the rage of the barren sea.

But Faust is not yet wholly delivered from evil; his activity is useful, indeed, but it lacks the finer grace of charity. He commissions Mephistopheles to destroy the cottage of old Philemon and Baucis, which stands in the way of his territorial improvements. It is the last crime of the unregenerate will. The four gray women—Care and Blame and Want and Crime—now assail him; but there is virtue in him to the last. However it may be with himself, grant only that ages hence the children of men, free and happy, may dwell upon the soil which he has saved for their place of labor and of love,—grant but this, and even in the anticipation of it he is made possessor of the highest bliss. Nor indeed is higher permitted to man on earth. And now that Faust has at last found satisfaction, and said to the passing moment, "Stay, thou art so fair," the time has come for Mephistopheles to claim his soul. But in this very aspiration after the perfect joy of others—not his own—Faust is forever delivered from the Evil One. The gray old man lies stretched upon the sand. Higher powers than those of his own will take him, guard him, lead him forward. The messengers of God bear away his immortal part. All Holy Hermits, all Holy Innocents, all Holy Virgins, the less and the greater Angels, and redeemed women who have sinned and sorrowed and have been purified, aid in his ultimate purification. It is the same thought which was interpreted in a lower key when Wilhelm Meister's fate was intrusted to Natalia. Usefulness is good; activity is good: but over all these should soar and brood the Divine graces of life, and love the chief of these. That which leads us farther than all the rest is what Goethe names "the imperishable womanly grace," that of love. And so the great mystery-play reaches its close.

Biographical Note.—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born at Frankfort-on-the-Main, August 28th, 1749; he attended the University of Leipzig 1765-1768, and went to Strassburg in 1770, where he met Herder, made the acquaintance of Shakespeare, and in 1771 took his degree. 'Götz von Berlichingen' in 1773 announced the dawn of a new era in German letters, and in 1774 'The Sorrows of Werther' made the poet world-famous. In 1775 Goethe accepted the invitation of Duke Carl August and went to Weimar, which remained thenceforth his home. The Italian journey, marking an epoch in the poet's life, took place in 1786-1787. The 'Faust Fragment' appeared in 1790. The friendship with Schiller, also of far-reaching importance in Goethe's life, began in 1794 and was terminated only by Schiller's death in 1805. 'Hermann and Dorothea' was published in 1797. In 1806 Goethe married Christiane Vulpius. The First Part of 'Faust' appeared in 1808;—in 1816 the poet is at work upon his 'Autobiography' and the 'Italian Journey'; the first part of 'Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship' appeared in 1821, and was completed in 1829. 'Faust' was finished on July 20th, 1831. Goethe died at Weimar on March 22d, 1832.

FROM 'FAUST'

Raphael—

The sun makes music as of old
Amid the rival spheres of heaven,
On its predestined circle rolled
With thunder speed; the angels even
Draw strength from gazing on its glance,
Though none its meaning fathom may
The world's unwithered countenance
Is bright as at creation's day.

Gabriel—

And swift and swift with rapid lightness
The adorned earth spins silently,
Alternating Elysian brightness
With deep and dreadful night; the sea
Foams in broad billows from the deep
Up to the rocks, and rocks and ocean,
Onward, with spheres which never sleep,
Are hurried in eternal motion.

Michael—

And tempests in contention roar
From land to sea, from sea to land;
And raging, weave a chain of power,
Which girds the earth as with a band.
A flashing desolation there
Flames before the thunder's way;
But thy servants, Lord, revere
The gentle changes of thy day.

The angels draw strength from thy glance,
Though no one comprehend thee may;
Thy world's unwithered countenance
Is bright as on creation's day.

SCENES FROM 'FAUST'

Oh, happy he, who still renews
The hope from Error's deeps to rise forever!
That which one does not know, one needs to use,
And what one knows, one uses never.
But let us not, by such despondence, so
The fortune of this hour embitter!
Mark how, beneath the evening sunlight's glow,
The green-embosomed houses glitter!
The glow retreats; done is the day of toil;
It yonder hastes, new fields of life exploring;
Ah, that no wing can lift me from the soil,
Upon its track to follow, follow soaring!
Then would I see eternal Evening gild
The silent world beneath me glowing,
On fire each mountain-peak, with peace each valley filled,
The silver brook to golden rivers flowing.
The mountain chain, with all its gorges deep,
Would then no more impede my godlike motion;
And now before mine eyes expands the ocean
With all its bays, in shining sleep!
Yet finally the weary god is sinking;
The new-born impulse fires my mind.—
I hasten on, his beams eternal drinking.
The Day before me and the Night behind.
Above me heaven unfurled, the floor of waves beneath me,—
A glorious dream! though now the glories fade.
Alas! the wings that lift the mind no aid
Of wings to lift the body can bequeath me.
Yet in each soul is born the pleasure
Of yearning onward, upward and away.
When o'er our heads, lost in the vaulted azure,
The lark sends down his flickering lay,
When over crags and piny highlands
The poising eagle slowly soars,
And over plains and lakes and islands
The crane sails by to other shores.

I've had, myself, at times, some odd caprices,
But never yet such impulse felt, as this is.
One soon fatigues on woods and fields to look,
Nor would I beg the bird his wing to spare us:
How otherwise the mental raptures bear us
From page to page, from book to book!
Then winter nights take loveliness untold,
As warmer life in every limb had crowned you;
And when your hands unroll some parchment rare and old,
All heaven descends, and opens bright around you!

One impulse art thou conscious of, at best;
Oh, never seek to know the other!
Two souls, alas! reside within my breast,
And each withdraws from, and repels, its brother.
One with tenacious organs holds in love
And clinging lust the world in its embraces;
The other strongly sweeps, this dust above,
Into the high ancestral spaces.
If there be airy spirits near,
'Twixt heaven and earth on potent errands fleeing,
Let them drop down the golden atmosphere,
And bear me forth to new and varied being!
Yea, if a magic mantle once were mine,
To waft me o'er the world at pleasure,
I would not for the costliest stores of treasure—
Not for a monarch's robe—the gift resign.

Faust and Mephistopheles

Canst thou, poor Devil, give me whatsoever?
When was a human soul, in its supreme endeavor.
E'er understood by such as thou?
Yet hast thou food which never satiates now:
The restless, ruddy gold hast thou,
That runs quicksilver-like one's fingers through;
A game whose winnings no man ever knew;
A maid that even from my breast
Beckons my neighbor with her wanton glances,
And Honor's godlike zest,
The meteor that a moment dances,—
Show me the fruits that, ere they're gathered, rot,
And trees that daily with new leafage clothe them!

Such a demand alarms me not:
Such treasures have I, and can show them.
But still the time may reach us, good my friend,
When peace we crave, and more luxurious diet.

When on an idler's bed I stretch myself in quiet,
There let at once my record end!
Canst thou with lying flattery rule me,
Until self-pleased myself I see,—
Canst thou with rich enjoyment fool me,
Let that day be the last for me!
The bet I offer.

And heartily!
When thus I hail the Moment flying:
"Ah, still delay—thou art so fair!"—
Then bind me in thy bonds undying,
My final ruin then declare!
Then let the death-bell chime the token,
Then art thou from thy service free!
The clock may stop, the hand be broken,
Then Time be finished unto me!

Forest and Cavern

Spirit sublime, thou gav'st me, gav'st me all
For which I prayed. Not unto me in vain
Hast thou thy countenance revealed in fire.
Thou gav'st me nature as a kingdom grand,
With power to feel and to enjoy it. Thou
Not only cold, amazed acquaintance yield'st,
But grantest that in her profoundest breast
I gaze, as in the bosom of a friend.
The ranks of living creatures thou dost lead
Before me, teaching me to know my brothers
In air and water and the silent wood.
And when the storm in forests roars and grinds,
The giant firs, in falling, neighbor boughs
And neighbor trunks with crushing weight bear down,
And falling, fill the hills with hollow thunders,—
Then to the cave secure thou leadest me,
Then show'st me mine own self, and in my breast
The deep mysterious miracles unfold.
And when the perfect moon before my gaze
Comes up with soothing light, around me float
From every precipice and thicket damp
The silvery phantoms of the ages past,
And temper the austere delight of thought.

That nothing can be perfect unto Man
I now am conscious. With this ecstasy,
Which brings me near and nearer to the gods,
Thou gav'st the comrade, whom I now no more
Can do without, though, cold and scornful, he
Demeans me to myself, and with a breath,
A word, transforms thy gifts to nothingness.
Within my breast he fans a lawless fire,
Unwearied, for that fair and lovely form:
Thus in desire I hasten to enjoyment,
And in enjoyment pine to feel desire.

Margaret

My peace is gone,
My heart is sore:
I never shall find it,
Ah, nevermore!

Save I have him near,
The grave is here;
The world is gall
And bitterness all.

My poor weak head
Is racked and crazed;
My thought is lost,
My senses mazed.

My peace is gone,
My heart is sore:
I never shall find it,
Ah, nevermore!

To see him, him only,
At the pane I sit;
To meet him, him only,
The house I quit.

His lofty gait,
His noble size,
The smile of his mouth,
The power of his eyes,

And the magic flow
Of his talk, the bliss
In the clasp of his hand,
And ah! his kiss!

My peace is gone,
My heart is sore:
I never shall find it,
Ah, nevermore!

My bosom yearns
For him alone;
Ah, dared I clasp him,
And hold, and own!

And kiss his mouth
To heart's desire,
And on his kisses
At last expire!

Martha's Garden

Promise me, Henry!—

How is't with thy religion, pray?
Thou art a dear, good-hearted man,
And yet, I think, dost not incline that way.

Leave that, my child! Thou know'st my love is tender;
For love, my blood and life would I surrender,
And as for faith and church, I grant to each his own.

That's not enough: we must believe thereon.

Would that I had some influence!
Then, too, thou honorest not the Holy Sacraments.

Desiring no possession.
'Tis long since thou hast been to mass or to confession.
Believest thou in God?

My darling, who shall dare
"I believe in God!" to say?
Ask priest or sage the answer to declare,
And it will seem a mocking play,
A sarcasm on the asker.

Then thou believest not!

Hear me not falsely, sweetest countenance!
Who dare express Him?
And who profess Him,
Saying: I believe in Him!
Who, feeling, seeing,
Deny His being,
Saying: I believe Him not!
The All-enfolding,
The All-upholding,
Folds and upholds he not
Thee, me, Himself?
Arches not there the sky above us?
Lies not beneath us, firm, the earth?
And rise not, on us shining
Friendly, the everlasting stars?
Look I not, eye to eye, on thee,
And feel'st not, thronging
To head and heart, the force,
Still weaving its eternal secret,
Invisible, visible, round thy life?
Vast as it is, fill with that force thy heart,
And when thou in the feeling wholly blessed art,
Call it, then, what thou wilt,—
Call it Bliss! Heart! Love! God!—
I have no name to give it!
Feeling is all in all:
The Name is sound and smoke,
Obscuring Heaven's clear glow.

All that is fine and good, to hear it so:
Much the same way the preacher spoke,
Only with slightly different phrases.

The same thing, in all places,
All hearts that beat beneath the heavenly day—
Each in its language—say;
Then why not I in mine as well?

To hear it thus, it may seem passable;
And yet some hitch in't there must be,
For thou hast no Christianity.

I've long been grieved to see
That thou art in such company.

The man who with thee goes, thy mate,
Within my deepest, inmost soul I hate.
In all my life there's nothing
Has given my heart so keen a pang of loathing
As his repulsive face has done.

Nay, fear him not, my sweetest one!

I feel his presence like something ill.
I've else, for all, a kindly will,
But, much as my heart to see thee yearneth,
The secret horror of him returneth;
And I think the man a knave, as I live!
If I do him wrong, may God forgive!

There must be such queer birds, however.

Live with the like of him may I never!
When once inside the door comes he,
He looks around so sneeringly,
And half in wrath:
One sees that in nothing no interest he hath:
'Tis written on his very forehead
That love, to him, is a thing abhorred.
I am so happy on thine arm,
So free, so yielding, and so warm,
And in his presence stifled seems my heart.

Foreboding angel that thou art!

In the Dungeon

In a niche of the wall a shrine, with an image of the Mater Dolorosa. Pots of flowers before it

Incline, O Maiden,
Thou sorrow-laden,
Thy gracious countenance upon my pain!

The sword thy heart in,
With anguish smarting,
Thou lookest up to where thy Son is slain!

Thou seest the Father;
The sad sighs gather,
And bear aloft thy sorrow and his pain!

Ah, past guessing,
Beyond expressing,
The pangs that wring my flesh and bone!
Why this anxious heart so burneth,
Why it trembleth, why it yearneth,
Knowest thou, and thou alone!

Where'er I go, what sorrow,
What woe, what woe and sorrow
Within my bosom aches!
Alone, and ah! unsleeping,
I'm weeping, weeping, weeping,—
The heart within me breaks.

The pots before my window,
Alas! my tears did wet,
As in the early morning
For thee these flowers I set.
Within my lonely chamber
The morning sun shone red:
I sat in utter sorrow,
Already on my bed.

Help! rescue me from death and stain!
O Maiden!
Thou sorrow-laden,
Incline thy countenance upon my pain!

A shudder, long unfelt, comes o'er me;
Mankind's collected woe o'erwhelms me here.
She dwells within the dark, damp walls before me,
And all her crime was a delusion dear!
What! I delay to free her?
I dread, once again to see her?
On! my shrinking but lingers Death more near.

My mother the harlot,
Who put me to death;
My father the varlet,
Who eaten me hath!
Little sister, so good,
Laid my bones in the wood,
In the damp moss and clay:
Then was I a beautiful bird o' the wood:
Fly away! Fly away!

She does not dream her lover listens near;
That he the rattling chain, the rustling straw, can hear.

Woe! woe! They come. O death of bitterness!

Hush! hush! The hour is come that frees thee.

Art thou a man? then pity my distress!

Thy cries will wake the guards, and they will seize thee!

Who, headsman! unto thee such power
Over me could give?
Thou'rt come for me at midnight hour:
Have mercy on me; let me live!
Is't not soon enough when morning chime has rung? [She rises.

And I am yet so young, so young!
And now death comes, and ruin!
I, too, was fair, and that was my undoing.
My love was near, but now he's far;
Torn lies the wreath, scattered the blossoms are.
Seize me not thus so violently!
Spare me! What have I done to thee?
Let me not vainly entreat thee!
I never chanced, in all my days, to meet thee!

Shall I outlive this misery?

Now am I wholly in thy might.
But let me suckle, first, my baby!
I blissed it all this livelong night;
They took 't away, to vex me, maybe,
And now they say I killed the child outright.
And never shall I be glad again.
They sing songs about me! 'tis bad of the folk to do it!
There's an old story has the same refrain;
Who bade them so construe it?

Here lieth one who loves thee ever,
The thraldom of thy woe to sever.

Oh let us kneel, and call the saints to hide us!
Under the steps beside us,
The threshold under,
Hell heaves in thunder!
The Evil One
With terrible wrath
Seeketh a path
His prey to discover!

That was the voice of my lover!

Where is he? I heard him call me.
I am free! No one shall enthrall me.
To his neck will I fly,
On his bosom lie!
On the threshold he stood, and Margaret! calling,
'Midst of hell's howling and noises appalling,
'Midst of the wrathful, infernal derision,
I knew the sweet sound of the voice of the vision!

FROM 'FAUST'

Chorus of the Archangels; from the Prologue in Heaven

Shelley's Translation

SCENES FROM 'FAUST'

Translated by Bayard Taylor

Faust and Wagner

Faust and Mephistopheles

Forest and Cavern

Margaret

Martha's Garden

In the Dungeon

In a niche of the wall a shrine, with an image of the Mater Dolorosa. Pots of flowers before it