The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' Part 6

GRETCHEN. I am thine, Father--save me! Ye angels, holy cohorts, encamp around me and defend me! (_To FAUST._) Heinrich, I shrink from thee in horror.

MEPH. She is judged.

VOICE FROM ABOVE. She is saved.

MEPH. _to_ FAUST. Here! to me!

[_Disappears with FAUST._

[_A VOICE FROM WITHIN--the voice of GRETCHEN--calls on the name of him she once loved--of him who has robbed her of happiness and life itself. Fainter and fainter it calls, then dies away into silence._

III

GOETHE'S 'FAUST'

PART II

The picture which Goethe has given us in _Faust_ is in its main outlines the picture of Goethe's own life. The Faust of Part I is the Goethe of early days--of the Sturm und Drang period--the Goethe of _Werther's Leiden_, of _Gotz_, of _Prometheus_, of Gretchen, Lotte, Annette, Friederike and Lili; the Faust of the earlier scenes of Part II is Goethe at the ducal court of Weimar; the Faust of the _Helena_ is Goethe in Italy, Goethe at Bologna, standing in ecstatic veneration before what was then believed to be Raphael's picture of St. Agatha, or wandering through the Colosseum at Rome, or writing his _Iphigenie_ on the sh.o.r.es of the Lago di Garda; and the Faust of the last act of all is Goethe reconciled to life and finding a certain measure of peace and happiness in his home, in the sympathy of his good-natured but unrefined wife and of others whom he loved, as well as in his scientific and philosophical studies--until he seals up the MS. of his great poem and (to use his own words) 'regards his life-work as ended and rests in the contemplation of the past,' and then, a few months later, pa.s.ses away from earth, murmuring as he dies 'More light!'

It will be remembered that at the end of Part I Faust is dragged away by Mephistopheles and leaves poor Gretchen to her doom. The fatal axe has now fallen. Gretchen is dead.

In the opening scene of Part II we find him 'lying on a gra.s.sy bank, worn out and attempting to sleep.' A considerable time has evidently elapsed--a time doubtless of bitter grief and of the fiercest accusation against his evil counsellor, that part of his human nature which is represented by Mephistopheles and from which even in the last hour of his life (as we shall see) he confesses it to be impossible wholly to free himself:

Damonen, weiss ich, wird man schwerlich los.

Das geistig-strenge Band is nicht zu trennen.

'From demons it is, I know, scarce possible to free oneself. The spiritual bond is too strong to break.'

But it is not from grief or self-accusation that Faust is to gain new inspiration. It is from the healing power of Nature--in which Goethe believed far more than in remorse.

The scene amidst which Faust is now lying reminds one of some Swiss valley. The rising sun is pouring a flood of golden light over the snow-fields of the distant mountains and down from the edge of an overhanging precipice is falling a splendid cataract, such as the Reichenbach or the Staub-bach, amidst whose spray gradually forms itself, as the sunshine touches it, an iridescent bow, brightening and fading, but hanging there immovable. Through this scene are flitting elfin forms--Ariel and his fays--singing to the liquid tones of Aeolian harps and lapping Faust's world-worn senses in the sweet harmonies of Nature, tenderly effacing the memories of the past and inspiring him with new hopes and new strength to face once more the battle of life.

He watches the rising sun, but blinded by excess of light he turns away, unable to gaze upon the flaming source of life, as erst he had turned from the apparition of the Earth-spirit. He seeks to rest his dazzled eyes in reflected light (a metaphor used, as you may remember, also by Socrates in the parable of the Cave)--in the sun-lit mountain slopes, the pine-woods and the glittering walls of rock, and in the colours of the foam-bow suspended amidst the spray of the swift down-thundering cataract. In the ever-changing colours but motionless form of this bow hanging over the downward rush of the torrent Faust finds a symbol of human life suspended with its ever-varying hues above the stream of time.

It is one of the truest and the most beautiful of all similitudes, this of pure sunlight refracted and broken into colours, symbolizing the One and the Many, the perfect and the imperfect, the eternal and the temporal. Doubtless you are already thinking of Sh.e.l.ley's magnificent lines:

The One remains, the Many change and pa.s.s; Heaven's light for ever shines, Earth's shadows fly, Life, like a dome of many-coloured gla.s.s, Stains the white radiance of eternity.

Into such variegated scene of reflected and refracted light Faust is now entering. He has pa.s.sed through the 'little world' of personal feeling--the world of the One, of the heart, and he is entering what Mephistopheles calls the 'greater world' (for greater it appears to be from the Mephistophelean standpoint)--the world of the 'many,' of politics and ethics and art and literature and society--the world whose highest ideal is success, or, at the best, the 'greatest good of the greatest number' and the evolution of that terrible ghoul the so-called Super-man.

It is at the court of a German Kaiser that Faust first makes trial of 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 _loc.u.m 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 quant.i.ties 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 s.p.a.ce 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 a.s.serting the sole n.o.bility 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 cla.s.sical heroes and heroines. 'This heathen Greek folk,' he says, 'have their own h.e.l.l 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 Mutter,' 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 s.p.a.ce. 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 a.s.sembled. 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 a.s.serted, 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 a.s.sertion 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 const.i.tuents 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, pa.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 cla.s.sic 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 gla.s.s 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 ma.n.u.scripts, 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 gla.s.s retort and is poured out like phosph.o.r.escent 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 superst.i.tion, Griffins, and Sphinxes, and bull-headed Molochs, and horned Astartes, and many-breasted Cybeles, till in the h.e.l.lenic 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 cla.s.sical _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 cla.s.sic 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 h.e.l.lenic art). Cheiron the Centaur has himself borne Helen on his back, and excites Faust's pa.s.sion 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 cla.s.sic art and beauty there are elements in the cla.s.sical witches' sabbath not less congenial to him than those of the Blocksberg with its northern and more modern types of devilry and b.e.s.t.i.a.lity. 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.s 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 cla.s.sical 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 sh.o.r.es of the Aegean. He longs to gain freedom from his gla.s.s, in which he is still imprisoned. Nereus the sea-G.o.d 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-G.o.ddess (identical with Aphrodite, the sea-born symbol of the beauty of the natural-world) pa.s.ses by in her chariot drawn by dolphins and surrounded by Nereids. The Homunculus in an ecstasy of love dashes himself against her chariot. The gla.s.s is shattered and he is poured forth in a stream of phosph.o.r.escent 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 cla.s.sical _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 h.e.l.lenic 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 h.e.l.l. 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 ident.i.ty, 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.