The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Volume I Part 36

E'en though thy words had banish'd every doubt, And I had curb'd the anger in my breast, Still must our arms decide. I see no peace.

Their purpose, as thou didst thyself confess, Was to deprive me of Diana's image.

And think ye I will look contented on?

The Greeks are wont to cast a longing eye Upon the treasures of barbarians, A golden fleece, good steeds, or daughters fair; But force and guile not always have avail'd To lead them, with their booty, safely home.

ORESTES

The image shall not be a cause of strife!

We now perceive the error which the G.o.d, Our journey here commanding, like a veil, Threw o'er our minds. His counsel I implor'd, To free me from the Furies' grisly band.

He answer'd, "Back to Greece the sister bring, Who in the sanctuary on Tauris' sh.o.r.e Unwillingly abides; so ends the curse!"

To Phoebus' sister we applied the words, And he referr'd to thee! The bonds severe, Which held thee from us, holy one, are rent, And thou art ours once more. At thy blest touch, I felt myself restor'd. Within thine arms, Madness once more around me coil'd its folds, Crushing the marrow in my frame, and then Forever, like a serpent, fled to h.e.l.l.

Through thee, the daylight gladdens me anew, The counsel of the G.o.ddess now shines forth In all its beauty and beneficence.

Like to a sacred image, unto which An oracle immutably hath bound A city's welfare, thee she bore away, Protectress of our house, and guarded here Within this holy stillness, to become A blessing to thy brother and thy race.

Now when each pa.s.sage to escape seems clos'd, And safety hopeless, thou dost give us all.

O king, incline thine heart to thoughts of peace!

Let her fulfil her mission, and complete The consecration of our father's house, Me to their purified abode restore, And place upon my brow the ancient crown!

Requite the blessing which her presence brought thee, And let me now my nearer right enjoy!

Cunning and force, the proudest boast of man, Fade in the l.u.s.tre of her perfect truth; Nor unrequited will a n.o.ble mind Leave confidence, so childlike and so pure.

IPHIGENIA

Think on thy promise; let thy heart be mov'd By what a true and honest tongue hath spoken!

Look on us, king! an opportunity For such a n.o.ble deed not oft occurs.

Refuse thou canst not,--give thy quick consent.

THOAS

Then go!

IPHIGENIA

Not so, my king! I cannot part Without thy blessing, or in anger from thee, Banish us not! the sacred right of guests Still let us claim: so not eternally Shall we be sever'd. Honor'd and belov'd As mine own father was, art thou by me; And this impression in my soul abides, Let but the least among thy people bring Back to mine ear the tones I heard from thee, Or should I on the humblest see thy garb, I will with joy receive him as a G.o.d, Prepare his couch myself, beside our hearth Invite him to a seat, and only ask Touching thy fate and thee. Oh, may the G.o.ds To thee the merited reward impart Of all thy kindness and benignity!

Farewell! O turn thou not away, but give One kindly word of parting in return!

So shall the wind more gently swell our sails, And from our eyes with soften'd anguish flow, The tears of separation. Fare thee well!

And graciously extend to me thy hand, In pledge of ancient friendship.

THOAS (_extending his hand_)

Fare thee well!

THE FAUST LEGEND FROM MARLOWE TO GOETHE

By KUNO FRANCKE, PH.D., LL.D., LITT.D.

Professor of the History of German Culture, Harvard University

The Faust legend is a conglomerate of anonymous popular traditions, largely of medieval origin, which in the latter part of the sixteenth century came to be a.s.sociated with an actual individual of the name of Faustus whose notorious career during the first four decades of the century, as a pseudo-scientific mountebank, juggler and magician can be traced through various parts of Germany. The Faust Book of 1587, the earliest collection of these tales, is of prevailingly theological character. It represents Faust as a sinner and reprobate, and it holds up his compact with Mephistopheles and his subsequent d.a.m.nation as an example of human recklessness and as a warning to the faithful.

From this Faust Book, that is from its English translation, which appeared in 1588, Marlowe took his tragedy of _Dr. Faustus_ (1589; published 1604). In Marlowe's drama Faust appears as a typical man of the Renaissance, as an explorer and adventurer, as a superman craving for extraordinary power, wealth, enjoyment, and worldly eminence. The finer emotions are hardly touched upon. Mephistopheles is the medieval devil, harsh and grim and fierce, bent on seduction, without any comprehension of human aspirations. Helen of Troy is a she-devil, and becomes the final means of Faust's destruction. Faust's career has hardly an element of true greatness. None of the many tricks, conjurings and miracles, which Faust performs with Mephistopheles'

help, has any relation to the deeper meaning of life. From the compact on to the end hardly anything happens which brings Faust inwardly nearer either to heaven or h.e.l.l. But there is a st.u.r.diness of character and stirring intensity of action, with a happy admixture of buffoonery, through it all. And we feel something of the pathos and paradox of human pa.s.sions in the fearful agony of Faust's final doom.

The German popular Faust drama of the seventeenth century and its outgrowth the puppet plays, are a reflex both of Marlowe's tragedy and the Faust Book of 1587, although they contain a number of original scenes, notably the Council of the Devils at the beginning. Here again, the underlying sentiment is the abhorrence of human recklessness and extravagance. In some of these plays, the vanity of bold ambition is brought out with particular emphasis through the contrast between the daring and dissatisfied Faust and his farcical counterpart, the jolly and contented Casperle. In the last scene, while Faust in despair and contrition is waiting for the sound of the midnight bell which is to be the signal of his destruction, Casperle, as night watchman, patrols the streets of the town, calling out the hours and singing the traditional verses of admonition to quiet and orderly conduct.

To the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, then, Faust appeared as a criminal who sins against the eternal laws of life, as a rebel against holiness who ruins his better self and finally earns the merited reward of his misdeeds. He could not appear thus to the eighteenth century. The eighteenth century is the age of Rationalism and of Romanticism. The eighteenth century glorifies human reason and human feeling. The right of man and the dignity of man are its princ.i.p.al watchwords. Such an age was bound to see in Faust a champion of freedom, nature, truth. Such an age was bound to see in Faust a symbol of human striving for completeness of life.

It is Lessing who has given to the Faust legend this turn. His _Faust_, unfortunately consisting only of a few fragmentary sketches, is a defense of Rationalism. The most important of these fragments, preserved to us in copies by some friends of Lessing's, is the prelude, a council of devils. Satan is receiving reports from his subordinates as to what they have done to bring harm to the realm of G.o.d. The first devil who speaks has set the hut of some pious poor on fire; the second has buried a fleet of usurers in the waves. Both excite Satan's disgust. "For," he says, "to make the pious poor still poorer means only to chain him all the more firmly to G.o.d"; and the usurers, if, instead of being buried in the waves, they had been allowed to reach the goal of their voyage, would have wrought new evil on distant sh.o.r.es. Much more satisfied is Satan with the report of a third devil who has stolen the first kiss from a young innocent girl and thereby breathed the flame of desire into her veins; for he has worked evil in the world of the spirit and that means much more and is a much greater triumph for h.e.l.l than to work evil in the world of bodies. But it is the fourth devil to whom Satan gives the prize. He has not done anything as yet. He has only a plan, but a plan which, if carried out, would put the deeds of all the other devils into the shade--the plan "to s.n.a.t.c.h from G.o.d his favorite." This favorite of G.o.d is Faust, "a solitary, brooding youth, renouncing all pa.s.sion except the pa.s.sion for truth, entirely living in truth, entirely absorbed in it." To s.n.a.t.c.h him from G.o.d--that would be a victory, over which the whole realm of night would rejoice. Satan is enchanted; the war against truth is his element. Yes, Faust must be seduced, he must be destroyed. And he shall be destroyed through his very aspiration.

"Didst thou not say, he has desire for knowledge? That is enough for perdition!" His striving for truth is to lead him into darkness. Under such exclamations the devils break up, to set about their work of seduction; but, as they are breaking up, there is heard from above a divine voice: "Ye shall not conquer."

It cannot be denied that Goethe's earliest Faust conception, the so-called _Ur-Faust_ of 1773 and '74, lacks the wide sweep of thought that characterizes these fragments of Lessing's drama. His Faust of the Storm and Stress period is essentially a Romanticist. He is a dreamer, craving for a sight of the divine, longing to fathom the inner working of nature, drunk with the mysteries of the universe. But he is also an unruly individualist, a reckless despiser of accepted morality; and it is hard to see how his relation with Gretchen, which forms by far the largest part of the _Ur-Faust_, can lead to anything but a tragic catastrophe. Only Goethe's second Faust conception, which sets in with the end of the nineties of the eighteenth century, opens up a clear view of the heights of life.

Goethe was now in the full maturity of his powers, a man widely separated from the impetuous youth of the seventies whose Promethean emotions had burst forth with volcanic pa.s.sion. He had meanwhile become a statesman and a philosopher. He had come to know in the court of Weimar a model of paternal government, conservative yet liberally inclined, and friendly to all higher culture. He had found in his truly spiritual relation to Frau von Stein a safe harbor for his tempestuous feelings. He had been brought face to face, during his sojourn in Italy, with the wonders of cla.s.sic art. The study of Spinoza and his own scientific investigations had confirmed him in a thoroughly monistic view of the world and strengthened his belief in a universal law which makes evil itself an integral part of the good.

The example of Schiller as well as his own practical experience had taught him that the untrammelled living out of personality must go hand in hand with incessant work for the common welfare of mankind.

All this is reflected in the completed Part First of 1808; it finds its most comprehensive expression in Part Second, the bequest of the dying poet to posterity.

Restless endeavor, incessant striving from lower spheres of life to higher ones, from the sensuous to the spiritual, from enjoyment to work, from creed to deed, from self to humanity--this is the moving thought of Goethe's completed _Faust_. The keynote is struck in the "Prologue in Heaven." Faust, so we hear, the daring idealist, the servant of G.o.d, is to be tempted by Mephisto, the despiser of reason, the materialistic scoffer. But we also hear, and we hear it from G.o.d's own lips, that the tempter will not succeed. G.o.d allows the devil free play, because he knows that he will frustrate his own ends. Faust will be led astray--"man errs while he strives"; but he will not abandon his higher aspirations; through aberration and sin he will find the true way toward which his inner nature instinctively guides him. He will not eat dust. Even in the compact with Mephisto the same ineradicable optimism a.s.serts itself. Faust's wager with the devil is nothing but an act of temporary despair, and the very fact that he does not hope anything from it shows that he will win it. He knows that sensual enjoyment will never give him satisfaction; he knows that, as long as he gives himself up to self-gratification, there will never be a moment to which he would say: "Abide, thou art so fair!"

From the outset we feel that by living up to the very terms of the compact, Faust will rise superior to it; that by rushing into the whirlpool of earthly experience and pa.s.sion, his being will be heightened and expanded.

And thus, everything in the whole drama, all its incidents and all its characters, become episodes in the rounding out of this grand, all-comprehensive personality. Gretchen and Helena, Wagner and Mephisto, Homunculus and Euphorion, the Emperor's court and the shades of the Greek past, the broodings of medieval mysticism and the practical tasks of modern industrialism, the enlightened despotism of the eighteenth century and the ideal democracy of the future--all this and a great deal more enters into Faust's being. He strides on from experience to experience, from task to task, expiating guilt by doing, losing himself and finding himself again. Blinded in old age by Dame Care, he feels a new light kindled within. Dying, he gazes into a far future. And even in the heavenly regions he goes on ever changing into new and higher and finer forms. It is this irrepressible spirit of striving which makes Goethe's _Faust_ the Bible of modern humanity.

INTRODUCTION TO FAUST

BY CALVIN THOMAS, LL.D.

Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures, Columbia University

The central theme of Goethe's _Faust_ may be put in the form of a question thus: Shall a man hate life because it does not match his dreams, or shall he embrace it eagerly and try to make the best of it as a social being? Goethe's answer is at once scientific and religious, which partly explains its vital interest for the modern man. To be sure, his answer is given at the end of a long symbolic poem which contains much that is not exactly relevant to the main issue. It must never be forgotten that _Faust_ is not the orderly development of a thesis in ethics, but a long succession of imaginative pictures. Some of them may seem too recondite and fantastic to meet our present-day demand for reality, but on the whole the poem deals with vital issues of the human spirit. At the end of it Faust arrives at a n.o.ble view of life, and his last words undoubtedly tell how Goethe himself thought that a good man might wish to end his days--unsated with life to the final moment, and expiring in an ecstasy of altruistic vision.

Goethe was about twenty years old when his imagination began to be haunted by the figure of the sixteenth century magician Doctor Faust.

In 1772 or 1773 he commenced writing a play on the subject, little thinking of course that it would occupy him some sixty years. The old legend is a story of sin and d.a.m.nation. Faust is represented as an eager student impelled by intellectual curiosity to the study of magic. From the point of view of the superst.i.tious folk who created the legend this addiction to magic is itself sinful. But Faust is bad and reckless. By the aid of his black art he calls up a devil named (in the legend) Mephostophiles with whom he makes a contract of service. For twenty-four years Faust is to have all that he desires, and then his soul is to go to perdition. The contract is carried out.

With the Devil as comrade and servant he lords it over time and s.p.a.ce, feeds on the fat of the land, travels far and wide, and does all sorts of wonderful things. At the end of the stipulated time the Devil gets him.

From the very beginning of his musings on the theme Goethe thought of Faust as a man better than his reputation; as a misunderstood truth-seeker who had dared the terrors with which the popular imagination invested h.e.l.l, in order that he might exhaust the possibilities of this life. Aside from his desire of transcendental knowledge and wide experience, there was a third trait of the legendary Faust which could hardly seem to Goethe anything but creditable to human nature: his pa.s.sion for antique beauty. According to the old story Faust at one time wishes to marry; but as marriage is a Christian ordinance and he has forsworn Christianity, the Devil gives him, in place of a lawful wife, a fantom counterfeit of Helena, the ancient Queen of Beauty. The lovely fantom becomes Faust's paramour and bears him a remarkable son called Justus Faustus.

What wonder if the young Goethe, himself disappointed with book-learning, eager for life, and beset by vague yearnings for mystic insight into the nature of things, saw in Faust a symbol of his own experience? But as soon as he began to identify himself with his hero it was all up with Faust's utter d.a.m.nableness: a young poet does not plan to send his own soul to perdition. At the same time, he could not very well imagine him as an out-and-out good man, since that would have been to turn the legend topsy-turvy. The league with the Devil, who would of course have to be conceived as in some sense or other an embodiment of evil, was the very heart of the old story.

At first Goethe planned his drama on lines that had little to do with traditional ideas of good and bad, heaven and h.e.l.l, G.o.d and Devil.

Faust is introduced as a youngish professor who has studied everything and been teaching for some ten years, with the result that he feels his knowledge to be vanity and his life a dreary routine of hypocrisy.

He resorts to magic in the hope of--what? It is important for the understanding of the poem in its initial stages to bear in mind that Faust is not at first a votary of the vulgar black art which consists in calling up bad spirits and doing reprehensible things by their a.s.sistance. Further on he shows that he is a master of that art too, but at first he is concerned with "natural magic," which some of the old mystics whom Goethe read conceived as the highest and divinest of sciences. The fundamental a.s.sumption of natural magic is that the universe as a whole and each component part of it is dominated by an indwelling spirit with whom it is possible for the magician to get into communication. If he succeeds he becomes "like" a spirit--freed from the trammels of the flesh, a partaker of divine knowledge and ecstatic happiness.

Pursuing his wonderful vagaries by means of a magic book that has come into his possession, Faust first experiments with the "sign" of the Macrocosm, but makes no attempt to summon its presiding genius, that is, the World-spirit. He has a wonderful vision of the harmonious Cosmos, but it is "only a spectacle," whereas he craves food for his soul. So he turns to the sign of the Earth-spirit, whom he feels to be nearer to him. By an act of supreme daring he utters the formula which causes the Spirit to appear in fire--grand, awe-inspiring, terrible. A colloquy ensues at the end of which the Spirit rebuffs the presumptuous mortal with the words: "Thou art like the spirit whom thou comprehendest, not like me"--and disappears. The meaning is that Faust, who knows very little of the Earth, having always led the narrow life of a brooding scholar in one little corner of it, is not fit for intimacy with the mighty being who presides over the entire planet, with its rush and change, its life and death, its vast and ceaseless energy. He must have a wider experience. How shall he get it?

It is a moot question whether Goethe at first conceived Mephistopheles as the Earth-spirit's envoy, sent for the express purpose of showing Faust about the world, or whether the Devil was thought of as coming of his own accord. Be that as it may, _Faust_ is an experience-drama, and the Devil's function is to provide the experience. And he is _a_ devil, not _the_ Devil, conceived as the bitter and malignant enemy of G.o.d, but a subordinate spirit whose business it is, in the world-economy, to spur man to activity. This he does partly by cynical criticism and opposition, but more especially by holding out the lures of the sensual life. At first Mephistopheles was not thought of as working solely for a reward in the shape of souls captured for eternity, but as playing his part for the diabolical pleasure of so doing. In the course of time, however, Goethe invested him more and more with the costume and traits of the traditionary Devil.