Arthur Davison Ficke

“ FAUST
It might be found, perhaps:
The joke's on someone!
OLDHAM
There's no joke in it!
It is the waste, the pitiful waste of life!
Men—slaves to gather gold—become then slaves
Beneath its gathered weight. For this one hope,
All finer longings perish at their birth.
Men's eyes to-day envy no sage or seer
Or conqueror except his triumphs be
In this base sphere of commerce. The stars go out
In factory smoke; the spirit wanes and pales
In poisoned air of greed. It is an age
Of traders and of tricksters ”

“ Satan?
SATAN
In my day,
I have relieved far sicker men than you,
My dear friend Faust. And yet I would not say
Even for a moment that your case is not
A grave one: not so much the case itself,
As what might spring from it. In such a mood,
Men sometimes have done mad and foolish things
With consequences sad to view. Some minds,
Reaching your state, and finding life a bane,
Decide within themselves that naught can be
Worse than the present world, and then set out
To revolutionize, rend, whirl, uproot
The world's foundations. And the mess they make
Is pitiful to contemplate! ”

“ FAUST
Dear Brander! Is it true
I am as bad as that? Well, though I were,
Why should it trouble you? If you find sport
In this strange game, this fevered interplay,
This hodge-podge crazy-quilt which we are pleased
To call our life—why, like it! And say: Damned
Be all who are not with me!
BRANDER
Are not you?
FAUST
I claim the criminal's privilege, and decline
To answer.
OLDHAM
Faust, might I presume so far
As to suggest that I should like a drink
Before you two start breaking furniture
Over this matter?
FAUST
Certainly; I beg
Your pardon; I neglected you. ”

“ FAUST
Gratitude is a graceful gift.
OLDHAM
Come, come!
What snake has bitten you, that to your lips
A poisoned irony so bitter springs
To-night?
FAUST
I am revolving in my brain
This serious question: whether 'tis not best
That one turn humorist. The mind that seeks
Holiness, finds it seldom; who pursues
Beauty perhaps shall in a lengthened life
Find it perfected only once or twice.
But if one's quest were humor—what rich stores, [10]
What tropic jungles of it, lie to hand
At every moment, everywhere one turns—
What luscious meadows for the humorist!
OLDHAM
No—for the satirist! ”

“ BRANDER
Flee, ere the awful wrath
Of God smite down these walls, these poisoned stones,
That hear your words! Flee, ere the heavens rain forth
Lightnings to blast us for these horrors!
FAUST
Nay!
In this dim hour of desolation's reign
Upon my soul, I summon to my soul
All powers that good or evil may consign
To the most lonely man in all the world;
I lift my voice, burdened with all the weight
Of loathing and of longing, and I cry:
My curse upon Thee, lure of dying hearts!
May lightnings smite Thy altars back to earth!
BRANDER
Father, forgive! He knows not what he does.... ”

“ FAUST
What! Is even the Devil
A poet nowadays?
SATAN
Indeed he is:
And not a bad one. Once I would have scorned
The poets; but we moderns so surpass
The ancients here that I am proud to write
Some verses now and then. For we have learned
That poetry, like all the other arts,
Is pure technique: the mere ideas are nothing,
The form is everything. That ennobles us
And makes us artists. ”

“ A hair's breadth only held you from the gates
That Oldham entered. Almost they sufficed
Your spirit; yes, a moth's wing could have blown
You toward them! 'Twas so nearly I fulfilled
All that I promised. Therefore when I speak,
You will, for justice's sake, concede I am
No absolute bungler, no coarse-palated
Plebeian, as to paradises.
FAUST
No.
I will admit that.
SATAN
Good! Now, I would make
One final offer to you.
Faust, I know
In other regions, beneath other skies,
One haven more, the only one of earth
That can be judged in glory to surpass
This paradise you entered not. ”

“ OLDHAM
You belie us, Faust. Let me
Have speech with him.
Most Holy One, we come,
From lands far off, beyond remotest seas
Of sunset. There, in midst of toil and stress
And clamor, have we dwelt, till weariness
Of all life's gifts impelled us to go forth
To seek if anywhere a region lay
Where happiness still dwelt. To you we turn
As unto one upon whose face is set
The seal of peace such as we dreamed not of.
SATAN
They seek the Way, the Way, most Holy One.
THE HOLY ONE
The Blessed Eightfold Way lies free to all. ”

“ SATAN
They have lied, always, horribly, of me!
I am not half so black as they allege.
You know, exaggeration is to them
What whiskey is to most men. But time bursts
Their bubbles—or at least we come to take
Their work as merely art. Thus their description
As art is not so bad; but if you seek
For truth, it's outright libel.
FAUST
I admit
It has a certain perfectness of evil
Lacking in you.
SATAN
Surely to-day we know
That nothing is so wholly good or bad
As our forefathers thought: not black and white,
But gray, predominates. Well, I am gray,
Possibly. I was never black ”

“ Wherein the voices of the heart's unrest
Are stifled, and the soul expands to clasp
Joy, nothingness, eternity and peace.
FAUST
Peace.... Peace.... Like bells from upland monasteries
You speak the word that summons us. But where
In peace is room for all once-towering hopes—
Nay, even for the wrecked and prostrate monoliths
That mark those fallen pylons?
THE HOLY ONE
Let the earth,
Ravenous of her young, these too devour,
And dust and nothingness engulf their shapes—
Vain burdens, bitter monuments. ”

“ SATAN
Your slave. Command, and it shall be
Fulfilled. A little snarling now and then
Means naught.
YOUNG PLUMBER
I will not let an honest man,
A worthy citizen, be spoken to
Like that by a damn anarchist while I
Can raise a hand!
BUTCHER
Nor I!
MERCHANT'S WIFE
Go after him!
FAUST
Silence! Let not your eager efforts prove
You are the beast-herd he would bid you be!
YOUNG PLUMBER
What! Let us show him how to talk to us!
SATAN
See, on his forehead, see! Where the deep lines
Meet—do you see the blackened cross that grows
Each moment darker with the curse of God! ”

“ OLDHAM
Faust, I feel,
Transfused with light and glory, that deep peace
Awaiting. There shall perish like a flame
The passions which have seared my tortured soul
All my life long. They die; and nothingness
Like a cool flood sweeps over me. Ah, come
Where never storm shall smite!
FAUST
I see the gates;
I see the cool breast of the silvery flood
Of refuge and oblivion.... Fare you well,
Oldham, and light go with you! For I go,
Alas, not with you....
OLDHAM
Faust, Faust, turn not back! ”

“ All kings of earth, all potentates of thought,
All great achievers. Power I offer you—
The one chief prize that all men have desired
And shall desire forever.
FAUST
Now you grow
Rather more interesting. What do you mean?
A crown and sceptre and a thousand slaves
To serve me? [30]
SATAN
Do not jest. I offer you
The one sole reservoir where power to-day
Lies stored in sleeping cataracts. At noon
Come with me into Wall Street; take your stand;
Buy, sell, as I direct you; and one hour
Shall make you richer than you ever dreamed
In madness of desire. ”

“ FAUST
Who is this "Midge" you speak of?
OLDHAM
Midge, dear Faust,
Is short for Margaret; which, you may guess,
Describes a lady of the female sex;
Said person being serviceably employed
As maid-of-all-work for some ancient dame
In Brander's own apartment house. She has,
Beside what other virtues I know not,
A most bewitching ankle and a taste
For opera. And dear Brander's kindly heart
Is so moved by the sight of these combined,
He sometimes sneaks, by lonely alley-ways,
With his fair Midge, and in the gallery
High out of sight of all of us enjoys
Her and the opera. ”

“ For slaves, not men. With bitter hand, destroy
This idol of destruction! Smite all haunts
Of faith and resignation and defeat
And rest and peace and comfort. Heaven and earth
Alike are poisoned: somnolence in heaven,
Decay on earth is regnant. Every faith
And law and nation must in wreck go down
For us who see the death that taints their halls;
And ruin shall walk reckless through the world,
Destroying tombs where life is daily slain!
(Faust pauses)
BRANDER (rises suddenly from his place in the audience)
My friends, I came to listen, not to speak. ”

“ I onward urge, till my short day be done
And I fall spent; and over me the wave
Sweeps on its way immortal; and my soul
Partakes of that lost immortality.
SATAN
Dreamer, whose dreams shall soon be choked with dust!
FAUST (slowly rising)
I am that dreamer to whose mounting dreams
No bounds are set, no region which my will
May not reach out toward. And I will create [113] —
I, and the souls that after me shall come—
By passion of desire a pillar of flame
Above the wastes of life. If no God be,
I will from my deep soul create a God
Into the universe to fight for me! ”

“ FAUST
What a faith we pin
Upon that bullet!
BRANDER
Thus the doubtful days
Passed like a nightmare. Till, one Sabbath morn,
As restlessly I paced, some random mood
Led me to enter this cathedral's doors
At hour of service. As I knelt, with lips
Unknown to prayer, the mighty music rolled
Over my heart like an all-purging flood,
And a voice chanted: "He that loveth life
Shall lose it; he that hateth this world's life
Shall keep the life eternal." ”

“ Despise life's being; but not yet will I
So utterly despise it. Though in gulfs
Of yet unsounded ruin I should die
At the end miserably, I still shall seek
In life itself my refuge: not in God
That stands apart from life, on heights of peace.
All my desires, my visions, my dreams, my unrest,
My loathing and my longing will I clutch
And cry: "With all its bitterness on my head,
My Will be done, not Thy Will!"
BRANDER
Blasphemy!
Ah, Faust, what madness!... [78]
FAUST
With calm sight, I speak
No blasphemy, but truth. Shall I buy peace
So easily? ”

“ FAUST
Midge could tell
A truer tale. Her eyes were full of light
And wonder as she heard me.
BRANDER
And she now
Weeps comfortless!
FAUST
And shall I then regret?
Is her soul yours, that you appraise and know?
Life stirs in her: and like the agonies
Of all life's birth, it shakes her: yet one day
She shall rise strong, sister to mighty winds,
A new and holy wonder in her eyes. ”

“ There is no breast of peace
And silence and forgiveness for this child
In any dusk-strewn chamber....
BRANDER
There is God!
FAUST
O God, can Thine arms fold me? Can my weight
Of loneliness and failure and despair
With the day's fruitage, find a child's release
In Thy great tenderness? I am a child;
And life's vast terrors gather round my soul;
And I am frightened. I am weary, Lord!
It darkens; and the storms creep on with night ”

“ SATAN
If you were but
A little wiser, you would understand
That I have taught them much, at various times,
That is of profit to them.
FAUST
Pray teach me
A little something also.
SATAN
No, you think
You know too much already.... Furthermore,
You do not trust me; and I will not teach
One who keeps restlessly, the whole day long,
His eyes upon me, as though fearful I
Were waiting to spring on him unawares!
FAUST
Oh, you exaggerate. [43]
OLDHAM
Look through yonder palms!
Someone is coming.
SATAN
He sees us! It is he! ”

“ Whereof you know not. All our ends are folly,
And win not what they seek; yet there is joy
In seeking; and one end there is that shows
A brighter glow. I am the watcher set [101]
Upon the heights. In my impassioned sight
All life is holy that strives unto life:
Death only is damnation. I will be
More happy than the happiest man, more strong
Than is the strongest! I will climb on the neck
Of this great monster, Life, and guide its course—
For I am master—toward that end I see
Hidden afar off.
BRANDER
You are sick and spent.
I should not thus—
FAUST
Fear not; I do not wander. ”