H. B. Cotterill

“ The scene changes. It is midnight. Faust, sleepless and restless, is pacing the hall in his castle. Outside, on the castle terrace, appear four phantom shapes clothed as women in dusky robes. They are Want, Guilt, Care, and Need. The four grey sisters make halt before the castle. In hollow, awe-inspiring tones they recite in turn their dirge-like strains: they chant of gathering clouds and darkness, and of their brother—Death. They approach the door of the castle hall. It is shut. Within lives a rich man, and none of them may enter, not even Guilt—none save only Care. ”

“ Standing on the very verge of his grave, Faust, reviewing the memories of his long life, feels that at last, though old and blind, with no more hopes in earthly existence, he has won peace and happiness in having worked for others and in having given other human beings a measure of independence and of that true liberty and happiness which are gained only by honest toil. He alone truly possesses and can enjoy who has made a thing his own by earning it. ”

“ Moreover Faust has not summoned the devil. The devil has come to him—is indeed a part of him. He does not league himself with a hell-fiend for the sake of worldly power or fame or sensual enjoyment, of which he speaks with contempt. He only offers to come forward into the battle of life and of passions to test the nobler powers and the deeper beliefs and the yet dim aspirations of his better nature against the powers of evil, against what he calls the 'cold devil's-fist' of negation and cynicism and disbelief, against the brute within the man. ”

“ The animals enthrone Mephistopheles in a chair, give him a feather brush for a sceptre, and offer him a broken crown, which he is to glue together with 'sweat and blood.' It is like some horrid nightmare. We feel as if we were going mad; and so does Faust himself. But suddenly he catches sight of a magic mirror, in which he sees a form of ravishing beauty—not that of Gretchen or Helen, but some form of ideal loveliness. ”

“ 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. Faust kneels in homage before the impersonation of ideal beauty, and Helen feels that she is now no longer a mere ideal, a mere phantom. She clings to her new, unknown lover, as to one who will make her realize her own existence. ”

“ Is he something external, something that we can avoid, something that we can put to flight by resisting and get entirely free of—or has each one of us signed with the blood of his human nature a compact with some such spiritual power, with the demonic element within him, with that spirit of negation, of cynicism, of cold unideal utilitarian worldly-wisdom which mocks at faith and love and every high and tender impulse—that part of our nature which, when some poor girl is sinking in the abyss, prompts us to answer our heart's appeal with the sneer of Mephistopheles: 'She isn't the first!'? ”

“ 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. ”

“ To this midnight orgy of the Walpurgisnacht Mephistopheles takes Faust.... They are lighted on their toilsome ascent of the Blocksberg by a will-o'-the-wisp. A vast multitude of witches and goblins are flocking to the summit; the midnight air resounds with their shrieks and jabberings; weird lights flash from every quarter, revealing thronging swarms of ghoulish shapes and dancing Hexen. The trees themselves are dancing. The mountains nod. The crags jut forth long snouts which snort and blow. Amid the crush and confusion Faust has to cling fast to his guide. ”

“ To me it seems very natural that, dispirited by his first contact with the outer world—unable to feel any real sympathy with the rollicking and sleek self-sufficiency of that holiday crowd, Faust should turn again to reflexion and speculation, and that when he is in this depressed and metaphysical mood the demonic element in his nature should first present itself—and that too in the disguise of an itinerant professor. For is it not the case that to many of us the devil has come first just at such a time and in just such disguise? ”

“ When he is once more left alone, longing to face the mystery of life but crushed by the contempt of the Earth-spirit, Faust is seized by despair. He shrinks from encountering life, with its delusive joys, its pitiless injustice and its arbitrary fate. He resolves to seek certainty—to solve the riddle of life by death. As he moves the cup of poison to his lips there comes floating through the air the chime of bells and, perhaps from some near chapel, the hymn of Easter morn:
Joy unto mortals! ”

“ In an ecstasy of embitterment and despair, though fully conscious that such a life can never bring him satisfaction and happiness, Faust exclaims: 'What wilt thou, poor devil, give me? Was the human spirit, in its aspirations, ever understood by such as thou?... And yet—hast thou the food that never satiates—hast thou red gold—hast thou love, [86] passionate faithless love—hast thou the fruits that rot before one plucks them—hast thou the fruits of that tree of sensual pleasure which daily puts forth new blossoms—then done! ”

“ 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. ”

“ If ever Faust seems to catch sight of any far-off vision of eternal truth and beauty—as he does at times in his love for Gretchen, and again in his passion for ideal beauty in Helen, and once again in that devotion to the cause of Humanity which finally allows him to express a satisfaction in life, and thus causes his life to end—if ever Faust shows any sign of real interest or satisfaction, it is just then that Mephistopheles displays most clearly his utter inability to understand the 'human spirit in its aspirations' ”

“ Gretchen soars up to the higher heaven, and the soul of Faust, now awakening to consciousness, rises also heavenward following her, while the chorus of angels sings, in words the beauty and power of which I dare not mar by translation, telling how all things earthly are but a vision, and how in heaven the imperfect is made perfect and the inconceivable wins attainment, and how that which leads us upward and heavenward is immortal love. ”

“ From the cipher of the vast material universe, the Macrocosm, we turn away, as Faust did, with unsatisfied yearnings. Whither then shall we turn? Where shall we grasp Nature—not the empty vision, but the warm living form? ”

“ In the embrace of Faust Helen melts away into thin air, leaving in his arms her robe and veil. These change into a cloud, which envelops him, raises him into the air and bears him also away. The Phorkyad picks up Euphorion's lyre and mantle; he steps forward and addresses the audience, assuring them that in the leavings of poetic genius he has got enough to fit out any number of modern poets, and is open to a bargain. He then swells up to a gigantic height, removes the Gorgon-mask, and reveals himself as Mephistopheles once more the northern modern devil ”

“ Thou wouldst live and die, as other eminent scientists of these latter days have done, in the certain hope and faith of demonstrating irrefutably that this curious phenomenon which we call 'life' is nothing but the chemical action set up by the carbonic acid and ammonia of the protoplasm.
As they walk and talk there appears a black dog ranging to and fro through a field, as if on the track of game. Ever nearer and nearer he circles, and in his wake, as it appears to Faust, trails a flickering phosphorescent gleam. ”

“ They approach ever nearer—Mephistopheles rages and curses, but in vain. They come ever onward, casting before them roses, the flowers of Paradise, which burst in flame and scorch the demons, who, rushing at their angelic adversaries with their hellish prongs and forks and launching vainly their missiles of hell-fire, are hurled back by an invisible power and gradually driven off the stage, plunging in hideous ruin and combustion down headlong into the jaws of hell. ”

“ How infinitely grander—how illimitable in its vistas—the subject becomes when thus treated by a great poet we all must feel. And even if we cannot with a whole heart accept as a true Gospel what (in spite of Goethe's admission that God's mercy was a necessary factor) seems to be a gospel of self-salvation, we should not forget that this picture of a man pressing on in his own strength amidst the lusts of the flesh and the errors of the mind is perhaps the noblest and grandest kind of picture that dramatic art can offer us—that of the human will in its struggle against destiny. ”

“ And from this cipher of the material universe, this vision of inconceivable immensity and infinite diversity, the human spirit which is not content with the dead bones of science and has entered into communion with Nature cannot but turn away dissatisfied—and even with despair. Let me try to illustrate this in a more matter-of-fact way.
The human mind discovers, let us say, that the earth is not the centre of the universe; that the sun is larger than the 'bottom of a cask,' as in the old legend Faust discovered it to be; that there are other worlds quite as large as ours ”

“ Thus, even the Faust of the older sixteenth-century legend, although he ultimately falls a victim to the devil, has noble and high impulses by which we feel strongly attracted. He is lost, not through these impulses, these yearnings for knowledge, but through his magic, and his sensual life. In spite of more than one fit of remorse he is unable to free himself from the lusts of the flesh ”

“ Still—there is a means.' He then tells Faust that he will have to descend to the 'Mothers,' 'die Mütter,' 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 Space. 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. ”

“ Toward the end of the last act, when the devils are triumphing over their apparent victory and the possession of Faust's body, a voice from heaven is heard: 'Triumph not! Ye have not won the battle over human nature and human knowledge. The Deity has not given to man the noblest impulses in order to bring him to eternal misery. What you imagine you possess is only a phantom.'
Although we cannot tell for certain how Lessing meant to solve the problem, I think it is almost certain that Faust was to work out his own salvation amidst error and sin much as Goethe's Faust does. ”

“ We now come to Christianity. In the early ages of the Church the final appeal seems to have been an appeal to miracles, and we find the apostles and their followers claiming the sole right of working miracles in the name of the one true God and anathematizing all other wonder-workers as in league with Satan. We all remember Elymas the Sorcerer struck blind by St. Paul, and the adversary of St. Peter, Simon the Mage, around whom first gathered the myths which lived so long in the popular imagination and many of which we shall meet with in the legend of Dr. Faust. ”

“ Such people make life a burden by their abstruse thoughts and their Ideas, which they hunt up in all directions and insist on discovering in everything.... They come and ask me what "Ideas" I have incorporated in my Faust. Just as if I myself knew!—or could describe it, even if I did know!' Of course Goethe's great poem contains an Idea, if by that word we mean in a poem what we mean by life in anything living; but it is not by dissection and analysis that we shall discover it. ”