Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“ Of that proud soul, that scorned to own the thrall
Of earth, a world within itself created,
And bore and cherished? that with its fellows sated
Swelled with prophetic joy to leave its sphere,
And live a spirit with spirits, their rightful peer.
Where art thou, Faust? whose invocation rung
Upon mine ear, whose powers all round me clung?
Art thou that Faust? whom melts my breath away,
Trembling even to the life-depths of thy frame,
Like a poor worm that crawls into his clay!
Faust.
Shall I then yield to thee, thou thing of flame?
I am that Faust, and Spirit is my name!
Spirit. ”

“ And human life how short!
I feel at times with all my learned pains,
As if a weight of lead were at my heart,
And palsy on my brains.
How high to climb up learning’s lofty stair,
How hard to find the helps that guide us there;
And when scarce half the way behind him lies,
His glass is run, and the poor devil dies!
Faust.
The parchment-roll is that the holy river,
From which one draught shall slake the thirst for ever?
The quickening power of science only he
Can know, from whose own soul it gushes free.
Wagner.
And yet the spirit of a bygone age,
To re-create may well the wise engage ”

“ Mephistopheles.
Art done?
Faust.
Deliver her! or woe thee!—the direst of curses lie on thee for ever!
Mephistopheles.
I cannot loose the bonds of the avenger, nor open his bars.—Deliver her! Who was it that plunged her into ruin? I or thou?
[Faust looks wildly round.
Mephistopheles. [continues]
Would’st grasp the thunder? ’Tis well that you, poor mortals, have it not to wield! To smash the innocent in pieces is the proper tyrant’s fashion of venting one’s spleen in a dilemma.
Faust.
Bring me to her! She shall be free!
Mephistopheles. ”

“ The man who could find no pleasure in existence, except in the gratification of an unnatural passion, could end only as Manfred ended, and die communing with his own proud soul and the evoked spirits of earth and air, amid the frost-bound ridges of the Alps. But, in order to attain this solitary Titanic sublimity, the poet has sacrificed all human probability and all human interest. It is a sublime poem, Manfred; but it is the sublime of monstrosity. The sublime of the Prometheus of Æschylus is a very different thing: it is the sublime, in the first place, not of an unnatural man, but of a god ”

“ Faust.
I feel it well, in vain have I uphoarded
All treasures that the mind of man afforded,
And when I sit me down, I feel no more
A well of life within me than before;
Not ev’n one hairbreadth greater is my height,
Not one inch nearer to the infinite.
Mephistopheles.
My worthy friend, these things you view,
Just as they appear to you;
Some wiser method we must shape us,
Ere the joys of life escape us.
Why, what the devil! hands and feet,
Brain and brawn and blood are thine ”

“ Sufficiently occupied with gazing, child-like, on the hovering shapes that teemed so richly from its new-awakened being, it had no time, no wish, to enter upon the severe task of conscious manhood, that of criticising its own powers, and defining, with cautious precision, what the mind of man can know, and what it cannot know,—and was thus destined, for a short season, to flounder through the misty regions of theosophy and magic, till it should learn, from experience, to find at once its starting-point and its goal, in the exhaustless fulness of actual Nature. ”

“ Faust and Mephistopheles.
Faust.
In misery! in despair! Wandering in hopeless wretchedness over the wide earth, and at last made prisoner! Shut up like a malefactor in a dungeon, victim of the most horrible woes—poor miserable girl! Must it then come to this? Thou treacherous and worthless Spirit! this hast thou concealed from me!—Stand thou there! stand!—Roll round thy fiendish eyes, infuriate in thy head! Stand and confront me with thy insupportable presence. A prisoner! in irredeemable misery! given over to evil Spirits, and to the condemning voice of the unfeeling world! ”

“ It digs even into the marrow of my life, the misery of this one; and thou—thou grinnest in cold composure over the wretchedness of thousands!
Mephistopheles.
Here we are arrived once more at the limit of our wits, where the thread of human reason snaps in sunder. Wherefore seekest thou communion with us, unless thou would’st carry it through? Would’st fly, and yet art not proof against giddiness? Did we thrust ourselves on you, or you on us?
Faust. ”

“ Margaret on Faust’s arm; Martha with Mephistopheles, walking up and down.
Margaret.
I feel it well, ’tis from pure condescension
You pay to one like me so much attention.
With travellers ’tis a thing of course,
To be contented with the best they find;
For sure a man of cultivated mind
Can have small pleasure in my poor discourse.
Faust.
One look from thee, one word, delights me more
Than all the world’s high-vaunted lore. ”

“ The devil is in the house and can’t get out.
Faust.
You have the window, why not jump out there?
Mephistopheles.
It is a law which binds all ghosts and sprites;
Wherever they creep in, there too they must creep out;
I came in at the door, by the door I must go out.
Faust.
So so! then hell too has its laws and rights,
Thus might one profit by the powers of evil,
And make an honest bargain with the devil.
Mephistopheles.
The devil, sir, makes no undue exaction,
And pays what he has promised to a fraction ”

“ Like the short intermezzo of Oberon and Titania’s golden wedding on the Brocken, the strange motley dance of figures that are here made to pop up before us with significant saws in their mouths, have little or nothing to do with the main action of the piece. Faust and Homunculus and Mephistopheles appear at intervals merely flitting through its luxuriant variety like fire-flies in a forest full of lions and tigers, and camelopards, and every curious wild beast. ”

“ In such a place one cannot be alone.
Faust.
And yet a place I’d rather own
Upon the top, where whirling smoke I see;
There thousands to the evil Spirit hie,
And many a riddle there he will untie.
Mephistopheles.
Yes: and for every knot he disentangles,
He’ll make another to produce new wrangles.
Let the great world rant and riot,
We’ll know to house us here in quiet;
In the great world ’tis a sanctioned plan,
Each makes a little world the best he can.
Look there; you see young witches without cover,
And old ones prudently veiled over ”

“ How, then, does Manfred stand as compared with Faust? Exactly in the same way, we must assume, as Byron stands when contrasted with Goethe. Byron is more sublime; Goethe more human. Byron has more wing; Goethe a better use of his wing. Byron is more intense, more impetuous, and more forcible; Goethe more rich, more various, more mellow, and more ripe. But the chief difference is this, that in all his poetry Goethe is wise; Byron never. Accordingly, we may say that with all its grandeur Manfred is essentially a mad poem. ”

“ Mephistopheles.
Well, in this humour, you bid fair
With hope of good result to dare.
Close with my plan, and you will see
Anon such pleasant tricks from me,
As never eyes of man did bliss
From father Adam’s time to this.
Faust.
Poor devil, what hast thou to give,
By which a human soul may live?
By thee or thine was never yet divined
The thought that stirs the deep heart of mankind! ”

“ Mephistopheles.
Thou super-sensual sensual fool,
A silly girl takes thee to school!
Faust.
Thou son of filth and fire, thou monster, thou!
Mephistopheles.
And then her skill in reading faces
Is not the least of all her graces!
When I come near, she feels, she knows not how,
And through my mask can read it on my brow
That I must be, if not the very Devil,
A genius far above the common level.
And now to-night——
Faust.
What’s that to thee?
Mephistopheles.
What brings my master joy, brings joy to me.
Scene VI. At the Well.
Margaret and Eliza, with water-pitchers. ”

“ Faust then wakens, and gratefully welcomes the fresh tide of a renewed existence which, after the soothing influences of the magic sleep, seems to stream in upon him. A resolution is strongly stirred in his breast to strive after the highest perfection of which human nature is capable. ”

“ By all accounts, indeed, Faust was a man of much more distinguished academic learning than Paracelsus, of whom historians even question whether he ever studied at any university; but as a vagabond, a boaster, and a wonder-promiser, the one is perhaps only not superior to the other. With a little knowledge of medicine, a little classical lore, some dexterity in performing sleight-of-hand wonders, and a panoply of assurance, a clever man like Faust or Paracelsus may easily obtain a livelihood, and, what is more, an imperishable name. ”

“ He is now no longer a freshman, but a Bachelor of Arts, well crammed with the customary amount of book lore, notable, also, for a certain heroic dash of scepticism, which has taught him to believe that a large amount of what passes for learning in the world is humbug, and that the professors of learning, generally, are only a more respectable sort of quacks. He stands in no need now of a Faust or a Mephistopheles to instruct him; for he knows more than all the most learned doctors can teach him by the simple omnipotence of his own conceit. ”

“ Faust.
In truth I see the eyes of one that’s dead,
On which no closing hand of love was laid.
That is my Margaret’s kindly breast,
That the sweet body I caressed.
Mephistopheles.
There lies the witchcraft o’t, thou fool!
A phantom takes thy wit to school:
She is the love of every lover’s brain.
Faust. ”

“ Many of the greatest philosophers, indeed, as Solomon, Roger Bacon, and Cornelius Agrippa, have been accounted magicians for no other reason than their uncommon wisdom, far surpassing that of the age in which they lived; but there is too much reason to suspect that Faust’s fame as a magician rests upon much more questionable grounds, and the whole account of his life and exploits leaves upon our mind the impression that he was a very clever vagabond quack, rather than a retired and contemplative philosopher. ”

“ Goethe, in particular, was a man who grew, as he advanced, into many new shapes, and, of course, grew out of the old ones; and, though he was to the end a consummate artist, and there was no question of decayed powers, much less of dotage, in the grand old octogenarian, it was an artistic blunder in him to weave the fantastic tissue of fair forms, which amused his later years, into a common web with the tale of strong human passion, which had grown into a well-rounded dramatic shape under the influence of his most fervid youthful inspirations. ”

“ In such an age, and under the influence of opinions, religious and philosophical, so different from those now prevalent, flourished the mysterious hero of modern magic, whom the pen of Goethe has made, likewise, one of the principal heroes of modern poetry. That a good deal of obscurity should have gathered around such a character,—that the love of the marvellous should have united with the ignorance of the age, in magnifying juggling tricks into miracles of magic, and clouding with a poetical mistiness that which was clear and definite,—is not to be wondered at. ”

“ As before the vanishing form which he had seen in the magic mirror, when in the witches’ kitchen, so here again he stands transfixed with wonder, gazes in ecstasy, glows with passion, and, losing all sense of propriety, raves in jealous indignation at Paris, for venturing to handle too familiarly the object of his adoration. He then rushes insanely to seize the bodiless form; but no sooner has fleshly touch troubled the spiritual essence than an explosion follows. The Doctor falls down in a swoon; the fair apparitions vanish ”

“ It is no small matter to compose poetical arabesques, as our poet has done so luxuriantly in the Classical Walpurgis Night, and other parts of this piece; and a very natural affair, too, one may remark, in the circumstances of the present composition. It is rare, perhaps impossible, in the history of literary manifestation, that a poet should commence a great poem in the fervour of youth, continue it through the firmness of middle life, and finish it in the serenity of an advanced old age, with a homogeneousness of inspiration, and a perfectly consistent handling throughout. ”

“ Light and agile in every motion, more like a bird than a boy, he is tempted to believe that the air, not the earth, is his proper element, and, notwithstanding the importunate warnings of his parents, assays, like Icarus, to bestride the air, and, like Icarus, falls and perishes. This mournful catastrophe the poet gladly makes use of to dissolve the spell of Helen’s phantasmal existence, and to put a finale on the unsubstantial classical courtship of Doctor Faust. ”

“ Popular legends seldom spring, like the antediluvian and prelapsarian traditions of the Talmudists, or the genealogies of old Celtic families, from mere airy nothingness; and, however contradictory and inconsistent their integrant parts may appear, they have all formed themselves around a nucleus of substantial reality. Nevertheless, as there is nothing so absurd which has not been asserted by some one of the philosophers, so there have not been wanting men of learning and investigation, who have seriously set themselves to the task of proving away the personality of the renowned Doctor Faust. ”

“ It is the greed of knowledge, where knowledge is not possible, and the lack of love and reverence, the indispensable conditions of moral sanity, that in ages of dreamy speculation lead to the practice of magic and necromancy, and in days of nice scientific measurement, to a hollow and heartless atheism, clothing itself in the philosopher’s mantle and accepted as wisdom by the unthinking. This aspect of the Faust legend, accordingly, did not escape the notice of Marlow, who has set it forth prominently, if not profoundly, in the opening scene of his drama ”