Faust (trans. Bayard Taylor)/Part-2-endnotes

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“Both Parts are symmetrical in their structure. The First moves with deliberate swiftness from Heaven through the World to Hell: the Second returns therefrom through the World to Heaven. Between the two lies the emancipation of Faust from the torment of his conscious guilt,—lies his Lethe, his assimilation of the Past.

“In regard to substance, the First Part begins religiously, becomes metaphysical, and terminates ethically. The Second Part begins ethically, becomes æsthetic, and terminates religiously. In one, Love and Knowledge are confronted with each other; in the other, Practical Activity and Art, the Ideal of the Beautiful.

“In regard to form, the First Part advances from the hymnal chant to monologue and dialogue: the Second Part from monologue and dialogue to the dithyrambic, closing with the hymn, which here glorifies not alone The Lord and His uncomprehended lofty works, but the Human in the process of its union with the Divine, through Redemption and Atonement.”

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This first scene has the character of a Prologue to the Second Part of Faust, the action of which commences with the following scene. An indefinite period of time separates the two parts of the drama. Neither in his own life nor in his poetical creations did Goethe ever give space to remorse for an irrevocable deed. When Faust disappears with Mephistopheles, all his later torture of soul has been already suggested to the reader, and nothing of it can properly be introduced here, where the whole plan and scope of the work is changed.

Goethe firmly believed in healthy and final recovery from moral as from physical hurt: his remedial agents were Time and Nature. In Riemer's collection of Brocardica I find the following fragment:—

‘Impatience is of no service, still less Remorse. That increases the offence, this creates new offences.) He overcame his own great sorrows by temporarily withdrawing from society and surrendering himself to the influences of Nature; and we are to suppose that Faust repeats this experience. The healing process is symbolized in this opening scene, ​wherein the elves represent the delicate, mysterious agencies through which Nature operates on the human soul. Ariel—who was Poetry in the Intermezzo of the Walpurgis-Night—here takes the place of Oberon as leader of the elves, possibly because the soul capable of a poetic apprehension of Nature is most open to her subtle consolations.

Goethe here refers to the four vigiliæ, or night-watches, of the Romans, each of three hours; so that the whole, from six in the evening until six in the morning, include both sunset and sunrise. I see no reason to suspect, in addition, a reference to Jean Paul’s four phases of slumber, especially as the latter division is rather fantastic than real, the phases of healthy slumber being only three. The line,—

recalls a passage in one of Goethe's letters to Zelter: “With every breath we draw, an ethereal current of Lethe flows through our whole being, so that we remember our joys but imperfectly, our cares and sorrows scarcely at all.”

The four verses of the Chorus correspond to the four vigiliæ. The first describes the evening twilight; the second, the dead of night; the third, the coming of the dawn; and the fourth, the awaking to the day. The direction in regard to the chanting of the verses by the alternate or collective voices of the elves was added, in view of the possible representation of the drama upon the stage. Even where he had no such special intention, Goethe was fond of attaching a theatrical reality to his poetic creations; but throughout the Second Part he has purposely done this, in order to counteract the tendency of his symbolism to become vague and formless.

We may conjecture that Goethe had in his mind the Rospigliosi Aurora of Guido, which suggests noise and the sound of trumpets; but he also referred both to ancient myths and ​the guesses of the science of his day. Tacitus speaks of a legend current among the Germans, that, beyond the land of the Suiones, the sun gives forth audible sounds in setting. The same statement is found in Posidonius and Juvenal. In Macpherson’s Ossian, "the rustling sun comes forth from his green-headed waves." Also in the German mediæval poem of “Titurel,” the sun is said to utter sounds sweeter than lutes and the songs of birds, on rising. The crash described by Ariel is only audible to the “spirit-hearing” of the elves, who at once disappear, and Faust awakens, his being “cleansed from the suffered woes.”

5. Look up!—The mountain summits, grand, supernal.

The scene described is Swiss, and from the neighborhood of the Lake of the Four Forest Cantons. Goethe’s projected journey to Italy in 1797 terminated with a tour in that region, in company with the artist Meyer. In the third volume of Eckermann’s Conversations, he is reported as having given the following account of his studies for the proposed epic of “Tell,” and the use he afterwards made of the material:—

“I visited again the lake and the little Cantons, and those attractive, beautiful, and sublime landscapes made such a renewed impression upon me, that I was tempted to embody in a poem the variety and richness of the scenery. In order, therefore, to add the proper interest and life to my description, I resolved to people the important locality with equally important personages, and the legend of Tell was the very thing I needed.”

After sketching his conceptions of the different characters, Goethe continued: “I was entirely possessed with the subject, and already began, from time to time, to hum my hexameters. I saw the lake in quiet moonshine, with illuminated mist in the gorges of the mountains. I saw it in the glow of the loveliest morning sun, and the awakening life and rejoicing of grove and meadow. Then I painted a storm, a thunder- gust, hurled from the gorges upon the lake. Moreover, there was no lack of night and silence, and secret meetings on bridges and Alpine paths.”

​“I communicated all this to Schiller, in whose soul my landscapes and characters grew to a drama. Since I had other things to do, and postponed more and more the fulfilment of my plan, I finally made over my material to him, and he thereupon produced his admirable poem.”

“I stated,” said Eckermann, “my impression, that the splendid description of sunrise, written in terza rima, in the first scene of the Second Part of Faust, might have sprung from the memories of those landscapes of the Lake of the Four Forest Cantons.”

“I will not deny,” said Goethe, “that the features of the description are thence drawn. Nay, I could not even have imagined the substance of the terzinen, without the fresh impressions of that wonderful scenery. But that is all which I coined for myself out of the gold of my Tell-localities: the rest I relinquished to Schiller.”

There seems to be a slight obscurity in the passage commencing:—

The substance of German comment is, that Faust is overwhelmed, as when the Earth-Spirit appears to him in the First Part, by the apparition of perfect and universally illuminating Truth, which his human eyesight cannot endure. The sudden and complete fulfilment of a hope, he reflects, has the same bewildering effect; and he hides himself “in youthful drapery” (veil, in the original), since youth is content with an amazed acceptance of the highest revelations of Life, without seeking to penetrate their mysteries.

Here the above thought is repeated in a metaphor drawn from Goethe’s studies of Color. The waterfall is a symbol of human endeavor,—impetuous, never-ending, destructive, yet inspiring, and creating force; and the rainbow is the divided ray of the intolerably keen white light of Truth, as it is reflected in and overhangs the movement of life. Shelley expresses exactly a similar thought in a different image:—

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In Goethe’s description of the Falls of the Rhine, at Schaffhausen, we find the germ from which his thought grew: “The rainbow appeared in its greatest beauty: it stood with unmoving foot in the midst of the tremendous foam and spray, which, threatening forcibly to destroy it, were every moment forced to create it anew.”

I have not translated the above line strictly in harmony with Goethe’s Farbenlehre. “Am farbigen Abglanz haben wir das Leben” is, literally: “In the colored reflection we have Life.” Goethe’s theory is that Color is not produced by the refraction of the ray, but is the result of the mixture of light and darkness, in different degrees. His conclusions were drawn from only partial observation, and have been proved to be incorrect. I therefore feel justified in using a term which best interprets his thought as a poet, without reference to this glimpse of his theory as a man of science.

The opening scene strikes the keynote which reverberates through the Second Part. Faust lets his “dead Past bury its dead” but his intellect has been purified by his experience of human love, delight, and suffering. He resumes, in another and more enlightened sense, his aspiration for the “highest being,” and we must accompany him, henceforward, with our intellectual, and not, as in the First Part, with our emotional nature.

On the 1st of October, 1827, Goethe read the manuscript of this scene to Eckermann. “In the Emperor,” said he, “I have endeavored to represent a Prince who has all possible qualities for losing his realm—in which, indeed, he afterwards succeeds.

“The welfare of the Empire and of his subjects gives him no trouble; he thinks only of himself, and how he may amuse himself, from day to day, with something new. The land is without order and law, the judges themselves accomplices with the criminals, and all manner of crime is ​committed unhindered and unpunished. The army is unpaid, without discipline, and ranges around plundering, in order to help itself to its pay, as best it can. The treasury is without money and without the hope of further contributions. In the Emperor’s household things are not much better: there are deficiencies in kitchen and cellar. The Lord High Steward, more undecided from day to day what course to pursue, is already in the hands of usurious Jews, to whom everything has been mortgaged, and even the bread on the Emperor’s table has been eaten in advance.

“The Council means to represent to His Majesty all these evils, and to consult with him how they may be removed; but the Most Gracious Ruler has no inclination to lend his ear to such disagreeable things: he would much rather be diverted. Here, now, is the true element for Mephisto, who has speedily made away with the former Fool, and as new Fool and Councillor stands at the Emperor's side.”

Goethe took from the old legend the idea of presenting Faust at the Court of the German Emperor. The proper manner of Faust’s introduction, however, seems to have given him a great deal of trouble: more than one outlined sketch must have been rejected, and this initial difficulty probably retarded for many years the completion of the work. Falk gives us the following plan, as having been communicated to him by Goethe (probably between 1806 and 1813):—

“Because Faust desires to know the whole world, Mephistopheles proposes to him, among other things, that he shall seek for an audience with the Emperor. It is the time of the latter’s coronation. Faust and Mephistopheles arrive safely in Frankfurt, and must now be announced. Faust refuses, because he knows not upon what subject to converse with the Emperor. But Mephistopheles encourages him with the promise that he will accompany him at the appointed time, support him when the conversation flags, and, in case it should fail entirely, will assume both his speech and his form, so that the Emperor will really not know with whom he has spoken or not spoken. With this understanding Faust finally ​accepts the proposition. Both betake themselves to the hall of audience and are received. Faust, on his part, in order to show himself worthy of the Imperial grace, summons up all his wit and knowledge, and speaks of the loftiest things. Nevertheless, his fire warms only himself: the Emperor remains cold, yawns continually, and is on the point of terminating the interview. Mephistopheles perceives this in the nick of time, and comes to Faust’s assistance, as he had promised. He assumes the same form, and stands bodily before the Emperor as Faust, with the latter’s mantle, doublet, ruff, and the sword at his side. He now continues the conversation, just where Faust left off; but with a very different and much more brilliant result. He chatters, swaggers, and prates so to the right and the left, hither and thither, of all things on earth and outside of it, that the Emperor is beside himself with amazement, and assures the lords present that this is a thoroughly learned man, to whom he could listen for days and weeks, without becoming weary. At first, indeed, he was not particularly edified, but after the man had warmed to his subject, nothing finer could be imagined than the manner in which he set forth all things so briefly, yet so gracefully and intelligently. He, as Emperor, must confess that he had never before found united in one person such treasures of thought and experience, with such knowledge of human nature,—not even in the wisest of his Councillors.”

This plan, although humorous, would require too much elaboration to serve as the mere vehicle of Faust’s introduction at Court; and the fact that Goethe related it to Falk is sufficient proof that he had already rejected it. We have his own word for the fact that he never dared to communicate his poetical ideas in advance, even to Schiller; and he would be much less likely to bestow so intimate a confidence upon a man so vain and garrulous as Falk.

Mephistopheles commends himself to the Emperor’s grace by a riddle of which himself (the Fool) is the solution. Some, however, consider “Justice” to be the true interpretation, ​and Hartung insists on finding in the lines a resemblance to Schiller’s riddle of “Genius.”

The part given to the crowd of spectators in this and the following scene is evidently imitated from the Greek Chorus. The “murmurs” are confused and fragmentary comments on the action, and they also seem to have been partly designed to represent the masses who passively accept Life in whatever form it comes to them, or as it may be moulded for them by active and positive individual natures. The satire indicated in these passages is for the most part pointless, and we cannot but feel that they add an unnecessary heaviness to what is, without them, the least edifying part of the drama.

Goethe’s conception of the character of the Emperor (given in Note 7) is here illustrated. The Fool and the Astrologer, standing on his right and left hand, are the two Court officials to whose counsel he is most inclined to listen. The former relieves the tedium of state affairs, and the latter has cast an auspicious horoscope of his fortunes; yet, even with their aid, he consents reluctantly and with a half-protest to hear the reports of his ministers. The titles of the latter are taken from the mediæval organization of the German Imperial Court, where they were hereditary in certain princely houses. The dignity of Arch Chancellor belonged to the Elector of Mayence; of Arch Banner-Lord (for which Goethe has substituted “General-in-Chief”) to the Elector of Würtemberg; of Arch-Treasurer to the Elector of Brunswick; and of Arch-Marshal to the Elector of Saxony. I have translated the word Marschalk, on account of the character of the office, into “Lord High Steward.” In spite of the conjectures of some of the German commentators, it is not probable that reference is made to any particular historical period. The decadence of an Empire is necessary for the part assigned to Mephistopheles and the later impatience of Faust with his experience of “the greater world.”

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The satire in this passage—of which the Chancellor himself is quite unconscious—needs no explanation Nature and Mind, in all ages, are the bugbears of privileged classes, and the speaker, here, is the representative of both the Saints (the priesthood) and the Knights.

In the Paralipomena there is a fragment of a scene which must have been intended as a substitute for the present. It is sketched in prose:—

They are pagan views; I have found similar ones in Marcus Aurelius. They are the pagan virtues.

And that means—splendid vices. It is just, for that reason, that the prisoners should one and all be burned.

I find it hard: what say you, Bishop?

Without evading the sentence of our all-wise Church, I am inclined to believe that, at once—

Pardon! Pagan virtues? I would fain have had them punished; but if it may not be otherwise, we will pardon them.—For the present thou art absolved, and again in thy right.

The astrologers divided the celestial hemisphere into twelve parts, which were called Houses. In casting a horoscope, it was necessary to have, first, the hour of birth and the latitude and longitude of the birthplace. The location of the sun, moon, planets, and the signs of the zodiac in the different houses, was then ascertained. As each house represented a special human interest or passion, and each planet a special controlling force, the various combinations which thus arose furnished the material out of which the horoscope was constructed.

​The speech of the Astrologer, prompted by Mephistopheles, refers to the seven metals, to which the mediæval alchemists attached the names of the seven planets. The sun is gold, the moon silver; Mercury is quicksilver, Venus copper, Mars iron, Jupiter tin, and Saturn lead.

Clemens Brentano, in his “Boy’s Wonder-horn,” states that it is a common superstition in Germany, that, when one accidentally stumbles, he is passing over the spot where a fiddler is buried.

The expressions of Mephistopheles refer to the power of divination supposed to be possessed by certain persons. They suggest a passage in Wilhelm Meister, where Jarno describes a man who accompanies him on his mineralogical journeys: “He possessed very wonderful faculties, and a most peculiar relation to all which we call stone, mineral, or even element. He felt not only the strong effect of the subterranean streams, deposits of metal, strata of coal, and all such substances as are found in masses, but also, what was more remarkable, his sensations changed with every change of the soil.” Goethe, himself, seems to have had a half-belief in the possibility of an occult instinct of this nature.

Old walls, especially in damp cellars and subterranean passages, become covered with an incrustation of saltpetre, the collection of which was formerly a government monopoly.

It is a general belief in Germany that when a cask of wine has been kept for centuries, it gradually deposits a crust of tartar, which may acquire such a consistency as to hold the liquid when the staves have rotted away. The wine thus becomes its own cask, and preserves itself in a thick, oily state. It is then supposed to possess wonderful medicinal powers.

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In the “Carnival Masquerade” we reach the first entangling episode of the Second Part of Faust. That the entire scene is an allegory, is evident; and we can scarcely be mistaken in assuming its chief motive to be the representation of the human race in its social and political organization. This basis has been accepted, almost, unanimously, by the German critics; but upon it each has built his own individual theory of the development of the idea through the characters introduced. Whether intentionally or unconsciously, Goethe himself has added not a little to the confusion by introducing, now and then, a double (possibly even a triple) symbolism: therefore, although we may feel tolerably secure in regard to the elements which he represents, so many additional meanings are suggested that we walk the labyrinth with a continual suspicion of our path.

I shall endeavor to hold fast to the firm determination with which I commenced the work,—that of not adding another to the many theories already in existence. The reader, nevertheless, requires, if not an infallible clew, at least an adequate number of indications pointing in the same direction, to carry him forwards. Unless he is sufficiently interested to add his own guesses, on the way, to those of the critics and commentators,—to perceive, at least, the concentric meanings in which the allegorical forms are enveloped,—he will probably grow weary long before this digression returns again to the original course of the drama.

The design of the Carnival Masquerade is similar to that of Scene II. (“Before the City-Gate”) of the First Part. The latter gives us a picture of life in a small German town,—a narrow circle of individual characters, as they would appear to Faust in his “little world.” The broader sphere into which he has now entered requires an equally broad and comprehensive picture of Human Life, as it is moulded by Society and Government. Schiller, to whom Goethe confided his literary plans more fully than to any other friend, foresaw the difficulty to be encountered. He wrote (in June ​1797): “A source of anxiety to me is, that Faust, according to your design, seems to require such a great amount of material, if the idea is finally to appear complete; and I find no poetical hoop which can encircle such a cumulative mass. Well, you will no doubt be able to help yourself. For example: Faust must necessarily, to my thinking, be conducted into the active life of the world, and whatever part of it you may choose out of the great whole, the very nature of it seems to require too much particularity and diffuseness.”

Goethe, who wrote to Schiller, “it gives one a new spirit for labor, when one sees one’s own thoughts and purposes indicated externally, by another,” was unable, in the end, to select any detachable phase of Society, and therefore attempted to present the elements which enter into all human association, under the form of a mask. We are first introduced to types of the classes of persons who are found in Society; then to the moral elements, represented by the Graces, the Parcæ, and the Furies; the symbol of a wisely organized government follows, with an interlude in which Poetry appears as the companion of Wealth. The debasing influences of the lust of gain and the madness of speculation are set forth, the Fauns, Satyrs, and Gnomes are introduced as types of the ruder forces of human nature, and the Carnival closes with a catastrophe in which most of the critics see Revolution symbolized.

This is the simplest and most obvious outline of the scene. At every step, however, there are additional references and suggestions, the most important of which are explained in the succeeding Notes. The views of German commentators are tolerably accordant in regard to Goethe’s general design but, when they come to particulars, they strike so many individual tangents from the central thought. Düntzer says: “The collective representations of the Masquerade refer to civil and political life. The first group of masks whom we meet exhibit the external blessings of life, followed by another group who set forth those moral features of life which are most influenced by external possessions. The State, prudently governed, and made prosperous by the wise ​activity of its Ruler, is then presented to us in an allegorical picture, whereto the concluding symbol of a State overthrown by the selfishness and weakness of a self-indulgent Ruler forms an explanatory contrast.”

Schnetger divides the scene into five parts: I. “A picture of the cheerful, rich garden of Life.” II. A sketch of the disorganizing influences in human society, which require to be governed; of the beneficent powers which have lost their sway in our modern world, and of the darker elements which have taken their place. III. A representation of a well-governed State. IV. The worship of Mammon in human society, and the vulgar hunger of the multitude for gold. V. The collision of the cupidity of the People with that of the Prince, followed by a general conflagration.

Hartung considers that the forms and forces of social life are directly presented, and finds a class of persons, not of ideas, behind each mask. He seems to include the elephant and its attendants (generally accepted as the symbol of the State) among the social allegories, but sees, in the conclusion, the overthrow of civil order.

Deycks and Köstlin reject the idea of a complete and consistent allegory of Society and Government. The latter, moreover, gives a different explanation of the final catastrophe, which is quoted in its appropriate place.

Kreyssig says of the scene: “Here the poet introduces that singular masquerade in which the action of the next following scenes is announced and allegorically hinted, and which, to the dispassionate mind, if not exactly the most difficult to be comprehended, is yet one of the most entangled and unrefreshing portions of the whole poem. Here the diction first displays all those ostentatious singularities, which have brought the Second Part of Faust into such bad repute with a part of the reading world. Here the poet first manifests, in easy latitude, his known tendency to mysterious, symbolic pranks, and loads the poem with a multitude of adjuncts which seem to us unnecessary for the comprehension and proper effect of the whole—but rich material for the interpreters who are skilled in æsthetic filigree-work.”

​The careful reader will find that there is some truth in each one of the foregoing explanations, and that the chief confusion has arisen from the circumstance that Goethe could not find, as Schiller feared, a poetic hoop capable of encircling such a cumulative mass of material. I will only add, that, in the Notes which follow, referring to the separate masks, I have given preference to the simplest and most direct interpretation, which is always the more poetic and the more consistent with the laws of Goethe’s mind, as manifested in his other works.

The scene of the Masquerade is not in Italy, as some suppose, but at the German Court, after the Emperor’s return from his coronation by the Pope, at Rome. Maximilian I. was the first German Emperor who omitted this ceremony.

The Masquerade is properly opened by the lightest, gayest, and most attractive element of Society,—the young, unmarried women. Goethe took the fioraje of Florence (not the present race!) as types of grace, beauty, and that art which seems artlessness. These qualities are the “flowers which blossom all the year.” Hartung, in his notice of this passage, says: “Every woman, who dresses herself with taste, is an artist for her own body.”

“They” (the Garden-Girls) “represent, in contrast to the foregoing description of the needs of the Court, the simple, joyous, and enjoying nature of the race. The picturesque character of the poetry and the sententious grace of the address make this one of the most agreeable groups.”—Leutbecher.

If the allegory is consistently developed, we must suppose that the Olive-Branch, the Wreath of Ears, and the Fancy-Wreath are types of female character, or of the different forms of attraction whereby women draw towards them the complementary male characters. Schnetger, however, gives a different interpretation: “Joy and enjoyment flourish ​under the sheltering branch of Olive, the certain warrant of peace. Under its shadow, in the Garden of Life, Nature creates the Golden Ear for the one who desires the Beautiful in union with the Useful; and Fancy, or Art, creates a thousand wreaths for the other, who only takes delight in gay and graceful forms.”

Goethe’s maxim, throughout the whole of the Masquerade, seems to have been that of the Manager, in the “Prelude on the Stage”:—

I do not think it necessary, therefore, to load each detail with all the varieties of explanation. The reader, in any case, will find himself infected by the suggestiveness of the text, and thereby unconsciously led to interpret the forms according to his own individual taste.

The reference is not to Theophrastus Paracelsus, but to Theophrastus of Lesbos, born B. C. 390, the disciple of Plato and the successor of Aristotle. Among his extant works is a “Natural History of Plants,” a translation of which, by Sprengel, was published at Altona, in 1822; and his name was probably thereby suggested to Goethe.

The “Fancy Nosegay” seems to be designed as a type of the wilful, artful, bewildering power of woman, which does not attract all of the opposite sex, but the more surely fascinates a portion of it. This version of the mask is certainly indicated by the “Challenge,” which next appears, and which is one with the “Rosebuds.” We are to suppose that the emblematic rosebuds which she carries are temporarily concealed, and then suddenly produced as a contrast, exhibiting the superior charms of sweet, timid, modest maidenhood over the glamour of acquired feminine art.

Hartung says: “The Fancy-Wreath and the Fancy Nosegay mean to unite Art and Poetry, which create a second artificial nature within Nature: and especially the latter, the poetic temperament, seeks a heart capable of recognition ​and love. The Rosebud, on the contrary, does not make herself conspicuous by show and glitter: she will only open her glowing bosom to the lucky finder.”

In Goethe’s “Four Seasons” there is the following distich:—

Although some commentators assert that the preceding masks of flowers represent the attraction of appearance, and the fruits which are now brought forward must therefore represent positive possession, I prefer to stand by the more obvious solution, and to see in the gardeners only the male element of Society. In the latter, grace and beauty are secondary qualities; the decision which follows mutual attraction must not be left to the eye alone; the internal flavor of character must be tasted. The spectacular arrangement of the fruits and flowers, under green, leafy arcades, suggests Goethe’s description of the Neapolitan fruit-shops, in his Italienische Reise.

Here the meaning is not easily to be mistaken, and the critics, although some of them have shown remarkable skill in their efforts to attach some additional significance to the characters, have not been able to escape the direct allusion to scheming mothers with marriageable daughters. The masks are appropriately introduced as a transition from the natural, unperverted attraction of the sexes in youth, which is the primitive cause and charm of Society, to the introduction of other and disturbing elements.

The game alluded to in the third stanza (Dritter Mann), I only know by its old English name of “Hindmost of Three,” which may possibly be a local designation; but it will at least indicate the game to those who happen to know it under another name.

The stage directions, in brackets, following this passage, ​as well as those on page 39, were added by Riemer, under Goethe’s direction. They thus appeared in the twelfth volume of Goethe’s Complete Works, in 1828, and it is understood that they were intended to indicate additional scenes, not written at the time. The failure, afterwards, to fill these gaps, was certainly not forgetfulness, as Düntzer charges, but rather weariness and the absence of fortunate moods, on the part of the octogenarian poet.

A theatrical atmosphere undoubtedly pervades, not only this, but many other scenes of the Second Part of Faust, and the English reader who may be not always agreeably conscious of this circumstance, should bear in mind that Goethe’s long management of the Weimar theatre, and his constant production of plays, masques, and vaudevilles (many of them of an “occasional” character), led him to consider, while writing, the possible representation of the drama upon the German stage. Prince Radzivill had already composed music for the First Part (in 1814), and at the very time when Goethe was preparing the Carnival Masquerade for publication, in 1828, Karl von Holtei was engaged in bringing out the First Part as a melodrama, with music by Eberwein. Nor must we forget that the German public had been educated to an appreciation and enjoyment of even allegorical representations. After Sophocles had been produced on the Weimar stage, and Schiller had revived the antique Chorus in his “Bride of Messina,” Goethe not unreasonably conjectured that the Second Part of Faust might be acceptably represented. The attempt has not yet been made; but a day may come when it shall be possible.

The ruder and less attractive—nay, frequently repellent—elements of Society are represented in these three classes. The interpretation of each will depend upon the circumstance, whether we give them a purely social, or also a political character. In the former case, the Wood-Cutters are typical of those coarse-natured, brusque individuals, who pride themselves on disregarding the social graces and ​proprieties; the Pulcinelli are the obsequious idlers, triflers, and gossip-mongers; the Parasites are described by their name. If we are asked to give them a broader significance, the Wood-Cutters are the rude, unrefined masses, upon whose labor rests the finer fabric of Society; the Pulcinelli are the loafers who manage to live without any visible means of support, and are never idler than when they seem to be most busy; and the Parasites remain the same, only with a broader field of action. Some lines in the address of the latter suggest a passage in the Third Satire of Juvenal:—

Goethe’s object, here, is to represent sensual indulgence, of which intemperance is but one form. This being the last of the masks which symbolize social classes, there is all the more reason for restricting the explanation to Society alone; since, if the author had meant to typify political classes, he must have necessarily closed the group with criminals instead of sensualists. Düntzer, nevertheless, insists that this and the three preceding masks represent “the slavish dependence of men upon external possessions”! But Leutbecher surpasses all other commentators in asserting that the Wood-Cutters, the Pulcinelli and Parasites typify “intellectual manifestations and their relation to each other,” while in the Drunken Man he finds “the struggle of the Real as a counterpoise to the Ideal”!!

From this point to the appearance of the Graces, we have the skeleton of an unwritten scene, the character of which ​may partly be conjectured from Goethe’s expressions to Eckermann. The various classes of poets whom he meant to represent, and the jealousy of the cliques with which they were associated (unfortunately a characteristic of German literary life at the present day), may readily be guessed. Although no one allows the others to speak, the Satirist succeeds in declaring that his delight is in uttering what no one likes to hear. Under the title of “Night and Churchyard Poets” the author may have hinted at Matthisson and Salis, and the earlier lyrics of Lenau. The allusion to the vampire we are able definitely to trace. Early in 1827, Merimée published his La Guzla: Poésies Illyriques, of which Goethe wrote: “The poet, as a genuine Romanticist, calls up the ghostliest forms: even his localities create a dread. Churches by night, grave-yards, cross-roads, hermits’ huts, rocks and ravines uncannily surround the reader, and then appear the newly dead, threatening and terrifying, alluring and beckoning as shapes or flames, and the most horrid vampirism, with all its concomitants.”

The new Romantic school in France, and especially its leader, Victor Hugo, aroused Goethe’s keenest wrath. He called Nôtre Dame de Paris “an abominable book!” and thus expressed himself to Eckermann: “In place of the beautiful substance of the Grecian mythology we have devils, witch-hags, and vampires, and the noble heroes of the early time must give way to swindlers and galley-slaves. Such things are piquant: They produce an effect! But after the public has once eaten of this strongly peppered dish, and become accustomed to the taste, it will demand more and stronger ingredients.” Herein is an explanation of the reference to the Grecian Mythology, “which, even in modern masks, loses neither its character nor its power to charm.”

Here the masks represent social qualities and forces, not varieties of individual character. In the Graces we see giving, receiving, and thanking or acknowledging, not in the narrower sense of an act, but as symbolical of the intercourse of ​men,—the communication of one nature to another, the impressions bestowed and received, the reciprocal appreciation of character.

According to Hesiod, the Graces were Aglaia, Euphrosyne, and Thalia. In place of the latter Goethe substituted Hegemone (one of the two Graces revered by the Athenians), perhaps for the reason that the name of Thalia is better known as that of a Muse.

As in the Graces we have the activity of beneficent social qualities, so now, in the Parc, we find those forces of order, restraint, and control, without which there could be no permanence in human intercourse. Hartung considers that they represent the “necessities” to which Life must submit, and Düntzer calls them the embodiment of “moral limitations”—but these are simply different forms of the same solution.

Goethe has purposely changed the parts of Atropos and Clotho. The former carefully spins a soft and even thread, warning the maskers that it must not be stretched too far, even in enjoyment. Clotho, the youngest of the Fates, announces that the shears have been given to her, because Atropos prolonged useless lives and clipped the threads of the young and hopeful, and she, therefore, thrusts the shears into the sheath, in order to make no similar mistakes. I confess I am unable to explain the exact significance of this action. Some find in it a hint that the ancient gloomy, inexorable idea of Fate is banished from modern society; others that the needful moderation and self-control will make the threatening shears unnecessary.

The task of Lachesis is evidently to arrange and twist together the separate threads into an even, ordered chain,—a symbol which requires no further explanation.

Here we have the activity of evil forces in society. Goethe changes the Erinnys of the Greeks, who were represented as fierce, baleful figures, with snakes and torches in their hands, ​into fair, young, wheedling creatures, seemingly harmless as doves. His design cannot be fora moment doubted. The unresting Alecto of modern society is the insinuation that breeds mistrust, the slander that wears an innocent face, the power that in a thousand ways thrusts itself between approaching hearts and drives them apart. Megæra typifies the alienation which arises from selfish whims, from indifference or satiety; and Tisiphone alone, the avenging Fury, remains true to her ancient name and office.

Asmodi (or Ashmedai), the Destroyer, was an evil demon of the Hebrews. He is mentioned in the Talmud, and Jewish tradition reports that he once drove Solomon from his kingdom. Since, in the Book of Tobias, he kills in succession the seven husbands of Sara, he has been credited with a special enmity to married happiness. In this quality he appears as the follower of Megæra. As “Asmodeus” we find him in Wieland’s Oberon, and the Diable Boiteux of Lesage, through which he is almost as widely known as Mephistopheles.

The Herald’s expression: “For that which comes is not to you allied,” seems to indicate a change in the character of the allegory; and I am disposed to agree with those who attach a political meaning to the coming masks, rather than with those who would include the latter in the representation of society. The former interpretation is certainly the more simple and complete. The elephant is Civil Government, or The State, as another form of organized human life. He is guided by Prudence, while on either hand walk Fear and Hope, in fetters. Fear, who shrinks from every undertaking, and Hope, who would undertake all things without considering results, are, as Prudence declares, “two of the greatest of human foes.” They thus represent the political elements of blind conservatism and reckless passion for change. In an ordered and intelligent State both these forces are chained, Prudence guides the colossal organism, ​and the Goddess of all victorious active forces sits aloft on her throne. Each change in the course of the allegory, the reader will observe, commences with the bright and attractive aspects of life and then advances to the opposite.

Eckermann reports a conversation which he had with Goethe in December, 1829, concerning this scene: “We spoke of the Carnival Masquerade, and how far it would be possible to represent it on the stage. ‘It would still be something more,’ said I, ‘than the market in Naples.’

“‘It would require an immense theatre,’ remarked Goethe, ‘and is hardly conceivable.’

“‘I hope to live to see it,’ was my answer. ‘I shall take especial delight in the elephant, guided by Prudence, with Victory above, and Fear and Hope in chains at the sides. Really, there can scarcely be a better allegory.’

“‘It would not be the first elephant on the stage,’ said Goethe. ‘One in Paris plays a complete part. He belongs to a political party, and takes the crown from the King to set it on his rival’s head. . . . . So you see that in our Carnival, we could depend on the elephant. But the whole is much too great, and would require a manager, such as is not easily found.’”

The addresses put into the mouths of Fear, Hope, and Prudence have less point and importance than any others in the Masquerade.

Goethe takes Thersites from the Iliad, and unites him to the Thracian barrator, Zoïlus, who, in the third century before Christ, became so renowned by his venomous abuse of Plato, Isocrates, and especially Homer, that his name was applied by the Greeks to all vulgar, malicious scolds. The two characters, combined, represent the class of political slanderers, defamers of all good works, pessimists in the most offensive sense. The characteristics of this class are exhibited in still stronger and more repulsive forms, when Zoïlo-Thersites is changed into the Adder and Bat by the magic wand of the Herald,

​The “Murmurs of the Crowd” are here introduced, as in Scene II., to supply the place of a Chorus, and assist in describing the action.

The costume of the Boy Charioteer, as described by the Herald, is that of the Apollo Musagetes. It is the same which Schlegel gives to Arion, in his well-known ballad:—

The appropriateness of this costume is explained in the following note.

I have used the phrase “a four-horse chariot,” because, in the original text, it is thrice spoken of as a Viergespann,—“a team of four,”—and the Boy Charioteer uses the word “steeds” (Rosse). Düntzer and some other German writers consider that the chariot is drawn by dragons, although the latter are specially mentioned as guardians of the treasure-chests. This is not a matter of much importance: I give the original words, in order that the reader may take his choice.

Eckermann, in 1829, reports: “We then talked of the Boy Charioteer.

“‘That Faust is concealed under the mask of Plutus, and Mephistopheles under that of Avarice,’ Goethe remarked, ‘you will have already perceived; but who is the Boy Charioteer?’

“I hesitated, and could not immediately answer.

“‘It is Euphorion,’ said Goethe.

“‘But how can he appear in the Carnival here,’ I asked, ‘when he is not born until the third act?’

​“‘Euphorion,’ replied Goethe, ‘is not a human but an allegorical being. In him is personified Poetry, which is bound neither to time, place, nor person. The same spirit, who afterwards chooses to be Euphorion, appears here as the Boy Charioteer, and is so far like a spectre that he can be present everywhere and at all times.’”

The episode of Plutus and the Boy Charioteer is a double allegory. The first and most direct interpretation is that which belongs to the characters as a portion of the masquerade. The Boy is not only Poetry, but the poetic element as it is manifested in all Art; and we may therefore say that he represents the highest intellectual possessions, as Plutus represents material possessions. Further on, we shall see the manner in which the gifts of both are received by the multitude.

Although Poetry and Profusion are one, and the Poet (Artist) is rich in proportion as he spends his own best goods—although Art and Taste esteem themselves wealthier than Wealth itself, since they bestow all which the latter can never of itself possess—nothing is less appreciated by the mass of mankind than the gifts which they freely scatter. Pearls become beetles, and jewels butterflies, and even the vision of the courtly Herald (possibly a type of the wholly artificial society of Courts) sees nothing beyond the external appearance.

The “flamelets” which the Boy also scatters, and which he afterwards describes as leaping back and forth among the crowd of masks, lingering awhile on one head, dying out instantly on others, and very seldom rekindled into a temporary brilliancy, need not, now, be further interpreted to the reader.

The appeal of the Boy Charioteer to Plutus brings us to the second and more carefully concealed allegory, which lies ​beneath the first, and does not seem to have been guessed by the German commentators. The only special reason why Faust appears in the mask of Plutus is the part which Mephistopheles arranges for him to play at the Emperor’s Court—to assist in restoring the shattered finances of the realm by a scheme of paper-money based on buried treasure. At this point, and hence to the close of the Carnival Masquerade, a thread taken from the regular course of the drama is also introduced, and lightly woven into the allegory. There is no difficulty in following both, and we might, if it were really necessary, be satisfied without looking further; but the conversation between Plutus and the Boy Charioteer, on pages 41 and 44, provokingly hints of an additional meaning. When Plutus says “soul of my soul art thou!” it is certainly not Wealth speaking to Art: when the Boy Charioteer says “as my next of kindred, do I love thee!” it is certainly not Art speaking to Wealth.

The Chancellor von Miiller, in his work: “Goethe as a Man of Action,” was the first and only one to discover the key to these expressions. The noble and intimate relation which for fifty years existed between the Grand Duke Karl August and Goethe—the Ruler and the Poet—is here most delicately and feelingly drawn. The manner in which the Grand Duke assisted Goethe in his flight into Italy; the care with which he watched lest the duties of his office should interfere with his poetic and scientific activity; the beautiful renown given by the latter in return for this freedom,—are all indicated in a few lines. When the Herald first describes Plutus, it is neither Faust nor Wealth whom we see, but Karl August as Goethe saw him:—

The correspondence between Goethe and the Grand Duke so thoroughly justifies this interpretation, that I do not see how it can be avoided. The strong impression which I have ​received from a careful study of the Helena (Act III.), that Euphorion is not really Byron, but Goethe himself in his poetic activity, is justified by Goethe’s declaration that the Boy Charioteer and Euphorion are one, and also—as I shall endeavor to show in subsequent notes—the Homunculus of the Classical Walpurgis-Night. Although this theory has not been adopted by any of the German critics, it seems to me to furnish the simplest and most satisfactory solution of the most perplexing puzzle which the Second Part contains —simplest, because all the illustrations which support it are drawn from Goethe’s life and poetical development, and most satisfactory, because I can find no other which harmonizes and consistently explains the three characters.

It is proper to make the statement now, where the first evidence is furnished. The additional reasons which I shall offer to the consideration of the reader will be given when Homunculus and Euphorion make their appearance.

Mephistopheles, true to his character of Negation, wears the mask of Avarice, which is the opposite of active and ostentatiously exhibited wealth. His address to the women is suggested by the difference of gender between the ancient Latin word, avaritia, which is feminine, and the German, der Geiz, which is masculine. The Women are perhaps introduced here, instead of the former mixed crowd, because avarice is more repulsive to their nature and habits than to those of the men.

With the departure of Euphorion, the additional character given to Plutus ceases, and he is simply the type of Wealth. When he opens the treasure-chest, the action of the multitude, contrasted with their reception of the Boy Charioteer’s gifts, explains itself. The intellectual wealth turned into beetles in their hands ; the tongues of flame, cast upon their heads, flickered and went out; but now the show of riches, which the Herald declares to be a cheat, a joke of Carnival ​excites them to a maddening exhibition of greed. The action of Plutus, in driving back the crowd with his burning wand, appears to symbolize the usual termination of those popular excitements which have wealth for their object,—such golden bubbles, for instance, as the Mississippi scheme of Law, the railway mania in England, petroleum in America, etc. The fury for sudden enrichment is followed by a general scorching.

The predominance of a coarse, material greed of gain in the people brings after it a general demoralization, the embodiment of which in a palpable form is appropriately given to Mephistopheles. He takes the gold and kneads it into shapes, the character of which is so evident that they need not be described, and which express the natural consequences of wealth without culture and refinement. It seems probable, as many commentators have surmised, that Goethe had in view the condition of France under Louis XV. and XVI. Düntzer says: “He shows us how, in a period of material prosperity, the passion for wealth and indulgence increases, until it leads the people to the highest pitch of shameless immorality.”

We now reach the last group of the Carnival masks, and the closing scene of the allegory. The commentators (with the exception of Köstlin and Kreyssig) are agreed that it represents the revolutionary overthrow of a State, and they differ only in regard to the interpretation of the details. The “savage hosts” are the masses of ignorant people, whose ruder qualities are presently typified under the forms of Fauns, Satyrs, and Gnomes. Since they lack that foresight which comes of intelligence and wider experience, they drift into Revolution without knowing whitherward they are wending. Schnetger thinks the Emperor takes the mask of Pan (the All), in the sense in which Louis XIV. declared: ​“L’Etat, c’est moi!” Hartung insists that the line “Full well I know what every one does not” refers to Free-Masonry and its supposed connection with the French Revolution! Düntzer considers that the Ruler and his Court are responsible for the catastrophe (a view which seems to be justified by Goethe’s expressions, quoted in Note 7), while others assert that it is brought on by the thirst of the people for gold and their subsequent demoralization.

There is one objection to this interpretation, which I give for what it may be worth. The Fauns, Satyrs, Nymphs, and Gnomes are the attendants of Pan (the Emperor), and their parts are played—as the catastrophe shows us—by the personages of the Court. Kreyssig says: “ They storm onwards like a savage host, the Emperor as Pan, his associates as Gnomes and Fauns, collectively the representatives of rude natural forces and desires, in contrast to the spiritualized, Olympian forms of light, and when they rashly approach the fire and spirit fountain of Plutus, after their first, amazed admiration, they are properly tormented by the magic glow, although meanwhile only in sport. The part they play is more distinguished and externally stately, but not much more dignified than that of the holiday carousers whom Mephistopheles so tricked in Auerbach’s Cellar.”

Düntzer asserts that the Fauns represent unrestricted indulgence in all forms of sensual appetite; the Satyrs the arrogant will of a Ruler who looks down upon and despises the people; the Gnomes the unbounded greed of power and wealth; and the Giants the stupid and stubborn nature of those counsellors who surround the throne and endeavor to crush every movement arising from the development of the people. Neither this nor any other of the more particular elucidations of the scene seems to me infallible. According to Hartung, the Fauns are peasants (Bauern), and the Satyrs demagogues, The field of conjecture, here, is still open to whoever wishes to enter it; and I shall not undertake to decide whether the masks represent classes or qualities.

​The Gnomes are the only ones who have something more than an allegorical part to play. They are evidently introduced as the guardians of buried treasure, in connection with the financial scheme of Mephistopheles. This is clearly expressed, when their Deputation approaches Pan and announces the new and wonderful fountain of wealth, the spell of which must be broken by him. The Chancellor refers to this episode in the following scene (page 58), when he assures the Emperor that the latter actually signed the mandate authorizing the issue of paper-money.

The greeting “Glück auf!” (which I have translated “Good cheer!” though it may also be rendered “Luck to you!”) isin use among the miners, everywhere throughout Germany. It appears to be exclusively an underground hail, and therefore appropriate to the Gnomes.

The Giants, as they are here described, naked, with an uprooted fir-tree in the hand, may’still be seen on the coat-of-arms of more than one princely house in North Germany. They are called Waldmänner (Men of the Woods) by the people, and are supposed, by some archeologists, to be lineal descendants of the Grecian Fauns.

“The foliage of these oaks and beeches is impenetrable to the strongest sunshine; I like to sit here after dinner on warm summer days, when on yonder meadows and on the park all around there reigns such a silence, that the ancients would have said of it: ‘Pan sleeps.’”—Goethe to Eckermann, 1824.

“The hour of Pan now fell upon me, as always upon my journeys. I should like to know whence it derives such a power. According to my view, it lasts from eleven or twelve until one o’clock; therefore the Greeks believe in Pan’s hour, the people and also the Russians in an hour of day, when the spirits are active. The birds are silent at this time; men sleep beside their implements. In all nature there is something secret, even uncanny, as if the Dreams were creeping around the noonday sleepers. Near at hand ​all is silent; in the distance, on the borders of the sky, there are hovering sounds. Not only do we recall the past, but the Past overtakes us and penetrates us with hungry yearning; the ray of Life is broken into singularly distinct colors. Towards the vesper, existence gradually grows fresher and stronger.”—Richter, Flegeljahre.

Perhaps as a contrast to this silence of the sleeping Pan, the Nymphs recall the old Greek tradition of his terrible voice, wherewith he even alarmed the Titans fighting against Jove. In battle, also, his cry was sometimes heard, and we still retain the expression of the sudden, collective terror it was supposed to inspire, in our word panic.

Although this scene is generally accepted as symbolizing Revolution, its character is not so clear and consistent as to forbid other interpretations. The Emperor’s account of his vision during the magic conflagration, given in the next scene, scarcely harmonizes with an allegorical representation of his own overthrow; and there are various details—such as the Dwarfs (Gnomes) being the conductors of the Emperor to the fount of fire, the Herald holding the wand which Plutus afterwards uses to quench the flame—to which we cannot easily give a political symbolism.

I have quoted Kreyssig’s view (Note 38), and here add that of Köstlin: “When Pan, or the Emperor, arrives with his suite, a deputation of the Gnomes, the spirits of the metals, advances and conducts him to the flowing gold in the chest of Plutus, which they have just discovered. The chief object of the Carnival Masquerade is therewith fulfilled; the Emperor is solemnly declared to be lord of the inexhaustible store of metals hidden in the earth. Then the whole, since it is only illusion and pleasantry, apparently terminates terribly, . . . . not the Revolution, as Düntzer’s gloomy interpretation asserts, but, as it is immediately afterwards styled, a cheerful “jugglery of flame,” which terrifies only to banter, and also serves, through the seeming terror and the speedy quelling of the conflagration, to show the magic art of Faust ​in its entire glory. At the most, there is herein a hint that wealth may result in damage, and that all material splendor is threatened with the danger of annihilation.”

It is possible that the scene may be a phantasmagoric picture of the consequences of the new financial scheme, which the Emperor has just (unconsciously) authorized. Most of the German commentators, however, accept the theory of “Revolution.” There is nothing, indeed, to prevent us from applying both solutions at the same time.

Some have supposed that the burning of the Emperor and the surrounding masks was suggested by the terrible conflagration which occurred at the ball given by Prince Schwarzenberg to Napoleon, at Paris, in 1810. But it is much more likely that Goethe remembered the following passage from Gottfried’s Chronik, which he must have read as a boy: “About two years afterwards (1394), when things were a little better for the King (Charles VI. of France), divers lords sought to do him a pleasure, to which end, on Caroli day in January, they arranged a masque and disguised six of themselves in the likeness of Satyrs or wild men. The garment which they had on was tight, lying close upon the body, thereto smeared with pitch or tar, whereon tow hung like as hair, that so they appeared rough and savage. This pleased the King so well that he was fain to be the seventh, and in like form. Now it was at night, and they must use torches, because this dance was begun in the presence of the ladies. The King came thus disguised to the Duchesse de Berry, and, to her thinking, made himself all too silly and rude, wherefore she held him fast and let him not go till she should find who he was. But as he did not disclose himself, the Duc d’Orleans, who was beholding the dance, took a torch from the hand of a servant, and lighted under the King’s face, whence caught the pitch on the fool’s-garment, and the King began to burn. Now when the others saw such, forgot they their garments, ran thither, and would quench the King’s blaze; but they were in like guise caught by the flame, and because every one hurried to the King, four of those French gentlemen were burned so miserably that they thereupon ​died. Truly the King was preserved, and no particular injury to his body, but because of the fright and the great outcry he fell again into his former madness.”

Carnival and Allegory close together, and with this scene we return to Faust, and his experiences at the Court of the Emperor. As I have already remarked, the Emperor’s description of what he saw in the realm of fire does not at all harmonize with the Revolutionary solution, whence Düntzer, who holds fast to the latter, is obliged to surmise that Goethe must have forgotten the close of the foregoing scene when he wrote the commencement of this! I should much prefer to believe that Goethe allowed one part of his duplicate allegory to drop (its purpose having been fulfilled), and here introduces the Emperor’s vision as a further explanation of the other part,—a deceptive picture of the additional splendor and homage which shall follow the new financial scheme. Mephistopheles falls ironically into the same strain, and scoffs while he seems adroitly to flatter.

The paper-money device was probably suggested by the history of John Law’s operations in Paris, under the Orleans Regency,—from 1716 to 1720. It is also likely that Goethe remembered a passage in Pope’s epistle to Lord Bathurst (“On the Use of Riches”):—

Eckermann writes, December 27, 1829: “After dinner, to-day, Goethe read to me the paper-money scene.

“‘You will remember,’ said he, ‘that at the Imperial Council the burden of the song is that money is lacking, and ​Mephistopheles promises to furnish it. This subject runs through the Masquerade, wherein Mephistopheles so manages that the Emperor, in the mask of the great Pan, signs a paper, which, receiving the value of money from his signature, is then a thousand-fold copied and circulated. Now in this new scene the circumstance is discussed before the Emperor, who does not yet know what he has done. The Treasurer hands over the bank-notes, arid explains the transaction. The Emperor, at first angry, but after a closer comprehension of his gain delighted, bestows the new paper- money lavishly upon the circle around him, and finally, in leaving, drops several thousand crowns, which the fat Fool gathers together and then hastens at once to change from paper into real estate.’

“Scarcely had the scene been read and some remarks concerning it been exchanged, when Goethe’s son came down and took his seat at the table. He spoke of Cooper’s last xomance, which he had just read, and which he very intelligently discussed. We made no reference to the scene which had been read, but he began, of his own accord, to talk of the Prussian treasury-notes, and that they were taken at more than their actual value. While the young Goethe thus spoke, I looked at the father with a smile which he answered, and we thereby showed that we both felt the seasonable character of the scene.”

Soret reports, in 1830: ‘Goethe mentioned his want of faith in paper-money, and gave reasons based on his own experience. As another evidence he related to us an anecdote of Grimm, in the time of the French Revolution, when the latter, who was no longer safe in Paris, returned to Germany and was living in Gotha.” Goethe then described how Grimm, one day at dinner, had exhibited his lace sleeve-ruffles, declaring that no king in Europe possessed so costly a pair. The others estimated their value at from one to two hundred louis d’or; whereupon he laughed and said: “I actually paid 250,000 francs for them, and was lucky to get that much for my assignats, which, the next day, were not worth a farthing.”

​The purpose of the scene, as a part of the plot, is to procure Faust a position at the Imperial Court. The character of its satire is drawn from subjective sources, and hence—since all successful satire must have a basis of generally evident truth—is only partially effective.

Goethe now returns to the original Faust-legend (vide Appendix I., First Part) in giving Faust the task of invoking the shades of Paris and Helena. In the legend, however, Mephistopheles voluntarily produces Helena as a succuba, to be the spouse of Faust: here he remains true to his Gothic character and his negation of Beauty. The heathen race, he confesses, has its own special Hades, with which he has no concern. His disinclination to assist Faust is so very evident that we may almost ascribe to him an instinct of the elevating and purifying influence which Helena, as the symbol of the Beautiful, will afterwards exercise. Being, nevertheless, bound by the terms of the compact, he consents to point out the method of invocation, leaving the performance to Faust.

Here is the second enigma, a complete and satisfactory solution of which is not to be expected. I will first quote all that Goethe himself has said in relation to this passage. On the 10th of January, 1830, Eckermann writes: “To-day, as a supplement to the dinner, Goethe gave me a great enjoyment, by reading to me the scene where Faust goes to the Mothers. The new, unsuspected character of the subject, together with the tone and manner in which Goethe recited the scene, took hold of me with wonderful power, so that I found myself at once in the condition of Faust, who feels a shudder creep over him when Mephistopheles makes the communication.

“I had heard and clearly comprehended the description, but so much of it remained enigmatical to me that I felt myself forced to beg Goethe to enlighten me a little. He, however, according to his usual habit, assumed a mysterious ​air, looking at me with wide-open eyes and repeating the words:—

“‘I can only betray so much,’ he then said, ‘that in reading Plutarch, I found that in Grecian antiquity the Mothers are spoken of as Goddesses. This is all which I have borrowed, however; the remainder is my own invention. You may take the manuscript home with you, study it carefully, and see what success you will have with it.’”

Riemer, in his Mittheilungen über Goethe, relates that during a season at Carlsbad, the latter read the whole of Plutarch’s Morals, in Kaltwasser’s translation. “This,” says Riemer, “gave us material for conversation at the table, or in our walks, and the enigmatical ‘Mothers’ in Faust may have remained in Goethe’s memory from some one of these occasions. For when he questioned me on this point twenty years afterwards—perhaps about the time when he wished to use the material in working on Faust—I could not immediately say where the Mothers were to be found; but he then remembered that he had read of them in Plutarch. At first I could not find the passages, and neglected or forgot to make further search; but, after his death, when I arranged the manuscript of Faust, memory and research awoke again. I found both passages, but did not quote them because they give no explanation of the use which Goethe has made of those mystic dæmons.”

Plutarch’s mention of the Mothers, however, is not to be found in his Moralia, but in the Life of Marcellus: “In Sicily there is a town called Engyium, not indeed great, but very ancient and ennobled by the presence of the Goddesses, called the Mothers. The temple, they say, was built by the Cretans; and they show some spears and brazen helmets, inscribed with the names of Meriones, and (with the same spelling as in Latin) of Ulysses, who consecrated them to the Goddesses.”

Hartung has discovered another passage in Plutarch (De Defect. Orac. 22), wherein the Mothers are not mentioned, ​it is true, but which Goethe evidently bore in his mind and applied in this scene: “There are a hundred and eighty-three worlds, which are arranged in the form of a triangle. Each side has sixty worlds in a line, the other three occupying the corners. In this order they touch each other softly, and ever revolve, as in a dance. The space within the triangle is to be considered as a common fold for all, and is called the Field of Truth. Within it lie, moveless, the causes, shapes, and primitive images of all things which have ever existed and which ever shall exist. They are surrounded by Eternity, from which Time flows forth as an effluence upon the worlds.”

The reader must bear in mind that Paris and Helena are together typical of the highest and purest physical embodiment of the idea of Beauty—the Human Form (vide Note 87 to the First Part), and that Helena, alone, afterwards becomes the symbol, both of Beauty and of the Classic element in Art and Literature. The Mothers, therefore, (admitting the significance of the name, which suggested their use to Goethe) must of necessity symbolize the original action of those elemental forces in Man, out of which grew the æsthetic development of the race, in whatever form. We may find the primitive source of all science in material necessity; our other knowledge is based upon the operation of natural laws: but the Idea of the Beautiful has a more mysterious origin, springs from a diviner necessity, and finds only hints, not perfect results, in the operations of Nature,

Goethe made it a rule to discover some positive, however dimly outlined, Form, in which to clothe abstract ideas. This is always a difficult and sometimes a hazardous experiment. Here the forms, instead of more clearly representing, seem to have further confused the thought, if we may judge from the variety of interpretations which have been offered. Dr. Anster has managed to present the latter with so much brevity, and at the same time so correctly, in his note on this passage, that I follow the order of his summary, only enlarging it by the introduction of additional views and giving a translation of the phrases he quotes.

Eckermann, after taking home Goethe’s manuscript and ​duly pondering over it, evolved out of his inmost consciousness the discovery that the Mothers are the “creating and sustaining principle, from which everything proceeds that has life and form on the surface of the Earth.” Köstlin denies that they are creative, but says they are the sustaining and conservative principle, adding: “They are Goddesses, who preside over the eternal metamorphoses of things, of all that already exists.” Düntzer calls the Mothers the “primitive forms (or ideas) of things,”—Urdilder der Dinge. But, according to Rosenkranz, they are “the Platonic Ideas,” while Hartung, agreeing with Duntzer that they are “the primitive forms of things,” adds that “they dwell in the desert of speculative thought.” Weisse states that they are “the formless realm of the inner world of spirit—the invisible depth of the mind, struggling to bring forth its own conceptions.” From this view it is but a step to the matrices of Paracelsus, which, in fact, we find partly accepted by Deycks, who sees in the Mothers, as in the matrices, “the elemental or original material of all forms.” Riemer’s view is substantially the same,—“they are the elements from which spring all that is corporeal as well as all that is intellectual.”

The theories which most of the above critics spin from these interpretations are too finely and consistently metaphysical to have been intended by a poet like Goethe, whose nature recoiled from metaphysical systems. Nevertheless, they are all guesses in the same direction, and perhaps if we do not attach too literal a significance to Goethe’s mysterious Deep, wherein is no Space, Place, or Time, and are content to stop short of the very “utterly deepest bottom ” of conjecture, we may get a little nearer to his actual conception. It is not easy to conceive how Formlessness can be represented by Form, though we may very well accept it as a vast, mysterious background ; and this is all, I feel sure, that Goethe intended.

Schnetger has picked up the most satisfactory clew, Kreyssig has followed it, and Goethe himself has given us an unconscious hint of its correctness. The commentary of ​the first is much too long to be quoted, but it is substantially this: The primitive idea of forms does not exist in Nature, which works according to the pattern set by a First Designer. The realm of the original conceptions of things is therefore outside of Space and Time, and the Mothers are imaginary existences, who typify the unknown and unfathomable origin of all forms, and chiefly, here, of those eternal Ideals of Beauty which become more real to the Poet and Artist than the never utterly perfect work of Nature.

Kreyssig says: “The poet evidently prepares to lead the character of his hero towards that refining and purifying experience, to which he himself consciously owed his greatest gain and his highest joy,—the refinement following an earnest, creative worship of those ideals of Beauty which have descended to earth in the masterpieces of classic art. With what fervor Goethe and his equal friend (Schiller) reverenced these, with what sacred feeling, what severe, devoted solemnity they served at the same shrine, their common activity is a single, continuous evidence. Goethe, especially, dated a new life, a complete spiritual regeneration, from his penetration into the spirit of the ancient masters. A profound withdrawal into himself, an almost abrupt relinquishment of the society around him, characterized the first earnest beginning of his studies..... Only a firm, manly resolution leads Faust to the sacred tripod, the primitive symbol of Wisdom, through the contact of which he wins power over the primitive forms of things, over the radical conditions of that beautiful state of being, accordant with Nature, which the Artist must know before he can “call the Hero and Heroine from the Shades,” and create imperishable forms as the fair material revelations of his dreams. What Goethe here celebrates under the form of the Mothers enthroned in Solitude, is sung by Schiller, if our instinct does not deceive us, in that thoughtful poem, “of the regions where the pure forms dwell.”^[1]

In Eckermann’s third volume, he describes a conversation which he had with Goethe, during a drive along the Erfurt ​road, in April, 1827: “‘I must laugh at the æstheticians (Æsthetiker),’ said Goethe, ‘who so torment themselves to epitomize in a few abstract words all the unutterable ideas for which we use the expression, beautiful. The Beautiful is a primeval phenomenon, which indeed never becomes visible itself, but the reflection of which is seen in a thousand various expressions of the creative mind, as various and as manifold, even, as the phenomena of Nature.’

“‘T have often heard it said,’ Eckermann remarked, ‘that Nature is always beautiful,—that she is the despair of the artist, because he is seldom capable of fully equalling her.’

“‘I well know,’ Goethe answered, ‘that Nature often exhibits an unattainable charm; but I am by no means of the opinion that she is beautiful in all her manifestations. Her designs are always well enough, indeed, but not so the conditions which are necessary in order that the designs shall be completely developed.’”

The realm where the Mothers dwell is visible to the secret vision of the Poet and the Artist. The Goddesses only see “wraiths”; around them is “Formation, transformation”; there is no way to them, and no spot whereon to rest,—but who and where they are is clearly revealed in

They are the unknown, “unreachable,” “unbeseechable” sources of all immortal embodiments of Beauty,—the mysterious, primeval forces which manifest themselves through Genius in a manner inexplicable to all ordinary human consciousness; which remove those who know them far from Space and Time, into a spiritual isolation which only the brother-genius can comprehend, but even he cannot share.

In the Dedication to his Poems, Goethe thus addresses the Muse:—

There might seem a contradiction to the purely æsthetic interpretation of this scene, in the circumstance that Faust ​is directed to the Mothers by Mephistopheles, but here, as occasionally elsewhere in the Second Part, the mask of Mephistopheles drops and we see the face of Goethe himself. To insist on the rôle of Negation, which explains the forms assumed by Mephistopheles in the Carnival Masquerade, the Classical Walpurgis-Night, and the Helena, would lead to great confusion. There is, however, a partial return to dramatic truth in the expression of Faust, that he hopes to find his All in the Nothing of Mephistopheles.

The symbols of the Key and the Tripod have also given rise to much speculation. Their meaning, of course, is entirely dependent upon that which may be attributed to the Mothers, since the key is to guide Faust to the latter, and then enable him to gain possession of the tripod, the incense-smoke of which will shape itself into the ideals of Human Beauty. Schnetger and Kreyssig agree that the tripod is a symbol of the profoundest wisdom, and the former attaches to it the idea of “intuition.” What we call the intuition of Genius, however, is the highest and purest form of wisdom, and Goethe, therefore, may have intended to typify that wondrous, unerring instinct, which from the “airy nothing” of the incense-ssmoke can evoke the immortal Beautiful. Schnetger considers the key to be a “glowing sense of the charms of the material form.” With others, it is a symbol of intense, passionate Desire. If Goethe had specially in view the creation of ideals of Beauty by the Grecian mind, still other meanings would be suggested. We must seek in Nature for the keys to the myths of Greece, which, them- selves, were designed to be keys to Nature.

What Mr. Ruskin says of the works of Homer: “They were not conceived didactically, but they are didactic in their essence, as all good art is”—is equally true of this and other episodes of the Second Part of Faust. We find traces of that truth which reaches the poet by a deeper intuition, having the involuntary nature, yet also the distinctness, of a dream; and which always contains more than its utterer can ​clearly express. He cannot reject it, for it comes to him with an irresistible authority: he must therefore be silent, and suffer it to stand as a mystery for his contemporaries.

The motive of this scene seems to be, to renew the contrast between the shallow, artificial society of the great world, and pure devotion to ideal aims. At the same time it enables Mephistopheles to resume his old character, and Goethe (through him) to satirize the homeopathic theory of medicine, in the cure of the Brunette.

In the Paralipomena there are two fragments which seem to belong here:—

The Herald, whose office is to proclaim in advance the character of the action, acknowledges himself baffled: he sees only “a wildering distraction” in the coming performance, and therefore describes the scene instead. Even in the few lines of description there is a covert satire. The Emperor is placed where he may comfortably see the pictures of battles; in the background are lovers, who recognize in the occasion only an opportunity for coming together.

Goethe intended at one time to introduce a play, as in “Hamlet,” and he appears to have chosen Fortinbras, Hamlet’s successor, as the hero. The fragment of a scene which remains gives us no hint of the character of the play, nor can we be certain that it would have been introduced in connection with the appearance of Paris and Helena. Nevertheless, the fragment may be here given:—

​

Mephistopheles. Bravo, old Fortinbras, old chap! You are feeling badly; from my heart I’m sorry for you. Make an effort,—only a few words more! We shall not soon again hear a King talk.

Chancellor. Instead of that, we shall have the fortune, to hear the wise remarks of His Majesty the Emperor so much the oftener.

Mephistopheles. That is something very different. Your Excellency need not protest. What we other wizards say is quite unprejudicial.

Faust. Hush! hush! he moves again.

Actor. Depart, thou ancient swan, depart! Blessed be thou for thy last song, and all the good which thou hast spoken. The evil, which thou wert obliged to do, is small⸺

Lord High Steward. Do not speak so loud! The Emperor sleeps; His Majesty does not seem well.

Mephistopheles. His Majesty has only to give the order, and we will cease. Besides, the spirits have nothing more to say.

Faust. Why do you look around?

Mephistopheles. Where, then, are the apes hidden? I hear them talking all the time.

The scene upon the stage is a Doric temple; the massive character of the pillars is here hinted, and the triglyphs are afterwards mentioned. By introducing the Architect, Goethe means not only to satirize the exclusive devotion of the German mind to Gothic art, but also to show how the Classic and Romantic repel each other when first brought into contact. It was simply necessary that he should remember the character of his own development. In 1772 he published an essay “On German Architecture ” (the word German being purposely used instead of Gothic), containing a glowing panegyric on Erwin von Steinbach, the architect of Strasburg Cathedral. Yet in 1810 he wrote to Count Reinhard; “ Formerly I had also a great interest in these things, and cherished a sort of idolatry for the Strasburg Cathedral, the facade of which I still consider, as then, greater than that at Cologne. But the most singular thing to me is our German patriotism, which endeavors to represent the evident Saracenic growth as having originally sprung up on German soil.”

The Doric temples at Girgenti and Pæstum produced such ​a profound impression upon Goethe’s mind, that, by a natural reaction, he was for a time repelled by Gothic art. In describing the architrave of the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina, in Rome, he wrote: “This is indeed something other than our cringing saints of the finical Gothic spirit, piled one over another on brackets and corbels,—something other than our tobacco-pipe columns, pointed turrets and flowery pinnacles. From these, thank God, I am now eternally delivered!”

Faust’s invocation, it seems to me, cannot easily be interpreted from any other point of view than that which I have chosen for the Mothers. The expression “Whate’er once was” certainly does not apply to all forms of Life upon the earth—still less to abstract thoughts, speculations, or philosophical systems. What can it be but all creations of Beauty, whether lost to the world or still possessed? They would fain be eternal, and the Artist never admits to himself that they have actually perished. In that mysterious realm of the imagination where their forms were first designed, they still exist as “wraiths,” in company with all those forms which never advanced from design to fulfilment,—with the unwritten poems of Homer, and Dante, and Shakespeare, the unchiselled gods of Phidias, the completed Dawn of Michel Angelo, the unpainted dreams of Tintoretto and Raphael. I interpret the line:—

as referring less to the life of these conceptions in Art, than to the occasional revelations of the Beautiful in Man and. Nature. The Magician, who arrests other forms, and “bestows as his faith inspires” would then be the Artist, whose nature is for the time (as we have already seen) typified in Faust.

The description of the Doric temple first prepares us for ​the apparition of the Grecian ideals of Beauty, and now the mysterious music, the ringing of the shafts and triglyphs, the singing of the whole bright temple, is introduced with wonderful effect. When Paris advances “with rhythmic step,” we have a suggestion of Poetry, in addition to Music and Architecture, so that all Art celebrates the coming of the highest dream of Beauty in the Human Form.

The personages of the Imperial Court not only represent, through their comments on Paris and Helena, the manner in which the Artist’s purest achievements present themselves to commonplace and conventional natures, but, if Riemer be correct, they have a personal character, also. He says: “To the Weimar public, or rather to the privileged persons of the Weimar Court circle, there was an element of interest which we cannot feel: the six or seven ladies and gentlemen who take part in the dialogue represented well-known persons.”

This scene may have been suggested by one of Count Hamilton’s tales, “The Enchanter Faustus,” wherein the latter calls up Helen of Troy, and other women noted for their beauty, before Queen Elizabeth and her Court. The impression which Helen makes upon the Queen and courtiers is so similar to Goethe’s description, that I quote a portion of it:—

“This figure walked a certain time before the company, and then turning face to face with the queen, that she might have a better view of her, took leave of her with a kind of half-pleasant, half-haggard smile, and went out by the other door.

“As soon as she had disappeared, the queen exclaimed, ‘What! is that the lovely Helen? Well, I don’t plume myself on my beauty,’ she continued, ‘but may I die, if I would change faces with her, even if it were possible.’

“‘I told your Majesty as much,’ replied the magician, ‘and yet you saw her exactly as she appeared when in the very zenith of her beauty.’

“‘Still,’ said Lord Essex, ‘I think her eyes may be considered fine.’

“‘It must be admitted,’ rejoined Sydney, ‘that they are ​large, nobly shaped, black, and sparkling, but what expression is there in them?’

“‘Not a particle,’ replied the favorite. The queen, whose face that day was as red as a turkey-cock’s, asked them what they thought of Helen’s porcelain complexion.

“‘Porcelain!’ cried Essex, ‘’t is but common delf at the best.’

“‘Perhaps,’ continued the queen, ‘such may have been the fashion in her time, but you must agree with me that there never could have been an age when such a pair of feet would be tolerated. I don’t dislike her dress, however, and I’m not sure whether I shall not bring it into fashion instead of those horrid hoops, so embarrassing on certain occasions to us women, and on others to you men.’”

This is one of the few references to the First Part, which we find in the Second. Faust remembers the form which he saw in the magic mirror, in the Witches’ Kitchen (First Part, Scene VI.), and which, we may now be sure, was neither Margaret nor Helena, but, as I have already stated, the beauty of the female form. There, it was the visible beauty, as it is more or less developed in every living form: here, it is the perfect Ideal. Let the reader compare the expression of Faust’s passion for Margaret (First Part, Scene XII.):—

with the ecstasy following the revelation of an esthetic Ideal:—

and the meaning of the passage cannot be doubtful to any one who appreciates the fine spiritual passion which possesses the Poet and the Artist.

Kreyssig alone, of all the German commentators, seems to ​have comprehended the spirit of this scene. He says: “The Artist has seen his Ideal. His joy, his yearning, rises to a burning desire, to a resolution so powerful that nothing can intimidate it. Again the old, passionate blood seethes, al- though now warmed by a nobler fire. The impetuous, rash attempt to win at one blow as a permanent possession that which has only been revealed in a fleeting glimpse, fails, like his former attempt, through that radical law, which only gives the most precious gifts in return for labor and patience. The apparition vanishes, and in the abrupt reaction we see him, who would fain be superhuman, lying senseless on the earth. The first assault of his ambitious claim has been resisted, but his resolution remains irrevocable. He cannot, now, remain longer at the Emperor’s Court. The man of ideal vision and creation must equally fail to find his place there, as formerly among the dissolute groups of the Blocksberg. The period of his intellectually-artistic development and maturity commences, and the poet inaugurates it by a series of sometimes varied and fantastic allegories, in order to complete it afterwards in the Third Act, the scenes of which are excellent and truly dramatic, in spite of all their symbolism and allegory.”

It is a great consolation to find a view which one can so heartily and totally accept.

The Astrologer, apparently, only uses this expression in order to excite Faust by the apprehension of loss, and thus bring about the catastrophe with which the act closes. In the line,

we have a striking contrast to Faust’s impatience and disgust with the results of all knowledge, in the opening monologue of the First Part. It is almost a prophecy of that supreme content which would delay the flying Moment; and Mephistopheles might hope soon to claim his wager, but for the circumstance that his negative nature is utterly incapable of comprehending Faust’s passion for the Beautiful.

​Schnetger says: “The title (The Rape of Helena) simply means to express more clearly that the form was only a prophetic vision, and now vanishes; that Faust is not yet sufficiently advanced to retain the Beautiful; that Helena, the highest ideal of Art, resembles that form of the Shades, which seems so near that Faust cries: ‘How can she nearer be!’ and yet is ever stolen from him who would too impetuously grasp her.”

Mr. Lowell, in his poem of “Hebe,” expresses the same idea:—

There is one slight concluding puzzle in this scene. If the key which Faust holds represents Desire, why should it be aimed (in the manner of a pistol) against Paris? The latter is here a part of the ideal Beauty. If the act indicates more than Faust’'s unthinking rashness, I cannot explain it.

In December, 1829, Goethe read the opening scene of the Second Act to Eckermann. At its close, he said: “The conception is so old, and I have so carried and considered it in my mind for fifty years, that the material has greatly increased, and my most difficult work, at present, consists in selection and rejection. The invention of the entire Second Part of Faust is really as old as I say.^[2] Hence it may be an advantage to the work, that I now write it, after all the affairs of life have become so much clearer tome. My experience is like that of one who possesses in youth a great many small silver and copper coins, which he gradually exchanges in the course of his life, until he finally sees all his early wealth lying before him as pieces of pure gold.”

If, as seems probable from the evidence, the dialogue ​between Mephistopheles and the Baccalaureus was written some thirty or forty years before, the opening pages of the scene may undoubtedly be referred to the year 1829. What Goethe says of its conception must not be taken too literally. We may guess that his first intention was to give Faust a part to play in his old Gothic chamber: the reappearance of the Student of the First Part as Baccalaureus seems to be hardly a sufficient motive for the return to Place and the purposed contrast of Time. Mephistopheles, whose part, throughout the period of Faust’s æsthetic development (Acts II. and III.), is supposed to be Ignorance as well as Negation, forgets himself in almost the first words he speaks:—

The idea of the Beautiful is this “insane root,” which, in the eyes of conventional humanity, takes the Artist’s reason prisoner. Faust lies senseless until he reaches the Pharsalian Fields, in the Classical Walpurgis-Night, and Goethe, meanwhile, becomes prompter to Mephistopheles, as the latter was to the Astrologer. The reader must be warned not to expect any dramatic consistency in this and the following scene. While writing them, the First Part, it is very evident, was constantly before Goethe’s mind, not as a still secret and vital inspiration, but as something gone from him forever, something considered, judged and set in its place by the world, shorn of the joy of private possession and powerless to reproduce its own original power. He translates his thoughts from the natural language of Age into that of Youth, and, as in all translation, he is not quite equal to the original.

There is a pun in the German which cannot be given. Grillen means both crickets and crotchets or splenetic humors, the first reference being to the insects which Mephistopheles has shaken out of the old fur. In describing this act Goethe makes use of the word farfarellen to designate one variety of insects,—probably a mistake, intended for the Italian ​word farfalette, which has the same double meaning as Grillen.

Taking these two words in connection with the foregoing satire of Mephistopheles, we may conjecture that the “Chorus of Insects” is intended to represent all the whims, crotchets, and theories of mechanical scholarship,—the verminiferous life which is bred in the mould of pedantry. At the close of Scene III., First Part, Mephistopheles declares himself to be

for which reason, apparently, the insects hail him as patron and father. Düntzer says: “The Devil ridicules the dead scholarship, the waste and mould of the chamber, wherein Grillen must ever be produced: we might even suppose that the insects, especially the farfalette (moths) and cicadas, are an indication of the crotchets and distorted views of life to which savans are so easily disposed.”

The new Famulus, who is a spiritual descendant of the Wagner of the First Part, is introduced to give Mephistopheles the opportunity of continuing his irony. Some imagine that in the latter’s description of the immense reputation and authority which Wagner has acquired Goethe intended a reference to the extravagant popularity which Fichte enjoyed at the University of Jena. Inasmuch as the irony of the passage is sufficiently clear without this personal application, I do not think it necessary to give the grounds on which the conjecture is based.

It seems to me evident that the conversation between Mephistopheles and the Baccalaureus (commencing on page 90) is one of the earlier fragments. Frau von Kalb declared that Goethe read to her the whole or a portion of it, at least twelve years before the publication of the First Part, consequently in 1796, about which time there are passages in the correspondence with Schiller which furnish an indirect ​explanation of some of the expressions. The Baccalaureus, moreover, is so admirable and consistent a continuation of the Student, and Mephistopheles (except at the very close of the interview) is so like his old self, that the reader of the original cannot help remarking the difference in execution. I trust there may be some evidence of it in the translation, The earlier passage commences at the line: “If, ancient Sir,” etc.

Eckermann asked Goethe whether a certain class of ideal philosophers was not typified in the Baccalaureus.

“No,” said Goethe; “he is the personification of that presumption which specially belongs to youth, and of which we had so many striking examples in the years immediately after our War of Liberation. Every one, however, believes, in his young days, that the world really began with him, and that everything exists for his individual sake. Thus there was once a man in the Orient, who assembled his people about him every morning and suffered them not to begin their labors until he had commanded the sun to rise. Of course he was shrewd enough not to utter the command until the sun was on the point of rising without it.”

In an earlier conversation (upon a work of Schubart), Goethe said: “I have always kept myself entirely free from Philosophy: my standpoint was that of sound human understanding.”

There is a philosophical antithesis implied in the words “resolute” and “absolute,” in this couplet. Mephistopheles uses the former word in its double sense of “determined” and “dissolved,” while the latter, according to Kreyssig, is a sarcastic allusion to the Hegelian philosophy. It would seem from what follows, however, that Goethe had Fichte in his mind, rather than Hegel.

The reference to Fichte is here not to be mistaken. The ​following passage occurs in his works: “When they have passed their thirtieth year, one well might wish, for their own reputation and the advantage of the world, that they would die; since, from that age on, their lives will only be an increasing damage to themselves and their associations.”

When Fichte first appeared as Professor at Jena in 1794, Goethe was very favorably inclined towards him and his theory, but the prepossession gradually wore away, partly in consequence of Fichte’s boundless assumption of infallibility, and partly, no doubt, from the indiscreet conflict of his disciples with the much smaller circle around Goethe and Schiller. The latter writes, on one occasion: “According to Fichte’s own expressions, the Me is also creative through its representations, and all reality exists only in the Me. The world, to him, is nothing but a ball which the Me tosses up, and which, in its contemplation, it catches again! He thus actually seems to have declared his own Godhood, as we recently anticipated.”

The expression of the Baccalaureus:

Goethe was acquainted with a little-known volume of Sterne, some of the maxims of which, translated by himself, were found among his papers and ignorantly published as original fragments by Eckermann and Riemer. The work, which is entitled: “The Koran, or Essays, Sentiments, ​Characters, and Callimachies of Tria Junctain Uno, M. N. A. or Master of No Arts,” was published in Vienna in 1798. There appears to have been an earlier edition; but I am unable to say, in view of certain resemblances between Sterne and Lichtenberg, which borrowed from the other. The following passage is undoubtedly Sterne’s:—

“But that nothing is new under the sun was declared by Solomon some years ago: and it is impossible to provide against evils that have already come to pass. So that I am sure I have reason to cry out, with Donatus, apud Jerom—Pereant qui ante nos nostra dixerunt! For I have ever wrote without study, books, or example, and yet have been charged with having borrowed this hint from Rabelais, that from Montaigne, another from Martinus Scriblerus, etc., without having ever read the first or remembered a word of the latter.

“So that, all we can possibly say of the most original authors, nowadays, is not that they say anything new, but only that they are capable of saying such and such things themselves, ‘if they had never been said before them.’ But as monarchs have a right to call in the specie of a state, and raise its value, by their own impression ; so there are certain prerogative geniuses, who are above plagiaries,—who cannot be said to steal, but, from their improvement of a thought, rather to borrow it, and repay the commonwealth of letters with interest again ; and may more properly be said to adopt, than to kidnap, a sentiment, by leaving it heir to their own fame.”

Goethe, in his conversations, very emphatically repeated this view. In 1825, he said: “ People talk forever of Originality, but what does it all mean! As soon as we are born the world begins to operate upon us, and continues to do so to the end. And everywhere, what can we call specially our own, except energy, strength, and will? If I should declare for how much I am indebted to great predecessors and contemporaries, there would not be a great deal left.”

Three years later, he thus expressed himself to Eckermann: “It is true that we bring capacities into life with us, but we owe our development to the thousand influences of a great ​world, from which we assimilate all we can. I owe much to the Greeks and to the French; my debt to Shakespeare, Sterne, and Goldsmith is immeasurably great. Nevertheless, the sources of my culture are not therewith indicated: to name them all would be an endless task, and to no purpose. The main thing is, that a man has a soul loving the Truth, and accepting it wherever he finds it. But the world is now so old, and for thousands of years past so many important men have lived and thought, that few positively new things can, be discovered and said.”

The expression of Mephistopheles, however, seems to have been more directly suggested by a line in Terence: Nullum est jam dictum, quod non dictum sit prius.

The sudden introduction of a theatrical detail at the close of this scene is a piece of satirical wilfulness on Goethe’s part. The younger auditors in the parquet do not applaud, because they are all in sympathy with the Baccalaureus, even as the students of Jena, severally and collectively, were enthusiastic disciples of Fichte. The movement among the German youth, which culminated in the famous Wartburg convention of 1817, was extremely distasteful to Goethe, and led to a coolness on the part of the students which did not pass away until the next generation. From various utterances of Goethe on this alienation of youth from him, I quote the following verse:—

This whimsical, artificial mannikin is, in reality, the chief personage in Act II. Since he is no less an enigma to the critics than the mysterious “Mothers,” and suggests even a greater variety of meanings in the course of his adventures, it will not be so easy to give, in advance, a full and satisfactory explanation of his character. I prefer, therefore, to offer ​the reader choice of several tracks, leaving that which I believe to be the true one to be further followed in succeeding notes.

The name and mode of origin of Homunculus are taken from Paracelsus, and some hint of the character, possibly, from Sterne. The former, in the first book of his De Generatione Rerum, says: “But now the generatio homunculorum is by no means to be forgotten. For there is something in it; although such has hitherto been held in the greatest secrecy, and there has been no small doubt and question among divers of the old philosophers, whether it may even be possible, that a man may be born without the natural mother. Thereto I answer, that it is not at all contrary to the ars Spagyrica and to Nature, but is quite possible. And although such has hitherto been concealed from the natural man, yet was it not concealed from the sylvestres, and nymphs, and giants, but long ago revealed, whence also they originate. For from such homunculis they grow to full age, monstrous dwarfs and other like wonderful creatures, which are employed as powerful agencies, are victorious over their enemies and know secret things, which men otherwise could not know. And by art they receive their life, by art they receive body, flesh, bones, and blood; by art are they born: therefore Art is in them incarnate and self-existing, so that they need not learn it from any man, but are so by Nature, even as roses and other flowers.”

Paracelsus thereupon gives minute and exact directions how the Homunculus may be created; and the attempt has no doubt been actually made thousands of times. Sterne, in the second chapter of Tristram Shandy, treats the subject with more than his usual wit and grace, averring that the Homunculus is as much a man and a brother as the Lord Chancellor of England. The attraction which such a conception (intellectually speaking) presented to Goethe’s mind may be readily guessed, and a curious coincidence probably led to its embodiment in this scene. The philosopher, Johann Jacob Wagner,^[3] seems to have possessed some of the ​characteristics of his namesake of the First Part. After the appearance of the latter, in 1808, Prof. Köhler, of Würzburg, gave a lecture upon it, in which, either as jest or malice, he declared that his fellow-professor was the original of Faust’s Famulus. About the same time, Wagner propounded the most astonishing views in his lectures, some of which—as, for instance, “all organisms are nothing but developed metals,” and the assertion that “Chemistry would finally succeed in producing organic bodies, even in creating human beings by crystallization”—were repeated all over Germany, and must have reached Goethe’s ears. The scene, as it stands, was thus suggested to him; for the attempt to create life artificially harmonizes completely with the lifeless pedantry of which Wagner is the representative.

Professor Wagner was an enthusiastic admirer of the original “Fragment” of Faust. He lectured upon it, and even published an analysis of the work, in 1839; but he rejected both the Second Part and the additions to the First Part which appeared in 1808!

Nothing which Goethe has himself said concerning Homunculus will much enlighten us. Indeed, his expressions seem to have been purposely uncertain and mystical: both here, and in his remarks upon Euphorion, the care with which he guarded the Key-secret is very apparent. After reading the scene to Eckermann (December 16, 1829), he said: “You will have noticed, in general, that Mephistopheles appears to a disadvantage in contrast with Homunculus, who is his equal in intellectual clearness, and much his superior through his inclination for the Beautiful and for a promotive activity Besides, he calls him Sir Cousin; for spiritual beings, like Homunculus, who were not obscured and limited by a

​complete human incorporation, were classed among the Demons, and therefore a sort of relationship may be presumed between the two.”

“Mephistopheles,” said Eckermann, “certainly appears here in a subordinate position; but I cannot escape the idea that he is secretly implicated in the creation of Homunculus, according to our former knowledge of him, and also from his appearance in the Helena as a secretly-working agency. Thus he is again elevated, as a whole, and, with his superior impassiveness, he may overlook some of the details.”

“You have a very just instinct of the relation,” said Goethe; “it is really so; and I have already reflected whether, when Mephistopheles goes to Wagner, and Homunculus is coming into being, I should not put some lines in his mouth, which might make his co-operation clear to the reader.”

“There would be no harm in that,” Eckermann answered. “Yet it is already hinted, when Mephistopheles closes the scene with the words:—

The following additional note was found among Riemer’s posthumous papers: “In answer to my question, what Goethe meant to represent in Homunculus, Eckermann said: Goethe thereby meant to present the pure Entelechie [Ἐντελέχεια, an Aristotelian word signifying the actual being of a thing], the Reason, the Spirit, as it enters life before experience; for the Soul of Man is highly endowed on its arrival, and we by no means learn everything, we bring much with us.^[4] To Goethe himself the world was very early opened, in advance of experience; he penetrated it, before he knew it through his life. He also pointed out to Eckermann the shrewdness and attentive perception of his little granddaughter Alma. Yes, Goethe himself has a sort of respect for Homunculus.”

​There is probably a good deal of purposed mystification in all this. Nothing that is here reported explains the office of Homunculus as guide to the Classical Walpurgis-Night and the prominent part which he there plays, to the exclusion of Faust. Let us now consider, as briefly as possible, some of the most important interpretations of the critics. Weisse says: “Homunculus is the objective expression, the hypostatic form of Faust’s present spiritual condition, struggling for a new birth into another and unknown condition of existence.” Leutbecher’s explanation is: “He appears as the personification of that spiritual condition in Faust, which, sprung to life in the realm of external, mechanical scholarship, and awakened by the keen irony of sensuous being, is furthered by the repose of the genuine and truly poetical spirit,—a condition in which he first overlooks the whole mythical world of antiquity, and through which it is possible for him to comprehend the being of the True, the Ethical, and the Beautiful, which that world holds concealed.”

Another series of opinions, having some metaphysical or psychological relationship to the above, may next be quoted, Düntzer says: “Homunculus is the thoughtful, striving force, urged in vital, self-conscious power towards the Ideal Beauty, which it hopes to attain, not, like Faust, by a wild assault, but by a gradual and certain march,” According to Horn, he is “the yearning for the creation of the Beautiful,” while Rötscher considers that he is an embodiment of Faust’s imperious yearning for the original home-land of Art. Schnetger takes a similar idea, and compresses it into a more definite form. “Homunculus,” says he, “is the human embryo, the germ of the perfectly beautiful human frame; he is the highest Beauty, developed through a scale of thousands of forms,—in a word, he is the embryo of Helena! ... . Homunculus is Human Beauty in process of creation, Helena and Galatea are Created Beauty.”

I add, in conclusion, those interpretations which vary more or less widely from the foregoing. Hartung declares that “what Helena is to Faust, that is Homunculus to Mephistopheles, a creation of his fancy, and, nevertheless, his ​ruling spirit.” He ignores any connection between Homunculus and Faust. Rosenkranz simply states that Homunculus is a “comical” figure, who, at the close of the Classical Walpurgis-Night, “manifests himself as Eros.” Köstlin says, with unconcealed irritation: “Grant that the new spirit is dramatically necessary, grant that he is cleverly invented, the figure is and remains an unedifying trick, a ridiculous image, with which the poet himself plays a game which totally annihilates it. It is difficult to say, indeed, what should have appeared in place of this Homunculus, but that is no excuse for the poet … . The figure suffers from the contradiction, that it is comical and not comical, at the same time.” Deycks thinks he is an elemental spirit, perhaps of fire, and adds: “He appears as born Knowledge, yet yearning for the real, corporeal. He endeavors to find them in the natural knowledge of the ancients, and returns to the elements, as fire, like phosphorus in union with water.” Friedrich von Sallet considered him to be German Poetry before Schiller and Goethe, and Julian Schmidt Greek-Romantic Poetry.

Kreyssig, who insists that the reader must approach this part of the drama with “a vital, receptive spirit, free from prejudice or prepossession,” if he wishes to enjoy and understand it, endeavors to solve the problem in a different manner. He attaches a special meaning to the relation between Wagner and Homunculus, accepting the former as a type of solid research and knowledge, while he sees in Faust a personification of Genius. “What the explorer has laboriously produced,” he says, “becomes a living light to Genius, guiding him into regions which Fate has closed against the former.” Kreyssig does not seem to perceive that this living light (Homunculus) is a quality inherent in Genius itself, and not in the productions of scientific research. Yet he approaches, unconsciously, a little nearer the secret, in the passage: “We know in what full measure the fundamental law of a healthy artistic development was exemplified in Goethe’s life; how he, in the maturity of his power, far from the daring wantonness of the ‘Storm and Stress’ years, ​found no form of knowledge dry and unimportant which had any bearing on Nature and Art; how he studied at the same time Geology, Botany, Anatomy, Optics, and Metrics, the history of Literature and Art.”

I am satisfied that much more of Goethe’s own struggle towards a higher intellectual and æsthetic development is reflected in the Second Part of Faust, than the critics seem willing to admit. The first three Acts are saturated, through and through, with his intellectual subjectiveness. It was not his habit of mind to build theories, nor could he have taken the least interest in the representation of abstract ideas. He was never satisfied until the vaguest gossamer-wraith of the imagination had found some corresponding reality of form. A careful study of his correspondence with Schiller and Zelter will illuminate all this portion of the drama with a multitude of broken and transient lights, which may sometimes confuse, but, in the end, will discover much that seemed hidden at first.

My impression that the Boy Charioteer, Homunculus and Euphorion, are one and the same elfish, elusive Spirit, which is the Poetic Genius of Goethe himself (as its entelecheia, other allegorical garments being thrown over it at will), grew into very distinct form as a feeling, or instinct, before I made any endeavor to apply it. Such an interpretation does not reject those of Weisse, Leutbecher, Düntzer, Horn, Rötscher, or Schnetger: it only completes and harmonizes all of them. Leutbecher, indeed, stops a little short of the same view, when he says: “As in the First Part, Wagner and Mephistopheles are personifications of certain tendencies in Faust, so also here the same thing must be assumed, and Homunculus is added as the personification of a new tendency.” Now, in 1827, in speaking of Ampère’s review of Faust, Goethe said: “He has expressed himself no less intelligently, in asserting that not only the gloomy, unsatisfied striving of the chief personage, but also the scoffing and sharp irony of Mephistopheles, are parts of my own being.”

Add to this confession the play of that pranksome (muthwillig) spirit in Goethe, which even age could not tame, ​and his delight in mystification, which had constant food in the respectful credulity of lesser intellects, and I find it easy to understand how he has confused, in endeavoring to conceal, his design. There will be sufficient opportunity to add whatever illustrations are possible, before we reach the end of the Classical Walpurgis-Night; and I will, now, only beg the reader to notice that the Ideal which led Goethe onward and upward during the best years of his life, is very nearly described in the words of Paracelsus,—“Art is in them incarnate and self-existing, so that they need not learn it from any man, but are so by Nature, even as roses and other flowers.”

In this passage Homunculus describes the dream of the sleeping Faust, which is visible to him alone. Faust has already gone further back towards the origin of Beauty, in this picture of Helena’s parents, Leda and the Swan-Jupiter. The separation of the Classic and Romantic elements, which commenced in the First Act, now becomes complete, and the occupation of Mephistopheles—at least in his original character—is gone for a time. Eckermann said to Goethe, after the latter had read the manuscript of the passage: “Through this dream of Leda in the Second Act, the Helena afterwards wins its proper foundation. There much is said of swans and the swan-begotten; but here the event is pictured, and when one, with the impression on his senses, comes afterwards to Helena, how much more distinct and complete everything will appear!”

Goethe assented to this, and said: “You will also find that already, throughout these first acts, the Classic and the Romantic vibrate, and come to expression, so that, as by a gradually ascending slope, we are carried upwards to the Helena, where both forms of Poetry come prominently to the light and find a species of adjustment.”

The ignorance of Mephistopheles concerning the Classical Walpurgis-Night is accounted for by the fact that he is a Gothic, mediæval Devil, from the North, and “brought forth ​in the age of mist.” The classic world had ceased before he began to exist. He has brought Faust to the old study to recover; but Homunculus sees that (like Goethe in Weimar before his Italian journey) Faust will die unless he is instantly transported to the land where his dream can be made a reality.

Goethe, here, entirely forgets Mephistopheles and speaks with his own voice. There are many slips of the kind, as the reader will have already noticed, but none quite so undramatic as this.

The scene, although not strictly geographically correct, is admirably chosen, since the classic age may be said to terminate with the Battle of Pharsalia (B.C. 48). The Peneus and Tempe, Greece beyond Pindus, on the right, Olympus and Ossa overlooking the plain, the sea in front, with Samothrace, Lesbos, Tenedos, and the Troad beyond,—these are the features, not all visible, but all suggested by the locality.

This expression (which Goethe sometimes uses in his correspondence to denote finish, completion) is explained by the endeavor of Homunculus, afterwards, to break the glass in which his artificial being is confined, and commence a free and natural existence. A scientific as well as a literary meaning is thereby suggested, and the clews to both will be found in the true history of Goethe’s own development.

These are the lines quoted by Eckermann to Goethe, as an evidence that Homunculus is really the creation of Mephistopheles, and not of Wagner. Goethe’s answer was: “You are quite right. To an attentive reader, the lines might be almost enough; but I will reflect, nevertheless, whether there should not be other hints.”

​“But that conclusion,” Eckermann then said, “contains a great meaning, which is not to be exhausted so easily.”

“I should think,” Goethe answered, “there was provender enough in it, to last for a time. A father, who has six sons, is lost, no matter what disposition he may make of himself. Also kings and ministers, who have placed many persons in high offices, may apply this profitably to their own experience.”

The other lines, wherein the co-operation of Mephistopheles in producing Homunculus is indicated,—which were either not noticed by Eckermann or afterwards added by Goethe,—are the following.

On page 88:—

On pages 96 and 97:—

This allegory occupies the same place in the Second Act, as the Carnival Masquerade in the First, and, like it, is a digression from the direct course of the drama. Unlike it, however, its substance is poetic rather than didactic. Neither the many puzzles which it contains, nor the wilful spirit in which Goethe has loaded his original, purely æsthetic design with a weight of extraneous scientific ideas, can restrain the breeze of Poetry which blows through it, fresh from the mountains and seas and isles of Greece.

When we have once accepted his double intention of conducting Faust to a higher plane of life through the awakening and development of his sense of Beauty, and, at the same time, of bringing together the Classic and Romantic elements in Literature and Art, in order to reconcile them in a region lofty enough to abolish all fashions of Race and Time, ​we have no difficulty in fancying how the plan of a Classical Walpurgis-Night must have presented itself to Goethe’s mind, as a pendant to the Walpurgis-Night of the First Part, which is Gothic, Mediæval, Romantic. We may also conjecture that it was no easy task to arrange the scenes and figures of such an episode, as a natural framework, capable of enclosing both the allegory and the narrative,—the former so airy, subtile, and shifting, that, while it could only be expressed through Form, it perpetually eluded the confinement of forms of thought, and the course of the latter so determined in advance by the completed Helena, that it could not further accommodate itself to the allegory.

There is direct evidence that this difficulty of execution was felt by Goethe, no doubt with his first conception of the episode. The first sketch, or outline, was probably made in 1800, while he was writing the Walpurgis-Night, and when the first pages of the Helena were produced. We have Eckermann’s testimony that it was only a sketch in 1827, when Goethe said to him: “The plan exists, indeed, but the great difficulty is yet to be overcome; and the execution really depends altogether too much on sheer good-luck. The Classical Walpurgis-Night must be written in rhymes, and yet everything must wear an antique character. It is not easy to invent the proper form of verse: and then, the dialogue!” Eckermann asked if that was not already planned in the sketch. “The What, I may say,” Goethe answered, “but not the How. And then, just consider how much must be said in that wild night! Faust’s address to Proserpine, moving her to restore Helena,—what speech must that be, which shall move Proserpine herself to tears! Nothing of all this is easy to do: a great deal depends on luck, yes, almost entirely upon the feeling and power of the moment.”

The poetic elaboration of this early sketch, which must have been in prose, was not commenced until January, 1830, and was finished, as we learn from Eckermann’s letter from Geneva, in August of that year, the eighty-first of Goethe’s life! He knew how to detect and secure his fortunate ​moods; the plan was traced out, like the pattern of a piece of embroidered tapestry, and he worked here and there, according to the color and form which were best adapted to his intervals of creative desire. The very manuscript, some pages of which I have seen, suggests the care and fidelity with which he labored. The hand is firm and clear, the interlineations few but always excellent, and there are sometimes broad spaces between the stanzas, which suggest long and silent pacings back and forth on the study-floor or the garden walk.

Goethe tells us that the Classical Walpurgis-Night is an ascending slope, upon which we gradually rise to the Helena, Its leading motive, therefore, must be the development of the Idea of the Beautiful; and to this chief clew we must hold fast. But Mephistopheles, the Spirit of Negation, is also introduced, and a reason must be found for his presence in a scene where he has, apparently, no business. If there is such a thing as æsthetic irony, Goethe has attempted it here. In the forms introduced, with which Faust and Homunculus come in contact (the latter taking the former’s part in the end), there is a gradual upward movement on the line of Beauty, from the Sphinxes and Griffins to the apparition of Galatea on her chariot of shell. In following Mephistopheles, however, from the same starting-point, we move downward on the line of Ugliness to its intensest classical embodiment in the Phorkyads. Woven between these two threads, and sometimes cunningly blended with them, are personifications of the Neptunic and Plutonic theories in geology, with satirical illustrations of the latter and a resonant glorification of the former. Flashing over all, like a Will-o’-the-Wisp, is Homunculus, with his yearning to commence a natural existence.

Here are the four leading elements of the episode, only the latter of which can really be called problematic. Whatever variety of interpretation may be given to the separate forms, or to detached passages, we can hardly be mistaken in regard to the first three motives; and I find that the German critics are here less active in constructing independent ​theories than in bending these evident elements to their service, in explaining the details. Rosenkranz, for instance, says that “Faust is led through Nature to Art,” but inasmuch as he afterwards admits that the highest result of Art is the perfect human form, he thus comes back to the original clew. Weisse remarks, very correctly, that the scenes “are filled with an anticipation of coming Beauty.” Köstlin, Schnetger, Düntzer, and others do not differ in substance, and their views need not be quoted.

Leutbecher says: “As is well known, Goethe himself lived and strove in that process of coming into being, of the new creation of the antique spirit in his time, and to his share therein is due the execution of this important part of the poem.” Add to this Schnetger’s declaration that “the key to the Classical Walpurgis-Night is Homunculus: his importance determines the importance of the entire scene, for his development into being is its chief motive,”—and we shall see that by accepting Homunculus as the embodiment of Goethe’s own yearning for a free and beautiful poetic being, we have the simplest key, not only to the Classical Walpurgis-Night, but to many of the views which it has suggested to the commentators. Only thus, indeed, can we understand the increasing prominence of Homunculus, and the early disappearance of Faust.

Deycks, also, has this passage: “This much seems to be clear: the scene has little or nothing to do with the history of Faust. At best, it prepares his way to the attainment of Helena; but he, himself, plays a secondary part. Neither is Mephistopheles much more prominent; he meets with (something quite new to him) one embarrassment after another. There are all the better grounds for assuming that Goethe, here, had other purposes, further evidence of which is shown in the visible love and elaboration wherewith the abundant forms are presented, the beauty and importance of so many visions, and the cheerful humor which throws a singular, shifting charm over the whole. It is full of alluring and mysterious suggestion, like the endless laughter of the sea-waves, in the ancient poet.”

​Another remark of Goethe (made in 1831) may be interesting to the reader: “The old Walpurgis-Night is monarchical, since the Devil is there everywhere respected as the positive ruler. But the Classical is thoroughly republican, because all are broadly placed side by side, one being as valid as the other, none subordinate or concerned for the others. But for a life-long interest in the plastic arts, the execution of the scene would not have been possible. Nevertheless, it was very difficult to be moderate with such abundant material, and to reject all figures which did not completely accord with my design. For example, I made no use of the Minotaur, the Harpies, and various other monsters.”

Mephistopheles is seduced to overcome his dislike for “antique cronies” by the mention of Thessalian witches, and the scene is accordingly opened by the witch Erichtho, described by Lucan as dwelling in the wilds of Hæmus, where she was consulted by Pompey, before the battle of Pharsalia. Her allusion to the “evil poets” is undoubtedly meant for Lucan and Ovid. She speaks in the measure called iambic trimeter (double); it is really an iambic hexameter, scarcely known to the English language, but the latter, nevertheless, adapts itself as readily to the additional foot as the German.

Faust recovers from his trance as soon as he touches the classic soil: his artistic instinct tells him at once that he is on the track of Helena. How much of Goethe’s own feeling is expressed in these lines may be seen from the following passage in his works: “Clearness of vision, cheerfulness of acceptance, and easy grace of expression, are the qualities which delight us: and now, when we affirm that we find all these in the genuine Grecian works, achieved in the noblest material, the most proportioned form, with certainty and completeness of execution, we shall be understood, if we always refer to them as a basis and a standard. Let each one be a Grecian, in his own way: but let him be one!” <section end="endnote-65">

​

Mephistopheles, on the other hand, is entirely out of his proper element. His disgust with the nudity of the antique forms is an admirable bit of humor, through which we can detect Goethe’s own well-known defence of the chastity of ancient art. The delicate satire of the line, Doch das Antike find’ ich zu lebendig, is lost in translation. We may almost surmise that when Mephistopheles speaks of overplastering the figures according to the fashion, Goethe referred to the indecent rehabilitation of the statues in the Vatican.

Mephistopheles finally addresses himself to the Griffins and Sphinxes, as the most grotesque and unbeautiful of the forms around him.

Düntzer explains that this passage is in ridicule of certain philologisis, who, in Goethe’s day, grouped words together at random according to their initial letters, and then attempted to trace them to a common root. The answer of Mephistopheles is a play upon the words Greif (Griffin) and greifen (to grip)—sufficiently like the English words to be intelligible in translation. The Griffin accepts this explanation, and confirms it by slightly changing the Latin proverb Fortes Fortuna juvat, which he applies to his own advantage.

According to Herodotus, the Arimaspeans were a one-eyed race who inhabited a distant part of the Scythian steppes, and were engaged in continual conflict with the gold-guarding Griffins. The colossal Ants, which were somewhat larger than foxes and dwelt in Central Asia, threw out gold-dust in making their subterranean burrows.

I confess I can offer no satisfactory explanation of the appearance of these creatures, beyond that of their repulsive forms. Schnetger finds a scale of development in them, in the following order: Griffins, Ants, Arimaspeans, Sphinxes, and afterwards Sirens, each grade approaching nearer the. ​human form. Hartung, on the other hand, finds that the Griffins are philologists ; the gold, scientific treasures; the Ants, diligent collectors of knowledge; the Arimaspeans, clever writers, who live by stolen thoughts, and the Sphinxes, History. Goethe would hardly have buried an allegory so deep as this. Schnetger’s explanation would answer very well, were it not for the Ants and Arimaspeans, who have no place in a progressive development based on Art. All we can be sure of is, that they are primitive forms of the Ugly, without the suggestion of possible beauty which we find in the Griffins and Sphinxes.

It is evident that the Sphinxes immediately recognized Mephistopheles, and their questions are only “chaffing.” When they say that their spirit-tones become material, to him, they hint that he sees nothing more than their semi-bestial form. In the answer of Mephistopheles to the demand for his name, Goethe uses the English words “Old Iniquity.” This term was given, in the Moralities, to a personification of Vice, or Sin, who accompanied the Devil when he appeared, teased him and beat him with a whip. The Clown, in Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night,” refers to this character in his song:—

Although Mephistopheles is an entire stranger among these antique forms, we must not suppose that he has never ​heard of them, and that his demand for an enigma from the Sphinx is out of keeping with the part he plays. But his Romantic sneer is at once crushed under the Bœotian irony. The retort of the Sphinx shows that she fully comprehends the mediæval Devil. Its keenness will be properly appreciated when I state that the word Plastron (which I have translated “breast-plate”) is a piece of impenetrable armor, worn by fencing-masters, in order to let their pupils lunge at them with impunity, even as the Devout, in Faust’s day, flattered their ascetic idea of holiness by keeping up an imaginary conflict with the Devil. We cannot much wonder that Mephistopheles should lose his temper, on receiving such a thrust.

The Sirens are first mentioned by Homer as two in number, but two more were afterwards added by the Athenians. They were located in various places,—Crete, Sicily, or Capri,—and there were contradictory accounts of their origin and character. It was generally believed, however, that they were fated only to live until some one should pass their island without being captivated by their song, whence the corresponding myths of the Argonauts and Ulysses.

After the confused and uncertain forms with which the Classical Walpurgis-Night opens, Goethe seems to have selected the Sirens as a point of departure for the opposite paths of Faust and Mephistopheles. They were generally represented as beautiful maidens to the waist, the lower half having a bird-form, with hideous falcon claws. The grotesque and beautiful are more intimately blended in the woman and lion of the Sphinx: in the Sirens Beauty and Ugliness are simply and sharply joined to each other. After leaving them, Faust begins to rise towards his Ideal, while Mephistopheles descends towards his

In the description which the latter gives of the Sirens’ song, commencing “These are of novelties the neatest,” Hartung sees “Goethe’s opinion of certain modern poets.” Some such meaning is certainly suggested by the lines; but ​we are already familiar with Goethe’s habit of double and triple allegory, and shall not be bewildered by these minor glosses.

This line throws a clear light all along the path we have chosen. Faust recognizes the far-off predictions of the Beautiful in the forms of Indian and Egyptian art, the forerunners of that of Greece. He is even reconciled to what is repulsive in them, by their association with the early memories of Grecian History and Literature. He is filled with fresh spirit, for he now feels that he has a clew which shall guide him to Helena. To Mephistopheles, who remembers Faust’s disgust for the grotesque phantoms of the Blocksberg, his satisfaction is of course incomprehensible.

The Sphinxes direct Faust to Chiron, the Centaur, who is not only purely Greek, but also the last struggle of the artistic Ideal of Beauty with animal forms; while, after recalling the Stymphalic birds and the heads of the Lernæan Hydra for the benefit of Mephistopheles, they shrewdly send him after the Lamiæ, who have aroused his desire at the first view.

The Pharsalian Fields lie upon the Enipeus, a branch of the Peneus, and many of the commentators charge Goethe with having made a mistake; but it is very evident that he meant-to include in the scene the whole region from Pharsalus to the base of Olympus and the shores of the Ægean Sea.

In the river-god, Peneus, with his attendant Nymphs and Tributary Streams, we reach a higher plane of development. Here the forms, though representing Nature, are entirely human, and an atmosphere of Poetry, as well as of Art, encircles them. The verse changes, also, suggesting a clearer moonlight and fresher air.

Faust’s dream of Leda and the Swan, which was described by Homunculus in Wagner’s laboratory, is here purposely repeated, as the reality of what was there only presentiment. Now, however, Leda herself is not seen: the thick foliage ​conceals her form. Faust is not yet prepared to behold the conception of the Beautiful.

The Centaur Chiron was the son of Saturn and Philyra, the daughter of Oceanus. Homer calls him the wisest and most just of the Centaurs. He was said to have taught the human race oaths, joyous sacrificial services, and music. In his grotto on Pelion he educated the grandest Grecian heroes, among them Peleus, Ajax, Achilles, Æsculapius, Theseus, and Jason.

Schnetger has a very ingenious explanation of the symbolical significance of Chiron in this scene. He interprets the expression of the Sphinx to Faust:

as indicating the overthrow of the monstrous forms of early Art; and Hercules therefore marks the commencement of the Human period. He then says: “If the old forms are entirely overcome by the new, in Hercules, then must Chiron, his instructor, be considered as standing equally in both periods of development. This position, half here, half there, is clearly illustrated in his figure, which is a horse behind and in front a nobly formed man. Chiron represents to us the bridge, the transition from the former coarseness and distortion to the later and loftier forms, and upon him Faust must pass to approach that which he seeks.”

One of the finest of the Pompeian frescos, now in the Museo Nazionale at Naples, represents Chiron teaching the young Achilles to play upon the lyre. Goethe never saw it, but he has unconsciously given to the Centaur the same dignity, nobility, and yearning sadness of expression, which are there so wonderfully painted.

There is a seeming contradiction in this passage. When Faust suggests the name of Hercules, which Chiron has omitted from the list of his Argonautic pupils and friends, ​the Centaur’s burst of enthusiasm for the hero whose poisoned arrow accidentally caused his own death is, to say the least, unexpected; while Faust’s following speech:

couples Hercules with Helena as the Ideals of male and female beauty. But it was Paris and Helena whom he called from the Shades. We must assume that when he speaks of the latter pair to Mephistopheles, in Scene V. Act I., as “the model forms of Man and Woman,” he is merely repeating the conventional ideas of the Emperor and the Court circle. In any case it is Goethe himself who speaks here. It was probably the famous torso in the Vatican which first gave him the impression that Hercules is, as he more than once declares in his papers on Art, “the highest glorification of masculine, beneficent activity and harmonious combination of power,” therefore in his form the highest embodiment of masculine beauty. In his Vier Jahreszeiten, he says: “Grace is only revealed from the fulness of Strength.” In 1832, only a month before his death, Goethe said to Soret: “The Hercules of antiquity is a collective being, the great bearer of his own deeds and the deeds of others.”

A trifling personal experience is here interpolated, or, at: least, suggested. When Faust says: “But seven years. old!” and Chiron answers:

we are directly reminded of a passage in Eckermann. Goethe was speaking of a line in one of his own poems, where Professor Gottling had persuaded him to change “Horace” into “Propertius,” to the damage of spirit and sound. “In the same manner,” said Eckermann, “the manuscript of your Helena showed that Theseus carried her off as a ‘ten-year-old and slender roe.’ But Göttling’s representations led you to print, instead, ‘a seven-year-old and ​slender roe,’ which is much too young, both for the beautiful maiden, and for her twin-brothers, Castor and Pollux, who rescued her.”

“You are right,” said Goethe; “I am also of the opinion that she should be ten years old when Theseus carries her off, and for that reason I afterwards wrote:—

In the next edition, therefore, you may still make a ten-years’ roe out of the seven-years’ one.”

Faust answers Chiron, as a Poet: “Then let no bonds of Time be thrown around her!” He refers to an obscure legend (mentioned by Miller, in his work on “The Dorians”), that Achilles ascended from the Shades to wed Helena on the isle of Leuke,—not Pheræ, which seems to be a mistake of Goethe,—where they had a son, Euphorion.

Goethe has wilfully taken Manto from blind Tiresias, “prophet old,” whose daughter she was, and given her Æsculapius as a father, perhaps to account for her familiarity with Chiron, and enable the latter, through her, to send Faust further on his ardent pilgrimage. She was, in reality, devoted to the service of Apollo. After her father’s death she wandered to Italy, where her son, Oknus, founded and named for her the city of Mantua. (Virgil refers to this in the Tenth Book of the Æneid, and Dante in the twentieth Canto of the Inferno.)

The temple shining in the moonlight, the dreaming Manto, and the few Orphic sentences which she utters, prepare us for Faust’s mysterious descent to Persephone. Goethe’s own words (quoted in Note 64) show that he had projected the scene; but here, in the vestibule, the doors suddenly close, and no voice from the adytum of Hades reaches our ears. Faust disappears, and we see him no more until the middle of the next Act, where the character of the allegory is entirely changed. There can be no doubt that Goethe found his powers inadequate to the execution of his design, ​and, as at the close of the First Part, he left the reader’s imagination to span the chasm for which he could build no poetic bridge.

The Classical Walpurgis-Night falls, naturally, into three divisions of nearly equal length. The first division closes here: the representation of the development of the Beautiful through the Grecian mind is temporarily suspended, and a very different element is introduced.

We return from Manto’s Temple, at the foot of Olympus, to the Upper Peneus, where the preceding scene opens. The premonitions which the River-god then uttered, are about to be verified. The Sirens reappear, but (we must assume) stripped of their former symbolism: they are now evidently representatives of the Neptunic theory in geology, and the “ill-starred folk” of whom they sing must be the Plutonists. The above line—in German, Ohne Wasser ist kein Heil!—declares the former theory at once, though it also suggests the well-known phrase of Pindar, ariston men hudor. The word Heil means either health or salvation; and the latter rendering would perhaps be more correct here. Goethe undoubtedly selected the Sirens to describe the earthquake, because they are the only characters already introduced who are directly associated with the Sea.

Goethe makes a personification of the Earthquake (Σεισμός), in order the better to satirize the Plutonists.

It is now time that I should endeavor to represent, as clearly as may be possible, what Goethe has introduced in this division of the Classical Walpurgis-Night, and why he has introduced it. A thorough and satisfactory commentary would involve the statement of scientific questions which require much special knowledge; but, on the other hand, it is inexpedient to wander too far from the tracks we have been following. Goethe did not intend this episode to be a digression. The pains he has taken to weave together ​the two threads, of such irreconcilable texture, are very evident, yet he has none the less failed in his attempt. I only feel bound, therefore, to present whatever may be strictly necessary to the understanding of this foreign element, and its elimination from the genuine substance of the drama.

Düntzer has carefully collected the principal facts, and so skilfully arranged them that I only need to abbreviate his material, and add to it a few illustrations from Goethe’s writings. The Neptunic theory in geology, to which Goethe early became a convert, originated with Werner, and is based on his observations of mountain-strata. Taking granite as the original base, he taught that the later formations were successive deposits from a primeval ocean or from denser atmospheres; that, as Goethe expressed it, the Earth, slowly and by a progressive, harmonious development, build- ed itself; and that earthquakes and volcanic fires, although permanent phenomena, were not universal creative agencies. When Werner, in 1788, declared that basalt was formed through the action of water, the struggle of theories commenced, and the terms “Neptunists” and “Plutonists” began to be heard. In the Xenien, written in 1796, Goethe speaks of the short-lived triumph of the latter, in regard to basalt.

Nevertheless, Plutonism was not dead. The theory of the upheaval of mountain-chains through the action of internal forces rapidly gained ground in the scientific world. Its champions were two distinguished geologists, Leopold von Buch in Germany and Elie de Beaumont in France, to whom, about 1820, was added Alexander von Humboldt. Goethe, aroused from his security in regard to the Neptunic theory, now began to express his views, less in the way of impartial scientific discussion than as a matter of feeling,—we may even say, prejudice. He wrote, at this time: “When the Earth began to interest me in a scientific sense, and I endeavored to become acquainted with its mountain masses, internally and externally, in generals as in particulars,—in those days, we had a foothold where to stand, and we could not have wished a better one. We were directed ​to Granite as the highest and the deepest, we respected it in this sense, and labored to investigate it more closely.”

It is evident that the rapid and general acceptance of the theory of upheaval was a great annoyance to him. Like an earthquake, it seemed to threaten his faith in the stability of the Earth itself. To his mind, it substituted violence, convulsion, and a series of chaotic accidents, for the quiet, undisturbed, sublime process of creation. In a paper entitled “Geological Problems and an Attempt at their Solution,” he wrote: “The case may be as it pleases, but it must be written that I curse this execrable racket and lumber room of the new order of creation! And certainly some young man of genius will arise, who shall have the courage to oppose this crazy unanimity.” In a letter written to Zelter in 1827, he says, referring to Leopold von Buch, “I know very well what we owe to him and others of his class; but it is not well that the gentlemen immediately set up a priesthood, and try to force upon us, together with that for which we are grateful, that which they do not know, possibly do not believe. Now that the human race moves especially in herds, they will soon lead the majority after them, and a purely progressive, problem-reverencing mind will stand alone. Since I will quarrel no more,—which I never did willingly,—I now allow myself to ridicule, and to attack their weak side, of which they are no doubt aware.”

I must add one more passage, from a letter written to Zelter in November, 1829, while Goethe was preparing the material of the Classical Walpurgis-Night: “Unfortunately, my cotemporaries are quite too eccentric. Recently the Milanese announced to me with amazement, that Herr von B. [Buch] would demonstrate to their eyes that the Euganan Hills, which they have hitherto looked upon as a natural outpost of the Alps, rose up suddenly from the earth at some time or other. They are about as well pleased at that, as savages at the preaching of a missionary. Now, last of all, it is announced [Humboldt’s Siberian Journey?] that the Altai was once conveniently squeezed up from the depths. And you may thank God that the belly of the earth does not ​choose to fall in somewhere between Berlin and Potsdam, in order to get rid of the fermentation in the same way. The Academy at Paris has sanctioned the declaration that Mont Blanc arose from the abyss last of all, after the crust of the earth was completely formed. Thus the nonsense accumulates, and will become a universal faith of the people and savans, like the faith in witches, devils, and their works, in the darkest ages.”

If these passages show the bitterness of Goethe’s prejudices, the unreasoning hostility he manifested to views based on honest and careful research, they show at the same time the secret source of his irritation. He must have considered the new theory as one of the phenomena of an approaching “Storm and Stress” period in Science, and have turned from it with the same revulsion of feeling as from that period in Literature, fifty years before. He suffered his æsthetic instincts to mould his scientific opinions, for the two had long been harmonized in his own mind. We must, therefore, now turn to that fancied harmony for an explanation of the intrusion of his scientific opinions into the lofty æsthetic plan of this episode. The two errors account for each other. The desperation with which he clung to the ground, which we can see he felt to be slipping from beneath his feet, shows how his intellect had succeeded in uniting Man and Nature, the individual, the race, and the planet, in one consistent and harmonious scheme, wherein the poem and the mountain, the flower and the statue, obeyed the same laws of growth. It was thus much more than the Neptunic theory of which the Plutonists deprived him.

Viewing the scene from this standpoint, we may guess that Goethe justified it to his own mind, and perhaps considered that his Ideal of the development of Nature should of right be interwoven with his artistic Ideal. The part given to Homunculus in the illustration of the Neptunic scheme strengthens this conjecture. The details of the double plan will be further explained in the following Notes.

It is also probable that persons, circumstances, and events are occasionally indicated. The prominence of the ​geological discussion has long since passed away; but the Witches Kitchen and Walpurgis-Night of the First Part betray a wilful habit of reference to passing events or temporary interests, which we may well suppose is retained in this scene. Goethe, speaking of the Classical Walpurgis-Night as a whole, said to Eckermann: “I have so separated from the particular subjects and generalized whatever of pique I have introduced, that the reader may indeed detect references, but will not recognize any one to whom they would properly apply. I have endeavored, however, to represent everything in the antique manner, in distinct outlines, and to avoid any vagueness and uncertainty, such as is allowed by the Romantic method.”

The arbitrary manner in which Goethe employs the forms of his duplicate allegory, using one or the other separate meaning, or blending both, at will, must not for a moment be lost sight of, in threading the mazes of the Classical Walpurgis-Night. If the Sphinxes, in the preceding scenes, represent the struggle of Art to rise from the animal to the human form, it is very evident that such a symbolism is entirely out of place here, where the new element is introduced. They were the prophecy of coming Beauty, to Faust, the “grand and solid features,” manifested in spite of the repulsiveness belonging to all undeveloped forms. Here, they seem to represent calm, stability, unchange, in opposition to the violence and convulsion of Seismos. We may even conjecture that the lines:

indicate that, while Goethe admits the local operation of volcanic forces, he insists that their agency is limited and restricted by the eternal cosmic law of gradual and harmonious creation.

The reference to the island of Delos is a variation of a legend mentioned by Pindar, wherein the island, which had previously floated on the waves, was made stationary by ​Apollo, for the sake of his mother Latona. Pliny also speaks of the volcanic origin of Delos and other isles of the Ægean.

When Seismos answers, the poetic aspect of force, which suggested the Titans, seems, in spite of his theory, to have kindled Goethe’s imagination. Forgetting his scientific prejudice, he gives full play to the new and picturesque fancy; the passage is perhaps the finest in the scene. Some of the commentators imagine that the line:

contains a reference to Elie de Beaumont; but the pun would be incomplete, and its application not very clear.

The sudden appearance of the Griffins, Emmets, Pygmies, and Dactyls, as inhabitants of the newly-created mountain, and their activity, both in collecting gold and arming to attack the Herons (Neptunists), is a new bewilderment, and many of the German critics leave it without attempting an explanation. While we cannot hope for a clear and complete interpretation of every detail, the design of the whole scene at least points out the direction which our guesses should take. The circumstance that Goethe represents the Plutonists by those purely grotesque forms, from which Mephistopheles takes his departure towards the Ideal Ugliness, shows his attempt to blend the accidental scientific element with his original æsthetic plan This can hardly be a mere coincidence. Thus far, if we accept it, the choice of characters is explained.

For their further significance, we must remember the extent to which Goethe was irritated by the general acceptance of the Plutonic theory. The Griffins and Ants, we may guess, represent those who at once give in their adherence to every new scientific régime, and fancy that its principles are so many great intellectual treasures, which they hasten to collect and possess. The Pygmies and Dactyls (Thumblings and Fingerlings) are the crowds of students and smatterers ​who are unable to free themselves from the chains of the new theorist; who find themselves, without knowing how it happened, under his authority, intellectual serfs, forced to service and obedience, without any reference to their own wills. The Pygmy-Elders and the Generalissimo are, of course, the rulers: it would hardly be too much to say that the former represent the members of the French Academy, and that the latter is Elie de Beaumont or Leopold von Buch. Homer’s account of the battle between the Pygmies and the Cranes suggested the introduction of the Herons as Neptunists. The Generalissimo orders the slaughter of these water-haunting birds, that the Pygmies may feather their helmets with the crested plumes.

The “fat-paunched, bow-legged knaves” of Plutonists are triumphant, and wear the plumes they have plundered from the slaughtered Neptunists. But the Cranes, in their airy voyage, have seen the murder, and like the “Cranes of Ibycus,” in Schiller’s ballad, they are the agents appointed by Fate to revenge the deed.

Ibycus, the poet, on his way from Rhegium to attend the Isthmian games, was attacked by robbers in the pine-grove dedicated to Neptune, near Corinth. Far from all help, cut down, and dying, with his last breath he called to a flock of cranes, flying in a long file over the grove, and invoked them to bear abroad the news of the murder. His body was found, carried to Corinth, and recognized; and the grief of the populace, assembled at the games, was loud for the loss of their favorite singer, Ibycus. Suddenly, during a pause in the performance, while the great amphitheatre was silent, a file of cranes passed overhead, and a mocking voice was heard, saying: “There are the Cranes of Ibycus!” The suspicions of the people were instantly aroused, the speaker and his accomplice were picked out from the audience, and the amphitheatre became a tribunal of judgment. The murderers confessed the deed, and the Cranes revenged Ibycus. Such ​is the story which Schiller has embodied in one of his most admirable ballads.

When Goethe wrote, in 1827, “Certainly some young man of genius will arise, who shall have the courage to oppose this crazy unanimity,” he anticipated the overthrow of the Plutonic theory. In his selection of Schiller’s “Cranes of Ibycus,” to summon his Neptunic kindred to the revenge which is only announced, not immediately performed, there is a touching suggestion of his own loneliness. The “endless hate” which is sworn is not the true substance of hate (which Goethe declared to be a passion only possible to youth): it is merely an impatient exclamation, veiling a pang of longing for the great friend who had passed away, and of disappointment that no one came to his side to help him turn his intrenched defence into an open assault.

Schnetger says: “There is also a little venom in the circumstance, that the reappearing Mephistopheles finds what he seeks in this world of the Vulcanists. ‘In your fire-world,’ Goethe virtually exclaims, ‘the Devil can attain his object; there is enough of the Ugly, the Vulgar, the Abominable there, but nothing whatever of the Noble and the Beautiful.’ But even the Devil grumbles over these new surface-inflations, and praises his secure Brocken of a thousand years, with its primitive and eternal forms of the Ilsenstein, Heinrichshöhe, the Snorers, and Elend: he greatly prefers such a soil to this uncertain quake-world.”

Mephistopheles mentions not only “the region of Schierke and Elend” of the first Walpurgis-Night, but also the Ilsenstein, which is one of the features of the approach to the Brocken on the northern side, by way of the Ilsethal. Heine, in his Reisebilder, describes the stream of the Ilse, as it plunges down the glen, from the Heinrichshöhe, in a spirited passage, which I quote from Mr. Leland’s translation:—

“No pen can describe the merriment, simplicity, and gentleness with which the Ilse leaps or glides amid the wildly ​piled rocks which rise in her path, so that the water strangely whizzes or foams in one place among rifted rocks, and in another wells through a thousand crannies, as if from a giant watering-pot, and then, in collected stream, trips away over the pebbles like a merry maiden. Yes—the old legend is true, the Ilse is a princess, who, laughing in beauty, runs adown the mountain. How her white foam-garment gleams in the sunshine! How her silvered scarf flutters in the breeze! How her diamonds flash! … . The flowers on the bank whisper, Oh take us with thee; take us with thee, dear sister.

The original Lamia, the daughter of Belus and Libya, was beloved by Jupiter, and then transformed, through Juno’s jealousy, into a hideous, child-devouring monster. Lilith, the nocturnal, female vampire of the Hebrews, mentioned in Isaiah, is rendered Lamia in the Vulgate. In the plural, they appear to have corresponded, very nearly, to the witches of the Middle Ages, who, indeed, were then frequently called Lamiæ. Keats’s poem of “Lamia,” in which the bride, recognized by the keen-eyed sage, returns to her original serpent-form, represents another of the superstitions attached to the race.

Mephistopheles (probably remembering the Thessalian witches promised by Homunculus) is attracted by forms having so much family likeness to those with which he is familiar; and when we recall Goethe’s opinion of Mérimée and Victor Hugo (vide Note 24), we may suppose an indirect reference, in this episode, to the approach of the Classic ​and Romantic schools in the elements farthest removed from Beauty. The scientific satire, at least, is here temporarily suspended, but to be soon again resumed.

Empusa (the “one-footed,” as the name denotes) had one human foot and one ass’s hoof, and is therefore fairly entitled to call Mephistopheles “cousin.” Goethe probably took her, as well as some other characters of the Classical Walpurgis-Night, from Böttiger, with whose works he was well acquainted. Empusa is mentioned in “The Frogs” of Aristophanes, and also in the life of Apollonius Tyana, by Philostratus, She had not the same habit of transformation as the other Lamiæ, but surpassed them all in her hideous appearance and her cannibalic habits.

Mephistopheles, however, is too ugly and repulsive for even these. They simply amuse themselves with him, and then send him further. The transformations which they undergo when he attempts to grasp them are characteristic of the Lamiæ, but, at the same time, they suggest some additional meaning. What it is I cannot guess, and I find nothing in any of the commentaries which throws the least light on the passage. Düntzer’s explanation is entirely inadequate.

Here the Oread is the spirit of a primeval mountain, created according to the Neptunic theory. But she is not introduced solely for the purpose of ridiculing the neighboring Plutonic mountain which Seismos has created by upheaval, and which, she declares, “will vanish at the crow of cock.” When Mephistopheles exclaims:

it is again Goethe who speaks; and the circumstance that Homunculus, who has been invisible during the whole Plutonic episode, now suddenly shows his light among the thickets covering the natural rock, hints that the Oread is immediately responsible for his reappearance. If we attach ​to Homunculus the part which I have ventured to propose,—if we assume that he is the æsthetic principle in Goethe’s own nature, seeking the commencement of a free, joyous and harmonious being,—the passage receives a distinct and easily intelligible meaning. As I have given, in Note 59, the other varieties of interpretation, the reader may apply them for himself, here as elsewhere, if he finds reason to reject my suggestion.

The representatives of the two geological theories are now introduced. Goethe’s choice of Anaxagoras and Thales is too evidently dictated by what is known of the systems of those philosophers, to need any further explanation. The former wrote of eclipses, earthquakes, and meteoric stones; the latter derived all life and physical phenomena from water; yet both based their theories on “Nature,” and equally sought to solve her mysteries. Homunculus, impatient to begin existence, seems to heed the counsel of Mephistopheles (Goethe) to dare to err, as the only means of arriving at understanding.^[5] Consequently, no sooner does the dispute between the two philosophers recommence, than he steps between them, seeking guidance.

The words of Thales:—

undoubtedly indicate what Goethe considered to be the easy acquiescence of other geologists in the Plutonic theory, and his own stubborn position; yet it is a little singular that he should have chosen the Neptunic “billows” as symbols of his antagonists!

​

The four lines very tersely express Goethe’s scientific creed. In 1831 he wrote: “The older I grow, the more surely I rely upon that law by which the rose and the lily blossom.” He recognized no beauty except in proportion, no harmony except in gradual, ordered development. When we remember his constant aspiration, as an author, to attain unto a pure objective vision, we may well wonder that in this instance he was not only unable, but fiercely unwilling, to liberate himself from prejudice. But, after carefully studying his life, we find that we have to deal with more than an intellectual peculiarity: it rests on the deeper basis of his moral, and even physical, nature, and was directly inherited from his mother. The Frau Aja, as she was affectionately called by the Weimar court-circle, was a woman of clear, lively intellect, of admirable frankness and honesty, and of warm and strong feelings. Yet, with all her force of character, she was unable to endure anxiety, suspense, the ordinary shocks and plagues of life. She always begged her family and friends to hide from her every coming appearance of misfortune, and only to mention that which was past, and to be inevitably supported. The circle around Goethe were so familiar with the same peculiarity in his nature, that they avoided speaking to him of losses which they knew he felt keenly. Even the love of woman seems to have been, to him, more an unrest than a bliss, as is clearly shown in his relations to Frederike and Lili.

It would be easy to give many direct illustrations of Goethe’s hostility to every influence which interfered with his quiet, harmonious development, and to show how such a strong quality of his nature must have moulded (perhaps unconsciously to himself) his scientific views. The better our knowledge of the poet, the less we shall be surprised to find him introducing, here, an element foreign to the original plan of the drama. The artistic mistake which we perceive was not one to him.

The two philosophers take no notice of Homunculus, until ​Anaxagoras, after seeing that the new mountain is already peopled, offers to make the former king over the Pygmies and Dactyls. Düntzer says of this passage: “Anaxagoras does not recognize the genuine nature of Homunculus; he sees only the external appearance, the little form, the imprisonment in the phial. On account of his littleness, and not, as others assert, because he is a spirit of fire, does Anaxagoras esteem him to be competent to rule over the little people. He seeks to exist, to enter the reality of life, which can only be attained through gradual development; but Anaxagoras desires to make him king at one blow, quite in the spirit of the theory of upheaval, which would create all things suddenly and violently.”

Thales answers as a Neptunist, ana aescribes the destruction of the Pygmies by the Cranes of Ibycus. The latter event was possibly intended as a prophecy; or, at least, as a satirical declaration that the Plutonists, if forced to give up the theory of upheaval, would next insist that mountain-peaks were created by meteoric stones projected from the volcanoes of the moon. This view is entirely consistent with all that we know of Goethe’s temper, before and during the time when the scene was written.

This is a reference to an old Grecian myth, mentioned in the Gorgias of Plato and the Clouds of Aristophanes. Horace, also, (Carm. V.,) has the lines:—

We are to suppose that only a meteoric stcne has fallen, but that Anaxagoras, in his excited fancy, imagines that the orb of the moon is rushing down upon the earth. Thales perceives nothing but that “the Hours are crazy”; the moon is shining quietly in her place. But a meteoric mass has really fallen, giving a pointed head to the round Hill of Seismos, and crushing Pygmies and Cranes in one common destruction. Perhaps Goethe meant to hint, satirically, that the theory of creation “from above” (as Homunculus says) ​is quite as rational as that of creation by upheaval. If so, he has curiously anticipated one of the most recent scientific ideas,—that of the growth and physical change of planets, by accretion from the meteoric belts.

Thales says, positively, to Homunculus: “’T was but imagined so,” and then sets out, with him, for his favorite element, leaving Anaxagoras prostrate on his face. Here the direct scientific allegory terminates, and we pick up the æsthetic thread again.

The Phorkyads, or, more correctly, Phorkids, were the three daughters of Phorkys (Darkness) and Keto (The Abyss). Their names were Deino, Pephredo, and Enyo: Hesiod, in his Theogony, gives only the two last. They were also called the Graiæ. They were said to have, in common, but one eye and one tooth, which they used alternately, and to dwell at the uttermost end of the earth, where neither sun nor moon beheld them. They represent the climax of all which the Greek imagination has created of horrible and repulsive. Mephistopheles, consequently, is ravished with delight: he has found the Ideal Ugliness, His flattery serves also to hint that while Northern or Romantic Art (in the Middle Ages) was accustomed to represent the Devil and all manner of hideous and grotesque Fiends, Classic Art only occupied itself with shapes of beauty. The Phorkyads dwelt in gloom, unknown, and only not unnamed. The Lamiæ rejected the Northern Devil, for he was still uglier than they, but the Phorkyads admit him into their triad. He suffers a classical change into something hideous and strange, and disappears from the Walpurgis-Night, to reappear, in his new form, in the Helena.

With this scene commences the third and last of the three parts into which the Classical Walpurgis-Night naturally divides itself. The first part, as we have seen, gradually ​eliminates the Beautiful from the Grotesque, separates the opposite paths of Faust and Mephistopheles, and closes with the disappearance of Faust, on his way to implore Helena from the shades. The second part introduces the Plutonic theory in geology as a disturbing element, satirizes it, symbolizes its overthrow, decides the course of Homunculus by attaching him to the Neptunic Thales, and closes with the union of Mephistopheles and his ugly Ideal.

The development of the Idea of the Beautiful is now taken up at the point where it was suspended, and carried onward; but Homunculus is henceforth the central figure of the changing groups. The reader will remark, however, that this and the following scene are strictly Neptunic: the characters all belong to the Ocean, and the occasion which calls them together is a festival of Nereus. Although Goethe’s scientific creed is constantly suggested, it is subordinate to his æsthetic plan, and hardly interferes with it. His few brief references are like so many low rocks, which cannot interrupt the multitudinous dance of the waves.

Oken, for whom. Goethe felt a hearty and admiring respect, has the following passage: “Light shines on the salt flood, and it becomes alive. All life is from the sea, nothing from the firm land: the entire ocean is living. It is a billowy, ever-upheaving and again subsiding organism … . Love is a birth of the sea-foam … . The first organic forms issued from the shallow places of the great ocean, here plants, there animals. Man, also, is a child of the warm shallows of the sea, in the neighborhood of the land.” This passage, which Goethe certainly knew, and probably accepted in a poetical sense, will throw some light on what follows.

We must suppose that the scene opens on the Thessalian coast, near the mouth of the Peneus, and therefore almost in sight of the mountain-isle of Samothrace. The purpose of the Nereids and Tritons, in their journey thither, will be presently revealed. Meanwhile Thales conducts Homunculus to Nereus, the Graybeard of the Sea, whom Hesiod ​describes as just and friendly, and well-disposed towards the human race.

Nereus, however, in words which are almost an echo of Goethe’s own expressions, refuses to give counsel. “The giving of advice is a peculiar thing,” said Goethe to Eckermann, “and when one has had some chance of seeing how, in the world, the most intelligent plans fail and the absurdest often turn out successfully, one is inclined to give up the idea of furnishing advice to anybody. At the bottom, indeed, the asking of advice denotes a restricted nature, and the giving of it an assuming one.” The reference to Paris is suggested by a passage in Horace (Ode I.), where Nereus is represented as having appeared in a calm to Paris, on his way to the Troad with Helena, and predicted to him the coming war and ruin.

The Dorides were the daughters of Nereus and the sea-nymph Doris, but are called Nereids in the Grecian mythology. Goethe’s object in calling them Dorides, and presenting them as the daughters of Nereus, while the Nereids are introduced without any hint of their relationship, has puzzled the commentators; and since any attempt at explanation must be merely conjecture, without evidence, I leave the question as it stands. There seems, also, to be no ground whatever for the declaration of Nereus that Galatea was worshipped at Paphos in the place of Cypris (Aphrodite). Thus far, none of the Olympian Gods or Goddesses have been introduced; and the fresco of Galatea by Raphael, which Goethe knew, together with the description of a very similar picture, mentioned by Philostratus, undoubtedly suggested to him the propriety of giving her the place which really belongs to Aphrodite, as the representative of Helena Beauty).

It is possible that the reason why Nereus refuses to help Homunculus to being, and refers him to Proteus, is, that Goethe intends the former to be an embodiment of accomplished, completed existence, while the latter represents ​Transformation, and therefore—since Homunculus must begin with the lowest form of organic life—he must be first consulted.

The introduction of the Cadiri, ancient Egyptian and Phœnician deities, in this place, is more difficult to explain than that of the geological element in the preceding scene. I can discover no dramatic, æsthetic, or even metaphysical reason for turning back from the human forms which we have reached, with their increasing poetry and beauty, to the uncouth gods of Samothrace,—especially since nothing comes of the circumstance. The whole episode seems to have been wilfully inserted, as the consequence of a whim or a temporary interest in the subject.

Schelling’s work “The Deities of Samothrace,” published in 1815, first directed Goethe’s attention to these primitive creatures, Creuzer, in his “Symbolism and Mythology” and Lobeck in his “Aglaophamus” continued the archæological discussion, which, considering the remote and uncertain nature of the subject, was carried on for a time with a good deal of sarcasm and bitterness. The dispute had not subsided when Goethe wrote this scene in 1830; and it was perhaps natural that he should have overrated its importance.

The Cabiri were originally three. In Memphis they had a temple and were worshipped as the sons of Phthas (Hephæstos). They appear to have been colonized on Samothrace by the Phœnicians, and their mysteries were celebrated there with orgies borrowed from the phallic worship of the Egyptians. Three female deities were subsequently added to their number; but Creuzer insists that there were seven. corresponding to the seven planets, with a possible eighth, representing the sun. The names of the first three were Axierus, Axiokersus, and Axiokersa, and the fourth, Kadmilus, being added as a uniting principle, they became together, according to Creuzer, a symbol of the spheral harmony. This may explain Goethe’s allusion to the fourth.

​ The Hebrew word, Kabbirim, is translated by Gesenius, “The Mighty.” Fürst says that Kabbirim was the name of the seven sons of Tzadik, in Phœnician mythology. The Arabic word kebeer (great), still in use, is evidently the same.

This quatrain seems to be aimed at the archæologists. Schelling had asserted that the Cabiri represented a chain of symbols, the first being Hunger, the second Nature, gradually rising to the latest and highest, who corresponded to the Zeus of the Greeks. Goethe transfers the desire of these lower deities to reach the places of the higher to the desire of the archæologists for unattainable knowledge.

The answer of the Sirens is a play upon Creuzer’s adherence to the Oriental symbolism of the sun, moon, and stars. Their reference to the Fleece of Gold, that is, The Cabiri, is also meant for satire, although it is so weak as to be scarcely apparent.

Creuzer, again. He asserted that the Cabiri were originally worshipped under the form of thick-bellied earthen jars, or pots. Schelling’s interpretation of the names had been opposed, not only by Creuzer, but by Paulus, De Sacy, Welcker, and others,—whence the mention of “stubborn noddles.”

Here the episode, which we cannot but feel is altogether unnecessary and unedifying, comes to an end,

The description which Thales gives of Homunculus directly suggests many hints which Goethe let fall in regard to his own nature. Ideas were never lacking to him; on the contrary, their very profusion was a source of unrest and perplexity, since it was associated with a difficulty in discovering the appropriate reality of form which Poetry requires. The perfect fusion cf the two elements was what he most ​admired and envied in Shakespeare; and the struggle of his life, to unite the Classic and the Romantic, was nothing more than to give the rare and subtile and delicate spirit of the latter the positive, palpable, symmetrical form which he recognized in the former. If Homunculus verily be Goethe’s own Poetic Genius, it is all the more easy to perceive how he was here able to symbolize a powerful aspiration of his nature, for which no other form of expression could be found. The theme suggests a multitude of illustrations, and I resist with difficulty the temptation to develop it further.

Homer describes the transformations of Proteus in the Fourth Book of the Odyssey, where Menelaus forces him to appear in his proper form. Thales makes use of the curiosity of Proteus to accomplish the same result.

Goethe, here, and from this point to the end, attaches an additional meaning to Homunculus, partly, no doubt, in order to disguise the secret, personal symbolism of the latter, and partly, also, because it enabled him to give a hint of his own palingenetic ideas. He suggests the gradual development of life, constantly evolving higher forms from lower as a part of his theory of creation, in accordance with the Wernerian system. But when Thales says, in the following scene (pages 156, 157):—

he expresses the psychological view of the ancients rather than the scientific system of the moderns, of which Darwin is the latest and most successful illustrator. Goethe perhaps considered that as all the series of organic life are traversed in the development of the human embryo, so, reversely, the lowest series already contains the preparation for, and the prophecy of, the highest. Schnetger’s interpretation, that Proteus represents Nature and bears Homunculus on his ​back as the embryo of the human race, which is to ascend “through thousand, myriad forms” to Man, is entirely consistent with this view.

The Telchines of Rhodes, who were called Sons of the Sea, were the first workers in metals. They made the knife of Kronos and the trident of Poseidon, and cast the first images of the Gods in bronze. Their appearance, here, indicates the dawn of the age of higher Grecian art. Pliny and Theophrastus are Goethe’s authorities for the sunny weather and pure atmosphere of Rhodes, The very movement of the verse suggests brightness; we feel that the sun and air are not those of Rhodes alone, but of all Classical art and literature.

The Telchines exalt Luna as the sister of Phœbus, who was the tutelar deity of Rhodes: the conclusion of their chorus seems to indicate the union of Religion and Art, and suggests Coleridge’s “fair humanities of old religion.” Proteus exalts organic being, life in the waters, over the dead works of the Telchines, and hints at the overthrow of the Rhodian Colossus by an earthquake.

Hartung’s words upon this passage may also be of service to the reader: “From the rude fetich to an Olympian Zeus by the hand of a Phidias, there is as great a gap as from the mollusk to the human form; and Art must run through the whole career. In this festival of the Sea, the poet has placed the development of organic forms in Nature, rising in continual progression to Man, side by side with the development of Art, in Religion, from the fetich [Cabiri?] to the height of a Phidias.”

The words of Thales are not meant as a reply to Nereus. They are simply a continuation of what he has before said:—

​

Goethe took from Pliny the Psylli and Marsi, who were snake-charmers in Southern Italy and on the Libyan shore. He arbitrarily makes them guardians of the chariot of Cypris, in which they still conduct Galatea by night, “unseen to the new generations,” fearing neither the Roman eagle, the winged lion of Venice, the crescent of the Saracen, nor the cross of the Crusader. Why they are here introduced, is not so easy to explain. Düntzer insists that, being magicians, they represent the magic power of Beauty! Schnetger says they are nearer to Galatea than the Telchines of Rhodes, because they destroy snakes, which are ugly, and which, according to the Bible, are hostile to woman!

It is not necessary to quote the variety of meanings given by the commentators to the interlude of the Dorides and the young sailors whom they have rescued from shipwreck. They, as well as the Telchines, the Psylli and Marsi, belong to the triumphal convoy of Galatea. Hence they are all prognostications of the coming Beauty, perhaps her symbolized attributes; and no single explanation could be satisfactory to every reader. Hartung’s guess seems to me very plausible, at least; “The poet has had in his mind the fable of Aurora and Tithonus, for that goddess could not prevent her lover, for whom she had obtained immortal life, from withering up into a grasshopper, from age. And thus we further perceive from the passage that Nature may indeed create the highest beauty, but can only retain it for a moment; for Beauty increases until human maturity, then immediately begins to fade.”

Galatea, the lovely Nereid, here takes the place of Helena, as Homunculus takes the place of Faust. She is the Ideal Beauty, the sea-born successor of Aphrodite. Goethe not only selected her as a Neptunist, but he was also directed to her, as I have already remarked, by Raphael and Philostratus. The latter thus describes a picture of her: “The broad watery floor heaves gently under the chariot of the Beauty; ​four dolphins, harnessed together, seem urged forward by one impulse; young Tritons bridle them in order to curb their wanton plunges. But she stands on her shell-chariot; the purple mantle, a sport of the wind, swells above her head like a sail and shades her.” Goethe says: “It is important for our object, to place beside this description what Raphael, the Caracci and others have done with the same subject.” Raphael’s fresco, in the Farnesina Palace in Rome, represents Galatea standing in a chariot drawn by dolphins, who are driven by a Cupid. Around her are Tritons, blowing their conch-shells, and embracing the attendant Nereids.

It is only a passing glimpse which the poet allows. Thales has hardly finished his pæan to Water, as the creating and sustaining principle of life, when the triumphal procession is already afar. The long line of symbols has now reached its crown, and the allegory must close.

Homunculus sees at once the beginning and the perfect result of existence. Beauty is all around him: his imprisoning glass glows and vibrates with his passionate yearning, and shivers itself at the feet of Galatea. The waves around the shell-chariot are covered as with fire: he begins life in the phosphorescent animalculæ of the Ocean

Some, here, imagine that Homunculus represents Eros; others that he is Galatea (!); others that he is Faust’s æsthetic passion. I will only say that to one who has closely studied Goethe’s life; who has detected how the cramped and restricted existence in Weimar became almost unendurable to him, how a new freedom came through his acquaintance with Classic Art in Italy, with what passionate devotion he strove to comprehend the Ideal of beauty in the human form, shivering all former moulds in which his intellectual being was confined, and pouring his nature forth in an effusion of free and joyous desire to create a new being for himself,—to such a one, both symbols, which are here united in Homunculus, become clearly intelligible. If, in the Boy ​Charioteer and Plutus we recognize Goethe’s relation to Karl August, crowned by the leisure for poetic activity which the princely friend secured to the poet, may we not find symbolized in Homunculus the struggle which resulted in that æsthetic growth, that intellectual freedom, into which Goethe rose during and after his Italian journey, and finally, in Euphorion, the harmonious union of the Classic and Romantic elements in his own poetry, commencing with Iphigenia in Tauris and Tasso?

The concluding chorus glorifies Eros, whom Hesiod mentions as one of the original creative Powers. The four Elements—Water, Fire, Air, and Earth—are celebrated, and Love is the generative principle through which all life, from its first rudimentary forms to the Supreme Beauty, is begotten from them. We are reminded of one of Goethe’s epigrams:—

The Third Act is known in Germany as The Helena, not only because it was separately published in 1827 under the title of “Helena: a Classico-Romantic Phantasmagoria,” but also because it is a complete allegorical poem in itself, inserted in the Second Part of Faust by very loose threads of attachment. It represents, indeed, in one sense, the æsthetic development of Faust’s nature, as an important part of his experience of “the greater world,” and a step by which he attains to the higher being to which he aspires; but this has already been announced, and, in itself, demands no such elaboration. The chief motive which governed Goethe was the reconciliation of the Classic and the Romantic: this dictated the form of the episode, which is quite as remarkable as its substance. Goethe, himself, recognized the preponderance of the latter allegory, and at one time debated whether he should not complete the Helena as a separate work. It ​was perhaps Schiller’s death which prevented the fulfilment of this plan.

I have related (in Appendix II., First Part) how Eckermann’s suggestion led him, in 1825, to take up the neglected fragment, which was written in 1800. We can scarcely be wrong in assuming that the earlier scenes, read at the Court of Weimar in 1780, were of an entirely different character, and that nothing of them was retained. At that time the terms “Classic” and “Romantic” were not heard: Schiller’s essay “On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry” led to that literary discussion which divided the German authors into distinct parties, thus designated. A quarter of a century later the conflict was transferred to France, where it has scarcely yet subsided. The significance of the terms is, therefore, now so generally understood that no special explanation is necessary. We need only remember that the culture of the German people was then so high, and their intellectual interests so keen, that the subject possessed an importance which we are likely now to undervalue.

When the Helena was published, in 1827, Goethe himself announced it in his journal, Kunst und Alterthum, in an article which must needs be quoted entire:^[6]—

“Faust’s character, in the elevation to which latter refinement, working on the old rude tradition, has raised it, represents a man who, feeling impatient and imprisoned within the limits of mere earthly existence, regards the possession of the highest knowledge, the enjoyment of the fairest blessings, as insufficient even in the slightest degree to satisfy his longing: a spirit, accordingly, which, struggling out on all sides, ever returns the more unhappy.

“This form of mind is so accordant with our modern disposition, that various persons of ability have been induced to undertake the treatment of such a subject. My manner of ​attempting it obtained approval: distinguished men considered the matter, and commented on my performance; all which I thankfully observed. At the same time I could not but wonder that none of those who undertook a continuation and completion of my Fragment, had lighted on the thought, which seemed so obvious, that the composition of a Second Part must necessarily elevate itself altogether away from the hampered sphere of the First, arid conduct a man of such a nature into higher regions, under worthier circumstances.

“How I, for my part, had determined to essay this, lay silently before my own mind, from time to time exciting me to some progress; while, from all and each, I carefully guarded my secret, still in hope of bringing the work to the wished-for issue. Now, however, I must no longer keep back; or, in publishing my collective Endeavors, conceal any further secret from the world; to which, on the contrary, I feel bound to submit my whole labors, even though in a fragmentary state.

“Accordingly I have resolved that the above-named Piece, a smaller drama, complete within itself, but pertaining to the Second Part of Faust, shall be forthwith presented in the first portion of my Works.

“The wide chasm between that well-known dolorous conclusion of the First Part, and the entrance of an antique Grecian heroine, is not yet overarched; meanwhile, as a preamble, my readers will accept what follows:

“The old Legend tells us, and the puppet-play fails not to introduce the scene, that Faust, in his imperious pride of heart, required from Mephistopheles the love of the fair Helena of Greece; in which demand the other, after some reluctance, gratified him. Not to overlook so important a concern in our work was a duty for us: and how we have endeavored to discharge it will be seen in this Interlude. But what may have furnished the proximate occasion of such an occurrence, and how, after manifold hindrances, our old magical Craftsman can have found means to bring back the individual Helena, in person, out of Orcus into Life, must, ​in this stage of the business, remain undiscovered. For the present, it is enough if our reader will admit that the real Helena may step forth, on antique tragedy-cothurnus, before her primitive abode in Sparta. We then request him to observe in what way and manner Faust will presume to court favor from this royal all-famous Beauty of the world.”

The opening of the act appears to be imitated from “The Eumenides ” of Æschylus. Until the appearance of Faust, the form of the verse is purely classic, the iambic hexameter, and afterwards the trochaic octameter, alternating with the irregular yet wonderfully metrical strophes of the Chorus. Some features in the description of the burning of Troy, in this Chorus, are taken from the Æneid, but the form and character are Goethe’s own. The first four strophes, in the original, are very grand. From the opening of the Act until the introduction of rhyme, after Faust’s appearance, I have been able to retain the exact metres, while giving the lines very nearly as literally as in a prose translation.

Carlyle, whose version of this passage and of Helena’s description of the encounter with Phorkyas is so excellent, that, had he given us the whole Act, no other translation would have been necessary, says of the metres: “Happy, could we, in any measure, have transfused the broad, yet rich and chaste simplicity of these long iambics; or imitated the tone, as we have done the metre, of that choral song; its rude earnestness, and tortuous, awkward-looking, artless strength, as we have done its dactyls and anapæsts …. To our own minds, at least, there is everywhere a strange, piquant, quite peculiar charm in these imitations of the old Grecian style; a dash of the ridiculous, if we might say so, is blended with the sublime, yet blended with it softly and only to temper its austerity; for often, so graphic is the delineation, we could almost feel as if a vista were opened through the long gloomy distance of ages, and we, with our modern eyes and modern levity, beheld afar off, in clear light, the very figures of that old grave time; saw them again living in their old ​antiquarian costume and environment, and heard them audibly discourse in a dialect which had long been dead. Of all this, no man is more master than Goethe.”

The reader will not have forgotten the transformation of Mephistopheles into a Phorkyad (page 144), in the Classical Walpurgis-Night, and will thus understand how he, as the Spirit of Negation, here appears in a female mask, as Ugliness, to torment and threaten Beauty. Carlyle says: “There is a sarcastic malice in the ‘wise old Stewardess’ which cannot be mistaken.”

The quarrel between Phorkyas and the Chorus has been variously interpreted; but it is evidently an imitation of the Greek tragedy. Very similar scenes occur in the Ajax and Electra of Sophocles. The sole purpose, here, seems to be to bring out in sharper distinctness the malice of Phorkyas, and to identify her more completely with Mephistopheles. In the “Eumenides” of Æschylus, the members of the Chorus speak singly, in one scene, fifteen times in succession. Goethe’s Chorus evidently consists of twelve, of whom six (one Semichorus) now speak.

The German word is Idol (eidolon): I follow Carlyle in translating it “Vision,” although the word “wraith” expresses the meaning more closely. Stesichorus is Goethe’s authority for this myth concerning Helena: he even declares that it was only her eidolon, not herself, which was present in Troy. Professor Lehrs (Populäre Aufsätze aus dem Alterthum) says: “He (Stesichorus) was probably the inventor of the fable of the airy image, which he connected with the legend of Helena’s residence in Egypt, and which he appears to have formed from the analogy of the eidolon of Æneas, about which the armies fight in the Iliad, and of that which Here substituted for herself, for the embraces of Ixion.” ​Her captivity in Egypt and her rescue from King Proteus, there, is the subject of the Helena of Euripides.

The union of Achilles, called from the shades, to Helena, on the island of Leuke, in Pontus (not Pheræ, as Goethe says), is mentioned by Arctinus and Pausanias. The name of her son by him was Zuphorion, Lehrs says: “That she was wedded to Achilles on the island of Leuke, which appears to have been an Oriental Elysium, is based on the idea of uniting the highest beauty of Man and Woman.”

The meaning of Helena’s swoon is passed over by most commentators. It seems to me that it must be accepted in a dramatic, not an allegorical sense; or, if the latter be demanded, that it may have some reference to the apparent death of the Classic spirit, before its renaissance in the Middle Ages. What Goethe said to Riemer, after completing the Helena (and he expresses himself similarly in a letter to Wilhelm von Humboldt), may here be quoted.

“It is time that the passionate conflict between the Classic and Romantic schools should be at last reconciled. The main requisite is that we are developed: whence our development comes would be indifferent, were it not that we must fear to shape ourselves wrongly by false models. In the hope of sympathetic insight, I have freely followed my own mood in elaborating the Helena, without thinking of any public or of any single reader, convinced that he who easily grasps and comprehends the whole will also be able, through loving patience, gradually to accept and assimilate the details.”

Goethe here follows one of the many Greek legends in relation to Helena. Although Homer relates that Menelaus threw away his sword, overcome by her beauty, when he again met her, yet there are frequent references in the poets (Euripides, among others) to a story of her having been sacrificed. Goethe makes a skilful use of it, to account for Helena’s migration from Classic to Romantic soil, Phorkyas maliciously amuses herself with the terror of the Chorus: ​the summoning of the dwarfs to prepare for the sacrifice is but a grim joke: she is bound, as Mephistopheles, to obey Faust’s command. Her threat of death to the Chorus is suggested by the punishment which Telemachus, in the Odyssey (Book XXIL.), inflicts on the faithless maids.

We now begin to feel, as by a subtile premonition, the approach of the Romantic element. Although the line “So many years deserted stood the valley-hills,” may be taken as a reference to the blank ages which followed the passing away of the classic world, yet the form in which the allegory is clothed has a singular distinctness and reality. Kreyssig speaks of the “sun-bright atmosphere” of the Helena, and Carlyle uses nearly the same expression: “It has everywhere a full and sunny tone of coloring; resembles not a tragedy, but a gay, gorgeous mask.” Nothing, indeed, is more wonderful than the delicate transition by which the antique form, spirit, and speech resolve themselves into the life, movement, and dithyrambic freedom of Modern Song. The two elements are equally represented in the external art, and in the characters, of the Interlude.

This must be borne in mind, when we attempt to find a special symbolism in every detail. Some things are undoubtedly introduced for the sake of artistic tone; others, again, for their intrinsic picturesqueness; others, perhaps, are the result of fleeting hints and suggestions which dropped into Goethe’s mind as he wrote, surrendering himself freely to the mingled visions of the highest culture of the ancient and modern world. A full and consistent allegory is here impossible; but, through the dissolving forms and colors of the “Phantasmagoria,” we catch continual glimpses of the leading idea.

The race, pressing forth from the Cimmerian Night, is of course the German, as we learn from the gold-haired boys. Düntzer says that the “free-gifts” of which Phorkyas speaks refer to the mediæval custom of purchasing security of the feudal barons; but the circumstance that Goethe has ​italicized the word hints of some particular significance, which I cannot discover. The description of Gothic architecture and the coats-of-arms is not ironical, as some assert, for under the mask of Phorkyas there is a mediæval Devil.

Phorkyas, here, and not when Helena chides her, forgets her part. The allegory becomes clear again, and its historical element is more pronounced. Kreyssig has a passage which explains this crisis in Helena’s fate: “The allegory shows us, in narrow space, a few boldly conceived dramatic scenes of that enormous revulsion, filling nearly a thousand years, which laid the antique culture in the grave of Barbarism, in order to summon it forth therefrom, in the fulness of time, rejuvenated and reinspired, as the beaming dawn of a new day of the world. The demoralization of the Hellenic favorites of the Gods themselves tore the crown from the head of that Culture, even as Menelaus, possessing through the favor of the Gods the highest Beauty, drives, in his ignoble, vulgar passion, the innocent victim from the house of her fathers, and compels her to seek protection among the Barbarians of the Cimmerian North.”

Carlyle says of the remarkable Chorus, wherein the characters are carried in mist and vapor from the high House of Tyndarus to a feudal Castle of the Middle Ages: “Our whole Interlude changes in character at this point; the Greek style passes abruptly into the Spanish: at one bound we have left the Seven before Thebes (Æschylus) and got into the Vida es Sueño (Calderon). The action, too, becomes more and more typical ; or, rather, we should say, half-typical; for it will neither hold rightly together as allegory nor as matter of fact.”

The reader will notice that although the classical form of verse is still retained, the Gothic character of the subject makes itself more and more prominent. When the Chorus describes the procession of blond-haired pages, the ​introduction of an alternate anapestic foot, followed by the short choriambic lines, prepares us for a coming metrical change. The transformation of time, place, and spirit is so artfully managed, that it is accomplished before we are aware, and as in dissolving views, the fading outline we have been watching proves to be the growing outline of a new scene.

The description of the youths suggests both Tacitus and the Non Angli sed angeli of Pope Gregory. It is the appearance of a new type of human beauty. The doubt and uncertainty of Helena and the Chorus, on finding themselves suddenly in the Gothic court-yard, are thus explained by Schnetger: “When Classic culture, with its ideal of Beauty, began to migrate northwards, it found the old Romantic world imprisoned in the darkness of priesthood, and sunken in monastic barbarism; the spirit of the North was as gloomy and unlovely as were its castles, cloisters, and churches. Fear-inspiring, as a deep, dark pitfall, the mediæval walls meet the gaze of the daughter of Greece, accustomed to freedom and to nature; she stands alone, unwelcomed on alien soil, for the Romantic world had in the beginning no recognition for the lovely guest from afar.”

Faust drops one foot from the double trimeter, and speaks in modern heroic measure. The Leader of the Chorus, in her description, agrees with Phorkyas, preferring him to many of the antique models of manly beauty. He is here not yet Faust,—not even the Faust of the Classical Walpurgis-Night,—but the new, virile element in Literature and Art, the growth of the Middle Ages, now so far developed that it recognizes its ideal of Beauty in the supreme æesthetic culture of Greece. Only towards the close of the act does he again become the hero of the drama.

The Warder, Lynceus (pilot of the Argonauts), whom he leads in chains to Helena’s feet, is variously interpreted. According to some, he represents both the Provençal troubadours and the German Minnesingers,—the poets of love, ​who, with all their sharp-sightedness, saw not the true art. Carlyle’s guess seems to me more successful: “We cannot but suspect him of being a School Philosopher, or School Philosophy itself, in disguise.” He may be the embodiment of Lore, in the scholastic sense, which, during the Middle Ages, plumed itself on the treasures which it had secured from antiquity, blind to the far greater treasure which was afterwards recalled to life, in the finer development of the race.

“As it has frequently happened to the Germans,” says Kreyssig. We surely have a reference here to the revival of the antique Beauty in Italian Art and Literature. It would be easy to illustrate this, as well as other passages, at length; but I must endeavor to confine myself strictly to what is necessary, in these Notes. The text suggests a wealth of allusions, for it is the attempt to epitomize the eighty years’ knowledge and thought of one of the clearest and most active of all human brains. But the thoughtful reader will be satisfied with a guiding hint, and the one who takes up the Second Part of Faust for a simple recreation will never return to it again.

With Lynceus, rhyme, and the Romantic metre first appear, although, for a short distance further, the Classic characters retain their native form of speech.

The second address of Lynceus describes the migration of the races from the East, under which the whole Classical world was buried, until it slowly arose from the inundation to assist in shaping a new phase of human culture. The chief import of the verses seems to be, that all which War and Colonization achieved—territory, power, wealth, permanence—becomes null and vain beside this new vision. It can only be restored, and to a better value, through the abiding presence of the Beautiful, the worship of which is the crowning element of Civilization.

​

Goethe has taken a Persian legend (related in his own West-Œstlicher Divan) of two lovers, Behram-gour and Dilaram, who invented rhyme in their amorous dialogues, and has applied it here with consummate skill, as a means of bringing Faust and Helena nearer. The gifts are not all on one side: the Romantic welcomes and worships the Classic, but in return it adds the music of rhyme to the proportion of metre. Thus the new element continues to absorb the old, through the loving mutual approach of the two. The allegory becomes so incarnate in the chief characters that it impresses us like an actual human passion, and is so described by the Chorus, The very soul and being of the antique world—the proportion, the reality of form, and the sublime repose of Classic Art—are wedded, in a union perfect as that of love, to the sentiment, the passion, and the freedom of Romantic Art: and the latter, equally yielding, forgets Time, Place, and Race, and feels only that it now possesses the supreme Ideal of Beauty.

This is too much for Phorkyas-Mephistopheles: she breaks in upon the lovers, addressing them in rhymes which seem intended to satirize Rhyme itself,—so violent is their contrast to the melting speech of Helena and Faust. The interpenetration of the ancient and modern metres in this portion of the act is a wonderful piece of poetic art, and I must call the reader’s special attention to it. Faust answers in the Greek iambic trimeter (for the first time), then returns to rhyme, while the Chorus and Phorkyas continue the classic forms until the appearance of Euphorion, when the transition is complete.

Düntzer conjectures that these “explosions” give us a hint of the invention of gunpowder and the use of artillery, towards the close of the Middle Ages. The commentators are generally agreed that Faust is here a type of the romantic, chivalrous spirit, which was expressed in the Minnesingers and Troubadours, as the forerunners of Modern ​Literature. The apportionment of the Peloponnesus (except Sparta and Arcadia) among the Dukes is certainly a literary rather than an historical symbol. The literatures of the German, the Goth (Spain), the Frank and the Norman (England) share equally in the classic inheritance. May we not guess, then, that, as Helena is Queen over all, her special Spartan and Arcadian realm, wherein the Romantic, or Modern spirit is her spouse, is that region of the loftiest achievement, where Art and Literature cease to be narrowly national, but are for the world and for all time?

Yes: the question, asked at the close of the foregoing note, is answered. The Arcadia of Faust and Helena is the home-land of the highest Art and Song: Et ego in Arcadiâ is the password which has been transmitted from generation to generation, and from race to race, through the long course of the ages. The name itself has a golden clang, and never was its mystic, illuminating power more thoroughly manifested than in these stanzas of the aged Goethe. We are reminded, it is true, of Ovid, Horace, and other ancient poets, and of Tasso’s “O, bella età dell’ oro!”—but here the ideal character of the realm is so blended with an exquisite picture of the actual Grecian province, that its hills, gorges, and happy meads rise palpably on our sight, as we read.

In the spring of 1858, after spending days beside the Eurotas and among the fastnesses of the Taygetus, I climbed from Messene into Arcadia, and everywhere,—whether plucking violets on the “Mount Lycæan” of Pan, or gazing on the lonely beauty of the temple of Apollo Epicureus, crushing the wild hyacinths along the mountain paths, or resting beside the herded goats and kine in the green vale of the Alpheus,—I felt both the magic of the name and its immemorial cause The mountains, that swell and fall in rhythmic undulations; the wealth of crystal streams; the grand forests of oak and pine; the pure, delicious air, and the sweet, happy sense of seclusion which seems to brood like a blessing over every landscape, must have been an ​inspiration to the earliest poet who sang to its people. Let it still continue to be a name for the dream of the pure and perfect life which Poetry predicts, and will predict forever!

The original:—

is one of those pregnant expressions which make the translator despair,—for, the more thoroughly he is penetrated with the meaning, the less does it seem possible to express that meaning in any words. The literal translation is, “For where Nature sways in a pure circle (or orbit), all worlds (human and divine) reciprocally take hold on one another.” The series is nowhere violently interrupted: the Gods reveal themselves through men, even as men rise to resemble Gods: the orbits of all spheres of existence are harmoniously interlinked. But we here approach the highest regions of the Ideal; and he who has not some little intuition to guide him will hardly follow the thought further.

“It appears too, that there are certain ‘Bearded Ones,’ (we suspect, Devils,) waiting with anxiety, ‘sitting watchful there below,’ to see the issue of this extraordinary transaction; but of these Phorkyas gives her silly women no hint whatever.”—Carlyle.

“If the French only recognize the Helena, they will perceive what may be made of it for their stage. The piece, as it is, they will ruin; but they will employ it shrewdly for their own purposes, and that is all one can wish, or expect. They will certainly supply Phorkyas with a Chorus of monsters, which, indeed, is already indicated in one passage.”—Goethe to Eckermann, 1831.

Düntzer, who so rarely lets anything escape him, does not seem to have noticed Goethe’s remark. He insists that the “Bearded Ones” are the spectators, whom Mephistopheles addresses in Act II., Scene I., and in Act IV. For my part, ​I find Goethe’s meaning so very uncertain, that I prefer to hazard no conjecture.

The son of Faust and Helena, as he is first described by Phorkyas, is Poetry, not an individual. In his naked beauty, his pranks and his sportive, wilful ways, he suggests not only the greater freedom of the Romantic element, but also the classic myths of Cupid and the child Hermes (Mercury). Phorkyas, in proclaiming him the “future Master of all Beauty,” quite forgets that she is Mephistopheles.

The Chorus describes the birth and childish tricks of Hermes, as they are related in Homer’s hymn and Lucian’s dialogues of the Gods. There is, perhaps, a “ poetic-didactical word” for the reader, in their relation, as well as for Phorkyas. Hermes may possibly typify the Poetic Genius, which boldly steals the attributes of all the Gods, and even longs to grasp the thunderbolts of Zeus, the Father.

In the original legend, Faust has by Helena a son, to whom he gives the name of Justus Faustus, and who disappears with her when his compact with Mephistopheles comes to an end. In one of the ancient Grecian myths, Helena bears a son to Achilles (recalled from Hades) on the island of Leuke. This son, born with wings, was called Euphorion (the swift or lightly wafted), and was slain by the lightning of Jupiter. Goethe unites the two stories, and adds his own symbolism to the airy, wilful spirit, resulting from them.

We have, at the outset, three positive circumstances to guide us. Euphorion is here, as when he formerly appeared in the Boy Charioteer, Poetry; he is born of the union of the Classic and Romantic; and, shortly before he vanishes from our eyes, he becomes the representative of Byron. The last of these characters, however, was not included in Goethe’s original plan. Indeed, it could not have been, since that plan was sketched while Byron was a boy at Harrow. We are ​able to fix both the time and the special influences which led to the introduction of Byron; and, moreover, the point in the allegory where the change commences may be easily detected.

Neither as we know him, nor as Goethe knew him, could Byron be the child of Faust and Helena: the only modern English poet to whom the symbolism would in any wise apply, is Keats. Among the Germans we might, if there were any indication pointing towards him, accept Schiller; but we at once feel, I think, that no poet of this age has so subtly and harmoniously blended the two elements in his highest achievement, as Goethe himself. His Iphigenia in Tauris, Tasso, Hermann and Dorothea, and Die Natürliche Tochter (a singularly neglected masterpiece) will suggest themselves as illustrations, to all who are acquainted with his works. Besides, the order in which the three boyish sprites are introduced reflects the order of his own development. In the Boy Charioteer we have his relation to Karl August, and his liberation from Court and official life; in Homunculus, his first acquaintance, through Art in Italy, with the spirit of the Classic world, and his struggle to lift himself into another and purer poetical existence; and finally, in Euphorion, the regeneration and birth of his nature in his greatest works. The allegory is carefully veiled, for long isolation, misrepresentation, and abuse had taught him to be cautious; but he would not, in any case, have made it obvious to the running reader. The secret was too intimate and precious to be easily betrayed, yet it has not been hidden beyond the reach of that “love and patience” on which he relied for a full and final recognition. He who discovers the symbolism must first pass through one chamber after another of the poet’s nature, and, when he has reached the inner sanctuary, he has breathed the same atmosphere too long to see either vanity or arrogance, or aught but a justified self-consciousness, in these fair and mysterious forms.

During the appearance of Euphorion upon the stage, the Classic form is wholly lost, absorbed in the Romantic. The measure becomes a wild, ever-changing, rhymed dithyrambic, ​which, in the original, produces an indescribable sense of movement and music. I can only hope that something of the infectious excitement and delight which I have felt while endeavoring to reproduce it may have passed into the English lines, and will help to bear the reader smoothly over the almost endless technical difficulties of translation. The spirit of the scene is quite inseparable from its rhythmical character.

There are references, in the first utterances of Phorkyas and the Chorus, to the new elements of Sentiment and Passion in Modern Poetry, as contrasted with the Classic; but they need no further explanation. Some have supposed that Helena's first stanza: “Love, in human wise to bless. us,” etc., gives the additional meaning of the Family to her relation with Faust. The stanza, certainly, has this character, but only incidentally: the reference is too slight to be applied to the entire allegory.

We may accept the lawlessness of Euphorion as, to a certain extent, reflecting Byron’s wild, unregulated youth. Some of the German commentators, however, force the parallel quite too far, endeavoring to discover definite incidents of the poet’s history in his dances with the Chorus, and his pursuit of the maiden who turns into flame. The individual character of Euphorion is very gradually introduced, and is first declared in the above lines.

Byron became acquainted with the First Part of Faust through Shelley, in 1816. There was at that time no English translation of the work, and he offered to give a hundred pounds if he could have it in English, for his private perusal. His Manfred, which was written immediately afterwards, betrays the strong impression which Faust left on his mind, an impression which Goethe instantly detected, on first reading Manfred, the following year. The two poets appear to have occasionally exchanged greetings, through common acquaintances, and it was the wish of both that they might ​meet. Byron dedicated his tragedy of Sardanapalus to Goethe, in words, the like of which a poet has rarely addressed to one of his contemporaries: “To the illustrious Goethe a stranger presumes to offer the homage of a literary vassal to his liege-lord, the first of existing writers, who has created the literature of his own country, and illustrated that of Europe.” In February, 1823, Goethe sent the following lines to Byron:-

This, followed by Byron's letters from Genoa and Leghorn, was their only approach towards a nearer intercourse. Goethe was engaged in completing the Helena, in 1826, when Mr. Murray, the publisher, sent him the autograph of the Dedication to Sardanapalus; and, from some hints which he let fall to Eckermann, his daughter-in-law, Ottilie von Goethe, who was an enthusiastic admirer of Byron, was another of the additional influences which, in combination, led him to change the character of Euphorion.

Goethe said to Eckermann (in 1827): “I could use no one but him, as the representative of our recent poetic time; he is, without question, the greatest talent of the century. And then, Byron is not antique, and is not romantic, but he embodies the Present Day. Such a one I needed. He was also appropriate through his unsatisfied nature, and his military ambition, which ruined him in Missolonghi … . I had intended, formerly, an entirely different conclusion to the Helena; I had elaborated it, for myself, in various ways, one of which was quite successful; but I will not betray it to you. Then time brought me Byron and Missolonghi, and I let all else go. You have remarked, however, that the Chorus quite loses its part in the Dirge; formerly it was antique throughout, or at least never contradicted its maiden-nature, but now it suddenly becomes grave and loftily ​reflective, and gives utterance to things which it never before thought or could have been able to think.”

Goethe’s estimate of Byron is not generally understood: it has, at least, been frequently misrepresented. I have, therefore, carefully gone through the correspondence with Zelter and Eckermann’s three volumes, for the purpose of selecting such passages as may give, in the briefest space, a fair representation of his views. There is much more material, of the highest interest to the literary critic, but the following extracts may perhaps suffice to explain the fleeting adumbration of Byron which we find in Euphorion:—

“That which I call invention I find more pronounced in him than in any other man in the world. The manner in which he disentangles a dramatic knot is always beyond one’s expectation, and always better than one’s own preconceived solution.”

“Had he only known how to impose upon himself moral restrictions! It was his ruin that he was unable to do this, and we are justified in saying that his lawlessness was the rock on which he split.”

“This reckless, inconsiderate activity drove him out of England, and in the course of time would have driven him out of Europe, Circumstances were everywhere too narrow for him, and with all his boundless personal freedom he felt himself oppressed: the world was for him a prison. His going to Greece was not a spontaneous resolution; he was driven to it through his false relation to the world.”

“We are forced to admit that this Poet says more than we wish; he speaks the truth, but it gives us a sense of discomfort, and we should prefer that he remained silent. There are things in the world which the Poet should veil rather than reveal; yet this is precisely Byron’s character, and we should destroy his individuality in attempting to change him.”

“Byron’s boldness, wilfulness, and grandiose manner, is it not an element of development? We must avoid seeking that element exclusively in what is decisively pure and ethical. All that is great, as soon as we appreciate it, furthers our development.”

​“Byron’s fatal fault was his polemical tendency.”

“Nevertheless, although Byron died so early, it was not a material loss to Literature, through the probable further expansion of his powers. He had reached the climax of his creative force, and, whatever he might have afterwards accomplished, he could scarcely have enlarged the borders within which his talents were already confined.”

From these, and other utterances of Goethe, it is very evident that what he most admired in Byron was not the harmonious union of the Classic and Romantic elements; not the artistic perfection of form; not the breadth and vitality of that Genius which lifts itself slowly, but on strong wings, through the still higher and clearer ether of thought: but that restless, mysterious, ever-creative quality which Goethe called Daimonic, the native, effortless splendor of rhythm and rhetoric, the sentiment of Nature pervaded and exalted by Imagination, and that virile power of transmitting himself to other minds, which we never can clearly analyze. Mr. Matthew Arnold has declared Byron to be “the greatest elemental power in English Literature, since Shakespeare,” and this phrase briefly expresses Goethe’s judgment. The latter was probably the first who ever looked beyond the prejudices of Byron’s day, unmoved by the opposing gusts of worship and hate, and separated the poet’s supreme and immortal qualities from the confusion of his life and the dross of his simulated misanthropy.

The Chorus entreats Euphorion to bide in the peaceful Arcadian land of Poetry; and his answer is entirely in accord with the spirit of the Philhellenes, during the Greek Revolution. The heroic struggle of the Suliotes, in which even women and children shared, is indicated in the preceding verses, and then follows the closing chant, in which the wail of the coming dirge is fore-felt through the peal of trumpets and the clash of cymbals. Iam not able to state whether Goethe had read Byron’s last poem, written at Missolonghi, on his thirty-sixth birthday, when he wrote the ​concluding portion of the Helena It is strangely suggested here, in spite of the allegory, and the difference of metre.

Here all allegory is thrown aside: the four stanzas are a lament, not for Euphorion, but for Byron, They express Goethe’s feeling for the poet, while the profound impression created throughout Europe by the news of his death was still fresh.

When Phorkyas bids Faust hold fast to Helena’s garment, saying:—

we are forced to forget the part she plays. She,—Mephistopheles in the mask of the Ideal Ugliness,—to call the garment of the Beautiful a “grand and priceless gift,” which will bear Faust “from all things mean and low”! This is a singular oversight of Goethe, and we can only guess that it was not noticed during his life, for the reason that the remainder of the Second Part was still in manuscript, and the character of Phorkyas thus not entirely clear to the critics.

Since Faust is only temporarily typical of the Artist, the symbolism embodied in the disappearance of Helena, and his elevation upon the clouds into which her garments are transformed, is not difficult to guess. The Ideal Beauty is revealed to few; but even its robe and veil form a higher ether over all the life of Man. In the direct course of the drama, æsthetic culture is the means by which Faust rises from all forms of vulgar ambition to that nobler activity which crowns his life.

Panthalis, the Chorage, is the only member of the Chorus who has manifested an individual character throughout the Interlude; consequently she retains it here, where the other members are about to be lost in the elements. We are reminded, by what she says, of Goethe’s vague surmises ​in regard to the future life. He hints on more than one occasion that a strong, independent individuality may preserve its entelechie (actual, distinctive being), while the mass of persons in whom the human elements are comparatively formless will continue to exist only in those elements. In 1829, he said to Eckermann; “I do not doubt our permanent existence, for Nature cannot do without the entelechie. But we are not all immortal in the same fashion, and in order to manifest one’s self in the future life as a great entelechie, one must also become one.” The subject seems to have been discussed with others; for we find Wilhelm von Humboldt, in 1830, writing to Frau von Wolzogen: “There is a spiritual individuality, but not every one attains to it. As a peculiar, distinctive form of mind, it is eternal and immutable. Whatever cannot thus individually shape itself, may return into the universal life of Nature.”

The twelve maidens of the Chorus divide themselves into four groups, relinquish their human forms, and enter into the being of trees, echoes, brooks, and vineyards. Goethe was so well satisfied with this disposition of an antique feature for which there seems to be no place in the romantic world, that we can hardly be mistaken as to his design. The transfusion of Nature with a human sentiment belongs exclusively to Modern Literature: it is not the Dryad, but the tree itself, not the Oread, but the Spirit of the Mountain, which speaks to us now. We have lost the “fascinating existences” of ancient fable, in their fair human forms; but Nature, then their lifeless dwelling, now breathes and throbs with more than their life, for we have clothed her with the garment of our own emotion and aspiration.

Unless this transformation, or a very similar one, were intended, the Chorus must of necessity have returned to Hades.

The description of the vintage with which the Act closes resembles, in the original, a fragment of the frieze of a tem: ple of Bacchus.

​

Düntzer interprets the Bacchanalian description as a picture of the decadence of the antique world. When the curtain falls, Phorkyas remains in the proscenium, rises to a giant height, takes off her mask, and reveals herself as Mephistopheles. Perhaps this may indicate that the element of Ugliness and Evil was not lost to the human race when the historical curtain fell on the beautiful culture of the Greeks, but remained as the sole link of union between the ancient and modern worlds!

The epilogue, which Goethe apparently planned, was never written. Indeed, after the publication of the Helena, in 1827, he scarcely again looked at its pages.

The classic trimeter is purposely retained in the opening of this Act, as a last, dying reverberation of the Helena. Faust’s soliloquy has also the character of an echo and a memory. The clouds upon which he has floated take the form of Helena, as they recede from him: the Ideal which he has been pursuing rests along the distant horizon, and the stony summits of actual life are again under his feet.

Goethe began to write Act IV. about the middle of February, 1831. The apparent calm with which he received the news of his son’s death was followed by an alarming hemorrhage, and during the month of November, 1830, his lite was in danger. His great age and increasing physical weakness warned him to make use of his remaining time, and fill the single remaining gap in the Second Part of Faust; but that marvellous second spring-time of Poetry which we feel in the Helena and the Classical Walpurgis-Night, was over. Throughout this Act we notice, if not precisely the weariness of age, yet a sense of effort, of surviving technical skill not wholly filled and made plastic by the life of the author’s conception. His original design for the Act had been given up, and the present substance was evidently adopted, perhaps at the last moment, because it offered fewer difficulties of execution.

​In the Paralipomena we find some fragments of the original plan, which lead us to suppose that this Act should have had a political character. Since every other clew thereto has been lost, I simply give the fragments in the order in which they were printed by Eckermann and Riemer:—

Goethe means to indicate by this image, and the first words of Mephistopheles, that Faust has been borne far away from his previous life, so that the former is obliged to make use of the seven-league boots of the fairy tale, in order to overtake him.

Mephistopheles, finding him among jagged peaks of Stone, (a volcanic formation?) immediately claims an infernal origin for them. Goethe’s hostility to the Plutonic theory is again exhibited here, and with more of his irritation than in the Classical Walpurgis-Night. The episode is so ​unnecessary (as the Germans would say, unmotivirt) that we can only explain it by the conjecture that something must have occurred in the scientific world, about the beginning of the year 1831, to renew Goethe’s partisan feeling. I have not thought it necessary to ascertain this with certainty, for the point is hardly important enough to repay the uncertain labor, and the attempted satire is sufficiently plain.

Here, in the original, Riemer has added the reference: “Ephesians vi. 12,” which I have omitted. The text is: “For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” Luther translates the last phrase: “against evil spirits under heaven.” The preceding line also suggests ii. 2, of the same Epistle. Mephistopheles perhaps means to insinuate that through the Plutonic doctrine he and his fellow-devils have escaped from their old subterranean Hell, and he has again become “ the prince of the power of the air.”

Faust’s reply expresses Goethe’s idea of Creation, and in almost the same words which he more than once employed in describing it.

In February, 1829, Goethe said to Eckermann: “Herr von Buch has published a new work, which contains an hypothesis in its very title. He means to treat of the granite blocks which lie about, here and there, one knows not how nor whence. But since Herr von Buch secretly cherishes the hypothesis that such granite blocks were cast out from within and shivered by some tremendous force, he indicates this at once in the title, where he speaks of scattered granite blocks. The step from this to the Force which scatters is very short, and the noose of Error is thrown over the head of the unsuspecting reader, before he is aware of it.”

Erratische Blöcke is the common German term for “boulders.” The reader, familiar with the science of our day, ​must remember that the glacial theory was then unknown. Mephistopheles continues Goethe’s satire by attributing the scattered boulders to the effects of Moloch’s hammer, and mentions, in verification, the correspondence of popular superstition, which sees the Devil’s hand in every unusual rock-formation.

Here, again, Riemer has printed, opposite the text: “Matthew iv.” It is, of course, the eighth verse to which he refers: “Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceed- ingly high mountain, and showeth him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them.” The temptation of Christ was evidently Goethe’s model for this portion of the scene. Mephistopheles offers the lures of authority and luxury, but Faust’s nature has been enlightened and purified, and he adheres to his own grand design of a sphere of worthy activity.

There is a marked contradiction, in this passage, to Faust’s liberal and confiding view of the people, given in the Paralipomena quoted in Note 129. Goethe, moreover, frequently declared that revolutions were always occasioned by the faults of the rulers, not by a native rebellious element in the people. In the description of a capital, which Mephistopheles gives, it is probable that Paris was intended; for the succeeding picture of “a pleasure-castle in a pleasant place” is undoubtedly Versailles. Since the scene was written early in 1831, the preceding July Revolution was probably fresh in Goethe’s memory, and we may thus explain Faust’s apparent cynicism.

In this description, from first to last, we recognize Goethe. He frequently asserted that what we call the elements, the active forces of Nature, are full of wild, unfettered impulses, constantly warring against each other and against Man. The ​grand Chant of the Archangels (Prologue in Heaven) represents their endless operation, and is thus prophetic of Faust’s sphere of activity. Society and Government have not satisfied the cravings of his nature ; the Ideal, though its consecration is permanent, cannot be a possession; and he now determines to enter into conflict with a colossal natural force, and compel its submission to the imperial authority of the human mind.

We must suppose that Mephistopheles, bound to obedience, unwillingly serves in the fulfilment of plans which he cannot comprehend. Although he implicates Faust in the coming military movements, ostensibly for the purpose of acquiring possession of the ocean-strand through the help which the latter shall furnish to the Emperor, he is ever watchful to bring the affair to another issue. In the passage commencing: “A mighty error!” Faust gives us Goethe’s impression of Napoleon. Mephistopheles naturally casts upon the priesthood the heaviest responsibility for the anarchy of the realm, and here, again, we have another view which Goethe frequently expressed.

Shakespeare’s Peter Quince becomes, in some. English farce into which the comic parts of the “Midsummer Night’s Dream” were worked, pedant and schoolmaster; and in Gryphius’s translation of this farce was introduced to Germany as “Herr Peter Squenze.”—Düntzer.

Riemer here inserts the reference “2 Samuel xxiii. 8.” But only the phrase seems to have been borrowed from the description of the three mighty men of David. The character given to the “allegoric blackguards” of Mephistopheles is not suggested by anything in Samuel, or the corresponding account in 1 Chronicles xi.

​

The disposition of the Imperial army is described with so much exactness of detail that the plan of battle, and the application of the magic arts which Mephistopheles employs, may be followed as readily as if we were furnished with a topographical chart. We find the Emperor, also, precisely as we left him in Act I., a weak, amiable ruler, with fitful impulses which he mistakes for qualities of character, always planning great personal achievements which he forgets the next moment. In spite of the prosaic substance of this scene, it is overhung by a weird, strange atmosphere; the real and the technical are singularly interfused with the supernatural, and we seem to be constantly on the point of feeling that vital poetic glow, which, in Goethe’s eighty-second year, was but faintly smouldering under its own ashes.

Precisely what Goethe intends to hint in this line is uncertain. It can scarcely be crystallomancy, as one of the forms of divination; nor, as Düntzer says, “wonderful phases of crystallization, considered as an external symbol of intellectual research.” Goethe attributed to Crystallization many mountain-phenomena which the Plutonists explained by upheaval, and this may be, possibly, a last, subsiding echo of his scientific prejudices.

Faust introduces an episode of the Emperor’s coronation in Rome, in explanation of his assistance, and the Archbishop-Chancellor afterwards mentions the same incident, in the very opposite sense. In one of the notes which Goethe attached to his translation of the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, we detect the original material from which he constructed this passage:—

“From whatever cause the mountains of Norcia, between the Sabine land and the Duchy of Spoleto, acquired the name in old times, they are called to this day the Mountains ​of the Sibyls. Old writers of Romance made use of this locality in order to conduct their heroes through the most wonderful adventures, and thus increased the belief in those magical figures, the first outlines of which were drawn by the Legend. An Italian story, Guerino Meschino, and an old French work, relate strange occurrences, by which curious travellers have been surprised in that region; and Messer Cecco di Ascoli, who was burned in Florence in the year 1327, on account of his necromantic writings, is still remembered, through the interest felt in his history by the chroniclers, painters, and poets.”

Again Goethe speaks; but his eloquent advocacy of a free, independent development of the individual becomes a hollow pretence in the Emperor’s mouth. Faust’s reply is a piece of flattery, which would have been more appropriate to Mephistopheles.

The original of this name is Raufebold, and those of the other Mighty Men Hadebald (accompanied by the vivandière, Eilebeute) and Haltefest. The first verse of Isaiah viii.: “Moreover, the Lord said to me, Take thee a great roll, and write in it with a man’s pen concerning Maher-shalal-hash-baz”—reads, in Luther’s translation; “Und der Herr sprach zu mir: Nimm vor dich einen grossen Brief; und schreib darauf mit Menschen-Griffel Raubebald, Eilebeute.”

I applied to the Rev. Dr. Conant for the exact interpretation of the Hebrew words, and take the liberty of quoting his reply:—

“Habebald and Eilebeute were suggested to Goethe by the symbolic name, Maher-shalal-hash-baz, the meaning of this name (hasten the spoil, speed the prey) portending that the spoiler and plunderer was at hand, In this, as its general import, critics are agreed, although there is a difference of opinion as to the grammatical construction, Gesenius, in his translation of Isaiah, expresses it well by Raubebald ​Eilebeute. Goethe was familiar with the same forms, transposed, in Luther’s version, I take it that Goethe regarded the spirit of plunder as the foremost element in war; and hence he has placed its representative, under the symbolic name of Habebald, at the head of the central phalanx.

“Half the Hebrew name he has given to the vivandière, introduced (as I suppose) both to enliven the representation and to characterize another revolting accompaniment of war, ‘die Frau ist grimmig wenn sie greift’, etc. Hence the other half of the name, Raubedald, he is obliged to transform to Habebald, both as better suited to the office of a military leader, and to avoid too close a resemblance to the name of another of his characters, whose participation in the fruits of victory it truly represents.”

There is no doubt that these characters symbolize the human elements manifested in war. Bully represents the fierce, brutal, unrestrained spirit of fight; Havequick is the thirst for booty, for the spoils of victory in every form; and Holdfast seems to be the stubborn quality of resistance, the chief strength of armies.

The reader, familiar with Goethe’s works, is referred to the latter’s description of his attack of “cannon fever” in the “Campaign in France” (1792). The passage is too long to be quoted; but the circumstance that the entire field of battle appeared to be tinged with a red color is here introduced. A careful examination of the “Campaign” would probably discover much of the material which is employed in this scene; and I venture to say that the chief reason why Goethe relinquished his first political plan, and accepted a representation of War in its stead, was, that it was very much easier for him to draw upon his memory than to task his failing powers of invention.

After introducing the Fata Morgana of Sicily and the fires of St. Elmo, Faust reassures the Emperor, who has ​become bewildered and somewhat alarmed, by a sign in the air, such as is described by Homer (Iliad, XII.) and Plutarch (Timoleon). Goethe certainly designed, by these features, to give a ghostly atmosphere to the scene; but he may have also meant to unite the superstition of the people with the brutality of war.

The apparent advantage of the enemy, in carrying the position occupied by the left wing of the Emperor’s army, makes Faust’s aid (through Mephistopheles) indispensable to victory. The latter, therefore, employs all his magic devices, in turn. Goethe seems to have ransacked the superstitions of History, and combined their most picturesque features. We are reminded of the storm and flood described by Plutarch, of St. Jago fighting for Spain, of the apparitions and noises which are reported to have accompanied many famous battles; but the most effective agent, after all, is transmitted party hate.

“Did the poet, perhaps, mean to indicate that booty is usually thoughtlessly squandered again, or only to describe, in general, the reckless haste of plunder, whereby the best is lost to the greedy robber hands, which attempt to grasp too much?”—Düntzer.

Havequick retorts that the contributions levied by armies in a hostile country are only another form of plunder.

The Alexandrine metre, with alternate masculine and feminine rhymes, in which the remainder of the scene is written, is not Goethe’s invention, as some have supposed. I find it in a Prologue of Lessing, written in 1765; but it may also be found, in brief poems, fifty years earlier.

The scene, properly understood, is a grave, powerful satire ​on the Imperial system of government. All the artificial ritualism of Courts is set forth so naturally and consistently, that we must recall the Emperor’s assumed manhood and the great danger he has just escaped, in order to feel the hollow selfishness which, disregarding the condition of the realm and the grievances of the people, only employs itself with the arrangement of ceremonials.

The reader will have already remarked that the satire of this scene is not limited to its mediæval features. It not only embraces that mechanical statesmanship which, after a great historical crisis, sees no other policy than the reestablishment of previous conditions, but it shows, in a contrast which grows sharper towards the close, the grandeur of intelligent human ambition, embodied in Faust, and the narrow greed and selfishness, first of the State, and then of the Church. The indifference of the secular princes becomes almost a virtue, beside the bigotry of the Archbishop. The latter refers to the humanity of the young Emperor, in saving the life of the Norcian necromancer, as an unatoned sin. The acceptance of the wizard’s gratitude, in the aid rendered by Faust and Mephistopheles, although it has saved the dynasty, (and the Archbishop himself, with it,) is a still greater sin, deserving the ban of the Holy Church. The Emperor is required to make heavy sacrifices of land, money, and revenues, before he can receive full absolution for his guilt. We are reminded of the priest’s words to Margaret’s mother (First Part, Scene IX.):—

But the climax of rapacity, and also of inconsistency, is reached when the Archbishop demands the tithes of the new land which Faust has not yet reclaimed from the sea.

On the 13th of February, 1831, Goethe said to Eckermann, after stating that he had commenced the Fourth Act: ​“I shall now arrange how to fill the entire gap between the Helena and the already completed Fifth Act, writing down my thoughts in detail as a programme (Schema), so that I may execute it with thorough ease and certainty, and also that I may work on whatever parts attract me most.”

Yet, on the 2d of May, Eckermann writes: “Goethe delighted me with the news that he had succeeded, within the last few days, in supplying the commencement of the Fifth Act of Faust, which was hitherto lacking, so that it is now as good as finished. ‘The design of these scenes also,’ said he, ‘is more than thirty years old; it was so important, that I did not lose my interest in it, but so difficult to elaborate, that I was afraid of the task. By the employment of many devices, I have at last taken up the thread again, and if Fortune favors me, I shall finish the Fourth Act before I stop.’”

Again, in a letter to Zelter, written June 1, 1831, Goethe says: “It is no trifle that one must represent externally in one’s eighty-second year what one has conceived in one’s twentieth, and clothe such a living inner skeleton with sinews, flesh, and epidermis.”

Here are apparent contradictions, which, I think, may be thus explained: In his letter to Zelter, Goethe simply refers to the original conception of Faust. The concluding part of Act V., commencing at Scene V. (Midnight: Four Gray Women enter), was written about the beginning of the century—certainly between 1800 and 1806—and was perhaps intended to be the entire Act. At least, it seems probable that the sphere of activity which crowns Faust’s life was first separated from the closing scenes of the drama. If Goethe, therefore, simply transferred the first four scenes from the Fourth Act to the Fifth, after remodelling the former, all these discrepancies of statement become intelligible.

Goethe also said: “That which, in my early years, was possible to me daily, and under all circumstances, can now only be accomplished periodically and under certain fortunate conditions … . Now, I can only work on the Second ​Part of my Faust during the early hours of the day, when I am restored by sleep, feel myself strengthened, and the distractions of daily life have not confused me, Yet, after all, what is it that I accomplish? In the luckiest case, one written page; but ordinarily only a hand’s breadth of manuscript, and often, in an unproductive mood, still less.”

It is very evident that the first four scenes of this last Act, having a more lyrical form than the conclusion of the Fourth Act, which was written a few weeks later, were a sore task to the aged poet. The metre is stiff and almost painfully constrained, and the construction sometimes so crabbed that I have twice or thrice been compelled to vary the phrase slightly for the sake of fluency. But the reader, no less than the critic, will be generous; and, keeping the grand design in view, will not too sharply scrutinize the imperfections of detail.

“Goethe showed me to-day the beginning of the Fifth Act of Faust, which had been lacking. I read to the passage where the hut of Philemon and Baucis is burned, and Faust, standing on the balcony of his palace at night, smells the smoke, borne to him by the wind.

“‘The names Philemon and Baucis,’ said I, ‘transport me to the Phrygian shore, reminding me of that famous antique pair; but this scene is laid in modern times and in a Christian region.’

“‘My Philemon and Baucis,’ said Goethe, ‘have nothing to do with that antique pair and the legend concerning them, I only gave them the same names, to dignify the characters. The persons and circumstances are similar, and the names thus will have a good effect.’”—Eckermann, June 6, 1831.

The Wanderer is introduced in order that the changes which Faust has wrought in the region may be described. The sea, which broke on the downs where the former was wrecked, years before, is now only seen as a blue horizon-line in the distance.

​

The original line is: “Tags umsonst die Knechte lärmten.” Some translators have rendered the word umsonst into “unpaid,” because it has frequently the meaning of “gratis.” The other and equally correct rendering is suggested to me by the circumstance that the workmen were employed by night as well as by day. The account which the old couple give of Faust’s cruelty must not be taken too literally: they are no friends of innovation.

The Warder, Lynceus, is here introduced for the purpose of describing the action. Schnetger, it is true, says he is the “prophetic vision of the Poet,” mourning over the destruction of the Beautiful by the modern Industrial Spirit; but I find in him no symbolism whatever,—certainly nothing which connects him with his namesake of the Helena. Goethe’s plan could not be embodied in dramatic dialogue; it required descriptive passages, and the vehicle through which to introduce them was not always readily found.

“Faust, as he appears in the Fifth Act,” said Goethe to Eckermann, “is just one hundred years old, according to my intention; and I am not certain whether it would not be well to express this positively, somewhere.”

Mephistopheles, still forced to serve, turns his commercial into a piratical voyage, and hopes to secure Faust’s complicity in Evil by tempting him to accept the precious spoils of all climes, and the vessels which he has accumulated. His argument, that War, Trade, and Piracy are “three in one,” makes no impression on Faust, who, as we learn from the Three Mighty Men, turns away from the bribe in disgust.

This is an obscure line, which some interpret as denoting those seaport sirens who consume so much of the sailor’s ​earnings. The Three Mighty Men represent the sea-faring class, so far as their character is drawn: Goethe did not feel himself on very secure ground here, and contented himself with indicating the sailor’s blunt coarseness of speech and fondness for carousals.

The reader must remember Faust’s age, and his long course of successful achievement, in order to understand his present impatience and petulance. He loses all joy in his vast possessions, because the neighboring sand-hill, whereon he wishes to build a lookout for a view over all his new, thickly-peopled realm, is the property of another who refuses to sell or exchange it. Goethe has borrowed this incident from the story of Frederick the Great and the miller of Potsdam.

Riemer has here inserted a side-reference: “i Kings xxi.” It will be enough to quote the second and third verses:—

2. And Ahab spake unto Naboth, saying, Give me thy vineyard, that I may have it for a garden of herbs, because it is near unto my house; and I will give thee for it a better vineyard than it; or, if it seem good to thee, I will give thee the worth of it in money.

3. And Naboth said to Ahab, The Lord forbid it me, that I should give the inheritance of my fathers unto thee.

Faust, impatient at being so long thwarted in his plans, so far yields to Mephistopheles that he consents to employ force. Here is yet another—and the last—chance for the Spirit of Evil to win his wager. Like Jezebel, he compasses the death of Naboth-Philemon. The result is incendiarism and murder, not forcible removal; and Faust, instead of accepting the coveted property, curses the rash, inhuman deed.

​

There can be no doubt that the earlier written portion of the Fifth Act commences with this scene. In the absence of any special evidence, I cannot fix the exact time; but I think it must have been in existence before Schiller’s death (1805). The atmosphere of the First Part begins to breathe upon us again, as if from a distant Past; gradually and successively the old warmth and harmony and power revive; the chimes and chants of Easter morning are heard again in the Choruses of the Angels, and we are lifted, at the close, into a region of Heaven less austerely sublime than that of the Prologue, but burning into clearest whiteness through the ineffable Presence of the Divine Love.

I have followed Dr. Anster in thus translating Noth, which may also be rendered “trouble” and “need,” for the reason that Care, in this scene, includes the former meaning, and Want the latter.

The character of the three gray sisters, Want, Guilt, and Necessity, is explained when they declare that they cannot enter the house of the Rich; but Care, the atra cura of Horace, has free entrance everywhere. Goethe’s conception of her being seems to be the embodied Worry, and the other three have no further apparent significance than to separate her from the other tormenting powers of life, and thus the more clearly define her nature.

Goethe said to Eckermann (1828): “But we old Europeans are all more or less in evil plight … . Each is refined and polite, but no one has the courage to be cordial and true, so that an honest man with natural ideas and impulses stands in an unfortunate position. Often one cannot help wishing that one had been born upon one of the South-Sea Islands, a so-called savage, so as once to have purely felt human existence, without any false flavors.”

Faust’s reference to his magic and to his curse (First Part, ​Scene IV.) is another evidence of the time when the scene was written, for it shows that the original conception was still fresh and warm in Goethe’s mind. In spite of his great age, we feel that we have again met the Faust of the First Part, instead of his shadowy representative of the preceding acts.

The original line, Dem Tüchtigen ist diese Welt nicht stumm, is difficult to translate—“To the capable (or genuine) man this world is not mute,” that is, it reveals to him its uses and possibilities. This was the first article in Goethe’s creed of life, and he has expressed it, in his poems, in a multitude of forms.

Faust’s selfish desire for a station on the linden-trees, whence to overlook his lands, and the crime to which it led, are justly avenged by his blindness. But with the external darkness comes a growing spiritual light, the “obscure aspiration” gives place to knowledge and faith. The passage is pregnant with meaning, but nothing in it is vague or doubtful.

Goethe has here borrowed (probably from Percy’s Reliques, which he knew) the original song of Lord Vaux, a part of which Shakespeare puts into the mouth of the grave-digger in “Hamlet.” But he has taken only the first half of the verses, completing them with other lines of hisown. Therefore I have only translated these latter, and added them to the original English lines. In “Hamlet,” the verses are:—

​Goethe shows his knowledge of English literature, in restoring

the line of Lord Vaux:—

Moreover, his variation of this latter verse, at least, is entirely in the spirit of the original.

The original line contains a pun which cannot be given in translation:—

In these lines Goethe has unconsciously remembered a passage from Schiller’s Wilhelm Tell:—

(Then first do I truly enjoy my life, when I reconquer it every day as a new possession.)

It is hardly necessary that I should call the reader to observe how Faust’s great work, which was at first planned to exhibit the victory of Man over the forces of Nature, now becomes, to his clearer spiritual vision, a permanent gain and blessing to the race. All unselfish work is better than the worker knows: and if Faust has only given “free activity” and not absolute “security” to the millions who shall come, he sees, at last, the great value of their very insecurity, as an agent which shall keep alive the virtues of vigilance, association, and the unselfish labor of each for the common good. He foresees a free people, living upon a free soil,—courage, intelligence, and patriotism constantly developed anew by danger. There is a passage in Montesquieu’s Esprit des Lois, wherein a similar thought is expressed. Through this prophetic vision, Faust experiences the one moment of supreme happiness. He has attained it in spite of, not through, Mephistopheles. He his blessed his ​fellow-men for æons to come, by creating for them a field of existence, surrounded with conditions which assure them its possession and their own freedom and happiness. Not through Knowledge, Indulgence, Power,—not even through the pure passion of the Beautiful, or victory over the Elements,—has he reached the crowning Moment which he would fain delay; the sole condition of perfect happiness is the good which he has accomplished for others.

Mephistopheles almost quotes the Archbishop (page 270):—

His manner also suggests his words to the Lord, in the Prologue in Heaven:—

The Chorus now purposely repeats the expression used by Faust, in completing the Compact (First Part, Scene IV.):—

The answer of Mephistopheles to the exclamation of the Chorus: “’T is past!” seems to conflict with the passion for annihilation, which he expresses in first describing his nature to Faust (First Part, Scene III.). He drops his character of Negation suddenly, and becomes the popular Devil, who is a very positive personage. From this point to the end, we are reminded of the Miracle-plays of the Middle Ages.

The chant of the Lemures is here again suggested by the Grave-digger’s song in Hamlet, third verse:—

​

Goethe’s first plan was to send Mephistopheles into the presence of The Lord, for the purpose of announcing that he had won. This, however, would have interfered with the effect of the closing scene, and he selected, instead, the machinery of the Miracle-plays, as better adapted to his purpose. The open jaws of Hell, as they are still represented in many chapels of Catholic countries, and the two varieties of Devils, are intentionally introduced as a coarse, almost vulgar framework for a scene which is meant to include the sharpest contrast of two principles, Heaven stooping down, and Hell rising up to take hold of the soul of Man.

This passage is a satirical reference, both to the old traditions of the appearance of the soul and its manner of escape from the body, and to various psychological speculations of recent times.

The long, lean Devils, in whom a commentator (probably related to Nicolai) finds a symbol of the Jesuits, are directed to catch the soul in the air, if it should escape the clutches of those who bend over the body. All the contempt of Mephistopheles for Faust’s ideal aspirations seems to be expressed in this sneer at “Genius,”

Mephistopheles here becomes Goethe, for a moment. The latter firmly believed in the universality of the Divine Power and the Divine Love, and few things were more repulsive to his nature than the horrors of the conventional Hell of mediæval theology. Nothing could be more savagely satirical than this declaration of Mephistopheles that the worst torments invented by the fiends are demanded by the faith of the Pious.

Hartung says of the appearance of the angels: “Mephistopheles calls the glory which surrounds them an ‘unwelcome ​day,’ their chant a ‘ nasty tinkling, a boy-girlish strumming,’ etc. This is a satire on the Moravian hymns and those of other canting sects.” The correctness of the last assertion is by no means evident.

The angelic choruses in this scene are scarcely less wonderful than those of Easter morning, in the First Part. They present an equal difficulty to the translator in their interlinking feminine and dactylic rhymes, and perhaps a greater one in that unnatural compression of phrase which almost destroys the form of the thought. In one or two instances Goethe has attempted the impossible, and failed; yet his failure is so grand that we are tempted to accept it as a success. I add the literal translation of this Chorus, for the help of those who are unacquainted with the original:—

In the closing scene, the roses are declared to have been scattered by the hands of “loving, sanctified women-penitents.” They are symbolical of Love; but not yet, as some commentators suggest, of the Divine Love. I agree with Dr. Bloede, who in his essay, Die Religions-Philosophie Goethe’s, calls them “acts of Love,” in which the highest principle of Good, manifested through Man, overcomes the principle of Evil.

The spirit of this Chorus is clear, in the original, but not the language. Even a literal translation is impossible unless ​we supply, conjecturally, the singular ellipses of the German lines:—

The meaning of the last four lines seems to be that true words are the clear ether wherein the eternal hosts of spirits find everywhere Day—or Light. There are several German interpretations of this chant.

The grotesque, mediæval character of the strife belongs to the Devils alone; the Angels are not yet seen, only their Chants fall from the Glory above. The celestial Roses burn and sting, “sharper than Hell’s red conflagration,” and both varieties of Devils are so tormented that they plunge head foremost into the Jaws which stand open upon the left hand, leaving Mephistopheles alone. We are to suppose that the Angels gradually descend during the singing of this Chorus, which I also give literally:—

Whatever may be said of the coarseness and irreverence of this and the following passage (Julian Schmidt, for instance, pronounces them “atrocious”), there could be no more tremendous illustration of the baseness and blindness ​of the principle of Evil. Although Mephistopheles is covered from head to foot, like Job, with boils which the burning roses have left behind them, he becomes enamored of the beauty of the Angels. In this languishing mood he is doubly a Devil, and the Negation embodied in him reaches a climax beyond all previous suggestion, for it is placed in antagonism to sacred purity.

Literally:—

The word which I have translated “case-hardened” is ausgepichten, an adjective usually applied to barrels and signifying “thoroughly seasoned with pitch.” This is one of the many instances where the correct translation must be equivalent, and not literal. The impression left upon Mephistopheles is evidently that the Angels have taken advantage of his attack of “senseless passion” for them, and stolen from him the soul of Faust. He understands only the letter of his compact, for redemption through love and beneficent labor for others is to him simply incomprehensible. Thus, not only consistent with his original character, but illustrating, as never before in the whole course of the drama, the eternal ignorance and impotence of Evil, he disappears from our sight.

This closing scene, although it ends in the higher regions of Heaven, appears to begin on Earth. Goethe evidently meant to symbolize a continual ascending scale of being, in ​which Death is simply a form of transition, not a profound gulf between two different worlds. In one of his letters to Zelter, he says: “Let us continue our work until one of us, before or after the other, returns to ether at the summons of the World-Spirit! Then may the Eternal not refuse to us new activities, analogous to those wherein we have here been tested! If He shall also add memory and a continued sense of the Right and the Good, in His fatherly kindness, we shall then surely all the sooner take hold of the wheels which drive the cosmic machinery (in die Kamme des Weltgetriebes eingreifen).”

The scene (apparently from some hint of Goethe’s, which has not been recorded^[7]) is taken, according to the best German commentators, from Montserrat, the remarkable, isolated mountain near Barcelona. This mountain, during the Middle Ages, was inhabited by anchorites, who were divided into regions according to the degree of spiritual perfection which they attained; the youngest occupying cells in the great summit-pyramids of rock, difficult and dangerous of access, while the older, after certain probations, gradually approached the base, their privations diminishing as their sanctity increased. Goethe reverses this order, commencing with the spirits who retain most of Earth, and rising above the highest summits into the pure, spiritual ether.

Schnetger’s remarks are as just as they are concise: “The whole closing scene exhibits nothing else to us than a universal upward movement of loving natures, to whom other loving natures offer their hands; so that we have a long chain, the lowest link of which is on the Earth, the highest in the loftiest regions of Heaven, the lowest a man still heavily burdened with the Corporeal, the highest the Deity. ​It is not a Heaven full of eternally inactive bliss, such as lazy Piety imagines, which is exhibited to us, but one of the purest loving activity.

It is generally agreed—and the tendency of Goethe’s mind during his last years justifies the belief—that the three Paires symbolize different forms or manifestations of devotional feeling. Their appearance, as we afterwards feel, was suggested by the necessity of avoiding a sudden transition from the blasphemous sensuality of Mephistopheles to the “indescribable” exaltation of the closing mystery; but they also have their appropriate place in this ever-rising and ever-swelling symphony, with its one theme of the accordance of Human and Divine Love.

Since it was known that Goethe selected actual figures to serve as, at least, an imaginary basis for his spiritual and allegorical characters, the commentators have exhibited their research in endeavoring to fix upon the originals of these Patres, Although the title Ecstaticus was bestowed on Dionysius the Carthusian, and is also applicable to St. Anthony, it is not likely that Goethe meant to represent the individual character of either. St. Theresa, in fact, is a better personification of that ekstasis, which, as here, would temporarily annihilate the material and dissolve the soul in a frenzy.of devotional love.

The last four lines spoken by the Pater Ecstaticus must be given literally, for the sake of comparison:—

We might almost say that the Pater Ecstaticus represents Devotion as manifested through temperament or exalted sensation; the Pater Profundus, Devotion as it shapes the intellect, which perceives symbols in all things, feels the ​limitations of the senses, and aspires towards Divine Truth as the highest form of knowledge; and finally, the Pater Seraphicus Devotion as it possesses the soul in the purest glow of self-abnegation.

The title Pater Profundus was bestowed on the English theologian, Thomas of Bradwardyne, and also on Bernard de Clairvaux, founder of the Cistercian order, two centuries before the former. It is not necessary, in either case, to seek for a parallel which we are not likely to find verified.

This name was given to St. Francis of Assisi, who is mentioned by Dante (Paradiso, XI.), and Goethe may possibly have borne him in mind, without borrowing anything from the story of his life.

These boys, whom Goethe calls “midnight-born,” are the spirits of those who died in birth, barely given to Life and then taken from it before the awakening of sense or mind. The meaning seems to be that they are still undeveloped in the spiritual world,—in other words, that, in the scale of ascending Being, they have missed our sphere, and feel only the delight of existence (allen ist das Daseyn so gelind), without the intelligence, from which must be born the aspiration for what is still beyond and above them.

The following passage occurs in a letter from Goethe to Wolf, author of the famous Homeric Prolegomena, in 1806: “Why can I not at once, honored friend, on receiving your letter, sink myself for a short time in your being, like those Swedenborgian spirits who sometimes receive permission to enter into the organs of sense of their master, and through the medium of these to behold the world?”

Eckermann writes, in June, 1831: “We then spoke of the ​closing scene, and Goethe called my attention to the following passage” [every line is here so pregnant with important meaning that an exact rhymed translation becomes nearly impossible, and I therefore add the verse, in prose]:—

“In these lines,” said Goethe, “the key to Faust’s rescue may be found. In Faust, himself, an ever higher and purer form of activity to the end, and the eternal Love coming down to his aid from above. This is entirely in harmony with our religious ideas, according to which we are not alone saved by our own strength, but through the freely-bestowed Grace of God.”

“Moreover, you will admit that the conclusion, where the redeemed soul is carried above, was very difficult to accomplish; and also that I might very easily have lost myself in vagueness, in such supernatural, hardly conceivable surroundings, if I had not given a favorably restricting form and firmness to my poetic designs, through the sharp outlines of Christian-ecclesiastical figures and representations.”

This passage is somewhat obscure, because it attempts to express a greater bulk of meaning than the words will hold. The last eight lines are:—

​Goethe undoubtedly meant to say that the elements of

earthly knowledge and experience become, in life, so blended into one with the spiritual nature of Man, that the Angels, who bear Faust’s immortal part, not yet purified from the traces of its earthly career, cannot separate the two: it must be the work of Eternal Love. The soul of Faust is now given into the hands of the Blessed Boys.

Some see in this name a reference to Marianus Scotus, who died, as an eremite, in 1086. Others, again, suppose it to be the celestial name of Faust, although the soul of the latter has not yet awakened to the change. The title “Doctor” impresses us singularly, after the Patres, and we cannot help surmising some special intention in it, although the character seems to be introduced solely for the purpose of describing the approach of the Mater Gloriosa. But there is nothing said, which might not, with equal propriety, have been put into the mouth of the Pater Seraphicus.

It is easy to understand why, in this mystic symphony of Love, Goethe should have chosen the Virgin as a representative of the sweetest and tenderest attribute of the Deity. This variation from the Prologue in Heaven was directly prescribed by the ecclesiastical framework through which he expresses the symbolism of the scene. Some of the critics censure Goethe for applying to the Virgin the word “Goddess,” because it is not used by the Catholic Church; as if, in borrowing the form, he must necessarily accept the spirit with it! Nevertheless, a Catholic writer, Wilhelm von Schütz,^[8] sees in this scene the evidence that Goethe was dissatisfied with “the palliative poverty of the Protestant spirit,” and had almost reached Catholicism at the close of his life! On the other hand, Dr. ​Bärens^[9] illustrates almost every portion of the scene by passages from the New Testament, and Pastor Cludius^[10] declares that “Faust is a sphinx, whose enigmas can only be solved by those who are initiated into the mysteries of Christianity.” Add to these views the assertion of a French critic that Faust is “a Gospel of Pantheism,” and we can appreciate the height of Goethe’s mind above all sectarian or theological boundaries.

I have retained the references attached to this and the two following stanzas, because I am not sure whether they were originally written by Goethe, or afterwards added by Riemer. Mary Magdalene and the Woman of Samaria require no comment: Mary of Egypt is described in the Acta Sanctorum as an infamous woman of Alexandria, who, after seventeen years of vice, made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. On approaching the door of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, an invisible arm thrust her away. Weeping, overcome with the sudden sense of her unworthiness, she prayed to the Virgin, and was then lifted as by hands and borne into the Temple, and a voice said to her: “Go beyond the Jordan, and thou wilt find peace.” She went into the Desert, where she lived alone forty-eight years, only visited by a monk who brought her the last sacrament, and for whom, when she died, she left a message written upon the sand.

These three sinful yet penitent and glorified women are made intercessors for the soul of Margaret, which has not yet been admitted to the higher spheres.

Margaret sees her full pardon in the face of the Mater Gloriosa, before it is spoken, and the prayer (First Part, Scene XVIII.) which was a despairing cry for help now ​becomes a strain of unutterable joy. The Blessed Boys approach, bearing the soul of Faust, already overtowering them as it grows into consciousness of the new being. By him, who has learned so much of Life, they shall be taught at last. Margaret, no longer an ignorant maiden, but an inspired Soul, sees the beauty and glory of the original nature of Faust, now redeemed, releasing itself from its earthly disguises and shining like the Holy Host. But we hear no voice: we only know that it awakens.

The literal translation of these two lines must be added:—

The reader who knows the original need not be told how difficult it is to render the word ahnet.

The closing lines of the wonderful drama must not be read as a complement to, or a solution of, the problem stated in the Prologue in Heaven. They seem to relate almost exclusively to the last scene, in order to connect the heavenly and the earthly spheres, by suggesting, mysteriously, the relation of the two. The translation I have given is nearly literal; but, inasmuch as every word is important, I here make it entirely so:—

I can find no English equivalent for Ewigwetbliche except “Woman-Soul,” which will express very nearly the same idea to those who feel the spirit which breathes and burns ​throughout the scene. Love is the all-uplifting and all-redeeming power on Earth and in Heaven ; and to Man it is revealed in its most pure and perfect form through Woman. Thus, in the transitory life of Earth, it is only a symbol of its diviner being; the possibilities of Love, which Earth can never fulfil, become realities in the higher life which follows; the Spirit, which Woman interprets to us here, still draws us upward (as Margaret draws the soul of Faust) there.