The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' Part 3

Then we turn our gaze in another direction and we find in the tiniest grain of sand countless millions of molecules whose atoms (or electrons), it is said, are in perpetual motion, revolving like the stars. Are then (we ask) the stars themselves nothing but molecules? Is the whole material universe nothing but some grain of sand on the sh.o.r.e of the ocean of eternity?

We turn away dazzled, and we rest our eyes, as Socrates was wont to say, on images, on reflexions. We try to make the mystery intelligible, or at least to pacify the reason by throwing it some such sop as the theory that 'Size is only relative,' or that 's.p.a.ce is only a mode of consciousness' and therefore nothing real in itself. Or we lull the mind to sleep with imaginative metaphors and speak (as Plato did) of the Central Fire of Hestia, the Hearth and Home of the Universe, or we call that mysterious unmoved centre of all motion the Throne of G.o.d. Thus we try to lay the spectre of infinite s.p.a.ce.

Or consider Time instead of s.p.a.ce. In a single second how many waves of light are supposed to enter the eye? About 500 billions I believe. And of these waves some 500 would not exceed the breadth of a hair. Now any being to whom these tiny waves were as slow as the ripples on a pond are to us would live our human life of three score years and ten in the hundredth part of _his_ second, while a being on one of those great worlds of s.p.a.ce revolving but once in long aeons around its centre would live--if his life were measured as ours--millions of our years. Here again, in our dazzlement, we have recourse to metaphor and theory: we lay the spectre of Time by explaining it away as merely a 'mode' and as therefore of no objective reality. In other words, dazed and outworn by the incomprehensible infinities of Time and s.p.a.ce we console ourselves with the theory that it is all a mere phenomenon, a projection of our own mind, and with Faust we exclaim

What wondrous vision! yet a vision only!

and in the words of a still greater master of magic than Faust himself we despairingly add that

like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea all that it inherit, shall dissolve And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made of.

From the cipher of the vast material universe, the Macrocosm, we turn away, as Faust did, with unsatisfied yearnings. Whither then shall we turn? Where shall we grasp Nature--not the empty vision, but the warm living form? It is in our own heart that we find a refuge from the infinities of s.p.a.ce and Time--in that human heart by which we live, in its tenderness, its joys, its fears. Here, and here alone, we find those ultimate facts of existence which need no explanation, and which we accept just as they are, without any questionings. Here we find an infinite universe--no less infinite than that of s.p.a.ce and Time--the universe of feeling.

From the cipher of the Macrocosm Faust turns to that of the Earth-spirit, the spirit of human life and feeling. He is filled with a sudden, pa.s.sionate yearning to share in the joys and the sorrows and the aspirations and the strivings of humanity:

Thou, Spirit of the Earth, art nearer.

I feel my powers loftier, clearer, I glow, as drunk with new-made wine; New strength I feel out in the world to dare, The woes of earth, the bliss of earth to bear, To fight my way, though storms around me lash, Nor know dismay amid the s.h.i.+pwreck's crash.

He calls upon this Earth-spirit, the Spirit of human life. He bends all the might of his human will to draw him down from his sphere. 'Come!' he exclaims. 'Thou must! Thou must!--e'en should it cost my life!'

Enveloped in blinding flame the Spirit of life appears. At the apparition Faust cowers back terrified and turns his face away. But it is only for the moment. Stung by the contemptuous words of the phantom he answers: 'Shall I yield to _thee_, Spectre of flame? 'Tis I, 'tis Faust, thine equal!' The human Mind claims equality with the Spirit of earthly life. But the phantom exclaims: 'Thou art akin to the spirit that thou comprehendest--not to me!'--and disappears. Faust has yet to learn a lesson that the mind of man can never learn of itself, the real nature and meaning of human life. But he has beheld the vision of life, he has received the baptism of fire. Henceforth he is to fight his way through the storms of life and pa.s.sion--to pa.s.s onward and upward and at last to rise to 'higher spheres'; and amidst the fierce and insidious a.s.saults of flesh and devil we shall see that he looks for strength and guidance to this Spirit that appeared to him in the blinding vision of living empyreal flame.

Scarcely has the Earth-spirit vanished when, with a timid knock, there enters Faust's _famulus_, or a.s.sistant, Wagner. He has heard Faust's voice and from its excited tones has concluded that he is practising declamation--reciting perhaps a Greek play. The poor amiable dryasdust literary and scientific worm-grubber, whose maxim of life is _Zwar weiss ich viel, doch mocht' ich Alles wissen_ (I know indeed a good deal, but I want to know _Everything_), wishes to profit from a lesson in elocution. A scene follows in which the contrast is graphically depicted between this half lovable, half contemptible scientific bookworm and Faust's t.i.tanic heaven-storming aspirations after absolute truth. When he is once more left alone, longing to face the mystery of life but crushed by the contempt of the Earth-spirit, Faust is seized by despair.

He shrinks from encountering life, with its delusive joys, its pitiless injustice and its arbitrary fate. He resolves to seek certainty--to solve the riddle of life by death. As he moves the cup of poison to his lips there comes floating through the air the chime of bells and, perhaps from some near chapel, the hymn of Easter morn:

Joy unto mortals! Christ is arisen!

He pauses. Memories of childhood sweep over him, and he yields to the sweet voices that call him back from the threshold of the unseen.

Sound on sweet hymns of heaven! As gentle rain My tears are falling. Earth hath me again.

Thus Faust escapes the cowardly act of suicide and gains new strength through the awakening, for a time at least, of the consciousness, which had slumbered within him since the unreasoning days of childhood, that there is that beyond life which alone makes life worth having.

The next scene shows us Faust already in contact with human nature, as represented by holiday crowds flocking out of the town into the woods and adjacent villages at Eastertide. Those who know Germany well will feel the art with which Goethe at once transports us into the midst of a Germanic Feiertag in spring-time, with its bright sunlight, its throngs of townspeople streaming into the country--happy and merry without vulgar rowdyism; the smugly dressed apprentice and the servant-girl in her Sonntagsputz; the pert student and the demure Burgermadchen with her new Easter hat and her voluminous-waisted Frau Mama; the sedate school-master or shopkeeper, leading his toddling child; sour-faced officials; grey-locked and spectacled professors and 'town-fathers'

discussing the world's news or some local grievance--all flocking countryward, with some Waldhaus or Forsthaus Restaurant as their ultimate goal. And those who know Frankfurt will recognize the scene at once: up there above Sachsenhausen, on the road to the pine-woods and the Jagerhaus, from which one sees the whole city lying below one, with its great Dom and its medieval gates--the river Main gliding through its midst and glittering away westward toward the Rhine; and in the far background the Taunus range and the dark Feldberg.

Amidst this scene, externally still the more than middle-aged German professor (he must be fifty-seven or so) but with a heart full of newly wakened yearnings for human life with all its joys and pa.s.sions, Faust wanders, trying to feel sympathy with all these mult.i.tudinous human beings, attracted perhaps here and there, but evidently for the most part repelled and discouraged. He has yet to learn that a love for and a knowledge of humanity, such as he finally reaches, must begin with love for and knowledge of _one_ human heart.

As he and Wagner return toward the city Faust gives vent to his pent-up feelings--pours contempt on his own book-learning and wasted life and expresses his yearnings for Nature, and the longing of his spirit for wings to fly away into the infinite:

For in each soul is born the rapture Of yearning upward, and away, When o'er our heads, lost in the azure, The lark sends down her thrilling lay, When over crags and pine-clad highlands The poising eagle slowly soars, And over plains and lakes and islands The crane sails by to other sh.o.r.es.

Whereat Wagner exclaims:

I've had myself at times an odd caprice, But never yet such impulses as these.

The woods and fields soon get intensely flat, And as for flight--I never longed for that!

Poor dear Wagner, how well one seems to know thee, with thy purblind spectacled eyes peering into fusty books and parchments, or bending over thy crucibles and retorts! Truly a novel and interesting sight it would be to see _thee_ a.s.suming wings. In thy philosophy there is naught but dreams of elixirs of life or homunculi. Thy highest aspiration nowadays would be to find the mechanical equivalent of thought--to prove that Shakespeare's and Dante's imagination was due only to a slightly abnormal movement of brain-molecules--to find some method of measuring faith, hope and charity in foot-pounds and thine own genius in electric volts. Thou wouldst live and die, as other eminent scientists of these latter days have done, in the certain hope and faith of demonstrating irrefutably that this curious phenomenon which we call 'life' is nothing but the chemical action set up by the carbonic acid and ammonia of the protoplasm.

As they walk and talk there appears a black dog ranging to and fro through a field, as if on the track of game. Ever nearer and nearer he circles, and in his wake, as it appears to Faust, trails a flickering phosph.o.r.escent gleam. But Wagner ridicules the idea as an optical delusion. _He_ sees nothing but an ordinary black poodle. 'Call him,' he says, 'and he'll come fawning on you, or sit up and do his tricks, or jump into the water after sticks.' The poodle follows them--and makes himself at home by the stove in Faust's study.

Faust has thus, after his first contact with the outer world of humanity, returned once more to his cell--to the little world of his own thoughts and feelings. He finds himself once more amidst his piled-up books, his crucibles and retorts, his bones and skulls. He lights his lamp and feels the old familiar glow of intellectual satisfaction. _But the poodle is there._ Faust has brought home with him something that will now haunt him to the last moment of his life. There has been awakened in his nature the germ of that acorn (to use Goethe's metaphor with regard to Hamlet) that will soon strike root and shatter the vase in which it is planted.

At present he is almost unconscious of this new presence. He is buried in thought, and his thoughts lead him toward the question of Revelation.

He is drawn to take up a Bible and turns, with a mind full of metaphysical curiosity, to the pa.s.sage 'In the beginning was the [Greek: logos]--the Word.' More than once there comes from the poodle a growl of disapprobation. Faust threatens to turn him out, and proceeds with his biblical criticism.... 'In the beginning was the [Greek: logos].' How shall he translate [Greek: logos]? It cannot mean merely a 'word.' ... A word must have meaning, _thought_--and thought is nothing without _act_.... So this 'Word,' this 'Logos,' must be translated as Act or Deed.

These speculations are interrupted by horrible growlings, barks, and howlings. As Faust looks towards the poodle he sees it rapidly swelling up into a monstrous form--huger than an elephant or hippopotamus, with fiery eyes and enormous tusks in its gaping mouth. He tries to exorcise the phantom with 'Solomon's key' and other magic formulae, and at length, when he threatens it with the mystic formula of the Trinity, it dissolves into mist, and out of the mist steps forth Mephistopheles, dressed as a 'travelling scholar'--an itinerant professor, or quack doctor.

I find that some commentators accuse Goethe of dramatic inconsistency and of interrupting the sequence of the action, because he makes Faust for a time return to his old speculations, and because Mephistopheles does not at once appear in the shape with which we are so familiar--with his 'red gold-trimmed dress and mantle of stiff silk and the c.o.c.k-feathers in his hat,' the type of the dissolute man-about-town of the period. To me it seems very natural that, dispirited by his first contact with the outer world--unable to feel any real sympathy with the rollicking and sleek self-sufficiency of that holiday crowd, Faust should turn again to reflexion and speculation, and that when he is in this depressed and metaphysical mood the demonic element in his nature should first present itself--and that too in the disguise of an itinerant professor. For is it not the case that to many of us the devil _has_ come first just at such a time and in just such disguise?

Questioned as to his name and personality, Mephisto defines himself (he too being in a metaphysical mood) as 'the spirit of negation,' and as 'a part of that power which always wills evil and always works good'--'a part of that darkness which alone existed before the creation of light'--and he expresses the hope that, as light is dependent for its existence on the material world, both it and the world will ere long return to chaos and darkness. I have already touched upon this question of Evil as merely negative--merely a part of the whole--and will not detain you further over it.

Mephistopheles now wishes to take his leave, promising to visit Faust again. 'Visit me as you like,' says Faust, 'and now--there is the window! there's the door! or the chimney is at your service.' But the devil must go out by the same way as he has entered, and on the threshold to keep out evil spirits Faust has painted a mystic pentagram, a figure with five points, the outer angle of which, being inaccurately drawn, had left a gap through which Mephisto had slipped in; but being once in, as in a mouse-trap, he cannot get out again.

As Faust now seems inclined to keep him prisoner, Mephistopheles summons spirits, who sing Faust to sleep. Then he calls a rat to gnaw a gap in the pentagram, and escapes.

When, in the next scene, Mephistopheles again appears, Faust is in a very different state of mind, and Mephistopheles is also in a different shape. He is decked out with silken mantle and with c.o.c.k-feathers in his hat, ready for any devilry. Faust is in the depths of morbid despair and bitterness at the thought of life:

'What from the world have I to gain?-- _Thou must renounce! renounce! refrain!_ Such is the everlasting song That fills our ears our whole life long ...

With horror day by day I wake And weeping watch the morning break To think that each returning sun Shall see fulfilled no wish of mine--not one.'

He vows he would rather die. 'And yet,' sarcastically remarks Mephisto, 'some one a night or two ago did not drink a certain brown liquid.'

Stung by the sarcasm, Faust breaks out into curses against life, against love and hope, and faith ... and 'cursed be patience most of all!'

Here is the devil's opportunity. 'Life is yours yet, and all its pleasures. Of what's beyond you nothing know. Give up all this morbid thinking, these dreams and self-delusions! Be a man! Enjoy life! Plunge into pleasures of the senses! I will be your guide and show you the life worth living!'

In an ecstasy of embitterment and despair, though fully conscious that such a life can never bring him satisfaction and happiness, Faust exclaims: 'What wilt _thou_, poor devil, give me? Was the human spirit, in its aspirations, ever understood by such as _thou_?... And yet--hast thou the food that never satiates--hast thou red gold--hast thou love, pa.s.sionate faithless love--hast thou the fruits that rot before one plucks them--hast thou the fruits of that tree of sensual pleasure which daily puts forth new blossoms--then done! I accept.' 'But if,' he adds (and, alas, I must give merely the sense of these n.o.ble verses--for all translation is so unutterably flat)--'if I ever lay myself on the bed of idle self-content, if ever thou canst fool me with these phantoms of the senses, if ever I say to the pa.s.sing moment, _Stay; thou art so fair!_--then let my life be ended. This wager I offer thee.' 'Topp!'

('Done!') exclaims Mephistopheles; and, as you know, the compact is signed by Faust with his own blood.

You will observe that here there is no mention, as in the old legend, of any term of years--the compact is _for life_. Of what may come after this life Faust makes no mention in his wager. He expressly says that all he cares about, all he can know, is _this_ life, and that he will hear nothing about any future life. This may be agnosticism or whatever else we like to call it, but it is not formally selling one's soul, with or without one's body, for a _future_ life and for all eternity.

Moreover Faust has _not_ summoned the devil. The devil has come to him--is indeed a part of him. He does _not_ league himself with a h.e.l.l-fiend for the sake of worldly power or fame or sensual enjoyment, of which he speaks with contempt. He only offers to come forward into the battle of life and of pa.s.sions to test the n.o.bler powers and the deeper beliefs and the yet dim aspirations of his better nature against the powers of evil, against what he calls the 'cold devil's-fist' of negation and cynicism and disbelief, against the brute within the man.

Thou hearest me! I do not speak of joy-- I dedicate myself to pa.s.sion--pleasure--pain-- Enamour'd hate, and rapture of disdain.

What's highest or what's lowest I will know, And heap upon my bosom weal and woe.

Footsteps are now heard approaching. It is one of Faust's scholars.

Faust 'has no heart to meet him'--and no wonder. He goes; and Mephistopheles, throwing around him Faust's professorial mantle and placing the professorial cap upon his head, awaits the scholar. The scene which ensues, in which Mephisto gives the young aspirant for knowledge his diabolic advice and his diabolic views on Science, Logic, Metaphysics, Medicine and even Theology--would offer ample material for a very long course of lectures; but as it is one which is not closely connected with the main action of the play it will have to be omitted.

The scholar retires--his poor young head whirling round like a mill-wheel with the advice he has received and carrying away his alb.u.m, in which the devil has inscribed his favourite text 'Ye shall be as G.o.ds, knowing good and evil.' Then Faust re-enters, Mephistopheles spreads out his silken cape, and on it the two fly away through the air on their adventures--first through the small and then the greater world--first the world of personal feelings and pa.s.sions, then the greater world (is it really greater?) of art and politics and Humanity.

Faust had said, as you remember,

What wilt thou, poor devil, give me?

Was the human spirit, in its aspirations Ever understood by such as thou?

This is the leading motive of all that follows. With ever-deepening disgust and contempt Faust, in his quest for truth through the jungles and quagmires of human pa.s.sions, follows his guide. If ever Faust seems to catch sight of any far-off vision of eternal truth and beauty--as he does at times in his love for Gretchen, and again in his pa.s.sion for ideal beauty in Helen, and once again in that devotion to the cause of Humanity which finally allows him to express a satisfaction in life, and thus causes his life to end--if ever Faust shows any sign of real interest or satisfaction, it is just _then_ that Mephistopheles displays most clearly his utter inability to understand the 'human spirit in its aspirations'; and it is _then_ that he shows most plainly his own diabolic nature, pouring out his cynical contempt and gnas.h.i.+ng his teeth at what he deems Faust's irrational disgust for all those b.e.s.t.i.a.lities that seem to him (Mephistopheles) the sweetest joys of existence.

His very first attempt is a dead failure. He has carried Faust off through the air to Leipzig, and here he brings him into what to the Mephisto-nature doubtless seems highly desirable and entertaining company--to the 'sing-song' (as I believe it is called in England) of tippling brawling students. The scene is Auerbach's Cellar, a well-known Leipzig 'Kneipe'--a kind of Wine taproom or Bodega. Among these brawling comic-songsters Mephistopheles is in his element, and he treats them to a comic ditty:

Of old there lived a king, Who had a great big flea As dear as any thing, Or any son, could be ...