The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' Part 8

Mephistopheles and his mates go to carry out the order. A few moments later flames are seen to rise from the cottage and chapel.

Mephistopheles returns to relate that the peasant and the wanderer proved obstinate: in the scuffle the wanderer had been killed; the cottage had caught fire, and old Philemon and his wife had both died of terror.

Faust turns upon Mephistopheles with fierce anger and curses him. 'I meant exchange!' he exclaims. 'I meant to _make it good with money_! I meant not robbery and murder. I curse the deed. Thou, not I, shalt bear the guilt.'

Here I do not find it easy to follow Faust's line of argument. Fair exchange is certainly said to be no robbery--but this theory of 'making everything good with money' is one which the average foreigner is apt to attribute especially to the average Britisher, and it does not raise Faust in one's estimation. I suppose he thinks he is doing the poor old couple a blessing in disguise by ejecting them out of their wretched hovel and presenting them with a sum of money of perhaps ten times its value.

Possibly Goethe means it to be a specimen of the kind of mistake that well-meaning theoretical philanthropists are apt to commit with their Juggernaut of Human Progress. Faust is filled with great philanthropic ideas--but perhaps he is a little apt to ignore the individual. Anyhow his better self 'meant not robbery and murder' and is perhaps quite justified in cursing its demonic companion and giving him the whole of the guilt.

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

'Is any one here?' he asks.

'The question demandeth _Yes_!'

'And thou ... who art thou?'

''Tis enough that I am here.'

'Avaunt!'

'I am where I should be.'

Faust defies the phantom. She, standing there invisible, recites in tones like the knell of a pa.s.sing-bell the fate of a man haunted by Care: how he gradually loses sight of his high ideals and wanders blindly amid the maze of worldly illusions--how he loses faith and joy--how he starves amidst plenty--has no certain aim in life--burdening himself and others, breathing air that chokes him, living a phantom life--a dead thing, a death-in-life--supporting himself on a hope that is no hope, but despair--never content, never resigned, never knowing what he should do, or what he himself wishes.

'Accursed spectres!' exclaims Faust. 'Thus ye ever treat the human race.

From demons, I know, it is scarce possible to free oneself. But _thy_ power, O Care--so great and so insidious though it be, I will _not_ recognize it!'

'So _feel_ it now!' answers the phantom. 'Throughout their whole existence men are mostly _blind_--So let it be at last with thee!'

She approaches, breathes in Faust's face, and he is struck blind.

He stands there dazed and astounded. Thick darkness has fallen upon him.

At last he speaks:

Still deeper seems the night to surge around me, But in my inmost spirit all is light.

I'll rest not till the finished work has crown'd me.

G.o.d's promise--that alone doth give me might.

He hastens forth, groping his way in blindness, to call up his workmen.

His life is ending and he must end his work. It is midnight, but the light within him makes him think the day has dawned. In the courtyard there are awaiting him Mephistopheles and a band of Lemurs--horrible skeleton-figures with shovels and torches. They are digging his grave.

Faust mistakes the sound for that of his workmen, and incites them to labour. He orders the overseer, Mephistopheles, to press on with the work ... to finish the last great moat--or 'Graben.'

'_Man spricht_,' answers Mephistopheles _sotto voce_,

'Man spricht, wie man mir Nachricht gab, Von keinem _Graben_--doch vom Grab.'

It is no moat, no Graben, that is now being dug, but a grave--a Grab.

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

Yes, to this thought I hold with firm persistence; The last result of wisdom stamps it true; He only earns his freedom and existence Who daily conquers them anew.

And such a throng I fain would see-- Would stand on a free soil, with people free.

Standing there, on the very edge of his new-dug grave he blesses the present moment and bids it stay. The fatal words are spoken and according to the compact his life must end.

He sinks lifeless to the ground. The Lemurs lay him in the open grave.

Mephistopheles, triumphant, looks on and exclaims:

No joy could sate him, no delight suffice.

To grasp at empty shades was his endeavour.

The latest, poorest emptiest moment--this-- Poor fool, he tried to hold it fast for ever.

Me he resisted in such vigorous wise; But Time is lord--and there the old man lies!

The clock stands still.

'Stands still,' repeats a voice from heaven, 'still, silent, as the midnight.' 'It is finished,' says Mephistopheles. 'Nay. 'Tis but past,'

answers the voice. 'Past!' exclaims Mephistopheles; 'how _past_ and yet not _finished_?' ... He is enraged at the suspicion that life, though past, may not be _finished_--that Faust's human soul may _yet_ elude that h.e.l.l to which he destines it ... that of annihilation.

The Lemurs group themselves round the grave and chant with hollow voices, such as skeletons may be supposed to have, a funeral dirge.

Meantime Mephistopheles is busy summoning his demons to keep watch over the dead body, lest the soul should escape like a mouse, or flicker up to heaven in a little flamelet. Hideous forms of demons, fat and thin, with straight and crooked horns, tusked like boars and with claws like vultures, come thronging in, while the jaw of h.e.l.l opens itself, showing in the distance the fiery city of Satan.

At this moment a celestial glory is seen descending from heaven and voices of angels are heard singing a song of triumph and salvation. They approach ever nearer--Mephistopheles rages and curses, but in vain. They come ever onward, casting before them roses, the flowers of Paradise, which burst in flame and scorch the demons, who, rus.h.i.+ng at their angelic adversaries with their h.e.l.lish p.r.o.ngs and forks and launching vainly their missiles of h.e.l.l-fire, are hurled back by an invisible power and gradually driven off the stage, plunging in hideous ruin and combustion down headlong into the jaws of h.e.l.l.

Mephistopheles alone remains, foaming in impotent rage. He is surrounded by the choir of white-robed angels. He stands powerless there, while they gather to themselves Faust's immortal part and ascend amidst songs of triumph to heaven.

Some of us, perhaps most of us--in certain moods at least--feel inclined to close the book here, as we do with _Hamlet_ at the words 'the rest is silence.' And this feeling is all the stronger when we have witnessed the stage decorator's pasteboard heaven, where Apostles and Fathers are posed artistically in rather perilous situations amid rocks and pine-trees, or balance themselves with evident anxiety mid-air on pendent platforms representing clouds. Altogether this stage-heaven is a very uncomfortable and depressing kind of place.

But when read in Goethe's poem and regarded as an allegorical vision the scene has a certain impressive grandeur, and some of the hymns of adoration and triumph are of exceeding beauty.

This Scene in Heaven opens with the songs of the three great Fathers, the Pater Ecstaticus, Pater Profundus, and Pater Seraphicus, symbolizing the three stages of human aspiration, namely ecstasy, contemplation and seraphic love. The Seraphic Father is of course St. Francis of a.s.sisi.

In heaven, as he did on earth, he sings of the revelation of Eternal Love.

Angels are now seen ascending and bearing Faust's immortal part, and as they rise they sing:

The n.o.ble spirit now is free And saved from evil scheming.

Whoe'er aspires unweariedly Is not beyond redeeming, And if he feels the grace of Love That from on high is given The blessed hosts that wait above Shall welcome him to heaven.

His yet unawakened soul is greeted by the heavenly choirs and by the three penitents, the Magdalene, the woman of Samaria and St. Mary of Egypt.

Then appears 'timidly stealing forth' the glorified form of her who on earth was called Gretchen. In words that remind one of her former prayer of remorse and despair in the Cathedral she offers her pet.i.tion to the Virgin:

O Mary, hear me!

From realms supernal Of light eternal Incline thy countenance upon my bliss!

My loved, my lover, His trials over In yonder world, returns to me in this.

The Virgin in her glory appears. She addresses Gretchen:

Come, raise thyself to higher spheres!

For he will follow when he feels thee near.