But I can’t seem to do it now as I could;
When I come, I seem to be dragging my feet,
And you seem to be pushing me back somehow.
Yet it’s still you, you’re still gentle and good!
FAUST. If you feel that it’s me, come with me now!
MARGARETA. Out there?
FAUST. Into freedom!
MARGARETA. If my grave’s out there,
If death is waiting, come with me! No,
From here to my everlasting tomb 4540
And not one step further I’ll go!—
You’re leaving? Oh Heinrich, if only I could come!
FAUST. You can! Just want to! I’ve opened the door!
MARGARETA. I can’t leave; for me there’s no hope any more.
What’s the use of escaping? They’ll be watching for me.
It’s so wretched to have to beg one’s way
Through life, and with a bad conscience too,
And to wander abroad; and if I do,
In the end they’ll catch me anyway!
FAUST. I’ll stay with you always! 4550
MARGARETA. Quick, oh, quick!
Save your poor baby!
Just follow the path
Up the stream, uphill,
Over the bridge,
The wood’s just beyond;
In there, on the left, by the fence-He’s in the pond!
Oh, catch hold of him!
He’s struggling still, 4560
He’s trying to swim!
Save him! Save him!
FAUST. Oh, stop, stop! Think what it is you say!
Just one step, and we’re on our way.
MARGARETA. Oh, quick, let’s get to the other side
Of the hill! My mother sits on a stone
Up there—oh it’s cold, I’m so terrified!—
My mother’s sitting up there on a stone,
She’s wagging her head, she’s all alone,
Not beckoning, not nodding her poor heavy head; 4570
She slept so long that she’ll never wake.
She slept so that we could be happy in bed!
Oh, those were good times, and no mistake.
FAUST. If persuasion’s no use, if that’s how it must be,
I’ll have to carry you off with me.
MARGARETA. Don’t touch me! Put me down! No, no!
I’ll not be compelled! Don’t clutch me so!
I was always willing, as well you know.
FAUST. The day’s dawning! Oh sweetheart! Sweetheart!
MARGARETA. The day! Yes, it’s day! The last day dawning! 4580
I thought it would be my wedding morning.
Now you’ve been with Gretchen, don’t tell anyone.
Oh, my garland’s spoilt!
What’s done is done!
We’ll meet later on;
But I shan’t be dancing.
I can’t hear them, but the crowd’s advancing.
There are so many there,
The streets and the square
Are all full; the bell tolls; they break the white rod* 4590
Oh how they bind me and seize me, oh God!
Now I’m on the execution-chair,
And at every neck in this whole great throng
The blade strikes when that sword is swung.
The world lies silent as the grave.
FAUST. Oh why was I born, at such a cost!
MEPHISTOPHELES [appearing outside the door].
Come! One more moment and you’re lost!
What’s all this dallying, parleying and dithering!
My night-steeds are quivering,*
The sun’s nearly risen. 4600
MARGARETA. What’s that? It came out of the floor of my prison!
It’s him! It’s him! Send him away!
He can’t come! This place is sacred today!
He wants me!
FAUST. You’re to live!
MARGARETA. Oh my God, I await
Your righteous judgment!
MEPHISTOPHELES [to FAUST].
Come! Come! Or I’ll leave
You both to your fate!
MARGARETA. Oh Father, save me, do not reject me,
I am yours! Oh holy angels, receive
Me under your wings, surround me, protect me!—
Heinrich! You frighten me. 4610
MEPHISTOPHELES. She is condemned!
A VOICE [from above] She is redeemed!
MEPHISTOPHELES [to FAUST].
Come to me!
[He vanishes with FAUST.]
[MARGARETA’S] VOICE [from the cell, dying away].
Heinrich! Heinrich!
EXPLANATORY NOTES
Introduction p. xliv (Chorus Mysticus), … lay beyond us: taking unzulänglich (in accordance with Goethe’s probable intention) in its older sense of ‘unreachable, inaccessible’ (now unzugätiglich) rather than in its modern sense of ‘inadequate’.
Ibid., visible: taking account of the semantic association between Ereignis (now=‘event’, but formerly often Eräugnis, i.e. ‘manifestation’) and Auge (eye).
1–32, Dedication: this and the other two ‘prefaces’ to Faust as a whole (Prelude on the Stage and Prologue in Heaven) were probably (the Dedication certainly) all written in the summer of 1797 at the time of Goethe’s second resumption of work on what is now ‘Part One’ (cf. Introd., pp. xxvi ff.). In the four stanzas of Dedication the 48-year-old poet apostrophizes the fictions of his imagination of the Urfaust period, the friends of his youth, and the world of his youth generally. (The theme of nostalgia for lost youth recurs in the Prelude, 184–97.) In the 1808 edition the words mein Leid ertönt in line 21 (‘my woes are heard’) was noted as a misprint for mein Lied ertönt (‘my song is heard’), but this correction was not made in the later editions published during Goethe’s lifetime, either because he overlooked it or because he accepted Leid as giving a good enough alternative sense. The reading Lied which I have used therefore remains controversial.
33–242, Prelude on the Stage: cf. previous note, and Introd., pp. xxvii f. Although the scene contains nothing that seems specifically relevant to Faust, the Clown (‘Lustige Person’) may be thought of as representing the comic element in the play, including Part Two, which has often been insufficiently appreciated even by German readers. In productions, the Clown (if the scene was included at all) has usually been played by the same actor as Mephistopheles, and this seems to be in keeping with Goethe’s intention; similarly, the Poet and the Director may be thought to parallel Faust and ‘the Lord’ respectively.
243–353, Prologue in Heaven: cf. Introd., pp. xxviii–xxxv. The general conception is based on Job 1: 6–12. The traditional name ‘Mephistopheles’ for Faustus’s devil, going back to the earliest chapbooks, is of uncertain derivation, and Goethe also leaves his position in the demonological hierarchy unclear.
334 f.: the Serpent of the Garden of Eden story (Genesis 3), thought of as the archetypal tempter and thus related to the Devil.
339, ironic scold: Schalk in modern German has come to mean merely ‘mischievous rogue’, but Goethe is here probably using it in an idiosyncratic sense (developed under the influence of a Swiss usage known to him and of certain literary and personal encounters) which implies someone possessed by esprit de contradiction and given to mocking, negativistic attitudes. Goethe drew attention to this special sense of Schalk in a minor literary work written a year or two after the Prologue, called The Good Women, a short story or conversation-piece in which the concept Schalk is lightheartedly analysed with application to one of the female characters. In the case of Mephistopheles the word emphasizes his negative and sardonic view of things and his usual expression of this in cold and witty intellectual irony. For the translation ‘the ironic scold’ an acceptable though less exact alternative would be ‘the Ironist’.
342 (German text 343): als Teufel schaffen could mean ‘create (be creative) as the Devil (i.e. in his devilish fashion)’ or ‘be busily active (in devilis
h fashion)’; both senses are probably intended.
354–605: the Urfaust begins with this sequence, and thus rather more than half of the scene Nacht consists of material originally written between 1772 and 1775. Goethe followed the puppet-play tradition (derived from Marlowe) of introducing Faust with his monologue about the futility of learning.
354 ff., 360: in the traditional medieval division of the academic faculties, ‘Philosophy’ embraced the Arts subjects, in which Faust has taken the degree of Master: he is also Doctor in the three higher faculties, of Law, Medicine, and Theology (cf. the similar classification in the Student scene, 1896–2036).
362: this suggests that Faust is perhaps in his thirties; in the Scene A Witch’s Kitchen, witten about fifteen years later, Goethe seems to think of him as about 50 (2340 f.).
420, Nostradamus: Michel de Notredame, a sixteenth-century French astrologer. His work, which includes no known books on magic, was not directly known to Goethe, who here fictionally associates him with Faust.
429 (stage direction): Goethe derived the idea of the ‘Sign of the Macrocosm’ from his early alchemical and astrological reading, which included such works as the Opus mago-cabbalisticum et theosophicum of Georg von Welling (1652–1727) and the Paradoxical Discourses or Uncommon Opinions on the Macrocosm and Microcosm by Franziskus Merkurius van Helmont (1618–99). In the traditional language of such studies, the ‘great order’ (macrocosm) of Nature was distinguished from the human ‘little order’ (microcosm), and the two were held to be magically related in complex ways which could be represented in signs and diagrams. Cf. also Note 14.
459 (stage direction): no precise antedecent or source is known for the ‘Earth Spirit’ which Faust here invokes, and it seems to be essentially an original invention by the young Goethe. Its status and its relationship to Faust and Mephistopheles are only ambiguously indicated in the text, and this question has been endlessly discussed. In the Spirit’s self-definition in 501–9, which is perhaps the key passage, it appears as the creative and destructive force of terrestrial Nature, weaving ‘the living garment of God’ (strictly, ‘of the Deity’, der Gottheit); and in another Urfaust scene (Sc. 26) Faust remembers it as a ‘great, splendid’ spirit. On the other hand, it appears from that same scene (cf. Note 124) to be associated with Mephistopheles and to be in some way his master. It is a ‘spirit of the earth’, not of heaven. In biblical tradition the Devil is a god or ruler of ‘this world’, and in the Faust chapbook which Goethe had read he is twice referred to as ‘the earthly god’ (der irdische Gott). It is also notable that in the original Urfaust version of the stage direction after 459 the Spirit was described as appearing to Faust not only ‘in a red flame’ but also ‘in a repugnant form’ (in widerlicher Gestalt), a phrase which Goethe later deleted. This ‘earthy’ spirit thus seems to have diabolic as well as divine or God-serving attributes. It has been suggested that whereas the ‘Sign of the Macrocosm’ (cf. Note 13 and lines 430–53) symbolizes a kind of lofty mystical contemplation, the Earth Spirit represents physical activity and involvement with the processes of earthly life, so that Faust in turning from the former to the latter (454–61) is making a momentous decision which will put him in the power of Mephistopheles. This has been seen as a modernized, attentuated echo of the motif in the old Faustus tradition whereby, as in Marlowe’s play, Faustus ignores the counsels of a good angel and accepts those of an evil spirit. Moreover, the Earth Spirit’s closing words in the present scene (512 f.) are scarcely intelligible except as a scornful relegation of Faust to the more suitable companionship of the baser spirit Mephistopheles. For further discussion of the Earth Spirit problem see Introd., pp. xxiv f. and xxxi f.
519: Faust’s ‘famulus’ or academic servant was called Christoph Wagner in the first Faust-book of 1587. Anachronistically, Goethe uses the figure of Wagner to represent aspects of eighteenth-century culture which he wishes to ridicule (complacent faith in man’s rational faculties and in academic learning, the assumption that moral edification is the essential purpose of art and rhetorical skill its essential means, the optimistic doctrine of automatic progress, etc.). Faust’s speeches express the critique of these values by the young Goethe and his generation.
606 ff.: this is the beginning of the later-added ‘infill material’ (cf. Introd., pp. xxxv f.) with which Goethe closed the gap in the Urfaust version between the departure of Wagner and the entry of the Student (1868). Nearly all of it was written between 1798 and 1801 (lines 598–601 were also inserted at this stage as a bridge-passage connecting the scene Night with the ensuing Easter Day sequence (737–1177)). Faust’s second soliloquy is partly a restatement of some of the themes already introduced in the opening Urfaust material (354–417); these are developed in a more ‘classical’ verse style and intermingled with further general reflections. It is notable that Goethe does not (as might have seemed natural or logical) choose Faust’s decision to commit suicide (686–736) as the point at which to introduce Mephistopheles; instead, the latter’s appearance is deferred until after a sequence of scenes (737–1237) which establish Faust in a more affirmative mood and in which Christian symbolism is prominently used.
737–807: the angelic and other choruses heard by Faust are presumably a supernatural intervention, like the spirit voices in Sc. 7, and not real singing from a nearby church. Goethe is thought to have begun writing this part of Sc. 4 on 9 April 1798, which was Easter Monday, shortly after hearing Karl Heinrich Draun’s oratorio, The Death of Jesus (1775).
770–8: Goethe here adds a new dimension to Faust by ascribing to him a youthful period of fervent religious belief, referred to again in 1023–9, and reminiscent of Goethe’s own Pietistic phase in his early twenties.
941–8: to establish some continuity between this later-written scene of the Easter walk and the Wagner scene of the Urfaust material, Goethe reintroduces the figure of Wagner as the narrow-minded bookish pedant, the contrasting foil to the visionary Faust (cf. 522 ff., 602–5, and 1147–63).
997–1055: in the folk tradition Faust was a peasant’s son, reputed to have acquired out-of-the-way scientific knowledge and to be able to cure people with herbs and potions. In Goethe’s version his father was a doctor and alchemist, like that of Paracelsus to whom an allusion is perhaps intended. Faust describes (1038–47) his father’s alchemical experiments, using the esoteric jargon of the art: chemical substances of different colours would be ‘married’ in a retort and forced by heat and evaporation from this ‘bridal chamber’ into another, in which an iridescent deposit would appear (the ‘Young Queen’, thought to possess healing powers). In Book VIII of his autobiography, Poetry and Truth, the elderly Goethe described with a certain irony the similar experiments he himself had carried out at the age of 20 in his parents’ house in Frankfurt.
1110–25: the inner polarity of which Faust here speaks appears to resolve itself into a conflict between dependence on sensuous earthly experience on the one hand and intellectual aspiration on the other (the latter impulse also being ascribed to Wagner). There is no very clear continuity between the conflict expressed in these terms and Faust’s state of mind in the Urfaust material, where he seemed to be utterly repudiating what Wagner stood for. Nor does Faust’s ensuing wish (1118–21) to be borne aloft, not to his intellectual ancestors (as in 1117) but to ‘new many-coloured life’, seem to correspond exactly to either of the ‘two needs’ referred to in the preceding lines; it may, however, represent a synthesis between the two.
1126–41: Wagner’s highly poetic speech about the wind-demons seems scarcely in keeping with his elsewhere established role of rationalist and pedant.
1148: according to the legend Faust possessed a familiar demon in the form of a large, black, hairy dog with fiery eyes called Prestigiar, which changed colour when stroked. This chapbook motif is alluded to in the sinister Urfaust prose scene, A Gloomy Day, but in the present passage (and more especially in the ensuing conjuration scene, 1178–322) it is treated as an essentially com
ic theme, in keeping with the classical Goethe’s more detached attitude to folkloristic material of this kind (cf. Introd., p. xxiii).
1176: it seems to have been common, in Goethe’s time and later, for students in Germany to keep dogs. (This is alluded to, for example, in Adalbert Stifter’s story, The Recluse, published in 1844.)
1178–2072: this important sequence, presenting Faust’s encounter and negotiation with Mephistopheles, consists officially of two substantial and complex scenes which it has become the established convention (following Goethe’s own final version of the text) to designate as ‘Faust’s Study (I)” and ‘Faust’s Study (II)’ (although in fact they are respectively the second and third scenes to take place in Faust’s study). The division between them at 1529 is a dramatically unexplained hiatus, due simply to the abandonment of Goethe’s original intention to insert a further scene at this point. The additional scene, for which only a fragmentary sketch survives, was to have featured a public academic disputation between Faust and Mephistopheles. On the evidence of a letter to Schiller which appears to allude to it, Faust’s Study (I) (1178–529) was written in April 1800; compared with its sequel (1530–2072), which combines material (including the Student scene) written at all three of the composition-stages of Part One, it has a more integrated and logical character.
1184f., 1215–23: these statements may seem inconsistent with Faust’s profession of disbelief in 765. The Christian symbolism which Goethe felt artistically constrained to introduce both in this scene and in the newly written latter part of Night (606–807) is, however, strongly associated with the affirmation of earthly life and with the theme of activity.