Faust

The first instinctive effort fails. An ex plosion occurs which leaves Faust unconscious on the floor. In order to be united with Helen he must join her in her own sphere, and thither he must be furthered by a spiritual coadjutor as ideal as she is. His guide to the realm of antiquity is Homunculus, a spirit without a body, the product of German learning repre sented by Faust's former famulus, the pedantic but indefatigable Wagner.

In Sparta Faust ultimately finds himself the lord of a mediaeval manor. Helen returns after the fall of Troy and for a brief but rapturous time she lives as the wife of Faust; until their son, Euphorion — a personification of the spirit of poetry whom Goethe was pleased to identify with Byron—perishes Icarus-like in conse quence of his irresistible impulse to soar to the heights, and his mother departs with him.

The episode of Faust and Helen, published separately in 1827 as a °classic-romantic phan tasmagoria, an interlude to 'Faust) , is, in the economy of the drama, a play within a play, and is surrounded with an operatic, even dream-like atmosphere. At its conclusion we find Faust once more in the German Empire. For aiding the emperor to put down a rebellion he is re warded with the sovereignty over a tract of coastland. He reclaims an extensive domain from the sea, establishes a prosperous com munity, and confesses that in the prospect of benefit to untold future generations his supreme moment has come. He dies, but not to fall into the hands of Mephistopheles. Good spirits defend him; doctors and saints intercede for him; the spirit of Gretchen pleads for him; and as one who erred so long as he strove, but who strove, though blindly, so long as he lived, he goes to his reward.

The action above outlined constitutes a complete and consistent whole, and there is no reason for questioning Goethe's assertion that from the first he conceived the subject as a whole in essentially this form. Not only, how ever, did he give his work to the public in por tions, but until the very last decade of his life he expected that it would remain a series of fragments. Even now it is fragmentary in exe cution, though not in conception. Some highly important links in the chain— such as, for example, a scene in Hades in which Faust se cures from Persephone the release of the spirit of Helen—are left to be forged by the imagi nation. Indeed, (Faust> by contrast to the or to 'Paradise Lost,> goes forward by leaps and bounds, and conveys by implication as much as it sets forth explicitly — or more. Goethe's invariable habit was so to treat a situation or an incident as to give it a connotation of infinite relations. And as to 'Faust', he never wrote any passage or scene until he was ready to make what he wished to make of it for itself ; and when he assembled passages and scenes written at widely different times, he gave them little or no editorial re vision. From his point of view they needed none. Hence some inconsistencies, some un deniable difficulties, and even some irrelevancies.

But who would subject to rationalistic ex amination a plot that takes us from heaven through the world to hell, from Leipzig to Sparta, and from Troy to Missolonghi? Goethe's 'Faust' is a symbolical representation not merely of a type of character, not merely of the poet's own career, nor yet merely of the history of German culture in its richest period: (Faust' is Goethe's encyclopedic com ment on human life as such. The first words

and the last bid us so regard it. It is a play: hence — after the dedication —a prologue in the theatre. It is a play, the chief character of which is a son and servant of God, no less representative of faithful humanity than Job: hence a prologue in heaven, in which the Lord gives Mephistopheles the privilege of tempting the hero. It is a play, the acts and facts of which are neither more nor less real than the acts and facts of our whole mundane existence amid the vain shadows of things. Of this the final chorus mysticus assures us: All things transitory But as symbols are sent.

is a poem; or rather, a volume of poetry which for form ranges—not even dis daining prose — from the homely Knittelverse ("doggerel rhymes") of Hans Sachs to stately hexameter; for method, varies from the minut est realism to the boldest figuration of visions unseen and undreamed of before; and for substance crystallizes the saturated fullness of a life of fourscore years.

In fine, is Goethe's philosophical testament. Even his idiosyncrasies find expres sion here: his preference for neptunism over vulcanism, his abhorrence of pedantry, his im patience with contemporary mediocrity and philistinism, his indifference to the empty framework of dilapidated institutions. But here he also gave utterance to his profoundest convictions concerning being, conduct, life, and destiny. Goethe can write cynically when he speaks for himself as well as from the lips of Mephistopheles. The "old heathen" could in his own person as little as in the person of his hero meet the test of Christian catechization; Faust does not reveal much capacity for repentance, and he reveals none for repining; he appears to be for the most part a ruthless self-seeker. Nevertheless, we may not unfairly call (Faust' a Christian poem. Altruistic activity is the culmination of the course of Faust's develop ment; altruistic intercession is not inoperative in his redemption; and the restlessly striving spirit in him works out its salvation because, consciously or unconsciously, it is ever drawn onward and upward by another spirit endowed with the divine attributes of goodness, love, and mercy. Translated by Bayard Taylor (Boston 1870-71) and by Anna Swanwick (London 1878). Edited by Calvin Thomas (Boston 1899). Consult Otto Pniower, Faust ; Zcugnisse und Excurse zu seiner Entstehungs geschichte' (Berlin 1899) • Veit Valentin, Goethes Faustdichtung in ihrer kiinstlerischen Einheit dargestellt' (in Schriften,' Vol. II, Berlin 1894) ; Jakob Minor, (Goethe's Faust; Entstehungsgeschichte und Erklarung' (Stuttgart 1901) ; Friedrich Lienhard, (E.in fiihrung in Goethe's Faust> (Leipzig 1913).