The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' Part 1

The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust'

by H. B. Cotterill.

PREFACE

These lectures have been given perhaps half a dozen times, in England, in Switzerland and in Germany. On allowing them to appear in print I should perhaps apologize to my readers for the somewhat free and familiar style in which parts of them are written; but even if I had the time to recast them into a more serious form I should be unwilling to do so, for there is surely enough ponderous literature on the subject, and although some may resent in a book what often helps to make a lecture attractive, I think I can rely on the fact that many people agree with the dictum of Horace:

Ridiculum aeri Fortius et melius magnas plerumque secat res,

or, as Milton has it:

Joking decides great things Stronger and better oft than earnest can.

Almost the only change that I have made in my MS. has been the subst.i.tution or addition of an English translation in numerous places where I had formerly quoted the German original. On some occasions, when first writing the lectures, I very probably used the English version of _Faust_ by Bayard Taylor, but I have not the book at present at hand and cannot feel quite certain whether any of the verse translations are not my own. The little book makes of course no pretence to be a contribution to critical or biographical literature. It is meant especially for those who wish to know something more about the story of Faust and about Goethe's play, and who, because their knowledge of German does not suffice or for other reasons, are unable to study the subject in any more satisfactory way.

H. B. C.

FREIBURG IM BREISGAU _August 1912_

I

THE OLD FAUST-LEGEND

All of us have probably experienced the fact that it is possible to have been familiar for a long time with some great work of imagination--some poem or picture--to have learnt to love it almost as if it were a living person, to imagine that we understand it and appreciate it fully, even to fancy that it has a special message, a deeper meaning, for us than for almost any one else, and then to come across somebody--some commentator perhaps--who informs us that our uncritical appreciation is quite worthless, mere shallow sentiment, and that until we can accurately a.n.a.lyze and formulate the Idea which the artist endeavoured to incorporate in his work, and cla.s.sify the diverse manifestations of this Idea as subjective, objective, symbolical, allegorical, dramatical-psychological or psychological-dramatical, we are not ent.i.tled to hold, far less to express, any opinion on the subject.

When I realised that I had undertaken to lecture on _Faust_, I thought it my duty to study Goethe's German commentators--some of them at least; for to study all would consume a lifetime. A few of the works of these commentators I already possessed--some, I am sorry to say, with their pages yet uncut. Others I procured, following the advice of German friends well versed in the matter. I set to work on what was presumably the best of these commentaries. As I laboured onwards, page after page, I found myself from time to time turning back to the t.i.tle of the book.

Sure enough, it was _Ueber Goethe's Faust_. I laboured on--the suspicion deepening at every turn of the page that perhaps the binder might have bound up the wrong text under the t.i.tle _Ueber Goethe's Faust_. At the fifty-third page I came to a dead stop. Except quite incidentally neither Goethe nor Faust had as yet been mentioned. These fifty-three pages had been entirely devoted to what seemed to my rather unmetaphysical mind a not very luminous or edifying dissertation on the difference between _Ansicht_ and _Einsicht_--between mere Opinion and true critical Insight; and, as far as I could discover, the only conclusion as yet arrived at was that the writer possessed an exclusive monopoly in the last-mentioned article.

But I will not inflict upon you any further description of my tusslings with Teutonic interpreters of _Faust_--with their _egos_ and _non-egos_, their moral-aesthetic symbolisms and so on. Let us leave them to the tender mercies of Goethe himself, who was not sparing of his ridicule in regard to his commentators, nor, alas, at times in regard to his countrymen. 'Of all nations,' he says, 'the Germans understand me least.... Such people make life a burden by their abstruse thoughts and their _Ideas_, which they hunt up in all directions and insist on discovering in everything.... They come and ask _me_ what "Ideas" _I_ have incorporated in my _Faust_. Just as if I myself knew!--or could describe it, even if I did know!' Of course Goethe's great poem contains an Idea, if by that word we mean in a poem what we mean by _life_ in anything living; but it is not by dissection and a.n.a.lysis that we shall discover it. 'He who wishes,' says Goethe in _Faust_, 'to examine and describe anything living first does his best to expel the life. Then he has got the dead parts in his hand; but what is wanting is just the spiritual bond.' It is my purpose--a purpose not easy of fulfilment--to avoid this method of dissection and to place before you living realities, not anatomical specimens.

But before we plunge _in medias res_ and grapple our present subject, namely the old Faust-legend, I should like to say just a few words in order to show from what standpoint I think we should regard Goethe as a poet and a thinker--for that he is great both as a poet and as a thinker cannot be denied.

Goethe describes his own philosophy as the philosophy of action. He believed in impulse, in inspiration, in action, rather than in reflexion, a.n.a.lysis and logic. 'Reflect not!' he makes Iphigenie exclaim--'Reflect not! Grant freely, as thou feel'st!' And in one of his Epigrams he says:

Yes, that's the right way, When we cannot say How we think. True thought Comes as a gift, unsought.

Such theory of inspiration is thoroughly Greek, reminding one of Plato's 'muse-inspired madman' and of what Sophocles is related to have said to Aeschylus; 'Thou, Aeschylus, always dost the right thing--but unconsciously ([Greek: all' ouk eidos ge]).' Thus it was also with Goethe. All intellectual hobbies and s.h.i.+bboleths, all this endless wearisome discussion and dissection and a.n.a.lysis and criticism and bandying about of _opinion_, which is the very life-breath of modern intellectual existence and modern journalistic literature, Goethe rejected, as Plato had done in his _Phaedrus_, where he makes Socrates call such things 'rotten soul-fodder.'

'The whole! The whole!' was Goethe's frequent exclamation--'life!

action! being!--the living whole, not the dead parts!' He was for ever decrying mere thought, mere intellect, mere cleverness. And yet of all moderns what greater intellect, what greater thinker, can we name than Goethe himself? Seldom, perhaps never, has there existed a mortal so many-sided. 'In such manifold directions'--he wrote to his friend Jacobi--'does my nature move, that I cannot be satisfied with _one_ single mode of thought. As poet and artist I am polytheist; as a student of Nature I am pantheist. When I need a G.o.d for my personal nature, as a moral and spiritual human being, He also exists for me.

Heaven and earth are such an immense realm that it can only be grasped by the collective intelligence of all intelligent beings.' Such 'collective intelligence' Goethe perhaps more nearly possessed than any other human being has done. The lordly pleasure-house which he built for his soul was such as Tennyson describes (and his words refer of course to Goethe):

Full of great rooms and small the palace stood, All various, each a perfect whole From living Nature, fit for every mood And change of my still soul.

And wonderfully true are those other lines of Tennyson--but rather bitter, as perhaps was to be expected of Tennyson when he was describing a great character with which he had so little sympathy:

I take possession of man's mind and deed.

I care not what the sects may brawl.

I sit as G.o.d holding no form of creed, But contemplating all.

To Goethe all things, both in Nature and in Art were but transitory reflexions of the real and eternal. 'Alles vergangliche ist nur ein Gleichnis'--all things transitory are but a parable, an allegory of truth and reality--such are some of the last words of his great Poem; and thus too he regarded his own poetry. 'I have,' he said, 'always regarded all that I have produced as merely symbolic, and I did not much care whether what I made were pots or dishes.' Even that life-poem of his, _Faust_, which he planned and began as a young man of about twenty-five, and the last lines of which he wrote a few months before his death, aged eighty-two, only represents (as indeed do all great works of art) _one_ aspect of belief--or perhaps I should rather say a certain number of truth's innumerable aspects, none of them claiming to afford a full vision, and not a few of them apparently contradictory; for, as both Plato and Shakespeare tell us, truth cannot be directly stated: it lies, as it were, in equipoise between contradictory statements:

For no thought is contented. The better sort, As thoughts of things divine ... do set the word Against the word.

_Faust_ does not claim to be a universal Gospel, nor to offer a final solution of the riddle of existence. It makes no attempt to pile up Pelions on Ossas--to scale heaven with the Babel-towers of the human reason. It merely holds up a mirror in which we see reflected certain views of truth, such as presented themselves to Goethe from some of his intellectual heights. To regard it and judge it otherwise--to a.n.a.lyse its Idea--to insist on discovering its Moral--to compare it with some little self-contained system of theory or dogma which we ourselves may have finally accepted--and to condemn Goethe as a prophet of lies because, viewing truth from such diverse standpoints (many of them perhaps quite inaccessible for us) he may seem at times to ignore some of our pet formulae--this, I think, would convict us of a lamentable lack of wisdom and humility. And if at times we feel pained by what may seem irreverent, let us remember that Goethe wrote also these words: 'With many people who have G.o.d constantly on their tongues He becomes a phrase, a mere name uttered without any accompanying idea. If they were penetrated by G.o.d's greatness, they would rather be dumb and for very reverence not dare to name Him.'

Goethe accepted not without a certain amount of pride the t.i.tle given him by some of his contemporaries--that of 'the last of the Heathen.'

But which of us will doubt the sincerity or fail to be touched by the humility of his words: 'And yet perhaps I am such a Christian as Christ Himself would wish me to be.'

There are doubtless but very few (and I confess that I am not one of these select few) who can accept Goethe in all his many-sidedness. We ordinary mortals are incapable of such Protean versatility and are sure to find points, often many and important points, where we are strongly repelled by his teachings and his personality. The idealist is scandalized by his vigorous realism, the realist and materialist by his idealism, the dogmatist by his free thought, the free-thinker by his reverence towards religion, while the scientific expert is apt to regard him as a mere poet, oblivious or ignorant of the fact that, although without scientific training, besides propounding theories on Colour which were for a time accepted by leading authorities on that subject and besides making a discovery which had escaped the investigations of professional Anatomists (that of the intermaxillary bone), Goethe was the discoverer of a law, that of the metamorphosis of leaves and flowers, which may be said to have almost revolutionised the science of Botany.

Let us now turn to our subject and attempt to trace to its first sources this strange and suggestive legend of Faust, the great Magician.

And first, we shall see our way more clearly if we consider what is really the nature of that magic, or black art, which played such an important part in the medieval imagination.

Perhaps we may say that by 'magic' was denoted that art by which one was supposed to gain a knowledge of, and a power over, the prime elements of Nature and its cosmic potencies, so as to be able to combine and use them independently of natural laws. It is this power that Faust in Goethe's play longs to attain:

... To find the force That binds the world and guides its course, Its germs and vital powers explore And peddle with worthless words no more.

In almost every age and nation we find a vital Power, an ordering Force, recognised as present in the natural world, and the human mind seems ever p.r.o.ne to believe such Power to have affinity to human nature and to be, so to speak, open to a bargain. The fetish priest, the rain doctor, the medicine-man, the Hindu yogi, the Persian Mage, the medieval saint, and countless miracle-workers in every age, have ever believed themselves to be, whether by force of will, or by ecstatic contemplation, or by potent charms, in communion with the great Spirit of Nature, or with mighty cosmic influences--with Powers of Light or of Darkness; with Oromasdes or Arimanes, Brahma or Siva, Jehovah or Baal; with Zoroastrian Devs, Persian Genii, guardian angels or attendant demons; with the Virgin Queen of heaven--whether as Selene, Astarte, Hecate, or the Madonna; with the Prince of the powers of this world--with or without his horns and his cloven foot.

Not only among the heathen--the orientals and Egyptians--but also among the Chosen People we find the priests attesting their favour with the Deity, and a.s.serting the truth of their religion, by what we may call orthodox magic. We all remember how Aaron's rod, in the form of an orthodox snake, swallowed up the unorthodox rod-snakes of the Egyptian sorcerers, and how Elijah attested the power of the true G.o.d by calling down fire from heaven in his contest with the priests of the Sun-G.o.d Baal. King Solomon too was for many ages credited with magic powers and was regarded in medieval times as the great authority in matters of wizardry.

Among the Greeks, although mysteries and witches played no small part in the old religion and survived long in popular superst.i.tion, magic was thrust into the background by the poetic and philosophic h.e.l.lenic imagination. The powers of Nature were incorporated in the grand and beautiful human forms of the Olympian G.o.ds, or in the dread shapes of the Infernal deities. But even among those of the Greeks who were raised far above the ordinary superst.i.tions of the populace we find many traces of mysticism and magic, as for example in connexion with oracles, with divine healing, with the efficacy of images and other sacred objects, and especially in connexion with Orphic and other Mysteries. And, while for the most part Greek philosophy was rather imaginative than mystic, still we encounter the genuine mystic element in such Greek sages as Empedocles and Pythagoras, both of whom a.s.sumed the priestly character and seem to have laid claim to supernatural powers. Empedocles indeed, it is said, gave himself out to be a deity exiled from heaven, and was apparently wors.h.i.+pped as such. According to a not very trustworthy legend he threw himself into the crater of Mount Etna--perhaps in order thus to solve the mystery of existence. Pythagoras is said by some to have met his death at the hands of the people of Crotona, who set fire to his house and burnt him alive with many of his disciples. Goethe evidently alludes to Pythagoras (as well perhaps as to John Huss and others who found their death at the stake) in some well-known lines, which may be roughly thus translated:

The few that truth's deep mystery have learned And could not keep it in their hearts concealed, But to the mob their inner faith revealed, Have evermore been crucified and burned.

We now come to Christianity. In the early ages of the Church the final appeal seems to have been an appeal to miracles, and we find the apostles and their followers claiming the sole right of working miracles in the name of the one true G.o.d and anathematizing all other wonder-workers as in league with Satan. We all remember Elymas the Sorcerer struck blind by St. Paul, and the adversary of St. Peter, Simon the Mage, around whom first gathered the myths which lived so long in the popular imagination and many of which we shall meet with in the legend of Dr. Faust.

This Simon, the Magus or Sorcerer, who bewitched the people of Samaria, and was looked upon as 'the great power of G.o.d,' is said in the _Acts of the Apostles_ to have been converted by St. Philip and to have brought upon himself a severe rebuke from St. Peter for offering to purchase with money the gift of wonder-working. In about the third century the legend of Simon Magus, as related by Clement of Alexandria, seems to have already incorporated in a mythical form the discords of the early Church, and especially the feud between the Jewish Christians, followers of St. Peter, and the Gentile proselytes, followers of St. Paul. Indeed Simon the Sorcerer was in course of time regarded by some as having been identical with St. Paul--that is to say, it was believed that St. Paul had been none other but Simon Magus in disguise. The voice heard at St.

Paul's conversion and the light by which for a season he was struck blind were alleged to have been feats of wizardry by which he, a wolf in sheep's clothing, stole his way into the true fold in order to introduce discord and to betray the Church to the Gentiles.

St. Peter, the true Simon, is said to have followed the false Simon from city to city, out-rivalling his Satanic miracles by orthodox miracles, until at length they reached Rome. Here Simon Magus by his magic arts succeeded in flying up into the sky in the presence of the Emperor and his court, but at the word of Peter the charm was broken and the wizard fell to earth and was killed.

But, besides this, the so-called Gnostic heresy introduced other elements into the legend. These Gnostics were a sect that arose in the early times of Christianity. They pretended to a special insight into the divine nature, and combined Platonic and oriental theories with Christian dogmas. They tried to convert the story of the Redemption into a cosmological myth, and regarded the human person of Christ as a kind of phantom--a magic apparition. Some of these Gnostics seem to have accepted Simon Magus as the 'Power of G.o.d'--as the Logos, or divine Reason, by which the world was created (or reduced from chaos to an ordered Cosmos). From this a curious myth arose. This Logos, or creative Power, was identified with the Sun-G.o.d, as the source of life, and as Sun-G.o.d was united to the Moon-G.o.ddess, Selene. Now the words Helen and Selene are connected in Greek, and Helen of Troy was accepted by these Gnostics as a mythical form of the G.o.ddess of the moon. Hence it came that in the Gnostic form of the Simon Magus legend he was married to Helen of Troy, and this notion found its way into the old Faust-legend, and is used by Goethe in that exceedingly wonderful and beautiful part of his great poem which is called the _Helena_.

After the suppression of Gnostic and other early heresies came the contest of the now united and politically powerful Church against the outer world of heathendom. While retaining for herself what we may call a monopoly in orthodox magic the Church condemned as in league with the devil _all_ speculation, whether theological or scientific--the one as leading to heresy, the other to sensual ends, such as riches, fame, and those l.u.s.ts of the flesh and that pride of intellect which were fatal to the contemplative and ascetic ideals of medieval Christianity.

It was not among Teuton and Celtic savages but among the learned adherents of the old Greek philosophy that the Church in those earlier days found her most dangerous and obstinate adversaries. Plato and Aristotle (whose tenets the Christian Schoolmen afterwards endeavoured to harmonize with the teaching of the Gospel) were at first brought forward to oppose the new religion, these doctrines of Greek philosophy being largely supplemented by mystic ideas derived from oriental sources. It was however Pythagoras, the great Greek-Italian philosopher of the sixth century B.C., the predecessor and to some extent the inspirer of Socrates and Plato, who was most generally accepted as the rival of St. Paul. It was his mystical doctrines of Number and Harmony, of the Unit and the Triad, which were most often marshalled against the Christian doctrine of the Unity and Trinity of the G.o.dhead. Indeed it even seems that Pythagoras was believed by some of these adversaries of Christianity to be the incarnation of Deity (as had been believed in his lifetime) and to be the friend and saviour of mankind, like Prometheus of old, who was said to have given his life for the human race devoted to destruction by the anger of an offended G.o.d.

No wonder that, embittered by such opponents, the Church launched her anathema against all the profane learning of the day--all study of the ancient heathen philosophers and poets. The G.o.ds of Olympus became synonymous with demons and monsters of the Christian h.e.l.l, as we see in Dante and in such old legends as that of the Hill of Venus. Plato and Aristotle, and even Homer, were put on the index. Virgil especially was regarded as a dangerous wizard--although in another age he was honoured almost as a prophet and a foreteller of the Messiah. I remember that many years ago, when I was searching for Virgil's tomb on Posilipo near Naples, I was informed by a contadino, of whom I had asked my way, that Virgil ('Marone,' as he called him) was a great magician. The man knew nothing of Virgil as poet. Probably Virgil's account of the descent of Aeneas into the lower world, and that strange _Eclogue_ of his, the _Pollio_, in which possibly a Sibylline prophecy of the coming of a Messiah is reproduced, may have credited him with magic lore, and may also have invested him for a time with almost the dignity of a canonical Minor Prophet.

Now, during these ante-Reformation ages the Roman Church claimed, as I have said, a monopoly in orthodox magic. She could send a soul to h.e.l.l, or by rites and exorcism she could save the sinner from his compact with Satan, as one sees in such legends as those of Merlin, of Tannhauser, of Robert the Devil, and of that Theophilus who was converted by flowers sent him from Paradise by the Virgin-Martyr St. Dorothea. Of another Theophilus, an eastern monk of perhaps the sixth century, we are told that, like Faust, he made a written compact with the devil, but repented and was saved by the Virgin Mary, who s.n.a.t.c.hed the fatal doc.u.ment from the devil's claws and gave it back to the penitent.