B00ARI2G5C EBOK (48 page)

Also relevant in this connection is a conversation with Falk in 1813, in which Goethe expounds his theory of the entelechies at considerable length; he here calls them ‘monads’, but it is clear from another statement to Eckermann (conversation of 3 March 1830) that he regarded the Aristotelian and Leibnizian terms as synonymous. According to Falk’s account, Goethe talked of ‘strong and powerful’ monads which seize any lesser, insignificant ones that approach them, and draw them into an organic union with themselves. (The words of the angels in 11958 ff., where the ‘spirit-energy’ of Faust’s
entelechy ‘captures the physical elements powerfully’, are reminiscent of this train of thought.) Death is the natural process of dissolution in which the dominant monad releases its subordinates from this union. Goethe seems to imply here that although all monads are immortal, some are more immortal than others: there is a hierarchy in which some have a much stronger potential to participate in the process of creation, as well as to maintain themselves in existence. ‘I myself’, he adds, ‘am sure that I have existed a thousand times already and may hope to return a thousand times again’ (conversation with Falk, 25 January 1813).

‘Mountain Gorges’ and ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’:
see Williams, 1976, 659-63; also 1987,145,162, 209.

castrato boys:
commentators have for some reason been strangely resistant to this obvious reading of these four lines; one eminent Catholic Goethe scholar (Beutler) wildly guesses that the devils’ ‘most outrageous trick’ (11691) was the crucifixion of Christ.

Pater Profundus, etc.:
the Latin epithets do not seem to intend any specific identification of these archetypal desert fathers, though in medieval times ‘Pater Profundus’ and ‘Pater Seraphicus’ were names given to St Bernard of Clairvaux and St Francis of Assisi, respectively. ‘Doctor Marianus’ was a title of honour given to scholarly contemplatives who excelled in devotion to the Mother of God.

Blessed Boys:
the idea that the contemplative lends his physical senses for spirits to use is derived from the Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), with whose
Arcana Coelestia
Goethe had been familiar since his youth.

integument
: the
‘Flocken’
in this line are usually interpreted as something like the cocoon of a chrysalis; but in his meteorological work Goethe uses the same word to suggest a fleecy cloud dissolving as it rises, and this image is probably also intended here, as Karl Lohmeyer (1927,117) points out.

Luna:
see Williams, 1976.

Goethe and Christianity:
Luke, ‘Goethe’s attitude to Christian belief (
Publications of the English Goethe Society
, 59, 1988-9).

Göttemebenbürtig
: the literal translation of 7440 (in Faust’s description of Helen to Chiron) is ‘the eternal being, born the equal of gods’.

unzulänglick
as Staiger points out (1959, 466),
unzulânglich
(which in modern German means ‘insufficient’ or ‘inadequate’) was used in the sense of ‘inaccessible’ in the 17th century and earlier; the mystical devotional writer Zinzendorf, for example, refers to God dwelling
‘in einem unzulänglichen Lichte’ (in lumine inaccessbile
), and other instances are given in Grimm’s authoritative historical dictionary of the German language. Goethe’s occasional retention of the older usage is documented in line 9083 of
Faust
, where
unzulängliche Mauer
(unassailable wall) appears to be what he wrote, though it was altered by the WA editor Erich Schmidt to
unzugänglich
, a ‘correction’ generally adopted. The use of
Ereignis
in the sense of
‘Eräugnis
(manifestation) in the next line of the Chorus Mysticus is also attested in Grimm.

Mahler:
Gustav Mahler’s setting (composed in 1906) of ‘Mountain Gorges’ constitutes the second and major part of his Eighth Symphony, a choral work in two long movements. Mahler includes most of Goethe’s text, using vast orchestral and vocal resources and leading up to the ‘Chorus Mysticus’ as a massive climax.

[
Prologue]:
although not so called by Goethe, this scene has the character of a prologue designed to mark the transition from the world of Part One to that of Part Two. Its date of composition is uncertain, but has been shown by Schadewaldt to be very probably March or April 1826 for Faust’s soliloquy (4679-727) and June or July 1827 for the elf dialogue (4613-78). In Goethe’s original conception, represented by the 1816 scenario (paralipomenon BA 70) and by a jotting as late as May 1827 (BA 76), spirits tempt the sleeping Faust to pursue worldly glory by devoting himself to action in the public sphere, for which more austere purpose he must put the private world of ‘sensuality and passion’ behind him. This theme in its turn seems to echo the obscure schema of 1797 (paralipomenon BA 5), in which Goethe distinguishes between passionate personal enjoyment of life (
Lebensgenuß
) as the theme of Part One and enjoyment of deeds (
Tatengenuß
) as that of Part Two. The function of the attendant spirits was then changed, for reasons already further discussed (see Introd., pp. xxii f.).

Ariel
: as in the ‘Walpurgis Night’s Dream’ of Part One (Sc. 25), Goethe borrows the friendly elemental spirit Ariel from Shakespeare’s
The Tempest
, though again without developing the Shakespearean connection in any way.

How strong and pure
…: Faust’s speech is in terza
rima
, the technically difficult and grandiose metre (with the rhyme scheme
aba bcb cdc
etc.) in which Dante wrote the
Divine Comedy;
Goethe hardly ever used it, the only other example being the great elegiac meditation on Schiller’s skull (’
I’m ernsten Beinhaus…’
) written in September 1826—that is, probably a few months after Faust’s speech. The
remarkable description of sunrise in the high mountains appears to be based on Goethe’s memories of Switzerland, which he revisited in 1797. His account of this journey describes in particular the Rhine waterfall at Schaffhausen with a rainbow formed in its rising spray, a phenomenon he repeatedly returned to the spot to observe. The choice here of
terza rima
, with its ceaseless flow through a constant form, is particularly appropriate to the image of the rainbow, static in the moving water. On the symbolic level this image also continues the theme of healing and regeneration already embodied in the elf dialogue; Faust’s inability to gaze directly at the sun and his gesture of turning to the rainbow instead (4715 ff.) are held together by the motif of renunciation. The passage, culminating in the much quoted and enigmatic final line (
‘Am farbigen Abglanz haben wir das Leben’
) which recalls Shelley’s ‘Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, stains the white radiance of eternity’ (
Adonais
, 1821), is usually interpreted in terms of the ancient metaphysical distinction between the perceptible, phenomenal world and an ulterior, divine reality. This reading appears to be supported by the various Neoplatonic echoes in Goethe’s work, such as the remark in one of his scientific essays that ‘The truth, being identical with the divine, can never be perceived directly by us, we only behold it in the reflection [
Abglanz]
, in the example, the symbol, in particular and related phenomena’ (
An Essay on Meteorology
, 1825). On the other hand, a dualistic interpretation is not clearly borne out by Faust’s own words (4704-14), which seem to describe an overwhelming emotional or mystical encounter with the force (‘what flame of love or hate’) of life itself, rather similar to his encounter in Part One (Sc. 4) with the Earth Spirit, from which he also had to turn away. The essential difference, and the essential theme, is that he is now prepared to accept human limitations: he will study the phenomenon, love the similitude, rather than confront the terrible and impossible Absolute. Timelessness must not crush time into insignificance, but intersect with it, as the colours of the spectrum stand over the white moving spray, as art criss-crosses life in a synthesis ‘changing yet ever still’. Such at least appears to be Faust’s attitude in this speech. For purposes of this ‘prologue’ he is wise, philosophical, and mature; which is not to say, however, that Goethe portrays him as remaining consistently so throughout Part Two (cf. Introd., pp. xiii f, xviii £).

an imperial palace:
I have followed the Weimar edition in assuming that Goethe intends this location to be understood as a general heading for Scenes 2-7 of Act I, which all take place in various rooms of a palace or in its garden.
Pfalz
can be (as apparently here) an archaic
word for ‘palace’, or it can have the wider sense of ‘palatinate’, i.e., one of the various places of residence between which, since there was no official central ‘capital’, the medieval emperor would travel with his court.

Mephistopheles:
Having somehow got rid (as Goethe indicated to Eckermann on 1 October 1827) of the official court jester, Mephistopheles takes his place, immediately propounding a riddle to which the answer is perhaps ‘the Fool’ or perhaps ‘the Devil’.

Ghibellines and Guelphs:
the two great factions in early medieval politics during the long struggle between the papacy and the Hohenstaufen emperors. The Ghibellines (the name is perhaps an Italianization of Waiblingen, the imperial family’s place of origin) traditionally supported the Emperor and the Guelph (Guelf, Welf) party the Pope. The references to them here and in Act IV (10772) are anachronistic if we situate the dealings between Faust and the Emperor in the 16th century, but in this symbolic story of prodigal rulers and power conflicts no strict chronology is called for.

gold in the earth:
Goethe here reverts to the folklore theme (which appeared more than once in Part One) that the Devil has knowledge of underground treasure (whether as veins of precious metal or as hidden gold and silver objects) and power to ‘raise’ or recover it (cf. Part One, 2675 ff, 3664-73).

Astrologer:
on Mephistopheles’ role as
souffleur
to the Court Astrologer, see notes to p. xxiii (
Doppelgànger
) and p. 57. In the speech 4955-70 Mephistopheles wraps up his essential message (the advantages of possessing or magically acquiring silver and gold) in high-sounding astro-babble about the seven planets of the medieval system. Since the latter was geocentric, these included the sun and moon as well as the other five known moving stars, though the seven are here listed in the more correct Copernican order from the sun outwards. ‘The Astrologer’ alludes to the particular metals with which they were each traditionally associated or identified (the Sun with gold, the Moon with silver, Venus with copper, Saturn with lead, etc.) as well as to the mythical role of the deity after whom each was named (Venus as the love-goddess, Mars as the war-god, and so forth); the double prominence of Venus as morning and evening star is also mentioned (4958).

Carnival masque:
see Introd., pp. xxiv ff. Goethe derived some of the costumed figures and other details for this court pageant from the Roman Carnival which he had seen and described in 1789, some from pictures such as Mantegna’s ‘Triumphs of Caesar’ and Dürer’s
‘Triumph of the Emperor Maximilian’, and a number from the book by a Renaissance author, Grassini, describing the various triumphs and masquerades in Florence at the time of the Medicis.

Theophrastus:
a philosopher from Lesbos, c.370-287
BC
, whose few surviving works include a long treatise on plants.

dialogues:
the reference in this and the next two stage directions to unscripted spoken material may or may not mean that Goethe intended to write it in but left the scene unfinished.

Punchineüos:
the ‘Pulcinella’ was the stock figure of the clown in the Italian popular comedy; Goethe uses this Italian form, of which ‘Punchinello’ (also shortened to ‘Punch’) was the corrupted English equivalent.

Parasites:
the παρ
σιτός (literally ‘fellow-diner’), who flattered rich people to earn free meals, was a popular figure in ancient comedy.

Night and Graveyard poets:
Goethe alludes satirically to contemporary ‘Gothic’ fashions in German and English Romantic literature, which he considered morbid and unnatural by contrast with the wholesomeness of classical Greek culture and mythology. For the ‘Graces’, ‘Fates’, and ‘Furies’ in the ensuing scene see Index.

Asmodeus:
a demon in Persian or Hebrew mythology whose special function is to stir up hatred and strife. He is mentioned again in 6961 by Mephistopheles.

mountainous beast:
the allegorical elephant group (typical in Goethe’s Renaissance sources for this scene) has been variously interpreted. It seems to be the last ‘real’ item in the procession; shortly after it, and heralded by the arrival of Mephistopheles (5457; see next note), a series of magical events begins which are not in the official programme and which the Herald can no longer understand or control (5500-9).