B00ARI2G5C EBOK (45 page)

Now when Chiron hears what Faust desires and intends, he is delighted once more to encounter a man who demands the impossible, for that is what he has always encouraged in his pupils. He also offers the modern hero assistance and advice, carries him on his broad back criss-cross over all the fords and pebbled shores of the Peneus, leaves Larissa on his right, and shows his rider only this or that place where the ill-fated king Perseus of Macedonia rested for a few minutes on his perilous flight. And thus they make their way downstream to the foot of Mount Olympus; here they come across a long procession of Sibyls, more than twelve in number. Chiron describes the first few who pass them as old acquaintances, and commends his protégé to Manto, the wise and well-disposed daughter of Tiresias.

She reveals to him that the path to the underworld is about to open, since now is the hour at which long ago the mountain had to gape wide to allow so many great souls to pass below. This indeed happens, and favoured by the horoscopic moment, they descend silently together. Suddenly Manto covers her protégé with her veil, thrusting him off the path and against the rocky wall, so that he fears he will choke to death. Releasing him a few moments later, she explains this precaution: the head of the Gorgon, growing ever bigger and wider with the passage of centuries, was moving up the chasm towards them; Persephone tries to stop it showing itself on the plain, for the phantoms and monsters gathered there for the feast would be driven distracted by its appearance and scatter immediately. Even Manto herself, wise as she is, does not dare look at it; and if Faust’s eyes had fallen on it, he would have been at once destroyed, and no trace of his body or spirit ever found again in the entire universe. At last they arrive at the court of Persephone, immeasurable in its size and thronging with the countless figures of the dead; here there is boundless scope for incident, until finally Faust, presented as a second Orpheus, is well received, though his request is considered rather strange. The speech of Manto as his sponsor will of course be impressive: she relies first on the force of precedents, adducing in detail the favoured cases of Protesilaus, Alcestis, and Eurydice. Helen
herself, she points out, has once already been given leave to return to life, to unite herself with Achilles, her early love! We must not here disclose the remainder of this speech and its eloquence, least of all its peroration, upon which the Queen is moved to tears and gives her consent; she refers the petitioners to the three Judges in whose adamantine memory all things are engraved as they roll past their feet in the stream of Lethe and seem to vanish away.

It here comes to light that on the previous occasion Helen was permitted to return among the living on condition that she remained on the island of Leuce. With a similar restriction she is now to return to the territory of Sparta and to appear there as truly alive in an imaginary palace of Menelaus; it must then be a matter for her new suitor to see whether he can so influence her changeable mind and sensitive temperament as to win her favour.

The intermezzo I have announced begins at this point; it is of course sufficiently integrated with the course of the action, but for reasons that will later appear, I am here publishing it on its own.

This brief scenario should of course have been offered to the public in a form elaborated with all the embellishments of poetry and eloquence. But for the time being let it serve, just as it is, to make known the antecedent circumstances (
Antezedenzien
) of the forthcoming ‘Helena: A Classic-Romantic-Phantasmagorical Intermezzo to
Faust’;
for as its prelude they deserve close acquaintance and careful attention.

Helena:
Goethe’s diaries of 1826 even refer to
Helena
and
Faust
as if they were separate works which he happens to be writing simultaneously.

early version of Helen story:
in 1826 Goethe wrote to Wilhelm von Humboldt that
‘[Helena
] is one of my oldest conceptions; it is based on the puppet-play tradition’ (letter of 22 October 1816; similarly to Boisserée on the same date). To Knebel he called it in 1827 ‘a product of many years’ which now is as impressive to him as the tall trees in his garden in Weimar (which he had planted himself in the mid-1770s) (letter of 14 November 1827). In 1828 he told a visitor:
‘[Helena
] is a fifty-year-old conception. Some of it dates from the earliest days when I first began writing
Faust’
(conversation with Kraukling, ?31 August 1828).

Faustus legend:
see Part One, Introd., pp. xiii ff. The Helen motif was made memorable by the famous passage in Marlowe’s dramatized version in which Faustus, seeing the apparition of Helen, exclaims:

‘Was this the face that launched a thousand ships
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?’ etc.

comedy:
in two of his last letters (to Boisserée, 24 November 1831, and Wilhelm von Humboldt, 17 March 1832) Goethe expresses regret that, having decided not to publish Part Two in his lifetime, he will not be able to enjoy his friends’ appreciative response to ‘these very serious jests’. The comic element in the text, of which Goethe was well aware, has been greatly underemphasized by critics.

Wager and Part Two:
this applies particularly to lines 9381 f. and 9411-18 of the central scene of Act III (see Introd., p. xliv). The Gretchen tragedy was written between 1771 and 1775, the scene of Faust’s Pact and Wager with Mephistopheles between 1797 and 1801, and Goethe did not begin writing Part Two, except for a few fragments, until 1825. The problem of how the Wager is related to the rest of Part One is discussed in the Introduction to Part One, pp. xxxvi ff., xliv f.

composition of Part One:
See Part One, Introd., esp. pp. lvi f.

epic and lyric features:
see for example Part One, Sc. 5 (‘Outside the town wall’), the latter part of Sc. 4 (‘Night’), and most of the two scenes called ‘Faust’s study’ (Sc. 6, 7).

Goethe and Schiller:
see Part One, Introd., pp. xxvi f.

epic mode:
discussing his current work on Act IV, Goethe remarks that this Act will have ‘a character all of its own’ and be joined to the whole only by a tenuous connection with what precedes and what follows it’. Eckermann credits himself with the further observation that this will mean that it is entirely in keeping with many other scenes and episodes in the two parts of
Faust
, which ‘are all just little worlds existing on their own, circumscribed within themselves, and affecting each other no doubt, but yet having little to do with each other. The poet’s concern is to express a manifold cosmos, and he uses the story of a famous hero merely as a thread of continuity so to speak, threading one thing after another onto it as he pleases. That is just how it is in the
Odyssey
too, and in
Gil Blas’
. Goethe replies: ‘You are absolutely right. And in such a composition the most important thing is that the individual masses should be significant and clear, although as a whole it must always remain incommensurable; but that is the very reason why, like an unsolved problem, it will always invite people to study it afresh’ (conversation of 13 February 1831).

damnation of Faust:
see Part One, Introd., pp. xiv ff. In Marlowe’s ‘Tragical History’, and of course in all the popular Faust chapbooks from the late 16th century onwards, devils carry the infamous hero off to hell on the expiry of an agreed period. Before Goethe, the only precedent for saving him seems to have been a lost fragmentary drama by Lessing, Goethe’s precursor in the humanistic revival of German literature in the later 18th century. The traditional denouement is revived and impressively modernized by Thomas Mann in his tragic novel
Doctor Faustus
, written during the Second World War (see pp. lxxix f.).

entelechy:
see pp. xxx, lxxii and note, lxxvi.

ironic distance:
see Part One, Introd., pp. xxxif, xxxvif.

historicist-genetic method:
see Part One, Introd., pp. xf.

paralipomena:
four years after Goethe’s death, Riemer and Eckermann published a heavily edited short selection from this posthumous material; borrowing a word that Goethe had sometimes used, they called these the ‘paralipomena’ (‘left-overs’), and this designation has been adopted by
Faust
editors ever since. The paralipomena were not assembled methodically until 1887-8, when Erich Schmidt included them in the
Faust
volumes of the Weimar edition (Weimarer Ausgabe, WA; see Preface).

Berlin edition
(Berliner Ausgabe, BA): see Preface. The ‘Selected Paralipomena’ in the present edition are BA 5, BA 70, and BA 73, corresponding to WA 1, WA 63, and WA 123.

conversation with Eckermann:
Eckermann reports that Goethe made this and other comments to him on the elf scene just after writing it; this conversation is wrongly dated 12 March 1826 in many editions. Its date is uncertain, but it cannot have taken place before the early summer of 1827 if the scene was written then (see 1st note to p. 3).

genesis of elf scene:
the role of the spirits as tempters beguiling Faust with the thought of great deeds is in keeping with the theme of activity which Goethe frequently associated with Faust. He evidently retained this scenario until a late stage, since it reappears in a short manuscript sketch for Act I (paralipomenon BA 76) which has been dated to May 1827, only a month or two before the probable date of the elf dialogue (June or July 1827). This point is made by Wolfgang Schadewaldt in his study of the scene; he also suggests, however, that over the years Goethe had become dissatisfied with the old conception. An important stimulus to his change of plan and adoption of the profounder theme of the healing processes and cycles of nature had been Goethe’s interest in Chinese poetry during 1827; this also bore fruit in his late cycle of lyric poems
Chinese-German Hours and Seasons
, one of which is strikingly similar to the elf chorus (4634–65).

Doppelgänger:
an element of this motif is curiously retained in Sc. 2 of the final version, where Mephistopheles plays prompter to the Astrologer (4947-72, 5048-56), rather as if the latter were Faust in disguise, though the final text does not seem to allow this; the ambiguity may have arisen because Goethe contaminated an earlier and a later conception.

ancien régime:
a veiled reference, here as elsewhere in Goethe’s work, to the contemporary political upheavals in France seems especially probable. In particular, the role of Mephistopheles at the Emperor’s court has been compared (see Williams, 1987, 126 f.) to that of the charlatan ‘Count’ Cagliostro, who is thought to have gained the favour of Marie Antoinette and to have played a leading part in the affair of the diamond necklace in 1785. Goethe wrote a satirical comedy based on this scandal (
The Grand Kophta
, 1792), which he saw as symptomatic of a society ripe for revolution.

paper money:
it is clear from one of his conversations with Eckermann (27 December 1829) that in the paper money episode Goethe is alluding to a talking-point of the day. Some of the historical
precedents are listed by Williams (1987,128), who points particularly to the suggestion of buried ecclesiastical treasure in 5018-32 and to the sequestration of church assets and property in 1790 by the French revolutionary government as backing for the so-called
assignats
, a form of paper currency which was issued with inflationary consequences.

roles in the Masquerade:
in a conversation of 20 December 1829 Goethe remarks to Eckermann: ‘You will have noticed that the mask of Plutus is worn by Faust, and that of Avarice by Mephistopheles. But who is the Boy Charioteer?’ Eckermann’s account continues: ‘I hesitated and could not answer. “It is Euphorion!” said Goethe. “But how”, I asked, “can he be appearing here already in the Carnival, when he is not bom until Act III?” “Euphorion”, Goethe answered, “is not a human being, only an allegorical figure. He is the personification of poetry, which is not bound to any time or place or person. The same spirit who later chooses to be Euphorion now appears as the Boy Charioteer, and in this respect he is similar to ghosts, who can be present anywhere and manifest themselves at any moment.”’

Charles VI:
the
Historical Chronicle
by Johann Ludwig Gottfried (1619) tells of a masked ball at the court of Charles VI of France in 1394, at which the king was disguised as a wild man with hemp and pitch; this costume caught fire when the Duke of Orléans came too near him with a lighted torch. Four courtiers were burnt to death, and the king became mentally deranged. Goethe had read this book as a child in an edition illustrated with woodcuts.

Arabian Nights motifs:
one (a favourite in the
Tales
) is that of treasure hidden underground; this indeed was also a main theme in Sc. 2 (4890-4, 4927-38, 5007-46). Typically, the treasure is found or promised as a reward for virtue (in a ruler who reforms his prodigality, for instance) or is associated with greed and its punishment. In one story a magician shows a young man how to use a paper inscribed with magic words to gain access to a treasure-chamber under a fountain; Mommsen thinks that this is not unlike the ‘magic’ paper money (6157) and Faust’s fiery treasure-fountain. Other tales tell of illusory fires and floods conjured up by a magician to educate a ruler, even of a ruler whose beard catches fire in one such case. Another
Arabian Nights
motif is that of battles between spirits who constantly change their shape (5471-83); another is that of kingdoms under the sea (6013-26).

Mothers:
Goethe claimed (conversation with Eckermann, 10 January, 1830) to have found a reference to ‘goddesses who are called Mothers’
in Plutarch (it occurs in the
Life of Marcellus
) and to have invented the rest himself; certain other passages in Plutarch’s writings, however, seem to be echoed by Mephistopheles’ descriptions. (In the essay
On the Cessation of Oracles
, for instance, we read: ‘There are a hundred and eighty-three worlds. These are arranged in the form of a triangle … The area within the triangle is to be regarded as a centre common to all of them, and is called the Field of Truth. In it lie motionless the causes, shapes and prototypes of all things that have ever existed and will yet exist. They are surrounded by eternity, out of which time overflows into the worlds’.) Williams (1987,137 f.) is inclined to emphasize the element of irony which is also detectable in Goethe’s presentation of this mythic theme, continuing perhaps Mephistopheles’ role as a Cagliostro-like figure (see 1st note to p. xxiv); Faust himself (6249 ff.) calls him a ‘mystagogue’ who tries to deceive his neophytes with elaborate ritual and verbiage.