B00ARI2G5C EBOK

by Goethe, J. W. von

  his beard: the final episode, in which the gold sets fire to the Emperor’s beard, is discussed in the Introduction (p. xxvi and notes).

  prince of a thousand salamanders: the Emperor’s vision of a palace or temple of golden fire stands out as a poetically remarkable passage, as does Mephistopheles’ reply. The latter’s flattering fantasy (6025 f.) of the Emperor’s union with the goddess Thetis (the mother of Achilles by Peleus; see Index, Peleus) has been seen by some commentators as a parallel to Helen’s union with Faust as a modern counterpart to Achilles. Alternatively, or additionally, we might see the magnificent submarine palace to which Mephistopheles’ imagination transports the Emperor as a hint of the motif, found in some versions of the Faust legend, of the Devil satisfying Faust’s curiosity by conveying him magically to the heights of heaven and the depths of the sea. (In Thomas Mann’s novel Doctor Faustus the hero tells of real or imaginary journeys he has made, by bathysphere and perhaps by spacecraft, with a mysterious cosmologist called Professor Capercailzie). Goethe is in any case also influenced in this scene by the Arabian Nights stories, which are specifically mentioned in 6032 f.; cf. Introd., p. xxvi.

  two worlds… happily united: the Emperor appoints Faust and Mephistopheles as ministerial assistants to the State Treasurer, with responsibility for locating the hoards and veins of gold which Mephistopheles has promised to extract from the earth as cover for the Emperor’s debts. In 6139 f. the Emperor may be referring to the expected happy collaboration between the Treasurer, who is competent in ordinary matters above ground, and Faust, who will reveal subterranean treasures; alternatively, Goethe may be hinting at some more symbolic union of upper and lower worlds. The former reading is suggested by the Treasurer’s reply in 6141 f, as he withdraws with Faust, leaving Mephistopheles behind; ironically, Faust seems to be regarded as the chief’magician’ and Mephistopheles as his unimportant subordinate.

  Mothers: see Introd., pp. xxvi f. and note.

  buried treasure: Goethe again hints in 6315 f. (as already in 6191 f. and 6197 f.) that the ‘raising’ of gold to cover the Emperor’s paper money and the ‘raising’ of Helen for his entertainment are to be thought of as symbolically parallel enterprises (cf. Introd., pp. xxv ff.).

  the Astrologer: Goethe takes up again the rather strange role of the court astrologer, whose speeches (as in Sc. 2) are really those of the ‘prompter’ Mephistopheles. As in Sc. 3, a narrator seems to be needed who will describe the events on the stage as they happen, rather as if the play were intended for readers and not spectators, and in any case giving the dramatic action in these scenes, such as it is, a half-serious, over-verbalized character, like a vaudeville or revue. It is not clear, however, why Mephistopheles could not equally well speak through the Herald, in this scene at least.

  ready magic: as in the 1816 prose sketch, a stage is magically provided for the apparitions (cf. paralipomenon BA 70, p. 242).

  Compose yourself. Mephistopheles only drops his role as prompter when a dramatic crisis develops, as Faust forgets his own part and passionately confuses semblance with reality (6487-500, 6544-63). Even Mephistopheles’ spokesman the Astrologer finally intervenes in dismay (6560-3); it is curious that he here (perhaps because it is really Mephistopheles speaking) addresses Faust by name, the only time anyone ever does so in the first three Acts. The crisis itself is reminiscent of an incident in an 18th-century version of the Faust story: in Anthony Hamilton’s L’Enchanteur Faustus (translated into German in 1778) Faust causes Helen, Cleopatra, and other notable beauties to appear before Elizabeth I of England, but when the Queen tries to embrace one of them there is an explosion, the scene disappears, and Faust is knocked unconscious. Whether or not Goethe used this source, the passionately rash behaviour of his Faust at this point remains problematical if we are trying to think of him as a seriously developed and developing dramatic ‘character’. This is the Faust of Part One rather than the supposedly mature Faust of the Part Two prologue, A Beautiful Landscape (cf. note to p. 5); once again, the allegory and the requirements of the particular episode seem to be what is important to Goethe, not a longer-term ‘dramatic’ view of events.

  only ten years old: the story of Helen’s beginnings as a nymphet who got herself kidnapped by the hero Theseus at the age of ten is also alluded to by Faust in Act II (7426 ff.) and by Mephistopheles and Helen herself in Act III (8848 ff.).

  bell: the fact that the bell pulled by Mephistopheles at this point is not heard by Wagner until 200 lines later may mean, as Staiger suggests, that the (in any case episodic) scene between Mephistopheles and the Graduate was interpolated by Goethe at some later time. Alternatively, one could say that the bell rings simultaneously for the famulus Nicodemus (6620), for the Graduate (6727), and for Wagner (6819 f.): a curious device which Goethe will also use in the Classical Walpurgis Night, where the earthquake seems to happen simultaneously in lines 7254 ff., 7503 ff., and 7686 ff. It is in any case interesting that Mephistopheles claims (6727) that by ringing the bell he has himself summoned the Graduate.

  Wagner. Faust’s research assistant in Part One (Sc. 4 and 5); see Introd. to Part Two, pp. xxx f.

  Graduate. Mephistopheles’ visitor is of course (6686, 6702 ff, 6723, 6741 ff.) the Student who humbly sought his advice in Sc. 7 of Part One, mistaking him for Faust; he is now a Bachelor of Arts (Baccalaureus). Asked by Eckermann whether this figure satirically represents any particular contemporary idealistic school of philosophy, Goethe replies:

  No, he personifies the kind of presumption that is especially characteristic of youth… Every young person believes that the world did not really begin until after he was born, and that everything really exists for his sake. In fact there once really was a man in the East who made his servants gather round him every morning, and would not let them begin their work until he had ordered the sun to rise. But he had the good sense not to utter this command until the sun was actually about to appear of its own accord. (Conversation of 6 December 1829)

  Despite Goethe’s disclaimer, however, it is probable that this comical scene does indeed contain implicit satirical comment on the German idealistic school of metaphysics which flourished in the early 19th century; specific targets are perhaps Fichte (1762-1814) and especially Schopenhauer (1788-1860). Goethe had had some personal dealings with the author of The World as Will and Idea (1818), the polemical opening words of which are ‘The world is my idea [meine Vorstellung]’; they had discussed Goethe’s work on the theory of colour, and the young Schopenhauer had shown some degree of intellectual arrogance which Goethe treated forbearingly.

  the Homunculus: see Introd., pp. xxix-xxxii and notes.

  romantic, classical: see 1st note to Introd. p. xiii. The Homunculus is ‘romantic’ by his origins in medieval Christendom (to which alchemy and the Devil belong) and becomes ‘classical’ by the Greek sea-change that both he and Faust undergo.

  Pharsalus: on the significance of the battle of Pharsalus (AD 48,) see Introd., p. xxix and note.

  Asmodeus: see first note to p. 26.

  Blocksberg. the mountain in central Germany on which the German ‘Walpurgis Night’ sabbath of the witches was supposed to take place (see Part One, Sc. 24).

  Thessalian witches: Thessaly (the ‘great plain where the Peneus flows’ and where the battle of Pharsalus took place) was a region especially associated in antiquity with magic and witchcraft.

  one’s own creatures: see Introd., p. xxxi and note.

  Classical Walpurgis Night: see Introd., p. xxix. Goethe’s intention appears to have been to divide this long scene, or scene sequence, into four or perhaps five shorter scenes with subtitles such as ‘The Pharsalian Plain’, ‘The Peneus’, ‘Rocky Inlets of the Aegean Coast’, but the points of division are not clear and there is in any case some geographical licence. The titles ‘By the upper Peneus’ at 7080 and ‘By the lower Peneus’ at 7249 were inserted editorially in 1906 by Erich Schmidt, but do not seem necessary. (Goethe’s ALH has merely ‘The Peneus’ at 72
49.) The fluid and dream-like action of the sequence begins, in what I have called Scene 10a, on the battlefield of Pharsalus, some way south of the Peneus (see map), and then moves to the river itself. During his discussion with Chiron in Sc. 10b Faust is evidently carried downstream, to Manto’s temple which Goethe situates near Olympus and the Aegean coast. Here they both disappear, and we return to the upper Peneus (‘as before’, at line 7495) for Sc. 10c; we are then taken downstream again for the Sea Festival in Sc. 10d.

  Erichtho’s speech: the sorceress Erichtho, who shuns the modem visitors, opens the scene in the grandiose iambic trimeter of Greek drama, which is not used again until Helen speaks at the beginning of Act III. On classical versification, see 1st note to Introd. p. xliii.

  Pompey: Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (‘the Great’), the Roman general (106-48 BC) who became the rival of Caesar for supreme power in the Republic; he was finally defeated by him at Pharsalus and murdered shortly afterwards in Egypt.

  Caesar. Gaius Julius Caesar (100-44 BC), the Roman general who after many victories over Rome’s enemies abroad achieved autocratic power as consul and dictator, defeating his rival Pompey at the battle of Pharsalus in 48 BC, which decided the civil war (cf. Introd., p. xxix and note). The Roman Republic became a lost cause, and after a period of transition and further conflict Caesar’s adopted successor Octavian became the first Roman emperor (Augustus Caesar). The family name became an imperial title, surviving into modern times as ‘Kaiser’ and ‘Tsar’.

  You’ll see a flash: Mephistopheles’ suggestion of separate exploration is accepted, but the signal for reunion is never in fact given, and this curious motif remains a loose end; Faust, left to his own devices, never communicates again with the Homunculus, and until Act III scarcely at all with Mephistopheles.

  greyfins: the untranslatable word-play in 7092 f. is between Greife (griffins; see Index) and Greise (old men). It may or may not be relevant that in the Gothic typeface of the early editions of Faust, the two letters that Mephistopheles pretends to confuse appear almost identical $$.$). Both here and in the absurd etymological discussion that follows (7093-103), Goethe may be making some obscure satirical in-joke.

  Sphinxes: see Index. The Sphinxes are symbolically associated with Goethe’s conception, developed long ago in his essay On Granite (1784), of an absolutely stable, primal rock (Urgestein) uninfluenced by volcanic processes. They are thus related by contrast to the turbulent figure of Seismos, and belong with him to the whole thematic complex of neptunism-vulcanism (see Introd., p. xxxvf. and note).

  think of a word: the Sphinx turns the riddle against Mephistopheles by describing the Devil.

  Sirens: see Index.

  Chiron: see Introd., p. xxxii and Index.

  Celestial Twins: see Index, Twins.

  the Twins: see Index.

  Pherae: see Index.

  great fight: the battle of Pydna (168 BC) in which Rome finally defeated Macedon; see note to Introd. p. xxix on Pharsalus and Pydna. Since Pydna is well to the north of Mount Olympus, Goethe’s description of the battle as taking place between Olympus and the Peneus (7465 f.) seems inaccurate.

  Manto: see Introd., p. xxxii and Index.

  Seismos: (see Index). The whole episode (beginning here and continuing intermittently until line 7948) of the new mountain suddenly tossed up out of the earth by the earthquake-god Seismos, the creatures that begin swarming all over it, and the reactions of the Homunculus, Thales, and Anaxagoras to these phenomena, have usually been interpreted as a political allegory referring to the French Revolution of 1789, though an allusion to that of 1830 may also have been intended if Goethe wrote this part of the Classical Walpurgis Night in July of that year or later. In his fragmentary satirical narrative The Journey of the Sons of Megaprazon, written in 1792, he had already used a similar complex of imagery: an allegorical class-structured island suddenly blown apart by an earthquake, and the traditional war between the pygmies and the cranes or herons (the ‘geranomachy’, a motif from Greek mythology), representing the struggle between the mob and the aristocracy. The episode in Faust appears to be a reprise and elaboration of these allegorical themes, alluding to events in France as well as to the neptunist-vulcanist controversy. The fall of the meteor which wipes out the warring factions (7936-41) has been interpreted as the decisive intervention of Napoleon. It also seems probable, as Williams (1983, ‘Seismos’) has argued on textual evidence, that Goethe (never averse to a Rabelaisian jest) intended the various small inhabitants of the upstart mountain to be by-products of a gigantic fart by the earthquake-god; and furthermore, that the episode in which the Cranes of Ibycus (see Index) execute justice on the pygmies (7883-99) may represent the stem measures that Goethe in 1830 thought the governing classes should take against actual or threatened mob violence (Williams, 1984).

  Blocksberg, etc.: Mephistopheles mentions various topographical features of the Blocksberg region (the Ilsenstein, the Heinrichshöhe, the Schnarcher, Elend) which occurred in the ‘northern’ Walpurgis Night scene (see Part One, Sc. 24).

  natural cliff: in another indirect expression of Goethe’s ‘neptunist’ view, the oread (mountain nymph) contrasts her authentic mountain, shaped by the slow processes of geological time, with Seismos’s unnatural ‘lump’ which, as Mephistopheles has noted (7808 ff.), was magically upheaved ‘in just one night’ and will vanish at dawn like a phantom.

  Anaxagoras’s conjuration of the moon: the Seismos episode, interwoven with the wanderings of Mephistopheles, the enquiries of the Homunculus, and the geological altercation between the philosophers Thales and Anaxagoras (see Index), reaches its climax in this speech which completes the ironic discrediting of the latter’s views and of his pretensions as a rival mentor to the Homunculus. The ‘vulcanist’ Anaxagoras, in a literally lunatic vision, seeks to emulate the power of the Thessalian sorceresses to call the moon down to earth; the moon-goddess will perhaps save the pygmies (‘my people’, 7904) from the avenging cranes. His imagined success is explained by the fall of a meteor, seemingly originating from the moon (7939), which knocks away the top of the ‘artificial’ mountain and crushes both the pygmies and their enemies. The sudden and violent processes on which Anaxagoras pins his faith are thus parodied both by the formation of the mountain ‘from underground’ and by its deformation from above, all within a few hours (7942-5). The whole sequence of events is pronounced by Thales (7946) to have been mere ‘fantasy’. The moon-meteor, whatever its political significance in the allegory, seems to be Goethe’s variant on the Greek legend according to which the historical Anaxagoras correctly predicted the fall of a meteor from the sun. The invocation of the moon as both a heavenly and an underground (chthonic) power (7900-9) reflects the triune character of the moon-goddess, who was identified in Greek myth with Artemis (Diana) and the witch-goddess Hecate (7905). See Index, Diana; also Williams, 1976.

  resinous smell: in the German text Goethe punningly associates the Harz Mountains with the homophonous but etymologically distinct word Harz (resin).

  the lofty Cabin: the bizarre episode of the ‘Cabiri’ (pp. nof, 113 ff.; see Index) was another of Goethe’s afterthoughts exclusive to the final version. It appears to serve a thematic purpose: these mysterious Aegean deities, known only to the classically erudite, are introduced as honoured guests into the Sea Festival because their peculiar characteristic is to have not yet fully come into being. They too are still developing and even, like Faust, ‘striving’:

  By an onward urge obsessed,

  Hungry with a strange unrest

  For a goal beyond their reach.

  (8203-5)

  Eckermann comments ruefully to Goethe on 17 February 1831 that Faust ‘does contain some intellectual exercises’, and that he had only understood this passage because he had read a book on the Cabiri by a contemporary scholar. ‘I have always found’, replies Goethe relentlessly, ‘that to know things is a great help.’

  a poet’s spell … three thousand years: Nereus alludes to th
e Trojan War and to the semi-legendary poet who immortalized it (see Index, Troy). Homer (?8th century BC) is traditionally identified as the author of the two great epic masterpieces of Greek literature, the Riad and the Odyssey; regarded as supreme among poets, his name is given to an age and to a whole corpus of heroic myth and legend.

  no Eagle, no Lion …: see Introd., p. xl; the eagle, winged lion, cross, and crescent moon are respectively Byzantium, Venice, the Crusaders, and the Turks.