John Lord: Beacon Lights of History

Goethe appears to have derived his knowledge of the Faust legend partly from the work of Widmann, published in 1599, partly from another more modern in its form, which appeared in 1728, and partly from the puppet plays exhibited in Frankfort and other cities of Germany, of which that legend was then a favorite theme. He was not the only writer of that day who made use of it. Some thirty of his contemporaries had produced their “Fausts” during the interval which elapsed between the inception and publication of his great work. Oblivion overtook them all, with the exception of Lessing’s, of which a few fragments are left; the manuscript of the complete work was unaccountably lost on its way to the publisher, between Dresden and Leipsic.

The composition of “Faust,” as we learn from Goethe’s biography, proceeded spasmodically, with many and long interruptions between the inception and conclusion. Projected in 1769 at the age of twenty, it was not completed till the year 1831, at the age of eighty-two.…

But the effect of the long arrest, which after Goethe’s removal to Weimar delayed the completion of the “Faust,” is most apparent in the wide gulf which separates, as to character and style, the Second Part from the First. So great, indeed, is the distance between the two that, without external historical proofs of identity, it would seem from internal evidence altogether improbable, in spite of the slender thread of the fable which connects them, that both poems were the work of one and the same author. And really the author was not the same. The change which had come over Goethe on his return from Italy had gone down to the very springs of his intellectual life. The fervor and the rush, the sparkle and foam of his early productions, had been replaced by the stately calm and the luminous breadth of view that is born of experience. The torrent of the mountains had become the river of the plain; romantic impetuosity had changed to classic repose. He could still, by occasional efforts of the will, cast himself back into the old moods, resume the old thread, and so complete the first “Faust.” But we may confidently assert that he could not, after the age of forty, have originated the poem, any more than before his Italian tour he could have written the second “Faust,” purporting to be a continuation of the first. The difference in spirit and style is enormous.

As to the question which of the two is the greater production, it is like asking which is the greater, Dante’s “Commedia” or Shakspeare’s “Macbeth”? They are incommensurable. As to which is the more generally interesting, no question can arise. There are thousands who enjoy and admire the First Part to one who even reads the Second. The interest of the former is poetic and thoroughly human; the interest of the other is partly poetic, but mostly philosophic and scientific.…

The symbolical character of “Faust” is assumed by all the critics, and in part confessed by the author himself. Besides the general symbolism pervading and motiving the whole,—a symbolism of human destiny,—and here and there a shadowing forth of the poet’s private experience, there are special allusions—local, personal, enigmatic conceits—which have furnished topics of learned discussion and taxed the ingenuity of numerous commentators. We need not trouble ourselves with these subtleties. But little exegesis is needed for a right comprehension of the true and substantial import of the work.

The key to the plot is given in the Prologue in Heaven. The devil, in the character of Mephistopheles, asks permission to tempt Faust; he boasts his ability to get entire possession of his soul and drag him down to hell. The Lord grants the permission, and prophesies the failure of the attempt:—

Here we have a hint of the author’s design. He does not intend that the devil shall succeed; he does not mean to adopt the conclusion of the legend and send Faust to hell. He had the penetration to see, and he meant to show, that the notion implied in the old popular superstition of selling one’s soul to the devil—the notion that evil can obtain the entire and final possession of the soul—is a fallacy; that the soul is not man’s to dispose of, and cannot be so traded away. We are the soul’s, not the soul ours. Evil is self-limited; the good in man must finally prevail. So long as he strives he is not lost; Heaven will come to the aid of his better nature. This is the doctrine, the philosophy, of “Faust.” In the First Part, stung by disappointment in his search of knowledge, by failure to lay hold of the superhuman, and urged on by his baser propensities personified in Mephistopheles, Faust abandons himself to sensual pleasure,—seduces innocence, burdens his soul with heavy guilt, and seems to be entirely given over to evil. This Part ends with Mephistopheles’ imperious call,—“Her zu mir,”—as if secure of his victim. Before the appearance of the Second Part, the reader was at liberty to accept that conclusion. But in the Second Part Faust gradually wakes from the intoxication of passion, outgrows the dominion of appetite, plans great and useful works, whereby Mephistopheles loses more and more his hold of him; and after his death is baffled in his attempt to appropriate Faust’s immortal part, to which the heavenly Powers assert their right.…

The character of Margaret is unique; its duplicate is not to be found in all the picture galleries of fiction. Shakspeare, in the wide range of his feminine personnel, has no portrait like this. A girl of low birth and vulgar circumstance, imbued with the ideas and habits of her class, speaking the language of that class from which she never for a moment deviates into finer phrase, takes on, through the magic handling of the poet, an ideal beauty. Externally common and prosaic in all her ways, she is yet thoroughly poetic, transfigured in our conception by her perfect love. To that love, unreasoning, unsuspecting,—to the excess of that which in itself is no fault, but beautiful and good,—her fall and ruin are due. Her story is the tragedy of her sex in all time. As Schlegel said of the “Prometheus Bound,”—“It is not a single tragedy, but tragedy itself.”…

[The First Part ends with the prison scene, where poor Margaret, escaping by death, ascends to heaven, while Mephistopheles, shouting an imperious “Hither to me!” disappears with Faust.] The reader is allowed to suppose—and most readers did suppose—that the author meant it should be inferred that the devil had secured his victim, and that Faust, according to the legend, had paid the forfeit of his soul to the powers of hell.

But Faust reappears in a new poem,—the Second Part. He is there introduced sleeping, as if burying in torpor the lusts and crimes and sorrows of his past career. Pitying spirits are about him, to heal his woes and promote his return to a better life.…

[At the end of his hundred years of earthly life,] Mephistopheles…fails to secure the immortal part of Faust, which the angels appropriate and bear aloft:

The last two lines may be supposed to contain the author’s justification of Mephistopheles’ defeat and Faust’s salvation. Though a man surrender himself to evil, if there is that in him which evil cannot satisfy, an impulse by which he outgrows the gratifications of vice, extends his horizon and lifts his desires, pursues an onward course until he learns to place his aims outside of himself, and to seek satisfaction in works of public utility,—he is beyond the power of Satan: he may be redeemed from evil.

One could wish, indeed, that more decisive marks of moral development had been exhibited in the latter stages of Faust’s career. But here comes in the Christian doctrine of Grace, which Goethe applies to the problem of man’s destiny. Faust is represented as saved by no merit of his own, but by the interest which Heaven has in every soul in which there is the possibility of a heavenly life.

And so the new-born ascending spirit is committed by the Mater gloriosa to the tutelage of Gretchen [Margaret],—una pœnitentium,—now purified from all the stains of her earthly life, to whom is given the injunction:—