It seems bizarre that Goethe, who must have had some knowledge of these facts, should in what amounts to a symbolic cultural history of medieval Greece leave wholly out of account the only medieval Greek civilization remotely qualifying to be described as a Renaissance. There is a baffling ambiguity (or perhaps some deeper ironic intention) in the position of Faust as commander of an army of pillaging barbarians (8999 ff., 9281-96, 9450-7; Mommsen has also compared them to the forces of Arab warlords) who are nevertheless receptive to the classical heritage of Greece, personified by Helen, as their Greek-named spokesman Lynceus appears to be (9273-80, 9313-32, 9346-55). In Faust’s final speech to them, after dividing up the whole Peloponnèse between the Germanic tribes of the earlier incursions (who seem to be synchronically identified with the thirteenth-century Frankish settlers), he orders them to surround and protect Helen and to establish her as queen of Sparta and overlord of them all, who will bring about an age of gold, plenty, and justice (9474-81). He thus seems strangely poised between the role of a recoverer and re-creator of culture and that of a destroyer. It is not really clear what the precious ‘classical heritage’ is being retrieved from, assimilated to, and defended against, or by whom; and the role of Menelaus (if it is to be interpreted allegorically at all) remains obscure and far-fetched.*
The ‘Mystra’ scene nevertheless reaches a positive climax when in his closing speech (9506-73) Faust magnificently evokes the idealized Arcadia where he now proposes to settle with Helen. This is probably the greatest piece of pastoral poetry in German literature, and another of the outstanding lyrical passages with which Part Two from time to time rises above allegorical obscurity and learned dispute. The ‘Arcadia’ here described bears little resemblance, of course, to the arid central region of the Peloponnèse that still goes by that name; the safe haven to which Helen is now spirited away is the traditional locus amoenus, or earthly paradise, of poetic fancy.* Another long but unspecified lapse of historical time (9574) is reduced to an instant, and the third scene of Act III takes place in what appears to be the early nineteenth century. Except for the opening and closing passages, which revert to ancient metrical conventions, Scene 13 not only uses rhymed verse but is meant to be staged as an opera, with singers replacing the acting cast (conversation with Eckermann, 25 January 1827) and continuous music from the birth until the death of Euphorion (9679-938). It must presumably have been Goethe’s intention to present the allegorical figure of Faust’s son in the medium of an enhanced, second-order art; the reader, however, is here at a disadvantage, since in the absence of music much of the text fails to rise above the level of an unaccompanied libretto of average quality. (Its style of jingling versification, indeed, has been shown by Arens to resemble that of Erwin and Elmira, an operetta or Singspiel which the young Goethe wrote in his Frankfurt days.) Goethe claimed at different times to have had different models or parallels in mind for Euphorion (some critics have proposed Mozart in this connection, or even Goethe’s own son August). In 1827 he told Eckermann that the identification with Byron had not been his original plan but an afterthought stimulated by the news of the poet’s death in 1824. He explained that Euphorion, like the Charioteer in Act I, is ‘the personification of Poetry’, and that Byron was his only possible choice ‘as a representative of the most modern poetic period’ and as unquestionably ‘the greatest talent of the century’ (conversation of 5 July 1827). The appropriateness of Byron was further heightened by his special enthusiasm for the cause of Greek liberation from the Turks, which led to his death at Missolonghi (not, admittedly, in battle, but from malaria) and his continuing status as a Greek national hero. In general he must have appealed even to the elderly Goethe as a romantic rebel, a scorner of convention who had probably committed incest with his sister, an exile from England who lived in Italy for his last eight years; appealed as a reminder, perhaps, of Goethe’s own youth, of a Geniezeit remembered with ambivalent nostalgia. All this is summed up in the Chorus’s (dramatically impossible but poetically noble) lament for Byron in 9907-38. Dramatically, however, there is an obvious parallel between Euphorion’s salute to the Peloponnèse (9823-6), his timeless call to the warriors of Greece to fight for its freedom (9843-50), and Faust’s own summoning of his warriors in Helen’s defence. Once again, the noblest Greek heritage must be defended against its destroyers.
The story of Helen and Achilles on Leuce is Goethe’s main classical Greek parallel for his Faust-Helen-Euphorion drama, though the latter also has some affinity to the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. In both these sources the motif of prohibition is central: the beloved must return to Hades and be lost for ever if a certain stipulation is infringed. In Mommsen’s interpretation, this already happened when Faust persuaded Helen to leave his castle and come with him to ‘Sparta’s near neighbourhood, Arcadia’ (9569): his Faustian arrogance and discontent have breached the condition, and Helen is doomed to vanish. This is not entirely persuasive, as Persephone’s stipulation that she must not leave Sparta has not been made explicit in the final text, only in the unpublished paralipomena; moreover, Helen has in any case already left Sparta when she joins Faust in his northern castle, despite which the two of them are allowed an Arcadian idyll of uncertain duration (9574). Goethe may have intended, in the final version, merely to hint at the underlying prohibition and to impose only an approximate obedience to it, for which Sparta’s ‘neighbourhood’ would suffice; or even to apply it not to Sparta but to Arcadia itself. The leafy groves and underground caverns in which Faust and Helen find themselves give the impression of being a kind of secluded and protected royal demesne, a designated island of refuge which they will leave at their peril.* The further law binding Euphorion himself is more easily interpreted: from the old Märchen motif of the 1816 sketch which forbids him to pass over a magic circle, an interesting and significant symbolic idea has developed. His father explains to him why he must not attempt to fly, and it is no accident that the myth of Antaeus, invoked by Faust himself as he touched the Greek earth (7077), here reappears:
In the earth lies the resilient Power that drives you upwards; touch the soil, on tiptoe merely touch it, And like the earth’s son Antaeus you will grow at once in strength.
(9609–11)
Poetry (or romantic poetry, or classical-romantic poetry, or poetry inspired by the Greek classical tradition) must not lose contact with the maternal earth, with that life-giving nature which is the eternal bedrock of true culture. The great synthesis in which ‘separate worlds unite’ is possible only ‘where the laws of purest Nature rule’ (9560 f.). Ironically, it is Euphorion’s vision of the defence of these values that destroys him. The ‘unwinged genius’ (9603) forgets that he is unwinged, and perishes like Icarus; it is left to the Chorus to speak the only consolation, which again is from nature:
For this soil has bred for ever
Greatness it will breed again.
(9937–8)
Helen disappears, the music stops, and the maidens of the Chorus revert to ancient metres. Their leader Panthalis, the only one dignified by a name, follows Helen and Euphorion to Hades after commenting caustically (9962-5) on the spell of ‘drunken tangled notes’ that has been worked on them by ‘that old Thessalian hag’. The rest, as Goethe puts it (conversation with Eckermann, 25 January 1827) ‘cast themselves on the elements’, dividing into four groups as they transform themselves into nymphs associated with different aspects of elemental nature. Their final celebratory lines (9992–10038) are trochaic tetrameters, as in the concluding chorus of a Greek drama; these must rank, with Faust’s greeting to the sunrise in the Prologue and his evocation of Arcadia in Scene 12, among Goethe’s greatest lyric achievements. The first group of maidens represent the forests as dryads; the second, the echoing mountain cliffs as oreads; the third are naiads haunting the streams and rivers; and the fourth, maenads or bacchantes, the followers of the winegod. This last and longest section (10011-38) celebrates the ripening of the grapes in the sun-god’s fire and the treadi
ng of the new wine; it develops magnificently into the evocation of a Dionysian orgia, as the god reveals himself to his worshippers. Act III, like Act II, ends with a great pagan mystery: the old wine is drunk, the grape’s new juice replaces it, the earth passes again through its eternal self-renewal and self-transformation.
5 THE COMPLETION OF FAUST
The fact that the five Acts of Part Two were almost entirely written between late February 1825, half-way through Goethe’s seventy-sixth year, and late July 1831, shortly before his eighty-second and last birthday, is already so astonishing that we need not be unduly surprised by his method of working. This was, as we have seen, to take up particular Acts or scenes in no particular order but as mood and instinct dictated and then to piece them together, leaving gaps and filling them in in due course. Something like a record of the progress of this work can be constructed from the letters and conversations and from manuscripts of the text or paralipomena in so far as these are datable; this evidence is sometimes clear, sometimes scanty or obscure, sometimes contradictory. Soon after the publication of Act III in the spring of 1827 Goethe confided to Zelter (letter of 24 May 1827) that he had now reached the beginning of Act IV, and that he intended to continue the work from this point, the point at which Faust, carried out of the world of classical antiquity by the cloud formed from Helen’s garments, has been deposited again in the world of ‘his evil genius’. It is not clear from this or from any other external evidence that Goethe actually wrote at this time Faust’s important opening soliloquy (10039-66). It would have been an appropriate moment to do so: the speech, still in classical trimeters, is a pivotal passage, both an epilogue or valediction to the Helen experience (10050-4) and a prologue to Acts IV and V, a turning back to the medieval, ‘romantic’ world of Mephistopheles, the Emperor, and Gretchen, whose image stirs in him now as a deep memory of the heart (10055-66).* Nevertheless, certain affinities between this soliloquy and the final scene of Act V (Sc. 23 ‘Mountain Gorges’, written probably in December 1830) suggest that it may indeed have been written after Scene 23 or at about the same time, and therefore probably in February 1831, when the main work on Act IV is known to have been started, as Eckermann confirms (conversation of 13 February 1831: ‘Goethe told me he is continuing the fourth Act of Faust and has now successfully written the beginning in the way he wished”). This was after the completion of the first three Acts and not quite all of Act V. In 1827, soon after the letter to Zelter of 24 May, he had changed his mind about continuing with Act IV and taken up Act I instead: the elf scene and Faust’s first dealings with the Emperor. As we saw, this material was carried forward as far as line 6036, and then hurriedly published in 1828 as the Act I fragment, rather as if Goethe had decided to serialize the rest of Part Two. But a curious gap of about eighteen months then followed, in which he turned to the completion of his novel Wilhelm Master’s Journeyman Years and the autobiographical Italian Journey. In the latter part of 1829 Faust was again resumed, and by the end of that year he had finished Act I and the opening scenes of Act II (Sc. 8 and 9). The ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’ (Sc. 10) then occupied him until well into the summer of 1830, when Act II was at last declared to be finished (letter to Eckermann, 9 August 1830). For some months after this the record is incomplete, but seems to suggest that the concluding scene of Act V (Sc. 23, ‘Mountain Gorges’) was mainly written in December 1830, though like much of the rest of the Act V material it may have been planned, if not actually sketched on paper, very much earlier.
The genesis and dating of the last four scenes (Sc. 20-3) thus remain controversial. Goethe states repeatedly, over the years, that Act V is already finished or ‘as good as finished’ or was finished long ago,* though its first three scenes (Sc. 17-19, the Philemon and Baucis episode) are still missing at the beginning of April 1831, and their addition during that month is documented; Goethe remarked of them, however, that ‘[their] intention too is more than thirty years old’ (conversation with Eckermann, 2 May 1831). Revisions to the final scenes 20-3, were apparently also made in the first few months of 1831. As for Act IV (Sc. 14-16), it is clear that it was begun or resumed in early February 1831 and then again in early May, and that it was finished on 22 July. Eckermann was often told of Goethe’s determination to complete this Act and with it the whole work; in February for instance Goethe informed him (conversation of 17 February 1831):
I have had the whole manuscript of the Second Part bound, in order to have it visibly there before me as a physical object. I have filled the place where the missing fourth Act should be with blank sheets, and there is no doubt that completed material acts as an enticement and stimulus to finish what has still to be done.
He had made a resolution to complete the whole of Part Two by his eighty-second birthday on 28 August (letter to Zelter, 4 August 1831); in the event he did it with a month to spare, and could then say to Eckermann (late July 1831, anticipated by Eckermann in his record of a conversation of 6 June):
From now on, I can look upon the remainder of my life as a gift pure and simple, and ultimately it no longer matters at all whether I still do anything or what it may be.
Goethe then sealed up the manuscript, only to open it yet again in January 1832, two or three months before his death, and enter a few minor afterthoughts. Apart from these, the last work that he did on Faust was the completion of Act IV and the insertion of the Philemon and Baucis scenes of Act V, which are closely related to the events of Act IV. The difficulty of discussing these two last Acts separately is increased by the fact that Act IV is related to Act V in much the same way as Act II is to Act III: in both cases the structurally preceding but later written Act is designed to explain or set the agenda for the structurally following Act which has been written already (and in the case of Act III published already). In each case the historically later Act is both a postscript and an ‘antecedent’. In order to understand Act IV, we must therefore first consider, so far as it is known, the development of Goethe’s plan for Act V, and in particular the changes it seems to have undergone, under the influence of certain external events, between February 1825 and May 1831.
Among Goethe’s various statements claiming or implying that the ‘ending’ of Faust has already been written, two are of particular importance; and although their exact meaning is in dispute, their authenticity as evidence has never been challenged. One is his conversation on 3 August 1815 with Sulpiz Boisserée (reported in the latter’s diary), in which he says of the ending: ‘I shall not tell you about it, I must not tell you about it, but it too is already finished, and it turned out very good and grandiose, something from my best period.’ The other is the closing sentence of the narrative sketch BA 70, which, as we know, was written down in December 1816. This early outline of Part Two takes us up to the death of Euphorion, Faust’s ensuing war with ‘the monks’, and his acquisition of ‘great possessions’; Goethe then remarks in conclusion that the events of Faust’s later life will be revealed in due course, ‘when at a future date we assemble the fragments, or rather the separately composed passages, of this Second Part’. This is usually taken to imply that various sketches of the concluding part of the play (presumably Act V) were in existence not later than December 1816 and probably long before (there is no terminus a quo). Boisserée’s report is clearer about the dating, since it is agreed that ‘my best period’ certainly means Goethe’s years of collaboration with Schiller at the turn of the century. The dispute centres on what Goethe meant in this conversation by ‘the ending’, and to a lesser extent on whether he meant that he had already, about fifteen years earlier, committed some version of the concluding scenes to paper or whether they were merely in his head. The scenes he is thought most likely to have been referring to are the three so-called ‘core’ scenes of Act V: that of Faust’s encounter with Care (Sc. 20), that of his death (Sc. 21), and that in which Mephistopheles is defeated and Faust’s ‘immortal part’ carried aloft (Sc. 22). All three qualify for the description ‘very good and g
randiose’. So indeed does ‘Mountain Gorges’ (Sc. 23); and Mason (1967, 317 f, 349-56) seeks also to assign this mysterious last scene of all, in its essentials, to the c.1800 phase.* Stylistic and manuscript evidence make 1830-1 seem the likelier date, but Mason is right to stress that ‘Mountain Gorges’ must not be seen as an unimportant afterthought or optional extra, a piece of senile mystical babbling not integral to the main conception. The three ‘core’ scenes preceding it are, as it happens, extant (though incompletely) in an important manuscript (known as H2 or VH2) which represents Goethe’s penultimate version of these scenes and was written out as an interim fair copy in March and April 1826, almost entirely by Goethe’s amanuensis Johann August John. H2, in its turn, is based on a number of untidy autograph fragments, datable to 1825, which together represent a less coherent and even less complete version of the same scenes. Opinion differs as to whether Goethe first wrote these fragments in 1825 or whether they were much older material, perhaps from c.1800, which he for some reason, in 1825, copied in his own hand, destroying the originals. For present purposes, however, we need only consider the 1826 penultimate version (H2) of Scenes 20-2. Both this and the version briefly sketched at the end of the 1816 paralipomenon (BA 70) can be revealingly compared with the definitive version of the last two Acts, of which the final fair copy was made in the spring and summer of 1831, comprising: (1) Scenes 20-2, now revised and extended; (2) Scene 23 (probably December 1830, a few passages added later); (3) the new Philemon and Baucis scenes (17-19), added in April 1831; and (4) the new Act IV, added between February and July 1831. How did this final version of the closely connected last two Acts develop?
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