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.
EXPLANATORY NOTES TO INTRODUCTION, TEXT, AND SELECTED PARALIPOMENA
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.
where Helen really belongs: at the level of the autobiographical allegory we may compare Faust’s escape from the Emperor’s world to Goethe’s withdrawal from frustrating political involvements at Weimar, a frustration expressing itself in his sudden ‘flight’ to Italy in 1786 in pursuit of his poetic and scientific development (cf. pp. xxiv, xxxv f.).
Greek mythology: Goethe’s main source for Greek mythological material, in the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’ and elsewhere, was Benjamin Hederich’s Griindliches Mythologisches Lexikon (Complete Lexicon of Mythology), 2nd ed., 1770. He was also able to consult Riemer, his resident adviser on all matters of classical scholarship.
Pharsalus: the text also recalls (7465-8) another decisive battle: the total defeat of Perseus of Macedon at Pydna, in 168 BC, by forces of the Roman Republic (7468). With the fall of the last successor of Alexander the Great and with him of the Macedonian kingdom, all effective Greek resistance to Roman power was at an end. This event is symbolically balanced by the victory of Caesar at Pharsalus 120 years later, as a result of which the whole Greek world became a province of the Roman Empire by the end of the 1st century BC.
homunculi: Goethe is thought to have had in mind the method advocated by Paracelsus (1493-1541): ‘Let the sperm of a man by it selfe be putrefied in a gourd glasse, sealed up, with the highest degree of putrefaction in Horse dung, for the space of forty days, or so long until it begin to bee alive, move, and stir, which can easily be seen. After this time it will be something like a Man, yet transparent, and without a body. Now after this, if it bee every day warily, and prudently nourished and fed with the Arcanum of Mans blood, and bee for the space of forty weeks kept in a constant, equall heat of Horse-dung, it will become a true, and living infant, having all the members of an infant, which is bom of a woman, but it will bee far lesse. This we call Homunculus, or Artificiall. And this is afterwards to be brought up with as great care, and diligence as any other infant, until it come to riper years of understanding’ (quoted by Gray, 1952, 205 f., from the English translation of 1650). Goethe could also read about homunculi in the Anthropodemus Plutonicus, a 17th-century demonological treatise by Johannes Schultze (‘Johannes Prätorius’) which yielded much material for Faust. The motif of bottle-imps and similar creatures is widespread in folklore, and is to be found in the Arabian Nights. Goethe is also known to have read and admired Sterne’s Tristram Shandy, where he would have found a humorous, if obscure, reference to ‘the Homunculus’ in ch. 2 of book I.
entelechy: from an undated conversation reported by Eckermann to Riemer and by Riemer to one of the early Faust editors who published it in 1857 (see Williams, 1987, 144 and note). For further reference to Goethe’s conception of the entelechy and its survival, see pp. lxxii and note, Ixxvi f.
Mephistopheles and the Homunculus: in a conversation of 16 December 1829 Eckermann ‘cannot help thinking that [Mephistopheles] has secretly helped the Homunculus into existence’, and Goethe replies: ‘You appreciate the position very correctly. It is in fact so, and I have already considered whether I should not put a few lines into the mouth of Mephistopheles, while he is visiting Wagner and the Homunculus is developing, which would make it quite clear to the reader that he has had a hand in it.’ Eckermann points out that there is already a hint to this effect in 7003 f., and Goethe replies: ‘You are right. For the attentive reader this might almost be enough; still, I shall try to think of a few lines nevertheless.’ No such lines were in fact added.
Faust’s dream: both in this passage and in Faust’s later vision by the Peneus (7271-312), what Faust sees is not Helen herself but her biological antecedents as it were, the begetting of her by the divine swan. In the conversation of 16 December 1829 Eckermann comments very perceptively on the former passage (the other had not yet been written), admiring the way in which ‘in a work of this kind the particular parts refer to each other, affect each other, and complement and enhance each other. It is really only this dream about Leda, here in the second Act, that lays the true foundation for the subsequent Helena episode. In the latter, we keep hearing about swans and about a woman begotten by a swan, but here that very action is presented and seen; and when we later come to the “Helena” full of the sensuous impression of such a situation, how much clearer and more complete it must then appear!’ Eckermann adds: ‘Goethe agreed with me, and it seemed to give him pleasure that I had noticed this.’
Homunculus in glass vessel: in a conversation of 20 December 1829 Eckermann wonders how the role of the Homunculus in Wagner’s laboratory could be represented on the stage; Goethe suggests that Wagner ‘must not let the flask out of his hands, and the voice would have to sound as if it were coming out of the flask. It would be a part for a ventriloquist; I have heard them perform, and I am sure one of them would make a good job of it.’
transitions: in an undated conversation (?1831) Goethe remarks to Riemer that the essential meaning of Part Two as a whole seems to him to be sufficiently clear for an intelligent reader, ‘even if
there are transitions enough that he will have to supply’. Another such hiatus occurs at the end of Act IV, again because Goethe omitted to write an intended scene, in this case that in which Faust receives from the Emperor a formal grant of the coastal land under the sea.
‘neptunism’ and ‘vukanism’: according to the ‘neptunist’ or ‘diluvianist’ theory, the earth’s crust had been shaped and modified by the gradual sedimentation of rocks in the oceans, whereas the ‘vulcanists’ or ‘plutonists’ regarded volcanic or seismic activity as the primary factor. Goethe also saw this scientific controversy as a political allegory, in which the two opposing principles were reforming gradualism on the one hand and violent revolutionary change on the other. He was temperamentally inclined to a gradualist, evolutionary view in both the geological and the political spheres; in particular he abhorred the French Revolution, and dreaded all his life the recurrence of similar upheavals in Europe (cf. p. lix f.). Both the episode of Anaxagoras’s mountain suddenly brought into being by an earthquake (7503-689, 7801-950) and the geophysical discussion between Mephistopheles and Faust in Act IV (10072-127) are satirical developments of the same allegorical theme; and the Homunculus’s preference for the counsels of the ‘neptunist’ Thales represents Goethe’s refusal to be involved in the world of politics, escaping instead into the study of the slow and orderly processes of nature.
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