Scene 11: this first scene (8488-9126) of the ‘Helen’ Act closely imitates the style and metre of a classical Greek tragedy (cf. Introd., p. xliii and note). The iambic trimeter used by Helen and Phorcyas (Mephistopheles) is dominant; the Chorus uses ode forms with patterns of metrically related strophes, and at certain points the dialogue changes to trochaic tetrameter (8909-29, 8957-70, 9067-70). The exchange of invective between Phorcyas and the Chorus in alternating single lines (‘stichomythia’, 8810-25) is a further convention of the style.
in duplicated shape: see Helen in Index.
A phantom to a phantom: see Helen and Achilles in Index.
three-headed hell-hound: the monstrous (in some accounts fifty-headed) dog Cerberus who guarded the entrance to the underworld. Hercules (q.v.), as one of his Labours, dragged him up to earth and then returned him.
fruit… ashes: the so-called apple of Sodom, referred to by Milton (Paradise Lost, x, 560-6) and Byron (Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, III, 34: ‘The apples on the Dead Sea’s shore, all ashes to the taste’). The fruit (cabtropis procera) outwardly resembles an apple, but is filled with hairy seeds, popularly identified with the ash from the holocaust of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Faust’s speech: at this point the versification of the dialogue begins to change, and the metres of medieval and modern poetry (especially rhymed verse) become dominant until just before the end of the Act; cf. Introd., p. xliii.
Arcadia: see Introd., p. xlvi f. and note.
daughter of Crete: Mephistopheles-Phorcyas has claimed (8864 f.) to have been carried off into slavery by Menelaus on his expedition to Crete.
Hermes: Arcadia was especially associated with Hermes (Mercury), who was thought to have been born there. Goethe takes his catalogue of the god’s exploits (9645-78) straight from Hederich’s mythological lexicon (see 2nd note to p. xxviii).
the young girl: there is no agreed interpretation of this curious episode.
‘a well-known figure’: the poet George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824), had died of a fever in Greece while helping the Greeks in their war of liberation from Turkish rule. On the significance of Goethe’s posthumous allegorical tribute to him by casting him as Faust’s son, see Introd., pp. xlvii f.
Chorus: The Chorus’s lament for ‘Euphorion’ (9907-38) refers in general terms to Byron’s character and career (his aristocratic birth, early death, success with women, poetic genius, rebellion against conventional morality, adoption of the ‘high purpose’ of Greek liberation). In the course of their discussion of the Byron episode, Goethe asks Eckermann whether he has noticed ‘that when the Chorus sing his lament, they are quite out of character? Earlier they are in the ancient style throughout, or at least they never cease to be a chorus of young girls; but here they suddenly become serious and full of lofty reflections, uttering things that they have never thought of and never could have thought of.’ Eckermann replies that he had indeed noticed it, but that ‘such small discrepancies cannot count against a higher beauty if they are the means to its achievement. The song after all had to be sung, there was no other chorus present, and so the girls had to sing it’ (conversation of 5 July 1827). From 9939, after the music has stopped, both Helen and the Chorus revert to ancient metres.
Phorcyas’s speeches and unmasking: the last words from Mephistopheles to Faust in Act III (9945-54) are a serious exhortation quite devoid of the speaker’s usual cynical inflections; they are thus, as Goethe himself remarked of the Chorus’s lament for Byron, ‘quite out of character’ (see previous note). It is perhaps a pity that no similar pronouncement by Goethe himself on 9945-54 has been recorded, as commentators might then have laid this point to rest. As it is, we have instead the already quoted conversation with Eckermann of 16 December 1829, in which Goethe endorses Ecker mann’s impression that Mephistopheles exercises some degree of secret control (Mitwirkung) not only in the making of the Homunculus but throughout the ‘Helena’ action (see note to p. xxxix). Goethe had evidently decided to suggest that Mephistopheles, whether disguised as the court jester or as Phorcyas, is in some respects a representative of poetic inventiveness, considered as a kind of ‘magical’ creativity; hints of this, as we have seen, are already dropped in Act I (see Introd., p. xxvi), and the role of poet also at times appears to be given subliminally to Faust himself (see Introd., pp. xxvii and xxxvi f). Here as elsewhere (see Introd., pp. xxxiii f.) Goethe seems to have been less concerned with consistency, with the construction of dramatic figures who would always speak ‘in character’, than with making a statement by means of a symbolic dramatic fantasy, in this case a statement about the nature of art. In Act III it is notable that Mephistopheles not only speaks unironically here about the ennobling effect of Helen (i.e., of classical beauty) on Faust, but also spoke similarly (9620-8) about Euphorion, the newly born personification of Poetry: ‘the future master-maker of all beauty, through whose limbs the everlasting music is already flowing.’ He reverts to his more usual cynical manner in his mocking speech (9955-61) about the dead Euphorion’s garments and their promise of modish literary imitation; he then comes forward and sits down in the proscenium, and when the Chorus has sung the praises of ‘the elements’ and disappeared into them he rises, still outside the stage, like some gigantic master of ceremonies, and removes his actor’s mask and actor’s cothurni (the special leather boots that were worn as a symbol of the classical high tragedy). Phorcyas is revealed as Mephistopheles, ready with his unspoken last words on the ‘drama’ (Stuck) that we have witnessed. By this ironical final stage direction, Goethe seems to suggest that the whole solemn and stylized ‘Helena’ action still has, as originally intended, something of the character of an intermezzo, a second-order ‘play within a play’; and that art has two aspects or natures, that of timeless monumentality and that of illusion.
Faust’s soliloquy: see Introd., p. 1 and note.
Eph. 6:12: Goethe associates Mephistopheles’ reference to the infernal host’s ‘lordship of the upper air’ with St Paul’s warning that our real enemies are not of flesh and blood, but evil spiritual powers of all kinds, including (the point is obscured by the Authorized Version but clearer in the Greek or in Luther’s German) ‘wicked spirits in the celestial regions’. Mephistopheles seems to be saying (10091-4) that the unseen presence of demons in the earth’s atmosphere is something that mankind has taken a long time to discover.
Moloch’s hammer: ‘Moloch’ appears in the Old Testament as the name of a Canaanite god associated with human sacrifice; in Milton and his German imitator Klopstock he is a fierce demon in the service of Satan. In Klopstock’s epic The Messiah (1848), which Goethe read as a child, he lives among mountains, and strengthens his defences by building new mountains round them (n. 354 ff.).
Babylonian debauch: Mephistopheles has been describing to Faust the luxurious life of a typical ancien régime ruler, surrounded by a pleasure-loving court and a large formal garden such as that of Versailles (which the German princelings of the 18th century strove to imitate). Faust’s comment, literally translated, is merely ‘Vulgar and modern! Sardanapalus!’. Sardanapalus (668-26 BC), reputedly the most decadent and corrupt of the ancient Babylonian despots, was eventually (like Louis XVI) dethroned by a rebellion. He was the titular hero of a drama by Byron (1821) which the latter had dedicated to Goethe.
mountain people, Peter Quince, Three Mighty Men: for the ‘mountain people’ and the three giants, see Introd. pp. lvii f. and notes. Peter Quince, in Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, is the leader of the group of naïve tradesmen who present the ‘merry and tragical’ play of Pyramus and Thisbe at the ducal court; the comparison of Mephistopheles’ sinister ‘rabble’ to these characters seems inappropriate.
mountain folk: see preceding note.
pictures in the air. Faust rather implausibly explains the three strong men’s demonically multiplied fighting powers to the Emperor by evocatively describing an atmospheric phenomenon sometimes observed in the Strait of Messina between Sicily
and Italy. (This seemingly magical mirage effect became known locally as fata Morgana after Morgan le Fay, the sister of King Arthur whose legend was carried to Sicily by Norman settlers.)
last fading glow. the dancing flames noticed by the Emperor on the spear-points of his army are similarly explained by Faust in terms of the luminous electrical discharge sometimes seen on the masts of a ship during a storm. Seamen knew this as ‘St Elmo’s fire’, after the saint whose protection they invoked; it was also associated with the tutelary ‘Heavenly Twins’ (see Index, Twins) whom Faust mentions in 10600.
our Master: the ‘sorcerer from Norcia’ whom the Emperor had pardoned (see 10439-52 and Introd., p. lvii); he now also sends the favourable omen of the eagle and the griffin (see Index, Griffin).
the Emperor and four princes: Goethe creates a slightly ponderous and comic effect by writing this concluding scene in alexandrine couplets, the old-fashioned metre used by German poets of the earlier 18th century in imitation of French classical drama. For the scene in general, see Introd., p. lviii and note.
that infamous man was granted land: Goethe originally intended to include a scene showing the formal grant of the coastal lands by the Emperor to Faust, as predicted by Mephistopheles in 10303-6 (see Introd., pp. lviii f. and note). The phrases ‘land on the Empire’s coast’ (11035 f.) and ‘the wide sea-strand’(10306; literally ‘the limitless strand’) may refer to the North Sea or Baltic coasts of the German Empire, but Goethe did not necessarily conceive this motif in terms of geographical realism; for that matter the ‘high sea’ noticed by Faust on his aerial journey back from Greece (10198) was presumably the Adriatic, where the Empire’s coastline could hardly be described as extensive.
Philemon and Baucis: see Introd., pp. Ixii ff. and Index, Philemon.
Lynceus the Watchman: see Introd., p. lxiv and text pp. 147-51.
from dong to ding: Goethe is said to have had a particular aversion to the sound of church bells.
Midnight: on this scene generally, see Introd., pp. lxiv-lxvii.
lemurs: see Index.
In youth when I did love…: the songs of the Lemurs as they dig Faust’s grave, here and on p. 224, are partly adapted by Goethe from the Gravedigger’s song in Shakespeare’s Hamlet (v, i), using the variant version published by Thomas Percy in his Reliques of Ancient Poetry (1765).
Mephistopheles’prediction: see Introd., pp. lxviiif.
no ditch: Goethe here puns untranslatably on Graben (ditch) and Grab (grave).
Faust’s last speech: see Introd., pp. lxx f.
All is fulfilled: Mephistopheles deliberately echoes Luther’s translation (‘Es ist vollbracht’) of the last words of Jesus on the cross (John 19: 30).
his own blood-scribed document: the Pact and Wager with the Devil which Faust signed in Part One, Sc. 7; on Goethe’s less than wholly serious treatment of this motif, see Introd. to Part Two, pp. xiii f.
My head’s on fire: on Mephistopheles’ flirtation with the angels, his final discomfiture, and Sc. 22 generally, see Introd., pp. lxxiii ff.
Mountain Gorges: on this last scene generally, see Introd., pp. lxxv-lxxviii and notes.
Mater Gloriosa: the Virgin Mother of God revealed in glory, in contrast to the Mater Dolorosa of Gretchen’s earlier prayer (Part One, Sc. 21).
Penitent women: the three leading penitents are the prostitute whose ‘many sins’ Jesus forgave when she anointed his feet in the house of Simon the Pharisee, and who is traditionally sometimes identified with Mary Magdalene (Luke 7: 36-50); the woman of Samaria with ‘five husbands’ to whom he talked at Jacob’s well, promising her the water of eternal life (John 4: 7-29); and Mary of Egypt whose story is told in the Acta Sanctorum (a calendar of the histories and legends of the saints and martyrs, compiled by Catholic scholars from the 17th century onwards). This Mary, also a courtesan, had attempted to enter the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, but an invisible arm barred her way; repenting her sinful life, she then did penance for forty years in the desert, and before dying wrote a message in the sand requesting the monk Socinius to bury her and pray for her.
paralipomena: see Introd., p. xxi and notes.
paralipomenon BA 5 (1797): this much quoted but cryptic jotting dates from the third or ‘classical’ period of Goethe’s work on Faust (see Introd., pp. xiv ff.). It is the only surviving fragment or draft of a more detailed scheme for the drama as a whole, in all probability written at the same time as the Prologue in Heaven (summer 1797). The fragment is difficult to interpret owing to its highly condensed style, partial illegibility, and defective punctuation, but it indicates clearly enough that Goethe has now decided to divide his Faust into two parts. Most of the formulations refer to Part One, which he was completing at this time. The first two lines seem to summarize Faust’s opening soliloquy and the conjuring of the Earth Spirit, the third and fourth possibly refer to his turning away from the Sign of the Macrocosm to that of the Earth Spirit (Part One, 454-61), signifying perhaps his choice of earthly experience and rejection of other-worldly vision. The seventh and eighth lines point to the symbolic affinity between Wagner and the Student as repudiated aspects of Faust; the tenth line recalls the Gretchen tragedy by which the rest of Part One is dominated. (‘Von außen gesehn is read as ‘von außen gesucht’ by some editors, but both phrases remain obscure.) The movement of Goethe’s thought, here characteristic of its ‘classical’ style under the influence of Schiller, is dialectical, operating in antitheses which are then resolved into syntheses, as in the fifth line; the sixth perhaps expresses a sense of the dramatic value (well understood by Schiller) of clearly polarized contradictions and conflicts. The last three lines again set up antitheses (‘from without: outwards: from within’, ‘life : activity’, ‘naïvety : consciousness’, ‘passion : beauty’). The deleted words seem to relate in some way to the last three lines; the eleventh line in particular evidently adumbrates Faust’s experiences in Part Two at the Emperor’s court (‘activity’) and with Helen (‘beauty’), episodes conceived at this time though not yet written. The last line probably also refers to the concluding phase of Part Two as Goethe now envisaged it, if we may take ‘creativity’ to refer to Faust’s land-reclamation enterprise or something similar, and ‘epilogue in Chaos on the way to Hell’ as an indication of the eventual non-tragic ending foreseen in the Prologue in Heaven: in an answering ‘epilogue’ Faust is somehow to be rescued from the Devil at the last moment (which is in fact what happens in the comic eucatastrophe of Act V).
paralipomenon BA 70 (1816): see Introd., pp. xxi f. and passim.
paralipomenon BA 73 (1826): see Introd., pp. xxi, xxviii and passim. Having decided in 1826 to publish what is now Act III, the ‘Helena’ Act, as a separate drama, Goethe considered providing an explanatory preface for the general public who had not studied the Faustus legend and knew nothing of what had happened to Goethe’s hero after the death of Gretchen. He planned to publish this preface, in advance of Helena itself, in his periodical Art and Antiquity, but evidently found it difficult to write. Three versions are extant, one consisting for the most part of a highly discursive synopsis of what was later to become Act II, especially the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’. The synopsis is preceded by a preamble in which he gives reasons for having at last decided to publish part of Part Two, and referring to the gap that must be bridged between the Faust of Part One and the ‘higher regions’ and ‘more dignified circumstances’ in which he encounters the classical Greek heroine. The much shortened version that actually appeared in Art and Antiquity omits the synopsis; I have here omitted the preamble and kept the lengthy but rather more illuminating synopsis. The relationship between this material and the finished Act II is discussed in the Introduction, see especially pp. xxx-xxxiv.
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND INDEX OF NAMES
I. Studies in English of Faust Part Two and Faust generally
Boyle, Nicholas, ‘The Politics of Faust II: Another Look at the Stratum of 1831’, Publications of the English G
oethe Society, new series 52 (1981–2), 4–43.
Boyle, Nicholas, ‘Du ahnungsloser Engel du!: Some Current Views of Goethe’s Faust’, German Life and Letters, new series 36 (1982–3), 116–47.
Gray, Ronald D., Goethe the Alchemist (Cambridge University Press, 1952).
Littlejohns, Richard, ‘The Discussion between Goethe and Schiller on the Epic and Dramatic, and its Relevance to Faust’, Neophilologus, 71 (1987), 388–401.
Mason, Eudo C., Goethe’s Faust; Its Genesis and Purport (University of California Press, 1967).
Williams, John R., ‘The Festival of Luna: A Study of the Lunar Symbolism in Goethe’s Klassische Walpurgisnacht’, Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, 50 (1976), 640–63.
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