Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Vol. 92, No. 5 (Oct., 1977), pp. 963-976 Published by: Modern Language Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/461849 Accessed: 10/12/2010 20:10
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alignment of Jesus Christ with the thousands of other "fowl under heaven"-is a form of the "Christless [Christ-empty] Christianity" that Lavater so abhorred. In Werther's bold adaptation of this position Atkins has seen a Lavaterian hint of Werther's arrogance (pp. 53435). In view of Goethe's theological differences with Lavater, we may wonder at Atkins' conclusion that Goethe uses Lavater's categories to mark out the symptoms and stages of Werther's decline-until we consider that Goethe, very much the chameleon poet, is quite uninhibited about adopting whatever frame of reference his
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purposes require. And Werther does exhibit arrogance, nowhere more than in his arrogation of the right to displace Jesus Christ in order to proceed directly to God the Father. As the church bells ring twelve, he holds the pistol to his forehead and dies his violent death. If we turn now to Faust, who likewise hears sounds from a neighboring church as he teeters on the brink of suicide, we are struck by the contrast. Whereas Werther surveys Christ and finds a way around Him, Faust encounters the Redeemer in the music of an Easter cantata and finds his path into death blocked. The difference might be easily explained: Werther believes in Christ's Resurrection and presumes to try to emulate it; Faust doubts and, having been reminded of his doubt by the ceremony, desists ("I hear the message, to be sure, but I lack the faith"-1. 765).6 It is hardly so simple, however, as faith versus doubt, for Faust seems to deny credence only in the miracle of the literal Resurrection (1. 766), not in the possibility of any sort of redemption or immortality whatsoever.7 In reaching for the poison, he was clearly gambling on reawakening in a higher sphere, on achieving pure activity beyond the grave. Faust does seem fleetingly to be overcome by doubt, but doubt not so much in the existence of "jene Spharen" 'yonder spheres' as in his own ability to attain them (1. 767). Ultimately, however, it is not fear and trembling but grateful reacceptance of mortal life that accounts for his restoration and reorientation. At the monologue's end Faust's mood is ecstatic, for he has fought a spiritual struggle and been granted a breakthrough: "Sound on, ye songs of heaven, so sweet and mild, / My tears flow forth, and Earth takes back her child!" (11. 783-84). A few bars of the heavenly tones, reaching out to him, Faust, "in the dust" (1. 763)-music better directed, Faust remonstrates, to the ears of "tender-hearted men" (1. 764)-have broken through his isolation and led him back into his natural terrestrial sphere and to fellowship with the rest of mankind. How much more authentic ring Faust's words as religious expression than does Werther's protesting that there will be compensation in the world beyond! Indeed, we have cause to wonder whether Faust is not the stronger believer of the two. Emil Staiger, for one, has questioned Wer-
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for the theme of death and rebirth as the principle governing organic development, and its introduction at the beginning of Faust should alert us both to expect Faust's ultimate redemption and to watch for a series of metaphorical deaths and rebirths in Faust's progress toward this last transmutation. But, while figuratively speaking we may call Faust's reacceptance of mortal life in the scene "Night" a rebirth, let us not lose sight of the question of his personal motivation. And his contemplation of the promise that man may die and live anew would seem to provide a poor incentive for reentering the life that thus far has proved unsatisfactory. The Easter music is a suitable accompaniment for the longed-for escape, but why should it cause Faust voluntarily to reincarcerate himself? At least, if he viewed Christ's death and Resurrection as exemplary, as Werther does, he would not be dissuaded from suicide but would be encouraged to carry it out. Insofar as Faust attributed any value whatsoever to Christ's example as example, it would seem to reinforce his purpose, not detract from it. The question remains then, Why does Faust's response to the Resurrection differ from that of Werther? And this question can be reformulated in at least three alternative ways. First-and we have pondered this-is the difference one of belief? Second, does Christ perhaps provide a different kind of model for Faust than for Werther; that is, does Faust focus on something other than Christ's transmutation from a mortal to an immortal being? And, third, does Faust view the relationship between man and Christ as other than that of imitator to model? Stuart Atkins sees Jesus serving as a model of heroism: "Although Faust remains unable to believe the message of the Resurrection literally, in the dust which is the verge of death he has been reminded of an example of suffering far more genuinely heroic than his own (second Angels' Chorus)" (Goethe's Faust, p. 32). A version of this view is rather fully developed by Ernst Busch, who considers the Easter cantata to be a divinely staged admonition to submit to a life of suffering: "Death as rebirth and resurrection to a new existence is the fruit of a life tested and proven through suffering. Man is meant to suffer. This is plainly confessed by Goethe through the words of the disciples: 'Ach! an der
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Erde Brust / Sind wir zum Leide da' ['Oh, at earth's breast have we / In suffering our lot to see']."13 The better to stress the exemplary character of Christ's passion, Busch explicitly denies the pertinence of the Atonement to this context: "The point of this passage is not that Christ's ordeal was also beneficial to others.... Christ is not seen as coming from God to man as the Revelator and Mediator; rather he strides toward God as the proven man." Only in this special sense, according to Busch, is Faust still receptive to the Christian message as he ventures hubristically to transcend his existential limits Busch has identified one of Goethe's several postures toward Jesus Christ, one differing from that of an Elder of the Pedagogical Province in Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre only in that the latter expressly exempts Christ's ultimate suffering from the life that men are to emulate.14 We have taken note of Werther's attempt to duplicate Christ's transmutation, and Herbert Schoffler long ago interpreted Werther's earthly trials as a secularized parallel to Christ's passion.15 A number of more recent critics have regarded Werther's imitativeness as megalomanic (e.g., Atkins, "Lavater and Goethe," pp. 544, 564). But, whatever the correct view of Werther (even megalomania may not be wholly incompatible with a certain grandeur in his defiance of a world he never made), it is doubtful that any pattern of Christ-imitating will fit the life of Faust, either as guiding ideal or as manifest accomplishment. While Busch's effort to take the meaning of the Easter ceremony into account is certainly to be applauded,16 he offers no reasons for his choice of the disciples as Goethe's spokesmen. Indeed, the last word is given to the Chorus of Angels, whose response gently urges the disciples to cease their lament and be joyful: "Euch ist der Meister nah, / Euch ist er da!" 'To you is the Master near, / For you is He here!' (11. 806-07). Further, the implicit, though no doubt unintended, assignment of Faust to the same side of the "Leiden/Tatigkeit" 'suffering/activity' polarity as Werther is more than questionable-for Faust is the most impressive symbol of human restlessness and striving in all of world literature. I believe that it is at least schematically correct to regard "die Leiden" of young Werther as antithetical to the
(pp. 129-30).
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he reexperiences only the emotion that once accompanied his pious convictions and nothing of the beliefs themselves, or that he remembers only the warmth and regeneration of springtime and the joyful games of youth. At the very least, his words reveal fondness and respect for the doctrine of Christ's mediation and for the Christian belief in this doctrine. Moreover, we will not appreciate all the meanings of the text under examination if we fail to take into account the active quality of the German noun "Erinnrung" (sic, 1. 781). We would be entitled to translate it as "reminder"-a reminder that man cannot save himself, a "putting inside" of the formative idea from Faust's childhood that man is a dependent being. To this extent, perhaps, he experiences a reactivated faith. In any case, the question of Faust's conviction or lack of it regarding the tidings of the Resurrection can be resolved only when we know its meaning to him. The crucial facts are these: Upon recovering from his humiliation in the encounter with the Earth Spirit, Faust is about to attempt self-translation "to new spheres of pure activity" (1. 705) when the intrusion of an Easter cantata upon his consciousness reminds him of the New Covenant. He then gives up the attempt and avoids the hubris of which he was in immediate danger. He is granted at the critical moment, if not faith -which he explicitly denies-then at least a different perspective on the human situation. He understands that man is a contingent being, a patient. (Thus, ironically, in their views of death and rebirth, Werther is the actor and Faust the sufferer.) It is virtually an epiphany that Faust experiences, although what is revealed is not "news"; rather, Faust reinternalizes an alienated conception. He appears to have asked himself, What is suitable for human beings, what is their proper station and mine as one of them?-and to have taken a more humble and grateful stance. In truth, of course, it is not a question of decorum but of existential possibility: Can there be such a thing as self-translation, as self-sufficiency? Faust's intellectual isolation and consequent self-image as a special creature had previously denied him every frame of referencehence his frustration at the limits of human experience. But he is given, in the nick of time, a vision of the redemptive act of the necessary being-and thus is made to recognize the con-
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tingency he shares with all mankind. In this way his sense of fraternity with his fellows is restored. If this explanation seems plausible, Faust's acceptance of terrestrial life can indeed be viewed metaphorically as a sort of rebirth, a reawakening to the proper sphere of human activity. We shall see that Faust's subsequent words and deeds reflect his changed orientation.
III Even those who give short shrift to the motivations behind Faust's return to earth recognize the Easter walk before the gates of town as a new beginning. What precedes this is expository: we learn of Faust's frustration with scholarship and witness his failure with magic-until there seems to be no recourse but abandonment of this world. None of these prior events, however, constitutes an embarkation on the course toward the goal of purposeful activity in human society to which Faust's earthly existence is eventually directed. The value of this goal is established by none other than the Lord Himself in His acceptance of Mephistopheles as a desirable stimulus and a deterrent to the life of sloth (11. 340-43), and its importance as a theme is made evident by its reassertion as a leitmotiv at a number of high points in the action-for example, in Faust's intended ascent "zu neuen Spharen reiner Tatigkeit" (1. 705), in his translation of John i.1 as "Im Anfang war die Tat!" 'In the beginning was the deed!' (1. 1237), and, of course, most especially in the formulation of the wager, with its implication that a cessation of striving would be tantamount to the annihilation of Faust's characteristic existence. Fortunately, Faust is persuaded by the Easter message to embark upon his life of activity not "in yonder spheres" (1. 1669) but here below. Then follows the scene "Outside the City Gates," in which Faust participates in the general reawakening and enjoys associating with the throng of all sorts of common people-"Hier bin ich Mensch, hier darf ich's sein!" 'Here I'm a man, am entitled to be!' (1. 940). The contrast to his solitude in the previous scene, the scene of his arrogant claims of uniqueness, is dramatic. Here also he acquires the companion, disguised but instantly suspect to the perspicacious Faust, who will
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of this parallel, it seems fundamentally mistaken, implying a break in the continuity of the earthly action of the drama and ignoring a crucial difference: in the events of "Pleasant Landscape"-in contrast to those of the "Prologue" and the scene "Mountain Gorges," which frame this earthly action-Faust himself is as much the main actor as in any other episode in the play. A more natural association would seem to be that between "Pleasant Landscape" and "Night" as respective introductions to the two parts of the tragedy. And comparison of events in these dissimilar introductions is indeed very illuminating. In "Night," Faust's rejection of scholarship and the Earth Spirit's rejection of him are culs de sac dramatically, but these incidents most economically display the superhuman ambitions of the character who is going to be redirected toward a very strictly circumscribed and human form of self-fulfillment-a life of "Einschrankung." The sleep in the alpine meadow accomplishes the transition from the climactic events in Faust's private world to his entrance into the public domain of the Emperor's Court, into the "Realm of the Great and Powerful" (Atkins' title-Goethe's Faust, p. 107). A part of this sequence is the important symbolic incidentfor the play now forsakes realism almost entirely -of Faust's misguided attempt to view the sun with his naked eye. The motivational importance of this passage, one of great richness and brilliance-hence rewarding to contemplate even apart from its dramatic and thematic contextstands out in the light of the corresponding scene
in Part I, the scene "Night." Faust, who has forgotten the lesson of "Night" along with the trauma of Margaret's incarceration and execution, once again commits the characteristic error of directly and hubristically addressing an absolute. And here again he is directed to a mediating agent as the only access to the sources of life and light. The agent in this case is a rainbow created by the passage of sunlight through the spray of a nearby mountain waterfall or, conceived scientifically rather than phenomenally, the spray itself. It will be useful to consider in some detail the symbolic correspondence between Jesus Christ, on the one hand, and the waterfall and rainbow, on the other. As all Goethe students know, a variation of the image of light passing through a medium occurs in "Zueignung" 'Dedication', the prefatory poem to the 1787 edition of Goethe's works. In this allegorical poem, a poet who has recovered his eyesight after a hubristic glance at the sun is given, "woven of morning mist and solar brightness, / Poetry's veil from the hand of Truth."22 Thus, both in the dedication to Goethe's oeuvre and in the first scene of Faust, Part ii, do we witness the eventual acceptance of mediated light by a man previously self-esteemed "Ubermensch genug" 'superman enough' ("Zueignung," 1. 61) to view the sun directly. However, there is also a direct relationship between this poem-repeatedly chosen by Goethe to introduce his complete works-and the first scene of Faust, Part i. Like the presumptuous poet of "Zueignung," who is reproached by a female divinity (Truth) for having denied his community with the rest of mankind (11. 63-64), Faust on Easter morning had twice disregarded his community with other men. His confrontation with the Earth Spirit had temporarily disabused him of his self-image as a special creature, in unique measure an "image of the Godhead" (his allusion is a willful distortion of the obvious generic meaning of Gen. i.27), who had "laid aside the earthly man" (11. 614, 617); and he had found himself thrown back "on man's uncertain fate" (1. 629). But his contrition, a trough between two hubristic billows, proved fleeting. "Erst noch Wurm" 'Just now a mere worm' (1. 707), he is quickly inflated into an Ubermensch again by the thought of selftranslation. He sees himself as deserving the "godlike rapture" of piercing the ether (11.
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704-07) and as entitled to turn his back on the blessed terrestrial sun (11. 708-09). Then occurs the intrusion that emphatically restores Faust to the earth and human society. In the poem a comparable restoration (11. 69-72) is consecrated by the gift of the veil, with its promise of succor to the community of mankind. Faust's heedless glance at the sun in "Pleasant Landscape" is dramatically more effective than that of his counterpart in the poem and is enhanced as a symbol by the addition of the rainbow-producing refraction, as opposed to the simple filtration of light in "Zueignung""Abglanz" versus "Schleier." However, the very familiarity of Faust's virtually untranslatable line "Am farbigen Abglanz haben wir das Leben" 'In the colorful reflection do we have our life' (1. 4727) has probably somewhat diminished its effect. Let us therefore attend closely to its terms. Faust's use of the general "wir" acknowledges his typicality (as also, e.g., in 11.636-39, and as is made apparent in 11. 4704-14). We may safely include at least "we mortals," perhaps in contradistinction to supernatural beings such as the three Archangels of the "Prologue," who are accredited by the Lord with the power to fix with lasting thoughts "what in wavering apparition gleams" (11. 348-49). For it is we intermediate beings in the great chain who, possessing only "den Schein des Himmelslichts" 'the spark/appearance of heavenly light' (1. 284), follow the wavering phenomenon and are but imperfectly enlightened by the refracted light of "des bunten Bogens Wechseldauer" 'the painted rainbow's constant change' (1. 4722). And of course Faust is one of us, as he here clearly understands: "Am farbigen Abglanz haben wir das Leben." But, since mortals are not the only living beings and this earth is not the only scene of life in the cosmology of Faust, "das Leben" 'life', as the property of those tolerating only the colorful indirect glow, must signify the life in which this limitation obtains-a life that, despite its transitoriness, is both a "Gleichnis" 'analogue' of, and a means to, eternal life, just as the rainbow, at once a mutation and a symbol, points to pure, direct light.23 Similarly, the "Tatigkeit" available to mortal man is both analogous and instrumental to the "reine Tatigkeit" 'pure activity' of the world beyond.24
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connection between man and God; His exclusive mission is to reconcile men to God, to accomplish the "at-one-ment" and overcome the alienation occasioned by the Fall. And, like the "Prince of Peace," the rainbow, in one of Goethe's minor poems, "[sichert] den Frieden . . . den er angekiindet" 'secures the peace . . . that it announced' (HA, i, 261). But Faust does not have to believe literally in the miracle of Christ's atonement, anymore than he has to view rainbows as real bridges, in order to accept the principle for which both stand. They are symbols of mediation, inspiring not only hope but also humility by announcing human dependency, the impossibility of self-redemption, our need for a bridge. Goethe seems gradually to have moved from rejection of the idea of mediation in his youth to reverent acceptance in later life, although he claims in his autobiography to have acknowledged its validity as a principle as early as his student days in Leipzig, during the sickness that abbreviated his stay there. He writes of the kindness shown him at that time by Ernst Theodor Langer, who, professing incomprehension of any claim to direct access to God, insisted on the need for a "Vermittelung" 'mediation'. Goethe tells us that only the self-denial imposed by illness was required for him, always a "bibelfest" young man, to embrace so biblical an idea (HA, ix, 5th ed. [1964], 334-35). It is prominent elsewhere in his works as well. Some positive and negative personifications of it, which I mention illustratively, are Iphigenie, the pompous meddler ironically called "Mittler" 'mediator' in Elective Affinities, Makarie in Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre,and the various mediator figures in the later poetry.35 An especially good example is the wife of the Brahman in "Paria," whose severed head has been inadvertently attached by her grief-stricken son to the body of a "Verbrecherin" 'female criminal,' (HA, i, 364). Now ambivalent, the woman can mediate between pariahs and the great God Brahma. She, like the refracting spray from the waterfall, can transmit light from the "primal source" (Faust, 1. 324) to its finite recipient. In "Das Gottliche" 'The Godlike'-dated 1783-the noble human being prefigures transcendental beings! "Sein Beispiel lehr' uns / Jene glauben." 'May man's example teach faith in them.'36 And "Prooemion" proclaims of our relationship to God, "So weit das
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Ohr, so weit das Auge reicht, / Du findest nur Bekanntes, das Ihm gleicht, / Und deines Geistes h6chster Feuerflug / Hat schon am Gleichnis, hat am Bild genug" 'So far as ear can hear or eye's not dim, / All known things, you will find, are like to Him. / The highest flight that mind of man e'er bore / Resorts to simile or metaphor' (HA, I, 357; Zeydel, p. 167). Mediation is the root metaphor in Goethe's conception of symbolism. His view, as formulated by Rene Wellek, is that "symbol suggests an ideal to the mind indirectly" (italics added),37 but an ideal that remains ineffable, indeed inscrutable.38 All symbols mediate. The rainbow and Redeemer, however, share as symbols a property that distinguishes them from most other symbols, inasmuch as the idea t-heyconvey is identical with the principle by which they (and all other symbols) work. The "vehicle" in each case is but a specific instance of their common referent-the general category under which they may be subsumed. They do that which they mean, and that which they mean is the principle that governs the life of man. In responding to these symbols by accepting and then reaccepting a life of finitude and indirectness, Faust seems to have grasped something of this aspect of their nature. And it seems necessary to accredit Goethe not only with being "the first to draw the distinction between symbol and allegory in the modern way" (Wellek, i, 210) but with having promulgated a conception of man as the symbol-using animal. Probably, then, there is a significant relationship between the respective introductory scenes of Faust, Parts I and II, inasmuch as they depict Faust's acknowledgment and then his reacknowledgment of the futility of a direct assault on ultimate values. Each redirects Faust over a detour-through first the small and then the great world. From the attempt to escape this "Kerker . . . Wo selbst das liebe Himmelslicht / Triib durch gemalte Scheiben bricht!" 'prison . . . Where even the lovely light of heaven / Breaks dimly through the painted panes!' (11. 398-401 )-yet another instance of light passing through a semiopaque medium (into what is both Faust's study and, symbolically, human life as confinement)-Faust seems to have learned to doubt Werther's belief "that [man] can leave this prison whenever he wants to" (p. 7) and
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My way to freedomI have not yet fought. Could I all magic from my pathwaybanish, Could quite unlearnits spells and bid it vanish Nature, could I face thee, in thy great plan, Then were it worththe pain to be a man. (11.11403-07) Whether or not Atkins' view is correct that the "Classical Walpurgis Night" and the whole of Act III are "a double dream play representing a victory of Faust over Mephistopheles" (Goethe's Faust, p. 157), it is evident that by the end of the play a victory is achieved. Perhaps owing to his deployment of Mephistopheles and company to remove Philemon and Baucis and to Faust's resultant complicity in the destruction of an idyllic existence-for the second time, for here too there is a distant parallel to Part i-Faust now, at the eleventh hour, does regret his unholy attachment and asserts the human self-reliance that alone, paradoxically, entitles him to divine assistance. In the confrontation with the allegorical figure Sorge, Faust cautions himself, "Take care and speak no magic word" (1. 11423), and combats his assailant with no other than his human resources, native and acquired. Among the latter must be counted his correct orientation, at last, to the human station-his unqualified acceptance of it: Der Erdenkreisist mir genug bekannt, Nach driibenist die Aussichtuns verrant; Tor, wer dorthindie Augen blinzelndrichtet, Sich uiberWolkenseinesgleichendichtet! Er stehe fest und sehe hier sich um; Dem Tiichtigenist diese Welt nicht stumm. Was brauchter in die Ewigkeitzu schweifen! Well do I know the sphereof earth and men. The view beyond is barredto mortalken; A fool! who thitherturnshis blinkingeyes And dreams he'll find his like above the skies. Let him standfast and look aroundon earth; Not mute is this world to a man of worth. Why need he range into eternity? (11.11441-47) The echoes here of Faust's first struggle to achieve and declare a commitment to a life in this world-"driiben" 'on the other side' (repeated from 1. 1660 of the second "Study" scene) and "der Erdenkreis" 'sphere of earth' (by contrast with "jene Spharen" 'yonder spheres' from 1. 1669), not to mention the unmistakable allusion to Faust's purpose on that long-ago Easter
Faust's intended suicide, an act of violence, had the purpose of circumventing the regular, evolutionary process; his death, in contrast to Werther's, ultimately occurs involuntarily and only when he is ripe for it. The satire on the philosophical solipsism of the Baccalaureaus in Act II is but another reminder that human life and death are conditional (11. 6791, 6793-6806). Only at the journey's end does Faust fully succeed in restricting himself to what is suitable for mortals. Almost until his final breath he relies upon a negative counterpart to the supernatural agency that alone can effect the metamorphosis promised by the blessed boys' description of Faust's soul, in the scene "Mountain Gorges," as "im Puppenstand" 'in Chrysalid state' (1. 11982). In the light of our discussion this dependence can be recognized as a still incomplete acceptance of the condition of unembellished humanity. For the significance of Faust's affiliation with Mephistopheles is that it amounts to an illicit increase in potency through diabolical assistance or, in other words, black magic. (Albeit strictly within the terrestrial sphere. Even Mephistopheles, by pretending to
honor Faust's "Mond . . . Sucht" 'moon craze,'
'lunacy' [11. 10179-80], helps reinforce Faust's ties to this earth. "Dieser Erdenkreis / Gewahrt noch Raum zu groBen Taten" 'This earthly sphere / Affords yet room for deeds of greatness' [11.10181-82], is Faust's uncomprehending retort. Faust is the butt of the sarcasm, but the joke ultimately is on Mephistopheles.) In retaining the devil's services-a dependence that, to those sensitive to evil, compromises both his love and good works (11. 3491-93, 11113-14) -Faust has renounced superhuman goals but not yet superhuman means, as he eventually comprehends: Noch hab' ich mich ins Freie nicht gekiimpft. Konnt' ich Magie von meinem Pfad entfernen, Die Zauberspriiche ganz und gar verlernen, Stiind'ich, Natur, vor dir ein Mann allein, Da wair'sder Miihe wert, ein Mensch zu sein.
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morning: "Why need he range into eternity?"mark this passage as a recapitulation of the right orientation. Having finally accomplished what was necessary for him to do, Faust confirms his successful self-restriction to human finiteness as part of a retrospective summary of his mortal existence. As though to prevent any further temptation to direct "thither his blinking eyes," Faust is now blinded, his characteristic "dunkler Drang" 'dark urges' (1. 328) having been supplanted by an inner "brilliant light" (1. 11500). In this inwardly enlightened state he is finally ready for removal "to higher spheres" (1. 12094). This time, however, it is not a case of self-initiated translation but one to be effected by another. Margaret's prayer in behalf of "Der friih Geliebte, / Nicht mehr Getriibte" 'My early lover, /No longer troubled' (11. 12073-74) is answered by the Mater Gloriosa with the instruction: "Come, rise to higher spheres! When he senses thee there, he'll follow" (11. 12094-95). Not incompatibly with the angels' earlier citation of Faust's striving as a factor in his redemption (11. 11936-37), the drama's mysterious last words, sung by a "Chorus Mysticus" containing perhaps all the personalities of the scene "Mountain Gorges," reiterate the theme on which we have dwelt: man's need for mediation and the symbolic-hence mediatory-nature of all things finite and insufficient:
Notes
1 Stuart Atkins, "J. C. Lavater and Goethe: Problems
of Psychology and Theology in Die Leiden des Jungen Werthers," PMLA, 63 (1948), 535. 2 The Sufferings of Young Werther, trans. Harry
ence to each work cited and subsequently indicate the page or line in the text. 3 Arnold Bergstriisser, "Goethe's View of Christ,"
Modern Philology, 46 (1948-49), 178. 4 Goethe und Lavater, ed. Heinrich Funck, Schriften
Steinhauer (New York: Norton, 1970), p. 67. Quotations from Werther, with page references hereafter given in the text, are from this translation. In translating Faust, I have relied heavily on Bayard Taylor, as revised by Stuart Atkins (New York: Collier, 1962) and George Madison Priest, 2nd ed. (New York: Knopf, 1941) but, mainly in shorter passages, have freely emended when this seemed desirable. Except as noted, other translations are mine. References to Goethe's writings in the original, unless otherwise noted, Trunz (Hamburg: Christian Wegner Verlag, 1949-64), henceforth abbreviatedHA. I give a detailed first referare to Goethes Werke: Hamburger A usgabe, ed. Erich
This contains the advice: "Da Gott Mensch geworden ist, damit wir arme, sinnliche Kreaturen ihn m6chten fassen und begreifen k6nnen, so muB man sich vor nichts mehr huten, als ihn wieder zu Gott zu machen" (p. 231). 6 Line nos. in Taylor and Priest agree with HA, im, 7th ed. (1964), the edition here cited and/or translated.
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p. 165). Cf. Trunz's "Anmerkung," HA, III, 632-33. 13 Goethes Religion: Die Faust-Dichtung in christlicher Sicht (Tubingen: Furche-Verlag, 1949), p. 129. 14 HA, VIii, 6th ed. (1964), p. 163. 15 "Die Leiden des jungen Werther: Ihr geistesgeschichtlicher Hintergrund," Wissenschaft und Gegenwart, 12 (1938); rpt. in Schoffler, Deutscher Geist im 18. Jahrhundert, ed. Gotz von Selle (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1956), pp. 155-81. 16 Trunz, by contrast, finds, "Der dogmatisch-heilsgeschichtliche Inhalt ist ganz in Musik aufgelost, so daB wir ihn uiber dem Klang fast vergessen" (HA, III, 505). 17 All biblical quotations are from the Revised Standard Version. 18 Johann Casper Lavater, Ausgewdhlte Werke, ed. Ernst Staehelin (Zurich: Zwingli-Verlag, 1943), im, 193. Already as a schoolboy Lavater had addressed Jesus in a poem as "O Gott und Mittler Jesu Christ!" (I, 24), and he complained to Goethe in the spring of 1774: "Wie kannst Eine Gottheit glauben, wenn du nicht an Christum glaubst? Denselben Augenblick bin ich ein Atheist, wenn ich kein Christ mehr bin. . . . Wenn Jesus Christus nicht mein Gott ist-so hab' ich keinen Gott mehr-u. G[oethe] u. P[fenninger] u. L[avater] sind Traumer, nicht Bruder, nicht Kinder eines Vaters -nicht unsterblich.-So ist Freundschaft nichts,alles Zauberspiel, keine Existenz etc." (Goethe und Lavater, pp. 21-22). 19 In Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1951; rpt. New York: Mentor, 1961), Susanne K. Langer observes that "Belief and doubt belong essentially to [the literal stage of thought rather than the myth-making stage]; the mythmaking consciousness knows only the appeal of ideas, and uses or forgets them. Only the development of literal-mindedness throws doubt upon them and raises the question of religious belief" (p. 168). Even we moderns, of course, remain open to a broader and more complex system of meaning than is encompassed by the simple dichotomy of belief and disbelief, and it is doubtful that the religious behavior of either Faust or Werther can be understood in terms of this distinction. 20 E.g., William J. Keller, in "Goethe's Faust, Part I, as a Source of Part ii," Modern Language Notes, 33 (1918), 342-52, lists numerous parallels, mainly verbal, between the two parts and sees Part II as dramatizing and amplifying the ideas and implications of Part I. Erich Franz, in Mensch und Damon: Goethes Faust als menschliche Tragoidie, ironische Weltschau und religioses Mysterienspiel (Tubingen: Max Niemeyer, 1953), takes a similar view and gives several illustrations (pp. 41-43). 21 Egil A. Wyller, "Das Vorspiel des Faust u: Seine Funktion innerhalb der Faustdichtung," Edda, 58 (1958), 311-20; and Franz, p. 41. 22 See original in HA, i, 7th ed. (1964), p. 152, 11. 95-96. 23 As Wilhelm Emrich elaborates, "das 'Wahre' soll in natiirlichen Bildern uns reizen es aufzusuchen. .... Der Schleier [which both veils and reveals truth] . . . entwickelt eine produktiv unendliche geistige Tatigkeit"
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(Die Symbolik von Faust II: Sinn und Vorforinen, 3rd ed. [Frankfurt am Main: Athenaum, 1964], p. 53). 24 Goethe wrote to K. F. Zelter on 19 March 1827: "Wirken wir fort bis wir, vor oder nacheinander, vom Weltgeist berufen in den Ather zuriickkehren! M6ge dann der ewig Lebendige uns neue Thatigkeiten, denen analog in welchen wir uns schon erprobt, nicht versagen! . . . Die entelechische Monade muB sich nur in rastloser Thatigkeit erhalten; wird ihr diese zur andern Natur, so kann es ihr in Ewigkeit nicht an Beschiiftigung fehlen" (Goethes Werke, Weimarer Ausgabe, Sec. IV, Vol. XLII, p. 95). 25 HA, XIII, 5th ed. (1966), p. 305. And see Emrich, pp. 83-87. 26 Trunz lists several in his notes to Faust (HA, II, 538), such as the line from Pandora proclaiming that man is "bestimmt, Erleuchtetes zu sehen, nicht das Licht!" (HA, v, 6th ed. [1964], 362,1. 958). 27 The magnificent final words of "Selige Sehnsucht" (HA, H, 7th ed. [1965], 19). 28 See his Farbenlehre, HA, XIII, 362-437, passim. 29 This term is enlisted by Emrich (pp. 90-92) from an incident in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre in support of his elaborate interpretation of the "farbiger Abglanz" as an objectification of the self. Emrich denies any Neoplatonist implications of the image (p. 89). 30 "Der leibhaftige Newton" is Andreas Speiser's phrase in his introduction to Goethe's Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften, Pt. I, Gedenkausgabe der Werke, Briefe und Gespriiche, ed. Ernst Beutler, xvI (Zurich: Artemis, 1949), 947. 31 J. E. Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols, trans. Jack Sage (New York: Philosophical Library, 1962), p. 32. 32 Cf. the poems "Regenbogen" and "Regen und Regenbogen," the latter of which is the third of "Drei Palinodien" written in response to short poems of Friedrich Haug, epigrammatist and editor of the Cotta publication Morgenblatt. It is in the draft of a letter to Cotta of 7 Feb. 1814 regarding Haug's poems that Goethe makes the remark cited above. I quote it from the notes of Eduard von der Hellen to Goethes Snimtliche Werke, Jubiliiums-Ausgabe, II (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1906), 315-16. See also Goethe's poem "Phanomen" from the West-istlicher Divan, in notes to which Konrad Burdach remarks: "Der Regenbogen des Sonnenlichts ist Goethe nach 1. Mos. 9, 12 im Einklang mit Herder ('Vom Geiste der ebraiischen Poesie', Suphans Ausg. Bd. 11, S. 390) Sinnbild der Poesie als der Brucke zwischen Himmlischem und Irdischem" (Jubildums-Ausgabe, v [1905], 328-29). In the indicated passage Herder explicitly interprets the rainbow of Genesis ix as a bridge, as against the now generally accepted understanding of that "bow" as a weapon (see The Interpreter's Bible, I [New York: Abingdon, 1952], p. 551; also The Oxford Annotated Bible: Revised Standard Version, eds. Herbert G. May and Bruce M. Metzger [New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 19621, p. 11, n. to verse 13), and as "den Abglanz seiner [i.e., of God's] Giite." Goethe's draft to Cotta shows unambiguously that he understood