Goethe’s Faust, Part 1

I read the verse translation by Philip Wayne. 

1/ The first interesting thing to observe is that in Goethe’s play, Faust doesn’t appear first. In Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, we do have the character of Chorus introducing the main character and providing us the context, but right afterwards Marlowe brings us into Faustus’ study. That is not the case in Goethe’s play. Goethe’s Faust begins in a “meta” way—the director, the poet, and the comedian talk about the play and its writing—then we have a scene in Heaven and see Mephistopheles and his intentions before meeting Faust. That shifts the focus.   

2/ I don’t know how close the translation is, but I enjoyed it—I liked that there’s rhyme.  

“FAUST […] The spirit’s splendour, in the soul unfurled, 

Is ever stifled with a stranger stuff. 

High values, matched with good things of this world, 

Mocking recede, and seem an airy bluff. 

Our nobler veins, the true, life-giving springs, 

Are choked with all the dust of earthy things.

[…] Shall I then rank with gods? Too well I feel 

My kinship with the worm, who bores the soil, 

Who feeds on dust until the wanderer’s heel 

Gives sepulture to all his care and toil…” (p.52 in my Penguin copy)  

Faust gets the best lines, naturally: 

“… But let not mortal troubles cast their shades, 

Before this hour of sweet content has run. 

Mark, now, the glimmering in the leafy glades, 

Of dwellings gilded by the setting sun. 

Now slants the fiery god towards the west, 

Hasting away, but seeking in his round 

New life afar: I long to join his quest, 

On tireless wings uplifted from the ground. 

[…] And now at length the sun-god seems to sink, 

Yet stirs my heart with new-awakened might, 

The streams of quenchless light I long to drink, 

Before me day, and, far behind, the night, 

The heavens above me, and the waves below: 

A lovely dream, but gone with set of sun…” (p.66) 

I couldn’t help thinking however that Faust felt like it’s meant to be read more than seen. Many long speeches—like some speeches in Spanish Golden Age plays—would feel rather awkward for the stage. This is very different from Shakespeare. As I noted before in my blog post about Tirso de Molina, the long speeches in Shakespeare are either rhetoric (a character trying to persuade another character or a group), or streams of thoughts showing the character’s process of thinking. In other (pre-Ibsen, pre-Chekhov) playwrights I have read including Goethe, the long speeches are often just the playwright writing some poetry. Some speeches in Faust are indeed him doing some thinking (such as his pondering over the line “In the beginning of the Word” before Mephistopheles’s appearance), but a lot of the long speeches are basically just Goethe writing poetry. 

(A side note: it’s when you read plays that are great poetically but undramatic and unstageable that you realise how stupid it is to believe that Shakespeare, who combined such great poetic and dramatic gifts, was an aristocrat sitting at court rather than, as Shakespeare was, a theatre man). 

3/ One problem with reading Faust in translation is that I cannot see its influence—I do not know which lines and phrases have entered the German language. Another problem is that when I come across something like “the dogs of war” (p.59) or “’Tis I for whom the bell shall toll” (p.87), I have no idea if it’s Goethe or the translator who is referencing Shakespeare and Donne. I know Goethe loves Shakespeare, but it may just be a “remembrance of things past” situation. 

4/ Faust goes in a direction I didn’t expect. 

“FAUST […] I have, I grant, outdistanced all the others, 

Doctors, pedants, clergy and lay-brothers; 

All plague of doubts and scruples I can quell, 

And have no fear of devil or of hell, 

And in return am destitute of pleasure, 

Knowing that knowledge tricks us beyond measure, 

That man’s conversion is beyond my reach, 

Knowing the emptiness of what I teach…” (p.43) 

That’s Faust when we see him the first time, bemoaning the emptiness of his knowledge. He is depressed: 

“FAUST […] And shall I wonder why my heart 

Is lamed and frightened in my breast, 

Why all the springs of life that start 

Are strangely smothered and oppressed? 

Instead of all that life can hold 

Of Nature’s free, god-given breath, 

I take to me the smoke and mould

Of skeletons and dust and death…” (p.45) 

Why does he make a pact with the devil? 

“FAUST Have you not heard?—I do not ask for joy. 

I take the way of turmoil’s bitterest gain, 

Of love-sick hate, of quickening bought with pain. 

My heart, from learning’s tyranny set free, 

Shall no more shun distress, but take its toll 

Of all the hazards of humanity, 

And nourish mortal sadness in my soul. 

I’ll sound the heights and depths that men can know, 

Their very souls shall be with mine entwined, 

I’ll load my bosom with their weal and woe, 

And share with them the shipwreck of mankind.” (p.89-90) 

But once he has power, as Mephistopheles does whatever he wants, the thing he wants is a lover—Margareta (or Gretchen). 

“FAUST […] To cut the story short, I tell you plain, 

Unless her sweet young loveliness has lain 

Within my arms’ embrace this very night, 

The stroke of twelve shall end our pact outright.” (p.122) 

That could very well be the effect of the potion Mephistopheles previously gave Faust, as part of the plan to corrupt and destroy him—my surprise is that the affair with Margareta dominates the play, that love and lust are Mephistopheles’s way of ruining Faust—it’s very different from Marlowe’s version.  

(But then this is the man who wrote The Sorrows of Young Werther, which I recently read). 

5/ I don’t have much to say about Faust, as I don’t think I got much out of it in my first reading. 

Philip Wayne makes a good point though, when he says: 

“[Goethe’s Mephistopheles] is the world’s most convincing portrait of Satan, and cynicism, scoffing, negation, is the key-note of his intellectuality.” (Introduction)