GOETHE’S FAUST AND THE PRESENT TRANSLATION
Faust is often thought of as the figure who embodies most completely—in proportions determined by the temper of the times—what are considered the best or the worst features of the German national character. He is also universally acknowledged to be the prototypical representative, for better or worse, of all post-medieval civilizations. Both these somewhat contradictory but not mutually exclusive conceptions of what Faust symbolizes ultimately derive from the fact that he is the protagonist of a tragedy which Goethe began in the early 1770’s, when he and other young writers were urgently concerned with creating what they hoped would be a literature with distinctively German themes and qualities, but which he subsequently transmuted into a drama expressing humanistic and cosmopolitan values that transcend all nationalisms. Into the tragedy he re-conceived and began to execute in 1788, toward the end of his first sojourn in Italy, Goethe fitted almost all of what he had originally written for his Faust. He was guided by the ideal of a new classicism that would reconcile permanently his aesthetic and scientific modes of thought and would reflect the influence, until the completion of the drama in 1831, of what he had come to regard—primarily because of their high artistic achievements—as the exemplary greatness of Greco-Roman antiquity and the Renaissance.
Faust is thus a mosaic, often in one and the same scene, of elements written decades apart—for details the reader is referred to the tabular summary “Chronology of the Composition of Faust” (p. 306 f.). Only what Goethe completed, at Schiller’s urging and with Schiller’s encouragement, as Part One contains passages that grant an occasional glimpse of his original, relatively naive, dramatic conception; although they hardly constitute a tenth of the total text of Faust, they are often emotionally powerful or trenchantly witty and give Part One a greater range of tonal intensity than Part Two, which otherwise is distinguished by even more variety of tone and style. Begun in 1800, when Part One was still unfinished, Part Two—nearly twice its length—took Goethe almost exactly the same number of years to complete as had Part One. Although, between 1801 and 1825, he is not known to have written any passage of Faust, Goethe continued to make revisions of his plans for it and of the motifs to be used. Thus, in 1816, still uncertain whether he would ever be able to complete the drama, he prepared for inclusion in Dichtung und Wahrheit a detailed summary of the action of Part Two as he then conceived it. It was while revising this summary for publication that he was persuaded in early 1825 by Eckermann and others to withhold it, and to undertake instead the completion of Part Two, which is therefore comprised primarily of material actually written in Goethe’s last years.
Composed over so many decades, often at moments of immediate response to new ideas and experiences, Faust mirrors in varying degrees of intensity the ever-widening interests and concerns of Goethe’s long and rich life which are thematically integral to it. Accordingly, despite the unified conception underlying its dramatic action, themes and motifs are sometimes developed so fully, with such great abruptness, or in such a variety of styles that (to be sure, more for the reader than the theater-goer) their functions become evident only when an earlier context is remembered or a subsequent one illuminates them. Motival repetition and thematic counterpoint are thus often more important, especially in Part Two, than immediate transparency of plot or character development; they offset structural ellipses, integrate what would otherwise be disparate textual elements, and, as a consequence, establish the interconnectedness of the several real worlds and their imaginary extensions in which the action of Faust takes place. Regardless of any disadvantages attendant upon it, the quasi-organic complexity consequent to Goethe’s mode of composition keeps Faust free of the monotonous homogeneity or artificial heterogeneity that flaws otherwise comparable dramas of epic scope by authors who emulated Goethe’s technique of varying dramatic styles and prosodic forms. (Examples would be contemporaries like Tieck, Brentano, Atterbom, and Oehlenschläger, and such later writers as Mickiewicz, Ibsen, Hardy, and Werfel.)
That in Faust the primary function of formal variety is to be thematic rather than ornamental best explains why Goethe prefaced his tragedy with three prologues—Dedication, Prelude on the Stage, Prologue in Heaven—which would otherwise be superfluous. Neither the dedication nor the stage-prelude makes any specific reference to Faust or to the plot of Faust, and although the heaven-scene announces an untraditional use of the Faust legend—the tragedy’s hero is to prove to be “a good man”—it too says nothing about the action of the play, while all it has to say about Faust will be stated dramatically in either Part One or Part Two of the tragedy proper. The three prologues do serve, however, to establish the thematic and tonal range that is to be a salient feature of Faust. The subdued, almost private, elegiac lyricism of Dedication is immediately followed by the realism of the farce-like scene in which the voices of cynical materialism and conciliatory practicality quickly silence the voice of conventionally rhetorical pathos. And after this typically eighteenth-century pseudo-improvisation there comes the timeless symbolism of a miracle-play heaven in which the rapid alternation of hymnlike sublimity, satiric diatribe, and gentle irony demonstrates that intense lyricism can coexist as it were simultaneously with bathos and ridicule.
The great tonal range displayed in these prologues is not without antecedents in dramatic literature—Shakespeare and Calderón, both of whom Goethe much admired, are major earlier masters of it—but it is not to be found in the introductory scenes of what was to be a serious play (and had perhaps never been used with such virtuoso concentration as in Goethe’s Prologue in Heaven). By insistently indicating that Faust represents a radical break with—or at least radical modification and extension of the functions of—traditional poetic and dramaturgical elements, it underscores the fact that Goethe’s drama will deviate radically from tradition in its conception of Faust’s character and its use of motifs from an already well-established Faust-legend.
The only writer before Goethe to anticipate the motif of Faust’s salvation was Lessing, but although an earnest concern for truth was to save his primarily intellectual hero from the paths of wickedness, traditional motifs were to constitute the main action of his never completed play, which is only a dream that Faust would awaken from as a better and wiser man. With the exception of Paul Valéry, most later writers—e.g. Heine, Gounod’s librettists Barbier and Carré, Thomas Mann, Dorothy Sayers, John Hersey—have been more conservative and conventional than Goethe; despite their often generous use of motifs, like the Gretchen action, which are Goethe’s sole invention, they have preferred to follow earlier tradition and let Faust sell his soul to the devil and, after twenty-four years of wish-fulfillment, die either literally or figuratively damned. Even Arrigo Boito’s Faust-opera, by virtue of its title Mefistofele, pays homage to that tradition, and although its Faust is “saved,” by giving the miracle-play motif of Prologue in Heaven a dramatic function not attached to it in Goethe’s tragedy, his work represents a return to the tradition established by Marlowe’s morality play of treating the Faust theme allegorically.
By virtue of its extremes of tone and style—motivally embodied in Prologue in Heaven as the polarity of light (Divine Reason) and darkness (human and Mephistophelean finitude)—Goethe’s tri-partite introduction establishes thematic variation and contrastive parallel as basic structuring principles of the tragedy that follows. The flexible application of these principles not only makes congruous the coexistence of present and past, of reality and dream, of temporality and timelessness, of life and art, of actuality and vision; through small and large parallelisms it also keeps certain longer scenes and several loosely connected scene-sequences from being a mere congeries of discrete elements and, most importantly, integrates with Part One of Faust a Part Two not radically different in dramatic and other techniques, but very unlike it in the proportions in which these are used. Thus the brief dream-play that in Part One concludes Faust’s Walpurgis Night visions adds little to them and means nothing to him, while that, well over ten times its length, which follows the visions of his “classical” Walpurgisnight significantly extends the symbolic exteriorization of his growing ability to be objective, especially about himself. Analogously, Part Two has many more, and many much longer, passages of strictly regular verse than does Part One, most immediately noticeable being those from which rhyme is absent; whereas in Part One only one of its three unrhymed passages (23 verses in iambic pentameter) is metrically regular, in Part Two there are five scenes with longer passages in variously regular unrhymed meters (in all nearly 1100 verses, including 101 iambic pentameters).
A motival technique much more important in Part Two than in Part One is the use of iconic and pictorial elements. Although Goethe occasionally employs this technique in Part One, chiefly in passages composed after his espousal of conscious classicism, and then chiefly as an ornamental surrogate for or supplement to detailed stage directions, in Part Two he uses it not only more extensively and more insistently, but also to all intents and purposes exclusively as a sign indicating that what is described—usually a motif from classical or Renaissance art—is to be displayed or imagined as Faust envisions it. This obviously holds true for the iconic elements of the long masque he stages for the Emperor, but elsewhere in the drama—whether or not Faust is an active participant or even present—its importance is far greater, since it establishes that what is happening must be looked at from Faust’s point of view and in terms of how it mirrors a given stage of his development as a dramatic character. Insofar as they are chiefly “classical,” the iconic motifs in Faust often reflect Goethe’s personal artistic preferences, but if they have an extra-dramatic function, it is not to document his aesthetic judgments or his knowledge of art history, but to underscore the secular-humanistic and humane-liberal values he lets Faust share with himself—values which, as he wrote Part Two of his tragedy, seemed threatened by a romantic cult of the irrational and by the forces of political, social, and religious reaction too often supported in the post-Napoleonic decades by consciously conservative exponents of romanticism. However ornamentally used, the iconic motifs of Faust are thus never merely incidental; like its motifs from myth and history, music and literature, philosophy and science, they represent elements that, by being archetypally significant, illuminate and bring into focus the themes and values given symbolic substance in Goethe’s uniquely universal drama.
Even the most scrupulous translation, whether prose or verse, will fail to convey some distinctive feature of an original text—a shade of meaning, a degree of emphasis, a sound effect, a level of tone, etc. A translator may be aware of all such textual features, but since no two languages are sufficiently alike to permit the simultaneous transfer of more than some of them from one language to another, the translator of a particular text has to decide which of its features it is most important to retain in translation. Translating, unless merely piecemeal hackwork, is thus a hermeneutic process, and a translation represents the results not only of textual analysis and linguistic (chiefly historico-lexicographical) interpretation, but also, and far more significantly, since this will determine what the translator retains in translation, of critical evaluation.
Faust as translated here will, I hope, give the English reader fully adequate equivalents of those features of the text which I have already indicated I regard as most important. Its language is present-day English, not so much because there was in Goethe’s day no contemporary literary equivalent of Goethe’s German that could be recreated, but because only modem English permits the reading or reciting of the text at a tempo approximating that possible with the German original. Accordingly, I have consciously introduced slightly old-fashioned words or turns of phrase only when it seemed appropriate to provide the counterpart of a German archaism, have eliminated thee and thou except when God is addressed (even though this has occasionally meant the addition of words to clarify whether a you is singular or plural), and have reproduced inversions only when they are thought-structuring rather than German-grammatical. And although I always sought the closest possible English approximations of the rhythms of Goethe’s text, I have not hesitated to sacrifice metrical regularity to idiomatic clarity.
Most translators of Faust into English (some ninety of the hundred, including myself on two earlier occasions, who have heretofore translated either the entire text or generous portions of it) seem to have subscribed to the view that the distinguishing feature of poetry is rhyme. Although they sometimes have demonstrated a keen ear for Goethe’s rhythms or substituted for them effective rhythmic patterns of their own, simply by employing rhyme—either rhyme schemes modeled upon those of the German text or, occasionally, ones of their own choosing—they have made it a far more conspicuous prosodic element in their translations than it is in the original German. In Faust, as in most of Goethe’s verse, rhyme is minimally obtrusive, since it ordinarily functions only to mark line-closure, i.e., to indicate the length of rhythmic units. To write doggerel, convoluted English, or non-English (“translatese”) for the sake of having rhyme gives as false an impression of how and what Goethe wrote as does mistranslation of lexical and syntactic elements. Aware of this, a handful of translators chose to disregard Goethe’s use of verse and were content to reproduce the tonal range of Faust only to the extent that it can be conveyed through prose. A few others tried using blank verse as the sole equivalent of what in Faust is great metrical variety. In each case, but especially in the second, the result has been a rhythmic homogenization that is not only minimally functional but, sooner or later, monotonous as well.
To avoid the pitfalls of rhyme, the limitations of prose, and the losses attendant upon metrical transposition or homogenization, in this translation I have made extensive use of what Randall Jarrell called “metered verse” (and used for his translation of Part One of Faust). By dispensing with rhyme it almost always permits the translator to reproduce the rhythms and to convey adequately the prosodic variety of Goethe’s German without recourse to inappropriate inversions or distortions of meaning. It not only allows inconspicuous transition to rhyme when rhyme—usually because it is mentioned—is demanded by the text of Faust; it is also so distinctively flexible that, when metrical regularity must contrast functionally with it, this regularity is immediately recognizable. I have therefore made it a basic principle to introduce no “undemanded” rhyme into my translation. To do so in order to imitate a rhymed couplet marking a scene-closure would be to attach a greater degree of importance to it than it has in an already rhymed context. To do so when rhyme is simply a signifier of lyric intensity, as in Gretchen’s monologue at her spinning-wheel, would be to intrude into the text a dramatically incongruous Singspiel or opera-like element as well as to diminish the functional effectiveness of other metrically regular passages meant—and marked—for singing. And to do so with these metrically regular passages would, in a now normally unrhymed context, make them unwarrantedly more conspicuous than are their German equivalents. (That, whatever its functional importance, rhyme is inconspicuous in Faust can most easily be confirmed by consulting the German counterpart of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, Büchmann’s Geflügelte Worte; of the 50 Faust passages cited in my edition of it, only 15 are two lines or more in length, and only two of these 15 constitute rhymed couplets.)
In the present translation metered verse usually corresponds to what in the original are either octosyllabic couplets or irregularly rhymed passages of lines with as few as one and as many as six stresses. Stanzaic verses are normally, and terza rima and non-discontinuous alexandrine couplets are always, reproduced (without rhyme) in more or less exact equivalents of the original meters; as in the German text of Goethe, indentation makes stanzaic verse immediately identifiable. The few irregularly rhythmical unrhymed verses of the German text—they occur only in Part One—have been assimilated to metered verse. Blank verse, and the lines in rhymeless “classical” meters of Part Two, are differentiated from metered verse by their sustained metrical regularity. Goethe’s “classical” strophes, which appear only in Act III of Part Two, strictly imitate Greek models and, when there is an antistrophe, repeat its meters. I have not—as, at the expense of clarity of expression, I did in earlier translations—reproduced their metrical patterns exactly, but offer only rhythmic approximations of them; their irregular rhythms distinguish them from stanzaic verses that, even though also rhymeless, are metrically far more regular. Naturalness of idiom has, I believe, never been sacrificed in order to establish stanzaic or metrical regularity, and it is the explanation of why—as is sometimes the case, though less often, in Goethe’s German—classical verses are here occasionally hypermetric or have, like some alexandrines, an improperly placed caesura. (Identification of verse forms and their German equivalents is provided, passim, in the Explanatory Notes to the text of this edition.)
Although, Goethe says in Dichtung und Wahrheit with reference to prose translations of Shakespeare, rhythm and rhyme make poetic works Poetry, “what actually produces a profound and fundamental effect… is what remains of a poet when he is translated into prose. It leaves us with the essential substance, which a dazzling exterior … may have concealed.” How best to be faithful to the substance—the meaning—of Faust and convey in English its poetic essence is the fundamental decision that its translator must make. All other decisions are ones that arise in connection with any translation and are, in the case of Faust, chiefly syntactic and lexicographical. If the translator is not trapped by “false friends”—does not mistake some lexical or grammatical element for another that resembles it, does not fail to recognize that the semantic value of a word may no longer be what it was in Goethe’s day, and does not fall into the trap of using an English word that, although it strongly resembles a German one in the text, has very different connotations—the result can be a reasonably close English counterpart of what Faust says and means. The only trap a scrupulous translator may fail to avoid is translating too carefully and too much. As Lessing noted:
Over-exactness makes any translation stiff; what is natural in one language cannot always be so in another. And when verses are translated (even) a prose translation becomes dilute and skewed. For where is there a successful versifier whom meter or rhyme … has not caused to say something otherwise than he would have without their constraints? If the translator cannot discern when this has occurred and lacks the judgment and courage to omit incidentals, to replace a metaphor by its referent, to supplement an ellipsis or introduce one, he will transmit to us all the flaws of a text without the symmetry and euphony that made venial their presence in its original language.
In making my translation of Faust I have frequently followed Lessing’s implicit advice; the one important exception is that I have kept textual elements apparently incidental to rhyme closure—i.e., that seem only to prepare for or to complete a rhyme—when a context of flexible line-lengths permitted their unobtrusive retention.
The distinctive features of the original text that have been preserved in this translation will, I believe, permit English readers to understand why Faust has long been everywhere recognized as one of the world’s “Great Books,” and why Goethe has earned an acknowledged place beside Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare in the pantheon of Western literature. In a world of time and history, Faust is Goethe’s timeless vision of what it is to be human. It is the expression of a spirit that transcends any national character, and I hope that my translation into today’s English lets this spirit be fully conveyed.
The translation of Part One, and of Part Two v. 4613–6036 and v. 8488–10,038, is based on the last editions published under Goethe’s personal supervision (1827 f.); for the sections of Part Two published posthumously, I have normally followed the first edition (1832), which, despite minor deviations from Goethe’s manuscript text, best reproduces his often helpfully idiosyncratic punctuation. Line numbering, as in all modem German editions of Faust, is that of Goethe, Werke, 1. Abt., XIV–XV (Weimar, 1884 f.): a few discrepancies occur when idiomatic English did not permit line-for-line equivalents of the German text.
As of 1981, 12 English translations of Faust were in print.
There are two prose translations of both Parts, one by B. Q. Morgan, and the other by Barker Fairley; the latter, somewhat free and often deliberately elliptical, occasionally omits—it may be presumed, inadvertently—short sections of the text.
The verse translations of both Parts that offer more or less close approximations of the original meters and rhyme schemes are those by Bayard Taylor, Philip Wayne, Charles Passage, and Walter Arndt; a revision of Taylor’s translation by Stuart Atkins; and the W. H. Bruford revision of the translation of Theodore Martin. With these may be included the abridged version of Louis MacNeice, a translation of about two-thirds of the text; its most notable omissions are Dedication, Prelude on the Stage, Mephistopheles’ interview with the Student, Auerbach’s Wine-Cellar, Walpurgis Night’s Dream, A Great Hall (the Court Masquerade), the scene between Mephistopheles and the Baccalaureate, slightly more than half of “Classical Walpurgisnight,” the entire first section of Act III, and about one-third of Act IV.
There are also in print two translations of Part One almost entirely in “metered verse,” by Carlyle F. MacIntyre and by Randall Jarrell (with v. 3374–3413 by Robert Lowell), and a rhyming translation of it by John Prudhoe.
Information in English about Faust, and commentaries on and interpretations of Faust, can be found under the entries “Goethe” and “Faust” in any library catalogue or general encyclopedia, and in many editions of Faust (including the translations of Arndt and Taylor-Atkins). The selective bibliography in Vol. III of Goethe, Werke, “Hamburger Ausgabe,” ed. Erich Trunz (München: C. H. Beck), which is updated every two or three years, is international in its coverage and, in addition, lists all comprehensive Faust-bibliographies to date.
Illustrations of many of the works of art alluded to in Faust are reproduced in the Passage translation and in the German editions with commentary by Georg Witkowski.
EXPLANATORY NOTES
All references are to line numbers (in italics) — When not reproduced in the translation, distinctive verse forms are identified. If not identified in the notes, and not printed as stanzas, unrhymed iambic verse represents iambic lines (usually with four to six stresses) variously rhymed—e.g., aa, abab, abba, etc.
1–32 (and 59–74) ottava rima (iambic pentameter, rhymed abababcc).
2 young 25 years earlier (1772, since these lines were written when Goethe undertook, in 1797, to complete Part I).
17 songs (Germ. Gesänge—also: the books of an epic poem).
21 tragic song in texts printed in Goethe’s lifetime: Leid (sorrow); in some modem editions: Lied (song), a manuscript reading.
26 spirit realm realm of the spirit (of dream, imagination, and poetry—not: of spirit creatures).
27 aeolian harp traditionally: the lyre of the heart, of uncontrollable feeling.
33–242 Director: financial principal of an acting troupe. Poet-Playwright (Germ. Theaterdichter): primarily an adapter of others’ works to the troupe’s resources. Player of Comic Roles (Germ. Lustige Person): actor-clown, a figure that largely disappeared from the German stage in the course of the 18th century. Time: first two-thirds of that century (53: late afternoon performances had long ceased to be customary when Goethe began completing Part I).
156 f. variation of the Renaissance commonplace that the gods are the invention or creation of poets.
243–70 hymn stanzas (rhymed abab).
285 f Renaissance commonplace (e.g., Macchiavelli); cf. the Earl of Rochester: “Reason, an ignis fatuus of the mind, / Which leaves the life of nature’s sense behind.”
312 What’ll you bet? Equivalent of the formulaic phrase of challenge introduced by Luther in translating Job 1, 11; it replaces “and” in the English version of “and he will curse thee to thy face.”
354–807 Time: primarily 16th century (especially 354–85), with some 18th-century elements (feeling for landscape; Storm-and-Stress satire in Wagner episode). Pictorial models: Thomas Wyck, Alchemist’s Laboratory; Rembrandt, The Astrologer (an adaptation of the latter was used as frontispiece to Faust: Ein Fragment, 1790).
360 Doctor university professor (with privileges of the nobility).
420 Nostradamus a French astrologer-prophet and younger contemporary of the historical Faust (here as an alchemist-mystic).
434 signs symbols of planets and elements.
442 sage a mystic or mystagogue.
446 roseate dawn here figurative: a moment favorable for mystic insights.
449 forces stars, angels.
460–513 Earth Spirit (Germ. Erdgeist) not the alchemical-mystic anima terrae, but a symbol of the divine-creative spirit as this manifests itself in terrestrial activity.
482 fearful overwhelmingly large (in a stage design sketched by Goethe: a colossal Olympian head).
737–41, 449–61, 785–807 rhymed chorale (hymn).
749–61, 785–96 Pictorial model: Raphael, The Transfiguration.
808–1177 Time: 16th century (998 plague of 1525), with 18th-century elements in the first folk scene 808–902 (e.g., 862 refers to Russo-Turkish Wars, 1768–74 and 1787–92—in the 16th century the Turkish threat was not so remote). First use in the text of a stage set representing several different places simultaneously.
878 Saint Andrew’s night Nov. 29 (patron saint of the unmarried).
1043 Lily an acid.
1046 Young Queen the sublimate produced (the elixir or panacea, the Philosopher’s Stone).
1178–1529 Time: 16th century (1220 ff. recall Luther’s translation of the New Testament, printed 1522).
1255 fire-red eyes fiery eyes are a striking feature of the dog in the elder Matthäus Merian’s The Devil Appears as a Dog to Cardinal Crescentius (engraving).
1258 Solomon’s Key collection of spells, incantations, etc.
1272 Spell of the Four i.e., the four elements Fire, Water, Air, and Earth, here identified with nature spirits.
1273 Salamander not the mythically incombustible animal, but—in Paracelsus’ writings—a being that inhabits fire.
1333 Lord of Flies (Hebr. Beelzebub), Destroyer (Satan), Liar (Gr. diábolos, slanderer).
1366 the indestructibility of matter became an accepted principle in the later 18th century (and was scientifically demonstrated, c. 1780, by Lavoisier).
1447–1505 rhymed (except for two verses).
1507 sleep hypnotic sleep (as of Miranda in The Tempest, I, ii, 185–304).
1530–2072 Time: 16th century (with later elements: 17th-century wigs, 1807; mid-18th century student scene, 1868–2050; ascent in 1783 of the hot-air balloon of the brothers Montgolfier, 2069 f.).
1607–26 verses of one to four stresses (all but three lines rhymed).
1705 its hand may fall the clock’s mechanism—or the clock itself—be broken.
1712 doctoral banquet Goethe at one time planned to write a scene with a comic disputation (traditional at academic celebrations), but the reference now serves only to underscore the fact that the long Easter recess is over—that considerable time has elapsed since the first scene with Mephistopheles.
1808 shoes such patten-like shoes (Ital. zoccoli) were fashionable in 16th-century Venice.
1911 Collegium Logicum required introductory lecture course on logic.
1941 encheiresis naturae (18th century GK.-Lat. scientific jargon; the form in the text is accusative) Nature’s knack of combining substances so that they are endowed with life (as opposed to products of distillation, crystallization, etc.).
2000 jot or tittle (Germ. Jota, the Greek letter iota); an allusion to the bitter conflict between Homoiousians and Homoousians (Eccl. Hist.).
2048 “Ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil”—Gen. 3, 5 (Vulgate, with Deus substituted for the plural dii, gods).
2073–2336 Time: 18th century (the German Holy Roman Empire no longer significant, 2090 ff.; political absolutism questioned, 2211 ff.; effect of electric shock on nervous system—Galvani, 1789—2324 and 2331).
2113 witches’ sabbath (Germ. Blocksberg = the Brocken, in the Harz Mountains, where the witches’ sabbath is held on Walpurgis Night).
2189 Rippach town in which Master Jackass (Germ. Hans [sc. Arsch or Dumm]) was said to live.
2337–2604 Pictorial models: illustrations in books on witchcraft; David Teniers, the younger, Witch’s Kitchen with Young Apes Playing with a Ball; H. B., Witch’s Kitchen with Apes (Dresden Gallery—formerly attrib. to Adriaen Brouwer).
2369 (cf. 10,121) allusion to rock-formations called Devil’s Bridges.
2429 ff. Faust presumably sees a nude in the style of Titian, Giorgione, or Paris Bordone.
2530 ff. The Witch’s preparations are traditional, but the ringing of glasses is a feature of later, 18th-century spiritualist séances (e.g., Cagliostro).
2759–82 ballad-like quatrains (rhymed abab).
3037 Sancta simplicitas saintlike naivety.
3318 her song an actual folksong (“Were I a little bird, I’d fly to thee”).
3337 lilies (Germ. Rosen—Luther’s translation of Song. Sol. 4, 5, has “roses”).
3374–3413 lyric monologue (except for four lines, rhymed xaxa, xbxb, etc.).
3537 interest in physiognomy (and phrenology—Gall) developed in the second half of the 18th century (cf. n. to 4323).
3540 radical (Germ. Genie) writer of the German Storm-and-Stress period (mid-1770’s).
3587–3169 verses of one to four stresses (all but two lines rhymed), with many echoes of the Stabat Mater (particularly popular in the 18th century in the setting for two voices by Pergolesi).
3673 pearls omens of tears and misfortune.
3682–97 folksong motif (cf. Ophelia’s “Tomorrow is Saint Valentine’s day,” Hamlet, IV, v, 49–56).
3776–3834 The German text is unrhymed (verses of one to six stresses).
3788 agonies of purgatory (having died, unshriven, in her sleep).
3798f., 3813ff., 3825ff. (from the Latin hymn, Dies Irae, sung in requiem masses) “The day of wrath shall dissolve this world into ashes. / When therefore the Judge shall take His seat, whatever is hidden shall appear, nothing shall remain unpunished. / What shall I, wretched man, then say? what protector supplicate? when scarcely the just may be secure!”
3835–4398 Time: dream-present, with steadily increasing number of allusions to persons and events of the late 18th century. – Schierke and Elend are towns at the base of the Brocken. – Pictorial models: illustrations in books and broadsides on witchcraft. – Stage set: several different places.
3855 will-o’-the-wisp ignis fatuus (cf. n. to 285f.).
3962 Baubo a lewdly amusing nurse in the Greek mysteries of Demeter.
3996–4007 the voice of a recidivist (in the Enlightenment the Renaissance and Reformation were regarded as the beginning of modem rationalism).
4072–91 untraditional figures (persons disadvantaged by the political and intellectual changes of the late 18th century).
4096 Huckstress-Witch A huckstress is a figure in Renaissance Italian carnival processions.
4144–75 (and 4267–70, 4319–22) Friedrich Nicolai, a life-long exponent of rationalism and prolific author of semi-autobiographical travel books, in 1799 reported his (earlier) cure of hallucinations by use of the treatment described by Mephistopheles.
4211 Prater a park in Vienna that became a popular fairground in the later 18th century.
4223–4398 quatrains (rhymed abab except for two that are rhymed xaxa). – Intermezzo an interlude—comic or satiric—given between the acts of an opera seria; here a satiric masque (masquerade). From Midsummer-Night’s Dream the figures Oberon, Titania, Puck; from The Tempest, Ariel.
4224 Mieding court cabinet-maker who served as stage manager of the Weimar theater until his death in 1782.
4227 Herald the announcer—and often describer—of figures in a masque or pageant.
4259 Materializing Spirit grotesque (and “unorganic”) poetry.
4271 Orthodox an orthodox Christian like Count F. L. von Stolberg, who condemned Schiller for glorifying “The Gods of Greece” in a poem so titled.
4275 Artist Goethe, who planned a third trip to Italy in 1797; military-political developments, however, made it impractical.
4279 Purist language-purist, and prude.
4295 Weathervane backbiting opportunist.
4303 Satiric Verses (Germ. Xenien: title of satiric distichs by Goethe and Schiller published in 1796; they aroused much anger among the butts of the satire—e.g., Hennings, 4307–18).
4307 Hennings (cf. n. to 4303).
4311 Would-Be Apollo (Germ. Musaget, Gr. mousagétes, Apollo as leader of the Muses—the title of a collection of Hennings’ poems).
4315 Spirit of the Age (Germ. Genius der Zeit) title of a journal edited by Hennings that was changed in 1801 to Genius des 19. Jahrhunderts (Spirit of the Nineteenth Century).
4323 Crane J. C. Lavater, Swiss Protestant pastor and leading 18th-century physiognomist (cf. 3537), friend of Goethe in the 1770’s and early 1780’s whom Goethe later came to distrust.
4327 Worldling (Germ. Weltkind) Goethe’s name for himself as a secularist.
4331 group representatives of various systems or types of philosophy (4343–62).
4347 Idealist J. G. Fichte or a Fichtean (cf. n. to 6736).
4367 Adroit those who survive social and political change (beginning with the French Revolution) successfully.
4371 Awkward maladroit French emigrés.
4375 Will-o’-the-Wisps those who have risen socially as a result of political change.
4379 Shooting Star a political idealist disillusioned by the actualities of revolution.
4383 Massive the masses who have not fully adjusted to their new importance.
4394 Hill of Roses site of the castle of Oberon in C. M. Wieland’s verse romance Oberon (1780).
p. 113 avenger of blood executioner (cf. Deut. 19, 12). That devils cannot release prisoners magically is traditional folklore.
4405–4612 rhymed (except for 18 random verses).
4412–20 the song (by Goethe) with its Atreus-like motif is based on a German folktale.
4590 the white rod a wand broken after the decree of execution has been publicly read.
4613–78 rhymed (4613–20, 4634–65 abab). Ariel (cf. n. to 4223 ff.) and the Spirits personify the curative powers of nature and time.
4666 Horae goddesses of (the orderly passage of) the seasons. Pictorial model: Guido Reni, Aurora.
4679–727 In terza rima (i.e., pentameters rhymed aba bcb etc.)—a verse form used in Italian for epic (e.g., Dante, Divine Comedy) and lyric poetry, and in Spanish drama of the Golden Age for lyric monologues (e.g., Calderón, Cervantes).
4728–6565 rhymed (when quatrains: abab or, occasionally, abba). Time: early 16th century (eve of the Reformation).
4743–50 Perhaps Mephistopheles’ self-introduction (fool as privileged critic), perhaps preliminary allusion to Faust as potential savior of the Emperor (cf. 4895 f.).
4938 subsoil earth below the level reached by a plow (Roman law).
4979 f. The shriek of the mandrake root when pulled from the ground was said to be fatal unless the agent used was a black dog.
5065–5986 The Masquerade is a mixture of carnival masquerade, pageant, and allegorical masques (cf. n. to 4223–4398) staged by Faust, the last of which—the triumph of the Emperor as Pan—ends in a mock-tragic conflagration modeled after a historical incident in the life of Charles VI of France. Almost all the figures who appear are standard types in Italian (Renaissance) carnival processions. For the role of the Herald, cf. n. to 4227.
5136 Theophrastus Greek botanist (pupil of Aristotle).
5299 The Graces Pictorial model: Andrea Boscoli (drawing).
5305 Pictorial model: Primaticcio, The Three Fates as Youthful Nudes (a motif occurring without nude figures, e.g., in The Fates by Heinrich Meyer, painter-collaborator of Goethe).
5357 Alecto identified, as traditionally since the Renaissance, with Calumny.
5378 Asmodeus In Tobit 3, 8 (Apocrypha) the demon who kills the husbands of Sara; here, as in 16th-century German literature, the devil responsible for (marital) discord.
5393–5456 The first allegory: Prudence (Italian carnival figure) controls idle fears and vain hopes, permitting Victory (successful activity) to use Power, of which the elephant is a traditional symbol, effectively.
5457 Zoilo-Thersites the spirit of Mephistophelean anti-heroism and antiidealism: Zoilus, a carping Alexandrian critic of Homer; Thersites, the scurrilous enemy of Achilles and Ulysses in the Iliad (and in Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida).
5479 Pictorial model: Aldegrever, Envy with Snake and Bats.
5494–5708 The second allegory: things of the spirit, including poetry (Boy Charioteer), are not appreciated by a materialistic society (Mephistopheles as Sir Greed; greed of the Crowd). Pictorial model: elements from Mantegna, The Triumph of Caesar.
5649 Avarice traditional carnival (female) figure.
5801 Wild Hunt spectral hunters of folklore; here, as in heraldry, a group of Salvage (Savage, Wild) Men, who were often figures in masques even in the 18th century.
5840 Gnomes carnival and masque figures (here: miners).
5864 Men of Great Stature (Germ. Riesen, giants). These were often “Ethiopians.” Pictorial model: Giulio Parigi (engraved by Jacques Callot).
5872 f Pan Frequent symbol of the ruling prince in Renaissance masques (e.g., of James I in collaborative work of Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones). Pictorial model: Claude Gillet, Pan with Attendants and Satyrs.
5934 ff. Pictorial model: Matthäus Merian, the elder, Pre-Lenten Fire at the Court of Charles VI (showing the king’s head and beard in flames). – Mock conflagrations were a popular Renaissance (and later) firework effect.
6025 f. Thetis a Nereid, mother of Achilles by Peleus, king of the Myrmidons.
6072 conjurors printers (allusion to the long popular identification of Faust with Gutenberg’s associate Fust).
6216 Mothers despite Graeco-Roman analogues (e.g., Sicilian mother-goddesses), inventions of Mephistopheles (and of Goethe); they allegorize the eternal existence of (insubstantial) forms and ideas. In a conversation recorded by his friend Riemer, Goethe called the Mothers’ realm of solitude a “sphere of dreams and magic” (cf. 3872), an experience of “poetic reverie” in which Faust gains “the Idea of Beauty in the form of Helen.”
6259 key The key (to Nowhere) is a traditional symbol of (magical) power—here: of Mephistopheles’ hypnotic powers as much as of any power it may lend Faust.
6421 in priestly robe and wreath Pictorial models: Giuseppe Cesari, Priest at Altar (drawing); Simon Magus (Assisi fresco, attr. Giunta Pisano).
6436 sorcerer Faust both as Magus and as Poet staging a pantomimic drama. (Goethe first wrote Dichter, poet, which he later changed to Magier, magician, sorcerer, magus; the equation is traditional.)
6509 picture Sebastiano Conca, Diana and Endymion (other treatments known to Goethe include those of Guercino, Annibale Carracci, and a Graeco-Roman fresco at Herculaneum).
6557 doubly as not only created, but also rescued—from Paris—by Faust (i.e., transported from the sphere of the imagination, of the Mothers, into that of tangible realities).
6566–10,038 Acts II and III take place on the same night as does the scene Knights’ Hall (cf. 7442, 7990 f.)—i.e., in February or March and not, as Mephistopheles will suggest through Homunculus (6940 f.), on the anniversary of the Battle of Pharsalus (Aug. 9, 48 B.C.,—cf. 6955 ff. and 7018).
6566–7004 Rhymed (except for four lines xaxaxbxb, 6596 f.). Time: 16th century (with allusions to the 18th century—cf. notes to 6588 and 6736).
6588 professor (Germ. Dozent, non-tenured professor—introduced as title in the later 18th century).
6634 Nicodemus a literal-minded person (cf. John 3, 4).
6635 Oremus “Let us pray.”
6736 with nothing left up there (Germ. nicht absolut) i.e., an adherent of some form of philosophical absolutism, which was often condemned as atheistic by the religiously orthodox—possibly that of Fichte (cf. n. to 4347), in which the Absolute Ego is God.
6879 Homunculus since antiquity an artificially produced diminutive man supposed to have great learning and magical powers. (Goethe said that the voice in the vial was to be projected ventriloqually—presumably here by Mephistopheles, since in this scene the homunculus seems to be the latter’s spokesman.) Pictorial model: Pretorius-Illustrator, Homo lunaris (1666), and illustrators of books with bottle-imps (e.g., Le Sage’s Le Diable boiteux).
6864 crystallized allusion to folklore accounts of Stone-people.
6903 ff. Description in style of Ariosto and his imitators. Pictorial models: Correggio, Michelangelo, etc.
6951 southeast to Thessaly.
6953 Peneus chief river of Thessaly.
6955 Pharsalus city in Thessaly (site of Pompey’s defeat by Caesar, 48 B.C.—cf. 6957 and 7018 ff.).
6961 Asmodeus cf. n. to 5378.
6978 Thessalian witches the most famous witches of classical Greek folklore.
6994 to dot the i’s to obtain substantial existence (like that which Faust has vowed Helen shall have).
6997 f. traditional benefits of the Philosopher’s Stone (cf. n. to 1046).
7005–8487 Classical Walpurgisnight (cf. n. to 6566–10,038). Time is magically suspended. – Two stage sets (7005–8033 and 8034–8487), each representing several different places.
7005–39 Unrhymed (iambic trimeter, i.e., lines of six iambs without a marked caesura—the verse of dialogue in Attic tragedy). Pharsalian Fields are at first the battle field near Pharsalus, then other parts of the Thessalian Plain, which extends from the Pindus Mountains eastward to the Aegean Sea, and of Macedonia (cf. n. to 7463–68). Erichtho is the most famous Thessalian witch (cf. Lucanus’ epic, Pharsalia).
7018 battle cf. 6955 ff. and note.
7077 Antaeus’s strength depended on contact with the earth (his mother, Ge); a giant, he was slain by Hercules, who lifted him off the ground.
7083 Griffins half lion, half eagle.
7104 Giant Ants according to Greek folklore, as large as foxes.
7106 Aramasps one-eyed Scythian enemies of the Giant Ants.
7107 how far to Scythia.
7198 slain by Hercules a “labor” of Hercules invented by Goethe.
7199 Chiron a medically skilled centaur and teacher-sage whose most famous pupil was Achilles.
7210 restrained by ropes Homer, Odyssey, Bk. XII. Pictorial models: Pietro da Cortona, Annibale Carracci.
7220 Stymphalian birds the Stymphalides, man-eating birds with iron beaks and talons, slain by Hercules.
7227 Hydra serpent-monster slain by Hercules.
7235 Lamiae vampire-like ghosts.
7249 Peneus the god of the river, 6953.
7276 once before cf. 9603–20.
7277–312 No pictorial source, since Leda is not seen; the landscape suggests that in Leonardo da Vinci’s treatments of Leda and the Swan.
7342 doesn’t do so well Despite the help of Pallas Athena, who takes the form of Mentor, Telemachus’ tutor, Telemachus’ search for his father Ulysses is a failure (Odyssey).
7371 Boreiads sons of Boreas (the North Wind), hence winged warriors helpful to the Argonauts in fighting the Harpies.
7377 Lynceus (cf. Gk. lýgkeios, lynx-like) proverbial for his keen sight; hence 9218 ff. and 11, 143 ff. as name of a lookout or watchman.
7381 Hercules was an emblem of the model prince in Renaissance art (especially in France).
7403 f. for the commonplace, cf. Milton, Paradise Lost, IV, 844f.
7405–25 Chiron’s assistance to Castor and Pollux in the Eleusian swamps near Athens when they rescue Helen from Theseus is Goethe’s (Faust’s) invention.
7434 ff. Pherae the Thessalian city to which Alcestis was returned after Hercules (Faust’s “handsomest man,” 7397) rescued her from Hades. – The shades of Helen and Achilles were joined in marriage on Leuce (an island in the Black Sea sacred to Achilles), where a son Euphorion (cf. 9599, 9695 ff.) was born to them.
7450 f Manto daughter of the Theban soothsayer Tiresias and herself a prophetess, is here instead given Aesculapius, the god of medicine, as father, and is endowed with medical skill. (Her temple in Greece was at Delphi.)
7463–68 place Pydna (in Macedonia, just north of Thessaly), site of the battle in which the last Macedonian king was defeated (168 B.C.) by Roman legions under generalship of the Roman consul Aemilius Paulus.
7491 Olympus the mountain lies on the border between Thessaly and Macedonia (between Pydna and the Thessalian border).
7493 Goethe’s (Faust’s) invention.
7519 ff. Seismos. Earthquakes and emerging mountains on which vegetation appears were common theatrical effects in Renaissance masques. Pictorial models: Raphael cartoon and tapestry, St. Paul Freed from Prison by an Earthquake; Giulio Romano, Fountain as a Giant.
7533 ff. Delos, originally a floating island, was supposedly raised from the deep by Poseidon and subsequently anchored by Zeus to provide a secure resting place on which Leto could give birth to Apollo and Artemis. (Goethe—or Faust—conflates two myths and gives them a new protagonist.)
7562 ff. The ballgame is an invention of Goethe or Faust; the mountains were piled not on Parnassus, but on Olympus, by Giants seeking to scale heaven.
7622 Dactyls a race of metalworkers, here identified with Tom Thumb-like dwarfs (Gk. dáktylos, finger).
7646–53 In Greek myth the Cranes are enemies of the Pygmies because the latter have stolen their eggs; here Goethe or Faust invents a new motivation of the enmity.
7660 The Cranes of Ibycus legendary symbols of retributive justice (of guilt incautiously revealed—theme of ballad with this title by Schiller).
7680 ff. allusions to places in the Harz Mountains (cf. n. to 3835–4398).
7732 Empusa a protean vampire (whose power of metamorphosis is transferred paramythically by Goethe or Faust—7766–90—to the Lamiae).
7813 Pindus the Thessalian mountain range.
7836 philosophers Thales (d. 546 B.C.), who regarded Water as the First Principle, and Anaxagoras (d. 430 B.C.), who gave great importance to Air (here arbitrarily equated with Fire, which in Faust is a Mephistophelean element); the former represents Neptunism, gradual evolution, and conservatism; the latter, Vulcanism and impatient radicalism. (Neptunists were geologists who held that the major force in determining the earth’s features was water; Vulcanists attributed more importance to subterranean fire.)
7855 Anaxagoras is said to have held that rocks represented condensed fire-vapors.
7873 Myrmidons here: the Giant Ants. (Myrmidon, a son conceived by Zeus when disguised as an ant, was the mythical ancestor of the Thessalian race, the Myrmidons.)
7914 f. disc not the moon, but a meteor.
7967 The Phorcides The Graiae (Phorcydes, Phorkyads, sing. Phorkyas) were sisters of the Gorgons (and hence of Medusa).
7989 Ops and Rhea Roman and Greek goddesses of fertility, usually considered identical.
8034–487 Water pageants were frequently used in Renaissance and Baroque masques.
8051 ff. Pictorial model (for bejeweled Nereids): Dürer, The Rape of Amymone.
8074 Cabiri minor deities of Samothrace whose form and significance were much disputed by German-romantic mythologists.
8082 Nereus sea-god, father of the Nereids, and famous for his prophetic wisdom.
8121 Pindus’ eagles (cf. 7813) Thessalian warriors—the victorious Greeks—who have gained Troy.
8137 the Graces of the sea, whom Doris gave me (Germ…. die Doriden, Engl. Nereids) daughters by Doris.
8140 ff. Pictorial model: Raphael, The Triumph of Galatea.
8146 Cypria Aphrodite (as worshiped at Paphos on Cyprus), who has long since ceased to be a marine deity (although she was born of the sea).
8152 Proteus prophetic sea-god who could assume different shapes (in the Renaissance a common symbol of Nature).
8170 Chelone’s giant buckler the shell of (a nymph who was changed into) a tortoise; shell-shaped boats were often used in water pageants.
8275 Telchines metal-workers at Rhodes, credited with forging Neptune’s trident and the colossal statue of the sun-god Helios.
8343 Paphos town on Cyprus celebrated for its temple of Aphrodite—cf. n. to 8146.
8359 Psylli and Marsi tribes famous for their reptile lore (Psylli, Libyan dwarfs; Marsi, an early Italian people); here, Cyprian attendants of Galatea, the new Cypria. – Snake charmers and snakebite healers were figures in Italian Renaissance carnivals.
8371 f. Eagle … Crescent symbols of successive Roman, Venetian, Crusader, and Turkish sovereignty over Cyprus.
8424 Galatea … on her conch Pictorial models: Raphael (cf. 8140), Domenico Feti, Annibale Carracci, L. Backhuyzen, F. Albani, etc.
8466 ff. water “on fire” was a popular pageant-effect from the Renaissance on.
8488–10,038 Three stage sets, but no pause in the action. Many echoes of Homer and of Attic tragedy, especially of the plays of Euripides. (The placing of the Chorus on the stage is ancient-Roman, not Greek, theatrical practice, however.)
8488–9191 Unrhymed verse: iambic trimeter (cf. n. to 7005–39) alternating with ode-strophes and, occasionally, trochaic tetrameters (cf. n. to 8909).
8492 Euros Eurus, the southeast wind.
8493 Phrygia The area of Asia Minor in which Troy is located.
8498 Pallas’ Hill Athens (as here translated); the German text of 8497 f. can also be read to mean: erected by Tyndareos near the slope of this hill sacred to Pallas Athena on his return (sc. from Aetolia in Asia Minor, where he married Leda).
8511 Cytherea’s shrine the temple of Venus on Cythera (in the Ionian Sea, south of Sparta), the site of “The Rape of Helen” in the scene Knights’ Hall.
8539 Eurotas chief river of Laconia (not navigable); Sparta lies inland on it.
8547 Lacedaemon founding king of Sparta (hence also called Lacedaemon).
8564 ff. Renaissance conceit.
8677 Pictorial model: the figure Sleep of Michelangelo’s Medici Tomb (Florence).
8704 Discord the goddess Eris.
8763 Orcus Hades.
8812 Erebus Darkness (son of Chaos).
8813 Scylla here the Homeric monster with six heads.
8851 Aphidnus A fortified town in Attica held by a friend of Theseus.
8855 Pelides Achilles, son of Peleus and friend of Patroclus.
8873 in both Ilium and Egypt The legend that the “real” Helen was transported by Mercury to Egypt, leaving Paris with a double, is the premise of Euripides’ Helen.
8876 ff. cf. note to 7435 ff.
8888 classicistic paraphrase of “(ravening wolves) in sheep’s clothing” (Matt. 7, 15), imitative of Renaissance Latin poetry on biblical themes (Vida, Sannazaro, etc.).
8909–29 Verse: trochaic tetrameter (eight trochees, often without the last unstressed syllable, and usually with a caesura after the fourth trochee); occasionally shortened in later passages to four trochees (e.g., 8970) with omission of the unstressed syllable of the fourth trochee.
8928 f. The fate of the twelve women-servants of Penelope whose conduct was dishonorable (Odyssey, XXII).
8996 Taygetus (Tāy˘ˊgĕtŭs) a mountain range west of Sparta, extending southward from the frontier of Arcadia.
9014 heroes Achilles (Iliad, XXII. 346 ff.) expressing his hatred of the dying Hector.
9020 Cyclopean using irregular stone blocks without mortar (primitive Greek).
9135 Pythoness wise woman, soothsayer (in the Vulgate pythonissa is a witch; cf. Exod. 22, 18, and—for the witch of Endor—1 Sam. 28, 7).
9162 ff. allusion to the apple of Sodom (Dead Sea apple).
9170 ff. Pictorial models (for the canopy borne above Helen’s head): painters of the Venetian school; Correggio, Madonna of St. Francis.
9192–376 Faust and Helen speak in blank verse.
9218–45 Verse: quatrains (rhymed abba—in Spanish drama of the Golden Age: redondillas). Lynceus (cf. n. to 7377).
9273–332 Verse: quatrains (rhymed aabb).
9346–55 Verse: rhymed couplets.
9411–18 Verse: rhymed couplets.
9435–41 Verse: iambic trimeter.
9442–81 Verse: quatrains (rhymed abab).
9454 Pylos harbor-city on the west coast of the Peloponnesus.
9467–77 the provinces of the Peloponnesus (the capital Sparta represents Laconia).
9506–73 Verse: quatrains (rhymed abab).
9509 center Arcadia, the mountainous region north of Sparta.
9511 almost-island (Germ. Nichtinsel, non-island) The Peloponnesus—literally: Pelops’ island—is a peninsula connected to mainland Greece by the isthmus of Corinth).
9538 Pan as originally, an Arcadian deity of flocks and shepherds.
9573 Arcadian idyllic (post-classical idealization of the harsh simplicity of life in Arcadia).
9574 Pictorial model (of stage set): paintings of Poussin.
9578 bearded elders the exclusively male spectators of the ancient Greek theater.
9587 idyllic as in love idylls of epic romances.
9594 f. belief in the possibility of a subterranean world was widely held well into the 19th century.
9603 Pictorial model: Raphael, in the Vatican Stanze.
9611 Antaeus cf. n. to 7077.
9619 f. Pictorial models: Annibale Carracci, The Genius of Fame; Guido Reni, Aurora.
9644 son of Maia Hermes (Mercury).
9679–938 Rhymed verse (quatrains, couplets, opera libretto-like shorter lines, and—finally—ababcdcd stanzas).
9826 Pelops’ island cf. n. to 9511.
9901 Icarus traditional symbol of imprudence. Pictorial model: Cornells Corneliesz.
9902 the well-known figure of the stage direction is Lord Byron, who had died in 1824 at Missolonghi (on the coast of the Greek mainland north of the Peloponnesus) as a commander in the Greek army fighting for independence from Turkey.
9939–44 Verse: iambic trimeter.
9962–91 Verse: iambic trimeter and strophes.
9992–10,038 Verse: trochaic tetrameter. The four parts of the Chorus become respectively Dryads, Oreads (and Echo Nymphs), Naiads, and Vineyard Nymphs, corresponding to the elements Earth, Air, Water, and Fire. Pictorial models: Poussin, Giulio Romano, Annibale Carracci, Claude Gillot, Daniel Höpfer (for the Dryads: also Hans Bol; and for the Vineyard Nymphs: also H. van Balen).
10,039–10,782 Stage set representing a variety of locations.
10,039–66 Faust still speaks in unrhymed verse (iambic trimeter; this is the last passage of unrhymed verse in Faust). Time: again the 16th century.
10,061 image of love’s dawn a cloud looking like Margarete.
10,092 princes of the air cf. Eph. 2, 2 (“the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience”).
10,094 cf. also Eph. 5, 12 f.
10,131 cf. Matt. 4, 8.
10,176 Sardanapalus ancient Assyrian tyrant and voluptuary (subject of a tragedy by Byron).
10,212–17 echo of Vergil, Aeneid, XI. 624–28.
10,284 cf. Ps. 85, 10 f. (motto of 16th and 17th century Papal coins).
10,304 In the Faust legend, Faust’s magic is supposed to have helped the Emperor Charles V win an Italian campaign.
10,321 Peter Quince the organizer of the miserable amateur actors in A Midsummer-Night’s Dream.
10,424 prevision foresight, preparedness (Lat. providentia, a word in the mottos of Trajan and the Emperor Maximilian I).
10,439 Norcia town near the northern end of the Sabine Hills, which were the Roman equivalent of Thessaly as a center of witchcraft.
10,488 footstool cf. Ps. 110, 1.
10,531 Quickloot (Germ. Eilebeute, Luther’s translation of the second part of the Hebrew name in Is. 8, 1.).
10,547 ff. Phantom armies occur in W. Rowley’s play The Birth of Merlin and in Calderonian drama—e.g., La aurora en Copacabana.
10,600 a light the Dioscuri cast St. Elmo’s fire was regarded in ancient Greek folklore as an emanation of the spirits of Castor and Pollux.
10,624 f. Pictorial model: Giuseppe Cesari, Roman Battle.
10,719 ff. a popular stage effect (especially in masques and pageants).
10,849–11,042 Verse: alexandrine couplets (six iambs, with a caesura—normally—after the third iamb).
10,873–976 The honorific offices here created by the Emperor were actually established by the imperial Golden Bull of 1356; there were four secular and three clerical Princes Elector; one of the latter held the Arch-Chancellorship.
11,043–142 quatrains (rhymed or assonating abab).
11,059 and 11,069 Baucis and Philemon in classical mythology an aged Phrygian woman and her husband, rewarded for entertaining Zeus and Hermes traveling in disguise (and granted their wish that they might die simultaneously of old age); here, symbols of hospitable helpfulness. Pictorial models: Adam Elsheimer; Matthäus Merian, the elder; J. W. Baur.
11,143–843 Stage set with view into Faust’s palace; continuous time.
11,143 Lynceus cf. n. to 7377. – Pictorial models: harbor scenes of Claude Lorrain; baroque gardens with canals or lagoons (and the canal of Pope Pius VI in reclaimed Pontine marshes).
11,167 Three Mighty Men civilian counterparts of the trio of 10,323.
11,171 ff. Pictorial model: Corneille de Wael, Unloading the Galley (in his series of engravings, The Galley Slaves).
11,308 ff. Pictorial models: Netherlandish artists specializing in conflagration scenes (e.g., Jan van der Heyden).
11,384 f. cf. Milton, Paradise Lost, IX. 12f.
11,512 Lemures Roman nocturnal spirits (of the dead), represented in art—e.g., a bas-relief found near Cumae—as skeletons held together by mortuary wrappings and mummified sinews; here: supernatural grave-diggers.
11,531–38 and 11,604–11 cf. Hamlet, V, i, 67ff. (song of First Clown, digging Ophelia’s grave).
11,594 cf. John 19, 30.
11,644 hell-mouth (still used as late as the 17th century in masques) Pictorial models: cemetery frescos, Pisa; Taddeo Gaddi; Michelangelo; Luca Signorelli; etc.
11,647 Flaming City Dis, not the god, but the city of that name in Dante’s Inferno, VIII, 65–81.
11,662 my mark cf. Rev. 19, 20.
11,699 ff. Pictorial models: Luca Signorelli, Angels Strewing Roses (fresco, Orvieto); Lodovico Carracci, The Miracle of the Roses.
11,716 bellows-devils fire-spewing demons of Germanic folklore and statuary using such figures.
11,809 cf. Job 2, 7.
11,844 ff. Single stage-set; time overlap (11,934 continues from 11,824). Pictorial models: Taddeo Gaddi, Thebaian Hermits (frescos, Pisa); Roelant Savery; Titian (?), St. Jerome; etc.
11,854 Pater Ecstaticus title of various saints; here, a religious enthusiast and mystic.
11,866 Pater Profundus title of St. Bernard of Clairvaux; here, a somewhat earth- and sense-bound hermit.
11,890 Pater Seraphicus title of St. Francis of Assisi; here, a hermit and saint concerned with the welfare of others.
11,890 ff. Pictorial model: Correggio (cupola frescos in the cathedral of Parma.)
11,898 born at midnight reference to the popular belief that those born at midnight die in infancy.
11,956 even cremated (Germ. wär’ er von Asbest, even if he were of asbestos) not to be purified by fire.
11,989 Doctor Marianus a hermit dedicated to the cult of (the Virgin) Mary, mother of Jesus and hence Mother of God.
11,994 f. the constellation Virgo (the Virgin).
12,032 Mater Gloriosa the Virgin in Glory. Pictorial models: Titian, Ascension of the Virgin; Murillo, La Imaculata; etc.
12,037 Magna Peccatrix “the greatly sinful woman” in the eyes of Simon, the Pharisee. Pictorial models: Michelangelo; Rembrandt; L. Cranach, the elder; Correggio; Annibale Carracci; Guido Reni; Carlo Dolci; Poussin; etc.
12,045 Mulier Samaritana the woman of Samaria.
12,053 Maria Aegyptica former prostitute who was supernaturally prevented from entering the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and therefore did forty years’ penance in the desert where, as she died, she wrote in the sand a request that her father confessor pray for her soul. Pictorial model: Tintoretto (Venice, Scuola di S. Rocco).
12,104 mysticus mystic (the Latin avoids negative connotations—e.g., of mystifying obfuscation—of the German equivalent mystisch).
12,110 Woman, eternally (Germ. das Ewig-Weibliche, often translated “the Eternal Feminine”).