1770–1829
(To Faust, Part 1)
Come, you uncertain forms, who showed your features
So long ago to my dark-shadowed gaze,
Shall I now try to grasp you, fleeting creatures?
Does my heart seek that madness, those strange ways?
You draw me there! Work then, so please your natures,
Rising around me in your fume and haze.
As in my youthful days, my heart feels shaken
By that strong breath of magic you awaken.
You bring too, from past times, happier visions,
And some loved shadows rise up, calling me;
As in some lay from half-recalled traditions,
First come the scenes of love and amity,
Then pain renews, with anguished repetitions,
How wild and labyrinthine life can be,
And calls those dear ones who, fortune deceiving
Of their sweet hours, fell off and left me grieving.
They will not hear these notes, to whom they mattered,
The souls to whom I sang the first of them;
That friendly throng is parted now and scattered,
Faded, alas, that echo now is dumb!
An unknown crowd will hear the song that’s uttered,
Applause only alarms my heart’s loud drum.
Whoever else that found my verses stirring
*
And I am seized by long-unwonted longing
For that serene and solemn realm of shades,
My halting song hovers with a vague ringing,
Like the Aeolian lyre in its glissades.
A shudder seizes me; tears, tears come stinging;
Now mild and weak, my strong heart’s fury fades.
All I possess and am seems lost and banished,
And what’s reality to me is what once vanished.
The three angels step forward.
RAPHAEL:
The sun joins as in ancient fashion
With brother-spheres’ contesting song,
And its prescribed peregrination
Ends in a thunderclap more strong.
Its sight gives all the angels power,
But how, no being fathom may,
These works, ungrasped by any knower,
As splendid as in that first day.
GABRIEL:
Swift, swift, beyond the mind’s grasp ranging,
The splendor of the earth rolls round,
The light of Paradise exchanging
With night’s chill lightlessness profound.
The sea pours shining in its pother
From deep base up the cliff ‘s steep waste,
And cliff and sea are torn together
Along the spheres’ eternal haste.
MICHAEL:
And storms rage, each with each competing,
From sea to land, from land to sea,
A furious chain of cause creating,
Across the world’s immensity.
There flames the lightning’s devastation,
Before the thunderbolt’s pathways;
Yet, Lord, thy heralds’ veneration
Is for thy gentler turning days.
This sight gives all the angels power,
But how, no being fathom may,
And all thy works, in their high flower,
Are splendid, as in that first day.
I’ve studied—ach—philosophy,
Medicine, law, and, more’s the pity,
Consuming endless energy,
The wasteland of theology;
And stand here, foolish sophomore,
No wiser than I was before!
They call me Master, even Doctor now,
And round and round, I know not how,
For ten long useless years I chose
To lead my students by the nose—
That’s why my hot heart burns me so,
Because I know we cannot know.
Yes, I’m a smarter fool than those
Professors, scribes, and holy joes;
No doubts or scruples plague my cell,
I fear no Devil, nor his Hell—
But that’s just why my joy is fled,
All my pretense of wisdom dead,
All pose of teacher but a sham;
No guide or counselor I am.
Nor have I either goods or gold,
My name’s not honored or extolled,
No dog would want to live like me.
And so I’ve set my soul on sorcery,
To try whether the spirits’ potency
Might not unveil the mysteries to me,
That I no longer, in a sweat of shame,
Name what I do not have the names to name,
That I may know what secret law or force
Unites the cosmos in its course,
And look into the seeds of life, and cease
To cram into mere words the universe.
O you full moon, once more again
Would that you might behold my pain
That many a midnight with its ache
Has kept me at this desk awake:
And over books and papers wise,
My friend so gloomy-souled, arise!
Ah, might I on the mountainside
Walk in your lovely light, and glide
With spirits over the crevasse
Or twilight meadow, floating, pass;
Unburdened of all knowing-pain,
Bathe in your dew, be whole again!
4. Faust Translating the Gospel
“In the beginning was the Word.”
I’m stuck at once! Who’d help me if I erred?
I do not hold the word as such a treasure:
I must find then a different measure
If I would trust the spirit’s influence.
“In the beginning”—write it then—“was Sense.”
Ponder this first line and its leaning:
Don’t let your pen outpace the meaning!
Is it then sense, the mind, that is the source?
“In the beginning,” then, perhaps, “was Force.”
But as I write I hear an admonition
That I not leave it with that definition.
The spirit moves me! I see it now, in fact:
Boldly write “In the beginning was the Act.”
MARGARETE:
… Do you believe in God?
FAUST: Love, who can say
“Yes, I believe in God”?
Ask the priest and wise man, and what they
Will answer sounds like mockery
Of her who asks the question.
MARGARETE:
So you don’t believe?
FAUST:
Oh, sweet-faced innocent, don’t misconceive!
Who can name Him,
Who can claim him,
Saying “I believe”?
Who presume
To say “I don’t believe”?
The all-containing,
All-sustaining,
Does He not embrace, sustain
you, and myself, and Him?
Above, does not the sky arch high,
Below, the firm earth steadfast lie?
Do not the friendly stars eternal rise,
Do we not see each other, eyes in eyes?
And do not all things strive
Toward your head and heart,
And do not all things weave
Themselves with everlasting secrecy,
Seen thus unseen, into your closest intimacy?
Fill up your heart with this,
And when your feelings overflow with bliss
Name it as you wish by any name whatever!
Luck, call it! Heart! Love! God!
I have no name to call it!
Feeling is all—
A name is but sound and smoke,
Clouding the glow of heaven.
MARGARETE:
This is all well and good.
It’s what the priest says, more or less,
Except the words are rather different.
A dying nation leaves behind it
Only a shadow-bolt of gray:
You see it, but to grasp and bind it
You run in vain through night and day.
Whoever reaches after shades
Gets empty air for his endeavor:
Who heaps up shades on former shades
Sees himself trapped in night forever.
[A flower vase in a niche for an image of the Mater Dolorosa. Gretchen is putting in fresh flowers.]
Ah, Mercy,
Grief-majesty,
Bend down your face to my plight!
A fiery dart
Has pierced your heart:
Your Son dead in your sight.
With such sad sighs
Your turn your eyes
To the Father above in his might.
Who knows
What gnawing throes
Have torn my body so?
What has made my poor heart quiver,
Dreadful yearning, dreadful fever,
Only you alone can know!
Wheresover I may go,
It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, and oh,
My bosom is so full of woe!
Wheresoever I’m alone,
I groan, I groan, I groan,
For my heart is broken so.
The pot beside my window
I watered with many a tear
This morning when I plucked for you
And brought these flowers here—
Light shone within my chamber
In the new-risen sun
When from my bed in wretchedness
I rose, the day begun.
Help! Help! From shame and death’s despite,
Bend down your face,
Ah, full of grace,
In pity for my plight!
8. Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel
My peace is fled,
My heart weighs sore;
It’s lost forever,
Forevermore.
Where he is not
Is burial:
The whole wide world’s but
Grave and gall.
My poor poor head
Has turned its wits,
My poor poor mind
Is all in bits.
My peace is fled,
My heart weighs sore;
It’s lost forever,
Forevermore.
My window serves merely
His coming to see;
I leave the house only
His seeker to be.
His noble step,
His elegance,
His gentle smile,
His powerful glance—
*
Its magic flow,
His hand’s strong touch,
His kisses—oh—
My peace is fled,
My heart weighs sore;
It’s lost forever,
Forevermore.
My bosom urges
Itself to his;
Ah, might I hold him,
Ah, might I kiss
Just as I wish it,
Just as I felt,
And with his kisses
I might melt!
What’s this within her arms, this heaven-sweetness?—
I’ll warm myself on her breasts’ whiteness:
Still, can’t I feel her yearning grief?
And am I not the houseless, doomed to wander,
Unhuman, goalless, without peace,
Who roars, a waterfall, from cliff to cliff asunder,
Greedily raging after the abyss?
And she, the childlike innocent unwitting,
In her small alpine hut beside the fall,
Busied with homely chores befitting,
Her little world about her, all!
I had no satisfaction,
I, the God-abhorred,
But must to her destruction
Drag rock and house and board:
I must uproot her peace in this unfounding!
This offering, Hell, I burn at your demanding!
O Devil, may my time of dread not tarry—
Since it must be, then let it be!
Upon me fall her ruin when she miscarry,
And with her fate crush me!
All that is transient
Is but a fiction;
All insufficiency
Here becomes action;
All wordless mystery
Here may be done;
The ever-womanly
Still draws us on.