Faust I+II

(1832)

If literature ever had a mind to rival Shakespeare’s, it was Goethe’s. A complete polymath in every respect, Goethe was a lawyer, a finance and agriculture minister, a botanist, a scientific researcher, and he even wrote a treatise on color. As a literary figure, he was equally wide-ranging, creating masterworks in every form (poetry, prose, drama, etc.) and generating fifty-five volumes of collected works. It’s not hard to see why the old folk-tale of Faust—the preeminent scientist and sorcerer who trades his soul to the devil—appealed so much to Goethe; he too had pushed human capacity as far as it could go, yet knew how much was still being missed.

There is no question that Goethe is Germany’s best writer ever, and he is still considered to have more or less established German as a serious literary language—putting him in a pantheon with Dante in Italy and Pushkin in Russia. Goethe is the kind of writer who comes along once per people. As Shakespeare’s talent and reputation virtually assure that he will never be displaced in English, so Goethe will never be in German. They wrote as men, but history has made them immortal.

Goethe has something on Shakespeare, however, and even on Dante: his countrymen still like reading him. It helps that Goethe’s language is multiple centuries newer (and therefore that much easier to understand), but the real reason is that he wrote with uninhibited gusto, a kind of good-natured mischief of the highest intellectual order. Goethe was a fast-moving amoeba, assimilating everything, as curious as he was gifted, and his works demonstrate a combined vivacity and alacrity perhaps unmatched by any other writer.

The reader of Goethe in English, however, finds himself feeling a bit like Tantalus, forever inches away from a frosty cold one. Goethe in the Engles’ tongue is a bit like a Persian rug turned upside down: you can tell there’s art and intricacy, but it’s hard to make out the finer points. His novel The Sorrows of Young Werther suffers the least from translation—and spells out the Weltschmerz (disappointment that reality never lives up to your imagination) that so afflicted Byron, Pushkin, and the author you’re reading now—but serious problems arise with translations of Goethe’s masterpiece, Faust.

Technically, Faust is a play—though Goethe knew it was too complex ever to be staged in full—and is written in verse, or rather in a jillion different kinds of verse, forever punning, alluding, game-playing, experimenting, jigging, sacheting, and generally goofing off, all the while being pretty damn brilliant. Imagine Shakespeare writing a play with an experimental agenda like Joyce’s in Ulysses; that’s how you get Faust. And trust me, translators do their best to follow along, trying to show you just how playful and fun and multifaceted Goethe is. And he is. But they, well, like farmhands on the dance floor, they just can’t keep up.

But, my darlings, crescent downward not your mouths; there are tricks to reading Faust in English, and they actually almost work. The first requires a bit of doublethink: as you’re going along, you have to imagine how great it is in German, taking what you get, and amplifying it in your minds till it has the kind of grandeur you know it’s supposed to. In the same way that women, when they receive crappy gifts from their husbands or boyfriends, think, “Oh, in his own little way, that was really sweet, and if he had any idea how to give gifts, he would have done so much better—isn’t he wonderful?” you have to think: “This is a translation; it can only go so far. I’m pretty sure that there’s a ton more behind this, and I’m just going to assume there is and love him like I’m experiencing it.”

I’ll admit, it’s a little pathetic. If you do know some German, definitely use a facing-page edition, like Walter Kaufmann’s (which I’m citing in all the quotations but one); that way when you read a line you like or that seems awkward, you can look at the original and see how Goethe put it together before Kaufmann had to abracadabra it into something that rhymes in the Queen’s. Limited as my German is, this made the experience considerably richer. (I should note in passing, however, that there is no readily available facing-page edition of Part II. Kaufmann only translates the last act and gives a synopsis of the rest. For most people’s purposes, that’s probably enough, but I’m never a fan of expurgated books unless I’m doing the purging. For what I think you should take a pass on in Part II, see “What to Skip”).

Then there are other things you can do, and these might prove more useful: don’t let the rhythm and rhyme carry you away (why there isn’t a quality un-rhyming translation is beyond me); just look for jokes in the short lines and deeper stuff in the longer speeches. Make sure to read the Dedication and the Prologues in the Theater and in Heaven carefully, really paying attention to the poetry, because they’re phenomenal. Then treat the rest like a plate of nachos: best at the beginning, less and less good as they cool. It’s early in Faust where you get most of his finest speeches; once the devil takes him for a ride and starts to show him the world, he almost disappears as an interesting character. Mephistopheles, our infernal little friend, is cheeky and hysterical throughout—be sure to appreciate all his charm and irreverence. Margaret (more often called Gretchen for “short”) and her story take up most of the second half of Part I; she’s pretty two-dimensional, but don’t miss the fact that Faust impregnates her with the child she will then not-so-explicably murder between the scenes “Martha’s Garden” and “At the Well”—whoa. Finally the Walpurgisnight (witches’ carnival) scenes, bizarre and funky as they are, lose even more than the rest crossing the border, so don’t worry if you’re not that into them.

Two things to monitor the whole time: one, the idea of striving. In the Prologue in Heaven, Mephistopheles will echo a sentiment we saw in Shakespeare and in Milton—“Man errs as long as he will strive” (line 317)—but Faust himself pretty much stands for striving, using the word again and again (as in the beginning of the quote in “What People Don’t Know” below). And then near the very end of Part II, Faust’s striving is going to make or break him; the devil will take his soul or he won’t (I don’t want to spoil it, but here’s the citation if you want to teleport right there: II, 11, 936–37).

The other is Faust’s somewhat parallel fixation with the idea of his status vis-à-vis the gods. Note how often he says “superman,” “god,” “godlike,” or “image of God” but invariably knows he still has feet of clay.

In Act V of Part II, Faust as emperor will attempt an act of purest aspiration, attempting to reborder the ocean. Hmm … subduing nature, eclipsing what humanity has ever done before—it’s pretty clear what Faust was after (remember God in Jeremiah: “Will ye not tremble at my presence, which have placed the sand for the bound of the sea?”). And small surprise, considering his gifts, that Goethe could conceive of someone trying to perform the deeds of a deity. Few human pates were ever as close as his to scraping the bottom of heaven—or felt the distance that remained so acutely. Goethe: a one-man Babel.

The Buzz: Even if you don’t know Faust’s most famous line—“Art is long, but life is short”—or that it appears in two forms, you’ve definitely heard how the character Faust gets approached by the devil and trades his soul for, for … uh, for what, though? The standard answer is knowledge, but that’s not quite right. For the real story, keep reading.

What People Don’t Know (But Should): Knowledge isn’t what Faust sold his soul for; knowledge he had—he was already summoning spirits to do his bidding—and had actually already given up on the progress man could make (“I loathe the knowledge I once sought”). That’s why he wanted to commit suicide; he felt he had gone as far as knowledge could take him and still not become godlike (this is one of the strains that makes the early part fascinating). No, at first the trade is not for some quality (like being able to convince people that literature is amazing), Faust simply agrees to be the devil’s servant in the afterlife if the devil will be his servant while living. The lines where Faust then says what he wants to get out of it are magnificent: He asks Mephistopheles, “What would you, wretched Devil, offer, / Was ever a man’s spirit in its noble striving / grasped by your like?” (1675–78). He then spurns gold, sex, even honor as unworthy desiderata. He doesn’t want enjoyment, he doesn’t want contentment (he actually says that if he becomes content, the devil can take his soul right then and there). Finally he says what he really wants:

Let every wonder be at hand!
Plunge into time’s whirl that dazes my sense,
Into the torrent of events!
And let enjoyment, distress,
Annoyance and success Succeed each other as best they can;

I have no thought of joy!
The reeling whirl is what I seek, the most painful excess,

I shall enjoy deep in myself, contain
Within my spirit summit and abyss,
Pile on my breast their agony and bliss,
And thus let my own self grow into theirs, unfettered,
Till as they are, at last, I, too, am shattered. (1754–75)

What’s incredible here is not only the desire to experience feeling at every point—good and bad—along the spectrum, but his longing in the end to be actually obliterated by experience. That’s what I think is fascinating: that he goes from trying to end his life with a draught of poison to wanting to end it by being utterly decimated by feeling. What a great switch.

Best Line: There are tons of great lines in Faust. The entirety of the Prologue in the Theater is an incredible display of Goethe’s various stylistic and personality types—he’s clearly all the parts, as he is both Faust and Mephistopheles as well—and believes all their arguments. My favorite line, though, is when the poet says that art has the ability “to carry the world back into his heart” (142). That’s amazing. But this passage, where Faust faces his human limits, is forced to acknowledge that he isn’t a god, might be the best (my translation this time):

I, the image of godhead, who sought to
See the mirror of eternal truth,
And thought myself amid heaven’s light,
As if I had stripped off my mortal man; Become, more than angel, with unbounded might
Even to flow through nature’s veins,
And feel th’ joy of creation: God’s domain.
Ah, the presumption, source of my pain,
One word of thunder swept me off my height. [614–22]

What’s Sexy: The devil, well he’s a horny little guy (sorry, I tried not to say it), as was Goethe, who apparently amassed an impressive collection of penis-themed memorabilia and had a variety of AC/DC dalliances. Hardly a shock, then, that Faust is piebald with innuendo, scurrilous songs, seduction tips, and a few exceptionally dubious metaphors (“at wisdom’s copious breasts / you’ll drink” 1892–93). But here’s the part that most editions—even the German ones—bowdlerize (from “Walpurgis-night” of course):

Faust (dancing with the young one):
“A pretty dream once came to me
In which I saw an apple tree;
Two pretty apples gleamed on it,
They lured me, and I climbed a bit.”

The Fair One:
“You find the little apples nice
Since they first grew in Paradise.
And I am happy telling you
That they grow in my garden, too.”

Mephisto (with the old one):
“A wanton dream once came to me
In which I saw a cloven tree
It had the most tremendous hole;
Though it was big, it pleased my soul.”

The Old One:
“I greet you with profound delight, My gentle, cloven-footed knight!
Provide the proper grafting-twig,
If you don’t mind the hole so big.” [4128–143]

Quirky Fact: There is a character called Proktophantasmist, who Kaufmann tells us is based on a half-rate intellectual of Goethe’s time who parodied The Sorrows of Young Werther (calling his The Joys … yeah yeah) and admitted to having been plagued by ghosts till he got rid of them by applying leeches to his ass. As a result, his character: the Ass-ghoster.

And if you want one more good one, keep reading.

What to Skip: In the scene “Before the City Gate,” one can skip up to line 1011 when Faust and his student Wagner start speaking; from there it gets good. You can skip the entire “Auerbach’s Cellar” scene; its point is just to show Faust how the vulgar amuse themselves—kind of lame. The “Walpurgisnight’s Dream” (which comes right after the plain old “Walpurgisnight”) is disjointed and doesn’t make much sense. Losing the poetry of the original, there’s not much point left.

That’s all in Part I. Then there’s the issue of Part II, which Goethe didn’t finish until decades after the publication of Part I—and only a few months before he died. What could be less promising than this back-cover copy of the Penguin edition: “Rich in allusion and allegory, Faust/Part II [sic] ranges through a host of philosophical and speculative themes. Goethe even foresees such modern phenomena as inflation and the creation of life by scientific synthesis.” Should I start letting my blood now?

Don’t worry; that hardly does it justice. What’s really going on in Faust II (apart from that righteous part on inflation) is something of a redux of the story of Faust I, but this time Faust travels through a classical Greek otherworld, seduces Helen of Troy (really of Sparta), and has a baby with her (that’s what I’m talking about). The child is immediately an adult and tries Icarus-like to fly and fails, causing Helen to follow him to Hades (easy come …). Then Faust leads a big battle (one of the instant narcolepsy sections), becomes emperor, has a serious problem with a pair of linden trees (word to the wise), and tries to bound the sea—a metaphor for vain striving.

I will confess, there is much to skip—though there’s also some stuff worth savoring. In Act I, read the “Baronial Hall” scene, beginning at Helen’s entrance (the Penguin edition doesn’t have line numbers, sadly). In Act II, read the first two sections (they’re very weird, but how many world classics have as one of their heroes a hermaphroditic bit of human-shaped flame trapped in a test tube?), then skip the rest except the very lyrical “Lower Peneus” of the Classical Walpurgisnacht. In Act III, read the “Inner Courtyard” but only from Faust’s first lines to the appearance of Phorkyas. In Act IV, read from the beginning until the drums announce the war. And in Act V, read the whole thing, at least until the victory over Faust’s soul is explained at line 11,937 (I’m still not telling who gets it).