Delivered before the
Συμπαϱανεϰϱώμενοι
[Fellowship of the Dead]2
Abgeschworen mag die Liebe immer seyn;
Liebes-Zauber wiegt in dieser Höhle
Die berauschte, überraschte Seele
In Vergessenheit des Schwures ein.
Gestern liebt’ ich,
Heute leid’ ich,
Morgen sterb’ ich;
Dennoch denk’ ich
Heut’ und Morgen
Gern an Gestern
[Foresworn may love at all times be;
Love-magic lulls down in this cave
The soul surprised, intoxicated,
In forgetfulness of any oath.
Yesterday I loved,
Today I suffer,
Tomorrow I die,
Yet today and tomorrow
I like to think
Of yesterday].3
We celebrate in this hour the founding of our society; we rejoice anew that the happy occasion has repeated itself, that the longest day is over and night begins to triumph. We have waited all the day long; just a moment ago we sighed over its length, but now our despair is transformed into joy. To be sure, the victory is not great, and the preponderance of day will last for a long time, but that its domination has been broken does not escape our attention. Therefore, we do not postpone our celebration over the victory of the night until it is plain to all; we do not postpone it until the torpid bourgeois life reminds us that day is declining. No, as a young bride impatiently awaits the coming of night, so we longingly wait for the first onset of night, the first announcement of its coming victory, and the more we have been inclined to despair over our being able to hold out if the days were not shortened, the greater our joy and surprise.
A year has gone by, and our society still survives. Should we rejoice over that, dear Συμπαϱανεϰϱώμενοι, rejoice that its existence mocks our doctrine of the downfall of everything, or should we not lament instead that it survives and rejoice that in any case it has only one year left to continue, for if it has not vanished within that time, was it not our decision to dissolve it ourselves? In founding it, we did not make farsighted plans; [I 146] too familiar with the wretchedness of life and the perfidiousness of existence, we resolved to come to the aid of universal law and obliterate ourselves if it does not forestall us. A year has gone by and our society is still intact; as yet no one has been released, no one has released himself, since every one of us is too proud for that, because we all regard death as the greatest good fortune. Should we rejoice over this and not rather be sad and take pleasure only in the hope that life’s confusion will soon split us up, that the storms of life will soon carry us off! Surely these thoughts are better suited to our society, are more in agreement with the festivity of the moment, with the entire setting. For is it not ingenious and significant that the floor of this little room is strewn, as is the local custom, with foliage, as if for a funeral; and is not nature itself giving us its approval when we take note of the wild storm raging around us, when we pay heed to the wind’s powerful voice? Yes, let us be silent for a moment and listen to the music of the storm, its spirited course, its bold challenge, and the defiant roar of the sea and the uneasy sighing of the forest and the desperate crashing of the trees and the faint sibilating of the grass. To be sure, people do say that the voice of the divine is not in the driving wind but in the soft breeze,4 but our ears, after all, are constructed not to pick up the soft breezes but to swallow the uproar of the elements. And why does it not rage even more violently and put an end to life and the world and this short speech, which at least has the merit exceeding everything else that it is soon ended. Yes, would that the vortex, which is the world’s core principle,5 even if people are not aware of it but eat and drink, marry and propagate themselves with carefree industriousness, would that it might erupt with deep-seated resentment and shake off the mountains and the nations and the cultural works and man’s clever inventions; would that it might erupt with the last terrible shriek that more surely than the trumpet of doom announces the downfall of everything; would that it might stir and spin this bare cliff on which we stand as light as thistledown before the breath in its nostrils. The night, however, is being victorious, the day is shortening, and hope is growing! So fill your glasses once again, fellow topers; with this goblet I toast you, silent night, the eternal mother of everything! From you comes everything; to you everything returns. Have mercy again on the world; open up once again to gather in everything and keep us all safe in your womb! I [I 147] greet you, dark night, I greet you as the victor, and this is my comfort, for in eternal oblivion you shorten everything, day and time and life and the irksomeness of recollection!
Since the time when Lessing defined the boundaries between poetry and art in his celebrated treatise Laokoon,6 it no doubt may be regarded as a conclusion unanimously recognized by all estheticians that the distinction between them is that art is in the category of space, poetry in the category of time, that art depicts repose, poetry motion.7 For this reason, the subject for artistic portrayal must have a quiet transparency so that the interior rests in the corresponding exterior. The less this is the case, the more difficult becomes the task for the artist, until the distinction asserts itself and teaches him that this is no task for him at all.
If we apply to the relation between sorrow and joy that which has been casually stated but not developed here, it is easy to perceive that joy is far easier to depict artistically than sorrow. By no means does this deny that grief can be depicted artistically, but it certainly does say that there comes a point where it is essential to posit a contrast between the interior and the exterior, which makes a depiction of it impossible for art. This in turn is due to the singular nature of sorrow. By nature, joy wishes to disclose itself; sorrow wishes to conceal itself, indeed, at times even to deceive. Joy is communicative, sociable, open, wishes to express itself. Sorrow is inclosingly reserved [indesluttet], silent, solitary, and seeks to return into itself. Surely no one who has made life the object of any observation at all will deny the correctness of this. There are people whose make-up is so constituted that when their emotions are stirred the blood rushes to the surface of the skin, and in this way the interior motion becomes visible in the exterior; others are so constituted that the blood recedes, withdraws into the heart chamber and the inner parts of the organism. It is somewhat like this with respect to the mode of expressing joy and sorrow. The first make-up described is much easier to observe [I 148] than the second. In the first, one sees the manifestation; the interior motion is visible in the exterior. In the second, one has an intimation of the interior motion. The exterior pallor is, as it were, the interior’s good-bye, and thought and imagination hurry after the fugitive, which hides in the secret recesses. This applies particularly to the kind of sorrow I shall consider more explicitly here, what could be called reflective sorrow. Here the exterior has at most only a suggestion that puts one on the track, sometimes not even that much. This sorrow cannot be depicted artistically, for the interior and the exterior are out of balance, and thus it does not lie within spatial categories. In yet another respect it cannot be depicted artistically, for it does not have inner stillness but is constantly in motion; even if this motion does not enrich it with new effects, the motion itself is nevertheless the essential. Like a squirrel in its cage, it turns around in itself, yet not as uniformly as does that animal, but with a continual alternation in the combination of the interior elements of sorrow. What excludes reflective sorrow as the subject for artistic depiction is that it lacks repose, is not at one with itself, does not come to rest in any one definite expression. Just as the patient in his pain tosses from one side to the other, so reflective sorrow is tossed about in order to find its object and its expression. If the sorrow is in repose, the interior of sorrow will gradually work its way outward, become visible in the exterior, and in this way become a subject for artistic depiction. If sorrow has inner repose and rest, the motion begins outward from the inside; reflective sorrow moves inward, like blood rushing from the outer surface, and lets one have an intimation of it only because of the fleeting pallor. Reflective sorrow does not involve any essential change in the exterior; even in the first moment of sorrow it hurries inward, and only the more careful observer has an intimation of its disappearance; later it carefully sees to it that the exterior is as inconspicuous as possible.
By withdrawing inward in this way, it finally finds an inclosure, an innermost retreat, where it thinks it can remain, and now it begins its uniform movement. Like the pendulum in a clock, it swings back and forth and cannot find rest. It continually begins from the beginning and deliberates anew, interrogates the witnesses, checks and examines the various statements, something it has already done hundreds of times, but it is never finished. In the course of time, the uniformity has something anesthetizing about it. Just as the uniform dripping [I 149] of rain from the roof, the uniform whirring of a spinning wheel, and the monotonous sound of a man pacing back and forth with measured steps on the floor above have an anesthetizing effect, so reflective grief eventually finds solace in this motion, which as an illusory motion becomes a necessity for it. At last there is a kind of balance; the need to give vent to the grief, insofar as it may ever have asserted itself at all, ceases; the exterior is calm and quiet; and deep within, in its little nook, grief lives like a well-guarded prisoner in an underground prison, who lives on year after year in his uniform movement, walking to and fro in his cubbyhole, never weary of traveling the long or short road of sorrow.
Reflective sorrow can be occasioned in part by the individual’s subjective quality, in part by the objective sorrow or the occasion of the sorrow. A morbidly reflective individual will transform every sorrow into a reflective sorrow; his individual make-up and structure render it impossible for him to assimilate the sorrow right away. But this is a morbidity that cannot be of particular interest to us, because in that way every accidentality can undergo a metamorphosis by which it becomes a reflective sorrow. It is another matter when the objective sorrow or the occasion of the sorrow in the individual himself fosters the reflection that makes the sorrow into a reflective sorrow. This is everywhere the case when the objective sorrow in itself is not finished, when it leaves a doubt, whatever its nature is. Here at once a great multiplicity appears for thought, greater according to the richness of one’s life and experience or one’s inclination to engage one’s keenness in such imaginary constructions.
But it is by no means my intention to go through the whole multiplicity; I want to single out only one aspect as it has appeared for my observation. If the occasion for sorrow is a deception, then the objective sorrow itself is of such a quality that it engenders reflective sorrow in the individual. That a deception is actually a deception is often very difficult to determine clearly, and yet everything depends upon that. As long as this is debatable, the sorrow will find no repose but must continue to ramble back and forth in reflection. Furthermore, if this deception does not involve anything external but a person’s whole inner life, his life’s innermost core, the probability of the continuance of the objective sorrow becomes greater and greater. But what can more truthfully be called a woman’s life than her love? Consequently, if the sorrow of an unhappy [I 150] love is due to a deception, we have unconditionally a reflective sorrow, whether it continues for a lifetime or the individual conquers it. Unhappy love is in itself undoubtedly the deepest sorrow for a woman, but it does not follow from this that every unhappy love engenders a reflective sorrow. If, for example, the beloved dies, or she perhaps does not find her love returned at all, or her life situation makes the fulfillment of her wish impossible, this certainly is an occasion for sorrow, but not a reflective sorrow, except to the extent that the person concerned was morbid before, and then she thereby lies outside our interest. But if she is not morbid, then her sorrow becomes an immediate sorrow and as such can also become the subject of artistic portrayal, whereas on the other hand it is impossible for art to express and portray the reflective sorrow or the point of it. In other words, immediate sorrow is the immediate imprint and expression of the sorrow’s impression, which, just like the picture Veronica8 preserved on her linen cloth, is perfectly congruous, and sorrow’s sacred lettering is stamped on the exterior, beautiful and clear and legible to all.
Reflective sorrow, then, cannot become a subject for artistic portrayal. For one thing, it is never really present but is continually in the process of becoming; for another, the exterior, the visible, is a matter of unimportance and indifference. So if art will not limit itself to the naïveté (examples are found in old books) in which a figure is portrayed that can represent almost anything, but one discovers on its breast a plaque, a heart or something similar, on which one may read everything, especially when the figure’s posture draws a person’s attention to it, even points to it, an effect that could just as well be achieved by writing above it “Please note!”—if art will not do this, it will be obliged to reject pictures of that kind and leave reflective grief to poetic or psychological treatment.
It is this reflective sorrow that I aim to single out and, as far as possible, have emerge in a few pictures. I call them silhouettes [Skyggerids],9 partly to suggest at once by the name that I draw them from the dark side of life and partly because, like silhouettes, they are not immediately visible. If I pick up a silhouette, I have no impression of it, cannot arrive at an actual [I 151] conception of it; only when I hold it up toward the wall and do not look at it directly but at what appears on the wall, only then do I see it. So it is also with the picture I want to show here, an interior picture that does not become perceptible until I see through the exterior. Perhaps there is nothing striking about the exterior, but when I look through it, only then do I discover the interior picture, which is what I want to show, an interior picture that is too delicate to be externally perceptible, since it is woven from the soul’s faintest moods. If I look at a sheet of paper, it perhaps has nothing remarkable about it for immediate inspection, but as soon as I hold it up to the light of day and look through it, I discover the subtle interior picture,10 too psychical, as it were, to be seen immediately.
So fasten your gaze, dear Συμπαϱανεϰϱώμενοι, on this interior picture; do not let yourselves be distracted by the exterior, or, more correctly, do not produce it yourselves, for I shall continually draw it aside in order to penetrate better into the interior. But presumably I do not need to encourage this society, of which I have the honor to be a member, to do this, for although we are young, we nevertheless are all old enough not to let ourselves be deceived by the exterior or to stop with that. Would I be indulging in a vain hope if I believed that you will do these pictures the honor of your attention, or would my efforts be foreign and of no consequence to you, not in harmony with the interest of our society, a society that knows but one passion, namely, sympathy with sorrow’s secret.
As a matter of fact, we, too, form an order; we, too, now and then go out into the world like knights-errant, each his own way, not to fight monsters or come to the aid of innocence or be tried in amorous adventures. All this is of no concern to us, not even the last, for the arrow in a woman’s eye does not wound our hardened breasts, and the cheery smiles of happy maidens do not move us, but rather the secret hint of grief. Let others be proud that no girl anywhere can resist their erotic power; we envy them not. We shall be proud that no secret sorrow escapes our attention, that no solitary sorrow is so prudish and so proud that we do not succeed in penetrating its innermost hideout! Which contest is the most dangerous, which requires the most skill and provides the greatest pleasure, we shall not investigate. Our choice is made: we love only sorrow. We are in quest only of sorrow, and wherever we find its trail, we follow it, fearlessly, unwaveringly, until it discloses itself. For this fight we equip ourselves; we practice [I 152] fighting daily.
It is true that sorrow sneaks about in the world so very secretively that only the person who has sympathy for it gains an intimation of it. One walks down the street; one house looks like the other. Only the experienced observer suspects that in this particular house things are quite otherwise at the midnight hour; then an unhappy person paces about, one who found no rest; he goes up the stairs, and his footsteps echo in the stillness of the night. People pass one another in the street; one person looks just like the next, and the next one is like almost everyone else. Only the experienced observer suspects that deep within that one’s head resides a lodger who has nothing to do with the world but lives out his solitary life in quiet home-industry work.
The exterior, then, is indeed the object of our scrutiny but not of our interest. In the same way, the fisherman sits and looks fixedly at the float; the float, however, does not interest him at all, but rather the movements down at the bottom. Therefore the exterior does indeed have significance for us, but not as a manifestation of the interior, but rather as a telegraphic report that there is something hidden deep within.
When one looks long and attentively at a face, sometimes another face, as it were, is discovered within the face one sees. Ordinarily this is an unmistakable sign that the soul is hiding an emigrant who has withdrawn from the exterior face in order to watch over a buried treasure, and the route for the operation of observation is suggested by the fact that the one face seems to be within the other, which indicates that one must try to penetrate inward if one wants to discover anything. The face, which usually is the mirror of the soul, here takes on an ambiguity that cannot be artistically portrayed and that usually lasts only for a fleeting moment. It takes a special eye to see it, a special vision to pursue this unerring indication of secret sorrow. This vision is avid and yet so scrupulous, alarming, and compelling, and yet so sympathetic, persevering, and cunning, and yet so honest and well disposed; it lulls the individual into a sort of pleasant lassitude in which he finds a sensual pleasure in pouring out his sorrow, similar to the sensual pleasure in bleeding to death. The present is forgotten, the exterior is penetrated; the past is resurrected, sorrow’s breathing is eased. The person who is grieving finds relief, and the sympathetic knight of grief rejoices over having found what he sought, for we seek not the present but the past, not joy, for it is always present, but sorrow, for its nature is to pass by, and in the present moment we see it just as we see a person when [I 153] we catch sight of him for just a moment and then he turns down another street and disappears.
But sometimes the sorrow conceals itself even better, and the exterior allows us to suspect nothing, not the slightest. It can elude our attention for a long time, but when by chance a look, a word, a sigh, a tone in the voice, a hint in the eyes, a trembling of the lips, or a blunder in the handshake treacherously betrays what has been carefully concealed—then passion is aroused, then the struggle begins. Then it is a matter of having vigilance and perseverance and sagacity, for who is as inventive as secret sorrow, but a solitary lifetime prisoner has adequate time to think up many things, and who is as swift to find concealment as secret sorrow, for no young girl can cover in greater anxiety and haste a bosom she has exposed than hidden sorrow when it is surprised. Then unshakable dauntlessness is required, for the struggle is with a Proteus,11 but he must give up if one only holds out. Even if like that sea god he assumed every shape in order to escape, such as a snake twisting in our hands, a lion terrifying us with its roaring, changed into a tree that whispers with its leaves or into roaring water or a crackling fire—at last he must nevertheless prophesy, and sorrow must disclose itself at last. See, these adventures are our delight, our diversion; to try ourselves in them is our knighthood. For that purpose, we arise in the middle of the night like robbers; this is why we risk everything, for no passion is as wild as the passion of sympathy. And we need not fear that there will be a lack of adventures for us but rather fear collision with opposition that is too hard and impregnable, for just as natural scientists report that in blasting boulders that have defied the centuries they have found deep within a living creature that, undiscovered, has maintained life, so also it is indeed possible that there are human beings whose exterior is a firm-as-rock hill that guards their forever hidden life of sorrow. This, however, will not temper our passion or cool our zeal; on the contrary, it will inflame it, because our passion, after all, is not curiosity that satisfies itself with the exterior and the superficial but is a sympathetic anxiety that searches the minds12 and hidden thoughts, conjures forth what is hidden by means of witchcraft and invocations, even that which death has withheld from our gaze. It is said that Saul, before the battle, came in disguise to a fortune teller and demanded [I 154] that she show him Samuel’s image.13 It surely was not only curiosity that impelled him, not a desire to see Samuel’s visible image, but he wanted to know his thoughts, and he undoubtedly waited uneasily until he heard the rigorous judge’s censorious voice. Likewise it surely will not simply be curiosity that moves one or another of you, my dear Συμπαϱανεϰϱώμενοι, to contemplate the pictures I am going to show you. Although I designate them with specific poetic names, by no means is it suggested thereby that it is only these poetic figures who appear before you, but the names must be regarded as nomina appellativa [common nouns], and from my side there is nothing to hinder any one of you, if you feel inclined, from giving a particular picture another name, a more appealing name, or a name that perhaps comes more naturally to you.
The girl taken as our subject is known to us in Goethe’s Clavigo,14 except that we shall follow her a little further in time, when she has lost dramatic interest, when the accompaniments of sorrow have gradually abated. We shall continue to follow her, for we, knights of sympathy, have just as much innate gift as acquired skill in being able to keep step in procession with sorrow.
Her story is brief: Clavigo became engaged to her; Clavigo left her. This information is enough for the person who is in the habit of observing the phenomena of life as one observes rarities in a curio cabinet; the shorter the better, the more one can manage to see. In the same way, it could be told very briefly that Tantalus thirsts and that Sisyphus rolls a stone up the mountain.15 If someone is in a hurry, it would indeed be a delay to dwell on it any further, since one cannot learn any more than one already knows, which is the whole thing. Whatever is to claim more attention must be of another kind. A group of intimates is gathered around the tea table. The [I 155] samovar is singing its last verse, and the hostess asks the mysterious stranger to unburden his heart. With that in mind, she has sugar-water and jam brought in, and now he begins. It is a long, prolix story. So it goes in novels, and it is also something quite different: a prolix story and such a brief little announcement. Whether it is a brief story for Marie Beaumarchais is another question. One thing is sure; it is not prolix, for a prolix story nevertheless has a measurable length, but a short story sometimes has the mysterious quality that despite all its brevity it is longer than the most prolix.
In what has been stated in the foregoing discussion, I have already pointed out that reflective grief does not become visible in the exterior, that is, it does not find its beautiful, composed expression therein. The interior unrest does not permit this transparency, and the exterior is more likely to be consumed thereby; insofar as the interior would declare itself in the exterior, it would likely be a kind of morbidity, which can never become a subject for artistic portrayal, since it does not have the interest of the beautiful. Goethe has suggested this by a few particular hints.16 But even if there is agreement on the correctness of this observation, there could be a temptation to regard it as something incidental, and not until one is assured, by deliberating purely poetically and esthetically, that what the observation states has esthetic truth, not until then will one gain a deeper consciousness. Now, if I were to imagine a reflective sorrow and asked if it could not be portrayed artistically, it would immediately be apparent that the exterior is altogether incidental to it; but if this is true, then artistic beauty is abandoned. Whether she is large or small, significant or insignificant, beautiful or not so beautiful, this is of no consequence; to deliberate on whether it would be more proper to have her incline her head to this side or to that or toward the ground, to have her gaze gloomily or sadly fix her eyes on the ground—all this is utterly inconsequential; the one expresses the reflective sorrow no more adequately than the other. In comparison with the interior, the exterior has become insignificant and inconsequential. The point in reflective sorrow is that the sorrow is continually seeking its object; this seeking is the sorrow’s restlessness and its life. But this seeking is a continual [I 156] fluctuation, and if at every moment the exterior were a perfect expression of the interior, then there would have to be a whole series of pictures in order to portray reflective sorrow; but no particular picture would express the sorrow, and no particular picture would have real artistic value, since it would be not beautiful, but true. These pictures must be looked at in the way one looks at the second hand of a watch; one does not see the works, but the interior movement expresses itself continually in the continually changing exterior. But this changeableness cannot be portrayed artistically, and yet this is the point of the whole thing.
If, for example, unhappy love is due to a deception, then its pain and suffering are that the grief cannot find its object. If the deception is proved and the person concerned has perceived that it is a deception, the sorrow certainly does not cease, but then it is an immediate sorrow, not a reflective sorrow. Here the dialectical difficulty is obvious, for what is she sorrowing over? If he was a deceiver, then it was indeed good that he left her, the earlier the better; she should rejoice over it instead and sorrow because she had loved him, and yet it is a deep sorrow that he was a deceiver. But whether it is a deception is the restlessness in sorrow’s perpetuum mobile. To establish certainty for the external fact that a deception is a deception is always very difficult, and yet that by no means ends the matter or stops the movement. For love [Kjœrlighed], a deception is indeed an absolute paradox, and therein lies the necessity of a reflective grief. The different factors in love may be amalgamated in the individual in very different ways, and thus love in one person may not be the same as in another; the egotistical may be dominant, or the sympathetic. But whatever the love is in its separate elements and also in its totality, a deception is a paradox that it cannot think, and yet one that it eventually wants to think. Indeed, if the egotistic or the sympathetic element is present absolutely, the paradox is canceled; that is, in the power of the absolute, the individual is beyond reflection. To be sure, he does not think the paradox in the sense that he cancels it by a reflective “how,” but he is saved precisely by not thinking it; he is not concerned with reflection’s busy reports or confusions—he reposes in himself. Because of its pride, the egotistically proud love regards a deception as impossible; it is not concerned with finding out what can be said for or against, how the person concerned can be defended or excused; it is absolutely sure, because it is too proud to believe that anyone would dare to deceive it. Sympathetic love possesses the faith [I 157] that can move mountains;17 for it, any defense is nothing compared with its unshakable conviction that it was no deception. Every charge proves nothing to the advocate, who explains that it was no deception, explains it not this way or that—but absolutely. But a love like that is seldom seen in this life, or perhaps never. Usually both factors are present in love, and this brings it into relation to the paradox. In the two instances described, the paradox indeed exists for love but does not concern it; in the latter instance, the paradox exists for love. The paradox is unthinkable, and yet love wants to think it, and, in accordance with the momentary predominance of the various factors, it makes an approach in order to think it, often in contradictory ways, but it does not succeed. This path of thinking is infinite and does not end until the individual arbitrarily breaks it off by affirming something else, by a determination of the will; but the individual thereby enters into ethical qualifications and does not engage us esthetically. By a resolve, it attains what it cannot attain on the road of reflection: an end, repose.
This holds for every unhappy love that is due to a deception. What may evoke reflective grief even more in Maria Beaumarchais is that it is only an engagement that has been broken. An engagement is a possibility, not an actuality; but precisely because it is only a possibility, it may seem that the effects of being broken are not so great, that it is far easier for the individual to bear this blow. This may indeed be the case at times, but on the other hand the circumstance that it is only a possibility that is destroyed entices much more reflection. When an actuality is shattered, the break is usually far more radical; every nerve is cut, and the break as a break has an implicit completeness. When a possibility is shattered, the momentary pain may not be as great, but frequently it also leaves a little ligament or two whole and undamaged, which remains a constant occasion for continued pain. The destroyed possibility appears transfigured in a higher possibility, whereas the temptation to conjure up a new possibility such as this is not as great when it is an actuality that has been shattered, because the actuality is higher than the possibility.
So Clavigo has left her, has perfidiously severed the connection. [I 158] Accustomed to leaning on him, she does not have the strength to stand when he thrusts her away, and she collapses weakly into the arms of those around her. This seems to be Marie’s situation. However, another beginning is also conceivable; it is conceivable that immediately at the outset she had sufficient strength to transform her sorrow into reflective sorrow, that she—either to avoid the humiliation of hearing others talk about her having been deceived or because she nevertheless still thought so highly of him that it would hurt her to hear him denounced again and again as a deceiver—promptly severed all connections with others in order to consume the sorrow in herself and to consume herself in the sorrow.
We follow Goethe. Those around her are not unsympathetic; they feel her pain with her, and in feeling it they say: This will be the death of her. Esthetically speaking, this is altogether correct. An unhappy love may be of such a nature that suicide may be regarded as esthetically proper, but then it must not have been due to a deception. If that is the case, then the suicide would lose all loftiness and involve a concession that pride must refuse to give. If, however, it is the death of her, this is the same as saying that he has murdered her. This expression harmonizes entirely with her powerful inner agitation; she finds alleviation in it.
But life does not always follow precisely esthetic categories, does not always obey an esthetic norm, and she does not die. This places those around her in an awkward position. They sense that it is inappropriate to go on declaring that she is going to die when she continues to live; in addition, they do not feel able to do it with the same pathos-filled energy as at the beginning, and yet this was a prerequisite if there was to be any solace for her. So they change their method. He was a villain, they say, a deceiver, an abominable person not worth dying for. Forget him; don’t give this thing another thought; it was only an engagement. Blot this incident out of your recollection, and once again you are young, can hope again. This incites her, for this pathos of wrath harmonizes with her other moods; her pride finds satisfaction in the vengeful idea of changing the whole thing into a nothing. It was not because he was an extraordinary person that she loved him, far from it; she was very aware of his faults, but she believed he was a good man, a faithful man, and that was why she loved him. It was out of compassion, and therefore it will be easy to forget him, because she never really needed him.
Marie and those around her are once again in tune, and the duet between them goes beautifully. Those around her do not find it difficult to believe that Clavigo was a deceiver, for they [I 159] had never loved him, and therefore there is no paradox. Insofar as they perhaps had liked him (something Goethe suggests with respect to the sister),18 this very interest arms them against him, and this kindly disposition, which perhaps was little more than kindness, becomes superb inflammable stuff to sustain the flames of hate. Nor do those around her find it difficult to blot out the recollection of him, and therefore they demand that Marie do the same. Her pride breaks forth in hate; those around her add fuel to the flames. She finds relief in violent words and vigorous, drastic intentions and becomes self-intoxicated with them. Those around her are pleased. They do not perceive—something she will scarcely admit to herself—that in the next moment she is weak and listless; they do not perceive that she is gripped by the anxious presentiment that the energy she has at a particular moment is an illusion. This she carefully hides and confesses to no one. Those around her continue their theoretical exercises successfully but nevertheless begin to want to see tokens of practical effects. They fail to appear.
Those around her continue to incite her; her words manifest interior strength, and yet they have a suspicion that there is something wrong. They become impatient, risk the extreme; they drive the spurs of ridicule into her side in order to drive her from cover. It is too late. Misunderstanding has entered in. That he actually was a deceiver entails no humiliation for those around her, but it certainly does for Marie. The revenge offered her, to scorn him, does not really mean very much, because in order for it to mean something he would have to love her, but that he certainly does not do, and her contempt becomes a check that no one will cash. On the other hand, in Clavigo’s being a deceiver there is nothing painful for those around her, but there certainly is for Marie, and he still does not totally lack a defender in her inner being. She feels that she has gone too far; she has hinted at a strength she does not possess; she will not admit it. And what consolation is there in scorning him? Then it is better to grieve. In addition, she has in her possession a secret note or two of great importance for clarification of the text but also of such a nature as to place him in a more favorable or more unfavorable light according to the circumstances. She has not, however, initiated anyone into this and does not wish to do so, for if he was not a deceiver, [I 160] then it would still be conceivable that he would repent of this step and come back or, even more glorious, that he perhaps would not need to repent of it, that he could completely justify himself or explain everything. In that case, it might become an offense if she had made use of it; then the old relationship could never be re-established, and it would be her own fault, for it was she who had shared with others his love’s most secret growth with others. And if she could really be convinced that he was a deceiver, well, then nothing mattered anyway, and in any case it would be most gracious of her not to make use of it.
In this way, those around her have been instrumental, against their will, in developing a new passion in her, jealousy for her own sorrow. Her decision is made; on every score those around her lack the energy to harmonize with her passion—she takes the veil. She does not enter the convent, but she takes the veil of sorrow, which hides her from every alien glance. Outwardly she is quiet. The whole affair is forgotten; her words give no hint. She herself takes the vow of sorrow, and now she begins her lonely, hidden life. At the same moment, everything is changed; previously it seemed to her as if she could speak with others, but now she is not only bound by the vow of silence that her pride extorted from her with the consent of her love, or that her love required and her pride sanctioned, but now she does not know at all where she is to begin, or how, and this is not because new factors have intervened but because reflection has triumphed. If anyone were now to ask her what she was sorrowing over, she would have nothing to reply, or she would reply in the same way as that sage19 who was asked what religion is, and he asked for time to think, and more time to think, and thus the reply was always due. Now she is lost to the world, lost to those around her, immured alive; sadly she closes the last opening. She feels that even at this moment it was perhaps possible to become open; the next moment she is forever removed from them. But it is decided, unshakably decided, and she does not need to fear—as is usual with one who is immured alive—that when the scanty ration of bread and water provided her is used up she will perish, for she has nourishment for a long time. She does not need to fear boredom; she indeed does have something to occupy her. Her exterior is quiet and calm, has nothing [I 161] remarkable about it, and yet her inner being is not the incorruptible essence of a quiet spirit20 but the barren busyness of a restless spirit. She seeks solitude or its opposite. In solitude, she relaxes from the strain always required in forcing her exterior into a particular form. Just as someone who has been standing or sitting for a long time in a forced position pleasurably stretches his body, just as a branch that has long been bent by force and then, when the bond is broken, joyfully takes its natural position again, so also does she find refreshment. Or she seeks the opposite, noise and diversion, in order to be safely preoccupied with herself while everyone else’s attention is led to other things, and what is going on around her, the sounds of music, the noisy conversation, sounds so distant that it seems as if she were sitting in a little room by herself, remote from the whole world. And if she perhaps cannot force back the tears, then she is sure to be misunderstood; then perhaps she cries herself out, for when one lives in an ecclesia pressa [persecuted church], it is truly a joy that one’s divine service harmonizes in its mode of expression with the public mode. She fears only the quieter sociality, for here she is less unguarded; here it is so easy to make a blunder, so difficult to prevent its being noticed.
Outwardly, then, there is nothing to be detected, but inwardly there is bustling activity. Here an interrogation is taking place that with perfect right and special emphasis may be called the third degree; everything is brought out and scrupulously examined—his figure, his facial expression, his voice, his words. It is said that it has sometimes happened that an interrogator, during a third degree such as this, has been captivated by the beauty of the accused, has halted the interrogation, and has been unable to continue it. The court expectantly awaits the result of his interrogation, but it fails to come, and yet it is not at all because the interrogator is neglecting his duty. The jailer can testify that he reports every night, that the accused is brought in, that the interrogation lasts several hours, that during his term there has never been an interrogator as persevering as this official. The court draws the conclusion from all this that it must be a very complicated case. So it goes with her—not just once, but again and again. Everything is presented just as it happened, trustworthily; it demands justice—and love.
The accused is summoned: “There he comes, he is turning [I 162] the corner, he is opening the wicket. See how he hurries; he has longed for me; it is as if he threw everything aside in order to come to me as soon as possible. I hear his quick footsteps, faster than my heartbeats; he is coming, there he is”—and the interrogation: it is postponed.
“Good Lord, that little phrase—I have repeated it so often to myself, recalled it amid many other things, but I have never paid attention to what is really concealed in it. Yes, it explains everything. He is not in earnest about leaving me; he is coming back. What is the whole world compared with this little phrase. People became tired of me. I did not have a friend, but now I have a friend, a confidant, a little phrase that explains everything.—He returns; he does not look down; he looks at me half reproachfully and says: O you of little faith,21 and this little phrase is poised like an olive leaf22 on his lips—he is there”—and the interrogation is postponed.
Under such circumstances, it is quite in order that there are enormous difficulties involved in passing judgment. A young girl, of course, is not a jurist, but it by no means follows that she cannot pass judgment, and yet this young girl’s judgment will always be such that although at first glance it is a judgment, it also contains something more that shows that it is no judgment, and also shows that the very next moment a completely opposite judgment may be passed. “He was no deceiver, because in order to be that, he would have had to be conscious of it himself from the beginning, but that he was not; my heart tells me that he loved me.” If the concept of a deceiver is advanced in this way, then perhaps, when all is said and done, a deceiver has never lived. To acquit him for this reason shows an interest in the accused that is incompatible with strict justice and cannot stand up against a single objection. “He was a deceiver, an abominable person, who coldly and heartlessly has made me inordinately unhappy. Before I knew him, I was satisfied. Yes, it is true that I had no idea that I could be so happy or that there was such a wealth in joy as he taught me, but neither did I have any idea that I could become as unhappy as he has taught me to be. Therefore I will hate him, abominate him, curse him. Yes, I curse you, Clavigo; in the secrecy of my soul I curse you. No one must know it; I cannot allow anyone else to do it, for no one but me has the right to do it. I have loved you as no one else has, but I also [I 163] hate you, for no one knows your cunning as I do. You good gods, to whom revenge belongs, entrust it to me for a little while; I will not misuse it, I will not be cruel. Then I will steal into his soul when he wants to love another—not in order to kill this love; that would be no punishment, for I know that he loves her just as little as he loved me. He does not love people at all; he loves only ideas, thoughts, his powerful influence at court, his intellectual power—I cannot imagine how he can love all these things. I will take it all away from him; then he will learn to know my pain. When he is on the verge of despair, I will give it all back to him again, but he will have me to thank for it—and then I shall be avenged.
“No, he was no deceiver. He did not love me anymore; that is why he left me, but that, after all, was no deception. If he had stayed with me without loving me, then he would have been a deceiver; then like a pensioner I would have lived on the love he once had had, lived on his pity, on the mite he perhaps even generously had thrown to me, lived as a burden to him and a torture to myself. Shame on you, wretched, cowardly heart; hold yourself in contempt; learn to be great, learn it from him; he has loved me better than I have understood how to love myself. And I should be angry with him? No, I will go on loving him because his love was stronger, his thoughts prouder, than my weakness and my cowardliness. And perhaps he even still loves me—yes, it was for love of me that he left me.
“Yes, now I see it; now I no longer doubt—he was a deceiver. I saw him: he looked proud and exultant; he surveyed me with a mocking glance. At his side was a Spanish girl, luxuriant in beauty. Why was she so beautiful—I could murder her—why am I not just as beautiful? And was I not?—I did not know it, but he taught it to me—and why am I no longer beautiful? Who is to blame for it? Curse you, Clavigo! If you had stayed with me, I would have become even more beautiful, for my love and, along with it, my beauty increased through your words and your assurances. Now I am faded; now I thrive no longer. Compared with a word from you, what power does the tenderness of the whole world have? Oh, would that I were beautiful once again; would that I could please him once again, because only for that reason do I want to be beautiful. Oh, would that he were no longer able to love youth and beauty; then I shall lament more than before, and who can lament as I do!
“Yes, he was a deceiver. Otherwise, how could he stop loving [I 164] me? Have I, then, stopped loving him? Is there not the same law for a man’s love as for a woman’s? Or is a man supposed to be weaker than the weak? Or did he perhaps make a mistake; was it perhaps an illusion that he loved me, an illusion that disappeared like a dream—is this befitting in a man? Or was it fickleness; is it befitting for a man to be fickle? Why, then, did he assure me in the beginning that he loved me so much? If love cannot last, what, then, can last? Yes, Clavigo, you have robbed me of everything, my faith, my faith in love, not just in your love!
“He was no deceiver. What snatched him away, I do not know; I do not know that dark power, but it pained him personally, pained him deeply. He did not want to initiate me into his pain; therefore he pretended to be a deceiver. Indeed, if he had taken up with another girl, then I would say he was a deceiver, then no power on earth would bring me to believe anything else, but that he has not done. He thinks perhaps that making himself appear to be a deceiver will diminish the pain for me, will arm me against him. Therefore he appears now and then with young girls, therefore he looked at me so mockingly the other day—to make me furious and thereby to liberate me. No, surely he was no deceiver, and how could that voice deceive? It was so calm and yet so agitated; it sounded from an inwardness, the depth of which I could scarcely suspect, as if it were breaking a path through masses of rock. Can that voice deceive? What is the voice, then—is it a stroke of the tongue, a noise that one can produce as one wishes? But it must have a home somewhere in the soul; it must have a birthplace. And that it did, in the innermost recess of his heart it had its home; there he loved me, there he loves me. To be sure, he had another voice also; it was cold, chilling; it could murder every joy in my soul, squelch every joyous thought, make even my kiss cold and abhorrent to me. Which was the true voice? He could deceive in every way, but this I feel—that tremulous voice in which his whole passion throbbed—that was no deceit; it is impossible. The other was a deception. Or there were evil forces that gained control of him. No, he was no deceiver; that voice that has shackled me to him forever—that is no deception. A deceiver he was not, even though I never understood him.”23
[I 165] The interrogation she will never finish, nor the judgment, either—the interrogation, because there are always interruptions; the judgment, because it is only a feeling. Once this movement begins, it can go on as long as it pleases, and there is no end in sight. Only by a break can it be brought to a halt—that is, by her cutting short this whole movement of thought; but this cannot happen, for the will is continually in the service of reflection, which energizes the momentary passion.
When at times she wants to tear herself away from all this, wants to reduce it to nothing, this is again only a mood, a momentary passion, and reflection continually goes on being the victor. Mediation is impossible; if she wants to begin so that this beginning in one way or another is a result of the operations of reflection, then at the same moment she is swept away. The will must be altogether impartial, must begin in the power of its own willing; only then can there be any question of a beginning. If this happens, then she certainly can begin, but then she falls outside our concern entirely, then we gladly turn her over to the moralists or to whoever else wants to take an interest in her. We wish her an honorable marriage and promise to dance on her wedding day, when fortunately the changed name will bring us to forget that it was the Marie Beaumarchais of whom we have spoken.
But we return to Marie Beaumarchais. As stated above, her sorrow is characterized by the restlessness that prevents her from finding the object of her sorrow. Her pain cannot find quiet; she lacks the peace that is necessary for any life if it is to be able to assimilate its nourishment and be refreshed by it; no illusion overshadows her with its quiet coolness as she absorbs the pain. She lost childhood’s illusion when she acquired that of erotic love; she lost erotic love’s illusion when Clavigo deceived her; if it were possible for her to acquire sorrow’s illusion, she would be helped. Then her grief would attain masculine maturity, and she would be compensated for her loss. But her sorrow does not thrive, for she has not lost Clavigo—he has deceived her. Her sorrow always remains a tiny wailing infant, a fatherless and motherless child, for if Clavigo had been taken from her, then the child would have had a father in the recollection of his faithfulness and love and a mother in Marie’s ardor. She has nothing on which she can bring it up, because what she experienced was beautiful, to be sure, but it had no significance in and by itself but only as a foretaste of the future. And she cannot hope that this child of pain will be [I 166] transformed into a son of joy; she cannot hope that Clavigo will return, for she will not have the strength to endure a future. She has lost the happy trust with which she would have accompanied him dauntlessly into the abyss, and she has acquired instead a hundred misgivings; at most she would only be able to live through the past with him once again. At the time Clavigo left her, a future lay before her, a future so beautiful, so enchanting, that it almost confused her thoughts; it obscurely exerted its power over her. Her metamorphosis had already begun; then the process was interrupted, her transformation stopped. She had had intimations of a new life, had sensed its powers stir within her; then it was broken off and she was repulsed, and there is no recompense for her, neither in this nor in the future world. That which was to come smiled upon her very generously and mirrored itself in the illusion of her erotic love, and yet everything was so natural and direct. Perhaps a weak reflection has sometimes painted for her a weak illusion that does not affect her temptingly but probably is soothing for a moment. Time will go on for her in this way—until she has consumed the very object of her sorrow, which was not identical with her sorrow but the occasion for her continually seeking an object of her sorrow.
If a person possessed a letter that he knew or believed contained information about what he had to consider his life’s happiness, but the characters were thin and faint and the handwriting almost illegible, then, presumably with anxiety and agitation, he would read it most passionately again and again and at one moment derive one meaning, at the next moment another, according to how he would explain everything by a word he believed that he had deciphered with certainty, but he would never progress beyond the same uncertainty with which he had begun. He would stare, more and more anxiously, but the more he stared, the less he would see. His eyes would sometimes be filled with tears, but the more frequently this happened to him, the less he would see. In the course of time, the writing would become fainter and less legible; finally the paper itself would crumble away, and he would have nothing left but tear-filled eyes.
We come to know this girl through the opera Don Giovanni, and it will not be unimportant to our subsequent exploration to note in the piece the clues to her earlier life. She was a nun; it is from the peacefulness of a convent that Don Giovanni has snatched her.24 This suggests the staggering intensity of her passion. This was no silly molly from a finishing school who has learned to love at school, to flirt at parties; whether such a one is seduced is not very important. Elvira, on the other hand, has been brought up under the discipline of the convent, which has not succeeded in rooting out her passion but presumably has taught her to suppress it and thereby to make it even more violent as soon as it is allowed to burst forth. She is sure prey for a Don Giovanni; he will know how to coax out the passion—wild, ungovernable, insatiable, to be satisfied only in his love. In him she has all, and the past is nothing; if she leaves him, she loses all, the past also. She had renounced the world; then there appeared a figure she cannot renounce, and that is Don Giovanni. From now on, she renounces everything in order to live with him. The more meaningful that was which she leaves, the more firmly must she cling to him; the more firmly she has embraced him, the more terrible becomes her despair when he leaves her. From the very outset, her love is a despair; nothing has meaning for her, neither in heaven nor on earth, except Don Giovanni.
Elvira is of interest to us in the opera only insofar as her relation to Don Giovanni is of significance to him. If I were to suggest her significance in a few words, I would say that she is Don Giovanni’s epic fate, and the Commendatore is his dramatic fate. There is in her a hatred that will seek out Giovanni in every nook, a flame of fire that will illuminate the darkest hiding place, and if she should still not discover him, then there is in her a love that will find him. She joins the others in pursuing Don Giovanni, but if I imagined that all the forces were neutralized, that his pursuers’ endeavors canceled one another [I 168] so that Elvira was alone with Don Giovanni and he was in her power, the hate would arm her to murder him. But her love would forbid it, not out of compassion, because to her he is too great for that, and thus she would continually keep him alive, for if she killed him she would kill herself. Consequently, if there were in the piece no forces in motion against Don Giovanni except Elvira, it would never end, for Elvira herself would prevent, if possible, even the lightning from striking him, in order to take revenge herself, and yet again she would be unable to take revenge. Such is her interest for us in the piece, but here we are concerned only with her relation to Don Giovanni insofar as it has meaning for her. She is the object of interest to many, but in very different ways. Don Giovanni is interested in her before the opera begins; the spectator bestows on her his dramatic interest; but we friends of grief, we accompany her not only to the nearest cross street, not only in the moment when she walks across the stage—no, we accompany her on her solitary way.
So, then, Don Giovanni has seduced Elvira and has forsaken her; this is speedily done, as quickly “as the tiger breaks a lily.”25 If there are 1,003 in Spain alone, one is able to see that Don Giovanni is in a hurry and can more or less reckon the speed of the operation. Don Giovanni has forsaken her, but there is no circle of friends into whose arms she can collapse in a swoon. She need not fear that they will surround her too closely—indeed, they know very well how to open ranks in order to expedite her departure. She need not fear that anyone will argue her out of her loss—instead someone may take it upon himself to demonstrate it. She stands alone and forsaken, and no doubt tempts her; it is clear that he was a deceiver who has divested her of everything and abandoned her to infamy and disgrace. Esthetically speaking, however, this is not the worst for her; for a brief time, it rescues her from reflective sorrow, which is surely more painful than immediate grief. Here the fact is indubitable, and reflection cannot come along and change it now to this and now to that. A Marie Beaumarchais may have loved a Clavigo just as ardently, just as wildly and passionately; in relation to her passion, it may be an altogether [I 169] accidental circumstance that the worst has not happened; she can almost wish that it had, for then there would be an end to the story, then she would be far better armed against him, but that did not happen. The fact she has before her is far more doubtful; its real nature always remains a secret between her and Clavigo. When she thinks of the cold cunning, the shabby commonsensicality it took to deceive her in such a way that it does not look so bad in the eyes of the world, so that she becomes prey to the sympathy that says, “Well, good Lord, it isn’t so terrible,” she is shocked, she can almost go insane at the thought of the proud superiority for which she has meant nothing at all, which has set a limit for her and said, “Up to here and no further.” And yet the whole thing can also be explained in another, a more beautiful, way. But as the explanation changes, the fact itself also changes. Thus, reflection immediately has plenty to do, and reflective sorrow is inescapable.
Don Giovanni has forsaken Elvira; everything is clear to her at once. No doubt coaxes sorrow into reflection’s parlor;26 she falls silent in her despair. With a single pulsebeat it streams through her, and its streaming is outward; in a blaze the passion shines through her and becomes visible externally. Hate, despair, revenge, love—all burst forth to manifest themselves visibly. At this moment she is pictorial. We immediately see a picture of her in our imagination, and here the exterior is not without significance, reflection over it is not without substance, and its activity is not without meaning as it sorts and chooses.
Whether she herself at this moment is a subject for artistic portrayal is another matter, but this much is certain: at this moment she is visible and can be seen—not, of course, in the sense that this or that actual Elvira can actually be seen, which frequently is tantamount to not being seen, but the Elvira we imagine is visible in her essentiality. Whether art is capable of depicting the nuances of expression in her face to such a degree as to make visible the substance of her despair, I shall not decide; but she can be described, and the picture that emerges becomes not merely a burden for memory, which does not matter one way or another, but has its validity.
And who has not seen Elvira! It was early one morning that I started a walking tour in one of Spain’s romantic regions. Nature was waking up. The trees in the forest shook their heads, and the leaves rubbed, so to speak, the sleep out of their eyes; one tree leaned toward the other to see whether it was out [I 170] of bed yet, and the whole forest undulated in the cool, fresh breeze. A light fog rose from the earth; the sun snatched it away as if it were a blanket under which the earth had rested at night and now like a fond mother gazed down on the flowers and every living thing and said: Get up, dear children; the sun is already shining. As I wound my way through a deep mountain pass, my eyes fell on a cloister high up on the top of the mountain, to which a footpath led with many bends. My mind lingered on it—there it lies, I thought, like a house of God firmly grounded on the rock. My guide told me it was a convent known for its strict discipline. My pace slackened and my thoughts also, and what indeed is there to hurry after when one is so near the cloister? I probably would have come to a complete stop if I had not been aroused by a rapid movement nearby. Involuntarily I turned around; it was a knight who hastened past me. How handsome he was, his step so light and yet so vigorous, so royal and yet so fugitive; he turned his head to look back, his face so captivating and yet his glance so restless. It was Don Giovanni. Is he hurrying to a rendezvous, or is he coming from one!
But soon he disappeared from my eyes and was gone from my thoughts; my gaze concentrated upon the cloister. Once again I was absorbed in contemplation of the lust of life and the serene peace of the cloister, when high up on the mountain I saw a female figure. In great haste she came running down the footpath, but the way was steep, and she continually seemed about to plunge down the mountain. She came closer. Her face was pallid, but her eyes were frightfully ablaze. Her body was exhausted; her bosom rose and fell violently, and yet she hurried faster and faster. Her ruffled hair flew loosely in the wind, but even the brisk morning air and her hurried pace were not able to bring color to her cheeks. Her nun’s veil was torn and fluttered behind her; her thin white dress would have betrayed much to a profane gaze if the passion in her face had not drawn to itself the attention of even the most corrupt of men. She rushed past me; I did not dare speak to her—her brow was too majestic, her glance too royal, her passion too highborn for that. Where did this girl belong? In the cloister? Do these passions belong there—in the world? This dress—why is she running? Is it to hide her shame and disgrace, or to catch up with Don Giovanni? She runs into the forest, and it closes around her and hides her, and I see her no more but hear only the sighing [I 171] of the forest. Poor Elvira! Have the trees found out—and yet the trees are better than people, for trees sigh and are silent: people whisper.
In this first moment, Elvira can be portrayed, and even if art does not really deal with such things because it will be difficult to find a unity of expression that also has all the multiplicity of her passions, the soul nevertheless demands to see her. I have tried to suggest this by the little picture I outlined above; it was not that I thought she was thereby portrayed, but I wanted to suggest that her being described was quite correct, that it was not a capricious whim on my part but a valid claim of the idea. But this is only one element, and therefore we must accompany Elvira further.
The movement nearest at hand is a movement in time. Through a series of moments in time, she keeps herself at the almost picture-like peak suggested above. She thereby acquires dramatic interest. With the speed whereby she rushed past me, she catches up with Don Giovanni. This, too, is quite appropriate, for he did forsake her, but he has swept her along into the momentum of his own life, and she must reach him. If she does reach him, all her attention is once again directed outward, and we still do not have reflective sorrow. She has lost all—heaven when she chose the world, the world when she lost Giovanni. Therefore she has nowhere to turn except to him; only by being in his presence can she hold off despair, either by stifling the inner voices with the uproar of hate and rage, which sound in full force only when Don Giovanni is personally present, or by hoping. The latter already hints that the elements of reflective sorrow are present, but as yet they are unable to find time to consolidate inwardly. “First she must be cruelly convinced,” so it says in Kruse’s adaptation,27 but this requirement completely betrays the inner disposition. If what has happened has not convinced her that Giovanni was a deceiver, then she will never be convinced. But as long as she demands additional evidence, she will succeed in avoiding the inner turmoil of quiet despair by means of a restless roving life perpetually engaged in a pursuit of Don Giovanni. The paradox is already there before her soul, but as long as she can keep her soul in a state of agitation by means of external evidence that is not supposed to explain the past but throw light on Don [I 172] Giovanni’s present condition, she does not have reflective grief. Hate, bitterness, curses, entreaties, and beseeching alternate, but her soul has still not returned into itself in order to repose in the thought that she has been deceived. She is expecting an explanation from the outside. When, therefore, Kruse has Don Giovanni say:
To take my word—you who suspect me;
Then I can almost say, almost improbable
Appears the cause that compelled etc.,
we must guard against thinking that what sounds like mockery to the spectator’s ear has the same effect on Elvira. To her, these words are refreshing, for she demands the improbable, and she will believe it precisely because it is improbable.
If we now have Don Giovanni and Elvira collide, then we have the choice between having Don Giovanni be the stronger or Elvira. If he is the stronger, then her whole behavior means nothing. She demands “evidence in order to be cruelly convinced”; he is sufficiently gallant not to let it fail to appear. But she naturally is not convinced and demands new evidence, because demanding evidence is a relief, and the uncertainty is refreshing. She then becomes just one more witness to Don Giovanni’s achievements. But we could also imagine Elvira as the stronger. That seldom happens, but out of gallantry toward the fair sex we shall do it. She is, then, still in her full beauty—it is true that she has wept, but the tears have not quenched the gleam in her eyes; and it is true that she has sorrowed, but sorrow has not ravaged her youthful luxuriance; and it is true that she has grieved, but her grief has not gnawed away at the vitality of her beauty; and it is true that her cheeks have become pallid, but the expression is therefore all the more soulful; and it is true she does not move with the lightness of childlike innocence, but she does step forth with the energetic firmness of feminine passion.
This is how she encounters Don Giovanni. She has loved him more than the whole world, more than her soul’s salvation; she has cast away everything for him, even her honor, and he was unfaithful. Now she knows only one passion—hate; [I 173] only one thought—revenge. Thus, she is just as great as Don Giovanni, because seducing all the maidens means for the man the same as for the woman—to let herself be seduced once and for all, heart and soul, and then to hate—or, if you please, to love her seducer with an energy that no married woman has. This is how she encounters him. She does not lack the courage to venture out against him; she is not fighting for moral principles, she is fighting for her love, a love she does not base on respect; she is not fighting to become his mate, she is fighting for her love, and this is not satisfied with a contrite faithfulness but demands revenge. Out of love of him, she has cast away her salvation—if it were offered her again, she would again cast it away in order to avenge herself.
Such a character can never fail in its desired effect upon Don Giovanni. He knows the pleasure of inhaling the finest and most fragrant flower of early youth; he knows that it is just for a moment, and he knows what comes later; too often he has seen these pallid figures wither so quickly that it was almost visible. But here something wondrous has happened; the laws for the usual course of existence have been broken. He has seduced a young girl, but her life has not been extinguished, her beauty has not faded—she is transformed and is more beautiful than ever. He cannot deny it; she enthralls him more than any other girl has, more than Elvira herself, for despite all her beauty, the innocent nun was just another girl, his infatuation just another experience—but this girl is the only one of her kind. This girl is armed; she does not hide a dagger in her breast,28 but she does wear armor—not visible, for her hate is not satisfied by speeches and declamations, but invisible, and it is her hatred. Don Giovanni’s passion is aroused; she must be his once again, but this does not happen. Indeed, if she who hated him were a girl who knew his villainy, although she herself had not been deceived by him, then Don Giovanni would conquer. But this girl he cannot win; all his seduction is powerless. Even if his voice were more insinuating than his own voice, his advances craftier than his own advances, he would not move her; even if the angels pleaded for him, even if the Mother of God were to be the bridesmaid at the wedding, it would be futile. Just as in the underworld Dido herself turns away from Aeneas,29 who was unfaithful to her, so she certainly will not turn away from him but will face him even [I 174] more coldly than Dido.
But this meeting of Elvira and Don Giovanni is only a transitional moment; she walks across the stage, the curtain falls, but we, dear Συμπαϱανεϰϱώμενοι, we quietly follow her, for only now does she really become the true Elvira. As long as she is in the vicinity of Don Giovanni, she is beside herself; when she comes to herself, it is appropriate to think about the paradox. Despite all the assurances of modern philosophy and the rash courage of its young ascribers, there are always great difficulties involved in thinking a contradiction.30 Presumably a young girl will be forgiven for finding it difficult, and yet this is the task assigned her—to think that the one she loves was a deceiver. She has this in common with Marie Beaumarchais, and yet there is a difference in the way in which each of them comes to the paradox. The fact Marie had for her starting point was intrinsically so dialectical that reflection, with all its concupiscence, had to grasp it at once. As for Elvira, the factual evidence that Don Giovanni was a deceiver seems so obvious that it is hard to see how reflection can take hold of it. Therefore, it grasps the matter from another angle. Elvira has lost everything, and yet a whole life lies before her, and her soul requires money for living expenses.
Here two possibilities become apparent—either to enter into ethical and religious categories or to keep her love for Giovanni. If she does the first, she is outside our interest; we will gladly have her enter a home for fallen women or whatever else she wants. But this probably will also be difficult for her, because in order for that to be possible she must first despair; she has once known the religious, and the second time it makes great demands. On the whole, the religious is a dangerous power with which to become involved; it is jealous of itself and does not allow itself to be mocked. When she chose the convent, her proud soul perhaps found rich satisfaction in it, because, say what you will, no girl makes as brilliant a match as she who espouses heaven; but now, on the other hand, now she will have to return penitently, in repentance and contrition. Furthermore, there is always the question whether she can find a priest who can proclaim the gospel of repentance and contrition with the same pithiness as Don Giovanni has proclaimed the glad tidings of pleasure. Consequently, to save herself from this despair, she must cling to Don Giovanni’s [I 175] love, which is all the easier for her to do since she does still love him.
A third possibility is unthinkable; that she could be able to find consolation in another man’s love would be even more dreadful than the most dreadful. So for her own sake, therefore, she must love Don Giovanni; it is self-defense that bids her do it. And this is the stimulus of reflection that forces her to stare at this paradox: whether she is able to love him even though he deceived her. Every time despair is about to seize her, she takes refuge in the memory of Don Giovanni’s love, and in order really to feel comfortable in this refuge, she is tempted to think that he is no deceiver, even though she does this in various ways. A woman’s dialectic is remarkable, and only the person who has had the opportunity to observe it can imitate it, whereas the greatest dialectician who ever lived could speculate himself crazy trying to produce it.
I have been fortunate enough, however, to know a few outstanding examples of this and through them have had a complete course in dialectics. Oddly enough, one would expect to find them most likely in the metropolis, for the noise and the throngs of people conceal much, but that is not the case—that is, if one wishes to have the perfect type. The finest ones are to be found in the provinces, in small towns, in country houses. The one I am thinking about in particular was a Swedish lady, a maiden of noble birth. Her first lover could not have desired her more ardently than I, her second lover, tried to pursue the thought processes of her heart. But I owe it to the truth to admit that it was not my keenness and ingenuity that gave me the clue, but an accidental circumstance that is too complicated to tell here. She had lived in Stockholm and there had come to know a French count to whose faithless charm [Elskværdighed] she became a victim. I can still see her vividly. The first time I saw her, she really did not make any impression on me. She was still lovely, proud and aristocratic of bearing; she did not say very much, and I probably would have gone away no wiser than I came if chance had not made me a party to her secret. From that moment on, she was important to me; she gave me such a vivid picture of an Elvira that I could never weary of looking at her.
One evening I was at a large party with her. I had arrived before she did, had already been waiting some time when I stepped to the window to see whether she was coming, and a moment later her carriage stopped at the door. She stepped out, and immediately her attire made a singular impression on [I 176] me. She was wearing a thin, light silk coat, much like the domino in which Elvira appears at the dance in the opera. She entered with a grand dignity that was really impressive. She was wearing a black silk gown; she was dressed with the utmost taste and yet quite simply. No jewels embellished her; her neck was unadorned; and since her skin was whiter than snow, I have hardly ever seen so beautiful a contrast as that between her black dress and her white bosom. One frequently sees an unadorned neck, but seldom does one see a girl who really has a bosom. She curtsied to all the guests, and when the master of the house came forward to greet her, she curtsied very low to him; although her lips parted in a smile, I did not hear a word from her. To me her conduct was very fitting, and I, who shared her secret, silently associated with her the words about the oracle: οὔτε λέγει οὔτε ϰϱύπτει, ἀλλὰ σημαίνει [neither speaks nor conceals but indicates].31
I have learned much from her and, among other things, have had confirmed my frequently made observation that people who conceal a sorrow acquire in the course of time a single phrase or a single idea with which they are able to signify everything to themselves and to the individual they have initiated into it. Compared with the prolixity of sorrow, such a phrase or idea is like a diminutive, like a pet name one employs for daily use. Frequently it has an entirely accidental relation to what it is supposed to signify and almost always owes its origin to an accidental circumstance. Having won her confidence, having succeeded in overcoming her mistrust of me because a chance event had placed her in my power, having had her tell me everything, I frequently went through the whole scale of moods with her. But if she was not so disposed and yet wanted to give me a hint that her soul was engrossed in her grief, she would take me by the hand, look at me and say: I was more slender than a reed, he more glorious than the cedars of Lebanon.32 Where she had found these words I do not know, but I am convinced that whenever Charon comes with his boat to take her over to the underworld, he will find not the required obol33 in her mouth but these words on her lips: I was more slender than a reed, he more glorious than the cedars of Lebanon!
So, then, Elvira cannot find Don Giovanni, and now, all by [I 177] herself, she must manage to discover the way out of the complication in her life; she must come to herself. She has changed her environment, and thus the help is gone that perhaps would have contributed to drawing out her sorrow. Her new environment knows nothing of her earlier life, suspects nothing, for there is nothing striking or remarkable about her external appearance, no mark of sorrow, no sign that announces to people that there is sorrowing here. She can control every expression, for the loss of her honor can very well teach her that; and even though she does not prize people’s opinions very highly, she at least can spare herself their condolences.
So now everything is in order, and she can be rather sure of going through life without arousing the suspicions of the curious populace, who ordinarily are just as stupid as they are curious. She has legitimate and unchallenged possession of her sorrow, and only if she were to be so unfortunate as to encounter a professional smuggler, only then would she have to fear a closer interrogation. What is going on within her? Is she sorrowing? Of course, she is! But how is this grief to be characterized? I would call it care for the necessities of life, because a person’s life, after all, does not consist only of food and drink. The soul, too, requires sustenance. She is young, and yet the reserves of her life are used up, but from this it does not follow that she will die. In this respect, she is concerned every day about the next day. She cannot stop loving him, and yet he deceived her, but if he deceived her, then her love has indeed lost its nourishing power. Yes, if he had not deceived her, if a higher power had torn him away, then she would have been as well provided as any girl could wish, for the memory of Don Giovanni was a good deal more than many a living husband. But if she gives up her love, then she is brought to the state of beggary, then she must return to the convent to ridicule and disgrace. Yes, if only she could buy his love again with this! In this way she goes on living. Today, this present day, she still thinks that she can endure, that there is still a little something left to live on, but the next day, that she fears. She deliberates again and again, grasps at every escape, and yet she finds none, and thus she never comes to grieve coherently and healthfully, for she continually searches for the way she is going to grieve.
“Forget him, that is what I want; rip his picture out of my soul; I want to ransack myself like a consuming fire, and every thought that belongs to him must be burned up; only then can I be saved; it is in self-defense. If I do not rip out every thought [I 178] of him, even the most remote, I am lost; only in this way can I protect myself. Myself—what is this myself—wretchedness and misery. I was unfaithful to my first love, and now should I make up for it by being unfaithful to my second?
“No, I will hate him; that is the only way to satisfy my soul, the only way I can find rest and something to occupy me. I will braid a garland of curses out of everything that reminds me of him, and for every kiss I say: Cursed be you! And for every time he has embraced me: Ten times cursed be you! And for every time he swore he loved me, I will swear that I will hate him. This is going to be my work, my labor; to this I dedicate myself. After all, I became accustomed to praying my rosary in the convent, and so I will still remain a nun who prays early and late. Or should I perhaps be satisfied that he once loved me? I should perhaps be a prudent girl and not throw him away in proud contempt now when I know that he is a deceiver; I should perhaps be a good housewife who, with economic sense, knows how to stretch as far as possible the little that she has. No, I will hate him; only in that way can I tear myself away from him and show myself that I do not need him. But am I not indebted to him at all when I hate him? Am I not living off him? For what is it that nourishes my hatred except my love for him?
“He was no deceiver; he had no idea of what a woman can suffer. If he had had that, he never would have forsaken me. He was a man who was to himself enough. Is that, then, a consolation for me? Indeed it is, for my suffering and anguish prove to me how happy I was, so happy that he has no idea of it. Why, then, do I complain because a man is not like a woman, not as happy as she is when she is happy, not as unhappy as she is when she is boundlessly unhappy because her happiness knew no bounds.
“Did he deceive me? No! Did he promise me anything? No! My Giovanni was no suitor, no poor chicken thief; a nun does not debase herself for such. He did not ask my hand in marriage; he stretched out his hand, and I grasped it; he looked at me, I was his; he opened his arms, I belonged to him. I clung to him; I entwined myself around him like a climbing plant; I rested my head on his breast and gazed into that all-powerful countenance, with which he ruled the world, and which nevertheless rested upon me as if I were the whole world to him; like a suckling infant I imbibed fullness and richness and bliss. Can I demand more? Was I not his? Was he not mine? And if he was not, was I therefore the less his? When the gods [I 179] wandered upon the earth and fell in love with women, did they remain faithful to their beloveds? And yet it occurs to no one to say that they deceived them! And why not? Because we want a girl to be proud of having been loved by a god. And what are all the gods of Olympus compared with my Giovanni? 34And should I not be proud—should I disparage him, should I insult him in my thought, allow it to force him into the narrow, wretched laws that apply to ordinary men? No, I will be proud that he has loved me; he was greater than the gods, and I will honor him by making myself into a nobody. I will love him because he belonged to me, love him because he forsook me, and I will go on being his, and I will keep what he throws away.
“No, I cannot think about him; every time I recall him, every time my thoughts approach the hiding place in my soul where his memory lives, then it is as if I committed a new sin. I feel an anxiety, an unspeakable anxiety, an anxiety such as I felt in the convent when I sat in my solitary cell and waited for him and my thoughts terrified me: the prioress’s intense scorn, the convent’s terrible punishment, my offense against God. And yet was not this anxiety part of it? What was my love for him without it? Indeed, he was not married to me; we had not received the blessing of the Church; the bell had not rung for us; no hymn was sung—and yet what was all the music and celebration of the Church; how would it be able to put me in a mood comparable to this anxiety!—But then he came, and the disharmony of my anxiety dissolved into the most blissful harmony of security, and only faint tremblings voluptuously stirred my soul. Should I fear this anxiety, then; does it not remind me of him; is it not the announcement of his coming? If I could recollect him without this anxiety, then I would not recollect him. He is coming; he asks for silence; he controls the spirits that want to tear me away from him; I am his, blissful in him.”
If I were to imagine a person in distress at sea, unconcerned about his life, remaining on board because there was something he wanted to save and could not save because of perplexity about what to save, I have an image of Elvira. She is in distress at sea; her destruction is imminent, but it does not concern her; she is not aware of it; she is perplexed about what she should save.
We know this girl from Goethe’s Faust. She was a little middle-class girl, not destined, like Elvira, for the convent, but still she was brought up in the fear of the Lord, even though her soul was too childlike to feel the earnestness, as Goethe so incomparably says:
Halb Kinderspiel[e],
Halb Gott im Herzen
[Half sport of childhood,
Half God within thee].35
What we particularly love about this girl is the charming simplicity and humility of her pure soul. The first time she sees Faust, she immediately feels much too inferior to be loved by him, and it is not out of curiosity to know whether Faust loves her that she picks the petals of the daisy—it is out of humility, for she feels too inferior to choose and therefore submits to the oracular bidding of an enigmatic power. Yes, lovable Margarete! Goethe betrayed how you plucked the petals and recited the words: He loves me, he loves me not.36 Poor Margarete! You can indeed continue this activity and merely change the words: He deceived me, he deceived me not. In fact, you can cultivate a little piece of ground with this kind of flower and you will have manual labor for your whole life.
Commentators have remarked on the striking fact that whereas the legend of Don Juan tells of 1,003 seduced in Spain alone, the legend of Faust speaks of only one seduced girl. It may be worth the trouble not to forget this observation, inasmuch as it will be of significance in what follows and will help us characterize what is distinctive in Margarete’s reflective sorrow. At first glance, it might seem that the only difference between Elvira and Margarete was the difference between two different individualities who have experienced the same thing. But the difference is far more essential and yet is due not so much to the difference in the two feminine natures as to the essential difference between a Don Juan and a Faust. From the very start, there must be a difference between an Elvira and a Margarete, since a girl who is to make an impression on a Faust must be essentially different from a girl who makes an [I 181] impression on a Don Juan. Yes, even if I supposed that it was the same girl who engaged the attention of both, it would be something different that appealed to each of them. By being brought into relation with a Don Juan or a Faust, the difference that was present only as a possibility would develop into a full actuality. Faust is admittedly a reproduction of Don Juan, but his being a reproduction is precisely what makes him essentially different from him, even in the stage of life in which he can be called a Don Juan, for to reproduce another stage does not mean only to become that but to become that with all the elements of the preceding stage in it. Therefore, even if he desires the same as a Don Juan, he nevertheless desires it in a different way. But in order for him to be able to desire it in a different way, it must also be present in a different way. He has features that make his method different, just as Margarete has features that make another method necessary. His method in turn depends upon his desire, and his desire is different from Don Juan’s, even if there is a basic similarity between them.
Generally, people think they are saying something very sagacious when they emphasize that Faust ends up by becoming a Don Juan, and yet it does not say very much, for the point is, in what sense does he become that. Faust is a demonic figure, just like a Don Juan, but a superior one. Sensuousness does not acquire importance for him until he has lost a whole previous world, but the consciousness of this loss is not blotted out; it is always present, and therefore he seeks in the sensuous not so much pleasure as distraction. His doubting soul finds nothing in which it can rest, and now he grasps at erotic love [Elskov], not because he believes in it but because it has an element of presentness in which there is a momentary rest and a striving that diverts and that draws attention away from the nothingness of doubt. His pleasure, therefore, does not have the Heiterkeit [cheerfulness] that characterizes a Don Juan. His visage is not smiling, his brow not unclouded, and joy is not his escort; the young girls do not dance into his embrace, but he scares them to himself. What he is seeking, therefore, is not only the pleasure of the sensuous but the immediacy of the spirit. Just as ghosts in the underworld, when a living being fell into their hands, sucked his blood and lived as long as this blood warmed and nourished them, so Faust seeks an immediate life whereby he will be rejuvenated and strengthened. And where can this better be found than in a young girl, and [I 182] how can he more completely imbibe this than in the embrace of erotic love? Just as the Middle Ages had tales of sorcerers who knew how to prepare a rejuvenating potion and used the heart of an innocent child for it, so this is the strengthening his emaciated soul needs, the only thing that can satisfy him for a moment. His sick soul needs what could be called the first greening of a young heart, and to what else could I compare the early youth of an innocent feminine soul? If I said it is like a flower, I would say too little, for it is more than that; it is a flowering. The vitality of hope and faith and trust burgeons and blossoms in rich multiplicity; gentle yearnings stir in the delicate shoots, and dreams shade their flourishing. In this way it stirs a Faust; it beckons his restless soul like an island of peace in the calm ocean. That it is ephemeral, no one knows better than Faust; he does not believe in it any more than in anything else, but that it exists, of that he assures himself in the embrace of erotic love. Only the plenitude of innocence and childlikeness can refresh him for a moment.
In Goethe’s Faust, Mephistopheles has Faust see Margarete in a mirror. His eyes delight in gazing at her, but nevertheless it is not her beauty that he desires, although he takes that in addition. What he desires is the pure, undisturbed, rich, immediate joy of a feminine soul, but he desires it sensually, not spiritually. In a certain sense, then, he does desire as does Don Juan, but still he desires in an entirely different way. At this point, some assistant professor or other, convinced of having been a Faust himself, since otherwise he certainly could not possibly have managed to become an assistant professor, would point out that Faust requires intellectual development and refinement in a girl who is to arouse his desire. Perhaps a larger number of assistant professors would consider this a brilliant observation, and their respective wives and sweethearts would nod approval. But it would miss the point completely, for Faust would desire nothing less. A so-called refined girl would fall within the same relativity as he himself, although this would have no significance for him, would amount to nothing. With her smattering of refinement, she perhaps would tempt this old master of doubt to take her along out into the current, where she would quickly despair. An innocent young girl, however, is within another relativity and thus, in a certain sense, is nothing compared with Faust and yet, in another sense, is enormously much, since she is immediacy. [I 183] Only in this immediacy is she a goal for his desire, and therefore I said that he desires immediacy not spiritually but sensually.
Goethe understood all this perfectly well, and therefore Margarete is a little middle-class girl, a girl one could almost be tempted to call insignificant. Since it is important with respect to Margarete’s grief, we shall now consider more closely how Faust presumably must have affected her. Of course, the particular features Goethe has emphasized are of great value, but I nevertheless believe that for the sake of completeness a little modification must be made. In her innocent simplicity, Margarete soon perceives that with respect to faith there is something wrong with Faust. In Goethe, this appears in a little catechization scene,37 which is unquestionably a superb invention by the poet. The question now is what results this examination may have for their relation to each other. It is apparent that Faust is a doubter, and it seems that Goethe, inasmuch as he does not suggest anything more in this respect, wanted to have Faust continue to be a doubter also in his relation to Margarete. He has tried to draw her attention away from all such probing and to fasten it simply and solely upon the reality of love [Kjœrlighedens Realitet]. But I think, for one thing, that once the problem has come up this would be difficult for Faust, and, for another, I do not think it is psychologically correct. I shall not dwell longer on this point, for Faust’s sake, but for Margarete’s sake I certainly shall, for if it is not apparent to her that he is a doubter, then her grief has an added element.
So, then, Faust is a doubter, but he is no vain fool who wants to make himself important by doubting what others believe; his doubt has an objective foundation in him. To Faust’s credit, this has to be said. But as soon as he wants to press his doubt upon others, a spurious passion can very easily enter in. As soon as doubt is pressed upon others, there is an envy involved that rejoices in wresting from them what they regarded as certain. But in order for this passion of envy to be aroused in the doubter, there must be the possibility of opposition in the individual concerned. The temptation ceases either where there is none whatever or where it would even be unbecoming to suppose it. The latter is the case with a young girl. Face to face with her, a doubter is always in an awkward position. To wrest her faith from her is no task at all for him; on the contrary, [I 184] he feels that it is only through her faith that she is the great person she is. He feels humbled, for there is in her a natural claim on him to be her supporter if she herself begins to waver. Of course, a clumsy fool of a doubter, a dabbler, presumably could find satisfaction in wresting faith from a young girl and joy in scaring women and children since he cannot terrify men. But this is not the case with Faust; he is too great for that.
Consequently, we can agree with Goethe that Faust betrays his doubt the first time, but I hardly believe it will happen with him a second time. This is very important with respect to the interpretation of Margarete. Faust readily perceives that Margarete’s entire significance hinges on her innocent simplicity. If this is taken from her, she is nothing in herself, nothing to him. This, then, must be preserved. He is a doubter, but as such he has all the elements of the positive within himself, for otherwise he would be a sorry doubter. He lacks the point of conclusion, and thereby all the elements become negative. She, however, has the point of conclusion, has childlikeness and innocence. Therefore, nothing is easier for him than to equip her. He has learned from experience that what he talked about as doubt often impressed others as positive truth. So now he finds his joy in enriching her with the opulent content of a way of looking at things; he takes out all the finery of immediate faith and finds joy in embellishing her with it, for it is very becoming to her, and she thereby becomes more beautiful in his eyes. In so doing, he has the added advantage that her soul attaches itself ever more tightly to his. She really does not understand him at all; like a child she attaches herself tightly to him; what for him is doubt is unswerving truth for her. But at the same time that he is building up [opbygge] her faith in this way, he is also undermining it, for he himself finally becomes the object of faith for her, a god and not a human being.
But here I must try to prevent a misunderstanding. It might seem that I am making Faust into a base hypocrite. That is not at all the case. Margarete herself is the one who has brought up the whole matter; with half an eye he appraises the glory she believes is hers and sees that it cannot withstand his doubt, but he does not have the heart to destroy it and even behaves with a certain amiability toward her. Her love gives her significance for him, and yet she becomes practically a child; he condescends to her childlikeness and has his joy in seeing how she appropriates everything. This, however, has the most regretable consequences for Margarete’s future. If it had become apparent to her that Faust was a doubter, she perhaps could have [I 185] saved her faith later. In all humility, then, she would have recognized that his high-flying, bold thoughts were not for her; she would have clung fast to what she had. But now she is indebted to him for the content of faith, and yet when he has forsaken her she perceives that he himself has not believed in it. As long as he was with her, she did not discover the doubt; now when he is gone, everything is changed for her, and she sees doubt in everything, a doubt she cannot control since she always includes in her thinking the fact that Faust himself was unable to master it.
That whereby Faust, also according to Goethe’s interpretation, captivates Margarete is not Don Juan’s seductive talent but his prodigious superiority. Therefore, as she herself endearingly expresses it, she really cannot comprehend at all what Faust can see in her that is favorable.38 Her first impression of him, then, is completely overwhelming; in relation to him, she feels her nothingness. Hence, she does not belong to him the way Elvira belongs to Don Giovanni, for that is still the expression of independent existence in relation to him, but Margarete completely disappears in Faust; neither does she break with heaven in order to belong to him, for that would imply a justification in relation to him; imperceptibly, without the slightest reflection, he becomes everything to her. But just as from the beginning she is nothing, so she becomes, if I dare say so, less and less the more she is convinced of his almost divine superiority; she is nothing, and at the same time she exists only through him. What Goethe said somewhere about Hamlet,39 that his soul in relation to his body was an acorn planted in a flower pot, with the result, therefore, that it bursts the container, is true of Margarete’s love. Faust is far too great for her, and her love must end by shattering her soul. And the moment for this cannot be far distant, for Faust is well aware that she cannot remain in this immediacy; he does not take her into the higher regions of the spirit, for it is that, after all, from which he is fleeing; he desires her sensually—and forsakes her.
So Faust has forsaken Margarete. Her loss is so terrible that, because of it, even those around her momentarily forget what they otherwise find difficult to forget—that she is dishonored. She collapses completely and is not even able to think about her loss; even the energy to comprehend her misfortune has been drained out of her. If this condition could continue, it would be impossible for reflective sorrow to commence. But [I 186] little by little the consolation of those around her brings her to herself, nudges her thought into motion again; but as soon as it is in motion again, it is apparent that she is unable to hold fast to a single one of their observations. She listens to it as if it were not speaking to her, and nothing it says arrests or accelerates the unrest in her thought process. The problem for her is the same as for Elvira—to think that Faust was a deceiver—but it is still more difficult, for she is far more deeply influenced by Faust. He was not merely a deceiver, but he was in fact a hypocrite; she has not sacrificed anything for him, but she owes him everything, and to a certain degree she still has this everything, except that now it proves to be a deception. But is what he said less true because he himself did not believe it? By no means, and yet for her it is, because she believed in it through him.
It might seem that reflection would have a more difficult time starting in Margarete; that which frustrates it is the feeling that she was nothing at all. Nevertheless there is a prodigious dialectical elasticity here. If she could sustain the thought that in the strictest sense she was nothing, then reflection would be precluded, and then she would not have been deceived, either, for if one is nothing, there is no relationship, and where there is no relationship, there cannot be a deception, either. To that extent she is at rest. This thought, however, cannot be sustained but suddenly turns into its opposite. The thought that she was nothing expresses only that all the finite differences of love are negated, and therefore it is precisely the expression for the absolute validity of her love, on which, in turn, her absolute justification is based. His conduct, therefore, is not only a deception but an absolute deception, because her love was absolute. And in this she will again be unable to rest, because, since he has been everything to her, she will not even be able to sustain this thought except through him, but she cannot think it through him, because he was a deceiver.
As those around her steadily become more and more alien to her, the inner motion begins. Not only has she loved Faust with her whole soul, but he was her life force; through him she came into existence [blev til]. As a result, her soul certainly does not become less agitated in mood than Elvira’s, but her particular moods are less agitated. She is on the way to having a basic mood, and the particular mood is like a bubble that rises from the depths and does not have the power to endure; neither is it displaced by a new bubble but is dissolved in the general [I 187] mood that she is nothing. This basic mood, moreover, is a condition that is felt and does not find expression in any specific outburst; it is unutterable, and the attempt the particular mood makes to lift it, to raise it, is futile. Thus the total mood always resonates in the particular mood; as weakness and powerlessness, it constitutes the resonance for it. The particular mood expresses itself, but it does not mitigate, does not relieve. It is, to borrow a saying from my Swedish Elvira that is definitely very expressive, even if a man does not completely understand it, it is a false sigh, which deceives, and not a genuine sigh, which is a strengthening and beneficial motion. The particular mood is not even full-toned or energetic; her expression is too burdened for that.
“Can I forget him? Can the brook, however long it keeps on running, forget the spring, forget its source, sever itself from it? If so, it would just have to stop flowing! Can the arrow, however swiftly it flies, forget the bowstring? If so, its flight would just have to come to an end! Can the raindrop, however far it falls, forget the heaven from which it fell? If so, then it would just have to disintegrate! Can I become someone else, can I be born again of a mother who is not my mother? Can I forget him? Then I would just have to cease to be!
“Can I bring him to mind? Can my recollection call him forth now that he has vanished, I who myself am only my recollection of him? This pale, hazy image—is this the Faust I worshipped? I recollect his words, but I do not possess the resonance in his voice! I remember his talks, but my breath is too faint to give them expression. Meaningless, they fall on deaf ears!
“Faust, O Faust! Come back, satisfy the hungry, clothe the naked, revive the languishing, visit the lonely one!40 I certainly know that my love had no meaning for you, but, after all, neither did I demand that. My love lay down humbly at your feet; my sigh was a prayer, my kiss a thank offering, my embrace adoring worship. Will you forsake me for this? Did you not know it beforehand? Or is it not, then, a reason to love me—that I need you, that my soul languishes when you are not with me?
“God in heaven, forgive me for loving a human being more than I loved you, and yet I still do it; I know that it is a new sin that I speak this way to you. O Eternal Love, let your mercy hold me, do not thrust me away; give him back to me, incline his heart to me41 again; have mercy on me, God of mercy, that I pray this way again!
“Can I curse him, then? What am I that I dare to be so bold? [I 188] Can the clay pot be presumptuous toward the potter?42 What was I? Nothing! Clay in his hands, a rib from which he formed me!43 What was I? A poor insignificant plant, and he stooped down to me; he lovingly raised me [opelskede];44 he was my all, my god, the origin of my thoughts, the food of my soul.
“Can I grieve? No, no! Sorrow broods like nocturnal fog over my soul. O come back, I will give you up, never claim to belong to you. Just sit with me; look at me so that I can gain enough strength to sigh; speak to me, tell about yourself as if you were a stranger, and I will forget that it is you; speak, so the tears may burst forth. Am I nothing at all, then, not even able to weep except through him!
“Where shall I find peace and rest? Thoughts rise up in my soul; the one rises against the other; the one confuses the other. When you were with me, they obeyed your suggestions; then I played with them as a child; I braided a wreath of them and put them on my head; I let them flow like my hair, ruffled in the wind. Now they twine themselves terrifyingly around me, twist themselves around me like snakes and crush my anguished soul.
“And I am a mother! A living being demands nourishment from me. Can the hungry satisfy the hungry, the feeble from thirst refresh the thirsty? Shall I become a murderer, then? O Faust, come back; save the child in the womb even if you do not want to save the mother!”
—Thus she is agitated, not by mood but in mood, but the particular mood is no mitigation for her, because it dissolves in the total mood she cannot banish. Indeed, if Faust had been taken away from her, Margarete would not seek any calming, her fate would indeed have been enviable in her eyes—but she is deceived. She lacks what could be called the situation of grief, for she is incapable of sorrowing alone. Indeed, if, like poor Florine in the fairy tale,45 she could find entry into a cave of echoes, from which she knew that every sigh, every lament, would be heard by her lover, then she would not, like Florine, spend only three nights there, but she would stay there day and night; but in Faust’s palace there is no cave of echoes, and he has no ear in her heart.
[I 189] Perhaps, dear Συμπαϱανεϰϱώμενοι, I have already held your attention too long on these pictures, all the more so because, however much I have said, nothing visible has appeared to you. But this, of course, is due not to fraudulence in my presentation but to the subject itself and to the subtlety of sorrow. When the favorable opportunity is offered, then what is hidden discloses itself. This we have in our power. And now in parting we shall unite these three women betrothed to sorrow; we shall have them embrace one another in the harmony of sorrow; we shall have them form a group before us, a tabernacle, where the voice of sorrow is never silent, where sighs do not cease, because more carefully and faithfully than vestal virgins they keep watch over the observance of the sacred ceremonies. Should we interrupt them in this; should we wish for them the return of what was lost; would that be an advantage for them? Have they not already received a higher initiation? And this initiation will unite them and envelop their union in beauty and provide mitigation in union, for only the person who has been bitten by snakes knows what one who has been bitten by snakes must suffer.46