The
multitude
presses, no word is spoke.
Faust, a Tragedy by Goethe
Thou com'st for me at dead of night;
In pity spare me, one short hour!
Wilt't not be time when Matin bell has rung?
[_She stands up. _]
Ah, I am yet so young, so young!
And death pursuing!
Fair was I too, and that was my undoing.
My love was near, far is he now!
Tom is the wreath, the scattered flowers lie low.
Take not such violent hold of me!
Spare me! what harm have I done to thee?
Let me not in vain implore thee.
Thou ne'er till now sawft her who lies before thee!
_Faust_. O sorrow worse than death is o'er me!
_Margaret_. Now I am wholly in thy power.
But first I'd nurse my child--do not prevent me.
I hugged it through the black night hour;
They took it from me to torment me,
And now they say I killed the pretty flower.
I shall never be happy again, I know.
They sing vile songs at me! 'Tis bad in them to do it!
There's an old tale that ends just so,
Who gave that meaning to it?
_Faust [prostrates himself_]. A lover at thy feet is bending,
Thy bonds of misery would be rending.
_Margaret [flings herself beside him_].
O let us kneel, the saints for aid invoking!
See! 'neath the threshold smoking,
Fire-breathing,
Hell is seething!
There prowling,
And grim under cover,
Satan is howling!
_Faust [aloud_]. Margery! Margery!
_Margaret [listening_]. That was the voice of my lover!
[_She springs up. The chains fall off_. ]
Where is he? Where? He calls. I hear him.
I'm free! Who hinders? I will be near him.
I'll fly to his neck! I'll hold him!
To my bosom I'll enfold him!
He stood on the threshold--called Margery plainly!
Hell's howling and clattering to drown it sought vainly,--
Through the devilish, grim scoffs, that might turn one to stone,
I caught the sweet, loving, enrapturing tone.
_Faust_. 'Tis I!
_Margaret_. 'Tis thou! O say it once again.
[_Clasping again. _]
'Tis he! 'tis he! Where now is all my pain?
And where the dungeon's anguish? Joy-giver!
'Tis thou! And come to deliver!
I am delivered!
Again before me lies the street,
Where for the first time thou and I did meet.
And the garden-bower,
Where we spent that evening hour.
_Faust_ [_trying to draw her away_]. Come! Come with me!
_Margaret_. O tarry!
I tarry so gladly where thou tarriest.
[_Caressing him. _]
_Faust_. Hurry!
Unless thou hurriest,
Bitterly we both must rue it.
_Margaret_. Kiss me! Canst no more do it?
So short an absence, love, as this,
And forgot how to kiss?
What saddens me so as I hang about thy neck?
When once, in thy words, thy looks, such a heaven of blisses
Came o'er me, I thought my heart would break,
And it seemed as if thou wouldst smother me with kisses.
Kiss thou me!
Else I kiss thee!
[_She embraces him. _]
Woe! woe! thy lips are cold,
Stone-dumb.
Where's thy love left?
Oh! I'm bereft!
Who robbed me?
[_She turns from him_]
_Faust_. O come!
Take courage, my darling! Let us go;
I clasp-thee with unutterable glow;
But follow me! For this alone I plead!
_Margaret [turning to him_]. Is it, then, thou?
And is it thou indeed?
_Faust_. 'Tis I! Come, follow me!
_Margaret_. Thou break'st my chain,
And tak'st me to thy breast again!
How comes it, then, that thou art not afraid of me?
And dost thou know, my friend, who 'tis thou settest free?
_Faust_. Come! come! The night is on the wane.
_Margaret_. Woe! woe! My mother I've slain!
Have drowned the babe of mine!
Was it not sent to be mine and thine?
Thine, too--'tis thou! Scarce true doth it seem.
Give me thy hand! 'Tis not a dream!
Thy blessed hand! --But ah! there's dampness here!
Go, wipe it off! I fear
There's blood thereon.
Ah God! what hast thou done!
Put up thy sword again;
I pray thee, do!
_Faust_. The past is past--there leave it then,
Thou kill'st me too!
_Margaret_. No, thou must longer tarry!
I'll tell thee how each thou shalt bury;
The places of sorrow
Make ready to-morrow;
Must give the best place to my mother,
The very next to my brother,
Me a little aside,
But make not the space too wide!
And on my right breast let the little one lie.
No one else will be sleeping by me.
Once, to feel _thy_ heart beat nigh me,
Oh, 'twas a precious, a tender joy!
But I shall have it no more--no, never;
I seem to be forcing myself on thee ever,
And thou repelling me freezingly;
And 'tis thou, the same good soul, I see.
_Faust_. If thou feelest 'tis I, then come with me
_Margaret_. Out yonder?
_Faust_. Into the open air.
_Margaret_. If the grave is there,
If death is lurking; then come!
From here to the endless resting-place,
And not another pace--Thou
go'st e'en now? O, Henry, might I too.
_Faust_. Thou canst! 'Tis but to will! The door stands open.
_Margaret_. I dare not go; for me there's no more hoping.
What use to fly? They lie in wait for me.
So wretched the lot to go round begging,
With an evil conscience thy spirit plaguing!
So wretched the lot, an exile roaming--And
then on my heels they are ever coming!
_Faust_. I shall be with thee.
_Margaret_. Make haste! make haste!
No time to waste!
Save thy poor child!
Quick! follow the edge
Of the rushing rill,
Over the bridge
And by the mill,
Then into the woods beyond
On the left where lies the plank
Over the pond.
Seize hold of it quick!
To rise 'tis trying,
It struggles still!
Rescue! rescue!
_Faust_. Bethink thyself, pray!
A single step and thou art free!
_Margaret_. Would we were by the mountain. See!
There sits my mother on a stone,
The sight on my brain is preying!
There sits my mother on a stone,
And her head is constantly swaying;
She beckons not, nods not, her head falls o'er,
So long she's been sleeping, she'll wake no more.
She slept that we might take pleasure.
O that was bliss without measure!
_Faust_. Since neither reason nor prayer thou hearest;
I must venture by force to take thee, dearest.
_Margaret_. Let go! No violence will I bear!
Take not such a murderous hold of me!
I once did all I could to gratify thee.
_Faust_. The day is breaking! Dearest! dearest!
_Margaret_. Day! Ay, it is day! the last great day breaks in!
My wedding-day it should have been!
Tell no one thou hast been with Margery!
Alas for my garland! The hour's advancing!
Retreat is in vain!
We meet again,
But not at the dancing.
The multitude presses, no word is spoke.
Square, streets, all places--
sea of faces--
The bell is tolling, the staff is broke.
How they seize me and bind me!
They hurry me off to the bloody block. [48]
The blade that quivers behind me,
Quivers at every neck with convulsive shock;
Dumb lies the world as the grave!
_Faust_. O had I ne'er been born!
_Mephistopheles [appears without_]. Up! or thou'rt lost! The morn
Flushes the sky.
Idle delaying! Praying and playing!
My horses are neighing,
They shudder and snort for the bound.
_Margaret_. What's that, comes up from the ground?
He! He! Avaunt! that face!
What will he in the sacred place?
He seeks me!
_Faust_. Thou shalt live!
_Margaret_. Great God in heaven!
Unto thy judgment my soul have I given!
_Mephistopheles [to Faust_].
Come! come! or in the lurch I leave both her and thee!
_Margaret_. Thine am I, Father! Rescue me!
Ye angels, holy bands, attend me!
And camp around me to defend me I
Henry! I dread to look on thee.
_Mephistopheles_. She's judged!
_Voice [from above_]. She's saved!
_Mephistopheles [to Faust_]. Come thou to me!
[_Vanishes with_ FAUST. ]
_Voice [from within, dying away_]. Henry! Henry!
NOTES.
[Footnote 1: Dedication. The idea of Faust had early entered into Goethe's
mind. He probably began the work when he was about twenty years old. It
was first published, as a fragment, in 1790, and did not appear in its
present form till 1808, when its author's age was nearly sixty. By the
"forms" are meant, of course, the shadowy personages and scenes of the
drama. ]
[Footnote 2: --"Thy messengers"--
"He maketh the winds his-messengers,
The flaming lightnings his ministers. "
_Noyes's Psalms_, c. iv. 4. ]
[Footnote 3: "The Word Divine. " In translating the German "Werdende"
(literally, the _becoming, developing_, or _growing_) by the term _word_,
I mean the _word_ in the largest sense: "In the beginning was the Word,
&c. " Perhaps "nature" would be a pretty good rendering, but "word," being
derived from "werden," and expressing philosophically and scripturally the
going forth or manifestation of mind, seemed to me as appropriate a
translation as any. ]
[Footnote 4: "The old fellow. " The commentators do not seem quite agreed
whether "den Alten" (the old one) is an entirely reverential phrase here,
like the "ancient of days," or savors a little of profane pleasantry, like
the title "old man" given by boys to their schoolmaster or of "the old
gentleman" to their fathers. Considering who the speaker is, I have
naturally inclined to the latter alternative. ]
[Footnote 5: "Nostradamus" (properly named Michel Notre Dame) lived
through the first half of the sixteenth century. He was born in the south
of France and was of Jewish extraction. As physician and astrologer, he
was held in high honor by the French nobility and kings. ]
[Footnote 6: The "Macrocosm" is the great world of outward things, in
contrast with its epitome, the little world in man, called the microcosm
(or world in miniature). ]
[Footnote 7: "Famulus" seems to mean a cross between a servant and a
scholar. The Dominie Sampson called Wagner, is appended to Faust for the
time somewhat as Sancho is to Don Quixote. The Doctor Faust of the legend
has a servant by that name, who seems to have been more of a _Sancho_, in
the sense given to the word by the old New England mothers when upbraiding
bad boys (you Sanch'! ). Curiously enough, Goethe had in early life a
(treacherous) friend named Wagner, who plagiarized part of Faust and made
a tragedy of it. ]
[Footnote 8: "Mock-heroic play. " We have Schlegel's authority for thus
rendering the phrase "Haupt- und Staats-Action," (literally, "head and
State-action,") who says that this title was given to dramas designed for
puppets, when they treated of heroic and historical subjects. ]
[Footnote 9: The literal sense of this couplet in the original is:--
"Is he, in the bliss of becoming,
To creative joy near--"
"Werde-lust" presents the same difficulty that we found in note 3. This
same word, "Werden," is also used by the poet in the introductory theatre
scene (page 7), where he longs for the time when he himself was
_ripening_, growing, becoming, or _forming_, (as Hayward renders it. ) I
agree with Hayward, "the meaning probably is, that our Saviour enjoys, in
coming to life again," (I should say, in being born into the upper life,)
"a happiness nearly equal to that of the Creator in creating. "]
[Footnote 10: The Angel-chorusses in this scene present the only instances
in which the translator, for the sake of retaining the ring and swing of
the melody, has felt himself obliged to give a transfusion of the spirit
of the thought, instead of its exact form.
The literal meaning of the first chorus is:--
Christ is arisen!
Joy to the Mortal,
Whom the ruinous,
Creeping, hereditary
Infirmities wound round.
Dr. Hedge has come nearer than any one to reconciling meaning and melody
thus:--
"Christ has arisen!
Joy to our buried Head!
Whom the unmerited,
Trailing, inherited
Woes did imprison. "
The present translator, without losing sight of the fact that "the Mortal"
means Christ, has taken the liberty (constrained by rhyme,--which is
sometimes more than the _rudder_ of verse,) of making the congratulation
include Humanity, as incarnated in Christ, "the second Adam. "
In the closing Chorus of Angels, the translator found that he could best
preserve the spirit of the five-fold rhyme:--
"Thatig ihn preisenden,
Liebe beweisenden,
Bruderlich speisenden,
Predigend reisenden,
Wonne verheissenden,"
by running it into three couplets. ]
[Footnote 11: The prose account of the alchymical process is as follows:--
"There was red mercury, a powerfully acting body, united with the tincture
of antimony, at a gentle heat of the water-bath. Then, being exposed to
the heat of open fire in an aludel, (or alembic,) a sublimate filled its
heads in succession, which, if it appeared with various hues, was the
desired medicine. "]
[Footnote 12: "Salamander, &c. " The four represent the spirits of the
four elements, fire, water, air, and earth, which Faust successively
conjures, so that, if the monster belongs in any respect to this mundane
sphere, he may be exorcized. But it turns out that he is beyond and
beneath all. ]
[Footnote 13: Here, of course, Faust makes the sign of the cross, or holds
out a crucifix. ]
[Footnote 14: "Fly-God," _i. e. _ Beelzebub. ]
[Footnote 15: The "Drudenfuss," or pentagram, was a pentagonal figure
composed of three triangles, thus:
[Illustration]
[Footnote 16: Doctor's Feast. The inaugural feast given at taking a
degree. ]
[Footnote 17: "Blood. " When at the first invention of printing, the art
was ascribed to the devil, the illuminated red ink parts were said by the
people to be done in blood. ]
[Footnote 18: "The Spanish boot" was an instrument of torture, like the
Scottish boot mentioned in Old Mortality. ]
[Footnote 19: "Encheiresin Naturae. " Literally, a handling of nature. ]
[Footnote 20: Still a famous place of public resort and entertainment. On
the wall are two old paintings of Faust's carousal and his ride out of the
door on a cask. One is accompanied by the following inscription, being two
lines (Hexameter and Pentameter) broken into halves:--
"Vive, bibe, obgregare, memor
Fausti hujus et hujus
P? nae. Aderat clauda haec,
Ast erat ampla gradu. 1525. "
"Live, drink, be merry, remembering
This Faust and his
Punishment. It came slowly
But was in ample measure. "]
[Footnote 21:_Frosch, Brander_, &c. These names seem to be chosen with an
eye to adaptation, Frosch meaning frog, and Brander fireship. "Frog"
happens also to be the nickname the students give to a pupil of the
gymnasium, or school preparatory to the university. ]
[Footnote 22: Rippach is a village near Leipsic, and Mr. Hans was a
fictitious personage about whom the students used to quiz greenhorns. ]
[Footnote 23: The original means literally _sea-cat_. Retzsch says, it is
the little ring-tailed monkey. ]
[Footnote 24: One-time-one, _i. e. _ multiplication-table. ]
[Footnote 25: "Hand and glove. " The translator's coincidence with Miss
Swanwick here was entirely accidental. The German is "thou and thou,"
alluding to the fact that intimate friends among the Germans, like the
sect of Friends, call each other _thou_. ]
[Footnote 26: The following is a literal translation of the song referred
to:--
Were I a little bird,
Had I two wings of mine,
I'd fly to my dear;
But that can never be,
So I stay here.
Though I am far from thee,
Sleeping I'm near to thee,
Talk with my dear;
When I awake again,
I am alone.
Scarce is there an hour in the night,
When sleep does not take its flight,
And I think of thee,
How many thousand times
Thou gav'st thy heart to me. ]
[Footnote 27: Donjon. The original is _Zwinger_, which Hayward says is
untranslatable. It probably means an old tower, such as is often found in
the free cities, where, in a dark passage-way, a lamp is sometimes placed,
and a devotional image near it. ]
[Footnote 28: It was a superstitious belief that the presence of buried
treasure was indicated by a blue flame. ]
[Footnote 29: Lion-dollars--a Bohemian coin, first minted three centuries
ago, by Count Schlick, from the mines of Joachim's-Thal. The one side
bears a lion, the other a full length image of St. John. ]
[Footnote 30: An imitation of Ophelia's song: _Hamlet_, act 14, scene 5. ]
[Footnote 31: The Rat-catcher was supposed to have the art of drawing rats
after him by his whistle, like a sort of Orpheus. ]
[Footnote 32: Walpurgis Night. May-night. Walpurgis is the female saint
who converted the Saxons to Christianity. --The Brocken or Blocksberg is
the highest peak of the Harz mountains, which comprise about 1350 square
miles. --Schirke and Elend are two villages in the neighborhood. ]
[Footnote 33: Shelley's translation of this couplet is very fine:
("_O si sic omnia! _")
"The giant-snouted crags, ho! ho!
How they snort and how they blow! "]
[Footnote 34: The original is _Windsbraut_, (wind's-bride,) the word used
in Luther's Bible to translate Paul's _Euroclydon_. ]
[Footnote 35: One of the names of the devil in Germany. ]
[Footnote 36: One of the names of Beelzebub. ]
[Footnote 37: "The Talmudists say that Adam had a wife called Lilis before
he married Eve, and of her he begat nothing but devils. "
_Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy_.
A learned writer says that _Lullaby_ is derived from "Lilla, abi! " "Begone
Lilleth! " she having been supposed to lie in wait for children to kill
them. ]
[Footnote 38: This name, derived from two Greek words meaning _rump_ and
_fancy_, was meant for Nicolai of Berlin, a great hater of Goethe's
writings, and is explained by the fact that the man had for a long time a
violent affection of the nerves, and by the application he made of leeches
as a remedy, (alluded to by Mephistopheles. )]
[Footnote 39: Tegel (mistranslated _pond_ by Shelley) is a small place a
few miles from Berlin, whose inhabitants were, in 1799, hoaxed by a ghost
story, of which the scene was laid in the former place. ]
[Footnote 40: The park in Vienna. ]
[Footnote 41: He was scene-painter to the Weimar theatre. ]
[Footnote 42: A poem of Schiller's, which gave great offence to the
religious people of his day. ]
[Footnote 43: A literal translation of _Maulen_, but a slang-term in
Yankee land. ]
[Footnote 44: Epigrams, published from time to time by Goethe and Schiller
jointly. Hennings (whose name heads the next quatrain) was editor of the
_Musaget_, (a title of Apollo, "leader of the muses,") and also of the
_Genius of the Age_. The other satirical allusions to classes of
notabilities will, without difficulty, be guessed out by the readers. ]
[Footnote 45: "_Doubt_ is the only rhyme for devil," in German. ]
[Footnote 46: The French translator, Stapfer, assigns as the probable
reason why this scene alone, of the whole drama, should have been left in
prose, "that it might not be said that Faust wanted any one of the
possible forms of style. "]
[Footnote 47: Literally the _raven-stone_. ]
[Footnote 48: The _blood-seat_, in allusion to the old German custom of
tying a woman, who was to be beheaded, into a wooden chair. ]
* * * * *
P. S. There is a passage on page 84, the speech of Faust, ending with the
lines:--
Show me the fruit that, ere it's plucked, will rot,
And trees from which new green is daily peeping,
which seems to have puzzled or misled so much, not only English
translators, but even German critics, that the present translator has
concluded, for once, to depart from his usual course, and play the
commentator, by giving his idea of Goethe's meaning, which is this: Faust
admits that the devil has all the different kinds of Sodom-apples which he
has just enumerated, gold that melts away in the hand, glory that vanishes
like a meteor, and pleasure that perishes in the possession. But all these
torments are too insipid for Faust's morbid and mad hankering after the
luxury of spiritual pain. Show me, he says, the fruit that rots _before_
one can pluck it, and [a still stronger expression of his diseased craving
for agony] trees that fade so quickly as to be every day just putting
forth new green, only to tantalize one with perpetual promise and
perpetual disappointment.
