To this period belong two short plays with songs—“Erwin and Elmire,” and “Claudine von Villa Bella.” Both are brightly written, but—except in the charm of their songs—they have no qualities that mark them off sharply from work of a like kind done by other dramatists of the time. The idea of the first of these two plays is the idea of Goldsmith’s ballad, “Edwin and Angelina.”
At this time Goethe sometimes amused himself by writing humorous and satirical sketches, in all of which there is a free and lively play of fancy. The most famous of them is “Götter, Helden, und Wieland” (“Gods, Heroes, and Wieland”), which Goethe (with a bottle of Burgundy on the table) dashed off one Sunday afternoon. Lenz, to whom it was sent, printed it without having received Goethe’s permission. In this prose “farce” Goethe very wittily makes fun of Wieland’s misrepresentations of Greek mythology.
So many ideas crowded into Goethe’s mind that it was impossible for him to realize all his plans. For some time he thought of taking the career of Mahomet as the subject of a poetical drama, and if we may judge from the beginning he actually made, the theme as he conceived it would have given full scope to his highest creative faculties. He also intended to write a poem on the Wandering Jew, bringing out the contrast between the loftiest idealism, as represented in Christ, and vulgar worldly intelligence, as represented in Ahasuerus, who was to have expostulated with Christ for uselessly exposing Himself to danger by the proclamation of unpopular truths. Of this poem he completed only a few passages, written in couplets like those of Hans Sachs—a poet whom Goethe warmly admired. Another of his poetical fragments is “Prometheus,” one of the finest of his early writings. The Moravian Brethren, with whom he still occasionally associated, impressed upon him that man, of himself, can do nothing well, and that his aim should be to wait passively for supernatural influences. This doctrine was ill fitted for a young poet who by a law of his nature was impelled to ceaseless effort; and in “Prometheus” he proposed to develop an exalted conception of the power of the free individual mind. The defiant address of Prometheus to Zeus, with which the fragment closes, ranks among the most splendid of his shorter poems.
CHAPTER IV.
YET another great conception stirred Goethe’s imagination at Frankfort—the conception of “Faust.” With the Faust legend he had long been familiar, and in “Die Mitschuldigen” he had made one of the characters compare himself with Dr. Faust. During his residence at Leipsic, however, he was too inexperienced to have even a faint conception of the deep meanings that lay hid beneath the surface of the story. It was at Strasburg that he began to realize the vast possibilities of the subject. There he thought of it often and profoundly, and it continued to fascinate him after his return to Frankfort. In 1774—or perhaps 1773—he began to write the drama with which, of all his works, his name is most intimately associated. He worked at it, at intervals, until he quitted Frankfort; he made several references to it in his letters; and to some of his friends he read passages in which he thought they might be interested.
The original “Faust”—the “Faust” written at Frankfort—contains all that is most essential in the First Part as ultimately published.[1] The Faust legend served only as a suggestion for Goethe’s drama. From being little more than a tale of magical wonders, it became, in passing through the alembic of his imagination, a conception pregnant with thought and passion—a conception in which were embodied all the most vital elements of the intellectual life of his century. Faust, as Goethe presents him, is a man of magnificent intellect, endowed originally with the purest and loftiest aspirations of humanity. When the drama opens, he has devoted many a year to study; but, sitting alone in his Gothic chamber at midnight, he feels sadly and bitterly that his labour has been in vain. Dry, abstract knowledge he has in abundance, but it does not satisfy him; it seems to him but a mockery of the knowledge for which he has always yearned. He pants for something infinitely grander than his books can tell him of. A Titan of the spirit, he would mount the very heavens, and snatch from the universe its inmost secrets. And so, despairing of finding truth by ordinary means, he has recourse to supernatural methods. Opening his book of magic, he sees the symbol of the Macrocosmos; and at once the scales fall from his eyes; he is confronted directly by the secret forces of nature working together in glorious harmony. At last, for a moment, joy wells up in his heart; he asks himself whether he has not become a god. But suddenly it flashes upon him that he is but a spectator, and he longs for so much more than can come to him by mere vision! To drink at the infinite sources of existence, to feel his soul quickened by contact with the very essence of life—nothing short of this can give him a rapture corresponding to his needs. Looking again into his book, he finds the symbol of the earth-spirit; and through all his being thrills a consciousness of energy and courage. There is no achievement of which he does not feel himself capable; he has an impulse to go out into the world, to experience all its delights and woes, and even in the crash of shipwreck to exult in his strength and freedom. The earth-spirit itself he must see, and it responds to his summons. But it scoffs at his claim of equality, and, as it disappears, leaves him once more in despair.
Baffled in his ideal aspirations, Faust gives himself up to the enjoyment of such pleasures as may be accessible through the senses. After the first monologue, and before the introduction of Gretchen, we find in the original “Faust” only Faust’s first dialogue with Wagner; the scene, afterwards considerably modified, in which Mephistopheles mystifies the ingenuous student; a draft, chiefly in prose, of the scene in Auerbach’s cellar; and a few lines, ultimately struck out, indicating the perplexity of Mephistopheles as he passes a cross by the wayside. Goethe was apparently in haste to reach the tale of love and sorrow, in which the destiny of Faust was to be interwoven with that of Gretchen, and the full meaning of his repudiation of the law of his spiritual being was to be disclosed in its tragic consequences.
After the accidental meeting of Faust and Gretchen in the street—when, struck by her beauty, he offers her his arm, and she escapes from him—there are wanting “Wald und Höble” and “Walpurgisnacht;” the part to be played by Gretchen’s brother, Valentin, is only indicated; immediately before “Trüber Tag” there is a dialogue between Faust and Mephistopheles which was afterwards omitted; and the last scene of all, the scene in the prison, is in prose. In other respects this part of the drama received at Frankfort what was essentially its final form. When the work was to be published, some lines and expressions were altered; but these changes did not vitally affect the conception as it had originally taken shape in Goethe’s mind.
Of all the products of Goethe’s genius, his presentation of the story of Gretchen is the finest; and, if we exclude Shakespeare, it would be hard to find anywhere in modern dramatic literature an equally noble achievement. The original of Gretchen, as a fresh, simple, happy maiden, with a heart overflowing with love and confidence, was Frederika Brion; and it may be that in depicting the early scenes in which she talks with Faust Goethe was recalling what had actually happened at Sesenheim. Frederika, for instance, must often have been astonished and rather dismayed by strange opinions expressed by her lover, and it is likely enough that she questioned him about religion, and that his answer was in spirit akin to the matchless lines in which Faust makes confession of his faith. But Goethe never seeks in his poetry simply to reproduce his personal experience. He transports us into an ideal world in which all that he has to show us stands out clearly, stripped of the accidental qualities which in actual life so often obscure our vision and disturb our judgment. Gretchen is not merely Frederika; she is the living representative of an enduring type of character and feeling.
Unlike Frederika, Gretchen is tempted to stain the purity of her spirit, and is brought within the sweep of forces that work her destruction; but she is never allowed to pass beyond the range of our sympathies, and in the end we are made to feel that in a deeper sense than that of theological dogmas she is “saved.” The last scene, as afterwards rendered in verse, has a more ideal character than it possesses in the original prose, yet in the process of transformation it lost some elements of tragic depth and force. In this great scene Goethe concentrates, with absolute truth to nature, all that is saddest and most terrible in human destiny.