"Faustus. Devil, thou blasphemest, for I see thou art trembling!—Quick, thou sayest, as the vengeance of——no! he may not be named among us! Quick, thou sayest, is his vengeance? Quick? And I still live? And I still sin?
"Sixth Spirit. That he suffereth thee still to sin is the beginning of his vengeance.
"Faustus. Oh that a Devil should teach me this!—But no, his vengeance is not quick; if thou art no quicker, begone!—(To the seventh spirit.) How quick art thou?
"Seventh Spirit. Unsatisfiable (unzuvergnuegender) mortal! If I, too, am not quick enough for thee———
"Faustus. Tell me, then, how quick?
"Seventh Spirit. No more nor less than the transition from Good to Evil.
"Faustus. Ha! thou art my devil! Quick as the transition from Good to Evil!—Yes, that is quick! Nothing is quicker!—Away from here, ye horrors of Orcus! Away!—Quick as the transition from Good to Evil!—I have learned how quick that is! I know it!"
Lessing had this fragment printed in the "Literaturbriefe," professedly as a specimen of one of the old popular dramas, despised at that time by the higher classes, though Lessing remarks,—"How fond was Germany once of its Dr. Faustus,—and is so, partly, still!" But even this bold reformer of German taste seems not to have had the temerity to come forward at once as the author of a conception so entirely contrary to the reigning rules and the Frenchified taste by which, at the period of the "Literaturbriefe," (1759-1763,) Germany was still subjugated.
We do not know whether some of the young poets who took hold of the subject a short time after were instigated by this fragment of Lessing's, or whether they were moved by the awakening German Genius, who, just at that period, was beginning to return to his national sources for the quenching of his thirst. Between 1770 and 1780, Lenz and Maler Müller composed, the former his "Hoellenrichter," the latter his dramatized Life of Dr. Faustus. No more appropriate hero could have been found for the young "Kraft-Genies" of the "Sturm und Drang Periode" (Storm and Stress period) of German literature. Schreiber, Soden, Klinger, Schink, followed them, the last-named with several productions referring to the subject. In 1786, Goethe communicated to the world, for the first time, a fragment of that astonishing dramatic poem which has since been acknowledged, by the whole literary public, as his masterpiece, and the most remarkable monument of his great genius.[6] The whole first part of the tragedy, still under the name of a fragment, was not published before 1808. Since then Germany may be said to have been inundated by "Fausts" in every possible shape. Dramas by Nic. Voigt, K. Schoene, Benkowitz,—operas by Adolph Bäurle, J. von Voss, Bernard, (with music by Spohr,)—tales in verse and prose by Kamarack, Seybold, Gerle, and L. Bechstein,—and besides these, the productions of various anonymous writers, followed close upon each other in the course of the next twenty years. Chamisso's tragedy of "Faustus," "in one actus," in truth only a fragment, had already appeared in the "Musenalmanach" of 1804.
To Goethe the legendary literature of his nation had been familiar from his boyhood. Very early in life, and several years before the publication of Maler Müller's spirited drama, his mind was powerfully impressed by the Faust-fable, and the greater part of the present fragmentary poem was already written and ready for print when Müller's first sketch, under the title, "Situations in the Life of Dr. Faustus," appeared (1776). As the entire poetry of Goethe was more or less autobiographical,—that is, as all his poetical productions reflect, to a certain extent, his own personal sensations, trials, and experiences,—he fused himself and his inner life into the mould of Faustus, with all his craving for knowledge, his passionate love of Nature, his unsatisfied longings and powerful temptations, adhering closely in all external action to the popular story, though of course in a symbolic spirit Goethe had, as he tells us himself, a happy faculty of delivering himself by poetical production, as well of all the partly imaginary, partly morbid cares and doubts which troubled his mind, as of the real and acute sufferings which tormented him, for a certain period, even to agony. Love, doubt, sorrow, passion, remorse—all found an egress from his soul into a poem, a novel, a parable, a dramatic character, or some other form of poetical expression. He felt as if eased of a burden, after having thus given his feelings body and shape. Thus his works became his history. "Faust," in its two parts, is the production of his lifetime. Conceived in early youth, worked out in manhood, completed in old age, it became a vehicle for all the various commotions of his existence. There is no other poem which contains such a diversity of thought and feeling, such a variety of sentences, pictures, scenes, and situations. For enlarging on the poetical value of this incomparable work this is not the place. Closely as Goethe has followed up the popular legend, it is emphatically and entirely his own production, because it contains his complete self.