FAUST’S DESPAIR

From the harmony and light of Heaven, we are transported to the gloom and discontent of earthly life. An expression of the divine, this latter cannot exist as such apart from the limitations inherent in all things connected with the earth, which as the archangels said, is the scene of change and conflict. Darkness exists beside light, evil beside good, as part of the earth’s character. Darkness comes about, Mephistopheles opines later on, because bodies cast shadows; were it not for physical existence, it could never be. It is the reverse of light; and evil is the reverse of good, not outside man’s nature but belonging to it. As we shall see, Mephistopheles never stimulates Faust to do what it is not in his being to do.

In this sphere of limitation, Faust, the confused scholar, as we had learnt in the Prologue in Heaven, is struggling to understand what transcends the boundaries of human understanding, the secrets of the universe. Symbolically it is night, the night before Easter, as we are told later. Faust sits restlessly at his desk in his narrow Gothic study, surrounded by parchments, instruments, and bones, striving to grasp with their lifeless aid what the archangels could not grasp. A creature of cogitation, remote from human experience, he is the prisoner of the only environment he knows, that of the University. The most learned scholar alive has found all the University faculties wanting; above all theology, the Queen of the sciences, has failed to provide, as it claimed to do, the truth about this world and the next. He is without religious scruples and preoccupations which might have impeded his intellectual progress. Yet he is frustrated. Academic learning, to which this titan for study has devoted himself, is not only vain, it has withdrawn him from life, aged him prematurely, denied him honour and glory and earthly gain, and has caused him to misinform his students. There is a material side to Faust, and he has a nascent sense of social responsibility; he is not purely and simply an intellectual. It is a satire upon human learning that he has to ally himself with the devil in order to escape the consequences of learning and to experience the life which it has denied him; and of course it is the evil aspect of life that is accordingly presented to him. He has to discover by protracted error the positive meaning in human life that his trusting but misdirected efforts have hitherto hindered him from grasping. Faust is not one of those who are devoted to learning for its own sake; that is why he can turn to magic as a substitute for it when he realizes its futility. He desires knowledge with a view to teaching and improving his fellow men. This is an important feature of his character. His social feeling breaks surface only rarely, but it is in the end decisive.
 

So runs the conclusion of the traditional review of learning with which the first earthly scene of the poem opens.

Magic, if it is fully to take the place of learning, must satisfy Faust on all the points in which learning has failed. It must first of all teach him the fundamental truths of life with a view to gaining him renown and the power to benefit his fellow creatures. If it does not do this he will reject it as remorselessly as he has discarded scholarship. But it must do more. With its aid, he hopes, he will perceive the way in which the universe operates. Theoretical understanding alone is insufficient; knowledge must be based upon real experience,
 

These words really accord with the doctrine of the archangels. Experience can supply what the understanding cannot; faith and comfort can spring from perception, even though understanding is lacking. Scholastic learning by itself is thus a preposterous indulgence. Faust, dimly realizing that man is not a creature of intellect alone, requires convincing proof through the senses of the reality of the universe. Mephistopheles’ subsequent attempt to lull him with sensual joys will merely provide something which he hitherto lacked, and so long as the fundamental desire to understand the universe remains unimpaired the attempt will be of ultimate service to Faust. It does not, of course, follow that the defects of learning need always be made up for by sin.

However, in turning to magic, Faust is as much in error as he was  in applying himself to knowledge. For whereas knowledge is unnatural through being abstract and lifeless, magic is equally so since it is an attempt to impose oneself upon nature. Short cuts to the truth, whether metaphysical or magic, are vain. Faust himself is really half-aware of this. The restrictions of his earthly life impede him even before he begins. He turns to magic because he is visited by the desire to escape with its aid from his narrow cell, to seek comfort in the realm of nature and to merge with her and learn from her lips. In his despair, he seeks regeneration from nature, as Werther, a kindred spirit, did. To understand the universe it is necessary to understand nature, its earthly manifestation, and to understand nature is to understand man, who is part of it, and his place in the universe. Nature, approached through magic, ought thus to be a hopeful substitute for learning. With Nostradamus’ manual to aid him, Faust feels he might speak on equal terms with nature; and nature in her turn will instruct him in the real meaning of the book’s magic symbols, replace abstract cogitation, and enable him to converse with her spirits. Indeed, this conviction causes him to feel the presence of spirits around him already. It is in fact the frame of mind of the seeker that matters in this, as in other things.

Faust turns the pages of the book, coming upon the sign of the macrocosm, doubtless the two interlocking equilateral triangles of the Grand Architect of the Universe, whose six points symbolize the six days of the Creation; it may well be a delicate allusion by Goethe to the mystic hexagon in Herder’s Älteste Urkunde des Menschengeschlechts, which that author believed likewise to represent the Creation and to be the most primitive of all hieroglyphics, the beginning of all writing, knowledge, science, philosophy and theology, given directly by God to man. The mere sight of this symbol fills Faust with joy, causes excitement to course through his veins and light to enter his soul, as he reads in it the beauty and harmony of the cosmos. His restless despondency is quietened and relieved when he feels his kinship with the creative forces of the universe, as he, no doubt, had never felt it before. We can apprehend nature and bathe ourselves back to health in the regenerating power of the dawn, the ever-recurring symbol of the Creation, if our hearts and senses are suitably attuned, he declares, quoting the wisdom of Nostradamus, who represents, no doubt, Herder or Swedenborg. As he realizes that all things are interdependent in the living system which is the cosmos, Faust has momentarily the vision and comprehension of a god, so filled is he with a sense of light and glory. An earthly creature, he is, for an instant, given a glimpse of the wisdom of the archangels, and this has been gained, not by knowledge, nor by magic, but by a consciousness of his oneness with nature, ‘da Gott den Menschen schuf hinein’ (l. 415).
 

For a moment the divine aspect of his being is uppermost in Faust. But he cannot give himself over to it completely. He has an earthly side. What he sees is a vision, a spectacle; he cannot touch it or share actively in its workings. He longs to grasp it, to enter into physical contact with it, to draw real sustenance from the eternal sources of life. It satisfies only his contemplative side, not his active urge. And activity is a divinely ordained feature of all life.

There is a gulf between the limited life of earth and the infinite life of Heaven. To possess both at once is impracticable. Significantly, Faust does not conjure up the spirit of the macrocosm, whose sign he beholds; indeed, he could not do so, for the spirit can be really none other than God Himself. The vision which he sees is, as it were, a drama (‘ Schauspiel’), as on a stage, and he is a spectator, not, as he longs to be, an actor. He in fact desires to be both spectator, understanding all, and character, participating in what happens, at one and the same time (as, in fact, he attempts to be when he later on calls up the vision of Helen of Troy), and all the learning of all the faculties has not revealed to him the folly of this desire. His despondency is deepened at his being cut off from the substance, so that even the comfort of the shadow is vain.

Faust next observes the symbol of the Earth Spirit, and, believing himself to be more akin to what it represents, proceeds to conjure up the attendant spirit, which appears, as did the Lord to Moses, in a fire. This symbol, too, fills him with strength, not the strength to understand the cosmos, but the strength to face sorrow and danger as well as joy.
 

Faust needs this strength, for the result of his invocation is shattering. The Earth Spirit is an unendurable apparition. Faust, who had never identified himself with the reality of earthly life, shrinks in terror, because what he sees is symbolically so strangely out of accord with the ideas of the world which he had formed in his academic isolation and is therefore something with which he cannot cope. The Earth Spirit is not a perfect and satisfying vision. It stands for change and movement, disharmony and conflict, birth and death, exactly as the archangels had testified. Faust is crushed by the very thing he thought he wanted. His earthly side, which had prevented his enjoying the vision of the universe a few moments earlier, is itself now cast down. He is unable to join in the processes of the world, despite his desire to do so, because his addiction to academic learning has rendered him incapable of this. He is caught in the remorseless vortex of his unnatural existence. He is unfitted by scholarship for life, and scholarship, his refuge from life, is itself no substitute for it and is a failure as an approach to universal truth. He who has flattered himself that he can speak on equal terms with the spirits of nature and now tries to do so with the Earth Spirit, is annihilated.

Faust invites the famous self-definition of the Earth Spirit, in which every word is chosen to express activity, development and growth and is a biting reflection upon his withdrawal into barren contemplation:
 

Life on earth is a cyclical rise and fall. In spite of its disharmony and disparateness, it is one life, as the threefold Ein makes clear, manifesting at all times the same basic universal causality. It is the outward expression of God, His living garment. What Faust hears the Earth Spirit define is the very restlessness which he feels within himself; and he is terrified because he is powerless to fit his existence into the scheme of things as a whole. So he can say, ‘Wie nah fühlich mich dir!’ (l. 511) and yet collapse in terror. He has gained less from the Earth Spirit’s appearance than from the contemplation of the macrocosm sign, for the latter at least gave him a pleasing vision. The contemplative scholar has been proved incapable of practical self-adaptation to the world’s affairs. Faust shudders at the thought of his own helplessness, he, created in God’s own image! As his pupil Wagner knocks on his door, he surprisingly refers to this overwhelming experience as his ‘schönstes Glück’. Horrible though it has been, it is no doubt so regarded by him in comparison with the dessiccated emptiness of rationalism, embodied in Wagner, which can teach nothing, not even the consciousness of one’s own frailty. Magic has failed, as learning failed, even learning as pursued by Faust. How much more barren is the learning that is sought by those who do not possess Faust’s titanic urge to grasp the meaning of the cosmos, who are devoted to it for its own sake or for the social status it confers and who apply themselves to it without a sense of its limitations!

Wagner is such a person, and ironically enough he is Faust’s pupil, one of those whom the great man has been misleading for the past ten years or so. Symbolically, he appears in a dressing-gown, as Gottsched did when Goethe visited him at Leipzig. (In the Urfaust it is noteworthy that Mephistopheles likewise wears a dressing gown when conversing with the student. Goethe’s hints were invariably pretty direct!) Wagner bears the lamp of Enlightenment in his hand, a puny human substitute for the clear light of Heaven revealed through nature. He needs artificial aid of this kind. He never goes out into the world of daylight, scarcely even on holidays, and fondly believes, as doubtless Faust did once, that midnight oil can replace real experience. He collects all scraps of knowledge, without quite knowing why, for his imagination cannot rise above his own level. Yet he is not without worth. Confidence in learning, modest rectitude and loyal deference to his master, combined with hard-headed imperturbability, are not to be condemned out of hand, utterly maddening as they are to the tempestuously despairing Faust. Hearing Faust’s voice and believing his master to be declaiming a Greek tragedy, he enters with a view to picking up what he can about the art of elocution. His entry enables Faust to define what contemporary scholarship was which had brought him to such an abyss of depression. It is a savage analysis. The academic atmosphere and hierarchy are indeed well studied by Goethe, in Faust, the most learned man alive, Wagner his assistant, and later on the matriculating student, as well as, in ‘Auerbachs Keller’, the reverse side of the medal, the academicals off duty.
When Faust reflects upon pulpit eloquence:
 

he is really continuing his invective against the defects of learning which had started the scene, for there can be little doubt that the clergy in his area were once his students, and it is his own fault in part if they were open to such censure as he now administers. His contempt for conventional scholarship shocks Wagner, as Faust turns his criticism upon rhetoric, philology, history and the theory of knowledge and stresses the value of subjective emotion instead of that of rationalism in which his pupil so profoundly believes. Eloquence, as Herder said in his An Prediger. Fünfzehn Provinzialblätter, comes from the heart, not from any artificial aids; it is the communication of emotion, the outpouring of the physical side of our being, which, as Faust is just discovering, is a part of the glowing life of the world described by the Earth Spirit.
 

eloquence is, Faust declares, useless. From such a standpoint, academic learning, with its stress upon reason, is almost the equivalent of sacrilege, the reverse of the divine order of things, a device for masking by artifice what can express itself directly if allowed to do so. The cast-off tricks of speech of others cannot take the place of sincerity of emotion. The fundamental verities of life need no adventitious rhetorical aids to expression.
 

In respect of source-study, to which Wagner is especially addicted, Faust’s remarks are upon similar lines. What matters is our attitude of mind to the world in which we five, the experience within our soul, for which philology can no more be a substitute than rhetoric.
 

The truths of religion are not revealed by the methods of history and archaeology; they are revealed through the human heart. ‘Qui suit son cœur, suit Dieu’, Faust might have said with Pascal.

In anguish, Wagner alludes to history, incautiously observing that it at least enables us to see how far we have advanced. Faust answers that history is interpreted subjectively; the facts are adjusted to one’s own pattern; historical research is powerless as a means of approaching the truth. What we see in history as it is presented to us is a shocking commentary upon the state of mind of those who present it.
 

All knowledge is, indeed, a mockery by comparison with the sense of that oneness with nature which Faust is discovering in human life and is yearning to experience more fully. He accordingly angrily closes the conversation, to the regret of his puzzled but pertinacious assistant, with the remark that the acquisition of data is as nothing beside emotional experience, the ‘volles Herz’, which does not indeed exclude the former, but which alone, when joined with it, can turn it into understanding.
 

Wagner, who doubtless represents a phase through which Faust once passed, retires without realizing that his master’s observations have quite shattered him. The Enlightenment was nothing, however, if not cocksure.
 

he remarks as he closes the door. How forcibly the difference between the two men is brought out, and how strikingly Faust’s initial condemnation of learning has been filled out in this conversation!

The remainder of the first scene, after the departure of Wagner, was written twenty years later than the material hitherto discussed, and the style and metre clearly display a difference in composition. None the less, Goethe did his best to preserve the unity of mood and did so with success.

The Wagner episode, a traditional feature of the Faust story, is a means of exercising a sobering influence upon the scholar who has been crushed by his encounter with the Earth Spirit. All the same, Faust cannot forget the devastating words:
 

He is haunted by his feeling of smallness and impotence. He, the most learned man alive, the titanic seeker after the secrets of the universe, has been brought to a state of dithering collapse. He reflects how nearly he approached the sight of eternal truth when contemplating the symbol of the macrocosm, which had lifted him above the finite limitations of his earthly existence, and how he had presumed to seek to add earthly experience to the revelations vouchsafed to him. Heavenly truth was insufficient for this titanic man of the earth; he desired both earthly and heavenly experience together, being conscious of his earthly and heavenly nature and thus deeming himself to be more greatly endowed than the cherubs and to possess more understanding than the archangels themselves.
 

Finite man cannot transcend his earthly bounds, if he is to remain man and of the earth. Such is the inevitable logic to which he is quickly led forward, and which the University had seemingly failed to teach him. The mal du siècle, of which Faust came to be so outstanding a representative, is founded upon this concept of man’s nature. By a supreme stroke of irony, it is at this moment, when Faust begins to see the impossibility of taking Heaven by storm, that we learn -- Wagner mentions the fact just before leaving -- that it is Easter Eve.

The tragedy, we remind ourselves, rests upon a universal basis, as the Prologue in Heaven had already indicated. It springs not merely from the inadequacy of knowledge, or the insufficiency of magic, or Faust’s lack of human experience, but from all these, indeed from the limitation of earthly life itself. Beside the eternal forces of the universe, man is a pygmy, despite the exaltation caused by the consciousness of his oneness with its glories. What is left for Faust now? Can he continue on the same lines as hitherto? Is he not limited by the consequences of living as he has done, so that no other kind of life is possible, futile though he recognizes it to be?
 

It is not feasible to separate our infinite contemplations from our finite attributes. As long as we remain human beings, we are doomed to frustration. We may be complacent, or we may allow ourselves to be paralysed by Care in the shape of our daily domestic anxieties and responsibilities. Care, who plays a significant role at a later crisis in the tragedy, causes man’s endeavour to relax; she is undoubtedly an ally of Mephistopheles, and Faust instinctively agrees with the Lord in revolting against her.
 

Life, Faust feels, that is constantly concerned to protect itself against common daily fears and preoccupations is worthless. His books and instruments, which he has inherited and no longer uses, are as millstones round his neck and limit his freedom, for inheritance too is a shackle. Only that which is immediately useful is of value. And in any case mechanical contrivances can never bring us nearer to the secrets of nature, which can only be revealed to the heart that is humbly opened to receive her message.
 

These reflections add to Faust’s despondency concerning the emptiness of his existence and his thoughts turn to death. Broken by the sense of earthly bondage at the hands of Care, his impulse is to escape. His eye lights upon poison. He has achieved a reductio ad absurdum of life; its only value comes when it can be cast off. Suicide offers the sole remaining approach to the central meaning of the universe from which earthly existence excludes him. It is, moreover, the supreme proof that he can still satisfy his god-given impulse to act. Death is to be a deed of heroism, not the end of life but the gateway to something higher.
 

At this supreme moment, Faust’s dual nature saves him. His earthly side (which, after all, is divine) draws him subtly back into life. His reflections upon the history of the goblet from which he is about to drink represent a first unconscious undermining of his resolution. Faust may have rejected historical research in his remarks to Wagner, but historical consciousness, or memory, can play strange tricks. Choruses which chance at that moment to fall upon his ears from a midnight Easter service in a nearby church add their decisive aid to his growing mood of reminiscence. Memory, we observe, is an earthly fetter; at this time of crisis it destroys Faust’s freedom of action. The Easter bells and music call forth recollections of his boyhood. It is not the force of religion, not faith -- he has long since abandoned that -- that keeps him alive. It is the thought of rebirth, of springtime, of the reawakening of all life, of the freshness and purity of youth, of the indistinctly apprehended love-impulse that now recalls him. And the reminder that he has no faith makes it illogical to think that he should try to enter the world to come, to which he had given so little attention! Religion acts in a very mysterious manner.

Faust is deflected from his purpose -- the only time in the whole drama in which he is. It is significant that after Mephistopheles’ arrival he is never deflected again. He recaptures the lost yearnings of youth. His attitude to life changes abruptly; he re-enters it with incipient positive aspirations, with something of the naïveté which he had not known for a long time. He is ready for life and its trials, and for Mephistopheles. The chance hearing of the Easter hymn has caused the force of love -- ‘der Liebe holde Schranken’ -- to enter his consciousness; he is reminded that he is part of the eternal growth that is the universe in a manner that magic had not really been able to effect; he feels a harmony and elevation of soul, as we see in the next scene, that we have not observed in him before. He is recalled from damnation, and the possibility of salvation is placed before him.
 

The Easter anthem, appropriately enough composed by Goethe on Easter Monday, 1798, emphasizes the certainty of God’s covenant with man (Faust uses the words ‘Gewißheit einem neuen Bunde’, l. 748). In Faust’s own case the application is of a very special kind, in view of what has happened concerning him in Heaven. Every word that is sung speaks of the liberation of mankind by the supreme victory of the Resurrection; of the joy and felicity that are to replace human chains and imperfections; of the power of love, embodied particularly in woman, which culminates in loyalty and self-sacrificing humility and gains salvation for those -- sinners even -- who display it; of grace pointing the way to Christ which humans cannot find without help; of the earth as a testing-ground; of the serene creativeness and growth of the universe as compared with the sorrows and longings of this human life; of the supreme example that is to be followed in Christ, if we will praise him by our deeds, love, charity, fellow-feeling and witness. Goethe did not, of course, intend that this should be taken as a statement of orthodox Christianity. It is, at the same time, a statement of cardinal importance as foreshadowing the means by which Faust is in the end to be redeemed. It is a repetition of the Lord’s cogent teaching in the Prologue. Salvation is not to be found in the four faculties of the University, or in magic, sensuality, ambition or power, but in self-sacrificial devotion to the needs of mankind.
 

It is not necessary to assume that Faust actually hears the precise words that are sung, though he may well have known them in his youth and be able to recall them. There is no reason why the anthem should not be familiar to him, despite his loss of faith. Its moral content, in view of his glimmering social sense, must have been just as important as the moral content of the Christian doctrine was to Goethe, indifferent though he was to refinements of dogma.