Faust (6 page)

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Authors: Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

BOOK: Faust
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SPIRIT.

 
Who calls?

FAUST
(
averts his face
).

 
                                   Terrifying vision!
4

SPIRIT.

 
I felt a mighty pull from you,
 
you have long been sucking at my sphere,
 
and now—

FAUST.

 
              No! I can’t endure you!

SPIRIT.

 
You have sought me breathlessly,
 
longed for my voice and countenance;
 
your strong pleadings have my sympathy.
 
Now I am here!—What pitiable terror
490
seizes you, you superman? Where is the outcry of your soul,
 
where the breast that built its inward world
 
and bore and fostered it and swelled with joyful tremor,
 
intent on rising to the level of the spirits?
 
Where are you, Faust, whose voice rang out,
 
who forced himself on me with all his might?
 
Are you he who at my very exhalation
 
shivers to his depths,
 
a frightened, cringing worm?

FAUST.

 
Should I flinch before you, flaming apparition?
500
I stand my ground as Faust, your equal!

SPIRIT.

 
In the tides of life and action
 
I rise and descend
 
and fling the shuttle back and forth.
 
The cradle and the grave,
 
a perennial sea,
 
a flickering fabric,
 
a glowing life,
 
I toil at the whirring loom of time
 
and weave the godhead’s living vesture.

FAUST.

510
You roam the ample world, my bustling spirit;
 
how close I feel to you!

SPIRIT.

 
You’re like the spirit that you grasp.
 
You’re not like me.
 
        (
The
SPIRIT
vanishes
.)

FAUST
(
overwhelmed
).

 
Not your equal?
 
Then whom do I resemble?
 
I, the image of the godhead!
 
And not your equal?
 
        (
A knock at the door
.)
 
Oh, death, I know that knock—my famulus—
 
So ends my fairest hour!
520
Why must this shriveled crawler
 
destroy the fullness of my vision?
 
        (
Enter
WAGNER
,
in dressing gown and nightcap, lamp in hand
.
FAUST
,
annoyed, turns to him
.)

WAGNER.

 
Excuse me, but I heard your declamation;
 
was it a passage from Greek tragedy?
 
I should like to profit from such elocution,
 
for nowadays it’s a great help.
 
I’ve often heard it said that an actor
 
could give lessons to a preacher.

FAUST.

 
Yes, whenever the preacher is also an actor,
 
which may happen now and then.

WAGNER.

530
Ah! when we’re cooped in our chambers
 
and scarcely see the world on holidays—
 
from far away as through a telescope—
 
how can we guide it by persuasion?

FAUST.

 
You will never conquer it unless you feel it,
 
unless a surging from your soul,
 
a primal, joyful energy
 
compels the heart of all your listeners.
 
Go sit down and paste your words together,
 
concoct a stew from morsels left by others
540
and try to get some feeble flames
 
from your puny heap of ashes!
 
And if your palate craves for this,
 
you may have apes and infants stand in awe,
 
but you’ll never move another’s heart
 
unless your own pours forth its energy.

WAGNER.

 
Yet elocution is the speaker’s greatest tool;
 
it’s clear to me, I’m far behind.
5

FAUST.

 
Go seek advancement honorably.
 
Don’t be a jingling fool!
550
Clear thinking and some honesty
 
need little art for their delivery.
 
And once you speak in earnest,
 
must you still hunt for words?
 
The tinseled glittering phrases
 
with which one crimps the shredded bits of thought
 
are lifeless like a misty exhalation
 
that blows through withered autumn leaves.

WAGNER.

 
Oh, my, but art is long
 
and our life is fleeting.
6
560
My head begins to swim
 
with the strain of critical endeavor.
 
How difficult it is to gain the means
 
that will lead one to the sources.
 
We poor devils labor long and hard
 
and die before we travel half the distance.

FAUST.

 
Is parchment then the sacred fount
 
from which a draft will quench our thirst forever?
 
You must draw it from your inward soul
 
or else you’ll not be satisfied.

WAGNER.

570
Excuse me, but it gives the greatest satisfaction
 
to view the spirit of another age,
 
to see how wise men thought before our days,
 
and to rejoice how far we’ve come at last.

FAUST.

 
Oh yes, a journey to the stars!
 
My friend, the days of history
 
make up a book with seven seals.
 
What you call the spirit of an age
 
is in reality the spirit of those men
 
in which their time’s reflected.
580
And what you see is mostly misery,
 
the sight of which will make you run away.
 
Pails of garbage and heaps of trash,
 
at best a staged enactment of high history
 
with excellent pragmatic maxims
 
suitable for puppets.

WAGNER.

 
But what of the world? The human heart and intellect?
 
One tries so hard to gain some knowledge!

FAUST.

 
Oh yes! They like to call it knowledge.
 
Who can give the child its rightful name?
590
Those few who gained a share of understanding,
 
who foolishly unlocked their hearts,
 
their pent-up feelings, and their visions to the rabble,
 
have always ended on the cross and pyre.
 
Forgive me, friend, the night is well advanced,
 
we must suspend our conversation.

WAGNER.

 
I should have liked to stay much longer
 
to exchange such learned words with you.
 
But I hope that on tomorrow’s Easter holiday
 
I may ask some further questions.
600
I always strive for erudition;
 
I know a lot, it’s true, but I must know it all.
 
(
Exit
.)

FAUST
(
alone
).

 
How can such hope still dwell with him,
 
whose mind tenaciously adheres to rubbish,
 
who digs with eager hands for treasure
 
and is delighted when he finds a worm!
 
Should such a human voice intrude
 
when spirits held me in their spell?
 
Alas, this once you have my gratitude,
 
you smallest of all sons of the earth.
610
You snatched me from despondency
 
which threatened ruin to my senses.
 
Ah! the titanic spirit’s visitation
 
made me gaze upon my dwarfish self.
 
I, the godhead’s image, who thought myself
 
close to the mirror of eternal truth,
 
and stripped of my mortality,
 
saw Heaven’s light and clarity reflect on me.
 
I, more than Cherub, with unbounded power
 
presumed to course through Nature’s arteries,
620
to create and live the life of a divinity—
 
now I must do penance without measure;
 
one thunder-word has swept me off to nothingness.
 
I can’t withstand comparison with you!
 
If I possessed the strength to draw you near,
 
I wanted strength to hold you close to me.
 
In that blessed, fleeting moment
 
I felt myself so small, so great—
 
you thrust me from you cruelly
 
into man’s uncertain destiny.
630
Who will teach me? What must I shun?
 
Shall I obey my inward yearning?
 
Alas, our deeds as much as our sorrows
 
cramp the course of our waking days.
 
However glorious the mind’s conception,
 
alien matter will in time intrude.
 
Whenever we achieve some good on our earth,
 
the better things are labeled frauds and fantasies.
 
The ecstasies that launched us on this life
 
congeal in the muddled business of living.
640
Once Imagination on her daring flight
 
reached boldly for eternity, but now
 
she deems a narrow chamber quite sufficient,
 
as every joy is foundering in the whirls of time.
 
Care nesting deep within the heart
 
will quickly wreak her secret pangs.
 
She sways and claws and dims our peace and joy
 
and never fails to don new masks,
 
as a homestead or as wife and child,
 
or else she shows herself as water, fire, poison, knife.
650
You dread the blows that do not strike
 
and you lament the things you never lose.
 
I am not like the gods—I feel it deeply now.
 
I am the worm that burrows in the dust
 
and, seeking sustenance in the dust,
 
is crushed and buried by a wanderer’s heel.

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