B00ARI2G5C EBOK (46 page)

where Helen really belongs:
at the level of the autobiographical allegory we may compare Faust’s escape from the Emperor’s world to Goethe’s withdrawal from frustrating political involvements at Weimar, a frustration expressing itself in his sudden ‘flight’ to Italy in 1786 in pursuit of his poetic and scientific development (cf. pp. xxiv, xxxv f.).

Greek mythology:
Goethe’s main source for Greek mythological material, in the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’ and elsewhere, was Benjamin Hederich’s
Griindliches Mythologisches Lexikon
(Complete Lexicon of Mythology), 2nd ed., 1770. He was also able to consult Riemer, his resident adviser on all matters of classical scholarship.

Pharsalus:
the text also recalls (7465-8) another decisive battle: the total defeat of Perseus of Macedon at Pydna, in 168
BC,
by forces of the Roman Republic (7468). With the fall of the last successor of Alexander the Great and with him of the Macedonian kingdom, all effective Greek resistance to Roman power was at an end. This event is symbolically balanced by the victory of Caesar at Pharsalus 120 years later, as a result of which the whole Greek world became a province of the Roman Empire by the end of the 1st century
BC
.

homunculi:
Goethe is thought to have had in mind the method advocated by Paracelsus (1493-1541): ‘Let the sperm of a man by it selfe be putrefied in a gourd glasse, sealed up, with the highest degree of putrefaction in Horse dung, for the space of forty days, or so long until it begin to bee alive, move, and stir, which can easily be seen. After this time it will be something like a Man, yet transparent, and without a body. Now after this, if it bee every day warily, and
prudently nourished and fed with the Arcanum of Mans blood, and bee for the space of forty weeks kept in a constant, equall heat of Horse-dung, it will become a true, and living infant, having all the members of an infant, which is bom of a woman, but it will bee far lesse. This we call Homunculus, or Artificiall. And this is afterwards to be brought up with as great care, and diligence as any other infant, until it come to riper years of understanding’ (quoted by Gray, 1952, 205 f., from the English translation of 1650). Goethe could also read about homunculi in the
Anthropodemus Plutonicus
, a 17th-century demonological treatise by Johannes Schultze (‘Johannes Prätorius’) which yielded much material for
Faust
. The motif of bottle-imps and similar creatures is widespread in folklore, and is to be found in the
Arabian Nights
. Goethe is also known to have read and admired Sterne’s
Tristram Shandy
, where he would have found a humorous, if obscure, reference to ‘the Homunculus’ in ch. 2 of book I.

entelechy:
from an undated conversation reported by Eckermann to Riemer and by Riemer to one of the early
Faust
editors who published it in 1857 (see Williams, 1987, 144 and note). For further reference to Goethe’s conception of the entelechy and its survival, see pp. lxxii and note, Ixxvi f.

Mephistopheles and the Homunculus:
in a conversation of 16 December 1829 Eckermann ‘cannot help thinking that [Mephistopheles] has secretly helped the Homunculus into existence’, and Goethe replies: ‘You appreciate the position very correctly. It is in fact so, and I have already considered whether I should not put a few lines into the mouth of Mephistopheles, while he is visiting Wagner and the Homunculus is developing, which would make it quite clear to the reader that he has had a hand in it.’ Eckermann points out that there is already a hint to this effect in 7003 f., and Goethe replies: ‘You are right. For the attentive reader this might almost be enough; still, I shall try to think of a few lines nevertheless.’ No such lines were in fact added.

Faust’s dream:
both in this passage and in Faust’s later vision by the Peneus (7271-312), what Faust sees is not Helen herself but her biological antecedents as it were, the begetting of her by the divine swan. In the conversation of 16 December 1829 Eckermann comments very perceptively on the former passage (the other had not yet been written), admiring the way in which ‘in a work of this kind the particular parts refer to each other, affect each other, and complement and enhance each other. It is really only this dream about Leda, here in the second Act, that lays the true foundation for the subsequent Helena episode. In the latter, we keep hearing about
swans and about a woman begotten by a swan, but here that very action is presented and seen; and when we later come to the “Helena” full of the sensuous impression of such a situation, how much clearer and more complete it must then appear!’ Eckermann adds: ‘Goethe agreed with me, and it seemed to give him pleasure that I had noticed this.’

Homunculus in glass vessel:
in a conversation of 20 December 1829 Eckermann wonders how the role of the Homunculus in Wagner’s laboratory could be represented on the stage; Goethe suggests that Wagner ‘must not let the flask out of his hands, and the voice would have to sound as if it were coming out of the flask. It would be a part for a ventriloquist; I have heard them perform, and I am sure one of them would make a good job of it.’

transitions:
in an undated conversation (?1831) Goethe remarks to Riemer that the essential meaning of Part Two as a whole seems to him to be sufficiently clear for an intelligent reader, ‘even if there are transitions enough that he will have to supply’. Another such hiatus occurs at the end of Act IV, again because Goethe omitted to write an intended scene, in this case that in which Faust receives from the Emperor a formal grant of the coastal land under the sea.

‘neptunism’ and ‘vukanism’:
according to the ‘neptunist’ or ‘diluvianist’ theory, the earth’s crust had been shaped and modified by the gradual sedimentation of rocks in the oceans, whereas the ‘vulcanists’ or ‘plutonists’ regarded volcanic or seismic activity as the primary factor. Goethe also saw this scientific controversy as a political allegory, in which the two opposing principles were reforming gradualism on the one hand and violent revolutionary change on the other. He was temperamentally inclined to a gradualist, evolutionary view in both the geological and the political spheres; in particular he abhorred the French Revolution, and dreaded all his life the recurrence of similar upheavals in Europe (cf. p. lix f.). Both the episode of Anaxagoras’s mountain suddenly brought into being by an earthquake (7503-689, 7801-950) and the geophysical discussion between Mephistopheles and Faust in Act IV (10072-127) are satirical developments of the same allegorical theme; and the Homunculus’s preference for the counsels of the ‘neptunist’ Thales represents Goethe’s refusal to be involved in the world of politics, escaping instead into the study of the slow and orderly processes of nature.

essay:
‘On Simple Imitation of Nature; Manner; Style’ (1789).

magical power:
in a conversation of 16 December 1829 Eckermann remarks (and Goethe agrees) that in ‘Helena’ Mephistopheles ‘always seems to be playing a secretly active part’. It is indeed notable that
throughout most of Act III Phorcyas-Mephistopheles appears to be magically in charge of all that is going on. He describes Faust’s castle to Helen, undertakes to ‘surround her’ with it instantly (9049), and the scene changes to it as soon as she consents. Earlier, he claps his hands and summons up ‘masked dwarf-like figures’ who obey his instructions like magic slaves in a
Märchen
, as he supervises with comic relish their preparations for the ritual slaughter of Helen (8936-46). He is, as it seems, running the whole show, rather as if it were indeed a show, a play within a play like the ‘Walpurgis Night’s Dream’ in Part One. This is partly (as Mommsen argues) a technical device on Goethe’s part: given the difficulties of stage presentation of magical events, an epic, fabling element is needed; it takes the form of Mephistopheles-Scheherazade’s fantastic narratives, which describe what is happening, or indeed cause it to happen, and which at the same time, in effect, demonstrate and celebrate the power of poetic imagination.

precedent:
in his final version (Acts II and III) Goethe alludes twice (7435 f, 8876-9.) to the posthumous encounter of Helen and Achilles, thus lending plausibility to Faust’s own enterprise; in the first case, rather curiously, he deliberately alters their meeting-place from the island of Leuce to the Thessalian city of Pherae, in order to contaminate the Leuce motif with the similar but better-known story of Alcestis, who was brought back from the dead after nobly sacrificing herself for her husband Admetus, king of Pherae (see Index, Pherae).

Euphorion:
the old German Faust books also mention a son bom to Faust and Helen by their diabolic union; the boy’s name is Justus Faustus, and he disappears after his father’s sudden death, prompting one 17th-century commentator to wonder whether he had been properly baptized For details of the Greek Euphorion story, see Index. One of the most interesting of the paralipomena to Goethe’s version is the discarded draft (BA 196) of a speech for Phorcyas-Mephistopheles, evidently written in a relaxed mood, in which Goethe makes fun of his own treatment of the Euphorion story and even of the venerable iambic trimeter. As part of her narrative to the Chorus at the beginning of Sc. 13, Phorcyas describes the boy’s birth and alludes to his mythological provenance: Faust and Helen, she explains, will presently emerge from their underground grotto

Wedded parentally by a charming little boy,
Whom they have called Euphorion; that was long ago
His step-stepbrother’s name, now no more questions please!
Enough, you soon will see him; though this case is worse
Than on the English stage, where gradually some brat
Can grow from tiny stature to heroic size.
Here it’s still crazier: only just been begotten and at once he’s born.
He leaps, he dances, he can fence already! Though
Some say that’s nonsense, others think: this must not be
Humdrumly understood, there’s some deep meaning here.
They smell a mystery, no doubt, perhaps they even smell
Mystification, Indian and Egyptian lore;
And to know how to clip it all together, how
To make a proper brew, an etymological
Dance—to enjoy all that’s the mark of scholarship.
And so say we; profoundly it convinces us,
Such neo-symbolism and its faithful neophytes.
But now I am no longer useful in this place.
Poetic fiction’s ghostly thread spins on and on
Till in the end it tragically breaks.

stipulation
: the rule requiring Helen to remain in Sparta is not made explicit in the final ‘Helena’ text, but is mentioned several times in the later paralipomena, notably that of 1826 (BA 73), where Persephone imposes this condition on her in the unwritten Hades scene.

monks:
this anticipates the role of the clergy in the war of Act IV, where Goethe continues his familiar line of anticlerical satire (see p. lviii). The three giants with whose assistance the Faust of BA 70 defeated the monks are also featured in Acts IV and V. In his illuminating article on Faust’s political role in the last two Acts, Vaget (1980) states not quite correctly that the war with the monks takes place in Greece (in fact the BA 70 version of the Helen story is located entirely in Germany).

classical-romantic
. Goethe tends to use the term ‘romantic’, as here, to mean ‘modern’ in the widest sense, that is to say as including the Middle Ages but not classical antiquity; belonging, in other words, to the Christian era, and having more to do with northern than with southern Europe. The paradoxical description ‘classical-romantic’ points to the mixture of ancient and modern styles in the piece and to the idea of a synthesis of two historical cultures, as well as perhaps to Byron, in whom such a synthesis is in some ways personified.

Faust’s education:
this point has been made by Williams (1983, ‘Faust and Helen,’ 30 f.); in the light of it, the critical dispute over the degree of reality or illusoriness to be attributed to the Helen of Act III becomes otiose.

classical metres:
ancient Greek verse was ‘quantitative’ in the sense that the syllables were either ‘long’ or ‘short’, and the lines were regulated structures of such syllables, with stress accent playing no part. Modern German or English verse is ‘accentual’, with stress as
the chief factor. Subject to this basic difference, some impression of the specific character of Greek versification can be given by modern (and especially German) accentual imitations which substitute stressed and unstressed syllables for longs and shorts respectively. In
Faust
Goethe imitates above all the ‘iambic trimeter’ of the classical drama, a line consisting basically (with certain permitted variations) of three metrical units each of which is in principle a double iambus (
–
–). It therefore tends to have twelve syllables like the modern alexandrine; but there is a certain difference of rhythm between these two lines, more easily conveyed in German than in English. The other ‘Greek’ line in Act III, used especially by the Chorus, is the ‘trochaic tetrameter’ of four double trochees (–
–
). The Chorus also uses odes with repeating patterns of strophe, antistrophe, and epode, in which the first two are metrically identical and the third a variation (e.g. 8610-37). Goethe imitates these forms with some accuracy and subtlety.