B00ARI2G5C EBOK (51 page)

mountain folk:
see preceding note.

pictures in the air
.
Faust rather implausibly explains the three strong men’s demonically multiplied fighting powers to the Emperor by evocatively describing an atmospheric phenomenon sometimes observed in the Strait of Messina between Sicily and Italy. (This seemingly magical mirage effect became known locally as
fata Morgana
after Morgan le Fay, the sister of King Arthur whose legend was carried to Sicily by Norman settlers.)

last fading glow
.
the dancing flames noticed by the Emperor on the spear-points of his army are similarly explained by Faust in terms of the luminous electrical discharge sometimes seen on the masts of a ship during a storm. Seamen knew this as ‘St Elmo’s fire’, after the saint whose protection they invoked; it was also associated with the tutelary ‘Heavenly Twins’ (see Index,
Twins
) whom Faust mentions in 10600.

our Master:
the ‘sorcerer from Norcia’ whom the Emperor had pardoned (see 10439-52 and Introd., p. lvii); he now also sends the favourable omen of the eagle and the griffin (see Index, Griffin).

the Emperor and four princes:
Goethe creates a slightly ponderous and comic effect by writing this concluding scene in alexandrine couplets, the old-fashioned metre used by German poets of the earlier 18th century in imitation of French classical drama. For the scene in general, see Introd., p. lviii and note.

that infamous man was granted land:
Goethe originally intended to include a scene showing the formal grant of the coastal lands by the Emperor to Faust, as predicted by Mephistopheles in 10303-6 (see Introd., pp. lviii f. and note). The phrases ‘land on the Empire’s coast’ (11035 f.) and ‘the wide sea-strand’(10306; literally ‘the limitless strand’) may refer to the North Sea or Baltic coasts of the German Empire, but Goethe did not necessarily conceive this motif in terms of geographical realism; for that matter the ‘high sea’ noticed by Faust on his aerial journey back from Greece (10198) was presumably the Adriatic, where the Empire’s coastline could hardly be described as extensive.

Philemon and Baucis:
see Introd., pp. Ixii ff. and Index, Philemon.

Lynceus the Watchman:
see Introd., p. lxiv and text pp. 147-51.

from dong to ding:
Goethe is said to have had a particular aversion to the sound of church bells.

Midnight:
on this scene generally, see Introd., pp. lxiv-lxvii.

lemurs:
see Index.

In youth when I did love
…: the songs of the Lemurs as they dig Faust’s grave, here and on p. 224, are partly adapted by Goethe from the Gravedigger’s song in Shakespeare’s
Hamlet
(v, i), using the variant version published by Thomas Percy in his
Reliques of Ancient Poetry
(1765).

Mephistopheles’prediction:
see Introd., pp. lxviiif.

no ditch:
Goethe here puns untranslatably on
Graben
(ditch) and Grab (grave).

Faust’s last speech:
see Introd., pp. lxx f.

All is fulfilled
: Mephistopheles deliberately echoes Luther’s translation (
‘Es ist vollbracht’
) of the last words of Jesus on the cross (John 19: 30).

his own blood-scribed document:
the Pact and Wager with the Devil which Faust signed in Part One, Sc. 7; on Goethe’s less than wholly serious treatment of this motif, see Introd. to Part Two, pp. xiii f.

My head’s on fire:
on Mephistopheles’ flirtation with the angels, his final discomfiture, and Sc. 22 generally, see Introd., pp. lxxiii ff.

Mountain Gorges:
on this last scene generally, see Introd., pp. lxxv-lxxviii and notes.

Mater Gloriosa:
the Virgin Mother of God revealed in glory, in contrast to the Mater Dolorosa of Gretchen’s earlier prayer (Part One, Sc. 21).

Penitent women:
the three leading penitents are the prostitute whose ‘many sins’ Jesus forgave when she anointed his feet in the house of Simon the Pharisee, and who is traditionally sometimes identified with Mary Magdalene (Luke 7: 36-50); the woman of Samaria with ‘five husbands’ to whom he talked at Jacob’s well, promising her the water of eternal life (John 4: 7-29); and Mary of Egypt whose story is told in the
Acta Sanctorum
(a calendar of the histories and legends of the saints and martyrs, compiled by Catholic scholars from the 17th century onwards). This Mary, also a courtesan, had attempted to enter the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, but an invisible arm barred her way; repenting her sinful life, she then did penance for forty years in the desert, and before dying wrote a message in the sand requesting the monk Socinius to bury her and pray for her.

paralipomena:
see Introd., p. xxi and notes.

paralipomenon BA 5 (1797):
this much quoted but cryptic jotting dates from the third or ‘classical’ period of Goethe’s work on
Faust
(see Introd., pp. xiv ff.). It is the only surviving fragment or draft of a more detailed scheme for the drama as a whole, in all probability written at the same time as the
Prologue in Heaven
(summer 1797). The fragment is difficult to interpret owing to its highly condensed style, partial illegibility, and defective punctuation, but it indicates clearly enough that Goethe has now decided to divide his
Faust
into two parts. Most of the formulations refer to Part One, which he was completing at this time. The first two lines seem to summarize Faust’s opening soliloquy and the conjuring of the Earth Spirit, the third and fourth possibly refer to his turning away from the Sign of the Macrocosm to that of the Earth Spirit (Part One, 454-61), signifying perhaps his choice of earthly experience and rejection of other-worldly vision. The seventh and eighth lines point to the symbolic affinity between Wagner and the Student as repudiated aspects of Faust; the tenth line recalls the Gretchen tragedy by which the rest of Part One is dominated. (
‘Von außen gesehn
is read as
‘von außen gesucht’
by some editors, but both phrases remain obscure.) The movement of Goethe’s thought, here characteristic of its ‘classical’ style under the influence of Schiller, is dialectical, operating in antitheses which are then resolved into syntheses, as in the fifth
line; the sixth perhaps expresses a sense of the dramatic value (well understood by Schiller) of clearly polarized contradictions and conflicts. The last three lines again set up antitheses (‘from without: outwards: from within’, ‘life : activity’, ‘naïvety : consciousness’, ‘passion : beauty’). The deleted words seem to relate in some way to the last three lines; the eleventh line in particular evidently adumbrates Faust’s experiences in Part Two at the Emperor’s court (‘activity’) and with Helen (‘beauty’), episodes conceived at this time though not yet written. The last line probably also refers to the concluding phase of Part Two as Goethe now envisaged it, if we may take ‘creativity’ to refer to Faust’s land-reclamation enterprise or something similar, and ‘epilogue in Chaos on the way to Hell’ as an indication of the eventual non-tragic ending foreseen in the
Prologue in Heaven:
in an answering ‘epilogue’ Faust is somehow to be rescued from the Devil at the last moment (which is in fact what happens in the comic eucatastrophe of Act V).

paralipomenon BA
70 (1816): see Introd., pp. xxi f. and
passim
.

paralipomenon BA
73 (1826): see Introd., pp. xxi, xxviii and
passim
. Having decided in 1826 to publish what is now Act III, the ‘Helena’ Act, as a separate drama, Goethe considered providing an explanatory preface for the general public who had not studied the Faustus legend and knew nothing of what had happened to Goethe’s hero after the death of Gretchen. He planned to publish this preface, in advance of
Helena
itself, in his periodical
Art and Antiquity
, but evidently found it difficult to write. Three versions are extant, one consisting for the most part of a highly discursive synopsis of what was later to become Act II, especially the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’. The synopsis is preceded by a preamble in which he gives reasons for having at last decided to publish part of Part Two, and referring to the gap that must be bridged between the Faust of Part One and the ‘higher regions’ and ‘more dignified circumstances’ in which he encounters the classical Greek heroine. The much shortened version that actually appeared in
Art and Antiquity
omits the synopsis; I have here omitted the preamble and kept the lengthy but rather more illuminating synopsis. The relationship between this material and the finished Act II is discussed in the Introduction, see especially pp. xxx-xxxiv.

I.
Studies in English of
Faust
Part Two and
Faust
generally

Boyle, Nicholas, ‘The Politics of
Faust II:
Another Look at the Stratum of 1831’,
Publications of the English Goethe Society
, new series 52 (1981–2), 4–43.

Boyle, Nicholas,
‘Du ahnungsloser Engel du!:
Some Current Views of Goethe’s
Faust’, German Life and Letters
, new series 36 (1982–3), 116–47.

Gray, Ronald D.,
Goethe the Alchemist
(Cambridge University Press, 1952).

Littlejohns, Richard, ‘The Discussion between Goethe and Schiller on the Epic and Dramatic, and its Relevance to
Faust’, Neophilologus
, 71 (1987), 388–401.

Mason, Eudo C.,
Goethe’s Faust; Its Genesis and Purport
(University of California Press, 1967).

Williams, John R., ‘The Festival of Luna: A Study of the Lunar Symbolism in Goethe’s
Klassische Walpurgisnacht’, Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte
, 50 (1976), 640–63.

Williams, John R., ‘Faust’s Classical Education: Goethe’s Allegorical Treatment of Faust and Helen of Troy’,
Journal of European Studies
, 13 (1983), 103–10.

Williams, John R., ‘The Flatulence of Seismos: Goethe, Rabelais and the Geranomachia’,
Germanisch-romanische Monatsschrift
, new series 33 (1983), 27–41.

Williams, John R.,
Goethe’s Faust
, Allen and Unwin (London, 1987).

II.
Studies in German of
Faust
Part Two and
Faust
generally

Arens, Hans,
Kommentarzu Goethes Faust II
, Karl Winter Verlag (Heidelberg, 1989).

Beutler, Ernst, Introduction and Notes to
Faust
, in Goethe,
Gedenkausgabe
, vol. 5, Artemis-Verlag (Zürich, 1953).

Hamm, Heinz, ‘Julirevolution, Saint-Simonismus und Goethes abschließende Arbeit am
Faust’, Weimarer Beiträge
, 38/11 (1982), 70–91.

Hertz, Gottfried Wilhelm, ‘Zur Entstehungsgeschichte von
Faust II
Akt 5 (1825, 1826, 1830)’,
Euphorion
, 33 (1932), 244–77.

Hohlfeld, A. R., ‘Die Entstehung des Faust-Manuskripts von 1825–26 (VH2)’, Euphorion, 49 (1955), 283–304.

Lohmeyer, Dorothea,
Faust und die Welt
, Verlag C. H. Beck (Munich, 1975).

Lohmeyer, Karl, ‘Das Meer und die Wolken in den beiden letzten Aleten des
Faust’, Jahrbuch der Goethe-Gesellschaft
, 13 (1927), 106–33.

Mommsen, Katharina,
Goethe und 1001 Nacht
, Akademie-Verlag (Berlin, 1960).

Mommsen, Katharina,
Natur- und Fabelreich in Faust II
, de Gruyter (Berlin, 1968).

Pniower, Otto,
Goethes Faust: Zeugnisse und Excurse zu seiner Entstehungsge-schichte
, Weidmannsche Buchhandlung (Berlin, 1899).

Schadewaldt, Wolfgang, ‘Zur Entstehung der Elfenszene im 2. Teil des
Faust’, Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesge-schichte
, 29 (1955), 227–36.

Schuchard, G. C. L., ‘Julirevolution, St. Simonismus und die Faustpartien von 1831’,
Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie
, 60 (1935), 240–74, 362–84.

Staiger, Emil,
Goethe
, vol. 3, Atlantis-Verlag (Zürich, 1959).

Vaget, H. R., ‘Faust, der Feudalismus and die Restauration’,
Aleten des VI. Internationalen Germanisten-Kongresses Basel 1980
(Berne, 1980), 345–51.

Williams, John R., ‘Die Rache der Kraniche. Goethe,
Faust II
und die Julirevolution’,
Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie
, Sonderheft Goethe, 103 (1984), 105–27.

III.
Miscellaneous

Freud, Sigmund,
Complete Psychological Works
(Standard Edition), vol. 22, Hogarth Press and Institute of Psycho-Analysis (London, 1964).

Mann, Thomas,
Essays of Three Decades
, Seeker and Warburg (London, 1947).

Runciman, S.,
The Last Byzantine Renaissance
(Cambridge University Press, 1970).

Runciman, S.,
Mistra: Byzantine Capital of the Peloponnese
, Thames and Hudson (London, 1980).

Storr, Anthony, Solitude, HarperCollins (London, 1989).

Woodhouse, C. M.,
Gemistos Plethon: The Last of the Hellenes
(Oxford University Press, 1986).

IV.
Goethe’s conversations and correspondence (index of names
)

Boisserée,
Johann Sulpice (1783–1854): a connoisseur and art collector who became one of Goethe’s closer friends and advisers from about 1811 onwards, communicating to him in particular some of his passion for medieval art and architecture.

Eckermann,
Johann Peter (1792–1854): Goethe’s secretary and resident companion from 1823 onwards. His famous
Conversations
appeared after Goethe’s death, between 1835 and 1848.

Falk
, Johannes Daniel (1768–1826): a writer and philanthropist who lived in Weimar from 1798 onwards; his memoirs, published after Goethe’s death, are not thought to be wholly reliable.