PROLOGUE IN HEAVEN
Translated by Louis MacNeice
raphael:
The chanting sun, as ever, rivals
The chanting of his brother spheres
And marches round his destined circuit—
A march that thunders in our ears.
5His aspect cheers the Hosts of Heaven
Though what his essence none can say;
These inconceivable creations
Keep the high state of their first day.
gabriel:
And swift, with inconceivable swiftness,
10The earth’s full splendor rolls around,
Celestial radiance alternating
With a dread night too deep to sound;
The sea against the rocks’ deep bases
Comes foaming up in far-flung force,
15And rock and sea go whirling onward
In the swift spheres’ eternal course.
michael:
And storms in rivalry are raging
From sea to land, from land to sea,
In frenzy forge the world a girdle
20From which no inmost part is free.
The blight of lightning flaming yonder
Marks where the thunder-bolt will play;
And yet Thine envoys , Lord, revere
The gentle movement of Thy day.
choir of angels:
25Thine aspect cheers the Hosts of Heaven
Though what Thine essence none can say,
And all Thy loftiest creations
Keep the high state of their first day.
[Enter mephistopheles. ]
mephistopheles:
Since you, O Lord, once more approach and ask
30If business down with us be light or heavy—
And in the past you’ve usually welcomed me—
That’s why you see me also at your levee.3
Excuse me, I can’t manage lofty words—
Not though your whole court jeer and find me low;
35My pathos4 certainly would make you laugh
Had you not left off laughing long ago.
Your suns and worlds mean nothing much to me;
How men torment themselves, that’s all I see.
The little god of the world, one can’t reshape, reshade him;
40He is as strange to-day as that first day you made him.
His life would be not so bad, not quite,
Had you not granted him a gleam of Heaven’s light;
He calls it Reason, uses it not the least
Except to be more beastly than any beast.
45He seems to me—if your Honor does not mind—
Like a grasshopper—the long-legged kind—
That’s always in flight and leaps as it flies along
And then in the grass strikes up its same old song.
I could only wish he confined himself to the grass!
50He thrusts his nose into every filth, alas.
lord:
Mephistopheles, have you no other news?
Do you always come here to accuse?
Is nothing ever right in your eyes on earth?
mephistopheles:
No, Lord! I find things there as downright bad as ever.
55I am sorry for men’s days of dread and dearth;
Poor things, my wish to plague ’em isn’t fervent .
lord:
Do you know Faust?
mephistopheles:
The Doctor?5
lord:
Aye, my servant.
mephistopheles:
Indeed! He serves you oddly enough, I think.
The fool has no earthly habits in meat and drink.
60The ferment in him drives him wide and far,
That he is mad he too has almost guessed;
He demands of heaven each fairest star
And of earth each highest joy and best,
And all that is new and all that is far
65Can bring no calm to the deep-sea swell of his breast.
lord:
Now he may serve me only gropingly,
Soon I shall lead him into the light.
The gardener knows when the sapling first turns green
That flowers and fruit will make the future bright.
mephistopheles:
70What do you wager?
You will lose him yet,
Provided you give me permission
To steer him gently the course I set.
lord:
So long as he walks the earth alive,
So long you may try what enters your head;
75Men make mistakes as long as they strive.
mephistopheles:
I thank you for that; as regards the dead,
The dead have never taken my fancy.
I favor cheeks that are full and rosy-red;
No corpse is welcome to my house;
80I work as the cat does with the mouse.
lord:
Very well; you have my full permission.
Divert this soul from its primal source
And carry it, if you can seize it,
Down with you upon your course—
85And stand ashamed when you must needs admit:
A good man with his groping intuitions
Still knows the path that is true and fit.
mephistopheles:
All right—but it won’t last for long.
I’m not afraid my bet will turn out wrong.
90And, if my aim prove true and strong,
Allow me to triumph wholeheartedly.
Dust shall he eat—and greedily—
Like my cousin the Snake6 renowned in tale and song.
lord:
That too you are free to give a trial;
95I have never hated the likes of you.
Of all the spirits of denial
The joker is the last that I eschew.
Man finds relaxation too attractive—
Too fond too soon of unconditional rest;
100Which is why I am pleased to give him a companion
Who lures and thrusts and must, as devil, be active.
But ye, true sons of Heaven, it is your duty
To take your joy in the living wealth of beauty.
The changing Essence which ever works and lives
105Wall you around with love, serene, secure!
And that which floats in flickering appearance
Fix ye it firm in thoughts that must endure.
choir of angels:
Thine aspect cheers the Hosts of Heaven
Though what Thine essence none can say,
110And all Thy loftiest creations
Keep the high state of their first day.
[Heaven closes. ]
mephistopheles [alone ]:
I like to see the Old One now and then
And try to keep relations on the level.
It’s really decent of so great a person
115To talk so humanely even to the Devil.
NIGHT
faust:
Here stand I, ach, Philosophy
Behind me and Law and Medicine too
And, to my cost, Theology—
All these I have sweated through and through
5And now you see me a poor fool
As wise as when I entered school!
They call me Master, they call me Doctor,
Ten years now I have dragged my college
Along by the nose through zig and zag
10Through up and down and round and round
And this is all that I have found—
The impossibility of knowledge!
It is this that burns away my heart;
Of course I am cleverer than the quacks,
15Than master and doctor, than clerk and priest,
I suffer no scruple or doubt in the least,
I have no qualms about devil or burning,
Which is just why all joy is torn from me,
I cannot presume to make use of my learning,
20I cannot presume I could open my mind
To proselytize2 and improve mankind.
Besides, I have neither goods nor gold,
Neither reputation nor rank in the world;
No dog would choose to continue so!
25Which is why I have given myself to Magic
To see if the Spirit may grant me to know
Through its force and its voice full many a secret,
May spare the sour sweat that I used to pour out
In talking of what I know nothing about,
30May grant me to learn what it is that girds
The world together in its inmost being,
That the seeing its whole germination, the seeing
Its workings, may end my traffic in words.
After summoning the Earth Spirit and finding it unwilling to assist him in his quest for knowledge, Faust lapses into a state of despair. He decides to end his life by drinking a cup of poison but abruptly changes his mind when he hears the tolling of church bells and the singing of choruses, celebrating the arrival of Easter. Setting out on a walk through the countryside with Wagner, his assistant, Faust is inspired by the beauty of spring and soothed by the peasants’ expressions of admiration and affection for him. When he returns to his study, however, his sense of contentment quickly dissipates. Alerted by the growling of his dog, Faust becomes aware of another presence in the room. When Faust threatens to use magic to defend himself against the unseen intruder, Mephistopheles comes forward from behind the stove, disguised as a traveling scholar. Faust soon becomes aware of Mephistopheles’s true identity, and he is intrigued by the possibility of establishing a contract with the devil. However, Faust falls asleep before the two can reach an agreement. In the following scene, Mephistopheles returns to the study to resume his discussion with Faust.
[The same room. Later. ]
faust:
Who’s knocking? Come in! Now who wants to annoy me?
mephistopheles [outside door ]:
35It’s I.
faust:
Come in!
mephistopheles [outside door ]:
You must say “Come in” three times.
faust:
Come in then!
mephistopheles [entering ]:
Thank you; you overjoy me.
We two, I hope, we shall be good friends;
40To chase those megrims3 of yours away
I am here like a fine young squire to-day,
In a suit of scarlet trimmed with gold
And a little cape of stiff brocade,
With a cock’s feather in my hat
45And at my side a long sharp blade,
And the most succinct advice I can give
Is that you dress up just like me,
So that uninhibited and free
You may find out what it means to live.
faust:
50The pain of earth’s constricted life, I fancy,
Will pierce me still, whatever my attire;
I am too old for mere amusement,
Too young to be without desire,
How can the world dispel my doubt?
55You must do without, you must do without!
That is the everlasting song
Which rings in every ear, which rings,
And which to us our whole life long
Every hour hoarsely sings.
60I wake in the morning only to feel appalled,
My eyes with bitter tears could run
To see the day which in its course
Will not fulfil a wish for me, not one;
The day which whittles away with obstinate carping
65All pleasures—even those of anticipation,
Which makes a thousand grimaces to obstruct
My heart when it is stirring in creation.
And again, when night comes down, in anguish
I must stretch out upon my bed
70And again no rest is granted me,
For wild dreams fill my mind with dread.
The God who dwells within my bosom
Can make my inmost soul react;
The God who sways my every power
75Is powerless with external fact.
And so existence weighs upon my breast
And I long for death and life—life I detest.
mephistopheles:
Yet death is never a wholly welcome guest.
faust:
O happy is he whom death in the dazzle of victory
80Crowns with the bloody laurel in the battling swirl!
Or he whom after the mad and breakneck dance
He comes upon in the arms of a girl!
O to have sunk away, delighted, deleted,
Before the Spirit of the Earth, before his might!
mephistopheles:
85Yet I know someone who failed to drink
A brown juice on a certain night.
faust:
Your hobby is espionage—is it not?
mephistopheles:
Oh I’m not omniscient4 —but I know a lot.
faust:
Whereas that tumult in my soul
90Was stilled by sweet familiar chimes
Which cozened the child that yet was in me
With echoes of more happy times,
I now curse all things that encompass
The soul with lures and jugglery
95And bind it in this dungeon of grief
With trickery and flattery.
Cursed in advance be the high opinion
That serves our spirit for a cloak!
Cursed be the dazzle of appearance
100Which bows our senses to its yoke!
Cursed be the lying dreams of glory,
The illusion that our name survives!
Cursed be the flattering things we own,
Servants and ploughs, children and wives!
105Cursed be Mammon5 when with his treasures
He makes us play the adventurous man
Or when for our luxurious pleasures
He duly spreads the soft divan!6
A curse on the balsam of the grape!
110A curse on the love that rides for a fall!
A curse on hope! A curse on faith!
And a curse on patience most of all!
[The invisible spirits sing again. ]
spirits:
Woe! Woe!
You have destroyed it,
115The beautiful world;
By your violent hand
’Tis downward hurled!
A half-god has dashed it asunder!
From under
120We bear off the rubble to nowhere
And ponder
Sadly the beauty departed.
Magnipotent
One among men,
125Magnificent
Build it again,
Build it again in your breast!
Let a new course of life
Begin
130With vision abounding
And new songs resounding
To welcome it in!
mephistopheles:
These are the juniors
Of my faction.
Hear how precociously7 they counsel
135Pleasure and action.
Out and away
From your lonely day
Which dries your senses and your juices
Their melody seduces.
140Stop playing with your grief which battens
Like a vulture on your life, your mind!
The worst of company would make you feel
That you are a man among mankind.
Not that it’s really my proposition
145To shove you among the common men;
Though I’m not one of the Upper Ten,
If you would like a coalition
With me for your career through life,
I am quite ready to fit in,
150I’m yours before you can say knife.
I am your comrade;
If you so crave,
I am your servant, I am your slave.
faust:
And what have I to undertake in return?
mephistopheles:
155Oh it’s early days to discuss what that is.
faust:
No, no, the devil is an egoist
And ready to do nothing gratis
Which is to benefit a stranger.
Tell me your terms and don’t prevaricate!8
160A servant like you in the house is a danger.
mephistopheles:
I will bind myself to your service in this world,
To be at your beck and never rest nor slack;
When we meet again on the other side,
In the same coin you shall pay me back.
faust:
165The other side gives me little trouble;
First batter this present world to rubble,
Then the other may rise—if that’s the plan.
This earth is where my springs of joy have started,
And this sun shines on me when broken-hearted;
170If I can first from them be parted,
Then let happen what will and can!
I wish to hear no more about it—
Whether there too men hate and love
Or whether in those spheres too, in the future,
175There is a Below or an Above.
mephistopheles:
With such an outlook you can risk it.
Sign on the line! In these next days you will get
Ravishing samples of my arts;
I am giving you what never man saw yet.
faust:
180Poor devil, can you give anything ever?
Was a human spirit in its high endeavor
Even once understood by one of your breed?
Have you got food which fails to feed?
Or red gold which, never at rest,
185Like mercury runs away through the hand?
A game at which one never wins?
A girl who, even when on my breast,
Pledges herself to my neighbor with her eyes?
The divine and lovely delight of honor
190Which falls like a falling star and dies?
Show me the fruits which, before they are plucked, decay
And the trees which day after day renew their green!
mephistopheles:
Such a commission doesn’t alarm me,
I have such treasures to purvey.
195But, my good friend, the time draws on when we
Should be glad to feast at our ease on something good.
faust:
If ever I stretch myself on a bed of ease,
Then I am finished! Is that understood?
If ever your flatteries can coax me
200To be pleased with myself, if ever you cast
A spell of pleasure that can hoax me—
Then let that day be my last!
That’s my wager!
mephistopheles:
Done!
faust:
Let’s shake!
205If ever I say to the passing moment
“Linger a while! Thou art so fair!”
Then you may cast me into fetters ,
I will gladly perish then and there!
Then you may set the death-bell tolling,
210Then from my service you are free,
The clock may stop, its hand may fall,
And that be the end of time for me!
mephistopheles:
Think what you’re saying, we shall not forget it.
faust:
And you are fully within your rights;
215I have made no mad or outrageous claim.
If I stay as I am, I am a slave—
Whether yours or another’s, it’s all the same.
mephistopheles:
I shall this very day at the College Banquet9
Enter your service with no more ado,
220But just one point—As a life-and-death insurance
I must trouble you for a line or two.
faust:
So you, you pedant, you too like things in writing?
Have you never known a man? Or a man’s word? Never?
Is it not enough that my word of mouth
225Puts all my days in bond for ever?
Does not the world rage on in all its streams
And shall a promise hamper me?
Yet this illusion reigns within our hearts
And from it who would be gladly free?
230Happy the man who can inwardly keep his word;
Whatever the cost, he will not be loath to pay!
But a parchment, duly inscribed and sealed,
Is a bogey10 from which all wince away.
The word dies on the tip of the pen
235And wax and leather lord it then.
What do you, evil spirit, require?
Bronze, marble, parchment, paper?
Quill or chisel or pencil of slate?
You may choose whichever you desire.
mephistopheles:
240How can you so exaggerate
With such a hectic rhetoric?
Any little snippet is quite good—
And you sign it with one little drop of blood.
faust:
If that is enough and is some use,
245One may as well pander to your fad.
mephistopheles:
Blood is a very special juice.
faust:
Only do not fear that I shall break this contract.
What I promise is nothing more
Than what all my powers are striving for.
250I have puffed myself up too much, it is only
Your sort that really fits my case.
The great Earth Spirit has despised me
And Nature shuts the door in my face.
The thread of thought is snapped asunder,
255have long loathed knowledge in all its fashions.
In the depths of sensuality
Let us now quench our glowing passions!
And at once make ready every wonder
Of unpenetrated sorcery!
260Let us cast ourselves into the torrent of time,
Into the whirl of eventfulness,
Where disappointment and success,
Pleasure and pain may chop and change
As chop and change they will and can;
265It is restless action makes the man.
mephistopheles:
No limit is fixed for you, no bound;
If you’d like to nibble at everything
Or to seize upon something flying round—
Well, may you have a run for your money!
270But seize your chance and don’t be funny!
faust:
I’ve told you, it is no question of happiness.
The most painful joy, enamored hate, enlivening
Disgust—I devote myself to all excess.
My breast, now cured of its appetite for knowledge,
275From now is open to all and every smart,
And what is allotted to the whole of mankind
That will I sample in my inmost heart,
Grasping the highest and lowest with my spirit,
Piling men’s weal and woe upon my neck,
280To extend myself to embrace all human selves
And to founder in the end, like them, a wreck.
mephistopheles:
O believe me, who have been chewing
These iron rations many a thousand year,
No human being can digest
285This stuff, from the cradle to the bier11
This universe—believe a devil—
Was made for no one but a god!
He exists in eternal light
But us he has brought into the darkness
290While your sole portion is day and night.
faust:
I will all the same!
mephistopheles:
That’s very nice.
There’s only one thing I find wrong;
Time is short, art is long.
You could do with a little artistic advice.
295Confederate with one of the poets
And let him flog his imagination
To heap all virtues on your head,
A head with such a reputation:
Lion’s bravery,
300Stag’s velocity,
Fire of Italy,
Northern tenacity .
Let him find out the secret art
Of combining craft with a noble heart
305And of being in love like a young man,
Hotly, but working to a plan.
Such a person—I’d like to meet him;
“Mr. Microcosm”12 is how I’d greet him.
faust:
What am I then if fate must bar
310My efforts to reach that crown of humanity
After which all my senses strive?
mephistopheles:
You are in the end . . . what you are.
You can put on full-bottomed wigs with a million locks,
You can put on stilts instead of your stocks,
315You remain for ever what you are.
faust:
I feel my endeavors have not been worth a pin
When I raked together the treasures of the human mind,
If at the end I but sit down to find
No new force welling up within.
320I have not a hair’s breadth more of height,
I am no nearer the Infinite.
mephistopheles:
My very good sir, you look at things
Just in the way that people do;
We must be cleverer than that
325Or the joys of life will escape from you.
Hell! You have surely hands and feet,
Also a head and you-know-what;
The pleasures I gather on the wing,
Are they less mine? Of course they’re not!
330Suppose I can afford six stallions,
I can add that horse-power to my score
And dash along and be a proper man
As if my legs were twenty-four.
So good-bye to thinking! On your toes!
335The world’s before us. Quick! Here goes!
I tell you, a chap who’s intellectual
Is like a beast on a blasted heath
Driven in circles by a demon
While a fine green meadow lies round beneath.
faust:
340How do we start?
mephistopheles:
We just say go—and skip.
But please get ready for this pleasure trip.
[Exit faust. ]
Only look down on knowledge and reason,
The highest gifts that men can prize,
345Only allow the spirit of lies
To confirm you in magic and illusion,
And then I have you body and soul.
Fate has given this man a spirit
Which is always pressing onward, beyond control,
350And whose mad striving overleaps
All joys of the earth between pole and pole.
Him shall I drag through the wilds of life
And through the flats of meaninglessness,
I shall make him flounder and gape and stick
355And to tease his insatiableness
Hang meat and drink in the air before his watering lips;
In vain he will pray to slake his inner thirst,
And even had he not sold himself to the devil
He would be equally accursed.
"A seminal work of the Romantic Movement, Faust dissects the philosophical problem of human damnation brought about by the desire for knowledge and personal happiness. A basically good man and a man of genius, Faust sells his soul to the Devil in a contract stipulating that only when he finds an experience so great that he wishes it to endure forever can the Devil take his soul. He finally reaches his goal, but the experience is one in which he helps his fellow man. Thus Mephistopheles loses despite his efforts" (Magill, "Faust" 307).
[Magill offers this critical evaluation of the wager:]
"[T]he Prologue in Heaven and the pact with Mephistopheles . . . are crucial to the philosophical aspect of the work. Mephistopheles is no longer the absolute opponent of God, but is included in the divine framework: he is a necessary force in creation, a gadfly. The Faust action now becomes a wager between God and Mephistopheles, which God necessarily must win. Thus the old blood contract between Faust and Mephistopheles must make Faust deny his very nature by giving up his quest for ever higher satisfactions, by giving him a moment of absolute fulfillment. Damnation, for Goethe, is the cessation of man’s striving toward the absolute, and this striving is good, no matter what mistakes man makes in his limited understanding. This is made clear in the Prologue: God recognizes that man will err as long as he strives, but He states that only by seeking after the absolute, however confusedly, can man fulfill his nature. Mephistopheles sees only the confusion, the futility of the results, and the coarseness of man’s life. He is blind to the visionary, poetic quality of Faust, the quality that animates his quest. This relationship established in part I will continue until the end of the play. In each episode Faust begins with an idealistic vision of what he seeks, but he never attains it. Seen externally, Mephistopheles is always right—it is only internally that Faust’s quest has meaning" (Magill, "Faust" 309).
[More of Magill’s critical commentary:]
"The final sections of Faust were composed between 1825-1831. In them, Faust’s appearances at court and the final scenes of Faust’s redemption return to the framework established in the Prologue. Faust’s last days are still unsatisfied and his quest is as violent as ever—his merchant ships turn to piracy and a gentle old couple are killed to make room for his palace. But his final vision is that of all humanity, striving onward to turn chaos into order, seeking a dimly imagined goal which is represented in the final scene by an endless stairway. Here, on the path toward the Divine, Faust is to continue to strive, and his live is redeemed by divine love, represented by Gretchen, who in spite of her crimes is also here, a penitent, praying for Faust. On earth all is transitory and insufficient. Only from the point of view of the Divine does all the confused striving attain meaning—meaning which was, in fact, implicit in the stanzas of the three archangels sung at the opening of the work, 12,000 lines earlier" (Magill, "Faust" 310).