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Johann Wolfgang von GoetheA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
“Mephistopheles: Ah, he serves you well, indeed!
He scorns earth’s fare and drinks celestial mead.
Poor fool, his ferment drives him far!
He half knows his own madness, I’ll be bound.
He’d pillage heaven for its brightest star,
And earth for every last delight that’s to be found;
Not all that’s near nor all that’s far
Can satisfy a heart so restless and profound.
The Lord: He serves me, but still serves me in confusion;
I will soon lead him into clarity.
A gardener knows, one day this young green tree
Will blossom and bear fruit in rich profusion.
Mephistopheles: If I may be his guide, you’ll lose him
yet;
I’ll subtly lead him my way, if you’ll let
Me do so; shall we have a bet?
The Lord: He lives on earth, and while he is alive
You have my leave for the attempt;
Man errs, till he has ceased to strive.”
Mephistopheles and the Lord have this conversation in the third prologue, as they establish the bet that will serve as the premise of Faust. The quote sets up this important bet, as well as introduces Faust’s restlessness and torment.
“I see all our search for knowledge is vain,
And this burns my heart with bitter pain.
I’ve more sense, to be sure, than the learned fools,
The masters and pastors, the scribes for the schools;
No scruples to plague me, no irksome doubt,
No hell-fire or devil to worry about—
Yet I take no pleasure in anything now;
For now I know nothing, I wonder how
I can still keep up the pretence of teaching
Or bettering mankind with my empty preaching.
Can I even boast any worldly success?
What fame or riches do I possess?
No dog would put up with such an existence!
And so I am seeking magic’s assistance,
Calling on spirits and their might
To show me many a secret sight,
To relieve me of the wretched task
Of telling things I ought rather to ask,
To grant me a vision of Nature’s forces
That bind the world, all its seeds and sources
And innermost life—all this I shall see,
And stop peddling in words that mean nothing to me.”
Faust says this at the start of the play, as he sits in his study. It sets up his inner conflict that will define his actions throughout the play, as he feels unfulfilled by traditional scholarship and reading, and instead turns to the spiritual world in his quest for meaning and knowledge. It also sets up the recurring motif of words and their (lack of) value, as he speaks of “words that mean nothing to me.”
“I had the power
To summon you, but could not hold you there.
I felt in that ecstatic hour
So small, and yet so great: and then
You hurled me back so cruelly
Into the changeful common state of men.
What must I do now? Who shall counsel me?
What urge claims my obedience?
Alas, not only pain, even activity
Itself can stop our life’s advance. […]
But what is this? My eyes, magnetically drawn,
Are fixed on that one spot, where I can see
That little flask: why does sweet light break over me,
As when in a dark wood the gentle moonbeams dawn?
Unique alembic! Reverently I lift
You down and greet you. Now, most subtle gift
Compounded of the wit and art of man,
Distilment of all drowsy syrups, kind
Quintessence of all deadly and refined
Elixirs, come, and serve your master as you can! […]
A fiery chariot on light wings descends
And hovers by me! I will set forth here
On a new journey to the heaven’s ends,
To pure activity in a new sphere!
sublime life, o godlike joy! And how
Do I, the erstwhile worm, deserve it now?
I will be resolute, and turn away
For ever from the earth’s sweet day.
Dread doors, though all men sneak and shuffle past
You, I’ll confront you, tear you open wide!
Here it is time for me to prove at last
That by his noble deeds a man is deified;
Time not to shrink from the dark cavern where
Our fancy damns itself to its own tortured fate;
Time to approach the narrow gate
Ringed by the eternal flames of hell’s despair;
Time to step gladly over this great brink,
And if it is the void, into the void to sink!”
Faust says this after he summons and gets rejected by the Earth Spirit. It shows his misery and desperation before Mephistopheles arrives, which drives him to consider suicide and makes him disillusioned with the world and his life. It also introduces the poison, which will reappear throughout the play, first in the discussion of Faust’s father, and then in the poisoning of Gretchen’s mother.
By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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