cost of much patience, with the theories of many sincere though self-asserting minds, and ascertaining what marvellous webs of meaning may be spun by the critic around a point of thought, simple enough in its poetical sense, I have always returned to Goethe’s other works, to his correspondence (especially with Schiller and Zelter) and his conversations, sure of gaining new light and refreshment.[1]
I should only confuse the reader by attempting to set forth all the forms of intellectual, ethical, or theological significance which have been attached to the characters of Faust. The intention of the work, reduced to its simplest element, is easily grasped; but if every true poet builds larger than he knows, this drama, completed by the slow accretion of sixty years of thought, may be assumed to have a vaster background of design, change, and reference than almost anything else in Literature. Like an old Gothic pile, its outline is sometimes obscured in a labyrinth of details. While, in the Notes which succeed, it will now and then be necessary for me to give the conflicting interpretations, I shall endeavor to wander from the text as little as possible, and, even when dealing with enigmas, to keep open a way past, if not through them. The embarrassing abundance of the material is somewhat diminished for me by the omission of all technical or philological criticism, and my chief task will be to distinguish between those helps which all
- ↑ I am glad to find that this method, drawn from my own experience, is substantially confirmed by Mr. Lewes, who, in his Life of Goethe (Book VI.), says: “Critics usually devote their whole attention to an exposition of the Idea of Faust; and it seems to me that in this laborious search after a remote explanation they have overlooked the more obvious and natural explanation furnished by the work itself. The reader who has followed me thus far will be aware that I have little sympathy with that Philosophy of Art which consists in translating Art into Philosophy, and that I trouble myself, and him, very little with ‘considerations on the Idea.’ Experience tells me that the Artists themselves had quite other objects in view than that of developing an Idea; and experience further says that the Artist’s public is by no means primarily anxious about the Idea, but leaves it entirely to the critics,—who cannot agree upon the point among themselves.”
