The intention of the passage, we might suppose, is sufficiently clear. It was Goethe’s habit, as an author, to quietly ignore the conventional theology of his day: yet Mr. Heraud insists that “The Lord” of the Prologue is the Second Person of the Trinity, and that the four lines commencing with Das Werdende are simply another form of invoking “the fellowship of the Holy Ghost!” The unusual construction of these lines—the first half implying a benediction, and the second half a command—has been retained in the translation.
14. Faust’s Monologue.
This scene, from its commencement to the close of Wagner’s interview with Faust, was probably written as early as 1773. In style, as well as in substance, it suggests the puppet-play rather than the published Faust legend. In Wahrheit und Dichtung, Goethe says, in describing his intercourse with Herder, in Strasburg (1770): “The puppet-play echoed and vibrated in many tones through my mind. I, also, had gone from one branch of knowledge to another, and was early enough convinced of the vanity of all. I had tried life in many forms, and the experience had left me only the more unsatisfied and worried. I now carried these thoughts about with me, and indulged myself in them, in lonely hours, but without committing anything to writing. Most of all, I concealed from Herder my mystic-cabalistic chemistry, and everything connected with it.”
The text of various puppet-plays, which has been recovered by Simrock, Von der Hagen, and other zealous German scholars, enables us to detect the source of Goethe’s conception,—the original corner-stone whereupon he builded. In the play, as given in Ulm and Strasburg, there is a brief Prologue in Hell, in which Pluto orders the temptation of Faust. Notwithstanding the variation of the action in the different plays, the opening scene possesses very much the same character in all of them. As performed by Schütz, about the beginning of this century, Faust is represented as seated at a table, upon which lies an open book. His
