an early desire, but it was also a necessary escape from the irksome duties of his position at Weimar. He broke away forcibly from affairs of state in order to recuperate himself for poetry, and his eagerness and anxiety may be guessed from the circumstance that he kept his plan secret from every one except the Duke, fearing that he would never succeed if his intention should become known. It was the old superstition of keeping silence while lifting a buried treasure. The only manuscript he took with him was that of Faust, which he had brought from Frankfurt, and which was now so yellow and worn and frayed, that he says it might almost have passed for an ancient codex. Nevertheless, he did not succeed in returning to the work until the spring of 1788, just before his final departure from Rome. He writes in March: “It is a different thing, of course, to complete the work now, instead of fifteen years ago; but I think nothing is lost, since I feel sure of having regained the thread. In so far as regards the tone of the whole, also, I am comforted: I have already finished a new scene, and if the paper were only smoked, I think no one could pick it out from the old ones.” This new scene is the “Witches' Kitchen.” It is doubtful whether the “Cathedral” and “Forest and Cavern” were also added in Rome, or after his return to Weimar.
Finally, in 1790, in Göschen’s Leipzig edition of Goethe’s works, Faust appeared as “A Fragment.” I have already mentioned, in the Notes, the scenes which it contains, from I. to XX., with the exception of a gap from the middle of Scene I. to the middle of Scene IV., and XIX. (Night: Valentine’s Death). The impression which the publication produced was not encouraging: the fragment was not generally understood, and the power exhibited in the separate scenes was only partially appreciated.[1] Goethe, occupied with
- ↑ Heyne, in Göttingen, wrote: “There are fine passages in it, but with them there are such things as only he could give to the world, who takes all other men to be blockheads.” Wieland expressed his regret that it was such a patchwork of earlier and later labors. Schiller was then unsatisfied with the impression it produced, and only Körner and August Schlegel seem to have had some presentiment of Goethe’s design and the grandeur of his fragmentary performance.
