and the Goddess of all victorious active forces sits aloft on her throne. Each change in the course of the allegory, the reader will observe, commences with the bright and attractive aspects of life and then advances to the opposite.
Eckermann reports a conversation which he had with Goethe in December, 1829, concerning this scene: “We spoke of the Carnival Masquerade, and how far it would be possible to represent it on the stage. ‘It would still be something more,’ said I, ‘than the market in Naples.’
“‘It would require an immense theatre,’ remarked Goethe, ‘and is hardly conceivable.’
“‘I hope to live to see it,’ was my answer. ‘I shall take especial delight in the elephant, guided by Prudence, with Victory above, and Fear and Hope in chains at the sides. Really, there can scarcely be a better allegory.’
“‘It would not be the first elephant on the stage,’ said Goethe. ‘One in Paris plays a complete part. He belongs to a political party, and takes the crown from the King to set it on his rival’s head. . . . . So you see that in our Carnival, we could depend on the elephant. But the whole is much too great, and would require a manager, such as is not easily found.’”
The addresses put into the mouths of Fear, Hope, and Prudence have less point and importance than any others in the Masquerade.
30. Zoïlo-Thersites.
Goethe takes Thersites from the Iliad, and unites him to the Thracian barrator, Zoïlus, who, in the third century before Christ, became so renowned by his venomous abuse of Plato, Isocrates, and especially Homer, that his name was applied by the Greeks to all vulgar, malicious scolds. The two characters, combined, represent the class of political slanderers, defamers of all good works, pessimists in the most offensive sense. The characteristics of this class are exhibited in still stronger and more repulsive forms, when Zoïlo-Thersites is changed into the Adder and Bat by the magic wand of the Herald,
