Goethe's Standard of the Soul
GA 22
2. Goethe's Standard of the Soul, as Illustrated in Faust
[ 1 ] The inner soul's conflict which Goethe has embodied in the personality of Faust comes to light at the very beginning of the Drama, when Faust turns away from the sign of the Macrocosm to that of the Earth Spirit. The content of the first Faust Monologue up to this experience of the soul is preliminary. Faust's dis-satisfaction with the sciences and with his position as a man of learning is far less characteristic of Goethe's nature than the kinship which Faust feels to the Spirit Universal on the one side and to the Earth Spirit on the other. The all-inclusive harmony of the universe is revealed to the soul by the sign of the macrocosm:
How each the Whole its substance gives,
Each in the other works and lives!
Like heavenly forces rising and descending,
Their golden urns reciprocally lending,
With wings that winnow blessing
From Heaven through Earth I see them pressing,
Filling the All with harmony unceasing!
[ 2 ] If we take these words in conjunction with Goethe's knowledge of the sign of the Macrocosm, we come upon an experience of great significance in the soul of Faust. There appears before Faust's soul a sense picture of the Universe,—a picture of the sun itself, of the earth in connection with the other planets of the solar system, and of the activity of the single heavenly bodies as a revelation of the Divine Being guiding movement and reciprocal interplay. This is not a mechanical heaven, but a cosmic weaving of spiritual hierarchies whose effluence is the life of the world. Into this life man is placed, and he comes forth as the apotheosis of the work of all these Beings. Faust, however, cannot find in his soul the experience for which he is seeking even in the vision of this universal harmony. We can sense the yearning that gnaws in the depths of this soul: “How do I become Man in the true sense of the word?” The soul longs to experience what makes man consciously truly Man. In the sense image hovering there, the soul cannot call up from the depths of being that profound experience which would make it able to realise itself as the epitome of all that is there as the sign of the macrocosm. For this is the “knowledge” that can be trans-formed through intense inner experience, into “Self-Knowledge.” The very highest knowledge cannot directly comprehend the whole being of man. It can only comprehend a part of man. It must then be borne through life, and in inter-relation with life its range is gradually extended over the whole being of man. Faust lacks the patience to accept knowledge with those limitations which, in the early stages, must exist. He wants to experience instantaneously a soul-realization which can only come in the course of time. And so he turns away from the revelation of the Macrocosm:
[ 3 ] How grand a show! but, ah! a show alone.
[ 4] Knowledge can never be more than a picture, a reflection of life. Faust's desire is not for a picture of life, but for life itself. He turns therefore to the sign of the Earth Spirit, in which he has a symbol before him of the whole infinite being of man as a product of earth activity. The symbol calls forth in his soul a vision of all the infinitude of being which man bears within him, but which would stun him, overwhelm him, if he were to receive it gathered up into the perception of a single moment of discovery rather than drawn out into the many pictures of that knowledge which is discovered to him in the long course of life.
In the phenomenon of the Earth Spirit Faust sees what man is in reality, but the result is confusion when in the weakened reflection of the forces of cognition it does not penetrate to the consciousness. There was present in Goethe, not of course in a philosophical form, but as a living concept, that spiritual fear which overtakes man in his life of thought: what would become of me if I suddenly were to behold the riddle of my existence and had not the knowledge to master it!
[ 5 ] It was not Goethe's intention to express in his Faust the disillusionment of a misguided yearning for knowledge. His aim was rather to represent the conflict associated with this yearning—a conflict that has its seat in the being of man. Man in every moment of his existence is more than can be disclosed if his destiny is to be fulfilled. Man must evolve from his inner being; he must unfold that which he can only fully know after the development has taken place. The constitution of his forces of knowledge is such that when brought to bear prematurely upon what at the right time they must master, they are liable to deception as the result of their own operations. Faust lives in all that the words of the Earth Spirit reveal to him. But this, his own being, confuses and deceives him when it appears objectively before his soul at a time when the degree of maturity, to which he has attained, does not yield him the know-ledge whereby he can transform this being into a picture:
Thou'rt like the Spirit which thou comprehendest. Not me!
[ 6 ] Faust is profoundly shocked by these words. He has really looked upon himself, but he cannot compare himself to what he sees, because he does not know what he really is. The contemplation of the Self has deceived and confused the consciousness that is not ripe for it. Faust puts the question: “Not thee? Who then?” The answer is given in dramatic form. Wagner enters and is himself the answer to this, “Who then?” It was pride of soul in Faust that at this moment made him desire to grasp the secret of his own being. What lives in him is at first only the striving after this secret; Wagner is the reflected image of what he is able at the moment to know of himself. The scene with Wagner will be entirely misunderstood if the attention is merely directed to the contrast between the highly spiritual Faust and the very limited Wagner. In the meeting with Wagner after the Earth Spirit scene Faust has to realise that his power of cognition is really at the Wagner stage. In the dramatic imagination of this scene Wagner is the reflected image of Faust.
[ 7 ] This is something that the Earth Spirit cannot immediately reveal to Faust, for it must come to pass as a result of development. And Goethe felt compelled not to allow Faust to experience the depths of higher human existence only from the point of view of forty years of life, but also to bring before his soul in a kind of retrospect, all that had escaped him in his abstract striving for knowledge. In Wagner Faust confronts himself in his soul vision. The monologue uttered by the real “Faust,” beginning with the words:
How him alone all hope abandons ...
contains nothing but waves beating up from subconscious depths of soul, expressing themselves finally in the resolve to commit suicide. At this moment of experience Faust cannot but draw the inference from his life of feeling that “all hope” must “abandon” men. His soul is only saved from the consequences of this by the fact that life invokes before him something that to his abstract striving for knowledge was formerly meaningless: the Easter Festival of the human heart in its simplicity and the Easter Procession. During these experiences, brought back to him in retrospect from his semi-conscious youth, the contact with the spiritual world that he has had as a result of the meeting with the Earth Spirit, works in him. As a result he frees himself from this attitude of soul during the conversation with Wagner when he sees the Easter procession. Wagner remains in the region of abstract scientific endeavour. Faust must bring the soul experiences through which he has passed into real life in order that life may give him the power to find another answer than “Wagner” to the question “Not thee? Then who?
[ 8 ] A man who, like Faust, has had contact with the spiritual world in its reality, is bound to face life differently from men whose knowledge is limited to the phenomenona of sense existence and consists of conceptions derived from this alone. What Goethe has called the “eye of spiri” has opened for Faust as a result of experience. Life brings him to “conquests”, other than that of the Wagner being. Wagner is also a portion of that human nature which Faust has within him. Faust conquers it in that he subsequently makes living within him all that he failed to make living in his youth. Faust's endeavour to make the word of the Bible living is also part of the awakening. But during this process of awakening still another reflected image of his own being—Mephistopheles—appears before Faust's soul. Mephistopheles is the further, weightier answer to the “Not thee? Then who?” Faust must conquer Mephistopheles by the power of the life experiences in the soul that has had contact with the spiritual world. To see in the figure of Mephistopheles a portion of Faust's own being is not to sin against the artistic comprehension of the Faust Drama, for it is not suggested that Goethe intended to create a symbolical figure and not a living, dramatic personage in his Mephistopheles. In life itself man beholds in other men portions of his own being. Man recognises himself in other men. I do not assert that to me John Smith is only a symbol when I say: ‘I see in him a portion of my own being.’ The dramatic figures of Wagner and of Mephistopheles are individual, living beings; what Faust experiences through them is Self Perception.
[ 9 ] What does the School Scene in Faust really bring before the souls of those who allow it to work upon them? Nothing more nor less than the nature which Faust manifests to the students—the Mephistophelian element in him. When a man has not conquered Mephistopheles in his own nature he can be manifested as this figure of Mephistopheles who confronts the pupils. It appears to me that in this scene Goethe allowed something from an earlier composition to remain—something that he would certainly have remodelled, if as he remodelled the older portions he had been able completely to understand the spirit which the whole work now reveals. In accordance with the import of this spirit all Mephistopheles' dealings with the students must also be experienced by Faust. In the earlier composition of Faust, Goethe was not intent upon giving everything so dramatic a form that it appears in some way as an experience of Faust himself. In the final elaboration of his poem he has simply taken over a great deal that is not an integral part of the spirit of the later dramatic composition.
[ 10 ] The writer of this Essay belongs to the ranks of those readers of Faust who return to the poem again and again. His repeated reading has afforded him increasing insight into the infinite knowledge and experience of life which Goethe has embodied in it. He has, however, always failed to see Mephistopheles—in spite of his living dramatic qualities—as an unitary, inwardly uniform being. He fully understands why the commentators of Faust do not know how they should really interpret Mephistopheles. The idea has arisen that Mephistopheles is not a devil in the real sense, that he is only a servant of the Earth Spirit. But this is contradicted by what Mephistopheles himself says: “Fain would I go over to the Devil, if only I myself were not a Devil!” If we compare all that is expressed in Mephistopheles, we certainly do not get a uniform view.
[ 11 ] As Goethe worked out his Poem he found that it drew nearer and nearer to the deepest problems of human experience. The light streaming from these problems of experience shines into all the events narrated in the poem. Mephistopheles is an embodiment of what man has to overcome in the course of a deeper experience of life. In the figure of Mephistopheles there stands an inner opponent of what man must strive for from out of his being. But if we follow closely those experiences which Goethe has woven subtly into the creation of Mephistopheles, we do not find one such spiritual opponent of the nature of Man, but two. One grows out of man's willing and feeling nature, the other out of his intellectual nature. The willing and feeling nature strives to isolate man from the rest of the universe wherein the root and source of ais existence exist. Man is deceived by his nature of will and feeling into imagining that he can traverse his life's path by relying on his inner being alone. He is deceived into a disregard of the fact that he is a limb of the universe in the sense that a finger is a limb of the organism. Man is destined to spiritual death if he cuts himself off from the universe, just as a finger would be destined to physical death if it attempted to live apart from the organism. There is a rudimentary striving in man in the direction of such a separation. Wisdom in life is not gained by shutting the eyes to the existence of this rudimentary striving, but by conquering it, transforming it in such a way that instead of being an opponent, it becomes an aid to life. A man who like Faust, has had contact with the spiritual world, must enter into the fight against this opposing force in human life much more consciously than one who has had no such contact. The power of this Luciferic adversary of man can be dramatised into a Being. This Being works through those soul forces which strive in the inner man for the enhancement of Egoism.
[ 12 ] The other opposing force in human nature derives its power from the illusions to which man is exposed as a being who perceives and forms conceptions of the outer world. Experience of the outer world that is yielded by cognition is dependent upon the pictures which, in accordance with the particular attitude of his soul, and other multifarious circumstances, a man is able to make of this outer world. The Spirit of Illusion creeps into the formation of these pictures. It distorts the true relation to the outer world and to the rest of humanity into which man could bring himself if its operations were not there. It is also, for instance, the spirit of dissension and strife between man and man, and sets human beings into that state of subjection to circumstances which brings remorse and pangs of conscience in its train. In comparison with a figure of Persian Mythology, we may call it the Ahrimanic Spirit. The Persian Myths ascribe qualities to their figure of Ahriman which justify the use of this name.
[ 13 ] The Luciferic and Ahrimanic opponents of the wisdom of man approach human evolution in quite different ways. Goethe's Mephistopheles has clearly Ahrimanic qualities, and yet the Luciferic element also exists in him. A Faust nature is more strongly exposed to the temptations both of Ahriman and of Lucifer than one without spiritual experiences. It may now appear that instead of the one Mephistopheles Goethe might have placed two characteristic beings there in contrast to Faust. Faust would then have been led through his life's labyrinth in one way by the one figure, and in another by the second. In Goethe's Mephistopheles, the two different kinds of qualities, Luciferic and Ahrimanic, are mingled. This not only hinders the reader from making an uniform picture of Mephistopheles in his imagination, but it proved to be an obstacle to Goethe himself when again and again he tried to spin the thread of the Faust poem through his own life. One is conscious of a very natural desire to witness or hear much of what Mephistopheles does or says, from a different being. Of course Goethe attributed the difficulties which confronted him in the development of his Faust to many other things; but in his sub-consciousness there worked the twofold nature of Mephistopheles, and this made it difficult to guide the development of the course of Faust's existence into channels which must lead through the powers of opposition.
[ 14 ] Considerations of this kind call forth all too readily the cheap objection that one wants to put Goethe right. This objection must be tolerated for the sake of the necessity for understanding Goethe's personal relation-ship to his Faust poem. We need only be reminded of how Goethe complained to friends of the weakness of his creative power just at the time when he wanted to bring his “life-poem” to an end. Let us remember that Goethe in his advanced age needed Eckermann's encouragement to rouse him to the task of working out the plan of the continuation of Faust which he intended to incorporate as such into the third book of Poetry and Truth. Karl Julius Schröer rightly says (page 30, Third Edition, Part II., of his Essay on Faust): “Without Eckermann we should really have had nothing more than the plan which possibly would have had some sort of form like the ‘scheme of continuation’ of the ‘Natural daughter’ that is embodied in the work.” We know what such a plan is for the world “an object of consideration for the literary historian and nothing else.” The cessation of Goethe's work on Faust has been attributed to every kind of possibility and impossibility. People have tried in one way or another to reconcile the contradictions that are felt to exist in the figure of Mephistopheles. The student of Goethe cannot well disregard these things. Or are we to make a confession like that of Jacob Minor in his otherwise interest ing book Goethe's Faust (Vol. II., p. 28): “Goethe was approaching his fiftieth year; and from the period of his Swiss journey comes, as far as I know, the first sigh which the thought of approaching age drew from him in the beautiful poem Swiss Alps (Schweizeralpe). Thought as a harbinger of the wisdom of old age came more to the foreground even in him—with his eternal youth—who hitherto was only accustomed to behold and create. He makes plans and schemes on his Swiss journey like any real child of circumstance, just as he does in Faust.” But a consideration of Goethe's life can lead us to the view that in a poem like Faust, certain things must be presented which could only be the result of the experience of mature age. If poetic power can wane in old age—even in a Goethe—how could such a poem have some into being at all?
[ 15 ] Paradoxical as it may seem to many minds, a serious study of Goethe's personal relationship to his Faust and to the figure of Mephistopheles seem to force us to see in the latter an inner foundation of the difficulties experienced by Goethe in his life poem. The dual nature of the figure of Mephistopheles worked in the depths of his soul and did not emerge above the threshold of his consciousness. But because Faust's experiences must contain reflections of the deeds of Mephistopheles, obstacles were continually being set up when it was a question of developing dramatically the course of Faust's life, and as a result of the working of the dual nature of the opposing forces, the right impulses for the development would not come to light.
[ 16 ] The Prologue in Heaven, which with the Dedication and the Prologue of the Theatre now forms an introduction to the first Part of Faust, was first written in the year 1797. In Goethe's discussions with Schiller on the subject of the poem, and their outcome which is to be found in the correspondence between the two men, we can see that about this time Goethe altered his conception of those basic forces which revealed themselves as the life of Faust. Until then everything that comes to light in Faust flows out of that inner being of his soul that is urging him towards the consummation and widening of life. This inner impulse is the only one in evidence. Through the Prologue in Heaven Faust is placed in the whole world process as a seeking man. The spiritual powers that temper and maintain the world are revealed and the life of Faust is placed in the midst of their reciprocal co-operation and reaction. And so for the consciousness of the poet and of the reader, the being of Faust is removed into the Macrocosm where the Faust of Goethe as a youth did not wish to be. Mephistopheles appears “in Heaven” among the active cosmic beings. But just here the twofold being of Mephistopheles comes clearly into evidence. The “Lord” says:
Of all the bold denying spirits
The waggish knave least trouble doth create.
There must therefore be yet other spirits who “deny” in the world struggle. And how does this agree with Mephistopheles' unrest at the end of Part II. in reference to the corpse, when he says “in Heaven:
I much prefer the cheeks where ruddy blood is leaping
And when a corpse approaches close my house.
Let us imagine that instead of one Mephistopheles, a Luciferic and an Ahrimanic spirit oppose the “Lord” in the fight for Faust. An Ahrimanic spirit must feel unrest before a “corpse,” for Ahriman is the spirit of illusion. If we go to the sources of illusion we find them to be connected with the mortal, material element working in human life. The forces of knowledge, of cognition, which become active to the degree in which the impulses appear in them which finally bring about death, underlie the Ahrimanic illusion. The impulses of Will and of reeling work in opposition to these forces. They are connected with budding, growing life; they are most powerful in childhood and youth. The more a man preserves the impulses of youth, the more vitally do these forces emerge in his old age. In these forces lie the Luciferic temptation. Lucifer can say: “I love the cheeks where ruddy blood is leaping”; Ahriman cannot “close his house” to a corpse. And the “Lord” can say to Ahriman:
Of all the bold denying spirits
The waggish knave least trouble cloth create.
The scoffing nature is akin to the nature of illusion. And so far as the “Eternal” in man is concerned, the Ahrimanic being governing the material and transitory, is less significant than the other denying spirit who is inwardly bound up with the kernel of man's being. The perception of a dual nature in Mephistopheles is not the result of an arbitrary fancy but the self-evident feeling of the existence of a duality in the constitution of man's universe and life. Goethe could not help being aware subconsciously of an element which made him feel: I am confronting the universal form of life with the Faust-Mephistopheles paradox, but it will not harmonise.
[ 17 ] If what has here been said were taken in the sense of the pedantic, critical suggestion that Goethe ought to have drawn Mephistopheles otherwise, it could easily be refuted. It would only be necessary to point out that in Goethe's imagination this figure grew as unity,—nay had to grow as such, out of the tradition of the Faust Legend, out of Germanic and Northern Mythology. And over against the evidence of “contradictions” in a living figure, apart from the fact that what is full of life must necessarily contain “life and its contradictions,” we could adduce Goethe's own clear words: “If phantasy (imagination) did not produce things which must for ever remain problematic to the intellect, there would not be much in it. This is what distinguishes poetry from prose.” What is here suggested does not in any sense lie in this region. But what Karl Julius Schröer says (page xciv., 3rd edition of Part II. of his Essay on Faust) is indisputable: “Sparkling, witty, brilliantly descriptive, and manifesting a penetration of the obscure background of the most sublime problems of humanity ... the poem stimulates in us feelings of the most intense reverence ...” This is the whole point: all that lay before Goethe's imagination in his Faust poem appeared to him against the “obscure background of the most sublime problems of humanity” which he penetrated again and again. The attitude in which Schröer, with his deep knowledge and rare love of Goethe's genius, makes these statements is unassailable, because Schröer cannot be reproached with having wished to explain Goethe's poem in the sense of an abstract development of ideas. But because the background of the most sublime problems of humanity stood before Goethe's soul, the traditional figure of the “Northern Devil” expanded before his spiritual gaze into that dual Being to which the profound student of life and the universe will be led when he realises how Man is placed within the whole world process.
[ 18 ] The Mephistopheles figure which hovered before Goethe when he began his poem was in line with Faust's estrangement from the import of the Macrocosm. The conflicts of the soul then rising from his inner being led to a struggle against the opposing power that lays hold of man's inner nature and is Luciferic. But Goethe was bound to lead Faust into the struggle with the powers of the external world also. The nearer he came to the elaboration of the second part of Faust, the more strongly did he feel this necessity. And in the “Classical Walpurgis Night” which was meant to lead up to the actual meeting between Faust and Helena, world powers and macrocosmic events entered into connection with human experiences. Mephistopheles entering into this connection must assume an Ahrimanic character. As a result of his scientific world conception Goethe had built for himself the bridge over which he was able to bring world events into connection with human evolution. He did this in his “Classical Walpurgis Night.” The poetic value of this will only be appreciated when it is fully realised that in this part of Faust Goethe so completely succeeded in moulding Nature's conceptions into artistic form that nothing of a conceptual, abstract nature remained in them; everything flowed into imagery, into an imaginative form. It is an esthetic superstition to reproach the “Classical Walpurgis Night” with containing a distressing element of abstract scientific theories. And perhaps the bridge between supersensible, macrocosmic events and human experiences is more marked in the mighty concluding picture of the Fifth Act of Part II.
[ 19 ] There seems no doubt that Goethe's genius underwent a development in the course of his life as a result of which the dual nature of the cosmic powers opposing man came before his soul's vision and that in the development of his Faust he realised the necessity for overcoming its own beginning, for the life of Faust is turned again to the Macrocosm, from which his incomplete knowledge had at first estranged him.
A wondrous show! but ah! a show alone.
[ 20 ] Yet into this show there played the forces of all embracing macrocosmic events. The “show” became Life, because Faust strove towards goals that lead man, as a result of the life struggle in his inner being, into conflicts with Powers that make him appear not only as a struggling member of the universe, but as a match for the struggle.
II. Goethes Geistesart in ihrer Offenbarung durch seinen Faust
Diese Ausführungen werden in dieser Neu-Ausgabe [1918] neu hinzugefügt
[ 1 ] Der Seelenkonflikt, den Goethe aus seinem eigenen Innenleben in die Persönlichkeit des Faust gelegt hat, leuchtet in voller Stärke gleich im Anfang des Dramas auf. Da, wo Faust sich von dem Zeichen des Makrokosmos ab- und demjenigen des Erdgeistes zuwendet. Was der erste Fausttrionolog bis zu diesem Seelenerlebnis enthält, ist im Grunde doch nur ein Auftakt. Die Unbefriedigung an den Wissenschaften, die andere an seiner Lage als Gelehrter, sind etwas, was in die besondere Goethesche Eigenart viel weniger hineinweist als das Verhältnis, in dem sich Faust zu dem Geiste des ganzen Alls auf der einen Seite und zu dem der Erde auf der andern fühlt. Aus dem Zeichen des Makrokosmos offenbart sich der Seele die umfassende Harmonie der ganzen Welt:
Wie alles sich zum Ganzen webt,
Eins in dem andern wirkt und lebt!
Wie Himmelskräfte auf und nieder steigen
Und sich die goldnen Eimer reichen!
Mit segenduftenden Schwingen
Vom Himmel durch die Erde dringen,
Harmonisch all das All durchklingen!
[ 2 ] Hält man diese Worte zusammen mit dem, was Goethe als Zeichen des Makrokosmos gekannt hat, so fällt der Blick auf ein bedeutsames Erlebnis in Fausts Seele. Vor dieser stand ein Sinnbild des Weltalls. Die Erde im Zusammenhang mit den anderen Planeten des Sonnensystems und die Sonne selbst. Die Wirksamkeit der einzelnen Himmelskörper als Offenbarung von Geistwesen, die Bewegung und Wechselverhältnis lenken. Nicht eine mechanische Himmelssphäre, sondern ein kosmisches Weben von geistigen Hierarchien, als dessen Ausfluß das Leben der Welt erscheint, in die der Mensch hineingestellt ist. Und dieser selbst als Zusammenfluß des Wirkens all dieser Wesen. - Doch Faust kann in dem Anschauen dieser All-Harmonie in seiner Seele nicht das Erleben fühlen, nach dem er strebt. Man empfindet, in den Untergründen dieser Seele wühlt die Sehnsucht: wie werde ich im vollsten Sinne des Wortes «Mensch»? Sie möchte in sich erleben, was den Menschen bewußt zum wahren Menschen macht. Sie kann aus den Tiefen ihres Wesens nicht in derjenigen Art, die ihr vorschwebt, dasjenige Erfühlen heraufholen, durch das sie sich als den Zusammenfluß alles dessen erscheinen könnte, was ihr durch das Zeichen des Makrokosmos vorgestellt wird. Denn dies ist «Erkenntnis», welche sich durch das innere starke Erleben in «Selbsterkenntnis» umwandeln kann. Keine Erkenntnis aber, auch nicht die höchste, kann unmittelbar den ganzen Menschen ergreifen. Sie kann nur einen Teil des Menschen ergreifen; der Mensch muß sie dann durch das Leben tragen; und im Wechselverhältnis mit dem Leben dehnt sie dann ihren Bereich über das ganze menschliche Wesen aus. Faust fehlt die Geduld, die Erkenntnis als das hinzunehmen, was sie zunächst allein sein kann. Er möchte im Augenblick eine Seelen-Erfüllung erleben, die nur im Laufe der Zeit zu erleben ist. Und so wendet er sich ab von der Offenbarung des Makrokosmos:
[ 3 ] Welch Schauspiel! aber ach! ein Schauspiel nur !
[ 4 ] Die Erkenntnis kann nicht mehr sein als Bild des Lebens. Faust will nicht ein Bild des Lebens; er will das Leben selbst. - So wendet er sich dem Zeichen des Erdgeistes zu. In diesem Zeichen hat er vor sich ein Sinnbild des ganzen unendlichen Menschenwesens, wie dieses ist durch die Kräfte der Erdenwirksamkeit. Das Sinnbild ruft in seiner Seele die Anschauung wach von allem, was der Mensch an unbegrenzter Wesenheit in sich trägt, was ihn aber betäuben müßte, wenn er es nicht auseinandergezogen in die Bilder der im Leben sich offenbarenden Erkenntnis, sondern zusammengezogen in die Wahrnehmung eines einzigen Erkenntnis-Augen-blickes empfänge. In der Erscheinung des Erdgeistes tritt vor Faust, was der Mensch in Wirklichkeit ist, was aber betäubend wirkt, wenn es nicht in der abgeschwächten Spiegelung der Erkenntniskräfte in das Bewußtsein eintritt. Gewiß nicht in philosophischer Form, wohl aber in einer lebendigen Erkenntnisempfindung war in Goethe die geistige Angst, welche den Menschen überkommt bei dem Gedanken: was wird mit mir, wenn das Rätsel meines Daseins mir plötzlich anschaulich wird, ich es aber erkennend nicht bewältigen kann !
[ 5 ] Goethe hat in seinen Faust nicht etwa nur die Enttäuschungen eines in die Irre gehenden Erkenntnisdranges hin-einlegen wollen; er wollte vielmehr die im Wesen des Menschen begründeten Konflikte dieses Dranges selbst darstellen. Der Mensch ist in jedem Augenblicke seines Daseins mehr, als sich zum Vollbringen seines Lebens enthüllen darf. Der Mensch soll sich entwickeln aus seinem Innern heraus; er soll entfalten, was in vollem Maße zu erkennen ihm erst nach der Entfaltung gegönnt sein kann. Seine Erkenntniskräfte sind so geartet, daß sie selbst zur Unzeit an das herangebracht, was sie zur rechten Zeit bewältigen sollen, durch ihren eigenen Gegenstand betäubt werden können. - Faust lebt in alle dem, was in den Worten des Erdgeists sich offenbart. Aber dieses sein eigenes Wesen betäubt ihn, als es ihm anschaulich vor die Seele tritt in dem Augenblicke, in dem seine Lebensreife, dieses Wesen nicht erkennend, zum Bilde wandeln kann.
Du gleichst dem Geist, den du begreifst,
Nicht mir !
Bei diesen Worten stürzt Faust zusammen. Im Grunde hat er sich geschaut; aber er kann sich nicht gleichen, weil er, was er ist, nicht erkennend umfassen kann. Die Selbstanschauung hat das dieser Anschauung nicht gewachsene Bewußtsein betäubt.
[ 6 ] Faust stellt die Frage: «Nicht dir ! Wem denn?» - Die Antwort wird dramatisch gegeben. Wagner tritt ein. Dieser selbst ist die Antwort auf das «Wem denn?». Seelischer Hochmut war es, der in Faust im Augenblicke das Geheimnis des eigenen Wesens erfassen wollte. Was in ihm lebt, ist zunächst nur das Streben nach diesem Geheimnis; das Ebenbild dessen, was er im Augenblicke von sich erkennend umfassen kann, ist Wagner. Man wird die Szene mit Wagner ganz mißverstehen, wenn man nur auf den Gegensatz blickt zwischen dem hochgeistigen Faust und dem beschränkten Wagner. In der Begegnung mit diesem nach der Erdgeistszene sollte Faust begreiflich werden, daß er mit seiner Erkenntniskraft im Grunde auf der Wagnerstufe steht. Dramatisch gedacht ist in der hier in Frage kommenden Szene Wagner das Ebenbild von Faust.
[ 7 ] Was durch den Erdgeist sich für Faust nicht in einem Augenblicke offenbaren konnte, es mußte aus der Entwicklung des Lebens sich ergeben. Und Goethe fühlte das Bedürfnis, Faust nicht nur von dem Ausgangspunkte seines etwa vierzigjährigen Lebens aus das weitere Menschendasein vertieft durchmachen zu lassen, sondern, gewissermaßen rückschauend, vor seine Seele auch dasjenige treten zu lassen, dem er sich in seinem abstrakten Erkenntnisstreben entzogen hat. In Wagner stand er sich selbst vor dem Seelenauge. Der Monolog, der sich in dem vollendeten Faust an die Stelle anschließt: «Wie nur dem Kopf nicht alle Hoffnung schwindet ...», enthält in seinen Worten nur Wogen, die aus unterbewußten Seelentiefen heraufschlagen und die zuletzt ausmünden in den Entschluss zu dem Selbstmord. Faust kann in diesem Augenblicke seines Erlebens nur die Gefühlsfolgerung ziehen, daß dem Menschen «alle Hoffnung schwinden» müsse. Vor dieser Gefühls-Schlußfolgerung rettet seine Seele nur, daß das Leben vor seinen Geist zaubert, was vorher an seinem abstrakten Erkenntnisstreben wesenlos vorbeigezogen ist: die Osterfeier des einfachen Menschengemütes und der Osterspaziergang. Während dieser Erlebnisse, die ihm die nicht voll erlebte Jugend wenigstens im Rückblick vor die Seele bringen, wirkt in ihm nach, was er durch die Berührung mit der geistigen Welt, durch die Begegnung mit dem Erdgeist erfahren hat. Durch diese Nachwirkung löst er sich während der Gespräche mit Wagner beim Osterspaziergang von dessen Seelenverfassung los. Wagner bleibt im Gebiete des abstrakten Wissenschaftsstrebens; Faust muß die Seelenerfahrungen, die er gemacht hat, in das unmittelbare Leben hineintragen, auf daß ihm dieses Leben die Macht gibt, eine andere Antwort als Wagner auf die Frage zu bekommen: «Nicht dir ! Wem denn?».
[ 8 ] Wer wie Faust von der geistigen Welt in ihrer Wirklichkeit berührt worden ist, der muß dem Leben anders gegenüberstehen als derjenige, dem sich nur das Sinnendasein geoffenbart hat und dessen Erkenntnis nur in Vorstellungen besteht, welche von diesem Sinnendasein hergeholt sind. Was Goethe das «Geistesauge» nennt: für Faust ist es durch sein Erlebnis geöffnet. Ihn bringt das Leben noch zu anderen «Überwindungen» als zu derjenigen der Wagner-Wesenheit. Wagner ist auch ein Stück der Menschennatur, die Faust in sich trägt. Er überwindet sie, indem er in sich nachträglich belebt, was er zu beleben in der Jugendzeit versäumt hat. Auch die Belebung des Bibelwortes, die Faust sucht, gehört noch zur Wiedererweckung des Versäumten. Aber eben während dieser Belebung tritt ein anderes «Eben-bild» des eigenen Wesens vor Fausts Seele: der Mephistopheles. Er ist die weitere schwerwiegendere Antwort auf das «Nicht dir ! Wem denn?». Ihn hat er durch dasjenige zu überwinden, was die Lebenserfahrungen in seiner von der Geisteswelt berührten Seele werden können. Man sündigt gewiß nicht gegen die künstlerische Erfassung des Faust-dramas, wenn man in Mephistopheles einen Teil von Fausts Wesen selbst sieht. Denn man behauptet damit nicht, daß Goethe in dem Mephistopheles nicht habe eine vollebendige dramatische Gestalt, sondern nur eine symbolische Figur schaffen wollen. Auch im Leben ist es so, daß der Mensch in anderen Menschen Teile seiner eigenen Wesenheit anschaut. Man erkennt sich an den andern Menschen. Ich behaupte nicht, daß Hans Müller nur ein Symbol für mich ist, wenn ich sage: ich schaue in ihm ein Stück meines eigenen Wesens. Die dramatischen Gestalten des Wagner und des Mephistopheles sind individuell lebensvolle Wesen; was Faust durch sie erlebt, ist Selbstanschauung.
[ 9 ] Was steht im Grunde im Fortgange des Faustdramas durch die Schüler-Szene vor der Seele dessen, der dieses Drama auf sich wirken läßt ? Doch nichts anderes als die Art, wie Faust seinen Schülern durch dasjenige gegenübertreten kann, was in ihm selbst von Mephistopheles ist. Als das, was in Mephistopheles dem Schüler gegenübertritt, kann sich der Mensch offenbaren, wenn er den Mephistopheles in sich nicht überwindet. Mir scheint allerdings, daß in dieser Szene von einer früheren Ausarbeitung seines Faust Goethe etwas stehen gelassen hat, was er wohl umgearbeitet hätte, wenn er sich überhaupt in eine vollständige Umarbeitung der älteren Teile in den Geist hinein, den jetzt das Ganze zeigt, hätte finden können. Im Sinne dieses Geistes müßte, was Mephistopheles mit dem Schüler treibt, auch von Faust erlebt werden. Das ist nicht der Fall. Aber Goethe war bei der früheren Ausarbeitung seines Faust nicht darauf bedacht, alles so dramatisch zu gestalten, daß es in irgendeiner Art auch als Erlebnis des Faust selbst erscheint. Und er hat dann in die letzte Ausgestaltung seiner Dichtung manches einfach herüber-genommen, was dem angedeuteten Geiste der späteren dramatischen Gestaltung sich nicht einfügt.
[ 10 ] Der Verfasser dieser Ausführungen gehört zu denjenigen Lesern des Faust, die zu dieser Dichtung immer wieder zurückkehren. Bei solchem Rückkehren traten ihm stets als Leser neue Einblicke vor die Seele in das, was Goethe an unermeßlicher Lebenserkenntnis und Lebenserfahrung in seinen Faust hineingelegt hat. Doch wollte es ihm nie glükken, in Mephistopheles trotz dessen dramatischer Lebendigkeit eine einheitliche, innerlich ungebrochene Wesenheit zu erkennen. Er fand es endlich sogar begreiflich, daß die Faustkommentatoren nicht recht wissen, als was sie 52 Mephistopheles eigentlich ansehen sollen. Die Ansicht ist aufgetaucht, Mephistopheles sei kein rechter Teufel, sondern nur ein Diener des Erdgeistes. Dem widerspricht doch wieder, daß Mephistopheles einmal selbst sagt:
Ich möcht' mich gleich dem Teufel übergeben,
Wenn ich nur selbst kein Teufel wär' !
Hält man zusammen, was in Mephistopheles sich ausspricht: man kommt eben denn doch nicht zurecht.
[ 11 ] Nun hat sich für Goethe im Fortarbeiten an seiner Faustdichtung diese immer mehr an die tiefsten menschlichen Rätselerlebnisse herangerückt. Das Licht, das von diesen Rätselerlebnissen ausströmt, leuchtet überall in die dargestellten Ereignisse seiner Dichtung hinein. In Mephistopheles verkörpert sich, was der Mensch im Laufe einer tieferen Lebenserfahrung zu überwinden hat. Ein innerer Gegner dessen, was der Mensch aus seiner Wesenheit heraus erstreben muß, steht in der Gestalt des Mephistopheles da. - Wer aber die Erlebnisse völlig verfolgt, die Goethe in die Schöpfung des Mephistopheles hineingeheimnißt hat, der kommt nicht auf einen solchen geistigen Gegner der Menschennatur, sondern auf zwei. Der eine erwächst aus dem Willens- und Gefühlswesen, der andere aus dem Erkenntniswesen des Menschen. Das Willens- und Gefühiswesen strebt danach, den Menschen von der übrigen Welt, in der er Wurzel und Quelle seines Daseins hat, zu isolieren. Es gaukelt dem Menschen vor, daß er seinen Lebensweg gehen könne, indem er sich ganz nur auf sein inneres Wesen stützt. Es täuscht darüber hinweg, daß der Mensch am Weltganzen ein Glied ist, wie ein Finger am Organismus. Daß er sich zum geistigen Tode verurteilt, wenn er sich vom Ganzen der Welt abschnürt, 53 so wie der Finger sich zum physischen Tode verurteilen würde, wenn er getrennt vom Organismus leben wollte. In dem Menschen ist ein elementares Streben nach solcher Abschnürung. Lebensweisheit wird nicht dadurch erworben, daß man sich gegen dieses elementarische Streben blind stellt, sondern dadurch, daß man es in seiner Eigenart überwindet, indem man es verwandelt, so daß es aus einem Gegner zu einem Helfer des Lebens wird. Wer wie Faust von der Geisteswelt berührt worden ist, der muß viel bewußter in den Kampf mit dieser dem Menschenieben gegnerischen Macht verstrickt werden als derjenige, dem solche Berührung frrn geblieben ist. Als Wesen dramatisiert kann diese Macht der luziferische Widerpart des Menschen genannt werden. [Vergleiche : Rudolf Steiner, Geisteswissensebaftliebe Erläuterungen zu Goethes Faust. Band 1 und II. Freiburg i. Br. 1955 und 1956.] Er wirkt durch die im eigenen Innern der Menschenwesenheit nach Steigerung des Egoismus streben-den Seelenkräfte.
[ 12 ] Der andere Gegner der Menschennatur schöpft seine Kraft aus den Täuschungen, denen der Mensch als die Außenwelt wahrnehmendes und vorstellendes Wesen ausgesetzt ist. Das vom Erkennen getragene Erleben der Außenwelt ist von den Bildern abhängig, die sich der Mensch von dieser Außenwelt nach der jeweiligen Verfassung seiner Seele, nach dem Gesichtspunkte, auf dem er steht, nach den allermannigfaltigsten andern Vorbedingungen machen kann. In die Entstehung dieser Bilder nistet sich der Geist der Täuschung ein. Er verzerrt das Verhältnis der Wahrheit, in das sich der Mensch ohne dessen Wirksamkeit zur Außenwelt und zur übrigen Menschheit setzen könnte. Er ist zum Beispiel auch der Geist der Zwietracht und des Streites zwischen Mensch und Mensch. Er bringt die Menschen in solche gegenseitige Abhängigkeiten, die Reue und Gewissensbisse zur Folge haben. Man kann diesen Geist im Anklange an eine Gestalt der persischen Mythe den ahrimanischen Geist nennen. [Siehe Bemerkung zu Seite 53] Die persische Mythe legt ihrem Ahriman Eigenschaften bei, die zum Gebrauch dieses Namens berechtigen.
[ 13 ] Luziferischer und ahrimanischer Widerpart der Menschenweisheit treten in ganz verschiedener Art an die menschliche Entwicklung heran. Goethes Mephistopheles trägt nun deutlich ahrimanische Züge; und doch lebt in ihm auch das luziferische Element. Eine Faustnatur ist den Versuchungen Ahrimans ebenso wie denjenigen Luzifers in stärkerem Maße ausgesetzt als eine solche, die nicht geistige Erfahrungen gemacht hat. Man könnte sich nun denken, daß Goethe statt des einen Mephistopheles die zwei gekennzeichneten Wesen Faust gegenübergestellt hätte. Faust wäre dann in die eine Art seiner Lebenslabyrinthe durch das eine, in die andere durch das andere geführt worden. So wie Goethe seinen Mephistopheles gekennzeichnet hat, sind in demselben uneinheitlich luziferische und ahrimanische Züge vermengt. Dies verhindert nicht nur den Leser, sich ein einheitliches Bild des Mephistopheles in der Phantasie zu formen, sondern es trat Goethe selbst hindernd in den Weg, wenn er immer wieder von neuem durch sein Lehen hindurch den Faden der Faustdichtung fortspinnen wollte. Man verspürt eben einen ganz naturgemäßen Drang, manches, was Mephistopheles tut oder sagt, von einem anderen Wesen getan zu sehen oder gesagt zu hören. Gewiß, Goethe hat die Schwierigkeiten, die sich ihm bei der Fortsetzung seines Faust entgegengestellt haben, manchem ganz anderen zugeschrieben; in seinem Unterbewußtsein aber wirkte die zwiespältige Wesenheit des Mephistopheles, die es schwierig machte, die Fortführung des Lebenslaufes des Faust in Bahnen zu geleiten, welche durch die dem Leben widerstrebenden Mächte hindurchführen müssen.
[ 14 ] Gegen Ausführungen wie diese ergibt sich nur allzuleicht der gewiß billige Einwand, man wolle Goethe korrigieren. Man muß diesen Einwand ertragen im Hinblick auf die Notwendigkeit, Goethes persönliches Verhältnis zu seiner Faustdichtung zu verstehen. Man verfolge doch nur, wie Goethe gegenüber Freunden gerade da über das Erlahmen seiner Schaffenskraft klagt, als er sich anschicken möchte, die «Dichtung seines Lebens» zu Ende zu führen. Man bedenke, daß er im hohen Alter Eckermanns Zuspruch braucht, um sich aufzuraffen, den Plan der Faustfortsetzung, den er als solchen dem dritten Buch von «Wahrheit und Dichtung» einverleiben will, auszuarbeiten. Karl Julius Schröer kann mit Recht 1Seite XXX der dritten Auflage des zweiten Teiles seiner Faustausgabe sagen : «Ohne Eckermann hätten wir wohl weiter nichts als den erwähnten Plan, der vielleicht eine Gestalt hätte wie das ,Schema zur Fortsetzung' der ,natürlichen Tochter', das in die Werke aufgenommen ist. Wir wissen, was ein solcher Plan für die Welt ist; ein Betrachtungsgegenstand für den Literarhistoriker, weiter nichts.» - Man hat das Stocken von Goethes Arbeit an seinem Faust aliem Möglichen und Unmöglichen zugeschrieben; man hat sich bemüht, die in der Gestalt des Mephistopheles gefühlten Widersprüche in der einen oder der anderen Art «aufzulösen». Der Betrachter Goethes kommt über beides nicht leicht hinweg. Oder soll man sich wirklich zu einem Bekenntnis herbeilassen, wie es Jakob Minor in seinem übrigens interessanten Buche «Goethes Faust» (2. Band, S. 28) ablegt? «Goethe stand ... nahe dem fünfzigsten Jahre; und aus der Zeit der Schweizerreise stammt, soviel ich weiß, der erste Seufzer, den ihm der Gedanke an das herannahende Alter in dem schönen Gedichte ,Schweizeralpe' entlockt hat. Auch bei ihm, dem Ewigjungen, der bisher nur zu schauen und zu gestalten gewohnt war, tritt nun der Gedanke als Vorläufer der Weisheit des Alters mehr in den Vordergrund. Er schematisiert, er rubriziert als echter Sohn des umständlichen Vaters auf der Schweizerreise wie bei seinem Faust.» Man kann doch aus der Betrachtung des Lebens auch die Anschauung gewinnen, daß in einer solchen Dichtung, wie dem Goetheschen Faust, Dinge dargestellt werden müssen, die erst durch die Lebenserfahrung des höheren Alters gewonnen werden können. Müßte selbst bei einem Goethe mit diesem höheren Alter die Dichterkraft versiegen: wie könnte eine solche Dichtung überhaupt entstehen?
[ 15 ] So paradox es mancher Gesinnung auch erscheinen mag: eine ernste Betrachtung des persönlichen Verhältnisses Goethes zu seinem Faust und eine solche der Gestalt des Mephistopheles scheinen dazu zu drängen, in der letzteren einen inneren Grund zu sehen für die Schwierigkeiten, die Goethe seiner Lebensdichtung gegenüber empfunden hat. Die Zwiespältigkeit der Mephistophelesfigur wirkte in den Untergründen seiner Seele; sie trat nicht herauf über die Schwelle seines Bewußtseins. Da aber die Erlebnisse des Faust Spiegelungen der Taten des Mephistopheles enthalten müssen, so stellten sich stets Hemmungen ein, wenn der Lebenslauf des Faust dramatisch fortgeführt werden sollte, und aus dem Wirken des uneinheitlichen Widersachers nicht die rechten Impulse für eine solche Fortführung sich ergeben wollten.
[ 16 ] Der «Prolog im Himmel», der jetzt mit der «Zueignung» und dem «Vorspiel auf dem Theater» den ersten Teil von Goethes Faust einleitet, ist erst 1797 gedichtet. Aus den Verhandlungen, die Goethe über seine Dichtung mit Schiller geführt hat, und deren Niederschlag sich in dem Briefwechsel der beiden findet, kann man ersehen, daß er um diese Zeit die Grundkräfte umgedacht hat, als deren Offenbarung das Leben des Faust erscheint. Bis dahin erfließt für die Anschauung dessen, was an Faust sich zeigt, alles aus dessen nach Lebensvollendung und Lebensweitung drängenden SeelenInneren. Man sieht keine anderen Impulse als diese inneren. Durch den «Prolog im Himmel» wird Faust als strebender Mensch in den ganzen Weltzusammenhang hineingestellt. Die geistigen Mächte, welche die Welt in Wirksamkeit versetzen und erhalten, zeigen sich in ihrer Entfaltung; und in ihr Zusammen- und Gegeneinanderwirken ist das Leben des Faust hineingestellt. So wird wenigstens für das Bewußtsein des Dichters und des Lesers Fausts Wesenheit in den Makrokosmos hineinversetzt, in den sich der Faust des jungen Goethe durch seine Erkenntnis nicht hineinstellen wollte. Mephistopheles tritt unter den wirkenden Weltenwesen «im Himmel» auf. Aber gerade da tritt auch das zwiespältige Wesen des Mephistopheles deutlich in die Erscheinung.
Von allen Geistern, die verneinen,
Ist mir der Schalk am wenigsten zur Last,
sagt der «Herr». Es müßte also noch andere Geister, die «verneinen», im Weltenkampfe geben. Und wie stimmt es zu der Bemühung des Mephistopheles am Schluß des zweiten Teiles des Faust um den Leichnam, wenn er sich hier «im Himmel» so äußert :
Am meisten lieb' ich mir die vollen frischen Wangen.
Für einen Leichnam bin ich nicht zu Haus.
Man denke sich: statt des einen Mephistopheles stünden ein luziferischer und ein ahrimanischer Geist dem «Herrn» gegenüber im Kampf um den Faust. Ein ahrimanischer muß sich um den «Leichnam» bemühen, denn er ist der Geist der Täuschung. Geht man den Quellen der Täuschung nach, so findet man, daß sie mit dem zusammenhängen, was als das Sterblich-Materielle schon im Leben des Menschen wirkt. Die Erkenntniskräfte, welche sich regen in demselben Maße, in dem diejenigen Impulse in ihm auftauchen, die zuletzt den Tod herbeiführen, unterliegen der ahrimanischen Täuschung. Die Willens- und Gefühisimpulse wirken diesen Kräften entgegen. Sie hängen zusammen mit dem sprießenden, wachsenden Leben. Sie sind in Kindheit und Jugend am mächtigsten. Sie treten im Alter in dem Grade lebhafter auf, als sich der Mensch die Antriebe der Jugend in dieses Alter hinüberrettet. Sie bergen die luziferische Abirrung in sich. Luzifer kann sagen: ich liebe mir die «vollen frischen Wangen»; Ahriman muß für einen Leichnam «zu Hause» sein. Und der «Herr» kann zu Ahriman sagen: «Von allen Geistern, die verneinen, ist mir der Schalk am wenigsten zur Last.» Denn die Schalk-Natur ist mit der Täusche-Natur verwandt. Und für das «Ewige» im Menschen ist die das Materiell-Vergängliche beherrschende Ahrimanwesenheit weniger bedeutend als die andere «verneinende» Wesenheit, die innig mit dem Wesenskern des Menschen verknüpft ist. Nicht eine Phantasie-Willkür ist es, was in Mephistopheles eine Zwienatur empfindet, sondern das selbstverständliche Fühlen eines zwiefach Wesenhaften in der menschlichen Welt- und Lebensgestaltung. Goethe muß etwas in seinem Unterbewußtsein empfunden haben, das ihn ahnen ließ : ich bringe den Gegensatz Faust-Mephistopheles vor die universale Lebensgestaltung; aber diese will zu diesem Gegensatz nicht stimmen.
[ 17 ] Wäre, was hier gesagt ist, im Sinne der pedantisch bedenklichen Forderung gemeint: Goethe hätte den Mephistopheles anders zeichnen sollen, so könnte es ganz leicht widerlegt werden. Man brauchte nur darauf hinzuweisen, wie in Goethes Phantasie diese Gestalt aus der Überlieferung der Faustsage, aus der deutschen und nordischen Mythologie als eine einheitliche hervorgegangen ist und hervorgehen mußte. Und gegen das Aufzeigen von «Widersprüchen» in einer lebendigen Gestalt könnte man, abgesehen davon, daß, was lebensvoll ist, gerade das «Leben mit seinen Widersprüchen» enthalten muß, sich an Goethes klares Wort halten : «Wenn durch die Phantasie nicht Dinge entstünden, die für den Verstand ewig problematisch bleiben, so wäre überhaupt zu der Phantasie nicht viel. Dies ist es, wodurch sich die Poesie von der Prosa unterscheidet. » -Nein, auf diesem Felde liegt das nicht, was hier gemeint ist. Aber unbestreitbar ist, was Karl Julius Schröer 2Seite XCIV der dritten Auflage des zweiten Teiles seiner Faustausgabe sagt: «Großartig spielend, mit überlegenem Humor scherzend, meisterhaft charakterisierend bei fortwährend durchblickendem tiefen Hintergrunde höchster Fragen der Menschheit hebt uns die Dichtung endlich zur Andacht hehrster Empfindungen empor ...» Das ist es, worauf es ankommt: was in seiner Faustdichtung vor Goethes Phantasie stand, das erschien ihm auf dem «fortwährend durchblickenden tiefen Hintergrunde höchster Fragen der Menschheit». Die Gesinnung, aus welcher in gründlicher Goethe-Erkenntnis und edler Liebe zu Goethes Art Schröer dies vorbringt, kann gewiß nicht angefochten werden, da Schröer jedenfalls nicht vorgeworfen werden kann, er wolle die Dichtung Goethes im Sinne einer abstrakten Ideenentwicklung erklären. - Aber, weil Goethe den Hintergrund höchster Fragen der Menschheit vor der Seele hatte, erweiterte sich für seinen Geistes blick die überlieferte Gestalt des «nordischen Teufels» zu jener zwiespältigen Wesenheit, zu welcher der ernste Betrachter des Lebens und der Welt nun einmal geführt wird, wenn er erkennend schaut, wie die Menschenwesenheit in das Ganze des Weltalls hineingestellt ist.
[ 18 ] Die Mephistopheles-Gestalt, welche Goethe vorschwebte, als er seine Dichtung begann, war angemessen der Abwendung des Faust von dem Sinne des Makrokosmos. Die Seelenkonflikte, die sich da aus seinemlnnern erhoben, führten zu einem Kampf gegen die gegnerische Macht, welche den Menschen im Innern anfaßt und die einen luziferischen Charakter hat. Aber Goethe war genötigt, des zweiten Teiles des Faust näherte, um so mehr empfand er diese Notwendigkeit. Und in der «Klassischen Walpurgisnacht», die zur wirklichen Begegnung des Faust mit Helena führen sollte, treten Weltenmächte, tritt makrokosmisches Geschehen in Zusammenhang mit den Erlebnissen des Menschen. Indem Mephistopheles in diesen Zusammenhang eingreift, muß er einen ahrirnanischen Charakter annehmen. Goethe hatte sich durch seine naturwissenschaftliche Weltanschauung die Brücke gebaut, über die er Weltgeschehen in die Menschen-entwicklung herüberbringen konnte. Er hat das getan in seiner «Klassischen Walpurgisnacht». Deren dichterischen Wert wird man erst erkennen, wenn man voll durchschauen wird, wie in diesem Gebiete des Faust es Goethe gelungen ist, Naturanschauungen künstlerisch so ganz zu bezwingen, daß an ihnen kein begrifflich-abstrakter Rest bleibt, sondern alles in das Bild, in die phantasiegemäße Gestaltung eingeflossen ist. Es ist nur ästhetischer Aberglaube, wenn man der «Klassischen Walpurgisnacht» vorwirft : sie enthalte einen peinlichen Rest abstrakter naturwissenschaftlicher Theorien. Und in vielleicht noch größerem Maße ist in dem gewaltigen Schlußbild des fünften Aktes des zweiten Teiles die Brücke geschlagen zwischen übersinnlichem All-Geschehen und Menschen-Erlebnis.
[ 19 ] Es scheint keinem Zweifel unterworfen: Goethes Geistesart nahm im Laufe seines Lebens eine Entwicklung, durch die ihm die zwiespältige Wesenheit der dem Menschen gegnerischen Weltmächte vor das Seelenauge trat, und er hat die Notwendigkeit empfunden, im Fortgange seiner Faustschöpfung deren Anfang selbst zu überwinden, indem das Leben den Faust dem Makrokosmos zuwendet, von dem er sich erst einst durch die einseitige Erkenntnis abgewendet hat.
Welch Schauspiel ! aber ach ! ein Schauspiel nur !
[ 20 ] In das Schauspiel traten aber die Kräfte des umfassenden Weltgeschehens ein. Es wurde Leben, weil Faust nach Zielen strebt, die den Menschen durch den Lebenskampf in seinem Innern zum Konflikte mit den Mächten führen, welche ihn als Glied des Weltganzen kämpfend, aber den Kampf aufnehmend erscheinen lassen.
II Goethe's spiritual nature in its revelation through his Faust
These remarks are newly added in this new edition [1918]
[ 1 ] The conflict of souls that Goethe has placed in the personality of Faust from his own inner life shines out in full force right at the beginning of the drama. There, where Faust turns away from the sign of the macrocosm and towards that of the earth spirit. What the first Faust trionologue contains up to this soul experience is basically only a prelude. The dissatisfaction with the sciences, the other with his situation as a scholar, are something that is much less indicative of Goethe's particular character than the relationship in which Faust feels himself to the spirit of the whole universe on the one hand and to that of the earth on the other. From the sign of the macrocosm, the comprehensive harmony of the whole world is revealed to the soul:
How everything weaves itself into the whole,
One works and lives in the other! How heavenly forces rise and fall
And pass the golden buckets to each other! With wings fragrant with blessing
Penetrate from heaven through the earth,
Harmoniously resounding through all the universe!>
[ 2 ] If we hold these words together with what Goethe knew as a sign of the macrocosm, we see a significant experience in Faust's soul. In front of him stood a symbol of the universe. The earth in connection with the other planets of the solar system and the sun itself. The effectiveness of the individual celestial bodies as a revelation of spiritual beings that direct movement and interrelationships. Not a mechanical celestial sphere, but a cosmic weaving of spiritual hierarchies, as the outflow of which appears the life of the world into which man is placed. And man himself as the confluence of the activity of all these beings. - But Faust cannot feel the experience he is striving for in the contemplation of this all-harmony in his soul. One senses a longing stirring in the subsoil of this soul: how can I become "human" in the fullest sense of the word? It wants to experience within itself what consciously makes a person a true human being. It cannot bring up from the depths of its being, in the way it has in mind, that feeling through which it could appear to itself as the confluence of all that is presented to it through the sign of the macrocosm. For this is "knowledge", which can be transformed into "self-knowledge" through strong inner experience. However, no knowledge, not even the highest, can directly take hold of the whole person. It can only seize a part of man; man must then carry it through life; and in interaction with life it then extends its sphere over the whole human being. Faust lacks the patience to accept knowledge for what it can initially be on its own. He wants to experience a soul fulfillment in the moment that can only be experienced in the course of time. And so he turns away from the revelation of the macrocosm:
[ 3 ] What a spectacle! but alas! a spectacle only!
[ 4 ] Knowledge can be no more than an image of life. Faust does not want an image of life; he wants life itself. - So he turns to the sign of the earth spirit. In this sign he has before him a symbol of the whole infinite human being as it is through the forces of earthly activity. The symbol evokes in his soul the vision of all that man carries within himself in unlimited essence, but which would have to stupefy him if he did not receive it drawn apart into the images of the knowledge revealing itself in life, but drawn together into the perception of a single insightful glance. In the appearance of the earth spirit, what man is in reality appears before Faust, but this has a numbing effect if it does not enter consciousness in the attenuated reflection of the powers of cognition. Certainly not in philosophical form, but certainly in a vivid sense of cognition was the spiritual fear in Goethe that overcomes man at the thought: what will happen to me if the riddle of my existence suddenly becomes clear to me, but I cannot come to terms with it through cognition!>
[ 5 ] Goethe did not merely want to include in his Faust the disappointments of a desire for knowledge that goes astray; rather, he wanted to depict the conflicts of this desire that are rooted in the nature of man himself. In every moment of his existence, man is more than he is allowed to reveal in order to fulfill his life. Man is to develop out of his inner being; he is to unfold what he can only be allowed to fully recognize after he has unfolded. His powers of cognition are such that even when brought at the wrong time to what they are supposed to master at the right time, they can be stunned by their own object. - Faust lives in all that is revealed in the words of the earth spirit. But this being of his own stuns him when it comes vividly before his soul at the moment when his maturity, not recognizing this being, can transform it into an image.>
You are like the spirit you comprehend,
Not me!
At these words, Faust collapses. Basically, he has seen himself; but he cannot resemble himself because he cannot recognize what he is. Self-perception has anaesthetized the consciousness that is not equal to this perception.>
[ 6 ] Faust asks the question: "Not you! To whom?" - The answer is given dramatically. Wagner enters. He himself is the answer to the "To whom?". It was spiritual arrogance that wanted to grasp the secret of Faust's own being in an instant. What lives in him is initially only the striving for this secret; the image of what he can grasp in the moment of recognizing himself is Wagner. One will completely misunderstand the scene with Wagner if one only looks at the contrast between the highly spiritual Faust and the limited Wagner. In the encounter with the latter after the earth spirit scene, Faust should realize that he is basically on Wagner's level with his power of cognition. In dramatic terms, Wagner is the image of Faust in the scene in question here.
[ 7 ] What could not be revealed to Faust in an instant through the earth spirit had to result from the development of life. And Goethe felt the need not only to let Faust go through the rest of his human existence in depth from the starting point of his life of about forty years, but also, looking back as it were, to let that from which he had withdrawn in his abstract striving for knowledge come before his soul. In Wagner, he stood before the eye of his soul. The monologue that follows the passage in the completed Faust: "How only the head does not lose all hope ...", contains in its words only waves that surge up from the subconscious depths of the soul and finally culminate in the decision to commit suicide. In this moment of his experience, Faust can only draw the emotional conclusion that "all hope must fade". His soul is only saved from this emotional conclusion by the fact that life conjures before his mind what had previously passed insubstantially by his abstract striving for knowledge: the Easter celebration of the simple human mind and the Easter walk. During these experiences, which at least in retrospect bring his not fully experienced youth before his soul, what he has experienced through his contact with the spiritual world, through his encounter with the earth spirit, continues to have an effect on him. Through this after-effect, he detaches himself from Wagner's state of mind during his conversations with him on the Easter walk. Wagner remains in the realm of abstract scientific striving; Faust must carry the soul experiences he has had into immediate life, so that this life gives him the power to get a different answer than Wagner to the question: "Not to you! To whom then?"
[ 8 ] He who, like Faust, has been touched by the spiritual world in its reality, must face life differently than he to whom only the sense existence has revealed itself and whose knowledge consists only in ideas which are derived from this sense existence. What Goethe calls the "spiritual eye": for Faust it is opened by his experience. Life brings him to other "overcoming" than that of the Wagnerian being. Wagner is also a piece of the human nature that Faust carries within him. He overcomes it by subsequently reviving in himself what he had neglected to revive in his youth. The revival of the biblical word that Faust seeks is also part of the reawakening of what he has neglected. But it is precisely during this revival that another "image" of his own being appears before Faust's soul: Mephistopheles. He is the more serious answer to the "Not you! To whom then?". He has to overcome him through what the life experiences in his soul, touched by the spiritual world, can become. One is certainly not sinning against the artistic understanding of the Faust drama if one sees in Mephistopheles a part of Faust's being itself. For one does not thereby assert that Goethe did not want to create a fully living dramatic figure in Mephistopheles, but only a symbolic figure. It is also the case in life that man sees parts of his own being in other people. One recognizes oneself in other people. I am not claiming that Hans Müller is only a symbol for me when I say that I see a part of my own being in him. The dramatic figures of Wagner and Mephistopheles are individually vivid beings; what Faust experiences through them is self-perception.
[ 9 ] In the progress of the Faust drama through the pupil scene, what basically stands before the soul of those who allow this drama to affect them? But nothing other than the way in which Faust can confront his pupils through that which is in himself of Mephistopheles. Man can reveal himself as that which in Mephistopheles confronts the pupil if he does not overcome Mephistopheles in himself. It seems to me, however, that in this scene Goethe has left something from an earlier elaboration of his Faust, which he would probably have reworked if he had been able to find his way into a complete reworking of the older parts into the spirit that the whole now shows. In the sense of this spirit, what Mephistopheles does with the pupil would also have to be experienced by Faust. This is not the case. But in the earlier elaboration of his Faust, Goethe was not concerned to make everything so dramatic that it would also appear in some way as an experience of Faust himself. And in the final formulation of his poem, he simply carried over some things that did not fit in with the implied spirit of the later dramatic form.
[ 10 ] The author of these remarks is one of those readers of Faust who return to this poem again and again. In such returns, new insights into the immeasurable knowledge and experience of life that Goethe has put into his Faust have always come before his soul as a reader. Yet he never succeeded in recognizing in Mephistopheles, despite his dramatic liveliness, a unified, inwardly unbroken being. He finally even found it understandable that the commentators on Faust do not quite know what they should actually regard Mephistopheles as. The view has arisen that Mephistopheles is not a real devil, but only a servant of the earth spirit. This is contradicted by the fact that Mephistopheles himself once says:
I would like to hand myself over to the devil,
If only I wasn't a devil myself!
Hold together what is expressed in Mephistopheles: you just can't get along after all.
[ 11 ] Now, as Goethe continued to work on his Faust poem, it drew ever closer to the deepest human puzzle experiences. The light that emanates from these puzzling experiences shines everywhere in the events depicted in his poetry. Mephistopheles embodies what man has to overcome in the course of a deeper experience of life. The figure of Mephistopheles is an inner opponent of what man must strive for out of his being. - However, anyone who follows the experiences that Goethe has secretly incorporated into the creation of Mephistopheles will not discover one such spiritual opponent of human nature, but two. One arises from the will and emotional being, the other from the cognitive being of man. The being of will and feeling strives to isolate man from the rest of the world, in which he has the root and source of his existence. It deludes man into believing that he can go his own way in life by relying entirely on his inner being. It conceals the fact that man is a link in the world as a whole, like a finger in an organism. That he condemns himself to spiritual death if he cuts himself off from the whole of the world, just as the finger would condemn itself to physical death if it wanted to live separately from the organism. In man there is an elementary striving for such separation. Wisdom of life is not acquired by blindly opposing this elementary striving, but by overcoming it in its own nature, by transforming it so that it turns from an opponent into a helper of life. He who, like Faust, has been touched by the spiritual world must become much more consciously involved in the struggle with this power that opposes the love of man than he who has not been touched in this way. Dramatized as a being, this power can be called the Luciferic adversary of man. [Compare: Rudolf Steiner, Geisteswissensebaftliebe Erläuterungen zu Goethes Faust. Vol. 1 and II. Freiburg i. Br. 1955 and 1956]. It works through the soul forces striving for an increase of egoism within the human being.>
[ 12 ] The other opponent of human nature draws its strength from the deceptions to which man is exposed as a being that perceives and imagines the outside world. The experience of the external world based on cognition is dependent on the images that man can form of this external world according to the respective condition of his soul, according to the point of view on which he stands, according to the most diverse other preconditions. The spirit of deception nests itself in the formation of these images. It distorts the relation of truth in which man could place himself to the outside world and to the rest of mankind without its efficacy. It is also, for example, the spirit of discord and strife between man and man. It brings people into mutual dependencies that result in remorse and remorse. This spirit can be called the Ahrimanic spirit, in reference to a figure from Persian mythology. [See note on page 53] The Persian myth attaches qualities to its Ahriman that justify the use of this name.>
[ 13 ] Luciferian and Ahrimanic opponents of human wisdom approach human development in very different ways. Goethe's Mephistopheles now clearly bears Ahrimanic traits; and yet the Luciferic element also lives in him. A Faustian nature is exposed to the temptations of Ahriman as well as those of Lucifer to a greater degree than one that has not had spiritual experiences. One could now imagine that Goethe, instead of the one Mephistopheles, would have contrasted the two characterized beings with Faust. Faust would then have been led into one of the labyrinths of his life by the one and into the other by the other. The way Goethe has characterized his Mephistopheles, Luciferian and Ahrimanic traits are inconsistently mixed in him. This not only prevents the reader from forming a unified image of Mephistopheles in his imagination, but it also hindered Goethe himself when he wanted to continue spinning the thread of the Faust poem again and again through his fiefdom. One feels a natural urge to see or hear another being doing or saying some of the things Mephistopheles does or says. Certainly, Goethe attributed the difficulties he encountered in continuing his Faust to something completely different; in his subconscious, however, the ambivalent nature of Mephistopheles was at work, making it difficult to guide the continuation of Faust's life in paths that must lead through the forces that oppose life.
[ 14 ] It is all too easy to object to statements such as these on the grounds that one wants to correct Goethe. This objection must be borne in view of the need to understand Goethe's personal relationship to his Faust poem. Just observe how Goethe complains to friends about the flagging of his creative powers just as he is about to complete the "poetry of his life". Consider that in his old age he needs Eckermann's encouragement to pull himself together to work out the plan for the continuation of Faust, which he wants to include as such in the third book of "Truth and Poetry". Karl Julius Schröer can rightly say 1on page XXX of the third edition of the second part of his Faust edition: "Without Eckermann, we would probably have nothing more than the plan mentioned, which would perhaps have a form like the 'scheme for the continuation' of the 'natural daughter', which is included in the works. We know what such a plan is for the world; an object of contemplation for the literary historian, nothing more." - The stagnation of Goethe's work on his Faust has been attributed to the possible and the impossible; efforts have been made to "resolve" the contradictions felt in the figure of Mephistopheles in one way or another. The viewer of Goethe cannot easily get over either. Or should we really allow ourselves to make a confession, as Jakob Minor does in his interesting book "Goethe's Faust" (2nd volume, p. 28)? "Goethe was ... approaching his fiftieth year; and, as far as I know, the first sigh that the thought of approaching old age elicited from him in the beautiful poem 'Schweizeralpe' dates from the time of the Swiss journey. For him too, the eternal youth, who until then had only been used to looking and creating, thought now comes more to the fore as a precursor of the wisdom of old age. He schematizes, he rubricates as the true son of the awkward father on the Swiss journey, as with his Faust." From the observation of life, one can also gain the insight that in such a poem as Goethe's Faust, things must be depicted that can only be gained through the life experience of old age. If even Goethe's poetic power had to dry up at this advanced age, how could such a poem be created at all?
[ 15 ] As paradoxical as it may seem to some, a serious consideration of Goethe's personal relationship to his Faust and that of the figure of Mephistopheles seem to urge us to see in the latter an inner reason for the difficulties Goethe felt towards his life's poetry. The ambivalence of the figure of Mephistopheles worked in the depths of his soul; it did not rise above the threshold of his consciousness. But since Faust's experiences must contain reflections of Mephistopheles' deeds, inhibitions always arose when the course of Faust's life was to be continued dramatically and the right impulses for such a continuation did not arise from the work of the inconsistent adversary.
[ 16 ] The "Prologue in Heaven", which now introduces the first part of Goethe's Faust with the "Zueignung" and the "Prelude at the Theater", was not composed until 1797. From the negotiations Goethe had with Schiller about his poetry, which are reflected in their correspondence, it can be seen that around this time he was rethinking the fundamental forces as the revelation of which the life of Faust appears. Until then, the view of what is revealed in Faust flows from the inner soul of Faust, which urges for the completion and expansion of life. One sees no other impulses than these inner ones. Through the "Prologue in Heaven", Faust is placed in the whole world context as a striving human being. The spiritual powers that bring and maintain the world into activity are revealed in their unfolding; and Faust's life is placed in their interaction and counteraction. Thus, at least for the consciousness of the poet and the reader, Faust's being is placed in the macrocosm, into which the Faust of the young Goethe did not want to place himself through his knowledge. Mephistopheles appears among the active world beings "in heaven". But it is precisely there that the ambivalent nature of Mephistopheles clearly comes to the fore.
Of all the spirits that deny,
The rogue is the least of my burdens,
Says the "Lord". So there must be other spirits who "deny" in the world struggle. And how does it fit in with Mephistopheles' efforts to find the corpse at the end of the second part of Faust when he expresses himself here "in heaven" in this way?>
Most of all I love the full fresh cheeks.
I'm not at home for a corpse.
Think of it: instead of the one Mephistopheles, a Luciferian and an Ahrimanian spirit would face the "Lord" in the battle for Faust. An ahrimanic spirit must strive for the "corpse", for it is the spirit of deception. If one pursues the sources of deception, one finds that they are connected with that which is already at work in the life of man as the mortal-material. The powers of cognition, which are aroused to the same extent as those impulses arise in him which ultimately bring about death, are subject to Ahrimanic deception. The impulses of will and feeling counteract these forces. They are connected with the sprouting, growing life. They are most powerful in childhood and youth. They appear more vividly in old age to the extent that the person retains the impulses of youth into this age. They harbor the Luciferic aberration. Lucifer can say: I love my "full fresh cheeks"; Ahriman must be "at home" for a corpse. And the "Lord" can say to Ahriman: "Of all the spirits that deny, the prankster is the least of my burdens." For the mischievous nature is related to the deceptive nature. And for the "eternal" in man, the ahriman presence that dominates the material-transient is less important than the other "negating" entity that is intimately linked to the core of man's being. It is not a fantasy-willfulness that feels a dual nature in Mephistopheles, but the self-evident feeling of a dual being in the human organization of the world and life. Goethe must have felt something in his subconscious that made him suspect: I am bringing the Faust-Mephistopheles contrast before the universal organization of life; but the latter does not want to agree to this contrast.
[ 17 ] If what is said here were meant in the sense of the pedantically questionable claim that Goethe should have drawn Mephistopheles differently, it could easily be refuted. One need only point out how, in Goethe's imagination, this figure emerged and had to emerge from the tradition of the Faust legend, from German and Nordic mythology, as a unified figure. And against the pointing out of "contradictions" in a living figure, one could, apart from the fact that what is full of life must contain precisely "life with its contradictions", keep to Goethe's clear words: "If things did not arise through the imagination which remain eternally problematic for the intellect, then there would not be much to the imagination at all. This is what distinguishes poetry from prose. " -No, what is meant here does not lie in this field. But what Karl Julius Schröer 2says on page XCIV of the third edition of the second part of his Faust edition is indisputable: "Playing magnificently, joking with superior humour, characterizing masterfully while constantly looking through the deep background of the highest questions of humanity, poetry finally lifts us up to the devotion of the most sublime feelings ..." This is what matters: what stood before Goethe's imagination in his Faust poem appeared to him on the "constantly transparent deep background of the highest questions of humanity". The attitude from which Schröer, with a thorough knowledge of Goethe and a noble love for Goethe's style, puts this forward can certainly not be disputed, since Schröer cannot in any case be accused of wanting to explain Goethe's poetry in terms of an abstract development of ideas. - But because Goethe had the background of the highest questions of humanity before his soul, the traditional figure of the "Nordic devil" expanded for his mind's eye into that ambivalent entity to which the serious observer of life and the world is led when he recognizes how the human being is placed in the whole of the universe.>
[ 18 ] The Mephistopheles figure that Goethe had in mind when he began his poetry was appropriate to Faust's turning away from the sense of the macrocosm. The conflicts of the soul that arose from within him led to a struggle against the opposing power that grips man within and has a Luciferian character. But Goethe was compelled to approach the second part of Faust, the more he felt this necessity. And in the "Classical Walpurgis Night", which was to lead to Faust's real encounter with Helena, world powers and macrocosmic events come into connection with the experiences of man. By intervening in this context, Mephistopheles must assume an ahrirnanic character. Through his scientific world view, Goethe had built himself the bridge over which he could bring world events into human development. He did this in his "Classical Walpurgis Night". Its poetic value will only be recognized when one fully understands how in this area of Faust Goethe succeeded in artistically conquering views of nature so completely that no conceptual-abstract residue remains, but everything has flowed into the image, into the imaginative design. It is only aesthetic superstition to accuse the "Classical Walpurgis Night" of containing an embarrassing residue of abstract scientific theories. And perhaps to an even greater extent, the powerful final image of the fifth act of the second part bridges the gap between the supernatural universe and the human experience.
[ 19 ] There seems to be no doubt about it: Goethe's way of thinking took a development in the course of his life through which the ambivalent nature of the world powers opposing man came before the eye of his soul, and he felt the necessity of overcoming their very beginning in the progress of his Faust creation, in that life turns Faust towards the macrocosm, from which he had only once turned away through one-sided knowledge.
What a spectacle ! but oh ! a spectacle only !
[ 20 ] But the forces of comprehensive world events entered into the spectacle. It became life, because Faust strives for goals that lead man through the life struggle within him to conflict with the powers that make him appear as a member of the world as a whole, fighting but taking up the fight.