Faust, Part I by Goethe

Author:Goethe
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2006-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

Faust’s Study (II)

[FAUST and MEPHISTOPHELES.]

FAUST

1530 A knock? Come in! Who is it plagues me now?

MEPHISTO

I do.

FAUST

Come in!

MEPHISTO

Say it a third time, will you?

FAUST

Come in then!

MEPHISTO

That’s the spirit.

We shall, I hope, get on together.

To end your moping I am here

In a noble Junker’s outfit,

In gold-trimmed red and over that

A cape of stiffened silk, my hat

Sports the rooster’s feather,

And I wear a long sharp sword

1540 And counsel you now, in a word,

To attire yourself in like manner

And so, let off the leash and free,

Find out what life is like or might be.

FAUST

This narrow earth-life’s pain will stay

In me whatever my attire.

I am too old to do nothing but play,

Too young to be without desire.

What can the world give me? Deny

Yourself! Do not enjoy!

1550 That is the one and only song

That, all of us, we ever hear

That hoarsely every single hour

Regales us with all our lives long.

Only with horror do I wake each day

And near to bitter weeping when I see

The day that in its course will not fulfil

One wish of mine, not one, but will

With selfish carping stunt

All pleasure even in presentiment

1560 And with a thousand of life’s idiocies thwart

The energies of my heart.

Come nightfall, I am certain

To lie down with anxiety

And no rest will be given me then

But wild dreams frighten me.

The god indwelling in me causes

Deep turmoil innerly

But he, the lord of all my energies,

Can move not one thing outwardly.

1570 So my existence is burdensome,

Death to be wished, life loathsome.

MEPHISTO

Yet Death, the visitor, is never wholly welcome.

FAUST

I call him blessed whose head Death winds

Around with bloody laurels as the illumined

Victor or, at the hectic dancing’s end,

Soon in a girl’s embrace Death comes and finds.

Oh when the High Spirit came would I had sunk

Under his power, unsouled by the ecstasy!

MEPHISTO

And yet that night a certain somebody

1580 Left a brown juice undrunk.

FAUST

Spying, it seems, is your delight.

MEPHISTO

Though not

Omniscient, I know a lot.

FAUST

By an old sweet music I was pulled

Then from my spirits’ terrible throes.

It touched on happy times and told

My lingering childish feeling lies.

But now I curse all things that have

The soul in check by lure and illusion,

That banish her to this sad cave

1590 By powers of blinding and deception.

Cursed be every big idea

The mind puts on to hide in like a shell.

And cursed be all phenomena

That dupe the senses they assail.

Cursed be dreams and vain believing

That name and fame will never end.

Cursed be the blandishment of having

A wife and child, household and land.

Cursed be Mammon when for riches

1600 He urges us to recklessness

Or plumps the pillows under us

For pleasurable idleness.

I curse the kind juice of the grape,

I curse the best love gives, let fall

My curse on faith, my curse on hope –

And patience: curse that most of all!

CHORUS OF SPIRITS [invisible]

Alas! Alas!

You have destroyed

The lovely world

1610 With a powerful fist,

It falls, it falls to bits,

A demigod has smashed it.

We carry

The ruins across into nothingness

And over the lost

Beauty we grieve.

Splendid among

Earth’s sons

By your power

1620 Build the world again

In your heart build the world up again.

Lighten

Your mind and be

Newly alive

Whereupon

New songs will be sung.

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