History 332:  German History

Beethoven, Schiller, Goethe

& the German Enlightenment

From: http://w3.rz-berlin.mpg.de/cmp/beethoven.html

BEETHOVEN

Introduction

(born Bonn, baptized 17 December 1770; died Vienna, 26 March 1827).  

[Beethoven] studied first with his father, Johann, a singer and instrumentalist in the service of the Elector of Cologne at Bonn, but mainly with C.G. Neefe, court organist. At 11 ½ he was able to deputize for Neefe; at 12 he had some music published. In 1787 he went to Vienna, but quickly returned on hearing that his mother was dying. Five years later he went back to Vienna, where he settled. He pursued his studies, first with Haydn, but there was some clash of temperaments and Beethoven studied too with Schenk, Albrechtsberger and Salieri. Until 1794 he was supported by the Elector at Bonn but he found patrons among the music-loving Viennese aristocracy and soon enjoyed success as a piano virtuoso, playing at private houses or palaces rather than in public. His public debut was in 1795; about the same time his first important publications appeared, three piano trios op.l and three piano sonatas op.2. As a pianist, it was reported, he had fire, brilliance and fantasy as well as depth of feeling. It is naturally in the piano sonatas, writing for his own instrument, that he is at his most original in this period; the Pathetique belongs to 1799, the Moonlight ('Sonata quasi una fantasia') to 1801, and these represent only the most obvious innovations in style and emotional content. These years also saw the composition of his first three piano concertos, his first two symphonies and a set of six string quartets op.l8.

 

1802, however, was a year of crisis for Beethoven, with his realization that the impaired hearing he had noticed for some time was incurable and sure to worsen. That autumn, at a village outside Vienna, Heiligenstadt, he wrote a will-like document, addressed to his two brothers, describing his bitter unhappiness over his affliction in terms suggesting that he thought death was near. But he came through with his determination strengthened and entered a new creative phase, generally called his 'middle period'. It is characterized by a heroic tone, evident in the Eroica Symphony (no.3, originally to have been dedicated not to a noble patron but to Napoleon), in Symphony no.5, where the sombre mood of the c Minor first movement ('Fate knocking on the door') ultimately yields to a triumphant C Major finale with piccolo, trombones and percussion added to the orchestra, and in his opera Fidelio. Here the heroic theme is made explicit by the story, in which (in the post-French Revolution 'rescue opera' tradition) a wife saves her imprisoned husband from murder at the hands of his oppressive political enemy. The three string quartets of this period, op.59, are similarly heroic in scale: the first, lasting some 45 minutes, is conceived with great breadth, and it too embodies a sense of triumph as the intense f Minor Adagio gives way to a jubilant finale in the major embodying (at the request of the dedicatee, Count Razumovsky) a Russian folk melody.

 

Fidelio, unsuccessful at its premiere, was twice revised by Beethoven and his librettists and successful in its final version of 1814. Here there is more emphasis on the moral force of the story. It deals not only with freedom and justice, and heroism, but also with married love, and in the character of the heroine Leonore, Beethoven's lofty, idealized image of womanhood is to be seen. He did not find it in real life he fell in love several times, usually with aristocratic pupils (some of them married), and each time was either rejected or saw that the woman did not match his ideals. In 1812, however, he wrote a passionate love-letter to an 'Eternally Beloved' (probably Antonie Brentano, a Viennese married to a Frankfurt businessman), but probably the letter was never sent.

 

With his powerful and expansive middle-period works, which include the Pastoral Symphony (no.6, conjuring up his feelings about the countryside, which he loved), Symphony no.7 and Symphony no. 8, Piano Concertos nos.4 (a lyrical work) and 5 (the noble and brilliant Emperor) and the Violin Concerto, as well as more chamber works and piano sonatas (such as the Waldstein and the Appassionata) Beethoven was firmly established as the greatest composer of his time. His piano-playing career had finished in 1808 (a charity appearance in 1814 was a disaster because of his deafness). That year he had considered leaving Vienna for a secure post in Germany, but three Viennese noblemen had banded together to provide him with a steady income and he remained there, although the plan foundered in the ensuing Napoleonic wars in which his patrons suffered and the value of Austrian money declined.

The years after 1812 were relatively unproductive. He seems to have been seriously depressed, by his deafness and the resulting isolation, by the failure of his marital hopes and (from 1815) by anxieties over the custodianship of the son of his late brother, which involved him in legal actions. But he came out of these trials to write his profoundest music, which surely reflects something of what he had been through. There are seven piano sonatas in this, his 'late period', including the turbulent Hammerklavier op.106, with its dynamic writing and its harsh, rebarbative fugue, and op.110, which also has fugues and much eccentric writing at the instrument's extremes of compass; there is a great Mass and a Choral Symphony, no.9 in d Minor, where the extended variation-finale is a setting for soloists and chorus of Schiller's Ode to Joy; and there is a group of string quartets, music on a new plane of spiritual depth, with their exalted ideas, abrupt contrasts and emotional intensity. The traditional four-movement scheme and conventional forms are discarded in favour of designs of six or seven movements, some fugal, some akin to variations (these forms especially attracted him in his late years), some song-like, some martial, one even like a chorale prelude. For Beethoven, the act of composition had always been a struggle, as the tortuous scrawls of his sketchbooks show; in these late works the sense of agonizing effort is a part of the music.

 

Musical taste in Vienna had changed during the first decades of the 19th century; the public were chiefly interested in light Italian opera (especially Rossini) and easygoing chamber music and songs, to suit the prevalent bourgeois taste. Yet the Viennese were conscious of Beethoven's greatness: they applauded the Choral Symphony even though, understandably, they found it difficult, and though baffled by the late quartets they sensed their extraordinary visionary qualities. His reputation went far beyond Vienna: the late Mass was first heard in St. Petersburg, and the initial commission that produced the Choral Symphony had come from the Philharmonic Society of London. When, early in 1827, he died, 10,000 are said to have attended the funeral. He had become a public figure, as no composer had done before. Unlike composers of the preceding generation, he had never been a purveyor of music to the nobility he had lived into the age - indeed helped create it - of the artist as hero and the property of mankind at large.

 

Extracted with permission from
The Grove Concise Dictionary of Music
edited by Stanley Sadie
© Macmillan Press Ltd., London.

 

From: http://slate.msn.com/id/2084948

From: The Beethoven Mystery
Why haven't we figured out his Ninth Symphony yet?
By Jan Swafford
Posted Monday, June 30, 2003, at 2:58 PM PT

This summer, as every summer, the end of the Boston Symphony's Tanglewood season will be marked by another round of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The world over, the Ninth has become an indispensable adornment for socio/musical hooplas. Chances are, it will be played soon by an orchestra near you. If you know Western classical music, you know this one. Probably half of humanity can hum the little ditty that serves as the theme of the choral finale—a setting of Schiller's revolutionary-era drinking song, "Ode to Joy."

Which is all to say, the Ninth has attained the kind of ubiquity that threatens to gut any artwork. Think Mona Lisa. Still, as with Lisa, when that kind of success persists through the centuries, there are reasons.

One reason is its mystery. Figuratively speaking, everybody knows the Ninth. But has anybody really understood it? The harder you look, the odder it gets. In a singular way, the Ninth enfolds the apparently contradictory qualities of the epic and the slippery.

First movement: loud, big, heroic, no? No. Big and loud all right, also wildly unstable, searching, inconclusive—everything heroes aren't. The formal outline, on the surface a conventional sonata form, is turned inside-out: The development section in the middle, usually a point of maximum tension and drama, is the relatively most placid part of the movement; the recap, the return of the opening theme and usually elaborately prepared, erupts out of calm like a scream, with a major chord that somehow sounds hair-raising. (Major keys and harmonies being traditionally nice, hopeful, that sort of thing, minor ones darker, sadder, etc.) At the end there's a funeral march over a slithering bass. Beethoven wrote funeral marches earlier, one the second movement of the "Eroica" Symphony. There we can imagine who died: the hero, or soldiers in battle. But who died in the first movement of the Ninth?

Next comes the scherzo, Beethoven's trademark skittering, ebullient movement. Here it's those things ratcheted up to a Dionysian whirlwind, manically contrapuntal, punctuated with timpani crashes. Strange choice, to follow a funeral march. Even stranger: For all the apparent over-the-top gaiety, the movement is in D minor. Gaiety generally means major keys, but not here.

Given its surroundings, the third movement is peculiar mainly in its cloudless tranquility. It's one of those singing, time-stopping adagios that mark Beethoven's last period. Two themes alternate, and nothing much happens but the themes acquiring delicate filigree and little dance turns in a dreamlike atmosphere of uncanny beauty.

The famous finale is weirdest of all. Scholars have never quite agreed on its formal model, though it clearly involves a series of variations on the "Joy" theme. But why does this celebration of joy open with a dissonant shriek that Richard Wagner dubbed the "terror fanfare"? Then the basses start playing stuff that is unmistakably a recitative, the familiar prose patter between arias in opera and oratorio. Here, a recitative with no words. And for the supreme oddity: One at a time, themes from the earlier movements are introduced only to be rebuffed by the basses—opening of the first movement, nope, too grim; second movement, too light; third movement … nice, the basses sigh nostalgically, but no, too sweet.

This, then: The Joy theme is unveiled by the basses unaccompanied, sounding for all the world like somebody (say, the composer) quietly humming to himself. (In fact, Beethoven sketched the Joy theme early on and aimed the whole symphony to be a revelation of it.) The theme begins to vary, picking up lovely flowing accompaniments. Then, out of nowhere, back to the terror fanfare. And now up steps a real singer, singing a real recitative: "Oh friends, not these tones! Rather let's strike up something more agreeable and joyful."

Soon the chorus is crying, "Joy! Joy!" and the piece is off, praising joy as the universal solvent, under whose influence love will flourish, humanity unite. Schiller's ode is a stylized drinking song, meant literally or figuratively to be declaimed by comrades with glasses raised. And what a tipsy course Beethoven's setting follows: At one point a mystical evocation of the godhead is followed by a grunting military march in a style the Viennese called "Turkish," which resolves into a learned and majestic fugue.

Nobody has figured out what Beethoven meant by all this. The result has been that every age and ideology has simply claimed the music for its own. Communists, Catholics, lefties, and reactionaries have joined in the chorus. A 1999 book by Esteban Buch, recently available in English, traces the course of the Ninth through history. It's been attached to European disunity in the form of nationalism, it got sucked into the Nazi cult of blood and race, and finally it became, with the Joy theme's adoption as the anthem of the European Union, a symbol of togetherness. Others have seen the Ninth as a universal human anthem. Leonard Bernstein conducted it at the international celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall, and what else would do the job?

For the composer's part, it's a good bet that Beethoven didn't intend for the Ninth to be precisely figured out. As with the Mona Lisa, maybe its very ambiguity is part of its success. Paint it any color you like, and it remains its exalted and inexplicable self. If you want universality in a work of art, here you are. One could argue that the best way of keeping the Ninth alive and fresh is not to pin it down but to embrace its mystery.

What can be said about the Ninth with reasonable certainty? One is that its position in the world is probably about what Beethoven wanted it to be. In an unprecedented way for a composer, he deliberately stepped into history with a great ceremonial work that doesn't just preach freedom and the unity of peoples but attempts however strangely to foster them. Another thing to note is that most late Beethoven pieces take surprising courses. His earlier works tend to have a tone (which sometimes he names for us, as in the "Pathetique" and "Eroica") that propels a dramatic unfolding: We hear what happens to the pathos and the heroism. In his late works Beethoven turned away from such clear dramatic curves to more elusive and evocative trains of ideas whose effect he and his time called poetic. And in keeping with the turn from drama to poetry, he left the heroics behind.

I'll add one more surmise. Famously, the Ninth first emerges from a whispering mist to towering, fateful proclamations. The finale's Joy theme is almost constructed before our ears, hummed through, then composed and recomposed and decomposed. The Ninth is music about music, about its own emerging, about its composer composing. And for what? "This kiss for all the world!" runs the telling line in the finale, in which Beethoven erected a movement of epic scope on a humble little tune that anybody can sing.

The Ninth, forming and dissolving before our ears in its beauty and terror and simplicity and complexity, ending with a cry of jubilation, is itself his kiss for all the world, from east to west, high to low, naive to sophisticated. When the bass speaks the first words in the finale, an invitation to sing for joy, the words come from Beethoven, not Schiller. It's the composer talking to everybody, to history. That's what's so moving about those words. There Beethoven greets us person to person, with glass raised, and hails us as friends.

 

From: http://www.theatredatabase.com/18th_century/friedrich_schiller_001.html

FRIEDRICH SCHILLER (1759-1805)

JOHANN CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH VON SCHILLER'S earliest dramatic effort, The Robbers, resulted in a prison sentence for its youthful author, when it was presented at Mannheim in 1782. Upon finishing his schooling he had been forced to take a position as army surgeon. The regiment to which he was attached was stationed near Mannheim at the time of the initial production of The Robbers. Having seen his first-born brain child once, Schiller slipped away a second time to watch a performance. His absence was discovered and on his return he was sentenced to two weeks in prison and, far worse, forbidden to publish anything but medical treatises.

Although Schiller was the son of an army surgeon he had wished as a child to become a clergyman. The autocratic Duke Karl of Württemberg, however, had insisted on placing the lad in his military academy. It is small wonder, then, that as soon as possible after his prison experience Schiller contrived his release from unwelcome military service.

In 1787 came the production of Don Carlos. The success of this play not only brought Schiller an invitation to Weimar, the German Athens, but made his name known throughout most of Europe. About 1794 an acquaintanceship with the great Goethe ripened into one of the perfect friendships of history with a marked effect on Schiller's subsequent writings. It was with Goethe's interested advice that the Wallenstein trilogy was completed and produced at Weimar. This drama, a story of the Thirty Years' War, as an "acting" play has never been surpassed on the German stage. The work on it served to turn Schiller's attention definitely to historical subjects as a basis for his dramatic writing.

The Maid of Orleans was first performed in Leipzig in 1801. At its close the audience waited silent and bareheaded outside the theater to do its author honor. The Bride of Messina, a historical tragedy constructed along Greek lines, has been much admired but has never achieved the popularity accorded some of his other plays. Schiller's last finished play, Wilhelm Tell, is probably universally regarded as his best. It shows a sharp contrast to his preceding works. While it is tragic in intent, success crowns a sane activity, fate yields to will and a certain serenity of spirit breathes over the whole.

Sandwiched in between all these successful dramas were critical, historical and philosophical essays, as well as lyric poetry that is known today by every German school boy, the most famous being The Song of the Bell. Schiller, apparently at the height of his dramatic power, was at work on a Russian tragedy titled Demetrius, at the time of his death in 1805.

This article was originally published in Minute History of the Drama. Alice Buchanan Fort & Herbert S. Kates. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1935. p. 72.

RELATED WEBSITES

• Death of Schiller - A brief account of the death of the German dramatist.
• Drama in the Eighteenth Century - A history of dramatic literature as it developed during the 18th century.
• Friedrich Schiller - A biography.
• Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) - A biography.
• Friedrich Schiller: Poems - An index of poems by the German dramatist.
• Find more articles on Friedrich Schiller
• Purchase Plays by Friedrich Schiller

 

From: http://www.lucare.com/immortal/ode.html  

Schiller's Ode to Joy

Text and translation of Symphony No. 9's Finale, by Friedrich Schiller, with a little intro by Beethoven.

                                                  BARITONE          

O Freunde, nicht diese To"ne!                     Oh friends, not these tones!

Sondern lasst uns angenehmere                   Let us raise our voices in more

anstimmen, und freudenvollere!    pleasing and more joyful sounds!

                     ODE TO JOY (Friedrich Schiller)        

                       BARITONE, QUARTET, AND CHORUS              

Freude, Scho"ner Go"tterfunken,                Joy, fair spark of the gods,

Tochter aus Elysium,                                Daughter of Elysium,

Wir betreten feuer-trunken,                      Drunk with fiery rapture, Goddess,

Himmlische, dein Heiligtum!                       We approach thy shrine!

Deine Zauber binden wieder,                      Thy magic reunites those

Was die Mode streng geteilt;                     Whom stern custom has parted;

Alle Menschen werden Bru"der,                   All men will become brothers

Wo dein sanfter Flu"gel weilt.                   Under thy gentle wing.

Wem der grosse Wurf gelungen,                 May he who has had the fortune

Eines Freundes Freund zu sein,                  To gain a true friend

Wer ein holdes Weib errungen,                   And he who has won a noble wife

Mische seinen Jubel ein!                            Join in our jubilation!

Ja, wer auch nur eine Seele                        Yes, even if he calls but one soul

Sein nennt auf dem Erdenrund!                    His own in all the world.

Und wer's nie gekonnt, der stehle               But he who has failed in this

Weinend sich aus diesem Bund!                   Must steal away alone and in tears.

Freude trinken alle Wesen                         All the world's creatures

An den Bru"sten der Natur;                       Draw joy from nature's breast;

Alle Guten, alle Bo"sen                              Both the good and the evil

Folgen ihrer Rosenspur.                             Follow her rose-strewn path.

Ku"sse gab sie uns und Reben,                     She gave us kisses and wine

Einen Freund, gepru"ft im Tod;                   And a friend loyal unto death;

Wollust ward dem Wurm gegeben,               She gave lust for life to the lowliest,

Und der Cherub steht vor Gott.                  And the Cherub stands before God.

                          TENOR SOLO AND CHORUS         

Froh, wie seine Sonnen fliegen                   Joyously, as his suns speed

Durch des Himmels Pra"cht'gen Plan,           Through Heaven's glorious order,

Laufet, Bru"der, eure Bahn,                       Hasten, Brothers, on your way,

Freudig, wie ein Held zum Siegen.                Exulting as a knight in victory.

                                CHORUS                 

Freude, scho"ner Go"tterfunken,                 Joy, fair spark of the gods,

          ...                                            ...

Seid umschlungen, Millionen!                      Be embraced, Millions!

Diesen Kuss der ganzen Welt!                    Take this kiss for all the world!

Bru"der u"ber'm Sternenzelt                     Brothers, surely a loving Father

Muss ein lieber Vater wohnen.                    Dwells above the canopy of stars.

Ihr stu"rzt nieder, Millionen?                    Do you sink before him, Millions?

Ahnest du den Scho"pfer, Welt?                 World, do you sense your Creator?

Such'ihn u"ber'm Sternenzelt!                    Seek him then beyond the stars!

U"ber Sternen muss er wohnen.                  He must dwell beyond the stars.

 

From: http://www.theatrehistory.com/german/goethe013.html

Johann Wolfgang von GOETHE

THE boy, Goethe, was a precocious youngster. At the early age of eight he had already acquired some knowledge of Greek, Latin, French and Italian. He had likewise acquired from his mother the knack of story telling; and from a toy puppet show in his nursery his first interest in the stage.

Goethe's early education was somewhat irregular and informal, and already he was marked by that apparent feeling of superiority that stayed by him throughout his life. When he was about 16 he was sent to Leipzig, ostensibly to study law. He apparently studied more life than law and put in his time expressing his reactions through some form of writing. On at least two occasions, this form was dramatic.

Finally, in 1770 Goethe went to Strassburg, this time really intent on passing his preliminary examinations in law, and with the somewhat more frivolous ambition of learning to dance. Along with his study of law, he studied art, music, anatomy and chemistry. A strong friendship with the writer, Herder, was likewise no part of Goethe's experience at this time, a contact which was of considerable importance in these formative years.

In 1771 Goethe returned to Frankfurt, nominally to practice law, but he was soon deep in work on what was to be his first dramatic success, Götz von Berlichingen. While this was actually the story of a robber baron of the 16th century it really represented Goethe's youthful protest against the established order and his demand for intellectual freedom. Its success made its hitherto unknown author the literary leader of Germany.

Goethe's invitation in 1775 to the court of Duke Karl August at Weimar was a turning point in the literary life of Germany. He became manager of the Court Theater, and interested himself in various other activities, so that for a period of some ten years not much actual writing was done.

The writing of Faust, however, that best known of Goethe's works, extended over practically the whole of Goethe's literary life, a period of 57 years. It was finally finished when Goethe was 81. Faust is in reality a dramatic poem rather than a piece for the stage. While based on the same legend as Marlowe's Dr. Faustus, it far transcends both its legendary source and the English play. The latter is little more than a Morality illustrating the punishment of sin; Goethe's work is a drama of redemption.

Others of Goethe's works which have stood the test of time include: Clavigo, Egmont, Stella, Iphigenia in Tauris and Torquato Tasso.

 

 From: http://www.theatrehistory.com/german/goethe012.html

 FAUST

An analysis of the play by Goethe  

From: Alfred Bates (ed.) The Drama: Its History, Literature & Influence

The principal contrast between the popular play and Goethe's Faust is that, in the former, love and enjoyment bring the hero to ruin, while, in the latter, love and activity are his salvation. All the essential elements of the composition are provided by the popular drama; the main difference made by Goethe is that he represents Faust as being at once inflamed by the sight of Helena at the imperial court, for the whole episode of Helena needed to be more compressed; and again, that Helena, instead of being put forward as a temptation of the Devil, is rather represented by Goethe as one of the objects which Faust, in his restless desires, demands from his evil companion. Mephisto chiefly shows himself as a tempter in the fourth act, when he offers the doctor a crown. In the popular drama Faust refuses it; with Goethe he accepts it, but this incident is charged with a fine moral import; Faust accepts the crown, not for the mere sake of possessing it, but to provide himself with a sphere of activity, and in the end his kingdom is his salvation.

The inner connection in the second part is not always quite clear, but we do not notice this when we see all the marvels spread before us. The effect of this second part is that of a phantasmagoria, and, as in an opera or fairy tale, the incredible and magic element makes us less strict in our demands for careful connection and development of the various parts. Each act and scene is most dramatically conceived, and it only needs abridgment to meet the requirements of the stage. While the first part is not divided into acts and scenes, in the second each division has its peculiar tone, and its definite close. We see here the hand of the stage-manager who knows how the multitude must be satisfied, charmed and held in suspense. The poet moves in a motley, fantastic world, in which figures of Classical and Christian religion, creatures of southern and northern superstition, are all mingled together.

Goethe's Faust savors throughout of the popular sphere in which the story first originated. Yet, in the third act, when Helena appears, the poet realizes somewhat of the grandeur of Greek tragedy. A prose scene in the first part, in which Faust has just heard of Gretchen's misery, and breaks into bitter execrations of Mephisto, shows the same forcible style as a Shakespearean drama, and sounds as if it might be from Schiller's Robbers. Passion is arrayed against passion, and the anger of the one side and the scorn of the other wax intense, with no sparing of coarse, strong language. The same overwhelming effect is produced by the scene in the cathedral, where Gretchen succumbs under the feeling of her guilt, and the horrible babel which stuns her. Very noticeable is the contrast offered by this scene to the earlier and more tender one, in which she prays to the Mater Dolorosa.

A few scenes of the first part are marked by a too close attention to detail, by coarseness, comicality, hostility toward clergy and church; in others we are reminded of poems like Prometheus or Ganymede, and are transported to higher spheres, above the level of earthly joys and earthly struggles. In one part a gentle naturalism holds sway; in another we breathe the idealism of Iphigenie. Sometimes naturalism and idealism are mingled or represented in the same scene in different persons. The two elements are united in the pathetic character of Gretchen, which is essentially a creation of Goethe's earlier manner, dating from the Frankfurt period of his life. He has never created anything more sublime than this ideal picture of innocence, simplicity, warmth and depth of affection; her maidenly reserve at the outset, the spirit of noble purity which breathes around her, her little world of domestic duties, the truly feminine instinct with which she tends her little sister, the natural grace with which she reveals her feelings, the naïve love of ornament natural to a girl of the people; then, the first shadows which fall on this transparent soul, the misgivings roused by Faust's bold address, the presentiment of danger and involuntary shudder felt at Mephisto's presence, her pious anxiety about the spiritual welfare of her lover, her devotion and utter self-surrender to him, her inability to refuse him anything, and, finally, all the fell consequence of her weakness--madness, prison, and death--a fearful transition from the idyllic to the tragical.

Still the charm of innocence clings to Gretchen in the midst of her guilt, and herein the poet shows his wonderful skill; for he does not try to veil or excuse her offense, and yet he fills us with that love of the heroine which purity alone can inspire. The halo of human forgiveness rests on the head of this good soul--as she is called in the second part--who only once erred, and hardly knew that she was erring. In Shakespeare's Ophelia we have the germ of Gretchen's character; only Gretchen rises above Ophelia. Most of the Gretchen scenes are somewhat ritualistic in treatment, not so forcible as the scene in the cathedral, and not so tender and affecting as her monologue. The mad scene in the prison is based upon an extravagant youthful sketch, which was toned down by the poet's maturer art.

Gretchen's female companions, her neighbor, Frau Marthe, and her contemporary Lieschen, are creations of Goethe's naturalistic period. So, too, is the famulus Wagner, the philistine counterpart of Faust, and akin to the old Hanswurst. But the first part was completed as far as possible in the style of Goethe's cultured realism, and in accordance with the typical method of his ripest art, as we find it in Hermann and Dorothea.

The "Prelude on the Stage" contrasts in a typical manner the poet's vocation and the actor's. The songs of the three archangels, which open the "Prologue in Heaven," are an attempt to picture to us the world under its eternal aspects. The suicide scene and the walk on Easter morning afford us typical pictures of human life. The fit of industry which follows, and the affair of the poodle are almost symbolically treated, and Mephisto's character is developed in accordance with the first outlines of it given in the prologue. The poet now aims at closer connection, more exact determination of time, and greater conciseness. Thus the scene in which Gretchen's brother appears and falls by Faust's hand is made to link directly to the Walpurgis-night. The latter was not completed, and the continuation of it afterward suggested by literary satire somewhat lowered this scene in the public estimation.

In the second part typical realism predominates exclusively; only that the realism disappears more and more, and the typical element alone remains, along with a wealth of allegory and personification. The emperor's court contains nothing but typical characters. Three strong men represent the army of spirits in the fourth act. Three penitent sinners from the New Testament stand by Gretchen's side, in order to give a typical aspect to an otherwise individualized picture of erring innocence. The figures, drawn either from ancient mythology, or, as in the Walpurgis-night, from the storehouse of Goethe's imagination, are made extraordinarily characteristic. A free, fine spirit of Romanticism breathes through the scene in the rocky caves of the Aegean sea, where the sirens repose on the cliffs in the moonshine, while Galatea appears in her shell-chariot, inflames the passion of Homunculus, and draws him to his death. A vein of spurious symbolism may, however, be noticed in the second part, in many utterances which would be appropriate enough if they came from Goethe's own lips, but are little consonant with the characters in whose mouth he puts them, and in which he either remains obscure or offends where his meaning is understood. The latter may be observed in the character of Euphorion, Faust and Helena's son, and intended as an impersonation of Byron. Nevertheless, when placed on the stage, Euphorion's graceful youth charms us, and his death affects us deeply.

There is a certain parallelism between the first and second parts. Notes struck in the one are repeated higher up the scale, as it were, in the other, as we should expect from a writer who sets himself to delineate types rather than particular people. Thus in the first part we have a German Walpurgis-night, in the second a classical one; Wagner, Faust's former servant, appears afterward as an independent scholar; an inquisitive student of the first part becomes an arrogant bachelor of arts in the second; Gretchen's wail of despair is turned into a prayer of joy. This parallelism is most observable in the case of Helena, who occupies the same leading position in the second part which Gretchen does in the first. It is not quite clearly brought out in the drama, but must have been a part of the poet's original plan, that the two sinning women should be Faust's good geniuses, who purify and save him from the power of the evil one. Only in the second part we are left to divine for ourselves that the passion with which Helena, like Gretchen, inspires him at first sight, gives way ultimately, like his passion for Gretchen, to nobler feelings. In the drama as it stands there is also considerable abruptness in the sudden transition from Faust as Helena's lover to Faust as the aspiring sovereign of lands wrested from the sea.

Helena stands in twofold contrast; first to the chorus and then to Phorkyas. Helena is the mistress, dignified in her bearing, self-possessed and calm, even in the presence of death; the chorus, on the other hand, is composed of serving women, whose demeanor is the exact opposite in everything. But though Helena can suffer death with placid dignity, the appearance of Phorkyas fills her with horror; for he represents the extreme of ugliness, as she of beauty. The two, in their opposition, are typical of the great contrast between the beautiful and the hideous which pervades creation. Beauty is everything with Helena; her beauty is her character and her faith. Phorkyas Mephisto, on the contrary, is physically and morally hideous, and delights in all malice and wickedness.

A third contrast may be noticed between Helena and Gretchen. The German burgher-maiden is all unconscious; the Greek goddess is throughout self-conscious; she knows her heart, and feels what is coming, and she acts not from impulse but with full reflection. We cannot believe that Goethe intended in Helena to show us beauty only from its evil side; he must also have meant to show us beauty as good, Helena proving a blessing to Faust. We may venture to surmise that the rousing of his creative activity was the legacy which Helena bequeathed to her northern friend.

Wilhelm Meister and Faust are two characters, who, from the emotional, speculative, critical or aesthetic life, pass, under the influence of denying spirits and ideal examples, to a life of useful labor. Both these figures accompanied the poet during the greater part of his life, and both are comparatively good pictures of himself. He was not able to give the last touches of his art to either of them, but Faust came nearer to perfection than Wilhelm Meister. The former represents the scientific, the latter the aesthetic tendency of Goethe's youth. Like Faust, Goethe had in vain sought satisfaction in all the departments of knowledge. Like Faust, he hoped for a short time to find a clue to the mysterious power which binds nature into one whole, in sciences which were of evil fame, in the writings of old chemists and alchemists. Like Faust, he harbored thoughts of suicide. Like Faust, he was not devoid of religious feelings, especially when engaged in contemplating nature as a whole. Like Faust, he had Mephistophelian friends--Merck and Herder, for instance--who made him conscious of his littleness, and thereby gave a stimulus to his efforts. Like Faust, he fell in love with a simple burgher-maiden, and as Gretchen was made miserable by Faust, so Friederike Brion was made miserable by Goethe, though not to such an extent. Like Faust, he always remained conscious of the right path, and though he often went astray, yet he always returned to it. Like Faust, he drew nigh to the Greek gods, and in communion with the immortal creations of Hellenic art and religion found the highest truths dawn upon him. Like Faust, he returned to his northern Fatherland, to a life of activity among his people.

Goethe's contact with the ancient world bore fruit in Germany, though in another sense than with Faust; he no longer found his vocation in political and social activity, but in science and poetry alone. Then, when a friend of equal intellectual rank inspired him with new joy in creation, Faust was among the first tasks that engrossed him. The classical Walpurgis-night, Helena, and the final studies which underlay the last developments of the poem, date from the period in which he practised his hand in Greek rhythms and revived the Greek gods in poetry.

Faust is not intended to resemble Goethe in all points, but he represents Goethe's views in all great questions--in the idea that man is meant to struggle, in the conviction of the salvation to be found in hard service, in the maxim which Faust utters when dying, as the last conclusion of wisdom: "He alone deserves liberty, like life, who daily must win it." Herein he was also in harmony with Schiller, whose Tell declares: "I only really enjoy my life when I win it every day afresh." Both in Wilhelm Meister and in Faust Goethe prizes activity for the common good more highly than the aesthetic and literary interests. Neither the poet, nor the actor, nor the speculative scholar, he seems to think, can attain in their own spheres to such lofty discernment and to such peace of conviction as the man of action. Thus Goethe recommended in poetry what he himself neglected to do in real life.

For an English translation, see: http://www.levity.com/alchemy/faust01.html