49. “Faust”
A tragedy by J.W. Goethe
Performance at the Deutsches Theater, Berlin
Several years ago, a famous scholar, the physiologist Du Bois-Reymond, said things about Goethe's Faust poem in a speech he gave when he took over the rectorate of Berlin University that revealed how well a perfect scientific education is compatible with a philistine attitude and aesthetic lack of judgment in one person. The pedantic speaker went so far as to claim that it would be better for Faust if, instead of surrendering to magic and doing all the great magic with the devil, he remained a good professor, invented the electrifying machine and the air pump, married Gretchen and made his child honest.
Whoever sat in the Deutsches Theater on Goethe's birthday with such an attitude must have experienced a very special pleasure in Josef Kainz's portrayal of Faust. For nothing was to be discovered in this portrayal of Faust's deep longing for knowledge of the world's secrets; nothing of the fact that the audacious explorer's heart almost wants to burn at the thought that we can know nothing. This Faust of the German Theater has not studied "philosophy, jurisprudence, medicine" and "unfortunately also theology with great effort", he has only read Du Bois-Reymond's elegant speech "On the Limits of Natural Knowledge" and Fr. A. Lange's "History of Materialism" together with other modern books written in a similar spirit and seen from them that there are certain "mysteries of the world" which man cannot solve. Such reading is indeed somewhat disturbing; it makes one "nervous", but it is not capable of causing the unspeakable agony in the human soul from which Faust suffers. Only if one feels the full force of the storms that assail Faust can one understand the deep psychological truth of Goethe's poetry. Whoever is capable of such a feeling knows that a soul like Faust's can only endure experiences that are not only far above those of the philistine life, but also above the satisfaction that man can derive from the invention of the air pump, for example. These experiences will in reality take place within the human soul; the dramatist, who cannot depict the inner processes, the psychological development as such, resorts to unreal regions of life. The imagination likes to go to the unreal regions when the feeling says that no real processes are in harmony with the feelings stirred up in the depths of the soul. The sensations we perceive in the soul of the Faust portrayed here are not such as to require the high regions to which Goethe leads us. This Faust could quite well marry Gretchen. And if he could even invent the electrifying machine, he could be completely reconciled with life. The art with which Josef Kainz speaks the great monologues is admirable. The technique of language shows itself here in a rare perfection. Anyone who has an appreciation of such technical formalities must find every sentence in Kainz's rendition interesting. The way in which the performer spoke the words was almost a feat of linguistic tightrope walking:
"Now come down, crystalline pure shell!
Out of your old sheath,
That I have not thought of for many years!
You shone at the fathers' feasts of joy,
Cheered up the serious guests,
When one brought you to the other."
Kainz completely destroyed the feeling that we are dealing with a man who is driven to "tear open the gates that everyone likes to sneak past" by not satisfying an impetuous thirst for knowledge and life. The tones with which Josef Kainz delights our senses do not give the impression that they come from a Faustian interior. The performance alone made the artist happy that evening.
And as if he wanted to show us how little he is interested in the hot storms and passions of Faust, the man of knowledge, Kainz immediately transforms himself, after taking the witch's potion, into an amiable, philandering philanderer, to whom Mephistopheles can never say: "The doctor is still in your body". The consequence of Kainz playing a downright dallying lover in the Gretchen tragedy is that the scenes in which the seriousness of Faust's mind breaks through again seem completely untrue, indeed are portrayed by the artist with an unforgivable indifference.
The art that confronted us on Goethe's birthday in the Deutsches Theater was not up to the tragedy of Faust. The portrayal of the main character was at least interesting in its details. The same cannot be said of the other performances. A Mephistopheles, who looked more like the jolly counselor of a prince than the devilish seducer of Faust (Müller), bored the audience with his horrible grimacing and his complete inability to mix anything of the demonic spirit of hell, which always wants evil, into the joker. The artist (Elise Steinert) removed all naivety from Gretchen and gave her a little seductive coquetry instead. The art of nuance, which she developed to such a rich degree, seemed intrusive.
After the performance on August 28, it cannot be said that the acting in the Deutsches Theater is ready for Goethe, no matter how much indulgence is exercised.