29. A New Book on Goethe's “Faust”

Whoever¹ is coming forward at the present time with an examination of Goethe's Faust poem, encounters difficult circumstances. Scholars and writers have looked at this national drama of the Germans from the most diverse points of view imaginable and have created an immense body of literature about it. You only need to know a part of this literature to know that some of the difficulties that are supposed to stand in the way of understanding the poem have been artificially created by aesthetes, philosophers and philologists, that some of the riddles that one believes to find in the work are not really there, but only imagined. One must courageously get rid of a large part of the questions that have been attached to "Faust" if one wants to view and enjoy it in an unbiased way as a work of art. Only those who keep this fact in mind will be able to judge the book to which these lines are dedicated correctly and then read it with true pleasure.

With regard to the ways in which works of poetry are viewed, the historical approach currently has the upper hand. It traces the gradual creation of a work and seeks to show how the parts have been assembled by the artist over time. One need not be an enemy of this approach to realize that it can easily deprive us of the enjoyment and understanding of a work as an artistic whole. This understanding is not achieved by dissecting scholarship, but by the recreative imagination of the connoisseur and viewer, who is able to grasp the artistic unity of a work and to judge and feel the relationship of the parts to this unity. Among our contemporaries, Herman Grimm is exemplary for this approach based on the re-creative imagination; he provided a model of it in his book on Goethe.²

Veit Valentin takes this approach in his book on "Faust". He refers to Goethe himself, who claims to have understood his work in this way. In "Vorspiel auf dem Theater", Goethe allows the various moods that confront a work of art to find expression. The theater director, who pursues practical goals and knows the onlooking crowd, demands effective details from the poet and is then happy to dispense with the unity of the whole. "If you give a play, give it in pieces! ... What good is it if you present a whole? The audience will tear it to pieces." The poet rejects this with indignation: "Is it not unison that comes out of the bosom and swallows the world back into its heart?" "Who calls the individual to general consecration, where it beats in glorious chords? ... The power of man, revealed in the poet!"

Valentin is quite right to claim that at the time Goethe was writing the "Vorspiel auf dem Theater" (1797), he set himself the task of making "the ingeniously thrown scenes of the "Urfausv, which do not yet reveal any plan beyond the deeply moving, immediately gripping poetic effect of the individual fates, into elements of such a plan". "The wavering figures, rising again from the haze and mist of early youthful days, now gain solidity and clarity as members of a far-reaching plan in which they must attain heightened significance." Valentin's book is now intended to provide detailed proof that the poet has succeeded in achieving this goal. The author does not, however, fall into the mistake that many philosophical Faustians make. They have presented the matter as if poetry were merely the embodiment of an abstract concept, an idea of reason. Such explainers do not realize that instead of focusing on the vivid images and characters that are important in art, they direct our attention to dead skeletons of ideas that support the work of art but never exhaust its content. Valentin's method of explanation shows why a particular event, a particular expression of a character is found at a particular point in Faust. He proceeds in the same way as the aesthetician [explains] the strict unity and inner harmony of a Raphael composition. And it must be said that from this point of view, the inner regularity and consistent symmetry of the poetry appears in a completely new light.

In an ingenious way, Valentin shows why the actual dramatic-human development is followed at the beginning and end by a preparatory and concluding action in heaven; then the author explains how, within the drama taking place on earth, the poet first allows Mephistopheles' influence on Faust to grow in a logical development, and then allows Faust's independence to emerge more and more, until finally Mephistopheles only comes into consideration as a servant for Faust's very own plans. It is not possible to go into individual details here, but I would like to point out that some parts of the first part, which have so far seemed like arbitrary insertions, appear from Valentin's point of view as a necessary link in the development of the whole. Of fundamental importance, however, is the conception of the "Classical Walpurgis Night" and the appearance of Helen and the homunculus that confronts us here. Until the events at the imperial court, Faust has only experienced the pleasures that the present can offer. His higher nature is demonstrated by the fact that he is not lost in this life of pleasure. But isn't this present purely coincidental for Faust? Doesn't the question remain open? What would it be like if Faust had lived in a different time? Could he not have found conditions there that would have corresponded to his longing for pleasure? It must be shown that finite life can in no way satisfy Faust's aspirations, because he wants to penetrate the secrets of the infinite. Therefore, he must also be introduced to the conditions of past times. Goethe regarded ancient Greece as a type of the past. The shadows of the Greek world must be reawakened in order to be able to enter into a living relationship with Faust. The classical Walpurgis Night serves this purpose. The elemental forces of nature that create reality must be unleashed in order to revive the vanished figures of the previous world, which live on only in the idea, to a new presence. This is why the material forces of creation appear in the classical Walpurgis Night. In order to bring the archetype of feminine beauty, Helen herself, back to real life, however, not only physical and geological forces are required, but also an organic seed of life that must mingle with the purely material events. This is the homunculus that shatters on the shell throne of Galatea in order to animate the material elements so that they become ripe to lend corporeality to the idea of Helena.

It may be that Valentin has not yet hit the nail on the head with some of his remarks. But his approach seems to me to be one that is capable of correcting the errors it entails at the first attempt over time.