Western European stream·Works of Goethe·Faust (Parts I and II)·Faust I (1808)·Scene XV — Margaret's Room

Source context

Theme

the soul's solitary longing awakened by erotic encounter — Margaret's spinning-song as externalized inner agitation

Soul-faculty

Sentient Soul

Steiner

not engaged in the GA corpus

Cross-tradition

• Sufi lyric tradition (maqam al-shawq)The spinning-wheel as figure of the soul's restless longing for the beloved shows cross-tradition congruence with Sufi poetry's station of yearning (shawq), in which repetitive physical action externalizes the soul's interior ache for union.
• Minnesang / courtly love lyricMargaret's monologue follows the structural pattern of the medieval German Frauenlied, in which the female voice articulates ungovernable desire as a disruption of ordinary domestic order — a pattern Goethe consciously inherits.

MarGareT 173 (at the spinning-wheel, alone).

Y peace is gone, My heart is sore: I never shall find it,

Ah, nevermore!

Save I have him near, The grave is here; The world is gall And bitterness all.

My poor weak head Is racked and crazed ; My thought is lost,

My senses mazed.

My peace is gone, - My heart is sore:

Scene XV. 217

I never shall find it,

Ah, nevermore!

To see him, him only, At the pane I sit ;

To meet him, him only, The house I quit.

His lofty gait, His noble size, The smile of his mouth,

The power of his eyes,

And the magic flow

Of his talk, the bliss

In the clasp of his hand, And, ah! his kiss!

My peace is gone, My heart is sore: I never shall find it,

Ah, nevermore!

My bosom yearns

For him alone;

218fa aust.
Ah, dared I clasp him, And hold, and own! And kiss his mouth, To heart's desire, And on his kisses At last expire! Scene XVI. 219 XVI. MARTHA'S GARDEN. MarGaReET. Faust.

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