Lecture II
The Romantic Walpurgis-Night
10th December, 1916 Dornach
I should
like, my dear friends, to make a few remarks about the
Walpurgis-night performed yesterday, which we shall be
playing again tomorrow, because it seems to me important to
have a correct idea of how this Walpurgis-night fits in with
the whole development of the Faust poem. It is indeed
remarkable that, having brought such calamity upon Gretchen
— her mother killed herself with a sleeping-draught,
her brother coming into his end through the fault of Faust
and Gretchen — Faust should then flee, leaving Gretchen
completely in the lurch, and knowing nothing himself of what
is happening.
An incident
of this kind has naturally made no small impression on those
who have studied the Faust poem with most sympathy. I
will read you what was said on the subject by Schröer
would certainly studied Faust with great warmth of
heart. (You will find a note on Schröer in my recent
publication
Riddles of Man.)
He says concerning the
“Walpurgis-Night”:
“We are to suppose of Faust urged
on by Mephistopheles, has fled, leaving Gretchen behind in
misery. Her mother was dead, her brother killed. Close upon
all this followed her confinement. She lost her reason,
drowned her child, and wandered around until she was
arrested and thrown into prison. Although Faust could not
have known what befell Gretchen after Valentine's death,
yet he had parted from her in circumstances that make it
appear very unnatural to see him now, two days after,
strolling — as it appears in the text — at his
ease on the Brocken. It is obvious, however that the
Walpurgis-night was not written in close coordination with
the poem as a whole. The poet is clearly no longer in a
prophetic vein, but attacks his subject with a touch of
irony. The underlying idea of linking this scene with the
whole is quite clear. Mephistopheles takes Faust away to
the Brocken to bewilder him and make him forget Gretchen.
But the love in Faust is stronger than Mephistopheles can
understand. The witch-apparitions did not attract him; in
the midst of the frenzied confusion the image of Gretchen
rises before him — this thought certainly does not
arise with sufficient insistence in the whole
Walpurgis-night take too great a place in relation to the
dramatic action. It grew to an independent whole becoming
all the more excessive by reason of the addition of the
Walpurgis-night dream. This of course applies only to the
Walpurgis-night as part of the tragedy.”
Thus, even a
man having a real love for Faust cannot explain to his
own satisfaction how it comes about that, two days after the
calamity, Faust is to be seen full of vigour walking with
Mephistopheles on the Brocken.
Now I should
like your here to set against against this, something purely
external — that the Walpurgis-night belongs to the most
mature part of Goethe's Faust. It was written in
1800–1. As a quite young man Goethe began to write his
Faust, so for that we may go back to the beginning of
the seventies of the 18th century — 1772, 1773, 1774;
it was then he began to write the first scenes. In 1800 or so
he was all that older and had passed the great experiences,
recorded, for instance, in the story of the
Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily
written before the Walpurgis-night
that he now adds to his Faust. The Walpurgis-night
dream was actually written a year earlier than the
Walpurgis-night itself. We may therefore slows that Goethe
took it very seriously the fitting of the
Walpurgis-night mysteries into Faust. But the
difficulty of understanding can never be overcome unless we
bear in mind that Goethe's meaning was really of a spiritual
nature.
I have a
pretty considerable knowledge of the commentaries on
Faust written up to the year 1900, but not so much of
those that were later; but up to 1900 I know them almost all,
though since that time, I have not gone so deeply into what
has been written on the subject. This I do know, however,
that no one has taken it from a spiritual point of view. It
may be objected, no doubt, that is asking too much of us to
suppose that, two days after such a great misfortune, Faust
should have gone off on a ramble in this carefree way. But
Goethe was really not the commonplace, imperturbable Monist
he is often pictured; he was a man, as the details of this
Walpurgis-night themselves show, deeply initiated into
certain spiritual connections. Anyone familiar with these
connections, can see that there is nothing dilettante about
the Walpurgis-night; everything in it shows deep
knowledge. To speak rather trivially, you can see that there
is something behind it, that it is not an ordinary poem but
written out of understanding for what is spiritual. Anyone
with the certain knowledge, can easily judge by details
whether realities are spoken of, whether a poet's description
is the result of spiritual understanding, or whether he is
just thinking out something about spiritual worlds and their
connections — for instance, the world of witches. One
must cultivate a little observation in such matters.
I will tell
you a simple story — I could tell you hundred of the
same time — to illustrate how it can be seen from
details whether, in what one is dealing with, there is
anything behind. It goes without saying that sometimes one
may be mistaken; it depends on the way the matter is
presented.
I was once in
a gathering of theologians, historians, poets, and so on. In
this assembly the following story was told. (This was all
long ago, nearly thirty years, in the eighties of the 19th
century). Once in a church in Paris a Canon was preaching in
a very fanatical way against superstition. He would only
concede that what the Church conceded. Above all he wished to
prevent people from believing things that were objectionable
to him in particular. Now this Canon in his fanatical sermon
tried to convince his hearers that Freemasonry was a very
evil thing. (Catholic clergy, you know, very often preach
about Freemasonry and its potential dangers). He now only
wished to maintain that it is a very reprehensible doctrine,
and that those connected with that are thoroughly bad men. He
would not allow that there was anything spiritual and many of
such brotherhoods. Now, a man is listening to those who had
been taken there by a friend, and it seemed to him very
strange that the Canon of a great community should be
speaking thus to a large congregation, for he himself
believed that spiritual forces do work through such
societies. The two friends waited for the preacher after the
sermon and discussed the matter with him. He, however,
fanatically persisted in his opinion that all this had
nothing to do with what is spiritual, but Freemasons were
just evil men with a very evil doctrine. Then one of the two,
who knew something about the matter said: I suggest, your
reverence, that you should come with me at a fixed time next
Sunday. I will put you in the private seat in a certain
lodge, from which you can watch what is going on unseen. The
preacher said: very well. But may I take sacred relics with
me? — he was beginning, you see, to be frightened! So
he took the relics with him and was led to the place where he
could sit in concealment. At a given signal he beheld a very
strange-looking individual with a pale face moving towards
the presidential chair, and he moved without putting one foot
before the other, but making himself glide forward. —
this was all described very exactly in the man continued: now
he set his relics to work, pronounced the blessing, and so
on, so that there immediately arose a great disturbance in
the assembly, and hold me was broken up.
Afterwards, a
very progressive priest, a theologian, who is present,
declared that he simply did not believe in the thing, and
another priest alleged that he had heard in Rome that ten
priests there had taken an oath vouching for the Canon's
veracity. But first priest replied: I would rather believe
that ten priests had taken a false oath then that the
impossible is possible. Then I said: the way in which it was
told is enough for me. For the way it was, was the important
thing with regard to the gliding.
You meet with
this gliding in the Walpurgis-night also; Gretchen,
when she again appears, also glides along. Thus with Goethe
even such a detail is relevant. And every detail is presented
in this way, nothing is irrelevant from a spiritual point of
view.
What is it
then we are dealing with? We are dealing with something which
shows that, for Goethe, the question was not whether it would
be natural for Faust, two days after the catastrophe, to be
going for a pleasant country ramble on the Brocken. No, what
we are dealing with is a spiritual experience coming to Faust
during Walpurgis-night, an experience he could not avoid
which came to him as the definite result of the shattering
events through which he had passed. We must realize,
therefore, that his soul has been snatched out of his body,
and has found Mephistopheles in the spiritual world. And it
is in the spiritual world that they wandered together to the
Brocken, that is to say, they meet with those who are also
out of their bodies when they go to the Brocken; for
naturally the physical body of those who make this journey
remains in bed.
In the days
when such things were intensively practiced, those who wished
to make this journey to the Brocken (the time for it is the
night of April 30) rub themselves with a certain ointment
whereby — as otherwise in sleep — the complete
separation of the astral body and ego is brought about. In
this way the Brocken journey is carried out in spirit. It is
an experience of a very low type, but still experience that
can be carried out. No one need think, however, that he can
obtain information about the mixing of the magic ointment any
more easily than he can obtain it about the way in which van
Helmont, by rubbing certain chemicals into parts of the body,
has contrived consciously to leave it. This leaving of the
body has happened to van Helmont. But this kind of thing is
not recommended to those who, like Franz in Hermann Barr's
Ascension,
[See lecture
10th December, 1916.
Also Cycle
XLIII, Lecture 3]
find it too tedious to do the exercises and to carry out the
affair in the correct way. I know well that many would consider
themselves lucky were methods of this kind to be divulged to
them!
Well then, my
dear friends, Faust, that is, Faust's soul, and
Mephistopheles, on the night of April 30, actually find
themselves together with a company witches also outside their
bodies. This is a genuine spiritual occurrence, represented
by Goethe out of his deep knowledge. Goethe is not merely
showing how one may have a subjective vision; to him it is
clear that when a man leaves his body he will meet with other
souls who have left theirs. Mephistopheles indicates this
conclusively when he says:
In the realm of dreams and glamour
as it seems we now have entered.
They have actually entered another realm,
they have entered the soul-world and there meet with other
souls. And we naturally find them within this world as they
have to be in accordance with the after effects of their
physical life. Faust has to go back into his physical body.
So long as the conditions are there are for man to go back
into his physical body, that is, while he is not physically
dead, so long does he bear about with him, on going out with
his astral body, certain inclinations and affinities
belonging to his physical existence. Hence, what Faust says
is quite comprehensible, that is, how he is enjoying the
Spring air of the April night just passing into May;
naturally he is perfectly conscious of it since he is not
entirely separated from his body, but only temporarily
outside it. When a man is outside his physical body, as Faust
was here, he can perceive all that is fluid and all that is
of an airy nature in the world, though not what is solid. Of
solid things he can only perceive the fluid in them. Man is
more than 90% fluid, a column of fluid, and has in him quite
a small percentage of what is solid. Thus you need not
imagine that when outside he is unable to see another man; he
can only see, however, what is fluid in him. He can perceive
nature too, for nature is saturated with fluid. All that is
here pictured that shows deep knowledge. Faust can perceive
in this way. But Mephistopheles, that is Ahriman, as an
Ahrimanic being has no understanding of the present earth; he
belongs relate to what has lagged behind, and hence he feels
no particular pleasure in the Spring. You remember how I
explained to you in one of my last lectures that in winter a
man can remember what is connected with the Moon. But what is
connected with the present moon, now that it is Earth-moon,
does not particularly appeal to him. What has to do with the
Moon, that unites itself with the former Moon-element, when
fiery, illuminating forces issued from the Earth — that
is man's element; the Will-o'-the-wisps, issuing from the
moon element still in the Earth, it is in accordance with the
exact truth.
I draw your
attention in passing to the fact that the first part of the
manuscript of the Walpurgis-night is not clear owing
to some negligence; in these editions there is everywhere
something almost impossible. It did not occur to me until we
were rehearsing that corrections would be needed even in the
Walpurgis-night. In the first place., in these copies,
the alternated song between Faust, Mephistopheles and the
Will-o'-the-wisps, the alternate singing and the alternate
dancing, are not assigned to the several characters. Now the
learned people have made various distributions that, however,
do not fit the case. I have allotted it all in such a way
that what we so often find given to Faust belongs to
Mephistopheles:
“In the realm of dreams and
glamour,
As it seems, we now are entered.
Lead us truly through the clamor (this is said to the
will-o'-the-wisps)
Thither where our aims are centered
Through the wide and desert spaces.”
Even in Schröer's version I find this
given to Faust, but it really belongs to Mephistopheles
— as it was spoken, you will remember yesterday. What
comes next lost to the Will-o'-the-wisps:
“Lo now! Lo! how swiftly
races
Tree past tree! How the gigantic
Crags lean over, and the antic
Rocky snouts that stand in cluster
Now they snort and how they bluster!”
Then it is Faust's turn where reference is
made to these things remind him of the shattering experience
he has passed through:
“Through the stones and turf
what lustre,
Stream and streamlet downward springing.
Hark! ’tis murmurs! Hark! ’tis singing.
Hark! ’tis love-plaints sweet and olden,
Voices from yon-days all golden!
All our hope, and love and longing
Echo, too, like tales once told in
Far-off times, comes faintly ringing.”
Then, strangely enough even Schröer
assigns what comes next Mephistopheles: it belongs, of
course, to the Will-o'-the-wisp:
Woo hoo! shoo-hoo! nearer hover
Cry of screech-owl, jay and plover.” (and so
on)
Schröer gives these lines to Mephistopheles, that is
obviously wrong. That last lines should go to Faust:
“Nay, but tell me, are we biding
Still, or are we onward riding?
Cliffs and green trees are sliding,
Will-o'-the-wisps their number doubles,
Blown up like transparent bubbles.
All in giddy whirls are gliding.”
I will here point out that there are still mistakes in
what follows. Thus after Faust has spoken the words:
“Now through the air the wind doth howl and
hiss,
And with what buffets beats upon my shoulder!”
You will find a long speech given to
Mephistopheles. But it does not belong to him (though
assigned to him in all editions). Only the first three lines
are his:
“Clasp thou the cliffs old ribs! Cling to the
boulders!
Else will it hurl thee headlong into the deep abyss!
The night is thick with rack.”
The lines following are Faust's:
“Hark how the groaning woods do crack.
Startled fly the solemn owls ...” (and so
on).
Not until the final line does Mephistopheles speak
again:
“... Hearest thou voices o'er us?
Far and dear that sing in chorus
All the magic mount along
Wildly streams the wizard song.”
This had to be corrected, for things must
stand in their right form. Then I have taken upon myself to
insert just one line. For there are some things, especially
where witches are concerned, that really cannot be put on the
stage, and so have thought fit to introduce a line that does
not actually belong.
Now I must
admit that it has distressed me a good deal to see how
corrupt the rendering is in all the editions and how it has
occurred to no one to apportion the passages correctly. It
must be kept clearly in mind that Goethe wrote Faust
bit by bit, and that much in it naturally needs correction,
(he himself called it the confused manuscript). But the
correction must be done with knowledge. It is not Goethe, of
course, who is to be corrected, but the mistakes made
publication.
From what has
been said it will be clear that Mephistopheles makes use of
the Will-o'-the-wisp's as a guide, and that they go into a
world that is seen to be fluctuating, in movement, as it
would be perceived were everything solid away. Now enter into
all that that is said there. How much real knowledge is shown
in the way all that is solid is made to disappear! How all
this is in tune with what is said by the Will-o'-the-wisp,
Mephistopheles and Faust, as being represented by Goethe as
out of the body. Mephistopheles indeed has no physical body,
he only assumes one; Faust for the moment is not in his
physical body; Will-o'-the-wisps are elemental beings who
naturally, since it is solid, cannot take on the physical
body. All this that proceeds in the alternated song shows
that he wishes to lead us into the essential being of the
supersensible, not into something merely visionary but into
the very essence of the spiritual world.
But mow our
attention is drawn to how, when we are thus in the spiritual,
everything looks different; for in all probability any
ordinary onlooker would not see Mammon all aglow in the
mountain, nor the glow within it. It is hardly necessary to
explain that all here described shows that the soul pictured
is outside the body. It is a real relation then between
spiritual beings that we are shown, in the Goethe lets us see
what unites him with knowledge of the spiritual world. That
Goethe could placed Mephistopheles so relevantly into his
poem at all, proves that he has knowledge of these matters
and that he knew perfectly well that Mephistopheles is a
being who has lagged behind. Hence he actually introduces
other retarded beings of that ilk. Notice this — a
voice comes:
“Which way, comest thou
here?”
A voice from below answers (and this means
a voice proceeding from a being with sub-human
instincts):
Over the Ilsensteep.
In the owlet's nest I took a peek
She had eyes like moons!”
Voice: to hell with a wanion!
Why so hot-foot thou run yon?
Voice: She hath well-nigh flayed
me!
See the wounds she hath made me!
Now notice that later the answers given by
a voice above.
“Come with us, come, from the
Felsenmere.”
Voices from below: “We would
climb with you the mountain sheer.”
Voice from above: “Who calls
from out the rocky cranny?”
And then we hear the voice of one who has
clambered for three hundred years. That means that Goethe
calls up spirits who are three hundred years behind. The
origin of Faust lies three hundred years back; the Faust
legend arose in the sixteenth century. The spirits left
behind from that time appear, mingling now with those who
come to the Brocken as witches in the present — for
these things must be taken literally. Thus Goethe says: Oh,
there are many such souls with us still, souls akin to the
witch souls, for they are three hundred years behind. Since
everything in the Walpurgis-night is under the guidance of
Mephistopheles, it would be possible for young Mephistopheles
beings to appear among the witch-souls. And then comes a
present-day half witch, for the voice that earlier cried:
“Take me with you, take me
up!
Three hundred years I've clambered zealous.”
is not that of a half-witch but of a being
who is really three hundred years old. The witches are not as
old as that although they go to the Brocken. — The
half-witch comes slowly trotting up the mountain. Here then
we meet something genuinely spiritual, something that has
overcome time, that has remained behind in time. Many of the
words are positively wonderful. Thus, one voice, the voice of
the one who has been clambering for three hundred years,
says:
“Yet I cannot reach the top.
Fain would I be beside my fellows!”
In these words Goethe very beautifully
expresses how the witch-souls and the souls belonging to the
dead who, in like manner, have remained so very much behind,
are akin. These souls remaining behind would fain be with
their fellows — very interesting!
Then we see
how all the time Mephistopheles tries to keep Faust to the
commonplace, the trivial; he tries to keep him among the
witches' souls. But Faust wants to learn the deeper secrets
of existence, and therefore wants more, wants to go farther;
he wishes to get to what is really evil, to the sources of
evil:
“Up yonder, though, I'd rather
be!
The smoke with lurid splendour lit
Rolls on. The crowd streams to the devil,
What riddles there one might unravel!
For this deeper element Faust is seeking
in Evil, Mephistopheles has no understanding; he does not
want to take even faust there because there things will
naturally become rather — painful. It is all very well
to be taken to the witches as a soul; but when a man like
Faust, having been received into this company, goes still
farther towards evil, he may discover things highly dangerous
to many. For, in Evil, is revealed the source of much that
the witches should be burnt. for although no one need
practise witchcraft, yet by reason of the existence of
witches and their being used to a certain extent for their
mediumistic qualities, by certain people wishing to fathom
various secrets, if their mediumistic powers went far enough
the source of much that is in the world could be brought to
light. Things were not allowed to go to these lengths, hence
the witches were burnt. It was definitely to the interest of
those who burned witches, that nothing could be divulged of
what comes to light when those experienced in such matters
probe deeper into with secrets. Such things can only be
hinted at. The origin of all sorts of things would have been
discovered — no one who had not this to fear has been
in favour of burning witches.
But, as we
have said, Mephistopheles wishes to keep Faust more to
trivialities. And then Faust becomes impatient, for he had
thought of Mephistopheles as a genuine devil, who would not
practice trifling magic arts upon him but, once he was out of
his body, would take him right into Evil. Faust wants
Mephistopheles to show himself as the Devil, not as a
commonplace magician able to lead him only to what is
trifling in the spiritual world. But Mephistopheles shirks
this and is only willing to lead him to the trivial. It is
exceedingly interesting to notice how Mephistopheles turns
aside from actual Evil; that is not to be disclosed to Faust
at this stage, and he directs his attention once more to the
elemental. The following is a wonderful passage:
“See where yon snail comes
creeping
She with her groping face hath nosed
Some inkling of ny secret out.”
Wonderfully to the point is this jolt down
into the sphere of smelling! It is actually the case that in
the world into which Mephistopheles has led Faust, smelling
plays a bigger part than seeing. Her ‘groping
face’ — a wonderfully vivid expression, for it is
not the same sense of smell as men have, neither is it a
face; it is as if one could send out something from the eyes
to touch things with delicate rays. It is true, the lower
animals have something of the kind, for the snail not only
has feelers, but these feelers lengthen themselves into
extraordinarily long etheric stalks with which an animal of
this kind can really touch anything soft, but only touch it
etherically. Think what deep knowledge this all is — in
no way dilettante.
And now they
come to a lively club. We are still in the spiritual world,
of course, and they come to this lively club. Goethe
understood how to be one of those who can talk of the
spiritual world without a long and tragic face, and how to
speak with humour and irony when these are necessary and in
place. Why should not an old General, a Minister (His
Excellency), a Parvenu and an Author, discussing their
affairs together while sipping their wine, find themselves by
degrees so little interested in what is being said that
gradually they fall asleep? Or, when they are still under the
particular influence of what is going on at the Club —
a little dicing perhaps, a little gambling — why then
should not these souls so come out of their bodies that they
might be found in a lively Club among others who have left
their bodies? At a Club — the General, His Excellency
the Minister, the Parvenu, and now the Poet as well; why not?
One can meet with them for they are outside their bodies. And
if one is lucky, one can really find such a party, for it is
something like that in this sort of assembly, that they fall
asleep in the midst of amusing themselves. Goethe is not
ignorant of all this, you see. But Mephistopheles is
surprised that here, through nature herself, through nothing
more than a rather abnormal occurrence of ordinary life,
these souls have come to be in this position. He is so
surprised to come across it in this way, that he has to
recall a bit of his own past. For this reason he becomes
suddenly old on the spot, or in his present form he is not
able to have this experience. The human world is meddling
with him and this he does not want. He tells the
will-o'-the-wisp it should go straight not zigzag, lest its
flickering light should be blown out. The will-o'-the-wisp is
trying to ape man kind by going zigzag. The Mephistopheles
wants to go straight — men go zigzag. So it disturbs
him that, merely through an abnormal way of proceeding in
life and not through any hellish machination, for respectable
members of human society have appeared on the Brocken
scene.
But then
things begin to go better. First there enters the
Huckster-witch, naturally also outside her body. She arrives
with all her arts — so beautifully referred to
here:
“No chalice but into the healthy
frame
Hath poured the poison's slow-assuming flame;
No jewel but to shame beguiled some winsome woman,
No sword that hath not stabbed i’ the back the
foeman.”
So now he
feels himself again. This witch has certainly been properly
anointed; he wants more feels quite in his element, addresses
her as ‘Cousin’, but tells her:
“Nay, thou dost read the times
but badly, Cousin,
For done is past, and past is done!
Only for novelties we clamour,
Should'st lay in novelties alone.”
He want
something of more interest to Faust. But Faust is not at all
attracted. He feels that he is in a very inferior spiritual
elements and now says — what I asked you to notice, or
it is wonderful:
“If only I don't take leave of
my senses!” (If only I don't loose my
consciousness!)
That means he
does not wish to go through the experience with a suppressed
consciousness, in an atavistic way; he prefers to have the
experience in full consciousness. In such a Witches' Sabbath
he consciousness might easily be blunted, and that should not
be. Think how deep Goethe goes!
And now
references made to how the soul element has to leave the
body, and how a part of the etheric body too must be lifted
out, and what I might call a kind of Nature-initiation, that
during the whole earth-evolution only happens in exceptional
circumstances. Part of Faust's etheric body has gone out; and
because a man's etheric body, as I have often told you
already, is feminine, this is seen as Lilith. This takes us
back to times when man was not constituted at all as he is
now. According to legend Lilith was Adam's first wife and the
mother of Lucifer. Thus we see here how Mephistopheles is
making use of the luciferic arts at his disposal, but how
something lower also enters in that, in the following speech
amounts almost to a temptation. Faust moreover is afraid he
may lose consciousness and losing consciousness he would fall
very low — so that Mephistopheles would like to promote
this. He has already brought Faust to the point of having
part of his etheric body drawn out, which makes him able to
see Lilith appear. But Mephistopheles would like to go still
farther, and thus tempts Faust to the witch-dance, when he
himself dances with the old witch, Faust with the young. But
it all results in Faust being able to lose consciousness
— he is unable to lose the!
Thus we are
given an accurate picture by Goethe of a scene taking place
among spirits. When souls have left their bodies they can
experience this, and Goethe knew how to represent it. But
there are other souls who can enter such an assembly, and
they to bring their earthly qualities with them. Goethe knew
that in Berlin lived Nikolai, a friend of Lessing's. Now this
Nikolai was one of the most fanatical, so-called enlightened
men of his time; he was one of those who, had a Monist
society then existed, would have joined it, would indeed have
directed it, for men were like that in the 18th century, they
made war upon everything spiritual. A man of that kind is
like the ‘Proktophantasmist’. (You can look this
word up in the dictionary). Thus Nikolai not only wrote
The Joys of Young Werther in order from a
free-thinkers point of view to make fun of Goethes's
sentimentality in The Sorrows of Werther, but also
wrote for the Berlin Academy of Science — to prove
himself, one might say, a genuine monist —
Concerning the Objectionable Nature of the Superstitious
Belief in a Spiritual World. And he was in a position to
do that, for he suffered from visions — he was able to
see into the spiritual world! But he tried the medical
antidote of the time; he had leeches applied to a certain
part of his body, and low and behold the visions disappeared.
Hence he was able to give a materialistic interpretation of
the visionary in his discourse to the Academy of Science, for
he could prove by his own case that visions can be driven
away by the application of leeches; therefore everything is
entirely under the influence of the material.
Now Goethe
knew Nikolai, Friedrich Nikolai, bookseller and writer, who
was born in 1733 and died in 1811, he knew him very well. So
perhaps he was not blindly inventing. And that there should
be no doubt that Nikolai is meant, he makes the
Proktophantasmist say, after he has been drawn in as a spirit
among the spirits, and has tried to talk them down:
“Are
you still there? Well, well! Was ever such a thing?”
They ought to have gone by now for he hoped to drive them
away by argument.
“Pack
off now! Don't you know we've been enlightening!” Today
he would have said: we have been preaching Monism.
“This
crew of devils by no rule is daunted.” Now he must see,
for he really can see, since he suffers from visions. Such
men are quite fit to join in the Walpurgis-night.
Again it is
not as an amateur that Goethe has pictured this; he has
chosen a man who, if things go favorably, can enter even
consciously into the spiritual world on this last night of
April, and can meet the witches there. And he must be such a
one. Goethe pictures nothing in a dilettante way; he makes
use of thoroughly suitable people. But they retain the bent,
the affinities, they have in the world. Therefore even as a
spirit the Proktophantasmist wants to get rid of the spirits,
and Goethe makes this very clear. For as a sequel to the
treatise about leeches and spirits, Friedrich Nikolai had
also conjured away ghosts on Wilhelm von Humboldt's estate in
Tegel. Wilhelm von Humboldt lived in Tegel, in the
neighborhood of Berlin and the Friedrich Nikolai had fallen
foul of him also, as one of the enlightened. Hence Goethe
makes him say:
“We're
mighty wise, but Tegel is still haunted.” Tegel is a
suburb of Berlin; the Humboldt's any property there and it
was there that the ghosts appeared in which Goethe was
interested. Goethe also knew that Nikolai had described it,
but as an enlightened opponent.
“I've swept and swept at this
vain fancying,
Yet cannot sweep clean! Was ever such a thing?”
So even in
the house of the enlightened Wilhelm von Humboldt in Tegel
there are apparitions. Nikolai cannot endure this spirit
despotism; it refuses to follow him and will not obey
him:
“My spirit cannot discipline it.”
And to make
it perfectly clear that with full knowledge he is describing
just such a personality as Nikolai, Goethe adds:
“A last, today 'tis useless. Now
I know it.
At least I'll take a journey with them though.
And still I hope,ere my last step, to show
My mastery alike o'er devils and poet.”
For at that
time Nikolai had taken a journey through Germany and
Switzerland, of which he had written a description where was
recorded everything noteworthy he came across. And there one
can find many shrewd and enlightened remarks. Everywhere he
contended particularly against what he called superstition.
Thus even this Swiss tour is alluded to:
“And still I hope, ere my last
step, to show
My mastery alike o'er devils and poet.”
‘Devils’
because he attacked the spirits; ‘poets’ because he attacked
Goethe — in the “Joys of Young Werthur”.
Mephistopheles is quite clear about such people, and
says:
“To seek relief, as usual in a
puddle
He'll seat himself, and when the leeches feast
Upon his ramp, from all his brains that muddle
From phantoms and from fancy he's released.”
Also a
reference to Friedrich Nikolai's leech theory. (You may read
about it in the Transactions of the Academy of Sciences in
Berlin. Nikolai delivered the lecture in 1799).
But now, when
this affair is over, Faust sees a very ordinary phenomenon
— a red mouse jumping from the beautiful witch's mouth.
That is a very common phenomenon and a proof that Faust has
remained completely conscious; for had he not been conscious
but only dreaming, it would have remained a red mouse,
whereas now he is able to change this vision called up by
sense-instinct into what it should really be for him.
Everything is transformed — I think this is most
impressive — and the red mouse becomes Gretchen. The
blood-red cord is still about her neck. The Imagination has
grown clear, and Faust is able to pass from a lower
imagination to the vision of the soul of Gretchen who, by
reason of her misfortune, now becomes visible to hem in her
true form.
You may think
as you like, my dear friends, the connections of the
spiritual world are manifold and perhaps bewildering —
but what I have just shown you in this changing of a lower
vision of a red mouse into something lofty, true and deep, is
pre-eminently a spiritual fact. It is highly probable that
Goethe originally planned the whole scene quite differently
represented. A little sketch exists in which it is
differently represented — in the way Mephistopheles
might have conjured up the scene before Faust. But Faust has
been sufficiently conscious to elude Mephistopheles here, and
to see a soul to whom Mephistopheles would never have led
him. To Mephistopheles himself she appears as Medusa, from
which you see that Goethe is wishing to show how two
different souls can quite differently interpret one and the
same reality — the one way true, the other in some
respect false. His own base instincts giving colour to the
phenomenon., Mephistopheles flippantly utters:
“Like
his own love she seems to every soul.” And here again
we find that this is a spiritual experience through which
Faust had to pass. He is not just a vigorous man enjoying a
walk, he is a man undergoing a spiritual experience; and what
he now sees as Gretchen is actually what lives within him,
while the other serves merely to bring this to the
surface.
Now,
Mephistopheles, wishing to lead Faust away from the whole,
from what is now the deeper spiritual reality, takes him to
something which he just introduces as an interlude, and which
we must regard as the conclusion of the
“Walpurgis-night's Dream”, that will be
performed, but the whole of it is inserted into the Brocken
scene to show how Mephisto wishes to get hold of Faust. This
Walpurgis-night's Dream — about which I shall say no
more today — was introduced by Mephisto in order to
turn Faust's thoughts in a quite definite direction. But here
we have a remarkable kind of poetical paraphrase. You
remember how Mephistopheles says:
“Go to! slight Reason, now, and
Science slight,
Wherein doth lie man's greatest might!
Let but the spirit of lies enamour
Thy soul of sorcery and glamour
And, pact or none, I hold thee tight — ”
In the Walpurgis-night Dream everything is
reasonable, but Faust has to be shown how to enjoy this
reasonableness. Goethe has translated the Italian
dilettare into the German dilettieren that is
actually to divert; and Servilibus, a servant of
Mephistopheles invented by Goethe, is to persuade Faust to
find diversion in what is reasonable, that is, to treat it in
a low and flippant way. Hence though the Walpurgis-night
Dream is to be taken seriously it is said:
“We're just about to begin
A brand new piece. 'Tis the last of the seven;
To give so many is the custom here.
A dilettante wrote it. Even
The players are dilettante too.
Excuse my vanishing. As dilettante 'tis my diversion
To pull the curtain up.”
This then is the way Mephistopheles tries
to tempt Faust to despise the reasonableness of the
Walpurgis-night Dream. That is why he places it before him in
this kind of aura. For it suited Mephistopheles cunningly to
introduce the rational into the Brocken; he finds that right
for in his opinion it is where it belongs.
So you see in
Goethe's poem we are dealing with something that really rises
above the lower spiritual world and shows us how well Goethe
was versed in spiritual knowledge. One the other hand, it may
bring to our notice the necessity of acquiring a little
spiritual science — for how else can we understand
Goethe? Even eminent men who love Goethe can otherwise merely
conclude that he is a bit of a monster — they don't say
it, they are silent about it, and that is one of the lies of
life — such a monster that he takes Faust, two days
after causing the catastrophe with Gretchen's mother and
brother, for a pleasant walk on the Brocken. But, we must
constantly repeat, Goethe was not the commonplace,
happy-go-lucky man he has hitherto appeared. On the contrary,
we must accustom ourselves to recognise more in him than
that, something quite different, and to realise that much
concealed in Goethe's writings has yet to be brought into the
light of day.
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