The Easter Cantata and the Idea of Mediation in Goethe's Faust Author(s): Robert Ellis Dye Source: PMLA,

Vol. 92, No. 5 (Oct., 1977), pp. 963-976 Published by: Modern Language Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/461849 Accessed: 10/12/2010 20:10
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ROBERT ELLIS DYE

The EasterCantataand the Ideaof Mediation in Goethe'sFaust

HERE IS extensive coincidence, then a curious divergence, in the behavior of Goethe's Faust and his Werther. Both become frustrated with human finitude, and both approach suicide as a means of transcending the walls of the human prison. Further, at the peaks of their respective crises, both have occasion to contemplate the Resurrection of Jesus Christbut there the resemblance ends. Werther goes on to carry out his suicide, but Faust is diverted and proceeds to live out a long and turbulent life on earth. My question is, What is the significance of Faust's and Werther's respective views of Christ in the determination of their sharply divergent courses? Stuart Atkins describes Werther as "profoundly religious" and therefore as needing "to dispose of the wide-spread religious prejudice against suicide before he can, emotionally and religiously, be ready to put his intention into effect without being inconsistent with his own nature."' An ethical and religious man, Werther must find a way of making suicide ethically and theologically permissible. He accomplishes this by transforming Christ from the exclusive agent of redemption into a mere example, so that he need not depend on Christ but only emulate Him. Werther insists-on the authority of his own heart-that he must be entitled to an immediate relationship to God: "Does not the Son of God Himself say that they shall be His whom the Father has given to Him? Well, what if I have not been given to Him? What if the Father wants to keep me for Himself, as my heart tells me?"2 Such a solution reflects the view held by Goethe at the time of his composition of Werther, that man requires no mediator between himself and God and that Christ, although a paragon of human excellence, is only "one among others who also bear witness to divine revelation."3 The question of Christ's special T status was the chief issue in Goethe's quarrel with his erstwhile friend, the enthusiastic Lavater, whom Goethe confronts at the height of their disagreement, on 22 June 1781, with the reproach that it is unjust and a rape to pluck out "all the precious feathers of the thousandfold fowl under heaven ... as though these had been usurped . .. and use them to adorn your bird of paradise exclusively."4 Goethe and like-minded believers would worship God in themselves and in all of God's children-including, to be sure, Jesus Christ. Werther similarly reclassifies Christ -demotes Him from "the Way" to a guidepost, as it were-before attempting self-redemption. Christ died and returned to the Father; Werther will do the same. He underscores the ritual nature of his self-sacrifice by partaking of bread and wine as his last supper, and he persists in the imitation even when his anguish is greatest, crying out: "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" (p. 67)-desperately grasping for, and finding, solace in the realization that there was a precedent for his terror. Since Christ too felt abandoned, Werther is not unique and thus not quite alone. The denial of Christ's exclusive divinity, intimated already in Goethe's early "Epistle of the
Pastor of *** to the new Pastor of
***"5

the

alignment of Jesus Christ with the thousands of other "fowl under heaven"-is a form of the "Christless [Christ-empty] Christianity" that Lavater so abhorred. In Werther's bold adaptation of this position Atkins has seen a Lavaterian hint of Werther's arrogance (pp. 53435). In view of Goethe's theological differences with Lavater, we may wonder at Atkins' conclusion that Goethe uses Lavater's categories to mark out the symptoms and stages of Werther's decline-until we consider that Goethe, very much the chameleon poet, is quite uninhibited about adopting whatever frame of reference his

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The Easter Cantata and the Idea of Meditation in Goethe's Faust

ther's faith.8 And it does seem that his appeal to the example of Christ is largely rhetorical-a desperate attempt to make impending death meaningful to himself, to make absurdity intelligible. And the consequence is only increased hysteria, translucently disguised as jubilation. Faust's relief, by contrast, is almost palpable, for Faust in some fashion grasps the reassurance given in the cantata to the anguished disciples: Christist erstanden, Aus der VerwesungSchoB; ReiBetvon Banden Freudigeuch los! Euch ist der Meisternah, Euch ist er da! Christis arisen, womb. Out of Corruption's Burstye your prison, Break from your gloom! To you is the Masternear, For you is He here! (11.797-807) From this prompting, Faust somehow derives sustenance. Yet he does also say that, while comprehending the message and cherishing a religious past, he now lacks faith. And what is liturgical solace to a doubter? The apparent contradiction has led to the popular interpretation that Faust is overcome by but vaguely recollected and dimly focused religious emotion, that he is swept back less by the particular message of the Resurrection than by memories of his own pious childhood and by his joy in the general reawakening that Easter announces (1. 780), which is dramatized in the very next scene"Outside the City Gates." Reinstalled in his natural, human context, Faust is susceptible of reclamation by the earth. Not a few writers seem blissfully unfussy about the specific meaning of the impediment to Faust's heaven-bent leap-an obstruction as sudden and fortuitous as "Oreas" in Goethe's sonnet "Machtiges Uberraschen." It is sufficient that it reminds him of his childhood integration in a community of believers and by this means effects his restoration from solitude into human society.9 Although there is textual support for it, such a reading lacks specificity and tends to be illogical, at least in those versions that speak of

purposes require. And Werther does exhibit arrogance, nowhere more than in his arrogation of the right to displace Jesus Christ in order to proceed directly to God the Father. As the church bells ring twelve, he holds the pistol to his forehead and dies his violent death. If we turn now to Faust, who likewise hears sounds from a neighboring church as he teeters on the brink of suicide, we are struck by the contrast. Whereas Werther surveys Christ and finds a way around Him, Faust encounters the Redeemer in the music of an Easter cantata and finds his path into death blocked. The difference might be easily explained: Werther believes in Christ's Resurrection and presumes to try to emulate it; Faust doubts and, having been reminded of his doubt by the ceremony, desists ("I hear the message, to be sure, but I lack the faith"-1. 765).6 It is hardly so simple, however, as faith versus doubt, for Faust seems to deny credence only in the miracle of the literal Resurrection (1. 766), not in the possibility of any sort of redemption or immortality whatsoever.7 In reaching for the poison, he was clearly gambling on reawakening in a higher sphere, on achieving pure activity beyond the grave. Faust does seem fleetingly to be overcome by doubt, but doubt not so much in the existence of "jene Spharen" 'yonder spheres' as in his own ability to attain them (1. 767). Ultimately, however, it is not fear and trembling but grateful reacceptance of mortal life that accounts for his restoration and reorientation. At the monologue's end Faust's mood is ecstatic, for he has fought a spiritual struggle and been granted a breakthrough: "Sound on, ye songs of heaven, so sweet and mild, / My tears flow forth, and Earth takes back her child!" (11. 783-84). A few bars of the heavenly tones, reaching out to him, Faust, "in the dust" (1. 763)-music better directed, Faust remonstrates, to the ears of "tender-hearted men" (1. 764)-have broken through his isolation and led him back into his natural terrestrial sphere and to fellowship with the rest of mankind. How much more authentic ring Faust's words as religious expression than does Werther's protesting that there will be compensation in the world beyond! Indeed, we have cause to wonder whether Faust is not the stronger believer of the two. Emil Staiger, for one, has questioned Wer-

Robert Ellis Dye

Faust's rekindled hope through the reawakening that is spring. It is precisely because Faust has a hope of reawakening that he raises the goblet to his lips in the first place, so why should he be dissuaded by news of the archetypal reawakening? Even if construed only as myth, the Resurrection might rather be expected to encourage him, just as it is supposed to have encouraged Werther. Does it not exemplify liberation from the confinement of mortality, which Faust has been lamenting, into the freedom of eternal life? D. J. Enright's inference that Faust "does not really wish to kill himself"10 may be valid in a sense, but it ignores Faust's purpose in venturing suicide and seems quite unjustifiably to suggest lack of will to be the principal cause of his turnabout. Enright does allow "that [Faust's] past beliefs are not entirely past" (p. 30), recognizing that religion is never an entirely dead issue. I would go further and suggest that providential revelations may both revive religion and alter purposes, indeed may influence even so momentous a decision as that for or against life. But what is the nature of the revelation, and what religious issues does it call to life? We pause here to note that there is a rich pattern of variations and recapitulations of the theme of rebirth in the tapestry of Faust. It is implicit in Faust's rejuvenation in the witch's kitchen and in his regenerating sleeps-first in the alpine meadow (11. 4613-78) and again in Wagner's laboratory, from which sleep "to life he'll waken" (1. 7054) when he is set down in Greece. It is further restated in the "birth" of Homunculus (11. 6848-79)-which, one may infer, presupposes the "death" and putrefaction of human spermatozoa in a laboratory retortT" -and in his (projected) rebirth, when, in the magnificent pageant on the Aegean Sea and shore, his wish to (die and) become is granted (11. 8466-73). Faust revels in the warm and colorful "resurrection" (1. 922) of the townspeople whom he and Wagner join outside the city gates only a few hours beyond the events we are here considering. Finally, there is Faust's death and his clearly implied rebirth to a subse-a culquent existence at the end of the play12 mination confirming the unique appropriateness of the Easter cantata as a keynote to the whole. Goethe's works collectively present us with a mountain of evidence for his special fondness

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for the theme of death and rebirth as the principle governing organic development, and its introduction at the beginning of Faust should alert us both to expect Faust's ultimate redemption and to watch for a series of metaphorical deaths and rebirths in Faust's progress toward this last transmutation. But, while figuratively speaking we may call Faust's reacceptance of mortal life in the scene "Night" a rebirth, let us not lose sight of the question of his personal motivation. And his contemplation of the promise that man may die and live anew would seem to provide a poor incentive for reentering the life that thus far has proved unsatisfactory. The Easter music is a suitable accompaniment for the longed-for escape, but why should it cause Faust voluntarily to reincarcerate himself? At least, if he viewed Christ's death and Resurrection as exemplary, as Werther does, he would not be dissuaded from suicide but would be encouraged to carry it out. Insofar as Faust attributed any value whatsoever to Christ's example as example, it would seem to reinforce his purpose, not detract from it. The question remains then, Why does Faust's response to the Resurrection differ from that of Werther? And this question can be reformulated in at least three alternative ways. First-and we have pondered this-is the difference one of belief? Second, does Christ perhaps provide a different kind of model for Faust than for Werther; that is, does Faust focus on something other than Christ's transmutation from a mortal to an immortal being? And, third, does Faust view the relationship between man and Christ as other than that of imitator to model? Stuart Atkins sees Jesus serving as a model of heroism: "Although Faust remains unable to believe the message of the Resurrection literally, in the dust which is the verge of death he has been reminded of an example of suffering far more genuinely heroic than his own (second Angels' Chorus)" (Goethe's Faust, p. 32). A version of this view is rather fully developed by Ernst Busch, who considers the Easter cantata to be a divinely staged admonition to submit to a life of suffering: "Death as rebirth and resurrection to a new existence is the fruit of a life tested and proven through suffering. Man is meant to suffer. This is plainly confessed by Goethe through the words of the disciples: 'Ach! an der

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The Easter Cantata and the Idea of Meditation in Goethe's Faust

titanic activity of Faust. Faust's adventures do not add up to a life of suffering (see 11. 1143340). Faust (at the outset) and Werther are afflicted with related forms of weltschmerz, but they part company in their respective reactions to this circumstance. In what follows I explore the third possibility: namely, that in his moment of extremity Faust is made to see in the joyous celebration of Christ's death and rebirth neither an invitation to follow Him into death, as he had been on the verge of doing, nor a hint to emulate Christ's earthly suffering; that, instead, he apprehends therein a symbolic pattern, a paradigmatic relationship between man and such ultimates as God, freedom, and immortality. This paradigm engages his sense of truth and propriety and effects an adjustment in his existential position, thus diminishing both the presumptuousness and the desperation that, until the ceremonial intrusion occurred, were in fact propelling him toward suicide. The remainder of my remarks are devoted to identifying the relationship in question and to illustrating Faust's acceptance of it. II It will be useful to follow Faust's gradual comprehension of what it is that intrudes upon his consciousness as he is about to drink the fatal draught. At first, he is aware of mere sounds: "Welch tiefes Summen, welch ein heller Ton /Zieht mit Gewalt das Glas von meinem Munde?" 'What deep humming, and what bright tones / Draw from my lips the glass with mighty power?' (11. 742-43). In the pair of verses immediately following, however, he knows the occasion of the music: "Verkiindiget ihr dumpfen Glocken schon / Des Osterfestes erste Feierstunde?" 'Ye muffled bells, make ye already known / The Easter festival's first solemn hour?' (11. 744-45). And in the final three lines of this speech, which expresses his first response to the Easter message, he knows its meaning: "Ihr Ch6re, singt ihr schon den trostlichen Gesang, / Der einst, um Grabes Nacht, von Engelslippen klang, / Gewil3heit einem neuen Bunde?" 'Ye choirs, do ye the song of consolation sing, / Which angels sang around the grave's dark night, to bring/ Us certainty of a new covenant?' (11.746-48).

Erde Brust / Sind wir zum Leide da' ['Oh, at earth's breast have we / In suffering our lot to see']."13 The better to stress the exemplary character of Christ's passion, Busch explicitly denies the pertinence of the Atonement to this context: "The point of this passage is not that Christ's ordeal was also beneficial to others.... Christ is not seen as coming from God to man as the Revelator and Mediator; rather he strides toward God as the proven man." Only in this special sense, according to Busch, is Faust still receptive to the Christian message as he ventures hubristically to transcend his existential limits Busch has identified one of Goethe's several postures toward Jesus Christ, one differing from that of an Elder of the Pedagogical Province in Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre only in that the latter expressly exempts Christ's ultimate suffering from the life that men are to emulate.14 We have taken note of Werther's attempt to duplicate Christ's transmutation, and Herbert Schoffler long ago interpreted Werther's earthly trials as a secularized parallel to Christ's passion.15 A number of more recent critics have regarded Werther's imitativeness as megalomanic (e.g., Atkins, "Lavater and Goethe," pp. 544, 564). But, whatever the correct view of Werther (even megalomania may not be wholly incompatible with a certain grandeur in his defiance of a world he never made), it is doubtful that any pattern of Christ-imitating will fit the life of Faust, either as guiding ideal or as manifest accomplishment. While Busch's effort to take the meaning of the Easter ceremony into account is certainly to be applauded,16 he offers no reasons for his choice of the disciples as Goethe's spokesmen. Indeed, the last word is given to the Chorus of Angels, whose response gently urges the disciples to cease their lament and be joyful: "Euch ist der Meister nah, / Euch ist er da!" 'To you is the Master near, / For you is He here!' (11. 806-07). Further, the implicit, though no doubt unintended, assignment of Faust to the same side of the "Leiden/Tatigkeit" 'suffering/activity' polarity as Werther is more than questionable-for Faust is the most impressive symbol of human restlessness and striving in all of world literature. I believe that it is at least schematically correct to regard "die Leiden" of young Werther as antithetical to the

(pp. 129-30).

Robert Ellis Dye

There is no question that in the first moments after the interruption Faust is conscious of a religious content, and a very specific one at that. For at this point already he focuses not merely on the physical miracle of the Resurrection, which a few moments later he claims to doubt, but specifically on the meaning of this event for man. It is a "consoling" song that he hears. And the covenant to which he attends is the "new" covenant, the covenant prophesied by Jeremiah (xxxi.31-34) and, in the belief of Christians, exclusively realized through the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the "surety [or "mediator"] of a better covenant" (Heb. vii.22, viii.6).17 "He is the mediator of a new covenant, so that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance .... For Christ has entered . . . into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf" (Heb. ix. 15-24). Thus, even if Faust no longer literally believes in Christ's Resurrection to the extent that he takes the rolling away of the stone and the disappearance and then reappearance in the flesh of the crucified Christ to be historical fact, his reference to the new covenant suggests that he is acutely conscious of the Christian acceptance of Christ as exclusive mediator-the central doctrine of orthodox Christianity and the crux of Goethe's dispute with Lavater, who once elaborated on John xiv.6, "Christ is either a fool or a deceiver without equal ... or it is true-and this truth is of the utmost importance-that 'no man cometh unto the Father but by Him; whosoever hath not the Son hath not the Father either'" (my translation and italics).18 If we are aware of this background, cognizant of Goethe's altogether common practice of advancing now one thesis, now its opposite, in the many sets of polarities that inform his "great confession," and are mindful of Faust's specific mention of "a new covenant" (1. 748), we will see that Faust is prompted by the music to consider the claim of Christ's exclusive agency for the salvation of man, that he is thinking of Christ as the Mediator-to whom one can relate only as patient to agent. Whatever the strength of Faust's belief or doubt-and there is a whole scale of possibilities in between'9-it is an idea Faust takes seriously. For even if, in reflecting on the "new covenant," Faust is only recalling a childhood belief, it would be arbitraryto suppose that

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he reexperiences only the emotion that once accompanied his pious convictions and nothing of the beliefs themselves, or that he remembers only the warmth and regeneration of springtime and the joyful games of youth. At the very least, his words reveal fondness and respect for the doctrine of Christ's mediation and for the Christian belief in this doctrine. Moreover, we will not appreciate all the meanings of the text under examination if we fail to take into account the active quality of the German noun "Erinnrung" (sic, 1. 781). We would be entitled to translate it as "reminder"-a reminder that man cannot save himself, a "putting inside" of the formative idea from Faust's childhood that man is a dependent being. To this extent, perhaps, he experiences a reactivated faith. In any case, the question of Faust's conviction or lack of it regarding the tidings of the Resurrection can be resolved only when we know its meaning to him. The crucial facts are these: Upon recovering from his humiliation in the encounter with the Earth Spirit, Faust is about to attempt self-translation "to new spheres of pure activity" (1. 705) when the intrusion of an Easter cantata upon his consciousness reminds him of the New Covenant. He then gives up the attempt and avoids the hubris of which he was in immediate danger. He is granted at the critical moment, if not faith -which he explicitly denies-then at least a different perspective on the human situation. He understands that man is a contingent being, a patient. (Thus, ironically, in their views of death and rebirth, Werther is the actor and Faust the sufferer.) It is virtually an epiphany that Faust experiences, although what is revealed is not "news"; rather, Faust reinternalizes an alienated conception. He appears to have asked himself, What is suitable for human beings, what is their proper station and mine as one of them?-and to have taken a more humble and grateful stance. In truth, of course, it is not a question of decorum but of existential possibility: Can there be such a thing as self-translation, as self-sufficiency? Faust's intellectual isolation and consequent self-image as a special creature had previously denied him every frame of referencehence his frustration at the limits of human experience. But he is given, in the nick of time, a vision of the redemptive act of the necessary being-and thus is made to recognize the con-

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accompany him along his earthly path and who, in the very next scene-"Study" (i)-is exorcised into revealing his true identity. Then, in the second "Study" scene, Faust both articulates his new posture and suffers a relapse, for his exasperation with human finitude is still acute. Limitation, incidentally-the operative word in Werther is "Einschrankung"-is a matter not of social rank but of the human condition per se: "In jedem Kleide werd' ich wohl die Pein / Des engen Erdelebens fiihlen" 'In every dress am I to feel, t'would seem, / The pain of earthly life's confinement' (11. 1544-45). Faust claims still to desire death and, in his wounded pride at discovering that Mephistopheles was a witness to his failure to drink the lethal cup (11. 1579-80), curses life's attractions, calling all of them deceptive or ephemeral. He claims now to regret his lack of resolution on that fateful morning. But Faust's actions indicate that he accepts both the urging of the Chorus of Spirits to begin a new career (11. 1622-24) and Mephisto's reminder-an echo of Faust's own remark in the scene "Outside the City Gates" (1. 940)-that even in the poorest human society he will discover himself to be a man among other men (11. 1637-38); for he concedes, "Aus dieser Erde quillen meine Freuden, / Und diese Sonne scheinet meinen Leiden" 'From this earth flow exclusively my joys, / And this is the sun that shines upon my sorrows' (11. 1663-64). And, now exaggerating his rejection of transcendent ambition, he claims indifference to "jene Spharen" and the question of whether there are love and hate there and an Above or a Below (11. 1668-70). Little satisfaction does he promise himself from terrestrial pleasures, but he will invest "das Streben meiner ganzen Kraft" 'the full commitment of my power' (I. 1742) in order to experience personally what is ordained for all mankind (1. 1770). Even this much is a tall order, to be sure, but it is at least restricted to the human realm, for Faust has resolved to live out his mortal life. And, now that this resolution is achieved, his adventures-as organized into the corresponding sequences of the "small" and the "great world"-can truly commence. They proceed without recurrence of hubristic ambition until Faust arises from the regenerating sleep and bath "in the dew from Lethe's stream" (1. 4629), which followed the trauma of Mar-

tingency he shares with all mankind. In this way his sense of fraternity with his fellows is restored. If this explanation seems plausible, Faust's acceptance of terrestrial life can indeed be viewed metaphorically as a sort of rebirth, a reawakening to the proper sphere of human activity. We shall see that Faust's subsequent words and deeds reflect his changed orientation.

III Even those who give short shrift to the motivations behind Faust's return to earth recognize the Easter walk before the gates of town as a new beginning. What precedes this is expository: we learn of Faust's frustration with scholarship and witness his failure with magic-until there seems to be no recourse but abandonment of this world. None of these prior events, however, constitutes an embarkation on the course toward the goal of purposeful activity in human society to which Faust's earthly existence is eventually directed. The value of this goal is established by none other than the Lord Himself in His acceptance of Mephistopheles as a desirable stimulus and a deterrent to the life of sloth (11. 340-43), and its importance as a theme is made evident by its reassertion as a leitmotiv at a number of high points in the action-for example, in Faust's intended ascent "zu neuen Spharen reiner Tatigkeit" (1. 705), in his translation of John i.1 as "Im Anfang war die Tat!" 'In the beginning was the deed!' (1. 1237), and, of course, most especially in the formulation of the wager, with its implication that a cessation of striving would be tantamount to the annihilation of Faust's characteristic existence. Fortunately, Faust is persuaded by the Easter message to embark upon his life of activity not "in yonder spheres" (1. 1669) but here below. Then follows the scene "Outside the City Gates," in which Faust participates in the general reawakening and enjoys associating with the throng of all sorts of common people-"Hier bin ich Mensch, hier darf ich's sein!" 'Here I'm a man, am entitled to be!' (1. 940). The contrast to his solitude in the previous scene, the scene of his arrogant claims of uniqueness, is dramatic. Here also he acquires the companion, disguised but instantly suspect to the perspicacious Faust, who will

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garet's execution. With restoration, however, comes revived temptation. IV Between the two parts of Faust there are both illuminating parallels (if perhaps not so many direct ones as is sometimes claimed)20 and radical differences. A parallel that has received little attention is that between the scenes immediately preceding the respective beginnings of Faust's two careers, the scenes "Night" and "Pleasant Landscape." Erich Franz and Egil Wyller both find it advantageous to label the latter scene a "Vorspiel" 'Prologue' to Part ii in order to compare it with the "Prologue in Heaven" preceding
Part
I.21

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While both adduce reasons in support

of this parallel, it seems fundamentally mistaken, implying a break in the continuity of the earthly action of the drama and ignoring a crucial difference: in the events of "Pleasant Landscape"-in contrast to those of the "Prologue" and the scene "Mountain Gorges," which frame this earthly action-Faust himself is as much the main actor as in any other episode in the play. A more natural association would seem to be that between "Pleasant Landscape" and "Night" as respective introductions to the two parts of the tragedy. And comparison of events in these dissimilar introductions is indeed very illuminating. In "Night," Faust's rejection of scholarship and the Earth Spirit's rejection of him are culs de sac dramatically, but these incidents most economically display the superhuman ambitions of the character who is going to be redirected toward a very strictly circumscribed and human form of self-fulfillment-a life of "Einschrankung." The sleep in the alpine meadow accomplishes the transition from the climactic events in Faust's private world to his entrance into the public domain of the Emperor's Court, into the "Realm of the Great and Powerful" (Atkins' title-Goethe's Faust, p. 107). A part of this sequence is the important symbolic incidentfor the play now forsakes realism almost entirely -of Faust's misguided attempt to view the sun with his naked eye. The motivational importance of this passage, one of great richness and brilliance-hence rewarding to contemplate even apart from its dramatic and thematic contextstands out in the light of the corresponding scene

in Part I, the scene "Night." Faust, who has forgotten the lesson of "Night" along with the trauma of Margaret's incarceration and execution, once again commits the characteristic error of directly and hubristically addressing an absolute. And here again he is directed to a mediating agent as the only access to the sources of life and light. The agent in this case is a rainbow created by the passage of sunlight through the spray of a nearby mountain waterfall or, conceived scientifically rather than phenomenally, the spray itself. It will be useful to consider in some detail the symbolic correspondence between Jesus Christ, on the one hand, and the waterfall and rainbow, on the other. As all Goethe students know, a variation of the image of light passing through a medium occurs in "Zueignung" 'Dedication', the prefatory poem to the 1787 edition of Goethe's works. In this allegorical poem, a poet who has recovered his eyesight after a hubristic glance at the sun is given, "woven of morning mist and solar brightness, / Poetry's veil from the hand of Truth."22 Thus, both in the dedication to Goethe's oeuvre and in the first scene of Faust, Part ii, do we witness the eventual acceptance of mediated light by a man previously self-esteemed "Ubermensch genug" 'superman enough' ("Zueignung," 1. 61) to view the sun directly. However, there is also a direct relationship between this poem-repeatedly chosen by Goethe to introduce his complete works-and the first scene of Faust, Part i. Like the presumptuous poet of "Zueignung," who is reproached by a female divinity (Truth) for having denied his community with the rest of mankind (11. 63-64), Faust on Easter morning had twice disregarded his community with other men. His confrontation with the Earth Spirit had temporarily disabused him of his self-image as a special creature, in unique measure an "image of the Godhead" (his allusion is a willful distortion of the obvious generic meaning of Gen. i.27), who had "laid aside the earthly man" (11. 614, 617); and he had found himself thrown back "on man's uncertain fate" (1. 629). But his contrition, a trough between two hubristic billows, proved fleeting. "Erst noch Wurm" 'Just now a mere worm' (1. 707), he is quickly inflated into an Ubermensch again by the thought of selftranslation. He sees himself as deserving the "godlike rapture" of piercing the ether (11.

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The word "Abglanz" 'reflection/off-gleam' is a coinage of Johann Jacob Bodmer's that Goethe employs in a famous passage from his "Versuch einer Witterungslehre" ("Essay on Meteorology") and elsewhere25 and is one of many symbols in Goethe's works conveying the idea of indirect manifestation.26 Mortal life, we understand Faust as saying, consists in perceiving light (truth, the divine, the infinite, the if viewed directly, would absolute )-which, blind our untransmuted eye-through a mediating agent, a medium. As a man, Faust has access only to mediated light, but in contemplating this he has a presentiment, as it were, of pure light and a susceptibility to personal purification. Until transmuted to a higher estate, any creature is "nur ein triiber Gast / Auf der dunklen Erde" 'only a gloomy guest / On the dark earth'27lines pertinent to our context by virtue of Goethe's technical conception of "die Triibe" 'obfuscation/cloudiness' as a semiopaque medium imparting color either to pure white light (from yellow to ruby red, as the opacity increases), or, if luminous, to pure dark (from violet to light blue).28 For the spray of the waterfall not only transmits light to Faust but also serves as a projection of Faust-"ein anderes Selbst" 'another self'29-through whom (for man too is a medium) light and dark likewise shine imperfectly, creating the colors that are life, and without whose participation there would be no life. The unmediated mixture of light and dark produces not color but only gray. Faust, until his assumption, is a "triiberGast." Situated between, and penetrable by, the "Light as the symbol of God" (Atkins, Goethe's Faust, p. 42) and the dark as personified by Mephistopheles, he is only partially at home in this world, one who "verworren dient" 'confusedly serves' (I. 308)-"verworren" being the median term between "dunkel" 'dark / obscure' and "deutlich" 'distinct' in the Leibnizian Ideencharte -and becomes "der . . . / Nicht mehr Getriibte" 'a man no longer troubled/obfuscated' (11. 12073-74) only after his death. He is a hybrid creature with two souls residing within his breast, one who demands the "fairest stars from heaven and from the earth the highest bliss" (11.304-05). Goethe's peculiar theory regarding the passage of light through a medium gave him an original and versatile application of the very common symbol of the rainbow, an application

704-07) and as entitled to turn his back on the blessed terrestrial sun (11. 708-09). Then occurs the intrusion that emphatically restores Faust to the earth and human society. In the poem a comparable restoration (11. 69-72) is consecrated by the gift of the veil, with its promise of succor to the community of mankind. Faust's heedless glance at the sun in "Pleasant Landscape" is dramatically more effective than that of his counterpart in the poem and is enhanced as a symbol by the addition of the rainbow-producing refraction, as opposed to the simple filtration of light in "Zueignung""Abglanz" versus "Schleier." However, the very familiarity of Faust's virtually untranslatable line "Am farbigen Abglanz haben wir das Leben" 'In the colorful reflection do we have our life' (1. 4727) has probably somewhat diminished its effect. Let us therefore attend closely to its terms. Faust's use of the general "wir" acknowledges his typicality (as also, e.g., in 11.636-39, and as is made apparent in 11. 4704-14). We may safely include at least "we mortals," perhaps in contradistinction to supernatural beings such as the three Archangels of the "Prologue," who are accredited by the Lord with the power to fix with lasting thoughts "what in wavering apparition gleams" (11. 348-49). For it is we intermediate beings in the great chain who, possessing only "den Schein des Himmelslichts" 'the spark/appearance of heavenly light' (1. 284), follow the wavering phenomenon and are but imperfectly enlightened by the refracted light of "des bunten Bogens Wechseldauer" 'the painted rainbow's constant change' (1. 4722). And of course Faust is one of us, as he here clearly understands: "Am farbigen Abglanz haben wir das Leben." But, since mortals are not the only living beings and this earth is not the only scene of life in the cosmology of Faust, "das Leben" 'life', as the property of those tolerating only the colorful indirect glow, must signify the life in which this limitation obtains-a life that, despite its transitoriness, is both a "Gleichnis" 'analogue' of, and a means to, eternal life, just as the rainbow, at once a mutation and a symbol, points to pure, direct light.23 Similarly, the "Tatigkeit" available to mortal man is both analogous and instrumental to the "reine Tatigkeit" 'pure activity' of the world beyond.24

Robert Ellis Dye

that brilliantly corroborates and buttresses more conventional meanings of this symbol and utilizes not only its form but also its origination and colors. Be it noted, however, that it is not by breaking it up into its constituent parts that the rainbow-creating mist renders white light bearable-for this, to the author of the Farbenlehre, would be an infuriating Newtonian interpretation-but by creating new, if progressively less brilliant, qualities as the opacity of the medium increases. The full spectrum provided by the rainbow, "Newton incarnate,"30 remained an unresolved problem for Goethe until the end of his life, but in the present context it is sufficient to note that its colors collectively refer to, and stimulate the desire for, pure and eternal light (see 1. 4697). In this unique, technical way, the rainbow of lines 4721-27 represents a novel application of a meaning occurring in "a great many cultures," that of "the link between what can be perceived and what is beyond perception."3T However, the rainbow's more conventional, form-determined meanings of a bridge between heaven and earth and of reconciliation between God and man, as in Genesis ix.13-17, are operative in the passage as well, as is suggested by Goethe's poetic use of the rainbow elsewhere and by his remark in the draft of a letter to his publisher, Cotta, that "this phenomenon [the rainbow] actually connects heaven and earth in both a moral and a sensuous way; and who would like to live without the pleasure of such glorious mediation?"32 The rainbow as a bridge to heaven is connected with both Christ and Mary in art and literature,33 and Mary, unlike the resurrected Christ, is an obvious mediator figure in Faust. To Goethe she seemed one of the most potent of symbols, and he once wrote of her explicitly as a link between heaven and earth.34 The rainbow of "Pleasant Landscape" thus may relate backward to the Mater Dolorosa of "Zwinger" and forward both to the Mater Gloriosa as Divine Love and to Gretchen as intercessor with her in Faust's behalf. Because "das Ewig-Weibliche" 'the Eternal-Womanly' draws us upward and on (11. 12110-1 1), it is futile to attempt self-elevation. But the Mary-rainbow equation only enhances and modulates the correspondence of rainbow and Redeemer. Multiplicity of reference is of the essence of the true symbol. Christ is what the rainbow symbolizes: the

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connection between man and God; His exclusive mission is to reconcile men to God, to accomplish the "at-one-ment" and overcome the alienation occasioned by the Fall. And, like the "Prince of Peace," the rainbow, in one of Goethe's minor poems, "[sichert] den Frieden . . . den er angekiindet" 'secures the peace . . . that it announced' (HA, i, 261). But Faust does not have to believe literally in the miracle of Christ's atonement, anymore than he has to view rainbows as real bridges, in order to accept the principle for which both stand. They are symbols of mediation, inspiring not only hope but also humility by announcing human dependency, the impossibility of self-redemption, our need for a bridge. Goethe seems gradually to have moved from rejection of the idea of mediation in his youth to reverent acceptance in later life, although he claims in his autobiography to have acknowledged its validity as a principle as early as his student days in Leipzig, during the sickness that abbreviated his stay there. He writes of the kindness shown him at that time by Ernst Theodor Langer, who, professing incomprehension of any claim to direct access to God, insisted on the need for a "Vermittelung" 'mediation'. Goethe tells us that only the self-denial imposed by illness was required for him, always a "bibelfest" young man, to embrace so biblical an idea (HA, ix, 5th ed. [1964], 334-35). It is prominent elsewhere in his works as well. Some positive and negative personifications of it, which I mention illustratively, are Iphigenie, the pompous meddler ironically called "Mittler" 'mediator' in Elective Affinities, Makarie in Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre,and the various mediator figures in the later poetry.35 An especially good example is the wife of the Brahman in "Paria," whose severed head has been inadvertently attached by her grief-stricken son to the body of a "Verbrecherin" 'female criminal,' (HA, i, 364). Now ambivalent, the woman can mediate between pariahs and the great God Brahma. She, like the refracting spray from the waterfall, can transmit light from the "primal source" (Faust, 1. 324) to its finite recipient. In "Das Gottliche" 'The Godlike'-dated 1783-the noble human being prefigures transcendental beings! "Sein Beispiel lehr' uns / Jene glauben." 'May man's example teach faith in them.'36 And "Prooemion" proclaims of our relationship to God, "So weit das

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The Easter Cantata and the Idea of Meditation in Goethe's Faust

proceed directly to the Father. For, if it is true that no direct route to immortality is available to man, then Faust has no choice but to strike out upon an indirect one in the company of his fellowmen. And this Faust does, measuring the "Realm of Common Humanity" (Atkins, Goethe's Faust, p. 55), in which he both enjoys the highest bliss and incurs the profoundest guilt, as fully as is humanly possible. This phase, which ends with Margaret's redemption and Faust's symbolic death, is followed by his "rebirth" and the beginning of his life on a grander stage. But, before starting anew, Faust must again renounce hubristic ambition and reaccept the colorful reflection and the indirect way. An "Antaus an Gemuite" 'Antaeus in spirit' (1. 7077), he needs the strength to be derived from contact with the earth. His son and foil, Euphorion, will reject the example of the mythical wrestler and defy Faust's prohibition of "free flight" (11. 9608, 9611). He it is who acts out the consequences of Faust's drive to transcend human limitation through flight (cf. 11. 702-05, 1074, 1090, 1116-25, etc.). Homunculus, by contrast, whose nature likewise requires a life of activity (1. 6888) but who submits to the process of organic development through death and rebirth, can be viewed as Faust's stand-in during much of the "Classical Walpurgis Night" (Gray, Goethe the Alchemist, pp. 217-18). On another plane, the quarrel between Anaxagoras and Thales dramatizes the struggle within Faust's own breast. Everyone knows which side Goethe took in this eighteenth-century scientific debate, but it is of course no arbitrary insertion of alien material into the action of Faust, for the Vulcanists represent precisely the impetuousness that Faust must continue to resist. They are the ones who would proceed immediately to the goal, skipping the intermediate steps.39 The chief objection to the seismic mountain of the "Classical Walpurgis Night" is the suddenness of its origination: Anaxagoras. Hast du, o Thales, je in einer Nacht Solch einen Berg aus Schlammhervorgebracht? Thales. Nie war Natur und ihr lebendiges Fliegen Auf Tag und Nacht und Stunden angewiesen. Sie bildet regelndjegliche Gestalt, Und selbst im Grogen ist es nicht Gewalt.
Anaxagoras. Have you, o Thales, ever in one night

Ohr, so weit das Auge reicht, / Du findest nur Bekanntes, das Ihm gleicht, / Und deines Geistes h6chster Feuerflug / Hat schon am Gleichnis, hat am Bild genug" 'So far as ear can hear or eye's not dim, / All known things, you will find, are like to Him. / The highest flight that mind of man e'er bore / Resorts to simile or metaphor' (HA, I, 357; Zeydel, p. 167). Mediation is the root metaphor in Goethe's conception of symbolism. His view, as formulated by Rene Wellek, is that "symbol suggests an ideal to the mind indirectly" (italics added),37 but an ideal that remains ineffable, indeed inscrutable.38 All symbols mediate. The rainbow and Redeemer, however, share as symbols a property that distinguishes them from most other symbols, inasmuch as the idea t-heyconvey is identical with the principle by which they (and all other symbols) work. The "vehicle" in each case is but a specific instance of their common referent-the general category under which they may be subsumed. They do that which they mean, and that which they mean is the principle that governs the life of man. In responding to these symbols by accepting and then reaccepting a life of finitude and indirectness, Faust seems to have grasped something of this aspect of their nature. And it seems necessary to accredit Goethe not only with being "the first to draw the distinction between symbol and allegory in the modern way" (Wellek, i, 210) but with having promulgated a conception of man as the symbol-using animal. Probably, then, there is a significant relationship between the respective introductory scenes of Faust, Parts I and II, inasmuch as they depict Faust's acknowledgment and then his reacknowledgment of the futility of a direct assault on ultimate values. Each redirects Faust over a detour-through first the small and then the great world. From the attempt to escape this "Kerker . . . Wo selbst das liebe Himmelslicht / Triib durch gemalte Scheiben bricht!" 'prison . . . Where even the lovely light of heaven / Breaks dimly through the painted panes!' (11. 398-401 )-yet another instance of light passing through a semiopaque medium (into what is both Faust's study and, symbolically, human life as confinement)-Faust seems to have learned to doubt Werther's belief "that [man] can leave this prison whenever he wants to" (p. 7) and

Broughtsuch a mountainout of slime to light?

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Thales. Nature with all her living, flowing powers Was never bound by day and night and hours. By rule she fashionsevery form, and hence In great things too there is no violence.
(11.7859-64)

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My way to freedomI have not yet fought. Could I all magic from my pathwaybanish, Could quite unlearnits spells and bid it vanish Nature, could I face thee, in thy great plan, Then were it worththe pain to be a man. (11.11403-07) Whether or not Atkins' view is correct that the "Classical Walpurgis Night" and the whole of Act III are "a double dream play representing a victory of Faust over Mephistopheles" (Goethe's Faust, p. 157), it is evident that by the end of the play a victory is achieved. Perhaps owing to his deployment of Mephistopheles and company to remove Philemon and Baucis and to Faust's resultant complicity in the destruction of an idyllic existence-for the second time, for here too there is a distant parallel to Part i-Faust now, at the eleventh hour, does regret his unholy attachment and asserts the human self-reliance that alone, paradoxically, entitles him to divine assistance. In the confrontation with the allegorical figure Sorge, Faust cautions himself, "Take care and speak no magic word" (1. 11423), and combats his assailant with no other than his human resources, native and acquired. Among the latter must be counted his correct orientation, at last, to the human station-his unqualified acceptance of it: Der Erdenkreisist mir genug bekannt, Nach driibenist die Aussichtuns verrant; Tor, wer dorthindie Augen blinzelndrichtet, Sich uiberWolkenseinesgleichendichtet! Er stehe fest und sehe hier sich um; Dem Tiichtigenist diese Welt nicht stumm. Was brauchter in die Ewigkeitzu schweifen! Well do I know the sphereof earth and men. The view beyond is barredto mortalken; A fool! who thitherturnshis blinkingeyes And dreams he'll find his like above the skies. Let him standfast and look aroundon earth; Not mute is this world to a man of worth. Why need he range into eternity? (11.11441-47) The echoes here of Faust's first struggle to achieve and declare a commitment to a life in this world-"driiben" 'on the other side' (repeated from 1. 1660 of the second "Study" scene) and "der Erdenkreis" 'sphere of earth' (by contrast with "jene Spharen" 'yonder spheres' from 1. 1669), not to mention the unmistakable allusion to Faust's purpose on that long-ago Easter

Faust's intended suicide, an act of violence, had the purpose of circumventing the regular, evolutionary process; his death, in contrast to Werther's, ultimately occurs involuntarily and only when he is ripe for it. The satire on the philosophical solipsism of the Baccalaureaus in Act II is but another reminder that human life and death are conditional (11. 6791, 6793-6806). Only at the journey's end does Faust fully succeed in restricting himself to what is suitable for mortals. Almost until his final breath he relies upon a negative counterpart to the supernatural agency that alone can effect the metamorphosis promised by the blessed boys' description of Faust's soul, in the scene "Mountain Gorges," as "im Puppenstand" 'in Chrysalid state' (1. 11982). In the light of our discussion this dependence can be recognized as a still incomplete acceptance of the condition of unembellished humanity. For the significance of Faust's affiliation with Mephistopheles is that it amounts to an illicit increase in potency through diabolical assistance or, in other words, black magic. (Albeit strictly within the terrestrial sphere. Even Mephistopheles, by pretending to
honor Faust's "Mond . . . Sucht" 'moon craze,'

'lunacy' [11. 10179-80], helps reinforce Faust's ties to this earth. "Dieser Erdenkreis / Gewahrt noch Raum zu groBen Taten" 'This earthly sphere / Affords yet room for deeds of greatness' [11.10181-82], is Faust's uncomprehending retort. Faust is the butt of the sarcasm, but the joke ultimately is on Mephistopheles.) In retaining the devil's services-a dependence that, to those sensitive to evil, compromises both his love and good works (11. 3491-93, 11113-14) -Faust has renounced superhuman goals but not yet superhuman means, as he eventually comprehends: Noch hab' ich mich ins Freie nicht gekiimpft. Konnt' ich Magie von meinem Pfad entfernen, Die Zauberspriiche ganz und gar verlernen, Stiind'ich, Natur, vor dir ein Mann allein, Da wair'sder Miihe wert, ein Mensch zu sein.

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The Easter Cantata and the Idea of Meditation in Goethe's Faust

Alles Vergiingliche Ist nur ein Gleichnis; Das Unzuliingliche, Hier wird's Ereignis; Das Unbeschreibliche, Hier ist's getan; Das Ewig-Weibliche Zieht uns hinan. All that is transient But as symbol is sent; Things insufficient Become here event; The indescribable, Here it is done; Woman eternal Leads upward and on. (11. 12104-11) No praise of pride this, for in the soteriology, as in the ethics, of Goethe's play, love, not egoism, is both the principal instrument of Grace and the highest value. Through its agency the finite may relate to the infinite, the transitory to the permanent, the part to the whole. To relate is to transcend the self and to partake of "Almighty Love" (1. 11872), which began everything (I. 8479), which "forms all things and all protects" (1. 11873), and which, as the drama Faust incomparably promises, will lead us onward and upward in the end. Macalester College Saint Paul, Minnesota

morning: "Why need he range into eternity?"mark this passage as a recapitulation of the right orientation. Having finally accomplished what was necessary for him to do, Faust confirms his successful self-restriction to human finiteness as part of a retrospective summary of his mortal existence. As though to prevent any further temptation to direct "thither his blinking eyes," Faust is now blinded, his characteristic "dunkler Drang" 'dark urges' (1. 328) having been supplanted by an inner "brilliant light" (1. 11500). In this inwardly enlightened state he is finally ready for removal "to higher spheres" (1. 12094). This time, however, it is not a case of self-initiated translation but one to be effected by another. Margaret's prayer in behalf of "Der friih Geliebte, / Nicht mehr Getriibte" 'My early lover, /No longer troubled' (11. 12073-74) is answered by the Mater Gloriosa with the instruction: "Come, rise to higher spheres! When he senses thee there, he'll follow" (11. 12094-95). Not incompatibly with the angels' earlier citation of Faust's striving as a factor in his redemption (11. 11936-37), the drama's mysterious last words, sung by a "Chorus Mysticus" containing perhaps all the personalities of the scene "Mountain Gorges," reiterate the theme on which we have dwelt: man's need for mediation and the symbolic-hence mediatory-nature of all things finite and insufficient:

Notes
1 Stuart Atkins, "J. C. Lavater and Goethe: Problems
of Psychology and Theology in Die Leiden des Jungen Werthers," PMLA, 63 (1948), 535. 2 The Sufferings of Young Werther, trans. Harry

ence to each work cited and subsequently indicate the page or line in the text. 3 Arnold Bergstriisser, "Goethe's View of Christ,"
Modern Philology, 46 (1948-49), 178. 4 Goethe und Lavater, ed. Heinrich Funck, Schriften

Steinhauer (New York: Norton, 1970), p. 67. Quotations from Werther, with page references hereafter given in the text, are from this translation. In translating Faust, I have relied heavily on Bayard Taylor, as revised by Stuart Atkins (New York: Collier, 1962) and George Madison Priest, 2nd ed. (New York: Knopf, 1941) but, mainly in shorter passages, have freely emended when this seemed desirable. Except as noted, other translations are mine. References to Goethe's writings in the original, unless otherwise noted, Trunz (Hamburg: Christian Wegner Verlag, 1949-64), henceforth abbreviatedHA. I give a detailed first referare to Goethes Werke: Hamburger A usgabe, ed. Erich

der Goethe-Gesellschaft, 16 (Weimar: Verlag der Goethe-Gesellschaft,1901), p. 182.

5 "Brief des Pastors zu * * * an den neuen Pastor zu * ** Aus dem Franzosischen," HA, xi, 5th ed. (1963).

This contains the advice: "Da Gott Mensch geworden ist, damit wir arme, sinnliche Kreaturen ihn m6chten fassen und begreifen k6nnen, so muB man sich vor nichts mehr huten, als ihn wieder zu Gott zu machen" (p. 231). 6 Line nos. in Taylor and Priest agree with HA, im, 7th ed. (1964), the edition here cited and/or translated.

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Faust: Die dramatische Einheit der Dichtung (Tiibingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1932), p. 140. See also Stuart Atkins, Goethe's Faust: A Literary Analysis (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1958), p. 32; and Steinhauer, p. 118. 8 Staiger, Goethe (Zurich: Atlantis, 1952), i, 171. 9 The most succinct formulation of this view is perhaps that of the Kommentar zu Goethes Faust, by Theodor Friedrich, rev. Lothar Scheithauer (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1959): "Nicht der Inhalt des Osterglaubens, der ja fur F[aust] nicht mehr vorhanden ist, sondern die Erinnerung an die mit Ostern verbundenen beseligenden Kindheitserlebnisse ziehen F. ins Leben zuriick. In der gleichen Stimmung liegt das Entscheidende" (p. 191). See also Konrad Burdach, "Das religi6se Problem in Goethes Faust," Euphorion, 33 (1932); rpt. in Aufsiitze zu Goethes 'Faust I,' ed. Werner Keller (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1974), pp. 27-28; further, Reinhard Buchwald, Fiihrer durch Goethes Faustdichtung: Erkliirung des Werkes und Geschichte seiner Entstehung (Stuttgart: Kroner, 1949), pp. 79-80; Gerhard M6bus, Die Christus-Frage in Goethes Leben und Werk (Osnabruick: A. Fromm, 1964), pp. 223-25; and Heinrich Rickert, pp. 140-41. Unable to make sense of this episode, Eudo Mason chooses to regard it as the product of a creative lapse on Goethe's part (Goethe's Faust: Its Genesis and Purport [Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1967], pp. 290-91). Nor is there an adequate solution in Arnold Bergstrasser's summary: "The unbelieving Faust is saved from self-destruction by the Easter message, which announces the hope granted to men through the Master who met the test of pain" (p. 190). Alexander Gillies, who does ponder the significance of the cantata, seems frankly puzzled: "The Easter bells and music call forth recollections of [Faust's] boyhood. It is not the force of religion, not faith-he has long since abandoned that-that keeps him alive. It is the thought of rebirth, of springtime, of the reawakening of all life, of the freshness and purity of youth, of the indistinctly apprehended love-impulse that now recalls him. And the reminder that he has no faith makes it illogical to think that he should try to enter the world to come, to which he had given so little attention! Religion acts in a very mysterious manner" (Goethe's Faust: An Interpretation [Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1957], p. 31). It would be strange indeed for a man of such contempt for the traditional disciplines as Faust to abandon his quest for fear of behaving illogically. 10 D. J. Enright, Commentary on Goethe's Faust, The Direction Series, No. 10 (Norfolk, Conn.: James Laughlin, 1949), p. 30. 11 Paracelsus' directions for the incubation of homunculi, with instructive commentary, may be found in Ronald D. Gray's Goethe the Alchemist (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1952), pp. 205-06. 12 In addition to several unambiguous indications within the text of Faust's eventual transmutation (e.g., 11. 11936-37; 11978-82; 12095), a Faust manuscript has, before 1. 11954, "Chor der Engel (Faustens Entelechie heran bringend)" (Goethes Werke, Weimarer Ausgabe, Sec. i, Vol. xv [Weimar: Hermann Bohlau, 1888], Pt. II,
7 Cf. Heinrich Rickert, Goethes

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p. 165). Cf. Trunz's "Anmerkung," HA, III, 632-33. 13 Goethes Religion: Die Faust-Dichtung in christlicher Sicht (Tubingen: Furche-Verlag, 1949), p. 129. 14 HA, VIii, 6th ed. (1964), p. 163. 15 "Die Leiden des jungen Werther: Ihr geistesgeschichtlicher Hintergrund," Wissenschaft und Gegenwart, 12 (1938); rpt. in Schoffler, Deutscher Geist im 18. Jahrhundert, ed. Gotz von Selle (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1956), pp. 155-81. 16 Trunz, by contrast, finds, "Der dogmatisch-heilsgeschichtliche Inhalt ist ganz in Musik aufgelost, so daB wir ihn uiber dem Klang fast vergessen" (HA, III, 505). 17 All biblical quotations are from the Revised Standard Version. 18 Johann Casper Lavater, Ausgewdhlte Werke, ed. Ernst Staehelin (Zurich: Zwingli-Verlag, 1943), im, 193. Already as a schoolboy Lavater had addressed Jesus in a poem as "O Gott und Mittler Jesu Christ!" (I, 24), and he complained to Goethe in the spring of 1774: "Wie kannst Eine Gottheit glauben, wenn du nicht an Christum glaubst? Denselben Augenblick bin ich ein Atheist, wenn ich kein Christ mehr bin. . . . Wenn Jesus Christus nicht mein Gott ist-so hab' ich keinen Gott mehr-u. G[oethe] u. P[fenninger] u. L[avater] sind Traumer, nicht Bruder, nicht Kinder eines Vaters -nicht unsterblich.-So ist Freundschaft nichts,alles Zauberspiel, keine Existenz etc." (Goethe und Lavater, pp. 21-22). 19 In Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1951; rpt. New York: Mentor, 1961), Susanne K. Langer observes that "Belief and doubt belong essentially to [the literal stage of thought rather than the myth-making stage]; the mythmaking consciousness knows only the appeal of ideas, and uses or forgets them. Only the development of literal-mindedness throws doubt upon them and raises the question of religious belief" (p. 168). Even we moderns, of course, remain open to a broader and more complex system of meaning than is encompassed by the simple dichotomy of belief and disbelief, and it is doubtful that the religious behavior of either Faust or Werther can be understood in terms of this distinction. 20 E.g., William J. Keller, in "Goethe's Faust, Part I, as a Source of Part ii," Modern Language Notes, 33 (1918), 342-52, lists numerous parallels, mainly verbal, between the two parts and sees Part II as dramatizing and amplifying the ideas and implications of Part I. Erich Franz, in Mensch und Damon: Goethes Faust als menschliche Tragoidie, ironische Weltschau und religioses Mysterienspiel (Tubingen: Max Niemeyer, 1953), takes a similar view and gives several illustrations (pp. 41-43). 21 Egil A. Wyller, "Das Vorspiel des Faust u: Seine Funktion innerhalb der Faustdichtung," Edda, 58 (1958), 311-20; and Franz, p. 41. 22 See original in HA, i, 7th ed. (1964), p. 152, 11. 95-96. 23 As Wilhelm Emrich elaborates, "das 'Wahre' soll in natiirlichen Bildern uns reizen es aufzusuchen. .... Der Schleier [which both veils and reveals truth] . . . entwickelt eine produktiv unendliche geistige Tatigkeit"

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The Easter Cantata and the Idea of Meditation in Goethe's Faust

the rainbow in Herder's way. Indeed, it is likely that Herder's interpretation determined the view of the entire epoch. Cf. the following tercet from Eichendorff's sonnet "Jugendandacht," No. 8: "Gebirge dunkelblau steigt aus der Ferne, / Und von den Gipfeln fiihrt des Bundes Bogen / Als Briicke weit in unbekannte Lande" (Joseph von Eichendorff, Werke, ed. Wolfdietrich Rasch [Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1966], p. 245). 33 In Gruinewald's madonna in Stuppach, a rainbow in the landscape doubles as a halo around Mary's head, its arc unnaturalistically narrowed in the interest of approximate concentricity. Possible literary sources of the suggested correspondence are discussed by Lottlisa Behling, "Neue Forschungen zu Grunewalds Stuppacher Maria," Pantheon, 26 (1968), 11-20. In medieval icons depicting the Last Judgment rainbows frequently serve as Christ's throne, where they perhaps symbolize "the pardon and . . . the reconciliation given to the human race" through Christ (George Ferguson, Signs and Symbols in Christian Art [1959; rpt. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967], p. 24). Fittingly, there is no rainbow in Michelangelo's Last Judgment, in which an angry Hercules of a Christ administers merciless, almost vengeful justice. For a general discussion of the rainbow in paintingin part from a scientific point of view-see Siegfried Rosch's "Der Regenbogen in der Malerei," Studium Generale, 13 (1960), pp. 418-26. See also, for myth and literature, Martti Rasiinen's "Regenbogen-Himmelsbriicke," Studia Orientalia, ed. Societas Orientalis Fennica, 14, No. 1 (1947), 3-11. I am indebted to Richard C. Clark for having put me on the trail of possible Christ-rainbow associations in the visual arts. 34 Goethe, Eine periodische Schrift Propylien: (Tiibingen: Cotta, 1798; facsimile rpt. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1965), p. 103. 35 See Trunz, HA, i, 677. A comprehensive attempt to identify mediator figures in Goethe's writings is Gertrud Reitz's Die Gestalt des Mittlers in Goethes Dichtung, Frankfurter Quellen und Forschungen, No. 3 (Frankfurt am Main: Diesterweg, 1932). Reitz finds, however, "daB die Faustdichtung der Gestaltung des Mittlers wenig gunstig ist" (p. 87). 36 HA, i, 148. The translation is from Edwin H. Zeydel, Goethe, the Lyrist (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1955), p. 67. 37 Ren6 Wellek, A History of Modern Criticism: 1750-1950, I (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1955), 211. 38 See Maximen und Reflexionen, No. 749, HA, XII, 470. 39 Barry Laine instructively discusses the larger context of the Thales-Anaxagoras debate in "By Water and by Fire: The Thales-Anaxagoras Debate in Goethe's Faust," Germanic Review, 50 (1975), 99-110. He is unconvincing, however, in his effort to establish a synthesis between the sudden and violent mode of creation represented by Anaxagoras and that of gradual but more lasting achievement according to Neptunist theory.

(Die Symbolik von Faust II: Sinn und Vorforinen, 3rd ed. [Frankfurt am Main: Athenaum, 1964], p. 53). 24 Goethe wrote to K. F. Zelter on 19 March 1827: "Wirken wir fort bis wir, vor oder nacheinander, vom Weltgeist berufen in den Ather zuriickkehren! M6ge dann der ewig Lebendige uns neue Thatigkeiten, denen analog in welchen wir uns schon erprobt, nicht versagen! . . . Die entelechische Monade muB sich nur in rastloser Thatigkeit erhalten; wird ihr diese zur andern Natur, so kann es ihr in Ewigkeit nicht an Beschiiftigung fehlen" (Goethes Werke, Weimarer Ausgabe, Sec. IV, Vol. XLII, p. 95). 25 HA, XIII, 5th ed. (1966), p. 305. And see Emrich, pp. 83-87. 26 Trunz lists several in his notes to Faust (HA, II, 538), such as the line from Pandora proclaiming that man is "bestimmt, Erleuchtetes zu sehen, nicht das Licht!" (HA, v, 6th ed. [1964], 362,1. 958). 27 The magnificent final words of "Selige Sehnsucht" (HA, H, 7th ed. [1965], 19). 28 See his Farbenlehre, HA, XIII, 362-437, passim. 29 This term is enlisted by Emrich (pp. 90-92) from an incident in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre in support of his elaborate interpretation of the "farbiger Abglanz" as an objectification of the self. Emrich denies any Neoplatonist implications of the image (p. 89). 30 "Der leibhaftige Newton" is Andreas Speiser's phrase in his introduction to Goethe's Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften, Pt. I, Gedenkausgabe der Werke, Briefe und Gespriiche, ed. Ernst Beutler, xvI (Zurich: Artemis, 1949), 947. 31 J. E. Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols, trans. Jack Sage (New York: Philosophical Library, 1962), p. 32. 32 Cf. the poems "Regenbogen" and "Regen und Regenbogen," the latter of which is the third of "Drei Palinodien" written in response to short poems of Friedrich Haug, epigrammatist and editor of the Cotta publication Morgenblatt. It is in the draft of a letter to Cotta of 7 Feb. 1814 regarding Haug's poems that Goethe makes the remark cited above. I quote it from the notes of Eduard von der Hellen to Goethes Snimtliche Werke, Jubiliiums-Ausgabe, II (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1906), 315-16. See also Goethe's poem "Phanomen" from the West-istlicher Divan, in notes to which Konrad Burdach remarks: "Der Regenbogen des Sonnenlichts ist Goethe nach 1. Mos. 9, 12 im Einklang mit Herder ('Vom Geiste der ebraiischen Poesie', Suphans Ausg. Bd. 11, S. 390) Sinnbild der Poesie als der Brucke zwischen Himmlischem und Irdischem" (Jubildums-Ausgabe, v [1905], 328-29). In the indicated passage Herder explicitly interprets the rainbow of Genesis ix as a bridge, as against the now generally accepted understanding of that "bow" as a weapon (see The Interpreter's Bible, I [New York: Abingdon, 1952], p. 551; also The Oxford Annotated Bible: Revised Standard Version, eds. Herbert G. May and Bruce M. Metzger [New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 19621, p. 11, n. to verse 13), and as "den Abglanz seiner [i.e., of God's] Giite." Goethe's draft to Cotta shows unambiguously that he understood