MANAGER. Such a reproof leaves me unhurt. A man who intends to work properly, must set a value on the best tool. Consider, you have soft wood to split; and only look whom you are writing for! Whilst one is driven by ennui, the other comes satiated from an overloaded table; and, what is worst of all, very many a one comes from reading the journals. People hurry dissipated to us, as to masquerades; and curiosity only wings every step. The ladies gives themselves and their finery as a treat, and play with us without pay. What are you dreaming about on your poetical height? What is it that makes a full house merry? Look closely at your patrons! Half are cold, half raw. The one looks forward to a game of cards after the play; the other, to a wild night on the bosom of a wench. Why, poor fools that ye are, do ye plague the sweet Muses for such an end? I tell you, only give more, and more, and more again; thus can you never be wide of your mark. Try only to mystify the people; to satisfy them is hard light or pain? -What is come to you? De POET. Begone and seek thyself another servant! The poet, forsooth, is wantonly to sport away for thy sake the highest right, the right of man, which Nature bestows upon him! By what stirs he every heart? By what subdues he every element? Is it not the harmony? which bursts from out his breast, and sucks the world back again into his heart. When Nature, carelessly winding, forces the thread's interminable length upon the spindle; when the confused multitude of all Beings jangles out of tune and harsh,-who, life-infusing, so disposes the ever equably flowing series, that it moves rhythmically? Who calls the Individual to the general consecration?-where it strikes in glorious accords? Who bids the tempest rage to passions? the evening-red glow in the pensive spirit? Who scatters on the loved one's path all beauteous blossomings of spring? Who wreathes the unmeaning green leaves into a garland of honour for deserts of all kinds? Who ensures Olympus?-Associates Gods? Man's Power revealed in the Poet. MERRYMAN. Employ these fine powers then, and carry on your poetical affairs as one carries on a love-adventure.— Accidentally one approaches, one feels, one stays, and little by little one gets entangled. The happiness increases,—then it is disturbed; one is delighted,—then comes distress; and before one is aware of it, it is even a romance. Let us also give a play in this manner. Only plunge into the thick of human life! Every one lives it, to not many is it known; and seize it where you will, it is interesting. Little clearness in motley images! much falsehood and a spark of truth !— this is the way to brew the best liquor, which refreshes and edifies all the world. Then assembles youth's fairest flower to see your play, and listens to the revelation. Then every gentle mind sucks melancholy nourishment for itself from out your work; then one while this, and one while that, is stirred up; each one sees what he carries in his heart. They are as yet equally ready to weep and to laugh; they still honour the soaring, are pleased with the shine. One who is formed, there is no such thing as pleasing; one who is forming, will always be grateful. РОЕТ. Then give me also back again the times, when I myself was still forming; when a fountain of crowded lays sprang freshly and unbrokenly forth; when mists veiled my world,—the bud still promised miracles; when I gathered the thousand flowers which profusely filled all the dales. I had nothing, and yet enough,— the intuitive longing after truth, and the pleasure in delusion! Give me back those impulses untamed,—the deep pain-fraught happiness, the energy of hatred, the might of love!-Give me back my youth! MERRYMAN. Youth, my good friend, you need undoubtedly, when foes press you hard in the fight,-when the loveliest of lasses cling with ardour round your neck,—when, from afar, the garland of the swift course beckons from the hard-won goal,—when, after the dance's maddening whirl, one drinks away the night carousing. But to strike the familiar lyre with spirit and grace, to sweep along, with happy wanderings, towards a self-appointed aim;-that, old gentlemen, is your duty, and we honour you not the less on that account. Old age does not make childish, as men say; it only finds us still as true children. MANAGER. Words enough have been interchanged; let me now see deeds also. Whilst you are turning compliments, something useful may be done. What boots it to stand talking about being in tune? The hesitating never is so. If ye once give yourselves out for poets,-command poesy. You well know what we want; we would sip strong drink-now brew away immediately! What is not doing to-day, is not done to-morrow. No day should be wasted in dallying. Resolution should boldly seize the possible by the forelock at once. She will then not let it go, and works on, because she cannot help it. You know, upon our German stage every one tries what he likes. Therefore spare me neither scenery nor machinery upon this day. Use the greater and T the lesser light of heaven; you are free to squander the stars; there is no want of water, fire, rocks, beasts and birds. So spread out, in this narrow booth, the whole circle of creation; and travel, with considerate speed, from Heaven, through the World, to Hell. NOTES. p. 265. They hear not the following lays—the souls to whom I sang my first.]— To understand the Dedication, it is necessary to refer to the history of the book. The plan of Faust appears to have been in Goethe's mind very early in life,* and parts were communicated to the circle of which his first-love, Margaret, formed one. It was first published in 1790, and forms the commencement of the seventh volume of Goethe's Schriften: Wien und Leipzig bey J. Stahel und G. J. Göschen, 1790. It is entitled, Faust: Ein Fragment (not Doktor Faust, Ein Trauerspiel, as Döring says), and contains no prologue or dedication of any sort. It commences with the scene in Faust's study, ante, p. 7, and is continued as now * He puts it down amongst the works written between 1769 and 1775, in the list appended to the Stuttgart and Tubingen octavo edition of 1819. |