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On the Structure of the URFAUST

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2021

R. M. Browning
R. M. Browning*
Affiliation:
Hamilton College, Clinton, N. Y.
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Extract

Erich Schmidt's thrilling discovery of the proto-form of Goethe's Faust came at a fateful hour. In the year 1887 the mechanistic evolutionism of the natural sciences still reigned almost unchallenged even in the field of literary criticism, which on the academic level at least was mainly philological in nature with occasional purple patches of “appreciation.” The philologist, regarding the Urfaust as a sort of “missing link,” pounced upon it and, in order to make it fit his hypotheses, tore it to pieces. The result was the famous “shred theory” of its genesis, the Fetzentheorie advanced by some of scholarship's most respected names— most notably perhaps, certainly most influentially, by Gustav Roethe, first chairman of the Goethe-Gesellschaft and disciple of Wilhelm Scherer. Even before the discovery of the Urfaust Scherer had of course made far-reaching conjectures regarding the original form and order of composition of Faust.In an essay first published in 1920 Roethe succeeded in reducing the Urfaust to no less than forty-one “shreds,” each of which, according to him, could have been written “at one sitting” (p. 676). Roethe's concept of the work is well summed up in the following words (p. 654): “Goethe, especially in his youth, was inclined to seize first upon that which he felt a strong urge to give form to and more than once he left it up to a later redaction whether the precious ‘patches’ (‘Fetzen‘) were to be sewn into a garment or not. The Urfaust, now, I regard as a provisional collection and redaction of such patches.” This might have been a harmless enough sort of game had not the players taken it upon themselves to cry down all attempts at esthetic interpretation which did not subscribe to their conjectures. Thus Roethe (p. 643) dismisses J. Minor's (not entirely consistent) effort to read the Urfaust as a work in its own right as unsuccessful because Minor slights problems of genesis. The idea that there might be some organic relationship between form and content seems to fill Roethe with a sense of the absurd—this approach he calls “a great, even mystic, overbending of the bow” (p. 677). No, for him the Urfaust remains “a tack, filled with little scraps of paper,” such as it had come down in legend, thanks to A. W. Schlegel.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 68 , Issue 3 , June 1953 , pp. 458 - 495
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1953

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References

page 458 note 1 Cf. Aus GoethesFriihzeit (Strassburg, 1879).

page 458 note 2 “Die Entstehung des ‘Urfaust’,” Sitzungsber.d. preuss. Akad. d. Wiss. (Berlin, 1920), pp. 642-687.

page 458 note 3 Goethes Faust, 1.Bd. (Stuttgart, 1901).

page 458 note 4 Cf. Otto Pniower, Goethes Faust. Zeugnisseund Excurse (Berlin, 1899), pp. 14 f.

page 459 note 5 “Neue Beiträge zurErklärung dee ‘Urfaust’,” Germ.-Roman.Monatss., x.Jhg. (1922), p. 138.

page 459 note 6 “Die Entstehung des Urfaust,” Preuss. Jahrbb., CXCII(Apr.-June 1923), 279-312.

page 459 note 7 Jahrb. d. fr. deut. Hochstifts (1940), pp. 594-686.

page 459 note 8 “Die dramatische Kunstform in Goethes ‘Faust’,” Euphorion, XXXIII(1932), 212.

page 459 note 9 “Die organische Seele im ‘Faust I’,” Euphorion, XXXIV(1933), 159 and throughout

page 460 note 10 “The Veil of Beauty. Some Aspects of Verse and Prose in Shakespeare and Goethe,” JEGP, L (1951), 442.

page 460 note 11 Quotations and enumeration of unes from the Urfaust according to Faust und Urfaust, erläutert von Ernst Beutler, Leipzig, copyright 1940 (Sammlung Dietrich, Bd. 25).

page 461 note 12 That the magician is primarily a man of will or of “will to will” was clearly recognised by such “contemporaries” of Faust as Paracelsus, van Helmont, Böhme, Campanella, et al Cf. Schopenhauer, “Animalischer Magnetismus und Magie,” Sämtliche, Werke(München, 1912), III, 383-408.

page 461 note 13 My thanks to readers for the Editorial Committee of PM LA for light on the following

page 463 note 14 This interpretation, derived from the imagery itself, is, I venture to submit, more in keeping with the poem than tome erudite reference to the Sweden borgian “suctio,” a concept which in any cue must be reversed in order to make it fit the present situation. See also Harold Jantz, Goethe's Faust asa Renaissance Man(Princeton, 1951), n. 18, pp. 147-149, where issue is ahn taken with the thesis of Swedenborgian influence in this passage, though from a quite different point of view.

page 463 note 15 “Grenzender Menschheit” also exhibits that same structural rhythm, applied posi-tively as it were.Cf. O. R. Meyer, “Goethes Ode ‘Grenzen der Menschheit’,” Euphorien, XXVI (1925), 592-602, esp. pp. 597600.

page 464 note 16 The New Testament, particularly St. Paul, is also fond of food and drink images, in the sense of spiritual nourishment. See 1 Cor. iii.1-3; x.2-4; Hebrews v.12-14. Indeed, as was pointed out to me by my colleague John R. Mattingly, the basse metaphor of the Church, the “Blessed Sacrament,” is an oral sacrament, ameans of receiving grace through the mouth. Among Protestants, where less stress is laid speusuch forma, the Word becomes all the mors important. Goethe himself wittily calk attention to this in “Der ewige Jude”: “Kamen anaOkerpfarrersHaus, / Stand von uralters noch im Ganzen. / Reformation hatt ihren Schmaus / Und nahm den Pfaffen Hof und Haus / Um wieder Pfaffen' nein zu pflanzen, / Die nur in allem Grund der Sachen, / Mehr schwäzzen, wenger Grimassenmachen”(Derjunge Goethe, ed. Max Morris, IV, 56). See also E. R. Curtius, Europäische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter (Bonn, 1948), pp. 142-144, for food and drink images.

page 465 note 17 That Faust'sideal is that of Storm and Stress, while Wagner's reflects that of the Baroque and its“Poetische Trichter,” has often been pointed out. It should be noted, however, that Faust's ideal is also that of the magician, who strives for direct contact with the divine Logos, whereas Wagner seeks no more than intermediate contact on a purely earthly plane. In so far as the ideals of Storm and Stress coincide with those of Faust the magician—“Gefühl” is the tertiumcompartionis—he can perhaps be regarded as their embodiment, but to make the hero of the Urfausta purely Storm and Stress figure, as Gunther Müller (“Organische Seele”) tends to do, seems an Immolation of Goethe and his work upon the altar of Geistesgeschichte.

page 470 note 18 The revisionof the Schülerszencpresents some of the most interesting problems in Faust. Very notable is the pointing up of the metaphorical material to echo that of the first 248 lines, especially the first 168 (as numbered in the Urfaust). I mention only the oral imagery of Mephisto's speech at the beginning of the scene as an example (“So nimmt ein Kind der Matter Brust...”). This would seem to show that Goethe, upon revising his work, became more conscious of his imagery and sought in this way to make the parallelism between Faust and the student all the more striking. It might also be used to support the theory advanced by Willy Krogmann(Goethe's, “Urfaust,” Berlin, 1933, pp. 37 f.) that the Schülerszeneis a very early sketch originally completely unconnected with Faust. However, the fact that there is as much relationship in the imagery between the foregoing scenes and the present one as there actually is, not to speak of complete correspondence in structural rhythms, seems to me to cast grave doubt on this view, though it cannot be denied that the Images of orality in the Fragment are of more central significance than in the Urfaust. In the latter the student asks for intellectual food and Mephisto speaks to him of physical nourishment; in the Fragment the various departments of knowledge an at once characterised as “der Weisheit Brüste” and then shown to be a snare and a delusion, thus bringing the Schüler more quickly to the point at which we see Faust at the beginning of the poem.

page 470 note 29 What can be more painful than the labored Jocularity some critics take as the right tone for discussing this scene?“ . . . ein unübertroffenes, höchst gelungenes und amüsantes Genrebild aus dem deutschen Studentenleben.” By such remarks does Kuno Fischer (Goeths) Faust, 4. Aufl., 3. Bd., p. 413) try to make it evident that he gets the point of Goethe's “joke.” Martin Schütze (Academic Illusions, p. 64), on the other hand, viewing the Urfaustas a poetic whole, says quite rightly: “When [Faust] finally discovers that real knowledge is beyond his power, he rushes in despair into dissipation, symbolizedby Auer-bach'sKeller,...” (emphasis mine).

page 471 note 20 Is this name necessarily as innocent at the commentators would have us think? Cf. “Hans Sachs poetische Sendung” (last two lines): “In Froschpfuhl all das Volk verbannt, / Das seinen Meister je verkannt!” in fact, if one were ignorant of the Faust legend, would it ever occur to him that these sots are supposed to be devotees of learning? In the Urfaust, Goethe even provides “Alten” with a wife, which need not be “einblosser Scherz,” as Minor (p. 112) claims.

page 472 note 21 Hermann Schneider (Urfaust EineStudie, Tubingen, 1949), is perhaps the most recent scholar to insist upon the break between magus and lover. According to the review of this study by Will-Erich Peuckert(Zeits. f. deut.Phil., LXXI(1951), 90), Schneider regarda the Gretchen tragedy as a new play, whose hero is not the Faustian Faust but a young seducer. The drama of the magna was allowed to wither on the vine while Goethe wrote the love tragedy of the infanticide, to that the redaction of 1775 represents a juxtaposition of two separate plays.

page 473 note 22 W. Böhm (G.sFaust im neuer Deutung, Köln, 1949, p. 78) correctly pointa out that the compoaitional principle even of the final version is that of “tema con variazioni,” rather than that of a strictly motivated drama.

page 473 note 23 Even the carouacrs in Auerbach's cellar are permitted a momentary glimpse of a (false) world of harmony and order in the vision of the vineyard, which they ate immediately want to “grasp.”

page 474 note 24 See, e.g., G.S Faust, hrsg v. G. Witkowski, 7.Aufl., 2. Bd., p. 229: “... die Umar-beitung [hat] .. . diewirklich störendeHerabziehungdes Heldenzumbehaglichen Taschenspieler glilcklichbeseitigt ...” (emphasis mine).

page 475 note 25 Comparison of motifs can lead to the conclusion that the work lacks unity rather than the opposite, as is clearly shown by Meyer-Benfey's study, where the author, on the basis of such a comparison, assigns the first half of the work to the period of Goethe's “Titanendichtungen” (1771-73) and the Gretchen actios to the poet's erotic period (after 1773). (Cf. “Entstehung,” p. 299 et passim.) Such reasoning is good enough for dating the work, but it does not follow that the Gretchen tragedy has no connection with the first half of the poem “either In theme or in character of the hero.”

page 478 note 26 Julius Goebel (G.S Faust, Erster Teil, New York, 1907, p. 361) even speculates as to whether the “Bauerhüttgen” may not be Gretehen's house! In this he is followed by the editors of the American school edition of the Urfaust(cf. G.S Urfaust, ed by H. F. H. Lens and F. J. Nock, New York, 1938, p. 45 n.).

page 479 note 27 Only seemingly, if Beutler (“Frankf. Fsust,” pp. 638, 645 and n. 61, p. 685) is correct in saying that it was Goethe's intention from 1772 on that Fault be saved by love manifested through “das Ewig Weibliche.”

page 479 note 28 How Ernst Traumann (G.s Faust, 3. Aufl.,I, 397) can speak of this scene as a “glückverheissendes Idyll” is to me incomprehensible.

page 481 note 29 Böhm, pp. 51-54 and 89.

page 482 note 30 Of the commentaries, examined, Minor (1. Bd., p. 148) sees the problem most clearly, but finds no other explanation than the time-honored “Hier irrt Goethe.”

page 484 note 31 “Vom Wesen des Tragischen,” Euphorion,XXXIV (1933), 7.

page 488 note 32 On Goethe's “primordial image” see L. A. Willoughby, “The Image of the Horse and Charioteer in Geethe's Poetry,” Publs. of the Engl. Goethe Society, N.S., xv (1946), 50-54.

page 489 note 33 Cf. DjG, III, 320-323.

page 490 note 34 Otto Pniower, “Goethes Faust und du hohe Lied,” Gethe Jahrb., XIII (1892), 181-198; als0 DjG, V, 337 f. and VI, 529.

page 491 note 35 Cf. Beutler, “Frankf. Faust,” pp. 632 f.

page 492 note 36 On the Gretchen tragedy as a cosmic myth see Arnold J. Toynbee, A Study of History (London, 1934), I, 271-198.

page 492 note 37 I am happy to be able to say that this interpretation of Gretchen's, death as an Opftertod, though arrived at quite differently, it in substantial agreement not only with Beutler but also with the penetrating study by Hans Jaeger, “The Problem of Faust's Salvation,” Goethe, Bicentennial Studies, Indiana Univ. Publs., Humanities Series, No. 22 (1950), pp. 109-132; Opfertod. pp. 146-152.

page 493 note 38 It is unfortunately very typical of (the semi-official attitude toward Faust that Heinrich Richert (G.s Faust, p. 275) should pass over this passage as “fur den Zusammenhing des Ganzen dedeutungslos.”

page 495 note 39 Wielands, Werk, (Akademieausgabe), 12. Bd. (Berlin, 1935), pp. 75 and A33 f.