Faust: A Tragedy
witch-like antic character of this whole scene. Besides, the term
"Cat-ape" is far more expressive of the nature of the animal
than that in the original.
Note IX.
_And we will strew chopped straw before the door._
A German custom prevalent among the common people, when they suspect
the virginity of a bride. The ceremony is performed on the day
before the marriage.--_Vide_ Adelung in voce _Häckerling_.
Note X.
_And good Sir Urian is the guide._
"Sir Urian is a name which was formerly used to designate an
unknown person, or one whose name, even if it were known, it was not
thought proper to mention. In this sense it was sometimes applied to
the devil. In the Parzival of Wolfram von Eschenbach, the
unprincipled Prince of Partartois is called Urian."--/Bayard
Taylor/.
Note XI.
_The ointment gives our sinews might._
"According to the orthodox theory, the witches anointed their
whole body with a salve or ointment prepared in the name of the
fiend, murmured a few magic sentences into their beard, and then
flew up, body and soul, head and hair, actually and corporeally into
the air."--Horst's _Dæmonomagie_, vol. ii. p. 203.
Note XII.
_Make way, Squire Voland comes._
A name of Satan, derived probably from the Latin _Volo_, through the
Italian _Volante_, expressive of that agile quality of the old
deceiver, whereby he is always "going to and fro on the earth, and
walking up and down in it."--Job i. 7. See Reichard's _Geister
Reich_, vol. i. p. 397. But I rather suspect this appellation is
connected with the office of the evil one, as chief of the flies,
and other volatile tormentors. In the French edition of the popular
story the devil is called "Le Diable volatique," c. vi.;--or,
better still, the devil is so called as being "the prince of the
power of the air," and therefore a flying spirit. "Mon Valet,
dis moi quel esprit es-tu?--Mon Maistre Faust, je suis un esprit
Volant, qui ay mon cours dans l'air sous le ciel"--in the same
French history of Doctor Faust.
Note XIII.
_Who then is that?--'Tis Lilith._
_Lilith_, from _Lil_, darkness, is the name of night-monster
(translated _screech-owl_ in Isaiah xxxiv. 14), who, under the
deceitful form of a beautiful woman, was believed by the Jews to be
most injurious to parturient women, and very often to occasion the
death of young persons before they were circumcised. Buxtorf, in his
Lexicon Talmudicum, gives a tolerably good account of these Hebrew
_Lamiæ_; but the most complete and satisfactory information on
this, as on all other subjects connected with ancient and modern
superstition, is to be found in Horst, _Zauber-Bibliothek_, part vi.
pp. 42 and 86.
Note XIV.
_Proctophantasmist._
It is universally agreed that Nicolai, a noted Berlin publisher, who
flourished about the middle and towards the end of the last century,
is the person meant here. From his biography by Göcking, he appears
to have been a man of remarkable mental activity and considerable
literary significance in his day; but, like the Brandenburg sands on
which he was located, his ideas seemed to have been somewhat flat
and prosaic, and totally inadequate to grasp the significance of the
great master spirits of thought, who were now asserting their
rightful place on the platform of German literature. Notwithstanding
the prosaic character of his mind, he became subject to a disease of
seeing apparitions in clear daylight (see Dr. Hibbert's book on
apparitions), an abnormal action of the optic nerves, which was
cured by the application of leeches to the part of the body on which
the unfeathered biped finds it comfortable to sit. Hence the name,
from the Greek πρωκτός.
Note XV.
_Intermezzo._
Most of the puppet personages who pop up in this curious little
piece, and explain their own significance in a stanza, may be
presumed to be sufficiently familiar to all readers capable of
appreciating the mind of a poetical thinker such as Goethe. I
confine myself to the few following notes:--
_Embryo-Spirit_.--German "_Geist der sich erst bildet_." A quiz
upon young versifiers,--poetlings with whom rhyme and reason are
opposite poles.
_Orthodox_.--We are indebted to the Fathers of the Church for the
pious imagination that the heathen gods were devils. Milton follows
the same unfounded idea. The gods of Greece were bad enough; but we
need not make them worse than they were. They had their good side
too. _Vide_ Schiller's beautiful poem, "The Gods of Greece,"
which, by the by, Frantz Horn calls "Ein unendlicher
Irrthum,"--an infinite error. But a man may admire an Apollo or a
Minerva without meaning to be a heathen.
_Purists_.--There are "purists" among the German grammarians;
but the allusion here must be to something else--prigs and
precisians, I fancy.
_Xenien_.--Epigrammatic poems published by Goethe and Schiller,
which were very severe on the half-poets of the day.
_Hennings_.--I know nothing of this character. Hayward says he was
one of the victims of the Xenien, and editor of two periodicals,
"_The Genius of the Age_," and the "_Musaget_."
The _stiff_ man is Nicolai; he of the "old mill," _supra_, p.
251. Nicolai was a great zealot against Catholics and Jesuits; but,
as Frantz Horn hints, his zeal was not always according to
knowledge.--_Geschichte der Deutschen Poesie_, vol. iii.
The _Crane_, I believe, is Lavater.
Note XVI.
_My mother, the wanton,_
_That choked my breath._
"This song is founded upon a popular German story, to be found in
the _Kinder-und Haus-Märchen_ of the distinguished brothers Grimm,
under the title of _Van den Machandel-Boom_, and in the English
selection from that work (entitled _German Popular Stories_), under
the title of _The Juniper Tree_.--The wife of a rich man, whilst
standing under a juniper tree, wishes for a little child as white as
snow and as red as blood; and, on another occasion, expresses a wish
to be buried under the juniper when dead. Soon after, a little boy
as white as snow and as red as blood is born: the mother dies of joy
at beholding it, and is buried according to her wish. The husband
marries again, and has a daughter. The second wife, becoming jealous
of the boy, murders him, and serves him up at table for the
unconscious father to eat. The father finishes the whole dish, and
throws the bones under the table. The little girl, who is made the
innocent assistant in her mother's villany, picks them up, ties
them in a silk handkerchief, and buries them under the juniper tree.
The tree begins to move its branches mysteriously, and then a kind
of cloud rises from it, a fire appears in the cloud, and out of the
fire comes a beautiful bird, which flies about singing the following
song:--
"'Min Moder de mi slacht't
Min Vader de me att,
Min Swester de Marleenken
Söcht alle mine Beeniken,
Un bindt sie in een syden Dook,
Legts unner den Machandelboom;
Kywitt, Kywitt! ach watt en schön Vagel ben ich!'"
Hayward's _Prose Translation of Faust_,
_2d edition_, p. 294.
[THE END.]
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES.
Alterations to text:
Add TOC and Dramatis Personae listing.
Relabel footnote markers and link to footnotes at end of work.
Add note markers to play and link to notes at end of work.
Minor changes to the formatting of some play elements (speaker
names, stage directions, etc.).
[Act IV/Scene VIII] Change the speaker of "Who's this lies here?"
from Gretchen to Margaret.
Text surrounded by /slashes/ is mixed capitals.