You Goethe Be Kidding Me . . .

My charming German tomes silently sitting right before my desk.

It is impossible to accomplish anything but Romantic ecstasies into the Sublime or poetic intoxication, when my recently acquired volume of Goethe's Faust (Erster Teil, Zweiter Teil, Urfaust, und Goethe über Faust) is sitting with my own hand-scribbled Fraktur script slithering and staring back at me, beckoning me with a mocking din of tollit lege ringing in my ears as Augustine once heard.  But like all good addictions, a reading of Goethe will slake my thirst for a verse only to rake the coals desiring one more stanza.  I'm reminded of one of Goethe's essays on Shakespeare, wherein Wilhelm Meister recounted his first reading of Hamlet, "You would think that while reading them, you stood before the unclosed awful Books of Fate, while the whirlwind of most impassioned life was howling through the leaves, and tossing them fiercely to and fro."  Goethe can definitely be seen as aspiring to the heights described by Meister here and if Goethe is the Shakespeare of German, Faust is his Hamlet.  I'm trying to read and to write some exams, but catharsis is calling and the rhymes are chiming, the Devil dances and the drama dins, and to me Goethe as he tosses in a poodle just for good measure.  Its a pleasure to have my soul riddled with these verses, however unproductive that may make me. Perhaps you'll see what I mean.

Mephistopheles:                                                              
[Er gibt seinen Name]  Ein Teil von jener Kraft,            
Die stets das Böse will und stets das Gute schafft.          
Faust:
Was ist mit diesem Rätselwort gemeint?                      
Mephistopheles:                                                              
Ich bin der Geist, der stets verneint,                                
Und daß mit rechts, denn alles was entsteht,                  
Ist wert, daß es zu Grunde geht;                                      
Drum besser wär's, daß nichts entstünde.                        
So ist denn alles, was ihr Sünde,                                    
Zerstörung, kurz das Böse nennt,                                    
Mein eigentliches Element.                                            
                                            Mephistopheles: [Offers his name]
                                            A part of that Power which would
                                            Ever Evil do; yet ever does the Good.
                                            Faust: 
                                           A riddle! Say what it implies!
                                           Mephistopheles:
                                            I am the Spirit that denies!
                                           And rightly too; for all that doth begin
                                           Should rightly to destruction run;
                                          'Twere better then that nothing were begun.
                                          Thus everything that you call Sin,
                                          Destruction- in a word, as Evil represent-
                                          That is my particular element.

Schüler:
Das sieht schon besser aus! Man sieht doch, wo und wie.
Mephistopheles:
Grau, teurer Freund, ist alle Theorie,
Und grün des Leben goldner Baum.
Schüler:
Ich schwör' Euch zu, mir ist's als wie ein Traum.
Dürft' ich Euch wohl ein andermal beschweren.
Von Eurer Weisheit auf den Grund zu hören?
Mephistopheles: Was ich vermag, soll gern geschehn.


                  Student:
                  Now that looks better! Now one sees 
                  the where and how!
                  Mephistopheles: Dear friend, all theory is grey,
                  And the golden tree of life is green.
                  Student: I vow,
                  It's all just like a dream to me.
                 Another time I'll bore you, if I may,
                 To hear your wisdom through and through.
                 Mephistopheles: All that I can, I'll gladly do.