FAUST
A monologue from the
play by Johann
Wolfgang von Goethe
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NOTE: This monologue is reprinted
from Faust. Trans. Bayard Taylor. Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1898. |
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- FAUST: I've studied now Philosophy
- And Jurisprudence, Medicine,--
- And even, alas! Theology,--
- From end to end, with labor keen;
- And here, poor fool! with all my lore
- I stand, no wiser than before:
- I'm Magister--yea, Doctor--hight,
- And straight or cross-wise, wrong or right,
- These ten years long, with many woes,
- I've led my scholars by the nose,--
- And see, that nothing can be known!
- That knowledge cuts me to the bone.
- I'm cleverer, true, than those fops of teachers,
- Doctors and Magisters, Scribes and Preachers;
- Neither scruples nor doubts come now to smite me,
- Nor Hell nor Devil can longer affright me.
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- For this, all pleasure am I foregoing;
- I do not pretend to aught worth knowing,
- I do not pretend I could be a teacher
- To help or convert a fellow-creature.
- Then, too, I've neither lands nor gold,
- Nor the world's least pomp or honor hold--
- No dog would endure such a curst existence!
- Wherefore, from Magic I seek assistance,
- That many a secret perchance I reach
- Through spirit-power and spirit-speech,
- And thus the bitter task forego
- Of saying the things I do not know,--
- That I may detect the inmost force
- Which binds the world, and guides its course;
- Its germs, productive powers explore,
- And rummage in empty words no more!
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- O full and splendid Moon, whom I
- Have, from this desk, seen climb the sky
- So many a midnight,--would thy glow
- For the last time beheld my woe!
- Ever thine eye, most mournful friend,
- O'er books and papers saw me bend;
- But would that I, on mountains grand,
- Amid thy blessed light could stand,
- With spirits through mountain-caverns hover,
- Float in thy twilight the meadows over,
- And, freed from the fumes of lore that swathe me,
- To health in thy dewy fountains bathe me!
-
- Ah, me! this dungeon still I see,
- This drear, accursed masonry,
- Where even the welcome daylight strains
- But duskly through the painted panes.
- Hemmed in by many a toppling heap
- Of books worm-eaten, gray with dust,
- Which to the vaulted ceiling creep,
- Against the smoky paper thrust,--
- With glasses, boxes, round me stacked,
- And instruments together hurled,
- Ancestral lumber, stuffed and packed--
- Such is my world: and what a world!
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- And do I ask, wherefore my heart
- Falters, oppressed with unknown needs?
- Why some inexplicable smart
- All movement of my life impedes?
- Alas! in living Nature's stead,
- Where God His human creature set,
- In smoke and mould the fleshless dead
- And bones of beasts surround me yet!
-
- Fly! Up, and seek the broad, free land!
- And this one Book of Mystery
- From Nostradamus' very hand,
- Is't not sufficient company?
- When I the starry courses know,
- And Nature's wise instruction seek,
- With light of power my soul shall glow,
- As when to spirits spirits speak.
- 'Tis vain, this empty brooding here,
- Though guessed the holy symbols be:
- Ye, Spirits, come--ye hover near--
- Oh, if you hear me, answer me!
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- [He opens the Book, and perceives the sign of the Macrocosm.]
MORE MONOLOGUES BY GOETHE |
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