pery aesthetic imitation but the genuine
article.

II

GOETHE'S 'FAUST'

PART I

When Goethe wrote to Schiller announcing his intention of once more
taking up his unfinished _Faust_, Schiller replied: 'My head grows dizzy
when I think of it. The subject of Faust appears to supply such an
infinity of material.... I find no circle large enough to contain it.'
Goethe answered: 'I expect to make my work at this barbarous
composition, this _Fratze_ [_i.e._ caricature, as he often called it]
less difficult than you imagine. I shall throw a sop to exorbitant
demands rather than try to satisfy them. The whole will always remain a
fragment'--a fragment, perhaps we may add, in the same sense as even the
grandest Gothic building may be said to be only a part of the infinitely
great ideal Gothic structure which will never be seen on earth, whereas
in the Parthenon we have, or rather the Athenians in the days of
Pericles had, something final and complete, something which will
tolerate no addition.

If Schiller's head grew dizzy at the thought of a Faust-drama, I fear
that one who has no Schiller head on his shoulders may prove a poor
guide among the precipices and ravines of Goethe's life-poem, where the
path is often very steep and slippery. But I will do my best; and
perhaps I had better treat our subject as I proposed. At first I shall
point out a little more distinctly some of the characteristics which
distinguish Goethe's drama from the earlier versions of the story. Then
I shall try to guide you steadily and rapidly through the action of the
first Part, offering whatever comment may seem useful, and now and then
perhaps asking you to step aside from the track in order to get a peep
over some of the aforementioned precipices.

As we have already seen, one great difference between Goethe's _Faust_
and many older versions of the story (including Marlowe's play, but
excluding Lessing's fragment) is the fact that the sinner is saved.

Shortly before his death, in 1832, Goethe wrote to Wilhelm v. Humboldt:
'Sixty years ago, when as a young man I first conceived the idea of my
_Faust_, the whole plan of it lay clearly before me.' From the first
therefore Goethe had conceived the second Part as integral to his poem.
He knew that, if he were to write a _Faust_ at all, Faust must be saved.

We have already arrived at the edge of one of those precipices of which
I spoke--Faust must be saved. But what did Goethe mean, or