be not crack'd within the ring," that is, have not lost the right sound. Just as Paulsen misses the meaning of this passage, when he tries in this impossible manner to prove Hamlet's sensuality, so he altogether misses the real, deep import of the Hamlet tragedy. For a fuller exposition I may refer the reader to my collected Hamlet studies, "Hamlet ein Genie," 1902. V. GOETHE'S SELF-REPRESENTATION IN FAUST. LIKE Shakespeare in his "Hamlet," Goethe has erected an everlasting monument to himself in his "Faust." In this unique drama the poet has mirrored his own æsthetic perceptivity, his own philosophic mode of thought, his own creative activity, and has given expression to all that touched his inmost soul. Let us, firstly, consider Faust's aesthetic perceptivity. How deep and heartfelt is his feeling for beauty, how readily he loses himself in the contemplation of the outward splendour of the world, how thirstily his eyes, on his walk with Wagner, drink in the light of the setting sun that with its golden radiance illumines and transfigures all the surrounding landscape. He longs for wings to carry him in the path of the great luminary, and so to absorb all the glory which its brilliance conjures up: "But let us not, by such despondence, so Mark how, beneath the evening sunlight's glow, Then would I see eternal Evening gild On fire each mountain-peak, with peace each valley filled, Yet, finally, the weary god is sinking; I hasten on, his beams eternal drinking, The Day before me and the Night behind, Above me heaven unfurled, the floor of waves beneath me, A glorious dream! though now the glories fade." 1 How extraordinarily susceptible he is also to the beauty of the human form, to what ecstasy he is transported by the first glimpse of the exquisite charm of woman's shape seen in the magic mirror in the Witches' Kitchen, the following verses show: "What do I see? What heavenly form revealed Shows through the glass from Magic's fair dominions! O lend me, Love, the swiftest of thy pinions, And bear me to her beauteous field! Ah, if I leave this spot with fond designing, If I attempt to venture near, Dim, as through gathering mist, her charms appear! A woman's form, in beauty shining! Can woman, then, so lovely be? And must I find her body, there reclining, Of all the heavens the bright epitome? 1 Bayard Taylor's Translation is used throughout. It is of the greatest interest, and was probably so designed by the poet with full intent, that Faust should show this rapture at the sight of a perfect female form even before he had taken the witch's rejuvenating potion. The draught, therefore, rejuvenates only his body; his soul and mind were already previously capable of feeling the greatest enthusiasm for the beauty of the world and of the human form. It is true, indeed, that the younger a man is, and the more vitality and strength he still possesses, the greater will be the joy, the delight, the amorous passion with which he views everything around him, and the more beautiful will everything appear to him; for love beautifies and irradiates all things. Hence it is that Mephistopheles expects that the rejuvenated Faust will soon fancy he recognises, in some one of the women brought in contact with him, the paragon among women, the fairest of the fair. "Thou'lt find, this drink thy blood compelling, each woman beautiful as Helen," Mephistopheles says to himself sarcastically. In a similar manner, Shakespeare, in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," makes Theseus say, "The lover, all as frantic, sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt." In reality it is not the classic beauty of form of the Greek Helen, but the naïve, charming innocence of the fair German Gretchen that first delights Faust on regaining his youth: "By Heaven, the girl is wondrous fair! The lip so red, the cheek's clear dawn, How short and sharp of speech was she, Why, 'twas a real ecstasy!" Afterwards it is the classic beauty of form that Faust turns to; the place of the naïve German Gretchen is taken by the ideal of female beauty, typified in the figure of the Greek Helen, the symbol of the highest art in Goethe's sense. Faust descends into the empire of the Mothers, the eternal Ideas, to conjure up the fair shape, and when it appears he exclaims rapturously: "Have I still eyes? Deep in my being springs And let my breath of being blow to waste, If I for thee unlearn my sacred duty! The form, that long erewhile my fancy captured, That Faust descends to the Mothers, into the empire of eternal Ideas, in order to conjure up the shape of Helen, the consummation of all beauty, is of profound significance and points to the doctrine to which we too have endeavoured to draw attention, namely, that what we call the beauty of a thing is nothing but the idea of that thing, seen, as it were, with our eyes. Every object exists and develops itself according to a fixed plan, following quite a definite idea. The more complete, in the first place, this idea itself is, and the more completely, in the second, |