Act 4

Scene I: High Mountains

(Fierce, jagged rocky peaks. A cloud approaches, pauses and settles on a projecting ledge. It parts.)

Faust (Steps out.)

Gazing at those deep solitudes beneath my feet,

I tread the mountain brink with deliberation,

Leaving the cloud-vehicle that carried me,

Softly, through bright day, over land and ocean.

Slowly, not dispersing, now, it moves away.

With a rolling movement, travelling eastward,

And the eye follows in wondering admiration.

Moving it divides, wave-like and changeable.

Yet it shapes itself – My eyes can’t deceive me! –

I see, reclining there, nobly, on sunlit pillows,

A godlike female form, though it’s immense!

An image of Juno, Leda, or Helen herself,

Royally lovely, floating before my eyes.

Ah! It’s already melting! Formlessly huge

And towering it hangs in far icy eastern hills,

Reflecting deep meaning from fine fleeting days.

Yet a soft, delicate band of mist still clings

To head and body, coolly caressing: and cheers me.

Now it lifts lightly, soars higher and higher, there,

Condensing. Does its enticing shape deceive me,

Like some long-forgotten joy of earliest youth?

The first riches of the heart’s depths flow again:

I’d liken it to Aurora’s Love, light-winged:

The first, swiftly felt, scarcely understood glance,

That outshines every treasure when it’s held fast.

The lovely form rises, now, like spiritual beauty,

Not melting further, but lifting through the air,

And carries, far-off, the best of what I am.

(A seven-league boot strides forward: another follows immediately. Mephistopheles steps out of them. The boots stride off quickly.)

Now that I call real onward striding!

But tell me why you’re all alone,

Climbing here among the horrors,

In these horrendous gulfs of stone?

I know them well, but with another face,

In truth, the floor of Hell’s a similar place.

Faust

You’re never short of a foolish fantasy:

You’ve dusted that one off again I see.

Mephistopheles (Seriously)

When the Lord God – and I know why as well –

Banished us from the air to deepest deeps,

There, where round and round the glow of Hell,

An eternal inward self-fuelled fire leaps,

We found we were too brightly illuminated,

Quite crowded, and uncomfortably situated.

All the devils fell to fits of coughing,

The vents above them and beneath them puffing,

Hell swollen with the sulphur’s stench and acid,

Gave out its gas! The bubble was so massive,

That soon the level surface of the earth,

Thick as it was, was forced to crack and burst.

So we all gained another mountain from it,

And what was ground, before, now is summit.

From this they deduced the truest law,

Turn lowest into highest, to be sure,

Since we escaped from fiery prison there,

To excessive power in the freer air:

An open mystery, yet well concealed,

And only lately publicly revealed. (Ephesians 6:12)

Faust

To me the mountain masses are nobly dumb,

I don’t ask why they are, or where they’re from.

When Nature in herself was grounded

The ball of Earth she neatly rounded,

Delighting in the mountains and the deep,

Setting rock on rock, and peak on peak,

Sloping the hills conveniently downward,

Softening them to vales, gently bounded.

They grow green, and joyfully she ranges,

Without the need for any violent changes.

Mephistopheles

Yes, so you say! It’s clear as day to you:

But he knows otherwise who saw it too.

I was there, while the void seethed below,

Enduring all that swollen, fiery tide:

When Moloch’s hammer forged cliffs, at a blow,

And flung the ruined mountains, far and wide.

Those foreign boulders scattered through the land:

Who knows what forces left them high and dry?

Philosophers all have failed to understand,

The rocks are there, and we must let them stand,

We’ve damaged them, already, where they lie.

Only the true believers, the people, know,

And nothing will shake their fond opinion,

They, since their wisdom ripened long ago,

Say it’s due to Satan’s wonderful dominion.

The traveller climbs, with faith’s crutch, over ridges,

Across the Devil’s rocks, and Devil’s bridges.

Faust

Yet it’s still worth noting, since every feature,

Reveals what it is the Devil sees in Nature.

Mephistopheles

What’s that to me! Let Nature be what she is!

The Devil was there: that’s what I’d have you notice!

We’re the folk, you see, who achieve great things:

The signs are tumult, force, and what nonsense brings! –

But shall I make myself understood at last: it’s best:

Did nothing at all of ours please you in the slightest?

You’ve looked down, from immeasurable heights,

On the riches of the world, and its splendid sights. (Matthew 4)

Yet, hard as you may be to fire,

Didn’t you feel some deep desire?

Faust

I did! I saw a mighty plan.

Guess!

Mephistopheles

Oh, that’s easily done.

I’d find myself some capital city,

It’s core the citizens’ greedy plenty,

Crooked alleys and pointed gables,

Cabbage, turnips, onions, market tables:

Butcher’s stalls where flies all cluster:

Round the fattened joints, pass muster:

Wherever you move, there you’ll find

Stench and activity, intertwined.

Then wide streets, and wider squares,

Measured, elegant thoroughfares:

And, at their end, no gates to bar you:

Just boundless far-flung suburbs too.

There I love to see all the carriages go by,

The noisy rushing about from side to side,

The endless running to and fro,

Of scattered ants in ceaseless flow.

And when I walk, and when I ride,

I’d be the central point implied,

A hundred thousand honouring me.

Faust

That could never content me though.

A swelling crowd is fine to see,

All well-fed in their way, agreed,

Well-bred, well-taught, all the three –

Yet you’ve only made more rebels grow.

Mephistopheles

For myself, I’d deliberately create

A pleasure house in a pleasant place.

Woods, hills, fields, meadows, open ground,

With splendid gardens all around.

Between green walls of velvet leaves,

Straight walks, where artful shadows please,

Waterfalls, spanning the rocks, in pairs,

And all those kinds of water-jet affairs:

Rising nobly, while all round the dish,

A thousand little fountains hiss and piss.

Then I’d have a hut, snug and convenient,

Where beautiful women might be content:

And pass the boundless time away

In the sweetest solitude, and play.

Women, I say: since, one and all,

I think of their loveliness in the plural.

Faust

Sardanapalus! Modern and rural!

Mephistopheles

Then might one ask to know your yearning?

It’s something daring: I’ve no doubt.

Since the moon was near you in your journeying,

Might it be moon-madness you’re about?

Faust

Not at all! This earthly round

Grants space for some mighty thing.

We’ll attempt what’s astonishing,

New strength for daring work I’ve found.

Mephistopheles

And shall you earn more glory by it too?

One sees the heroines have been with you.

Faust

I’ll win power, and property!

The deed is all, and not the glory.

Mephistopheles

Yet future poets’ verse will stress

The splendour of your bright success,

And inspire fools to foolishness.

Faust

All that’s far from you, indeed.

What do you know of what Men need?

Your contrary being, bitter, dire,

What does it know of Man’s desire?

Mephistopheles

Let it all be as you wish it then!

Trust fancy’s flight to me again.

Faust

My eyes were drawn towards the deepest ocean:

It swelled, and heaped itself, upon itself,

Then ebbed, and shook its waves again in motion,

Storming towards the wide shore’s level shelf.

And that annoyed me: as the exuberance

Of a free spirit, that values all its rights,

Will transmit uneasy feelings to the dance

Of the passionate blood that it excites.

I thought it chance: I gazed more intensely:

The waves paused, rolled away from me,

Far from what they’d reached in their pride:

Time passes, and then once more comes the tide.

Mephistopheles (To the audience.)

There’s nothing new in that to greet my ears,

I’ve known it for a hundred thousand years.

Faust (Continuing passionately.)

It sweeps along, to whatever thousand ends:

Fruitless itself, it fruitlessly extends:

It swells and rolls and breaks and overwhelms

The empty stretches of its barren realms.

There wave rules power-inspired wave, again

Draws back – and yet still there’s nothing gained.

If anything makes me despair, of my intent,

It’s the aimless force of that wild element!

Then my spirit dared to soar high above:

Here I must fight, and this I must remove.

And it’s possible! – However tides may flow,

At last they nestle round the hills below:

So they are tamed in their exuberance,

A modest height tops their proud advance,

A modest depth draws them forcefully on.

Quick, through my mind, leapt plan after plan:

Let rich enjoyment be mine for evermore,

To keep the noble ocean from the shore,

To channel all the wide and watery waste,

And urge it backwards to its own deep place.

Step by step I know how to design it:

That’s my desire, so be brave and promote it!

(On the right, from the distance, behind the audience, the sound of drums and military music.)

Mephistopheles

That’s trivial! Can you hear the distant drums?

Faust

War again! The wise man hates it when it comes.

Mephistopheles

War or peace, it’s wise to seize the chance,

And gain advantage from the circumstance.

One waits, one notes each favourable moment.

Opportunity’s about, so Faust, be ardent!

Faust

Spare me all your riddles, if you please!

Once and for all, say, what am I to seize?

Mephistopheles

Nothing was hidden from me on my journey:

The noble Emperor’s consumed by worry.

You know him. While we both supplied him,

Those illusory riches in his hand, beside him,

The whole world then was open to him.

Young, the throne was granted to him,

And it pleased him to assume, wrongly,

That he could easily combine the two,

Enjoy the essential and the lovely too:

Both government and pleasure, jointly.

Faust

A fatal error! He who wishes to command

Must make command his joy, and though

His mind is full of all the noblest plans,

What he intends, must let no other know.

What he whispers then in some faithful ear,

Is done, and the world will be amazed to hear.

So he’ll remain supreme, above them all,

And noblest: pleasure comes before a fall.

Mephistopheles

That’s not the man! He enjoyed himself, and how!

Meanwhile anarchy brought the empire down,

While great fought little, and orders crossed,

And brothers fought with brothers, and were lost,

Castle with castle, city against city,

The guilds at war with the nobility:

The bishops with their congregation:

No friends, and only a hostile nation.

In churches death and slaughter: through the gate

Every merchant and trader swift to his fate.

Now, everywhere, man’s audacity shows:

The word is ‘defend your life’. And so it goes.

Faust

So it goes – it stumbles, falls, and stands again,

Then tumbles headlong, and lies there in pain.

Mephistopheles

None dared to criticise the situation,

Each could, and would improve his station.

Even the smallest wished to be great enough.

But for the best it proved a step too much.

The capable declared, with energy:

‘He who brings peace can have the mastery.

The Emperor can’t, and will not – let us choose

A new Emperor, who’ll inspire the realm anew.

While each man achieves security,

In a world that’s re-created freshly,

Let peace and justice there be wedded, too.’

Faust

That smacks of priesthood.

Mephistopheles

The priests were there, yes,

Defending their well-fed stomachs with the rest,

And they were more involved than all the others.

The rebels swarmed: and were blessed as brothers:

Then the Emperor, whom we had made happy,

Advanced, for his last battle, that’s as maybe.

Faust

I’m sorry for him: He was so frank and open.

Mephistopheles

We’ll watch! While there’s life there’s hope again.

Let’s set him free, from this narrow valley!

He’s a thousand times saved, if they would rally.

Who knows how the dice might fall, if so:

Good luck, and he’ll have treasures to bestow.

(They cross over the middle range of hills, and view the army in the valley. Drums and military music sound from below.)

The position they’ve taken, there, looks fine:

We’ll join them: victory – in the nick of time.

Faust

And what should I expect to see?

A hollow show! Blind magic! Trickery!

Mephistopheles

Strategy, and how to win a battle!

Think hard, and be on your mettle,

Keep dreaming of your mighty aim.

If we return the Emperor his land,

You can kneel, and make a claim,

In payment, for the boundless strand.