The Germanic Review: Literature, Culture, Theory

ISSN: 0016-8890 (Print) 1930-6962 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/vger20

Lenaus Faust

Israel S. Stamm

To cite this article: Israel S. Stamm (1951) Lenaus Faust, The Germanic Review: Literature,
Culture, Theory, 26:1, 5-12, DOI: 10.1080/19306962.1951.11786507

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19306962.1951.11786507

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 LENAU'S FAUST
By Israel S. Stamm
Wenn es <lurch den Egoism us, den mir das Schicksal
abgedrungen hat, so weit gekommen ist, dall die Liebe
mein Herz nicht weich und dankbar genug findet, so
moge sie mich entschuldigen. Ich habe dem Leben ge
gentiber nun einmal meine Stellung genommen, es soil
mich nicht hinunterkriegen. Dall mein Widerstand nicht
der eines ruhigen Weisen ist, sondern viel Trotziges an
sich hat, das liegt in meinem Temperament.
-Lenau to Emilie Reinbeck, February 5, 1836.

I
F WISDOM is balance, a right sense of proportion, and if egotism is by
its nature opposed to the proper measure of man's place in the world,
then Lenau's Faust may illustrate for us the want of wisdom in
much of subjective German writing. The heart of Lenau's poem is egotism
which demands that the world answer to it. This is not the beginning of
wisdom.
Who is Lenau's Faust? Carl Siegel, in his careful analysis, sees him as a
satirical figure exposing the subjectivism of the German idealists. 1 Siegel
is right in making subjectivism the problem of Faust, but he is not right,
we believe, in putting Faust at satirical distance from the problem. The
tonality of the poem convinces us that self-centered subjectivism is here
more than a satirical object: the poem is too pathetic for satire.2 Siegel
cites the victory of Mephistopheles over Faust as evidence that in Lenau's
recognition arbitrary subjectivism must yield to some superior reality.
But recognition of a condition is not necessarily its control. Indeed, the
tone of hopelessness, set early, heightens the poem's pathos:
Die unglticklichste, ewig hoffnungslose,
Die Liebe fur die Wahrheit ist mein Schmerz.3
With this quotation we move towards the center of Faust's temperament
and situation. For the hopelessness of these lines is attributed to a grievous
1 Carl Siegel, "Lenaus Faust und sein Verhaltnis zur Philosophie," Kantstudien,
XXI, 66-92.
2 "Die Tonalitat eben des ganzen Gedichtes drii.ngt mit schmerzlichem Crescendo

zur Katastrophe, die ihm in der Kulmination seine eigene pessimistische Bedeutung
gibt.
"Alie Elemente und alle Motive des Werkes... schaffen, indem sie dauernd das
Thema von einem verzweifelten panischen Pessimismus (der leidenschaftlich und
nicht gedanklich ist) festhalten, die unbestreitbare Einheitlichkeit des ganzen
Gedichtes...."-Vincenzo Errante, Paraphrasen iiber Lenau (Munchen, 1924), pp.
157 and 161.
3 Faust, p. 14. (All references to Faust are to Volume II of the standard edition of

Eduard Castle.)
5
6 THE GERMANIC REVIEW

love of truth, and this despair shall yield us a clue to the truth from which
it stems. Faust's truth is hopeless, because it is an abstract absolute. And
if we agree with Santayana that "absolute" is "the most false and the
most odious of words,"4 we shall begin to see through Faust's difficulty.
What is the truth that Faust seeks? It is not the knowledge of nature as
known in science. In the anatomical laboratory Faust repudiates Wagner's
smug satisfaction with the results of physiological study:
Dich mag begliicken, Freund, das tiefe Wissen,
Dafi dieser Tote, als er war gesund,
Das Futter hat gesteckt in seinen Mund,
Und dafi er mit den Zahnen es zerbissen.
Auch ist zu deinem Gliicke nicht erdichtet,
Der Magen war zum Dauen eingerichtet,
Und dafi dazu in dem erwiihnten Falle
Getropfelt aus der Leber kam die Galle,
Und dafi die Siifte durchs Geiider kreisen,
Und was noch schlau der Forscher sonst erfrug;
Doch ist die ganze Weisheit nicht genug,
Auch nur den kleinsten Zweifel satt zu speisen.'
The "wisdom" of science is for Faust merely an elaboration of the obvious;
it is the world described in its own terms.With such an elaboration of the
world Faust cannot be satisfied; he wants an explanation of it, a statement
that transcends it.Unfortunately, however, no such statement is available:
Vom Schofi der Mutter in den Grabesschofi
Jagt mich die ernste, tiefvermummte Zeit,
Die dunkle Sklavin unbekannter Miichte.
Sie spricht kein Wort auf alle meine Fragen .... 8
It seems to Faust that there is in nature a conspiracy of silence ("Ein
heimlich tiickisches Komplott ...des Schweigens"7) to thwart his search
for an answer:
Furchtbarer Zwiespalt ists und todlich bitter,
Wenn innen tobt von Fragen ein Gewitter,
Und aufien antwortlose Totenstille
Und ein verweigernd ewig starrer Wille.8
The nature of Faust's problem begins to take form. This man is an
absolutist. He seeks an ultimate meaning of the world that lies outside and
above it. In metaphysical hunger he demands a guaranteed formula that
will tell him the meaning of life and death:
Sag an, was ist der Tod? was ist das Leben?
Ich find es nicht; mein Geist will Antwort geben,
Doch sie ersauft sogleich in meinem Blut. 9
4 George Santayana, Egotism in German Philosophy (New York, 1940), p. 150.
Ii Fau8t, p. 5. 8 lbid., p. 7. 7 Ibid., p. 23. 8 lbid., p. 11. 9 lbid., p. 10.
 LENAU'S FAUST 7

In effect Faust demands an absolute verbal statement of the form: "The

meaning of life and death is...."
Faust's difficulty springs in part from his seeking his absolute as an iso
lated ego rather than as a member of the traditional absolutisms of the
Western mind: the rich, warm absolutism of religious faith and the more
abstract absolutism of rationalistic philosophy. Faust can identify himself
with neither of these traditions. The section of the poem entitled "Der
nachtliche Zug," in moving passages, evokes the power of religioUB faith
that was once so whole and beautiful and now is gone. AP, Faust, hidden,
watches the religious procession of children,nuns, and aged priests through
the dark forest-
Er starrt hervor aus dunklem Buschesgitter,
Die Frommen um ihr Gluck beneidend bitter.
Als sie voriiber, und der letzte Ton
Des immer fernern, leisern Lieds entflohn,
Und als der fernen Fackeln letzter Schein
Den Wald noch einmal zauberhell verklart
Und nun dahin am Laube zitternd fahrt,
Als Faust im Finstern wieder steht allein:
Da fafit er fest und wild sein treues Roil
Und driickt das Antlitz tief in seine Mahnen
Und weint an seinem Halse heifie Tranen,
Wie er noch nie so bitter sie vergofi. 10
The absolute faith of religion is gone. And the dogmatic absolutism of
rationalistic philosophy is, since the critical work of Kant, difficult to
hold; it is not offered as a possible method of philosophy in this Faust. We
have then in the poem a characteristically modern situation: A man who
is conditioned by the traditions of the Western mind to an absolutistic
expectation cannot accept the substance of absolute religion nor the methods
of absolute rationalism; nor can he accept science as a philosophical sub
stitute,since this is for him merely a system of tautologies about the world.
(To put it in simple terms: To a man tempered like Lenau's Faust, "H20"
is not more significant than "water.")
Faust stands then in a void: without religion, without rationalism, and
without belief in the philosophical significance of science. It is just this
void which is the test of modern character. What in this situation will a
man do? Faust's intention, though not his accomplishment, is in the Fich
tean line.For Fichte proceeded to fill the modern void with the Ego.Lenau's
Faust, with greater tragic necessity than Fichte, likewise throws his Ego
into the breach. Though his method is not that of Fichte, his egotism is
comparable. In effect he stands up to the world and says: "You must tell
me your secret. I demand to know what you are." It is a similar egocentric
insistence that motivates Fichte. Now when a single individual stands up
10
Ibid., p. 60.
8 THE GERMANIC REVIEW

to the world this way, we may speak of courage and of pride, but scarcely
of wisdom. It would seem to be a grown man's business to know that the
world owes him nothing.It is the recognition of this simple fact that marks
the solid men, the Spinozas and the Goethes. It was this very knowledge,
expressed in theological terms, that so attracted Goethe to Spinoza:
Was mich aber besonders an ihn fesselte, war die grenzenlose Uneigennutzigkeit,
die aus jedem Satze hervorleuchtete. Jenes wunderliche Wort "Wer Gott recht
liebt, mufi nicht verlangen, dafi Gott ihn wieder liebe" ... erfullte mein ganzes
Nachdenken. 11
In Lenau's Faust the basic proportion is all wrong: the great world, God's
world, shall bow to a Faustulus. The insistence on an absolutistic formula
tion of the world to satisfy Faust's mind-a formulation that shall reach
beyond our human powers-expresses an unfortunate egotism.
The problem is not really faced in this Faust how a man might possibly
live without an absolute. The lesson that Mephistopheles gives to Faust's
egotism is largely irrelevant. He shows him chiefly the unhappy social
results of following his free passions. To be sure Faust's social score is an
unhappy one: a girl reduced to wretchedness with her illegitimate child;
the bones of an unwanted infant, born to Faust and a sinning nun, bleach
ing at the bottom of a lake; and an outraged lover killed. Yet surely a reli
gious search (Faust's crisis is obviously religious) must concern itself with
something more primary and necessary than these personal social mis
fortunes. We can easily conceive of a society whose different sexual code
could have colored Faust's personal experiences much more brightly. The
exaggerated significance given to Faust's social experiences results from
the confusion of his religious problem with matters of social morality and
convention.
The problem of living without an absolute answer to the world is not
faced. The expectation of such an answer would seem to depend on belief
in a Value that lies outside the world. It is possible to speak of "meaning,"
to apply a label to the world, as long as God is out of Nature. The notion
of "explaining" the world would seem to imply a position outside it, for a
thing cannot explain itself. This is probably why men who feel themselves
inside Nature do not in any absolutistic sense explain. Instead they under
stand from within through the corresponding rhythms of the world in
them and outside. In this sense, for example, Goethe is not a man of ex
planations and correlatively not of absolutes. In his essay "Erfahrung und
Wissenschaft," after describing his method of arriving at "das reine
Phanomen," he remarks: "Hier ware, wenn der Mensch sich zu bescheiden
wul3te, vielleicht <las letzte Ziel unserer Krafte. Denn hier wird nicht
nach Ursachen gefragt, sondern nach Bedingungen, unter welchen die
Phanomene erscheinen...." 12
11 Dichtung und Wahrheit, Jubilaumsausgabe, XXIV, 216.
12 Jubiliiumsausgabe, XXXIX, 28. On the matter of Ursache and Bedingung in Goethe
see Wilhelm Troll, Goethes Morphologische Schriften (Jena, 1926), pp. 78 ff.
 LENAU'S FAUST 9

The chief requirement for living without an absolute would seem to be

a sense for the values in things rather than beyond them. 13 As soon as one
gives up the claim to a superior explanation, to an absolute statement from
outside, one must live by relationship with the world and not by some
superior knowledge of it. The point would seem to be, within this view,
that we cannot know the world, but we can know our place in it.
Again the foil to Lenau is Goethe: "Der Mensch ist nicht geboren, die
Probleme der Welt zu losen, wohl aber zu suchen, wo das Problem angeht,
und sich sodann in der Grenze des Begreiflichen zu halten."14 This is living
within Nature. The claim is renounced to a solution of the world, i.e., to
an absolute apart from it. And this respect for the superiority of the world
to our limited understanding is to a Goethean mind a better basis for a
religious attitude than the demanding absolutism of Lenau's Faust. Goethe
knows the world owes him nothing. Though the world grants him no out
side answers, he is happy to sense from within the wonderful power that
works in the world and to adore that power. And while the exaggerated
absolutistic expectations of the ego, doomed to failure, so often lead to
disgust of the self, the wise respect of a Goethe for reality flows over into
respect for the self, too.
So seh ich in allen
Die ewige Zier,
Und wie mir's gefallen,
Gefall' ich auch mir. 15

The mind that is filled with an ego-centered absolute would have little
room left for wonder and worship; that which limits itself before reality
has all the world in which to marvel and adore. In this spirit Goethe writes
when he discusses, for example, the endless botanical variety achieved by
nature with such simple means:
Der Forscher kann sich immer mehr iiberzeugen, wie wenig und Einfaches, von
dem ewigen Urwesen in Bewegung gesetzt, das Allermannigfaltigste hervorzu
bringen fahig ist.
Der aufmerksame Beobachter kann, sogar durch den ii.ulleren Sinn, das un
moglich Scheinende gewahr werden; ein Resultat, welches, man nenne es vorgeseh
nen Zweck oder notwendige Folge, entschieden gebietet, vor dem geheimnisvollen
Urgrunde aller Dinge uns anbetend niederzuwerfen.'8
13 "It is the essence of life that it exists for its own sake, as the intrinsic reaping of

value."-A.N. Whit ehead, Nature and Life (Chicago, 1934), p. 9.

14 To Eckermann, October 15, 1825.
1 Faust, vss. 11296--99. Cf. also the letter to Boisseree of February 25, 1832, quoted in
Erich Franz, Goethe als religioser Denker (Tiibingen, 1932), p. 255: "lch habe immer
gesucht, das miiglichst Erkennbare, Wi13bare, Anwendbare zu ergreifen, und habe es
zu eigener Zufriedenheit, ja auch zu Billigung anderer darin weit gebracht. Hierdurch
bin ich fiir mich an die Grenze gelangt, dergestalt, dafi ich da anfange zu glauben,
wo andere verzweifeln, und zwar diejenigen, die vom Erkennen zuviel verlangen und,
wenn sie nur ein gewisses, dem Menschen Beschiedenes erreichen kiinnen, die griifiten
Schiitze der Menschheit fiir nichts achten."
18 Quoted in Wilhelm Troll, op. cit., p. 260.
10 THE GERMANIC REVIEW

The religious tone of this passage reminds us that Goethe's naturalism is

not to be confused with mere materialism. Like most great spirits Goethe
has his Platonism, but not a one-sided one in which the idea overwhelms
the thing, but one wonderfully harmonized of matter and form involved
in the real world about us.17 This naturalistic Platonism may be viewed in
the poem "Metamorphose der Tiere":
... Also bestimmt die Gestalt die Lebensweise des Tieres,
Ulld die Weise zu leben, sie wirkt auf alle Gestaltell
Machtig zuriick ....
Dieser schi:ille Begriff voll Macht Ulld Schrallken, voll Willkiir
Ulld Gesetz, von Freiheit und Ma/3, VOil beweglicher Ordnung,
Vorzug und Mangel erfreue dich hoch! Die heilige Muse
Brillgt harmollisch ihll dir, mit sallftem Zwange belehrelld.18
This is balance, harmony, wisdom. The contrast is the fanatic search for
an abstract absolute in Lenau's Faust at the expense of the world of which
we are part:
Mir war <las Meer des Schmerzes hohe Schule,
Hier mag er wiirdig aufzuflammell lernell
Nur llach dem Ewgen, !eider ewig fernell,
Und dafi er llicht llach dem Erschaffllell buhle.
Eill machtig Wort: 'Verachtullg des Erschaffllell!'
Ich habs erfafit, dafi es voll Schuld mich heile....19
There are in Lenau's Faust counteragents to its absolutism. The one,
Spinoza, being advocated by the devil, should stand on the negative side
of the poem's philosophy. The other, Gorg, is respectfully heard and
passed over.
The Spinoza passages in Faust are curious. Spoken by Mephistopheles,
they should, as remarked, be taken as negative to the poem, Mephisto
being, in his own description, the person of the great Minus Sign.20 Yet the
tone of these passages is quite positive.Lenau seems to be expressing here
a naturalism of which he is sensibly conscious but which he neglects be
cause of the absolutistic insistence in him. If it is true that a mature philos
ophy should arrive at an ideal that grows from the world and not one
divorced from it, then the naturalism expounded in Spinoza's name by the
17 Cf. Ernst Cassirer's essay "Goethe und Platon" in Goethe und die geschichtlicM

Welt (Berlin, 1932), and Wilhelm Troll, op. cit., pp. 90 ff.
18 Jubilaumsausgabe, II, 250-51.
19 Faust, p. 97. Another illustration of how an absolute may consume actuality is
contained in the following quotation from Fichte: "Ich soil in mir die Menschheit in
ihrer ganzen Fiille darstellen, so weit als ich es vermag, aber nicht um der Mensch
heit selbst willen; diese ist an sich nicht von dem geringsten Werte, sondern, um
hinwiederum in der Menschheit die Tugend, welche allein Wert an sich hat, in ihrer
hochsten Vollkommenheit darzustellen."-Die Bestimmung des Menschen, ed. Messer
(Berlin, 1922), p. 166.
2 Faust, p. 66.
 LENAU'S FAUST 11

devil would be a beginning of wisdom that a more objective Faust could

follow. In the speech in which Nature charges the ancient Jews with be
trayal, Spinoza is named the great atonement for this sin, but an atonement
too late:

"Die Juden brachen mir den heiligen Bund!"

Zu stihnen jenen alten Fluch, ersteht
Dereinst ein grofler Jude; doch zu spat!
Ein weiser Schreiber nie vergeflner Schriften,
Wird an den Todespfahl er Jesum schlagen
Mit seines Geistes diamantnen Stiften,
Den Namen von der Dornenkrone tragen. [i.e., corona spinosa]
Doch sind erstorben euch urkraftige Triebe,
Verwelkt die wunderbaren Herzensbltiten,
Die starken Lieder, zaubervollen Mythen,
Die gotterzeugende gewaltige Liebe.
Verraten ward Natur, und ihr Vertrauen
Habt ihr verscherzt und eingebtiflt flir immer;
1hr mogt ihr forschend in das Antlitz schauen,
1hr scheues Herz erschlieflt sich euch doch nimmer;
Denn wer nicht sie zum Hochsten sich erkoren,
Wer jenseits Gotter sucht, hat sie verloren.21

The other antagonist to Faust's absolutism, Gorg, is the most under

rated person of the poem:

Dem subjektiven Idealismus wird in Lenau's Faust in der Gestalt des Gorg der
platte Empirismus und atheistische Sensualismus gegentibergestellt. Gorg glaubt
nicht an Gott, weil er nie sein Angesicht schaute und nie seine Stimme horte.
Was er nicht mit den ftinf Sinnen erfaflt und mit seinem gemeinen Menschen
verstand versteht, darf nicht in die Na.he seines Herzens kommen. ...Obwohl
zunachst manches Wort des starken Gorg Faust innerlich beschaftigt, spurt er
doch bald, dafl dieser ihm keinen Funken Trost gebracht hat....12

In a superficially literal sense this statement is true. But it neglects the

relational significance of Gorg's character in the poem. In relation to Faust,
in contrast to him, Gorg's tough naturalism assumes positive value. It is
possible that in Gorg Lenau sought to overthrow the crushing weight of
German idealism and to clear the air of its contrived absolutes and its
forced virtues. There is in Gorg a cleanliness, a simplicity, that puts the
others of the poem to shame. There is Spinozistic toughness in him and a
pre-Nietzschean hunger for philosophical innocence, cleanliness, and man
liness. Gorg takes the world as it is. He has no ideals. But he is not a
nihilist. He has relations to things and to people. He has friends and he
21 Ibid., p. 85.
22 Max Schaerffenberg, Nikolaus Lenaus Dichterwerk als Spiegel der Zeit (Erla.ngen,
1935), p. 70.
12 THE GERMANIC REVIEW

knows loyalty. An eye for necessity, a trust in trustworthy men-not a

bad beginning for a philosopher:
Ich glaube-Kameradenwort,
Bei gutem Wind wohl an den Port,
Ich glaube, dafi ein Schiff versinkt,
Wenn es zuviel Gewafier trinkt....23

Gorg is a simplified character. We see him as the representation of a

strong, manly simplicity, an utter anti-romanticism that Lenau was con
scious of, though helplessly. But Gorg is not wise, not an ideal man for
Lenau nor for others. For Gorg has simplicity at the price of limitedness.
A full man, a wise man, must stand the test of a much fuller consciousness.
His range must include despair, weakness, doubt, bitterness as well as
poise, strength, and manliness. If Lenau in his Faust could have arrived
at some balance, he would have been rarely wise, for he and his poem
include a certain testing quality that Goethe's Faust, for example, lacks:
hopelessness. We do not have the feeling that Goethe, for all his depth,
knew the bottom that Lenau reached. How friendly is the agent of evil in
Goethe's Faust. We think of the tone of badinage ("Von Zeit zu Zeit seh'
ich den Alten gern") and we think of Valery's remark in his Faust: "Le
Mal etait si beau, jadis."24
We should be grateful for the friendly spirits that hovered over Goethe
and his Faust. But we recognize in Lenau's poem an added dimension of
human fate-the hopelessness of a spirit surely doomed in the world.
Goethe is greater than Lenau (apart from other reasons) in the sense that it
is greater to know the way than to be lost. But every aspect of human pos
sibility concerns us, and those who have lost their way are not the least
of our teachers. Wisdom itself should respect those lost in the depth of the
world. For wisdom is not absolute; it knows its own weakness; it may even
know its folly and the secret truth of despair.
In our picture of life we think of the frail and lovely craft of wisdom
moving over the threatening sea. Lenau is not of this craft, but he is the
passion that is in the wind and the dark water:
Mir war das Meer des Schmerzes hohe Schule....

The Newark Colleges, Rutgers University

23 Faust, p. 111.
24Cf. Karl Jaspers, Unsere Zukunft und Goethe (Ziirich, 1948), p. 34: "Unsere freie
Freude am Grofien, unser Mitgenommenwerden von der Liebeskraft Goethes, unser
Atmen in seiner Lebensluft darf uns nicht hindern, gerade das zu tun, was er selbst
verbarg, den Blick auf die Abgriinde zu werfen."