Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Goethe's Faust, Vol. 1: A Commentary
In such universal sense the periphery Of the Faust legend broadens out into the twilight Of History, reaching far back into Asia and taking in the very origin of the long human discipline. Goethe has not omitted this far-reaching sug gestion; in the Prologue in Heaven we shall see him calling up the grand dualism in its two persons, the Lord and Mephisto, who exist, as it were, before the human beginning, and talk together about the terrestrial being, Man, and his destiny.
Indeed, the very form and conception of this dialogue carries us back to the book of Job, one Of the Oldest Of Asiatic books. Thus at the start of the poem, and underlying it, we find the spiritual or Hebraic strand; in the same Prologue we shall have a hint of the natural or Aryan strand, in that cosmical song of the Archangels, singing Of Sun and Earth, of Light and Darkness, of the con?icts of the elements, as their image of the grand struggle, which struggle, however, has not yet deepened in them to the spiritual denial of Mephisto. Perhaps this thought did not lie in the conscious intention of the Poet; but he is a seer, beholding realities and if we would compre pend him, we must follow up his vision with our thought and knowledge.
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