H B Cotterill

The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' H B Cotterill

But I will not inflict upon you any further description of my tusslings with Teutonic interpreters of Faust-with their egos and non-egos, their moral-æsthetic symbolisms and so on. Let us leave them to the tender mercies of Goethe himself, who was not sparing of his ridicule in regard to his commentators, nor, alas, at times in regard to his countrymen. 'Of all nations, ' he says, 'the Germans understand me least.... Such people make life a burden by their abstruse thoughts and their Ideas, which they hunt up in all directions and insist on discovering in everything.... They come and ask me what "Ideas" I have incorporated in my Faust. Just as if I myself knew!-or could describe it, even if I did know!' Of course Goethe's great poem contains an Idea, if by that word we mean in a poem what we mean by life in anything living; but it is not by dissection and analysis that we shall discover it. 'He who wishes, ' says Goethe in Faust, 'to examine and describe anything living first does his best to expel the life. Then he has got the dead parts in his hand; but what is wanting is just the spiritual bond.' It is my purpose-a purpose not easy of fulfilment-to avoid this method of dissection and to place before you living realities, not anatomical specimens.