Free B00ARI2G5C EBOK by J. W. von Goethe, David Luke

Eurydice. In both these sources the motif of prohibition is central: the beloved must return to Hades and be lost for ever if a certain stipulation is infringed. In Mommsen’s interpretation, this already happened when Faust persuaded Helen to leave his castle and come with him to ‘Sparta’s near neighbourhood, Arcadia’ (9569): his Faustian arrogance and discontent have breached the condition, and Helen is doomed to vanish. This is not entirely persuasive, as Persephone’s stipulation that she must not leave Sparta has not been made explicit in the final text, only in the unpublished paralipomena; moreover, Helen has in any case already left Sparta when she joins Faust in his northern castle, despite which the two of them are allowed an Arcadian idyll of uncertain duration (9574). Goethe may have intended, in the final version, merely to hint at the underlying prohibition and to impose only an approximate obedience to it, for which Sparta’s ‘neighbourhood’ would suffice; or even to apply it not to Sparta but to Arcadia itself. The leafy groves and underground caverns in which Faust and Helen find themselves give the impression of being a kind of secluded and protected royal demesne, a designated island of refuge which they will leave at their peril. * The further law binding Euphorion himself is more easily interpreted: from the old
Märchen
motif of the 1816 sketch which forbids him to pass over a magic circle, an interesting and significant symbolic idea has developed. His father explains to him why he must not attempt to fly, and it is no accident that the myth of Antaeus, invoked by Faust himself as he touched the Greek earth (7077), here reappears:
                                          In the earth lies the resilient Power that drives you upwards; touch the soil, on tiptoe merely touch it, And like the earth’s son Antaeus you will grow at once in strength.
    (9609–11)
    Poetry (or romantic poetry, or classical-romantic poetry, or poetry inspired by the Greek classical tradition) must not lose contact withthe maternal earth, with that life-giving nature which is the eternal bedrock of true culture. The great synthesis in which ‘separate worlds unite’ is possible only ‘where the laws of purest Nature rule’ (9560 f.). Ironically, it is Euphorion’s vision of the defence of these values that destroys him. The ‘unwinged genius’ (9603) forgets that he is unwinged, and perishes like Icarus; it is left to the Chorus to speak the only consolation, which again is from nature:
    For this soil has bred for ever
Greatness it will breed again.
    (9937–8)
    Helen disappears, the music stops, and the maidens of the Chorus revert to ancient metres. Their leader Panthalis, the only one dignified by a name, follows Helen and Euphorion to Hades after commenting caustically (9962-5) on the spell of ‘drunken tangled notes’ that has been worked on them by ‘that old Thessalian hag’. The rest, as Goethe puts it (conversation with Eckermann, 25 January 1827) ‘cast themselves on the elements’, dividing into four groups as they transform themselves into nymphs associated with different aspects of elemental nature. Their final celebratory lines (9992–10038) are trochaic tetrameters, as in the concluding chorus of a Greek drama; these must rank, with Faust’s greeting to the sunrise in the Prologue and his evocation of Arcadia in Scene 12, among Goethe’s greatest lyric achievements. The first group of maidens represent the forests as dryads; the second, the echoing mountain cliffs as oreads; the third are naiads haunting the streams and rivers; and the fourth, maenads or bacchantes, the followers of the winegod. This last and longest section (10011-38) celebrates the ripening of the grapes in the sun-god’s fire and the treading of the new wine; it develops magnificently into the evocation of a Dionysian
orgia
, as the god reveals himself to his worshippers. Act III,