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

three scenes (Sc. 17-19, the Philemon and Baucis episode) are still missing at the beginning of April 1831, and their addition during that month is documented; Goethe remarked of them, however, that ‘[their] intention too is more than thirty years old’ (conversation with Eckermann, 2 May 1831). Revisions to the final scenes 20-3, were apparently also made in the first few months of 1831. As for Act IV (Sc. 14-16), it is clear that it was begun or resumed in early February 1831 and then again in early May, and that it was finished on 22 July. Eckermann was often told of Goethe’s determination to complete this Act and with it the whole work; in February for instance Goethe informed him (conversation of 17 February 1831):
    I have had the whole manuscript of the Second Part bound, in order to have it visibly there before me as a physical object. I have filled the place where the missing fourth Act should be with blank sheets, and there is no doubt that completed material acts as an enticement and stimulus to finish what has still to be done.
    He had made a resolution to complete the whole of Part Two by his eighty-second birthday on 28 August (letter to Zelter, 4 August 1831); in the event he did it with a month to spare, and could then say to Eckermann (late July 1831, anticipated by Eckermann in his record of a conversation of 6 June):
    From now on, I can look upon the remainder of my life as a gift pure and simple, and ultimately it no longer matters at all whether I still do anything or what it may be.
    Goethe then sealed up the manuscript, only to open it yet again in January 1832, two or three months before his death, and enter a few minor afterthoughts. Apart from these, the last work that he did on
Faust
was the completion of Act IV and the insertion of the Philemon and Baucis scenes of Act V, which are closely related to the events of Act IV. The difficulty of discussing these two last Acts separately is increased by the fact that Act IV is related to Act V in much the same way as Act II is to Act III: in both cases the structurally preceding but later written Act is designed to explain or set the agenda for the structurally following Act which has been written already (and in the case of Act III published already). In each case the historically later Act is both a postscript and an ‘antecedent’. In order to understand Act IV, we must therefore first consider, so far as it is known, the development of Goethe’s plan for Act V, and in particular the changes it seems to have undergone, under the influence of certain external events, between February 1825 and May 1831.
    Among Goethe’s various statements claiming or implying that the ‘ending’ of
Faust
has already been written, two are of particular importance; and although their exact meaning is in dispute, their authenticity as evidence has never been challenged. One is his conversation on 3 August 1815 with Sulpiz Boisserée (reported in the latter’s diary), in which he says of the ending: ‘I shall not tell you about it, I must not tell you about it, but it too is already finished, and it turned out very good and grandiose, something from my best period.’ The other is the closing sentence of the narrative sketch BA 70, which, as we know, was written down in December 1816. This early outline of Part Two takes us up to the death of Euphorion, Faust’s ensuing war with ‘the monks’, and his acquisition of ‘great possessions’; Goethe then remarks in conclusion that the events of Faust’s later life will be revealed in due course, ‘when at a future date we assemble
the fragments, or rather the separately composed passages
, of this Second Part’. This is usually taken to imply that various sketches of the concluding part of the play (presumably Act V) were in existence not later than December 1816 and probably long before (there is no
terminus a quo
). Boisserée’s report is clearer aboutthe dating, since it is agreed that ‘my best