I finally got round to reading Goethe's Faust. I bought the books at the start of the year after spending an excessively long time trying to figure out
which translation was best.
OK so I found out what the deal was with Faust Part I and Part II. Part I contains the typical Faust stuff: dark magic, deal with the devil, seduction and ruin of Gretchen, etc. and is probably what gives Faust its widespread literary appeal.
Part II was published after a 24-year interval. It's not a sequel - apparently Goethe had the bones for Parts I and II in his mind, but he was delayed by (among other things) his work for the Weimar government, so completed it close to the end of his life. But it's very different stuff from Part I. It's epic in scope, full of references to the classical world, and it doesn't have the narrative drive of the first part. I suppose that's why Walter Kaufmann's translation is only for Part I.
Anyway, Faust Part I is absolutely worth reading. It doesn't take long to read either. I was a little scared of the verse/drama format, but it's easier to follow than Shakespeare. Goethe uses a different tone for each scene and character, so it never gets boring, and his poetry is full of everyday things like shoes and pie crusts.
After all the gleeful fun with Mephistopheles we come to tragedy. With Mephistopheles' help, Faust seduces the young Margareta (Gretchen). It's a consensual relationship; she genuinely loves Faust so in a way she brought about her own doom. Her brother tries to stop Faust from getting to her, and he dies calling Gretchen a whore. Gretchen is closely watched by her mother; Faust gives Gretchen a potion to put her mother to sleep while they do the deed.
Faust has her way with Gretchen and goes away for a long time. Later he finds out that Gretchen is in prison. Her mother never woke up from the sleeping draught (whether by Mephistopheles' design or Faust's oversight or just an accident, we never find out) and Gretchen has had a child, who drowned (again, whether deliberate or accident is ambiguous). Gretchen's plaintive verses are some of the most chilling I've ever read:
As you can see, Gretchen never blames Faust for anything - despite her losses she still loves him. Faust tries to break her out of prison, but she declined, preferring to pay for her sins. Thus she is uncorrupted to the end.
After Part I, what do I say about Part II? At times it felt like Ulysses - I felt I needed a companion book to understand who was who. In Part II Faust and Mephistopheles enter politics, where they invent printed money to stimulate the economy of an indebted country. Then Faust resurrects Helen and Paris of Troy, falls in love with Helen. Helen is manoeuvred into Faust's arms and she (predictably) falls in love with him. They have a child, who dies. Later Helen dies too. Faust decides his project is to mastering water, and he lives to old age as a sage leader of a people, building endless dykes and stuff.
Then he dies. The Faustian bargain was: Mephistopheles does everything in his power to satisfy Faust's wants, and if Faust experiences one moment of transcendence (i.e. a moment so fulfilling it puts a stop to his incessant wanting), he'll drop dead and his soul goes to the devil. But (deus ex machina time!) God invoked a clawback clause. If Faust dies while in the service of something morally good then his soul goes to heaven.
So that's what happens in the end. Mephistopheles swoops in, ready to claim Faust's soul, but God's nubile angels distract Mephistopheles with lustful thoughts, and tada, Faust goes to be with God.
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Samuel Johnson and James Boswell went to tour the Scottish highlands and Hebrides islands in 1773 and each wrote a book about it - Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (abbreviated Journey) and Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (or, Journal).
Touring the highlands isn't exactly a breeze, even today, with roads and cars. But back then it was much harder. Johnson and Boswell travelled mostly by horse, on steep terrain, and the going was tedious. Island-hopping in the Hebrides was worse. Johnson had imagined bouncing from island to island, at will, but the reality was a whole lot of waiting (sometimes for days) for the storms to stop. You had to be ready at all times, for there were only brief windows of good weather. Then, on the boat, enjoying the rough seas and getting varying degrees of wet. Often, on the islands, they slept in "rude" accommodations such as barns.
For Johnson (who was 63 on this journey) it was a spectacle of unexpected savagery and misery. He is not impressed by the scenery, describing the Hebrides as mainly stone and water, sometimes with a thin layer of earth atop the stone. He spends the first quarter of Journey complaining about the lack of trees. Then he moves on to the rudimentariness of life here (men without shoes, inns without floors). Finally, he winds up talking about how credulous the simple, unlearned Scots are. But his old-man grumpiness is not without its charm. Johnson is frequently tickled by the thought of himself gallivanting around rural Scotland at age 63, and wonders where he will be when he's 80.
He is also not unkind about the locals' lack of sophistication, saying that it is natural given the lack of natural resources. "Life unimproved, and unadorned, fades into something little more than naked existence, and every one is busy for himself, without any arts by which the pleasure of others may be increased" - hey, that applies to any place where mere survival is time-consuming and expensive.
And finally, Dr Johnson at least demonstrates some humility about his limited perspective:
Having passed my time almost wholly in cities, I may have been surprised by modes of life and appearances of nature, that are familiar to men of wider survey and more varied conversation. Novelty and ignorance must always be reciprocal, and I cannot but be conscious that my thoughts on national manners, are the thoughts of one who has seen but little.
Here is more Samuel Johnson on travel.
Meanwhile, James Boswell's Journal is a record of the same journey, only he devotes much of his word count to recording what Dr Johnson said and did. At first the fanboying felt over the top. There's a lot of "I watched Dr Johnson do X with immense delight" and "what joy to behold the great English moralist talking to person Y". But I began to see the value of such fandom. Boswell was 32, half Johnson's age. He was quite literally a Dr Johnson otaku who got the chance to travel with his idol. Can you blame the kid?
Anyway, if it wasn't for Boswell faithfully recording his speech verbatim, we wouldn't have known much about Dr Johnson's personality. The man who said these things is nowhere to be found in the Journey.
In response to someone saying he doesn't believe in "second sight" because it's not based on any principles:
There are many things then, which we are sure are true, that you will not believe. What principle is there, why a loadstone attracts iron? Why an egg produces a chicken by heat? Why a tree grows upwards, when the natural tendency of all things is downwards?
On the habit of writing quickly:
If a man is accustomed to compose slowly, and with difficulty, upon all occasions, there is danger that he may not compose at all, as we do not like to do that which is not done easily; and, at any rate, more time is consumed in a small matter than ought to be.
In a discussion on writers who do not practice what they preach:
People are influenced more by what a man says, if his practice is suitable to it, because they are blockheads. [...] I have, all my life long, been lying till noon; yet I tell all young men, and tell them with great sincerity, that nobody who does not rise early will ever do any good. Only consider! You read a book; you are convinced by it; you do not know the authour. Suppose you afterwards know him, and find that he does not practice what he reachers; are you to give up your former conviction?
Comparing the cleanliness of different fabrics:
All animal substances are less cleanly than vegetables. [...] If I kept a seraglio, the ladies should all wear linen gowns, or cotton - I mean stuffs made of vegetable substances. I would have no silk; you cannot tell when it is clean: it will be very nasty before it is perceived to be so. Linen detects its own dirtiness.
(Meanwhile, in Dr Johnson's harem...) here he is talking about men vs women:
Men know that women are an over-match for them, and therefore they choose the weakest or most ignorant, If they did not think so, they never could be afraid of women knowing as much as themselves.
In response to Boswell's question on why we get angry when we observe the opulence of tradesmen:
Why, sir, the reason is, we see no qualities in trade that should entitle a man to superiority. If a man returns from a battle, having lost one hand, and with the other full of fold, we feel that he deserves the gold; but we cannot think that a fellow, by sitting all day at a desk, is entitled to get above us.
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