Of the many visitors who in the latter part of his life came from Germany and abroad to call on him, some would try to get him to satisfy their curiosity by divulging any plans he might have for the sequel which the designation ‘Part One’ seemed to hold in prospect. In particular, having evidently not read or not understood the Prologue in Heaven, they would ask about the hero’s ultimate fate: ‘Tell us, your Excellency, will the Devil carry off Faust?’ On one occasion Goethe is reported to have replied impatiently: ‘No, on the contrary, Faust will carry off the Devil.’ His readers were perhaps understandably confused by the presence in the title of the word ‘tragedy’. This description was appropriate enough for what was predominantly the story of Gretchen, but it is a little difficult to account for its use, otherwise than as an ironic formality, in the title of what eventually appeared as Faust. The Second Part of the Tragedy in 1832. This extraordinary continuation in five long Acts, which it is here perhaps appropriate to summarize briefly, opens with Faust waking from a sleep of forgetfulness in the bosom of Nature, which has erased all memory of Gretchen from his mind. Much of the material that now follows is not so much drama as elaborate dramatic allegory which appears to be only loosely connected with the Faust theme. In largely comic scenes at the Imperial court, the spendthrift Emperor is first provided with ‘magical’ wealth by the printing of paper money, and then shown magical phantasms of Helen of Troy and her lover Paris. Faust is stricken with a passion for Helen, and Mephistopheles (on whom the new perspective of classical antiquity which predominates in Part Two now casts an ironic light) objects that he cannot assist in this matter since Helen is, so to speak, not his period. Faust is referred to subterranean mother-goddesses and an alchemical homunculus from whom we learn that he must seek Helen in ancient Greece. After he has encountered various other bizarre mentors in the course of an elaborate allegorical pageant (the Classical Walpurgis Night of Act III) Helen appears in ancient Sparta before the palace of her husband Menelaos, talking in the style of Euripidean drama to a chorus of women and to Mephistopheles, who is now disguised as a hideous old female servant and who persuades Helen to seek Faust’s protection. In the central third Act Faust appears as a medieval crusading knight; his union with Helen seems intended as an allegory of the cultural union between ancient and modern, Greek and German, in the synthesis of Weimar Classicism. Their son Euphorion, expressly identified by Goethe as an allegory of Byron, falls to his death in an attempt to fly; the idyll ends with Helen’s disappearance as she returns to the underworld, and with an impressive celebration of the eternally productive forces of Nature which outlast all cultures. In Act IV Faust floats back to Germany on a cloud and on the way observes the sea, the wasteful energies of which he desires to conquer and control. Mephistopheles wins a battle for the Emperor by magical devices (an old chapbook motif) and in reward Faust is granted all the coastal lands that lie below the waterline. A grandiose reclamation programme begins, and is the theme of the final Act. In the last years of his life Goethe is reported to have expressed interest in future large-scale projects of this kind such as the building of canals through Panama and Suez. Faust’s enterprise is of course charged with symbolic significance. On the one hand, having re-created (even if only temporarily) the perfect shape of Helen, he now seems to seek another medium in which to bring form out of chaos. More generally it is the confrontation between Man and Nature, the continuing struggle of civilization against the elemental forces which both the sea and Mephistopheles represent. Faust, now a hundred years old and with his activity still unflagging, dies in a vision of his project’s accomplishment; and at this point Goethe feels it to be artistically necessary to revert (for the first time since line 1706 of Part One) to the unresolved and virtually forgotten motif of the Pact and Wager. By a jeu de mots (Faust enjoys his moment of supreme bliss in anticipation of a future achievement, and pronounces the ‘fatal’ words in this sense) Mephistopheles is put literally in the right, though essentially in the wrong. Faust falls dead, and with elaborate comedy Mephistopheles sets about the business of claiming his supposed victim’s ‘soul’ (the medieval conceptions of which Goethe here takes occasion to satirize) and summons up diabolic underlings to assist him. But part of the celestial host now suddenly appears, scattering roses of love which burn the devils and put them to flight. Mephistopheles’ own attention is distracted by a grotesque fit of homosexual lust inspired by the young angels: his skin erupts in boils and he recovers himself only to find that Faust’s ‘immortal part’ (as the stage-direction puts it) has been carried off out of his reach. Cursing his discomfiture, he grudgingly acknowledges the power of Eros over even so hardbitten a cynic as himself. A concluding scene, set in a mysterious region between earth and heaven, shows the mute and inert Faust being carried upwards to where he can undergo further transformation and development. In this final passage, which has a mystical and syncretic character, Goethe uses largely Catholic symbolism and legend. Holy hermits and Church fathers pray and meditate, saints and choruses of penitent women mingle their voices with those of the angels, and as a climax the Mother of God appears in glory. Again all mention of Christ, and almost all suggestion of a personal judgement on the hero, is carefully avoided. Much of the material is reminiscent of Dante—though only of the Paradiso.