The Dyers Hand and Other Essays

because he does not believe that Das Driihen, the exhaustion of all possibilities, can ever be reached—as, indeed, in the play it never is. Faust escapes Mephisto's clutches because he is careful to define the contentment of his last moment in terms of anticipation:

Im Vorgefiihl von solchem hohen Gliick Geniess' ich jezt den hochsten Augenblick.

But, though Faust is not damned, it would be nonsense to say that he is saved. The angels bearing him to Heaven describe him as being in the pupa stage, and to such a condition Judg­ment has no meaning.

Mephisto describes himself as:

ein Teil des Teils, der Anfangs alles war, Ein Teil der Finsternis, die sich das Licht gebar

as, that is to say, a manifestation of the rejection of all finite- ness, the desire for existence without the limitation of essence. To the spirit that rejects any actuality, the idea must be the Abgrund, the abyss of infinite potentiality, and will creation must be hateful to it. So Valery's serpent cries out against God:

II se fit Celui qui dissipe En consequences son Principe, En entoiles son Unite.

Mephisto describes himself as:

ein Teil von jener Kraft, Die stets das Bose will und stets das Gute schaft,

but it is hard to see what good or evil he does to Faust. Through his agency or his suggestion, Faust may do a good deal of harm to others, but Faust himself is completely un­affected by his acts. He passively allows Mephisto to entertain him and is no more changed in character by these entertain­ments than we are by watching the play.

Faust may talk a great deal about the moral dangers of con­tent and sloth, but the truth is that his discontent is not a dis­content with himself but a terror of being bored. What Faust is totally lacking in is a sacramental sense,¹ a sense that the

¹IЈ Faust holds any theological position, it is pantheist. The pantheist believes that the universe is numinous as-a.-wh.ole. But a sacramental sign is always some particular aspect oЈ the finite, this thing, this act, not the finite can be a sign for the infinite, that the secular can be sanctified; one cannot imagine him saying with George Her­bert:

A servant with this clause Makes drudgery divine; Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws Makes that and the action fine.

In this lack Faust is a typical modern figure. In earlier ages men have been tempted to think that the finite was not a sign for the holy but the holy itself, and fell therefore into idolatry and magic. The form which the Devil assumed in such periods, therefore, was always finite; he appeared as the manifestation of some specific temptation, as a beautiful woman, a bag of gold, etc. In our age there are no idols in the strict sense because we tire of one so quickly and take up another that the word cannot apply. Our real, because permanent, idolatry is an idolatry of possibility. And in such an age the Devil appears in the form of Mephisto, in the form, that is, of an actor. The point about an actor is that he has no name of his own, for his name is Legion. One might say that our age recognized its nature on the day when Henry Irving was knighted.

VI

Voglio far il gentiluomo E non voglio -piu servir.

—da ponte, Don Giovanni

Dein Werkl O thorige Magd

—wagner, Tristan and Isolde

The man who refuses to be the servant of any telos can only be direcdy represented, like the Miller of Dee, lyrically. He

finite-in-general, and it is valid for this person, this social group, this his­torical epoch, not for humaiiity-in-general. Pansacramentalism is self- contradictory.

can sing his rapture of freedom and indifference, but after that there is nothing for him to do but be quiet. In a drama he can only be represented indirectly as a man with a telos, indeed a monomania, but of such a kind that it is clear that it is an arbitrary choice; nothing in his nature and circum­stances imposes it on him or biases him toward it. Such is Don Giovanni. The telos he chooses is to seduce, to "know" every woman in the world. Leporello says of him: