Mark Scrivener Poetry Blog No 59 Faust Night Monologue

FAUST NIGHT FIRST SCENE - MONOLOGUE

translated and rendered into English verse by Mark Scrivener
 

The play opens with Faust in his study. He despairs about external knowledge and scholastic endeavours and their inability to illumine the inner nature of reality. In this he is more an archetypal figure for the revolution of ideas and aspirations in the literary period of the "romantics" than a medieval type. He decides to turn to mystical and magical lore in his desire for deeper knowledge and experience. The book he opens would not be by Nostrodamus but more likely by someone like Agrippa who himself is sometimes considered part of the model for the Faust legend.

Faust feels dissatisfied with all forms of knowledge and so accepts to deal with the devil. Drawing by Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863)

NIGHT
A HIGH-VAULTED, NARROW GOTHIC CHAMBER. A RESTLESS FAUST IS SEATED IN HIS ARMCHAIR AT HIS DESK.

FAUST

Ah, how I've studied philosophy
And law and medicine as well,
And saddest yet theology,
Full-through with hot, hard-sweated zeal.
Now here I stand, a poor fool, I'm sure,
No smarter than I was before!
Called master, even doctor; oh, how
For ten long years already now,
Up, down, across and all around it goes-
This pulling my pupils by the nose;
To see we can know nothing true!
That really burns my heart right through.
Sure, I am brighter than those nitwit screechers:
The doctors and masters, clerks and preachers.
I'm plagued by neither doubt nor scruple,
Nor do I tremble at hell or devil-
So too all joy is torn from me. Just so.
I don't pretend I know what's right to know;
I don't pretend that I could teach what could
Make mankind better, turn it to good.
As well I've neither goods nor gold,
Nor honour and the splendour of the world.
No dog would endure this life any more!
So I've given myself to magic's lore,
To see, through spirit strength and speech,
If many secrets come in reach.
With bitter sweat then I'll not go.
Impelled to say what I don't know.
Then I'll know what, at this world's heart,
Is binding in its inmost part
And see the seminal, the creative core,
And rummage around in words no more.

Oh, that you looked, full-shining moon,
For the last time on my pain and gloom.
For I, so many midnights here,
Have held watch at this desk and chair.
Then over a book and paper sea,
Forlorn, old friend, you shone on me,
Could I but go, in your loved light,
To wander on a mountain height,
To glide with spirits round mountain caves,
Drift over fields in your twilight hue,
Be freed from fumes of knowledge, bathe
Myself to health here in your dew!

Oh no! Am I still stuck within this prison?
This dark wall-hole where even the vision
Of heaven's light is dimmed and stained
In breaking through the painted panes!
Boxed in by book piles here, all spread
With dust, where gnawing worms have been.
Books reach the vaults up overhead,
With smoke-stained papers stuck between;
Case, glass and box surround me too,
With instruments, forced-in, unfurled-
Ancestral junk that blocks the view.
This is my world! Call this a world!

Do you still ask why should your heart
Be bound by fear within your breast?
Why unexplained, a pain so sharp
Blocks every impulse of life's zest?
Instead of living Nature's space
Where God made man to have a home,
Here only mould and fumes embrace
Beast skeletons and dead men's bones.

Up! Flee forth to the far, wide land!
This book of mystery, by my side,
In Nostrodamus' own hand,
Will it not be sufficient guide?
You'll grasp the paths of stars and when
You're taught by Nature too, the force
Of your own soul wells from its source;
How spirit speaks to spirit then.
In vain does dry perception try
To make the sacred symbols clear:
You silent spirits, hovering by;
Now answer me, if you can hear.