There is a passage on page 84, the speech of Faust, ending with the
lines:--
Show me the fruit that, ere it's plucked, will rot,
And trees from which new green is daily peeping,
which seems to have puzzled or misled so much, not only English
translators, but even German critics, that the present translator has
concluded, for once, to depart from his usual course, and play the
commentator, by giving his idea of Goethe's meaning, which is this: Faust
admits that the devil has all the different kinds of Sodom-apples which he
has just enumerated, gold that melts away in the hand, glory that vanishes
like a meteor, and pleasure that
perishes
in the possession.
Faust, a Tragedy by Goethe
]
[Footnote 38: This name, derived from two Greek words meaning _rump_ and
_fancy_, was meant for Nicolai of Berlin, a great hater of Goethe's
writings, and is explained by the fact that the man had for a long time a
violent affection of the nerves, and by the application he made of leeches
as a remedy, (alluded to by Mephistopheles.)]
[Footnote 39: Tegel (mistranslated _pond_ by Shelley) is a small place a
few miles from Berlin, whose inhabitants were, in 1799, hoaxed by a ghost
story, of which the scene was laid in the former place.]
[Footnote 40: The park in Vienna.]
[Footnote 41: He was scene-painter to the Weimar theatre.]
[Footnote 42: A poem of Schiller's, which gave great offence to the
religious people of his day.]
[Footnote 43: A literal translation of _Maulen_, but a slang-term in
Yankee land.]
[Footnote 44: Epigrams, published from time to time by Goethe and Schiller
jointly. Hennings (whose name heads the next quatrain) was editor of the
_Musaget_, (a title of Apollo, "leader of the muses,") and also of the
_Genius of the Age_. The other satirical allusions to classes of
notabilities will, without difficulty, be guessed out by the readers.]
[Footnote 45: "_Doubt_ is the only rhyme for devil," in German.]
[Footnote 46: The French translator, Stapfer, assigns as the probable
reason why this scene alone, of the whole drama, should have been left in
prose, "that it might not be said that Faust wanted any one of the
possible forms of style."]
[Footnote 47: Literally the _raven-stone_.]
[Footnote 48: The _blood-seat_, in allusion to the old German custom of
tying a woman, who was to be beheaded, into a wooden chair.]
* * * * *
P. S.
There is a passage on page 84, the speech of Faust, ending with the
lines:--
Show me the fruit that, ere it's plucked, will rot,
And trees from which new green is daily peeping,
which seems to have puzzled or misled so much, not only English
translators, but even German critics, that the present translator has
concluded, for once, to depart from his usual course, and play the
commentator, by giving his idea of Goethe's meaning, which is this: Faust
admits that the devil has all the different kinds of Sodom-apples which he
has just enumerated, gold that melts away in the hand, glory that vanishes
like a meteor, and pleasure that
perishes
in the possession.
But all these
torments are too insipid for Faust's morbid and mad hankering after the
luxury of spiritual pain. Show me, he says, the fruit that rots _before_
one can pluck it, and [a still stronger expression of his diseased craving
for agony] trees that fade so quickly as to be every day just putting
forth new green, only to tantalize one with perpetual promise and
perpetual disappointment.
