produced, for whom his clear eye marked out paths in the future.
In Faust, we see the redeeming power, which, at present, upholds woman, while waiting for a better day, in Margaret. The lovely little girl, pure in instinct, ignorant in mind, is misled and profaned by man abusing her confidence.[1] To the Mater Dolorosa she appeals for aid. It is given to the soul, if not against outward sorrow; and the maiden, enlightened by her sufferings, refusing to receive temporal salvation by the aid of an evil power, obtains the eternal in its stead.
In the second part, the intellectual man, after all his manifold strivings, owes to the interposition of her whom he had betrayed his salvation. She intercedes, this time herself a glorified spirit, with the Mater Gloriosa.
Leonora, too, is woman, as we see her now, pure, thoughtful, refined by much acquaintance with grief.
Iphigenia he speaks of in his journals as his “daughter,” and she is the daughter[2] whom a man will wish, even if he has chosen his wife from very
- ↑ As Faust says, her only fault was a “Kindly delusion”—“ein guter wahn.”
- ↑ Goethe was as false to his ideas in practice, as Lord Herbert. And his punishment was the just and usual one of connections formed beneath the standard of right, from the impulses of the baser self. Iphigenia was the worthy daughter of his mind, but the son, child of his degrading connection in actual life, corresponded with that connection. This son, on whom Goethe vainly lavished so much thought and care, was like his mother, and like Goethe's attachment for his mother, “This young man,” says a late well informed writer, (M. Henri Blaze.) “Wieland, with good reason, called the son of the servant, der Sohn der Magd. He inherited from his father only his name and his physique.”
