Transformation by Mockery: Lenau's "The Forge" (Die Schmiede) from "Faust"

continued from Nikolaus Lenau "The Dance"


from The Forge (Die Schmiede)

M e p h i s t o 

Do you recall your Hannchen from that inn?
Oh, let's repeat your loving spin:

(mockingly aping Faust)

"She there whose eyes shine black and gay
Is tearing all my soul away.
Seductive eye beams forcefully Infinitudes of ecstasy."

Now it is hollow, vain decoy,
A well of tears pumped dry of joy.

"‘tis sweetest limitless desire
To kiss these lusting lips with passions,
These swelling ones, and to retire
On those two sensual tender cushions."

Those wilting lips for bread just languish,
For lodgings do they beg in anguish.

You saw "the breasts anxiously burning
In blissful torrents of their yearning!"

And now you see them downwards turning;
The wretched one raised with this bust
Your child, conceived in crazy lust,
Together with her misery,
Now is she bowed by drudgery.

Do you "in ecstasy embrace
This body now of hungry grace?"

(more and more mockingly)

"Ah! how impatiently they fight,
these curls of hair, so long, so black,
And fly in curves around the neck
As rapid storm-bells of delight!"

Now hangs it sluggishly that unkempt hair,
As if it rather did prefer the bier.
 Just grab it! grab it! always full of vigor!

 (Again reverberates his scornful snigger.)

translated by Rolf-Peter Wille

_____

Transformation by Mockery

Franz Liszt intended a performance of his “Dance” (“Mephisto Waltz”) to be preceded by another episode from “Faust”: “Der nächtliche Zug” (“The Night Procession”). This is a rather odd decision because in Lenau this episode appears quite a bit later: Having danced with his Hannchen at the village inn and—as we learned—not just danced, Faust continues his adventurous journey and forgets all about the girl. In a later episode, “The Forge” (“Die Schmiede”), Faust reaches a village in the evening. There he leads his horse into a forge and asks the blacksmith to re-shoe it. The good-natured blacksmith invites him for dinner and Dr. Faust, showing off his magic and his eloquence, is planning to seduce the blacksmith's wife. He is encouraged by Mephistopheles who, pretending to be his servant, waits outside. Suddenly a pale beggar woman enters with an emaciated child asking for a little bread. She happens to be Hannchen [and the educated reader might guess who the father of her child is]. Faust would not have recognized her at all, had his loyal “servant” not alerted him. Mephisto laughs so noisily that the house is moving.

Now follow my translated verses above: Mephisto mocks Faust by reciting Faust's amorous verses from the earlier “Dance” episode (at the village inn) and compares Hannchen's seductive appearance then to her present state. Faust, predictably, looses his wits. His soul trembles. He flees, rides away—not without Hannchen making a nasty scene and scream after him: "You must marry me today!". (Would Faust marry her, Hannchen's “honor” could be restored. Society and Church could accept her and her child. We must not forget that we are in the Middle Ages.)

“Night Procession” is the next episode. Faust rides into a black forest. He sees a procession of devout pilgrims, listens to their heavenly singing, and he hides. He becomes aware of his loss of grace, his eternal separation from God. He presses his face into the mane of his horse and he sheds the most bitter tears.

Back to Liszt's odd reverse-chronology. Should one not sin before feeling remorse? But Liszt apparently told his publisher: "A Mephisto of this kind [the Dance] may only arise from such a poodle [the Procession]!" In concert performance that makes sense, of course. The Mephisto Waltz is brilliant and the Night Procession rather slow and meditative. The Procession was published together with Lenau's verses inserted at the relevant spots. It could thus be performed as a melodrama with narrator. In the Waltz, on the other hand, Liszt only gave the last verse line “Und brausend verschlingt sie das Wonnemeer” (“And roaring in oceans of pleasure they drown”) after the final coda at the end of the piece. An insertion of all the verse lines from the “Dance” into Liszt's Mephisto Waltz could not make sense. Though the programmatic intention of the themes is quite obvious, the musical narrative does not correspond with the poem's on such a literal level. Naturally one can point out the beginning of the "amoroso" waltz, or hear the "nightingale" in the recitative towards the end. And, yes, Mephisto "tunes his fiddle" at the opening. One may recite the poem and insert Liszt's themes here and there, and this will be a nice introduction to the performance of the piece. Otherwise I believe that the music follows its own structural demands. In other words, the musical narrative is greatly determined by the possibilities inherent in the themes (there are two here) and manifests as form convincingly because the composer is an expert in transforming and combining them convincingly. 

Liszt, we have to admit, is more than an expert. His parodistic genius does resembles Mephisto's. I do not remember if my “soul trembled” or just grew pale, when I first realized the famous octave jumps to be a parody of the "amoroso" waltz. Liszt's sarcastic effect rivals Berlioz's in his transformation of the “beloved melody” into a vulgar dance tune in the witches' sabbath of his Symphonie fantastique.

Devilish mockery can not be found in Lenau's Dance episode. Mephisto uses mild irony to encourage Faust. Otherwise the episode describes the effect of Mephisto's violin playing. The mocking does appear in the later Forge episode. And the horror it evokes here is quite comparable to Liszt's mocking octave jumps. Both, Lenau and Liszt, use parody to achieve this effect. Satan as the negating principle cannot create. He can only destruct. Wisdom eventually realizes the life-giving power of this destruction. “Ich bin ein Teil von jener Kraft, / Die stets das Böse will und stets das Gute schafft.” (“Part am I of that Powerhood / which always wills the Evil, always works the Good.”), says Mephistopheles in Faust.

But wait! That one is Goethe's Faust! Not Lenau's!