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Fantasy Aspects, issue 2, November 1947
Page 12
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devil, partly through his own human weakness. He deserts the girl he has seduced and becomes responsible for her ruin. He helps out the Devil in various diabolical schemes that lead only to trouble for everyone in the surroundings. Even when he becomes old and begins to get truly altruistic ideals, Faust quite ruthlessly removes an old couple who annoy him by living quietly in a hut which spoils the view on his domain. This enormous work, longer that 12,000 lines in all, contains a lot of concepts straight from the volumes of Arkham House. There are two long Walpurgis Night Scenes, one in the best German tradition, the other a Classical one, in which anything from debates over geology to the wildest of revels happens. Once Faust visits a mysterious spot where apes are playing with a ball which, being the earth, is liable to explode at any moment. After his affair with Mrgarita, Faust enlists the aid of the Devil in bringing back to quasi-life Helan of Troy: the couple promptly bear a son who turns out to be the manifestation of poetry, but destroys himself after a few moments of life in an effort to soar too high into the airy heights. Then there's a little critter in a glass tube, all intelligence and no body. He represents artifically created life, and has quite a time before he finally learns a way to get a real body. The realm of the others is described in terms more awe-inspiring than anything in Lovecraft of Dunsany. However, the reader gets the impression that this particular matter is a tounge-in-cheek affair, somewhat like another set of gods whose stupendous powers are exalted at length, but finally appear and turn out to be nothing but a few little-clay-filled pots. In the wildly improbable event that all this may inspire someone to investigate the drama for himself, I would like to make one suggestion: don't read the first part without immediatly following it with the second part. The first part, by far the most widely read, simply poses the question and shows one of the events in Faust's career, that of the affair with Margarita, I'm inclined to think, too, that the second part contains some of the highest spots poetically n the entire work, although it also contains some of the less satisfactory moments-----the German monarch whom Faust and Mephistopheles assist with such spectacular results is probably the greatest bore in all literature, and the scenes in which Faust is reclaiming land from the ocean just don't come off. But the whole scene with Helena is tremendously great poetry, the dirge on the death of Euphorion---probably intended as a lament for Byron, whose death had occured just before it was written---and the final pages of the second part match the supurb rhetoric of the first section's prolouge in Heaven, the lyrics which Margarita is given to sing, and Faust's philosophizing in the early stages of the work. It is esy to read a (cont. on page 18) ---- Page 12 ----
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devil, partly through his own human weakness. He deserts the girl he has seduced and becomes responsible for her ruin. He helps out the Devil in various diabolical schemes that lead only to trouble for everyone in the surroundings. Even when he becomes old and begins to get truly altruistic ideals, Faust quite ruthlessly removes an old couple who annoy him by living quietly in a hut which spoils the view on his domain. This enormous work, longer that 12,000 lines in all, contains a lot of concepts straight from the volumes of Arkham House. There are two long Walpurgis Night Scenes, one in the best German tradition, the other a Classical one, in which anything from debates over geology to the wildest of revels happens. Once Faust visits a mysterious spot where apes are playing with a ball which, being the earth, is liable to explode at any moment. After his affair with Mrgarita, Faust enlists the aid of the Devil in bringing back to quasi-life Helan of Troy: the couple promptly bear a son who turns out to be the manifestation of poetry, but destroys himself after a few moments of life in an effort to soar too high into the airy heights. Then there's a little critter in a glass tube, all intelligence and no body. He represents artifically created life, and has quite a time before he finally learns a way to get a real body. The realm of the others is described in terms more awe-inspiring than anything in Lovecraft of Dunsany. However, the reader gets the impression that this particular matter is a tounge-in-cheek affair, somewhat like another set of gods whose stupendous powers are exalted at length, but finally appear and turn out to be nothing but a few little-clay-filled pots. In the wildly improbable event that all this may inspire someone to investigate the drama for himself, I would like to make one suggestion: don't read the first part without immediatly following it with the second part. The first part, by far the most widely read, simply poses the question and shows one of the events in Faust's career, that of the affair with Margarita, I'm inclined to think, too, that the second part contains some of the highest spots poetically n the entire work, although it also contains some of the less satisfactory moments-----the German monarch whom Faust and Mephistopheles assist with such spectacular results is probably the greatest bore in all literature, and the scenes in which Faust is reclaiming land from the ocean just don't come off. But the whole scene with Helena is tremendously great poetry, the dirge on the death of Euphorion---probably intended as a lament for Byron, whose death had occured just before it was written---and the final pages of the second part match the supurb rhetoric of the first section's prolouge in Heaven, the lyrics which Margarita is given to sing, and Faust's philosophizing in the early stages of the work. It is esy to read a (cont. on page 18) ---- Page 12 ----
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