Overview
- Female: 0
- Male: 2
Context
Faust and his assistant Wagner ventured from Faust’s study, a rare excursion for the melancholy scientist. Wagner does his best to keep Faust’s spirits up, and tries to help him understand that the city is thankful for Faust’s contributions to science--they believe that Faust and his father helped cure the town of the plague many years ago, but Faust argues that he actually poisoned people. Wagner is leading Faust home, but they see a strange black dog approaching them. Faust is unnerved by the
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Wagner: Let’s go on! The world has darkened,
The air is cool: the mists descend!
Man values his own house at night.
What is it occupies your sight?
What troubles you so, in the evening?
Faust: Through corn and stubble, see that black dog running?
Wagner: I saw him long ago: he seems a wretched thing.
Faust: Look at him closely! What do you make of him?
Wagner: A dog that, in the way they do,
Sniffs around to find his master.
Faust: See how he winds in wide spirals too,
Round us here, yet always coming nearer?
And if I’m right, I see a swirl of fire
Twisting about, behind his track.
Wagner: Perhaps your eyesight proves a liar,
I only see a dog, that’s black.
Faust: It seems to me that with a subtle magic,
He winds a fatal knot around our feet.
Wagner: I see his timid and uncertain antics,
It’s strangers, not his master, whom he meets.
Faust: The circle narrows: now he’s here!
Wagner: You see a dog, there’s no spectre near!
He barks uncertainly, lies down and crawls,
Wags his tail. Dogs’ habits, after all.
Faust: Come on! Here, now! Here, to me!
Wagner: He’s a dogged hound, I agree.
Stand still and he holds his ground:
Talk to him, he dances round:
What you’ve lost, he’ll bring to you:
Retrieve a stick from the water, too.
Faust: You’re right: and I see nothing
Like a Spirit there, it’s only training.
‘Faust, Mephistopheles, and the Water Spaniel’
Wagner: A wise man finds agreeable,
A dog that’s learnt its lesson well.
Yes, he deserves all your favour,
Among the students, the true scholar!
(They enter the City gate.)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Part One. Trans. A. S. Kline. https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/German/FaustIScenesItoIII.php#Scene_II
Links
A full-text translation of Faust, with notes: https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/German/Fausthome.php
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