The New Lifetime Reading Plan

The Federalist Papers, by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, represents American political thought and expression at a peak of elegance and power it has never since attained. Conceived originally as journalistic letters intended to mobilize New York State public opinion in support of the proposed Federal Constitution of 1787, they are not merely historical documents but in many cases masterpieces of reasoning. In 1788 Jefferson wrote to Madison praising them as "the best commentary on the principies of government which was ever written." It is illuminating to study them in connection with your reading of Aristotle^ Politics [13], Hobbes [43], Locke [49], Marx and Engels [82], Machiavelli [34], and Tocqueville [71]. Not ali the Papers need to be read. A fairly thorough knowledge of this classic may be gained by a reading of numbers 1-51, 84, and 85.

C.F.

_ PART FOUR

O

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

1749-1832 Faust

Goethe is often called "the last Universal Man." He possessed the sort of nonspecialized mind that no longer exists, and the lack of which may be leading us to disaster. This colossus lived a long and superbly favored life. He loved plurally. He wrote, brilliantly or tediously, in every possible form. Creative artist, government administrator, scientific researcher, and theorist, he was fantastically versatile. He invented German literature, and then for half a century dominated it. Like his contempo- rary Napoleon, he was more a force of nature than a man.

Perhaps more than either he was a process. One key to Goethe is a pair of words: change (he might have said metamor- phosis) and development. Although he felt both himself and nature to be wholes, his sense of himself, as well as of nature, was evolutionary. He outgrew women, ideas, experiences, only to incorporate what they had taught him into a new, larger, ever- growing Goethe. "I am like a snake," he said. "I slough my skin and start afresh." Perhaps we should speak of Goethe as we do of some great country, like the United States. At any moment he is the sum of a complex historical past and the potentialities of an incalculable future. In his lifelong emphasis on growth, change, striving, activity, and the conquest and understanding of the world Goethe was himself what we have come to call a Faustian man, typifying a major aspect of our modern Western life-feeling.

His dramatic masterpiece grew as Goethe himself did. As a small boy in his native Frankfurt he saw a puppet show based on the old folk-character Faust. From that day to a few months before his death, when he finished Part 2, Faust continued to

develop in his mind and on his writing table. Part 1 was started in his early twenties and completed almost thirty years later. Neither part is really a play for the stage. Both are changing visions of life, written, as Goethe's own career was conceived, in many different tonalities and styles, from the obscene to the sublime.

Part 1 is the simpler and less profound of the two, and the easier of access. It is familiar to us partly because its legend has attracted so many writers and composers. The Faust-Margaret love story inspired Gounod's famous opera.

Part н deals with an individual soul, the seeker Faust: his intellectual disillusionments and ambitions; the temptations put in his way by the fascinating, all-denying Mephistopheles; his seduction of Margaret; and the promise of redemption through love. Part 2 deals with the "great world," not of the individual Faust but of Western humanity. It is really a kind of historical phantasmagoria, with the legendary Helen, whom we met in Homer [2,3], symbolizing the Western classical world and Faust himself symbolizing the modern or post-Renaissance Western world. Heaven, Hell, and Earth are the settings of Faust as they are of The Divine Comedy [30]. But Goethe is not as clear as Dante, and many of his meanings are still being quarreled over.

In translation Goethe, like Moliиre [46], is not entirely sat- isfactory reading. Yet some acquaintance, however superficial, must be made with this European titan who has influenced hundreds of writers, including the greatest modems, such as Thomas Mann [107].

C.F.

63

WILLIAM BLAKE

1757-1827 Selected Works

Once, William Blake tells us, he walked to the end of the heath and touched the sky with his finger. At four he screamed upon

perceiving God's head at the window. He saw angels in boughs and the prophet Ezekiel under a tree. His wife once remarked placidly, "I have very little of Mr. Blake's company. He is always in Paradise." Perhaps an exaggeration, but there is no doubt that Blake felt himself on ali fours with spirits. He is the supreme type, at least in modern times, of the visionary poet.