INTRODUCTION[vii]

Through all the work of Arthur Davison Ficke runs a note of bigness that compels attention even when one feels that he is still groping both for form and thought. In "Mr. Faust" this note has assumed commanding proportions, while at the same time the uncertainty manifest in some of the earlier work has almost wholly disappeared. Intellectually as well as artistically, this play shows a surprising maturity. It impresses me, for one, as the expression of a well-rounded and very profound philosophy of life—and this philosophy stands in logical and sympathetic relationship to what the western world to-day regards as its most advanced thought. The evolutionary conception of life is the foundation of that philosophy, which, however, has little or nothing in common with the materialistic and dogmatic evolutionism of the last century. The work sprung from that philosophy is full of the new sense of mystery, which makes the men of to-day realize that the one attitude leading nowhere is that of denial. Faith and doubt walk hand in hand, each one being to the other check and goad alike. And

with this new freedom to believe as well as to question, man becomes once more the centre of his known universe. But there he stands, humbly proud, not as the arrogant master of a "dead" world, but merely as[viii] the foremost servant of a life-principle which asserts itself in the grain of sand as in the brain of man.

Yet "Mr. Faust" is by no means a philosophical or moral tract. It is, first of all and throughout, a living, breathing work of art, instinct with beauty and faithful in its every line to the principle laid down by its author in the preface to one of his earlier volumes: "Poetical imagination must fail altogether if it descends from its natural sphere and assumes work which is properly that of economic or political experience. Nor can it usefully urge its own peculiar intuitions as things of practical validity."

Mr. Ficke was born in 1883 at Davenport, Iowa, and there he is still living, although I understand that he has since then been wandering in so many other regions, physical and spiritual, that he can hardly call it his home. He graduated from Harvard in 1904 and spent the next travelling in all sorts of strange and poetic places—Japan, India, the Greek mountains, the Aegean Islands. Returning to the United States, he studied law and was admitted to the Bar in 1908. While studying, he taught English for a year at the University of Iowa, lecturing on the history of the Arthurian Legends.

He was a mere boy when he began to write, turning from the first to the metrical form of expression and remaining faithful to it in most of his subsequent efforts. His poems and essays have been printed in almost all the leading magazines. So far he has published five volumes of verse: "From the Isles," a series of lyrics of the Aegean Sea; "The Happy Princess," a romantic narrative poem; "The Earth Passion," a series of poems which may be characterized[ix] as the effort of a star-gazer to find satisfaction in the things of the earth; "The Breaking of Bonds," a Shelleyan drama of social unrest, where he has tried to formulate a hope for our final emergence from the maelstrom of class-conflict; and "Twelve Japanese Painters," a group of poems expressive of the peculiar and alluring charm of the great Japanese painters and their world of remote beauty.

Edwin Björkman.

THE FIRST ACT[3]

The scene is the library of John Faust, a large handsome room panelled in dark oak and lined with rows of books in open book-shelves. On the right is a carved white stone fireplace, with deep chairs before it. In the far left corner of the room, on a pedestal, stands a stiff bust of George Washington. Near it hangs a wonderful Titian portrait, a thing of another world. The furniture looks as if it were, and probably is, plunder from the palace of some prince of the Renaissance.

A fire is burning in the fireplace; it, and several shaded lights, make a subdued brilliancy in the room. Before the fire sits John Faust. Brander and Oldham, both in evening dress, lounge comfortably in chairs near Faust. All three are smoking, and tall highball glasses stand within their reach.

BRANDER

You are a thorn to me, a thorn in the flesh. Contagiously you bring to me mistrust Of all my landmarks, when, as here to-night, Out of the midst of every pleasant gift The world can offer you, you raise your voice In scoffing irony against each face, Form, action, motive, that together make Your life, and ours.[4]

FAUST

Dear man, I did not mean To send my poor jokes burrowing like a mole Beneath your prized foundations.

BRANDER

Not alone Your attitude to-night; you always seem As if withholding from all days and deeds Moving around you—from our life and yours— Your full assent.

FAUST

Dear Brander! Is it true I am as bad as that? Well, though I were, Why should it trouble you? If you find sport In this strange game, this fevered interplay, This hodge-podge crazy-quilt which we are pleased To call our life—why, like it! And say: Damned Be all who are not with me!

BRANDER

Are not you?

FAUST

I claim the criminal's privilege, and decline To answer.

OLDHAM

Faust, might I presume so far As to suggest that I should like a drink Before you two start breaking furniture Over this matter?

FAUST

Certainly; I beg Your pardon; I neglected you. (He busies himself with the glasses) [5]No, no, We won't wage combat over this. You're right, Doubtless, as usual, Brander. I have not Your fortunate placidity of mind, And I get grumpy.

Come, fill up your glass; And let us drink to the glories of the world. Down with the cynic!

BRANDER

Down with him, indeed! And may he cease to trouble you. The world Is pretty glorious when a man is young, As we are, and so many splendid choices Lie all around him. There have never been Such opportunities as now are spread Before us. Men are doing mighty things To-day. A critic tells me that last night Wullf at the opera sang "La ci darem" With an artistic brilliancy of tone That never has been heard on any stage Anywhere in the world. You moped at home, Doubtless; but it was wonderful, on my word.

OLDHAM

Whom did you go with?

BRANDER

Midge.

OLDHAM

Ah, Midge again! I thought so....

BRANDER

Well, I don't know why I shouldn't.

OLDHAM

Those rosy-toned remarks gave you away.[6] Perhaps 'twas not "Don Juan" that last night Was at its best, but Midge. Where did you sit?

BRANDER

Up in the gallery.

OLDHAM

The top one?

BRANDER

Yes.

OLDHAM

Once more, I thought so. You and Midge would look Nice in a box! Yes, I will pay for one If you will take it.

BRANDER

Oh, leave me alone!

FAUST

Who is this "Midge" you speak of?

OLDHAM

Midge, dear Faust, Is short for Margaret; which, you may guess, Describes a lady of the female sex; Said person being serviceably employed As maid-of-all-work for some ancient dame In Brander's own apartment house. She has, Beside what other virtues I know not, A most bewitching ankle and a taste For opera. And dear Brander's kindly heart Is so moved by the sight of these combined, He sometimes sneaks, by lonely alley-ways, With his fair Midge, and in the gallery High out of sight of all of us enjoys Her and the opera.[7]

FAUST

I did not know You had a lady-love.

BRANDER

It's hardly that! But she's a mighty jolly little thing.

FAUST

What sort of girl is she?

BRANDER

A mighty nice one! Full of all kinds of happiness; but shy. I'd like to see some rounder try to speak To her on Broadway. She looks like a lady!

FAUST

That is too bad.

BRANDER

Oh, pshaw! Don't lecture me; I'm not a saint; in fact, few of us are.

FAUST

Unfortunately not. I least of all. And yet I wonder if.... However, I Do not presume to lecture you. Remember One thing, though, as my friend. Your Midge has deeps Not pleasant under her if you let go.

BRANDER

Oh, I will not let go!... Not yet, at least.

OLDHAM

Faust really means it, strange as it may seem. Of late he has turned moralist.

FAUST

Not quite: But just a little tired of pursuits That end regretfully.[8]

OLDHAM

Well, don't pursue....

BRANDER

(Goes to the window and raises the shade) See, what a night it is! The stars are out As if a bucketful of them had spilled Across the sky. And here we sit like owls, Blinking and staring at a little fire When heaven is burning! I'm afraid it's time For me to leave this owlish parliament; And I shall probably knock holes in half The windows of the town as I walk home Star-gazingly. And here it's after twelve! I might have guessed it from the fatal fact That we'd begun to talk philosophy: No sane man ever does, except in hours When by all rights he should be sound asleep. Good night to both of you. And don't stay up Talking till morning.

OLDHAM

Well, good night.

FAUST

Good night, Brander, I'm sorry you must go: come in Quite soon again, and I will try to be Less disagreeable than I was to-night. [Brander goes out.

OLDHAM

I'll bet he takes an arc-light for a star!

FAUST

He is warm-hearted; I am fond of him. But Midge!... However, one can say no more....[9]

OLDHAM

He's a good fellow; but he tires me Sometimes.

FAUST

Dear boy, I envy him.

OLDHAM

Of course, And so do I; but I would not exchange Heads for a kingdom.

FAUST

Are you so fond, then, Of what's in yours?

OLDHAM

No, but at least I have A certain faint perception of the gilded And quite preposterous crudeness of our days— The sordid sickness of his life, and ours; And that is something to be thankful for.

FAUST

Gratitude is a graceful gift.

OLDHAM

Come, come! What snake has bitten you, that to your lips A poisoned irony so bitter springs To-night?

FAUST

I am revolving in my brain This serious question: whether 'tis not best That one turn humorist. The mind that seeks Holiness, finds it seldom; who pursues Beauty perhaps shall in a lengthened life Find it perfected only once or twice. But if one's quest were humor—what rich stores,[10] What tropic jungles of it, lie to hand At every moment, everywhere one turns— What luscious meadows for the humorist!

OLDHAM

No—for the satirist! There is no humor In what you see and I see when we look On this crude world wherein our lives are spent— This sordid sphere where we are but spectators— This crass grim modern spectacle of lives Torn with consuming lust of one desire— Gold, gold, forever gold— Or do you find Humor in that?

FAUST

It might be found, perhaps: The joke's on someone!

OLDHAM

There's no joke in it! It is the waste, the pitiful waste of life! Men—slaves to gather gold—become then slaves Beneath its gathered weight. For this one hope, All finer longings perish at their birth. Men's eyes to-day envy no sage or seer Or conqueror except his triumphs be In this base sphere of commerce. The stars go out In factory smoke; the spirit wanes and pales In poisoned air of greed. It is an age Of traders and of tricksters; all the high And hounded malefactors of great wealth Differ from the masses, in their wealth, indeed; But in their malefaction, not at all. Your grocer and my butcher have at heart The selfsame aims as he to whom we pay Tribute for every pound of coal we burn.[11] Their scope is narrower, but their act the same As his—against whose millions all the tongues Of little tricksters in each corner store Babble and rail and shriek!

FAUST

Almost you do Persuade me to turn humorist on the spot! Was ever, since Gargantua, such a vine Heavy with bursting clusters of the grape Of humor?

OLDHAM

Of corruption! You may laugh; But there's in all your laughter hardly more Mirth than in my upbraidings. Ah, I grow So weary of this low-horizoned scene, Our generation; I am always drawn In thought toward that great noon of human life When in the streets of Florence walked the powers And princes of the earth—Politian, Pico, Angelo, Leonardo, Botticelli— And a half-hundred more of starry-eyed Sons of the morning, in whose hearts the god Struggled unceasing. Ah, those lucent brains, Those bright imaginations, those keen souls, Arrowy toward each target where truth's gold Glimmered, or beauty's! Those were days indeed; We shall not look upon their like again.

FAUST

I am not sure.

OLDHAM

Then take my word for it!

FAUST

I am not sure; the lamentable fact[12] To me seems otherwise. For I believe That this vile age of commerce and corruption Which you describe in very eloquent terms, Is still, upon the whole, the best that yet Has graced our earth. I think not more than you Am I in love with it; but, looking back, I fail to see a better, though I peer Into remote arboreal history.

OLDHAM

When I was six, my teachers taught me that. Why, one would think that you had never heard Of Greece or Italy!

FAUST

And what were they? Your Renaissance, despite its few bright gleams, Lies like a swamp of darkness, soaked in blood And agony: such tortures as we scarce Dream of to-day writhe through it; and the stench Of slaughtered cities and corrupted thrones— Yes, even the Papal throne—draw me not back With longing toward it. Rich that time might be If one were Michael Angelo; but how If one were peasant, or meek householder, When the Free Captains ravaged to and fro, And peoples were the merest pawns of kings Enslaved by mistresses? The more I look, The more evaporates that golden haze Which cloaks the past; the more I doubt if men Had ever in their breasts more lofty souls Than those we know. And I am glad to be A citizen of this material age.

OLDHAM

Congratulations!—tempered with surprise[13] At finding you, beneath your lion's skin, So sweet an optimist—whose faith can find All's for the best; and the best, this great year Nineteen Thirteen.

FAUST

Hardly so strong as that.

OLDHAM

Yes, tell me that the golden age has come!

FAUST

I quarrel not with ages—but with man; Whose life such play and folly seems—for all Its sweat and agony—that laughter lies The sole escape from madness. I peruse The present and the past, only to find Mountains of human effort piled aloft Like the Egyptian Pyramids, and toward No end save folly....

All is foolishness! In Argolis, a woman, somewhat vain, Preferred a fop to her own rightful lord And ran away; and then for ten long years The might of Hellas on the Trojan plain Grappled in conflict such as had been mete To guard Olympus, and Scamander ran Red with heroic blood-drops. And they got The woman. And it all was foolishness!... That was your Golden Age. I hope you like it.

Foolishness!... Once a mariner set forth, With all the fires of heaven lit in his breast And godlike courage on his brow, to find[14] New worlds beyond the unknown wastes of sea. He sailed; he found; he died in rusty chains: So that, to-day, the vermin of all climes May thither flock, and there renew the old Familiar toil toward utter foolishness....

Why all this labor unto vanity? Why all this straining toward an empty end?

OLDHAM

Ah, you forget what Beauty was to them! We are quite lost to that high touch to-day. Beauty hung over them, a star to draw Men's aspiration. That divides them quite From our debased modernity.

FAUST

Dear Oldham! My dear delightful visionary Oldham! What an adorer of the past you are!

OLDHAM

Yes, I adore it sacredly, and loathe To-day's whole content—except you! I loathe it So much that, if I had the dynamite, I'd blow it all—and you and me ourselves— Into a nebula of dust.... Ah, well, We hardly can decide these things to-night, Can we? I must be off, little as I like, To end our midnight talking.

FAUST

Oh, not yet!

OLDHAM

I must; this is not good for me: I fear To let myself dwell on these restless thoughts[15] Which with a perilous longing sometimes make My actual days so bitter that despair Grips me in horror. And besides, I'm due To pick my brother up. I have, you see, The limousine to-night, and that entails Its obligations. Dear modernity! Whose Saviour is the limousine!... Good night!

FAUST

Good night. May all the Furies and the Gorgons Of Greece and Florence leave you in repose To dream to-night of white-limbed goddesses And painters like archangels!

OLDHAM

I deserve it! And yet I fear they will not be so kind.... Sleep is no friend to me these many nights. I do not know what wrong I can have done That so offends her she will none of me. One of these days, she will carry it too far.... [Oldham goes out. Faust turns out all but two of the lights; then seats himself wearily before the fire. The room is dark around his lighted figure.

FAUST

The play drags, and the players would begone, Out of this theatre of tinsel days And lights and tawdry glamour, out to face Even the blank of night, the icy stars, The vast abysses. What the gallery-gods Could give, they well have given; but deities Inscrutabler than they annul all gifts With one gift more—the restless mind that peers Past fame, friends, learning, fortune, to enquire:[16] Whither? Whither? Whither? And no answer comes To the cold player's lips....

I see too much To make my peace with any ordered rôle And play it heartily. To-day's thin coin Pays not my labors; and to-morrow's hope Has never been authenticated to me By a fulfilling hour when I might say: "Lo, this is what I hoped!" The vision flies As I advance; while always far ahead Its glow makes dim the color of my days; And I loathe life because my hope is fairer, And know my hope a lie. Thus, Faust, my friend, You damn yourself ingeniously to hells Of rich variety....

The eyes of men Envy me as I pass them in the street— Me, whom sufficient fortune, moderate fame, Have made completely happy in their sight. Well, I am no barbarian: let them have The bliss of envying.... But I am sick With the hour's emptiness; and great desire Fills me for those high beauties which my dreams Yearn ever toward. I am weary; I would go Out to some golden sunset-lighted land Of silence.

I have been athirst of dreams! And all earth's common goals and gifts have been But fuel to flame. O strange and piteous heart![17] O credulous and visionary heart! Desirous of the infinite—from defeat Arising still to grope again for light And the high word of vision! And in vain! Till, not having found, its bitterness corrodes Inward—like one betrayed by his last god....

Strange, that my father was a worthy man! Perhaps 'tis his blood in me that withholds Unreasoning my hand from washing clear This scribbled slate with one quick tide of peace. Would more of him were in me! that like him I might spend eagerly a useful life In medicining miserable men Who were better dead—employ my force To aid a world within whose marrow dwells An evil none can cure, an agony Beyond our dearest aiding.

Ah, well, well! Such are the great men of this busy world, Whose ardor for the game is anodyne Against its buffets, and intoxicant To lend it reveller's meaning. Ardor given, All things are possible....

You, old marble-face, Who front me from the corner with that grave Virtuous Father-of-your-Country look, I pay you my respects; you are a light Of leading, as I see you now. Your soul Was never shaken by convulsive doubts Of life or man or liberty; you built[18] Unsceptical of bricks, but such as lay To hand you took, nor did your purpose shake At prescient thought of how your edifice Might be turned pest-house some day. Undismayed By doubt, you rose, and in heroic mould Led—dauntless, patient, incorruptible— A riot over taxes. Not a star In all the vaults of heaven could trouble you With whisperings of more transcendent goals. O despicable, admirable man! How much I envy you—the devil take you! [The bust of Washington and its pedestal move slightly; gradually they change and shape themselves into the figure of a well-dressed man, rather short and stocky, with a sociable, commonplace face. His head, however, is very peculiarly modelled; it reminds one, indescribably and faintly, of the fact that men sprang from beasts. The high position of the

ears help this impression, as does also the astonishing animal brilliance of the eyes. Faust, passing his hand over his forehead, turns away.

FAUST

This is what comes of smoking far too much.

SATAN

Good evening, Mr. Faust.

FAUST

Well, I'll be damned!... And who, I beg, are you?

SATAN