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Goethe
A perfect face amid -barbarian faces, A perfect voice of sweet and serious rhyme, Traveller with calm, inimitable paces, Critic with judgment absolute to all time, A complete strength when men were maimed and weak, German obscured the spirit of a Greek. SRI AUROBINDO
THE year 1949 has just celebrated the 200th anniversary of the birth of the great force of light that was Goethe. We too remember him on the occasion, and will try to present in a few words, as we see it, the fundamental experience, the major Intuition that stirred this human soul, the lesson he brought to mankind. Goethe was a great poet. He showed how a language, perhaps least poetical by nature, can be moulded to embody the great beauty of great poetry. He made the German language sing, even as the sun's ray made the stone of Memnon sing when falling upon it. Goethe was a man of consummate culture. Truly and almost literally it could be said of him that nothing human he considered foreign to his inquiring mind. And Goethe was a man of great wisdom. His observation and judgment on things-no matter to whatever realm they belong-have an arresting appropriateness, a happy and revealing insight. But above all, he was an aspiring soul-aspiring to know and be in touch with the hidden Divinity in man and the world.
GOETHE AND THE PROBLEM OF EVIL
No problem is so vital to the human consciousness as the problem
Page – 135 of Evil – its why and wherefore It is verily the Sphinx Riddle. In all ages and in all climes man has tried to answer; the answers are of an immense variety, but none seems to be sure and certain. Goethe's was an ardent soul seeking to embrace the living truth whole and entire; the problem was not merely of philosophical interest to him, but a burning question of life and death – life and death of the body and even of the soul. One view considers Evil as coeval with Good: the Prince of Evil is God's peer, equal to him in all ways, absolutely separate, independent and self-existent. Light and Darkness are eternal principles living side by side, possessing equal reality. For, although it is permissible to the individual to pass out of the Darkness and enter into Light, the Darkness itself does not disappear: it remains and maintains its domain, and even it is said that some human beings are meant eternally for this domain. That is the Manichean principle and that also is fundamentally the dualistic conception of chit-achit in some Indian systems (although the principle of chit or light is usually given a higher position and priority of excellence). The Christian too accepts the dual principle, but does not give equal status to the two. Satan is there, an eternal reality: it is anti-God, it seeks to oppose God, frustrate his work. It is the great tempter whose task it is to persuade, to inspire man to remain always an earthly creature and never turn to know or live in God. Now the crucial question that arises is, what is the necessity of this Antagonist in God's scheme of creation? What is the meaning of this struggle and battle? God could have created, if he had chosen, a world without Evil. The orthodox Christi an answer is that in that case one could not have fully appreciated the true value and glory of God's presence. It is to manifest and proclaim the great victory that the strife and combat has been arranged in which Man triumphs in the end and God's work stands vindicated. The place of Satan is always Hell, but he cannot drag down a soul into his pit to hold it there eternally (although according to one doctrine there are or may be certain eternally damned souls).
Goethe carries the process of convergence and even
harmony of the two powers a little further and shows that although
they are contrary apparently, they are not contradictory
Page – 136 principles in essence. For, Satan is, after all, God's servant, even a very obedient servant; he is an instrument in the hand of the Almighty to work out His purpose. The purpose is to help and lead man, although in a devious way, towards a greater understanding, a nearer approach to Himself.
THE CHALLENGE AND THE PACT
There is on the earthly stage the play of a challenge, a twofold challenge, one between God and Satan and another, as a consequence, between Man and Satan. Satan is jealous of man who is God's favourite. He tells God that his partiality to man is misplaced. God has put into man a little of his light (reason and intelligence and something more perhaps), but to what purpose? Man tries to soar, he thinks he flies high and wide, but in fact he is and will be an insect that "lies always in the grass and sings its old song in the grass." God answers that whatever the perplexity in which man now is, in the end he will come out and reach the Light with a greater and richer experience of it. Satan smiles in return and says he will prove otherwise. Given a free hand, he can do whatever he likes with man: "Dust shall he eat and with a relish." God willingly agrees to the challenge: there is no harm in Satan's trying his hand. Indeed, Satan will prove to be a good companion to man; for man is normally prone to inertia and sinks into repose and rest and stagnation. Satan will be the goad, the force that drives towards ceaseless activity. For activity is life, and without activity no progress.
Thus, as sanctioned by God, there is a competition, a
wager between man and Satan. The pact between the parties is this
that, on the one hand, Satan will serve man here
in life upon earth, and on the other hand, in return, man
will have to serve Satan there, on the other side of life.
That is to say, Satan will give the whole world to man to enjoy, man
will have to give Satan only his soul. Man in his ignorance says he
does not care for his soul, does not know of a there or
elsewhere: he will be satisfied if he gets what he wants upon earth.
That, evidently, is the demand of what is familiarly known as
life-force (élan vital): the
utmost fulfilment of the life-force is what man stands for, although
the full significance of the movement
Page – 137 may not be clear to him or even to Satan at the moment. For life-force does not necessarily drag man down, as its grand finale as it were, into hell – however much Satan might wish it to be so. In what way, we shall see presently. Now Satan promises man all that he would desire and even more: he would give him his fill so' that he will ask for no more. Man takes up the challenge and declares that his hunger is insatiable, whatever Satan can bring to it, it will take in and press on: satisfaction and satiety will never come in his way. Satan thinks he knows better, for he is armed with a master weapon to lay man low and make him cry halt!
LOVE HUMAN AND LOVE DIVINE
Satan proposes to lead man down into hell through a sure means, nothing more sure, according to him, viz., love for a woman and a woman's love in return. Nothing like that to make man earth-bound or hell-bound and force out of him the nostalgic cry, "Time must have a stop." A most simple, primal and primeval ]yric love wil1 most suit Satan's purpose. Hence the Margaret episode. Love=Passion=Lust=Hell; that is the inevitable equation sequence, and through which runs the magic thread of infatuation. And that charm is invincible. Satan did succeed and was within an ace, as they say, of the final and definitive triumph: but that was not to be, for he left out of account an incalculable element. Love, even human love has, at least can have, a wonderful power, the potency of reversing the natural decree and bring about a supernatural intervention. Human love can at a crucial moment – in extremis – call down the Divine Grace, which means God's love for man. And the soul meant for perdition and about to be seized and carried away by Satan finds itself suddenly free and lifted up and borne by Heaven's messengers. Human Jove is divine love itself in earthly form and figure and whatever its apparent aberrations it is in soul and substance that thing. Satan is hoisted with his own petard. That is God's irony.
But Goethe's Satan seems to know or feel something of
his fate. He knows his function and the limit too of his function. He
speaks of the doomsday for people, but it is his doomsday also, he
says in mystic terms. Yes, it is his doomsday, for it is
Page – 138 the day of man's 1iberation. Satan has to release man from the pact that stands cancelled. The soul of man cannot be sold, even if he wanted it.
THE COSMIC RHYTHM
The angels weave the symphony that is creation. They represent the various notes and rhythms – in their higher and purer degrees – that make up the grand harmony of the spheres. It is magnificent, this music that moves the cosmos, and wonderful the glory of God manifest therein. But is it absolutely perfect? Is there nowhere any flaw in it? There is a doubting voice that enters a dissenting note. That is Satan, the Antagonist, the Evil One. Man is the weakest link in the chain of the apparently all-perfect harmony. And Satan boldly proposes to snap it if God only let him do so. He can prove to God that the true nature of his creation is not cosmos but chaos not a harmony in peace and light, but a confusion, a Walpurgis Night. God acquiesces in the play of this apparent breach and proves in the end that it is part of a wider scheme, a vaster harmony. Evil is rounded off by Grace. The total eradication of Evil from the world and human nature and the remoulding of a terrestrial life in the substance and pattern of the Highest Good that is beyond all dualities is a conception which it was not for Goethe to envisage. In the order of reality or existence, first there is the consciousness of division, of trenchant separation in which Good is equated with not-evil and evil with not-good. This is the outlook of individualised
consciousness. Next, as the consciousness grows and envelops the
whole existence, good and evil are both embraced and are found to
form a secret and magic harmony. That is the universal or cosmic
consciousness. And Goethe's genius seems to be an outflowering of
something of this status of consciousness. But there is still a
higher status, the status of transcendence in which evil is not
simply embraced but dissolved and even transmuted into a supreme
reality of which it is an aberration, a reflection or projection, a
lower formulation. That is the mystery of a spiritual realisation to
which Goethe aspired perhaps, but had not the necessary initiation to
enter into. Page – 139
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