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Ebook has 1145 lines and 33260 words, and 23 pages
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INTRODUCTION vii
LIST OF PLAYS BY ARTHUR DAVISON FICKE x
MR. FAUST 1
INTRODUCTION
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 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 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 BJ?RKMAN.
LIST OF PLAYS BY ARTHUR DAVISON FICKE
THE BREAKING OF BONDS, 1910 MR. FAUST, 1913
MR. FAUST
INSCRIPTION
Pale Goethe, Marlowe, Lessing--calm your fears! None plots to steal your laurel wreaths away. Approach; take tickets: you shall witness here The unromantic Faustus of to-day--
A Faustus whom no mystic choirs sustain, No wizard fiends blind with prodigious spell. The mortal earth shall serve him as domain Whether he mount to Heaven or sink to Hell.
Yet, mount or sink, your lights around him shine. And there shall flow, bubbling with woe or mirth, From these new bottles your familiar wine, As ancient as man's rule upon the earth.
MR. FAUST
THE FIRST ACT
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.
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.
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
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. Perhaps 'twas not "Don Juan" that last night Was at its best, but Midge. Where did you sit?
BRANDER
Up in the gallery.
OLDHAM
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