riots outside the theatre. Politics had broken in; was it possible that there should be such taboos?
I thought — But is not the question old-fashioned, who are the manipulators and who are the victims?
The forest became more crowded as groups converged on the castle; we called out to each other like flocks of birds — for greeting or for warning. I thought — We are trying to ensure our own space, our identity: but still this does not seem to be quite what is happening. Perhaps we are more like those little bits of fungus called slime-mould that crawl together in the forest: they form a worm; this erects itself into a sort of penis; then it explodes, and little bits and pieces are scattered again in the forest.
There was one group we came across — our routes intertwining as if through a maze — which was a group of five or six boys, two of whom spoke together sometimes in English. I thought — Would it be easier to talk about the way we see and talk about things if we had another language with which to do this?
Schloss Rabe was on its crag over the lake; the village was below; there were thousands of students camping on the hills above. They were, yes, like an assembly come together for some millenium. I thought — But surely there would never be room for everybody in an ark.
We climbed amongst the groups that were like refugees or besiegers; we found a place for our camp on a piece of ground on the level but with thick undergrowth; we set about clearing it. We found that the group with the two English-speaking boys was clearing a space to one side of us. And slightly below us were the group of Nazi boys. I thought — So this is the way in which God's dice have come to rest in the forest.
Minna said to me 'For God's sake, let's you and I sleep together tonight!'
I thought — But I don't want to go back; I want to go forward.
It was in the morning when we set up our camp: the performance of Faust Part I was to be in the afternoon. Then there was to be an interval in which there would be time for supper: the scenes from Part II were to be done in the evening.
You remember the story of Faust? (Who am I talking to: you? or you?) Faust, usually taken to be representative of aspiring Western man, makes a pact with Mephistopheles, the Devil, whereby Mephistopheles will provide him with ever more extravagant experiences until such a time as he, Faust, may feel he has his heart's
desire and so will call 'Stop!' And then Mephistopheles can claim Faust's soul for his own. Faust does not worry much about the chances of his calling 'Stop!' Surely there will always be more to desire, more to experience, more to learn. And anyway — if he does reach some point which he feels is perfect, then what will it matter if the Devil does claim his soul! At the back of all this is the idea that God himself encourages the pact; it is by means of the dreams that the Devil dangles in front of humans, and in response to the disasters that come upon humans as they follow these dreams, that humans are roused out of torpor and carry out God's plans for evolution. And if in the process Faust loses his soul — well, it is always up to God, is it not, to organise some deathbed salvation and so cheat the Devil.
Bruno said 'I have told you, Faust is profoundly immoral.'
Minna said 'Why should God be moral?'
Franz said 'Do you know what you are saying?'
I thought — Yes, I want to know what I am saying.
In the enormous courtyard of the castle a stage had been set up: it backed on to a part of the building that was still in repair: there were doorways and windows with balconies in the facade above the stage. The courtyard was crowded: the audience was to sit on the grass of a central lawn. There were one or two fraternities identifiable by the ribbons in their caps or by armbands; but for the most part people in the audience seemed to have gathered in the hope of discovering a larger identity.
In the afternoon Kreuz was to play Faust and Liebermann Mephistopheles. I suppose there have been other performances in which Faust has been portrayed as a naive and even neurotic upward-striving Aryan and Mephistopheles as a crafty and manipulative Jew, the latter being the agent of Faust's perdition but also in the end — abracadabra! — of his salvation. In this production Kreuz presented himself obviously as some prototype of a Nazi: he wore leather boots and a brown tunic belted at the waist; he had a black-and-red-and-white armband. He seemed an unpleasantly childlike man; a disaffected fraternity member. He strutted up and down; he boasted and complained. Then when he seemed to see ghosts he crouched in a corner like a rat: he looked around as if for someone's arms to run to. When Liebermann as Mephistopheles appeared, he was a huge man in a long black cloak and a wide-brimmed hat: he had his hair in ringlets. Then when he opened his cloak for Faust to
run to and be enfolded — Faust scuttling across the floor — Lieber-mann was wearing underneath his cloak a bulging tunic and a short skirt and stockings, so that he seemed almost to be a parody of a prostitute on the streets of Berlin. I thought — Well, yes, this is clever: one does not have to say what it means! But then when Faust and Mephistopheles were off on their journey to the seduction of the innocent Gretchen — which Faust had stipulated as a first step to his heart's desire — it did not seem that there was much that the actors could do in the way of suggesting complex patterns. I thought — Oh well, this is the same old stuff — the stuff that audiences love and that poets love to give them — the ordinary boring stuff about murder and self-mutilation and degradation and then death.
Gretchen is seduced; abandoned: oh what an occasion for beautiful performances! She finds herself pregnant; she goes mad and kills her child. In the condemned cell she is visited by her old lover, Faust. How purging, how satisfying it is, to watch her sweet madness: to weep with his, Faust's, so noble, so searing remorse! The audience was being caressed, pelted; it was being seduced or assaulted. I thought — So what does it matter who is the Nazi and who is the Jew? What we are witnessing is a demonstration of a universal curse; an indiscriminate love of miserableness.
When Gretchen had been redeemed by the voice of God on high and the audience stood and clapped, I put my head in my hands. I thought — Oh do not let us imagine that we are gods, if gods get pleasure from watching this sort of thing from on high! Then — Franz is right: it is better if we are involved in some universal catastrophe.
But Franz was standing up and clapping with the rest.
I thought — This stuff is imprisoned in our heads: we are ourselves the cage; we cannot get out.
On the way back to our camp, Franz and Bruno discussed the significance of Faust being played as a Nazi and Mephistopheles as a Jew: yes, indeed, good could come out of eviclass="underline" had not Jews always known this? In the evening performance, it had been announced, the roles would be reversed: so that in the scenes from Part II, I wondered, might it be seen that on a higher and more mystical level it was the wicked but ultimately self-defeated Nazis who were goading the holy Jews on to ever more purified visions of their proper relationship to God — after all, this had always been God's purpose for them, no? Bruno and Franz were discussing
something like this as we walked up the hill. Minna and I did not talk much. I was trying to remember — In Part II it is the mystical vision of Helen of Troy that is conjured up for Faust in place of the mundane Gretchen: but even with Helen he does not call 'Stop!' What is it that in the end makes him (or is it only almost makes him?) call 'Stop!' to the whole damn rubbish that he loves to keep imprisoned in his head?
I thought — Helena, Eleanor: I would want to get it out; I would want you to call 'Stop!'
Back in our camp, Franz collected firewood and Bruno made the fire and Minna and I prepared food we had got earlier in the village. In the camp next door the two boys who spoke English seemed to have had a quarrel. The younger one, who was like a faun, had walked away and had come and sat with his back against a tree between his camp and ours. I thought — There is a painting like this: a girl is lying on the ground; there is a faun at her head: I have the impression that I should be part of this painting.