Existence is a duty, be it only for an instant.7
Here the drama seems to stop. We think that Helen and Faust have nothing left to desire, fulfilled as they are by each other's presence. But Mephistopheles, who, in order to adapt himself to the Greek world, has taken on the monstrous mask of Phorkyas, breaks off this perfect moment by announcing the menacing approach of the troops of Menelaus, and Faust reproaches him for his ill-timed interruption. The marvelous instant has now disappeared, but the dispositions of Faust anJ of I lclcn will still be reflected in the deS<..Tiption of the ideal Arcadia in which F11UNI 1111J Helen arc to engender Euphorion, the genius of poetry.
220
Themes
The dialogue we have quoted may be understood at several levels. First and foremost, it is the dialogue between two lovers, who, as such, resemble all lovers everywhere. Faust and Helen are two lovers absorbed by the living presence of the beloved: they forget everything - both past and future - which is other than this presence. Their excess of happiness gives them an impression of dreamlike unreality: time and space disappear. We are entering the unknown, and it is the moment of love fulfilled.
On a second level of interpretation, however, the dialogue takes place between Faust and Helen as symbolic figures, representing, on the one hand, modem man in his ceaseless striving, and on the other, ancient beauty in its soothing presence; both are miraculously reunited by the magic of poetry, which abolishes the centuries. In this dialogue, Faust as modern man tries to make Helen forget her past, so that she may be wholly in the present instant, which she is incapable of understanding. She feels herself to be so distant and yet so close, abandoned by life and yet in the process of rebirth, living in Faust, mingled with him, and trusting in the unknown. Faust asks her not to reflect upon her strange destiny, but to accept the new existence which is being offered to her. In this dialogue between two symbolic figures, Helen becomes "modernized," if one may say so; as she adopts rhyme, the symbol of modern interiority, she has doubts, and reflects upon her destiny. At the same time, Faust becomes "antiquated": he speaks as a man of antiquity, when he urges Helen to concentrate on the present moment, and not to lose it in hesitant reflection on the past and the future. As Goethe said in a letter to Zelter, this was the characteristic feature of ancient life and art: to know how to live in the present, and to know what he called "the healthiness of the moment." In antiquity, says Goethe, the instant was "pregnant;" in other words, filled with meaning, but it was also lived in all its reality and the fullness of its richness, sufficient unto itself. We no longer know how to live in the present, continues Goethe. For us, the ideal is in the future, and can only be the object of a sort of nostalgic desire, while the present is considered trivial and banal. We no longer know how to profit from the present; we no longer know - as the Greeks did - how to act in the present, and upon the present.8 Indeed, if Faust speaks to Helen as a man of the ancient world, it is precisely because the presence of Helen - that is, the presence of ancient beauty - reveals to him what presence itself is: the presence of the world,
"That splendid feeling of the present" (He"liches Gefiihl der Gegenwart) as Goethe wrote in the East- West Divan.9
This, finally, is the reason why the dialogue can be understood at a third level. Here, it is no longer the dialogue of two lovers, nor of two historical figures, but rather the dialogue of man with himself. The encounter with Helen is not only the encounter with ancient beauty emanating from nature; it is also the encounter wit h n living wisdom 1md art of living: that
"hcnhhincss of t he moment " which we mt•nt lnncd nhovc. The nlhili111 Fnust
"Only the Present is our Happiness "
221
had wagered with Mephistopheles that he would never say to an instant:
"Stay, you are so beautiful!" But now, following after humble Gretchen, it is ancient, noble Helen who reveals to him the splendor of being - that is, of the present instant - and teaches him to say yes to the world and to himself.
We must now define the ancient experience of time which we saw expressed in the above-quoted verses from Faust. Basing ourselves on the letter from Goethe to Zeller we cited above, we might think that we have to do with a generalized, common experience of ancient man, and that it was natural for ancient man to be familiar with what Goethe calls the "healthiness of the moment." Moreover, following Goethe, many historians and philosophers, from Oswald Spengler10 to the logician Hintikka, 11 have alluded to the fact that the Greeks "lived in the present moment" more than did the representatives of other cultures. In his book Die Zauberflote,12 Siegfried Morenz gives a good summary of this conception: "No one has better characterized the particular nature of Greece than Goethe . . . in the dialogue between Faust and Helen: ' . . . then the spirit looks neither backwards nor ahead. Only the present is our happiness. ' "
We must certainly agree that the Greeks in general gave particular attention to the present moment, and this attention could take on several different ethical and artistic meanings. Popular wisdom advised people both to be content with the present, and to know how to utilize it. Being content with the present meant, on the one hand, being content with earthly existence.
This is what Goethe admired in ancient art, particularly in funerary art, where the deceased was represented not with his eyes raised toward the heavens, but in the act of living his daily life. On the other hand, knowing how to utilize the present meant knowing how to recognize and seize the favorable and decisive instant (kairos). Kairos designated all the possibilities contained within a given moment: a good general, for example, knows how to strike at the opportune kairos, and sculptors fix in marble the most significant kairos of the scene which they wish to bring to life.
It does seem, then, that the Greeks paid particular attention to the present moment. This, however, does not justify us in imagining - as did Winckelmann, Goethe, and Holderlin - the existence of an idealized Greece, the citizens of which, because they lived in the present moment, were perpetually bathed in beauty and serenity. As a matter of fact, people in antiquity were just as filled with anguish as we are today, and ancient poetry often preserves the echo of this anguish, which sometimes goes as far as despair. Like us, the ancients bore the burden of the past, the uncertainty of the future, and the fear of death. Indeed, it was for this human anguish that ancient philosophies
- particularly F.picurcanism and Stoicism - sought to provide a remedy.
These philo!IUllhics were therapies, intended to provide a cure for anguish, and to hrintc f'rt•t•dom and self-mastery, and their goal was to allow people to
222
Themes
free themselves from the past and the future, so that they could live within the present. Here we have to do with an experience of time wholly different from the common, general experience we have been describing. As we shall see, this experience corresponds precisely to that expressed in the verses from Faust: "Only the present is our happiness . . . don't think about your destiny.