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Of all Goethe's works, Faust is the one I most like; and, of all his female characters, "Margaret" is that which I prefer. A fine vein of philosophy runs through the whole of this production, in which the vanity of human knowledge without goodness was never more powerfully exemplified.
I can imagine her saying about Faust: 'Fancy sacrificing one's self for the transient pleasure of a moonlight meeting or two with a man, and a few jewels however unique, when one can live! in italics and with a note of admiration.
The bulk of his music no more discloses its full measure of beauty and eloquence to one who is in ignorance of its poetic basis than would Wagner's "Faust" overture, Tchaikovsky's "Romeo and Juliet," or Debussy's "L'Après-midi d'un Faune."
Valentin, a soldier who is about to go to the wars, commends his sister Marguerite to the care of Siebel, a gentle youth who loves her. Wagner, a student, begins a song, but is interrupted by Mephistopheles, who has entered the circle of merry-makers with Faust, and who now volunteers to sing a better song than the one just begun.
The music there made me strangely reminiscent of my life in Connecticut; it was an atmosphere in which I caught a fresh breath of my boyhood days and early youth. Generally, in the morning after I had attended a performance, I would sit at the piano and for a couple of hours play the music which I used to play in my mother's little parlor. One night I went to hear Faust.
At any rate Faust will go straight, now he's been scorched. I'll just re-enter that bet to the Little Woman while I think of it. 'Three thousand seven hundred and fifty to fifty, Diablo for the Brooklyn, laid to Miss Allis Porter." Then he dated it. "She loses by this transaction, but that won't matter; it will be a pretty good win if it comes off.
Then it came to Jakey Faust that there was nothing left to do but fill the Lauzanne column in his book with the many bets that would come his way and make much money. Crane watched Lauzanne go lazily, sluggishly down to the post for his race. He knew the horse's moods; the walk of the Chestnut was the indifferent stroll of a horse that is thinking only of his dinner.
Perhaps he was even a little theatrical in his fancies, and remembered the crashes of sheet-iron thunder and the blinding blaze of the gunpowder lightning, that always accompanied the shot-cylinder rain when Macbeth was seeking the weird sisters for the second time when the fearful incantations of "Der Freischutz" were about to be commenced or when the ever-ready demon was invoked by Faust, the first printer-devil.
He must do this for the love of both of us, and Heaven will find him another copy sooner or later. As I have once begun asking favours, I go on. Be kind enough to send me two things: My "Faust" overture. I hope that, if you want it still, you have had a copy made. I have a mind to rewrite it a little and to publish it through H. Perhaps I shall get a little money for it.
I have said that there is no reason to question Gounod's statement that it was he who conceived the idea of writing the opera whose popularity is without parallel in the musical history of the Faust legend; but, if I could do so without reflecting upon his character, I should like to believe a story which says that it was Barbier who proposed the subject to Gounod after Meyerbeer, to whom he first suggested it, had declined the collaboration.
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