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Updated: May 1, 2025
Then, when he asks me 'Who is the happy man who begot you? I will answer: It is Euphorion, the divine poet and singer; and my mother, too, is a worthy matron, the gate-keeper of your palace, Doris, the enchantress, who turns dingy clothes into snow-white linen." These last words the young artist sang in a fine and powerful voice to a mode invented by his father.
The poet's appetite for "soul-dissection" was amply shown in the characters not merely of Paracelsus himself, but of his soberer friends Festus and Michal, and of the Italian poet Aprile, a sort of Euphorion pretty evidently suggested by, though greatly enlarged from, the actual Euphorion of the second part of Faust, then not long finished.
When, returning from such an excursion, he stretched himself again on his couch, the old woman, pointing to the hanging-lamp which the impatient creature often knocked with his head, would call out, "Euphorion, mind the oil." And he each time answered with the same threatening gesture and the same glare in his black eyes: "The little brutes!"
The translations from Euphorion, by which he first made his reputation, followed the current fashion; but about the same time he introduced a new kind of poetry, the erotic elegy, which had a swift and far-reaching success.
No allegory, I well know, and least of all no historical allegory, can ever be strained to fit quite tight the lives of individuals and those of centuries, their modes of intermixture, genesis, and inheritance are far different; but if an allegory is to possess any meaning at all, we must surely apply it wherever it will fit most easily and completely; and the beautiful allegory prepared by the tradition of the sixteenth century for the elaborating genius of Goethe, can have a real meaning only if we explain Faust as representing the Middle Ages, Helena as Antiquity, and Euphorion as that child of the Middle Ages, taking life and reality from them, but born of and curiously nurtured by the spirit of Antiquity, to which significant accident has given the name of Renaissance.
But there must be no water in it to-day." "I cannot drink," sighed Euphorion. "Then I will drink your share and my own too." Nay-nay, mother," remonstrated Pollux. "Well put some water in, lad, just a little water, only do not make such a pitiful face. Is that the way a young fellow should look who has his art, and plenty of strength in his hands, and the sweetest of sweethearts in his heart?"
Doris shared her son's breakfast but, contrary to her usual custom, she spoke very little, only she frequently passed her hand over her son's curly hair. Euphorion strode up and down the room, rummaging his brain for ideas for an ode in which he might address the Emperor and implore forgiveness for his son.
"At any rate I looked nice enough for the men in disguise fauns and satyrs and were the cynic hypocrites in their ragged cloaks, to think it worth while to look at me and to take a rap on the knuckles when they tried to put an arm round me or to steal a kiss, I did not care for the handsomest of them, for Euphorion had done for me with his fiery glances not with words for I was very strictly kept and he had never been able to get a chance to speak to me.
"If only you had been a singer!" exclaimed Euphorion. "Then I should have enjoyed the prospect," retorted Pollux, "of spending the evening of my life as your successor in this little abode." "And now for wretched pay, you plant the laurels with which Papias crowns himself!" answered the old man shrugging his shoulders.
My old heart beats as happily as if the little Loves were touching it with their wings and rosy fingers. If my feet had not grown so heavy with constantly standing over the hearth and at washing really and truly I could take Euphorion by the arm and dance through the streets with him to-day." "Where is father?" "Out singing." "In the morning! where?"
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