July 1
No sign of him today—working, sleeping, taking meals in his rooms or out. So elusive. Faust about to meet Margarete in the flesh for the first time. He will be her undoing. Knowing this already on a second reading—not learning through suffering (it is too late for that) but a heightened suffering through knowledge, seeing things for what they are. My new objectivity.
Matt 18:21–35. “Should you not have shown mercy to your fellow servant as I showed mercy to you?” The arithmetic of sin. Revenge-cycles expand eleven-fold through six generations. Cain avenged seven times, Lamech seventy-seven times.39 Mercy-cycles, to root out revenge, must expand 490-fold within one generation. Where does Peter get seven from? He must be thinking of the Sabbath and Jubilee cycles. People and the land are allowed to rest every seven days and seven years, and debts are forgiven and indentured servants released from their servitude every forty-nine years—seven times seven.40 To forgive “from the heart” is to cease keeping track. What long memories we have for sin, though I could not tell you what Mrs. H. and I served our master for dinner last week.
Faust is a very Christian play at heart, I think, for the only hint of revenge is in Mephisto’s sport with the vicious, and this is only momentary, and is only giving them not what they deserved, but rather what they desired, in the form of a literalized metaphor, e.g., “firewater” for the men in the tavern. Be careful what you wish for, Mephisto playfully warns again and again. He could just as well be a Brahmin or a Buddha, preaching on the ravages of passion. Real love, not the morose morality play of sermonizing sinners, is what Goethe will extract from Faust. But first he must become a full-fledged sinner. Faust must know a deeper regret than what he felt for his patients who suffered and died under his benighted medieval medical practice. But I get ahead of my reading.
July 2
A dream last night. I had my little girl—born alive—and she was five years old. We were walking hand-in-hand down the street—it seemed like Berlin, but with everyone speaking Danish and all the signs in yet another language. But my little girl and I spoke German. Her name was Mai, for the month in which she was born, and it was spring again and the city was fresh and very pretty. Mai popped the question, “Where is my daddy?” just like that, entirely out of the blue, and I said “in heaven,” without thinking. I did not mean to suggest that he was dead (he may or may not be, for all I know), but to indicate that her only hope for paternal protection would come from above. We walked on. In the dream I had no misgivings and thought I had been clear. When I awoke I remembered all my losses.
Matt 19:1–12. “Some are neutered because they were born that way, and some are neutered because people neutered them, and some are neutered because they neutered themselves for the sake of heaven.” Jesus tells his disciples that whatever he or Moses has said about marriage or divorce at any given time is meant strictly for the understanding and situation of those to whom each was speaking. But in this short disquisition, it seems to me, he has covered all the possibilities. He has provided an anatomy of marital dispositions. The natural state, he argues on the authority of Genesis, is for a man to be united with a woman for life. Moses allowed divorce, he claims, on account of the hard-heartedness (we would say heartlessness) of the ancient Israelite men toward their women. (They were polygamous, like the Arabs today, I gather, though this is no proof of insensibility.) But the most interesting cases are represented by Jesus himself, who I do believe was celibate for the sake of his ministry (who in his right mind would marry and have children knowing his fate would be that of Jesus?); Paul, who I think was not suited to marriage from birth, being of the most extreme temperament; and people such as myself, and perhaps my master, ruined for marriage by what others have made of them. Certainly combinations of these categories are also possible. Luther began with Jesus and ended with Adam. It is a wonder the monastery did not ruin him for marriage.
Faust meets Margarete “in passing” and, in response to his gentlemanly courtesy, she drily responds that she is neither pretty nor a young lady,41 by which she does not mean to suggest she is no longer a virgin, but rather that she is not overly given to undue courtesy. She proves her point by being so curt with Faust, who is not the least bit deterred—on the contrary, he is charmed by her rudeness. Or rather her rusticity.
July 4
My master asked me today if I believed in equality. I answered, “I believe we are all equal before God.” He said somewhat impatiently, “Yes, of course. But does that translate into political equality?” I was so amazed that he would put such a serious question to me with the expectation that I would have an immediate answer, which I felt I would be called upon to justify in the very next moment, that I simply stared at him. He stared back. Knowing full well what a wealthy man would want to hear from a servant, I hedged with, “Not in reality.” He mimicked my words back to me, “Not in reality,” punctuated with another question, “but which reality?” “There is only one reality, Sir, in which we proceed to become what God has known us to have been from the beginning, as Saint Paul put it, neither Greek nor Jew, free nor slave, male nor female—neither marrying nor given in marriage. We are free to become what we are, but we will never be equal until we are capable of regarding one another in the light of God’s countenance.” He seemed taken aback at that, whether on account of agreement or disagreement I could not say.
Matt 19:13–15. The disciples think children are a waste of their master’s time, but Jesus thinks they are the heart of the matter: “of such is the heavenly kingdom.” Margarete says she is not a young lady, not because she is ill-bred or immoral, but because she is still a young girl, a child. True innocence is before all distinctions—of such is the heavenly kingdom.
July 5
Mrs. H. and I into the cooking wine this evening. Consolation for a failed meal, one of her rare opportunities to prove her worth in the kitchen missed. Or did the wine precede the culinary disaster? Our master was very forgiving—perhaps he sensed the cause. I am certain he partakes when he is out, whereas we go nowhere but to the market to supply his needs (and I on my walks with the dog). Mrs. H. is a widow whose children do not visit. Our master has become her surrogate son, and she worries about him as she would her own if she knew more of their doings. “Out of sight, out of mind”—true even for a mother.
Surprised by my master’s question yesterday, even more than he was by my response. He is opposed to all social leveling, as far as I can tell, and yet he seems to value the opinion of a servant, or at least wants to hear it. Perhaps just taking the pulse of the people.
Matt 19:16–26. Jesus tells the rich young man, “If you want to be complete, go and sell what you have, and give it to the poor . . . When the young man heard this, he went away troubled, for he had many goods.” My master’s goods are many, and he values them greatly. Does this make him a hypocrite? Is my relative poverty necessarily a spiritual boon? Never mind how I came by my poverty, but to inherit one’s wealth as my master did seems so innocent. He has not devoted his education or adult life to the pursuit of wealth, but rather to understanding. I will not say knowledge or reputation, because these things are vexed and his approach to them has been sidelong. Better yet, he seeks wisdom. Solomon exhorts rulers to wisdom, for “a harsh judgment will be held over the powerful.”42 How odd my master conducts himself as a weak person when