Des Geklimpers vielverworrener Töne Rausch: Die metrische Gestaltung in Goethes "Faust" (review)

Goethe Yearbook 319 "bless me" and ending it with "old greybeard farts"; the equation of nächst with next in 8668 ("reflecting on / The King's next order" for "Der nächsten Pflicht gedenkend"—i.e., mindful of my [Helen is the speaker] immediate responsibifity); 8874 "This is a superstition of dark-tangled sense" for "Verwirre wüsten Sinnes Aberwitz nicht gar"; 9498 "rewarding his prince with gratitude" for "dem Herrscher zu lohnendem Dank" (i.e., gaining liberal thanks from his prince); 9870 "I was not bom here as a child" for "nicht ein Kind bin ich erschienen"—spoken in Arcadia by Arcadian-born Euphorion—is an Irish bull never before perpetrated in any of the dozens oÃ- Faust translations I have read; and 11675 "genius, too— that must soar up somehow" for "das Genie, es will gleich obenaus" (here generification changes spiritual essence into intellectual talent). There are a few errors and misprints that should be corrected in the next printing oÃ- Faust Part Two: 4637 should end with a full stop (the verbs 4638ff, now third-person singular in the translation, can then be made imperatives to match the German text); 7690 "what wonders are downstream" would be better "that wonder tiiere downstream" (in 7691 Abenteuer is singular); 8591 for our readyour; 9313 for so great a read so a great, 9663 tor patron—rendpatron- (to preserve the elegant synzpheia patron-Sprite); 10018 tor flirting (faselnd)—since there is no lexicographic authority for the translation—conjecturally read fluting; letzt seems to have been misread as kurz when 10333f "eine Memme ... Fass' ich bei ihren letzten Haaren" (referring to the—traditionally long—outflown hair of any fleeing coward) is englished as "I'll have him ... by the short hairs"; for Lemurs (from after 11150 until II6IO) read Lémures, since only lemur has the plural lemurs; before 11676 tor A flash of glory read A glory (or, for greater clarity , Heaven opens in a circle of light). Santa Barbara, California Stuart Atkins Markus Ciupke, Des Geklimpers vielverworrener Töne Rausch: Die metrische Gestaltung in Goetiies "Faust." Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 1994. 307 pp. This volume, an amplification of observations on the metrics of Faust made for use in die commentary of FA 7.2, is meant for "den sowohl in der Metrik als auch im Faust... noch relativ unbewanderten Leser" to read scene by scene with that text rather than as an independent monograph. Its author's scrupulous recognition of the contributions to his topic of predecessors as various as Kurt May, Alexander Hohlfeld, Eduard Prokosch, Albert Fuchs, and Erich Trunz makes it valuable as a Forschungsbericht. Although its 105-page appendix chiefly comprises a glossary of metrical terms, an index of their occurrence, a Literaturverzeichnis , and a one-item discography (Grundgens's production), it also contains tables (pp. 207-35) that can help—even if one does not accept Ciupke's metrical classifications or his terminology—the scholar or critic to determine what verse forms occur in Faust (a) sequentially by line number, (b) by descending order of frequency in each Part (with sub-listing by line numbers for Präludien, Gelehrten-Tragödie, Gretchen-Tragödie, and each act of Part TT), and (c) simply as totals for frequency and distribution with the addition of totals for the whole text. There is also a two-page Verzeichnis der eingerückten Verse in FA 7.2 from which it can be calculated that 8843 lines are unambiguously "reine 320 Book Reviews Sprechverse"; less clear is the distinction between "Lied- und Liedstrophenverse" and "Lyrische (= eingerückte) Sprech- und Sprechstrophenverse," inasmuch as under the former one finds 3374-3413 which, in the absence of any stagedirection to the contrary, must—as Fuchs (here adduced by Ciupke) actually insists —belong with die latter, and under the latter 11926-33 which, containing the injunction "singet," must belong under the former. Ciupke's close reading of Faust from a metrical viewpoint lets him persuasively demonstrate how Mephistopheles is heard to adapt his speech rhythm to that of another speaker φ. 60), how classicity is a governing principle for all of Part Î (no surprise to those of us who have failed to find evidence of...