`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
-Percy Bysshe Shelley, 'Ozymandias'
Wer immer strebend sich bemüht,
Den können wir erlösen.
("Who ever strives with all his power,
We are allowed to save.")
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust
In
Faust, the name of the game is passion. Passion for learning, passion for love, passion for life in all its forms and facets. The deprivation of passion by the slow grind of facts and figures and hypocrisy, the boons of inheritance providing shortcuts without granting the necessary experience of true effort, and excess. When the world is at one's feet, what is there left for passion to strive for?
But until then, what will you do to achieve that world?
It's an almost impossible balance, especially when the rest of the world is thrown in at full tilt. The passion becomes split, and when one track is spent the next is sought, and the next, and the next, by any means to any measure. One may wish at the beginning to be good, but when the so-called custodians of morality sell it by the yard for a varying price, and all the esteem generated by the straight and narrow pales in comparison to the smallest glimpse of moonlit wraith, well. One must consider the odds when the devil comes a calling.
On the one hand, your wish at the immortal's command. On the other, all the ramifications of those wishes, bound as they are in a reality of finite glory, finite justice, finite truth. To go forth enraptured in the potential, and in the end consigning everything outside of that potential to the flames.
Now, who among you would proclaim yourselves worthy of judging just how far one can go?
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Now, as this is
Faust we're talking about, I know this first reading was nowhere near good enough to exempt me from future rereadings. Also, the German language is one that I am intent on mastering, and what better piece to work towards than one of, if not
the, pillars of German literature? So, until we meet again, Mephisto, preferably on a span of stage that does full honors to your Walpurgisnacht. I'm very much looking forward to it.