Page:The Theme of the Joseph Novels.djvu/20

 whose contemplation keeps him in the right mood, and which he seeks to emulate. All, that can be of no help, does not fit, has no reference to the subject,—is hygienically excluded,—it is not conducive at the moment and therefore disallowed. Well then, such strengthening reading during the last Joseph years was provided by two books: Laurence Sterne's "Tristam Shandy" and Goethe's "Faust"—a perplexing combination; but each of the two heterogeneous works had its particular function as a stimulant, and in this connection it was a pleasure for me to know that Goethe had held Sterne in very high esteem, and had called him one of the finest intellects who had ever lived.

Naturally, it was the humorous side of the "Joseph" which profited by this reading. Sterne's wealth of humorous expressions and inventions, his genuine, comical technique attracted me; for to refresh my work I needed something like this. And then, Goethe's "Faust," this life's work and linguistic monument developed from tender, lyrical germ-cell, this enormous mixture of magic opera and mankind's tragedy, of puppet-show and cosmic poem. Time and again I returned to this inexhaustible source,—especially to the second part, to the Helena scenes, the classical Walpurgis Night; and this fixation, this insatiable admiration indicated the secret immodesty of my own endeavors, they revealed the direction in which the ambition of the Joseph story pointed,—its own; for the author, as usual, had at the outset been quite innocent of such ambition.

"Faust" is a symbol of humanity, and to become something like that in my hands was the clandestine tendency of the Joseph story. I told about beginnings, where everything came into being for the first time. That was the attractive novelty, the uncommon amusement of this kind of fable [16]