☆NO 85 Witch's Kitchen and The Heaven’s Events.
This painting is based on John 1:5, The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
However, the subject matter is not from the Bible, but from the Witch's Kitchen in Part I and the final scene in Part II of Faust, a play by the German author Goethe based on the Bible.
The story of Faust is about an astrologer and impostor named Georg Faust who existed in the 16th century and used all kinds of magic in collusion with the devil to deceive people, which Goethe saw in a puppet show when he was a child.
Goethe added a new heroine, Margarete (Gratchen), to this well-worn folk drama and made it a world-famous masterpiece.
I chose this play on the theme for this painting because it uses the Bible as its main theme.
First, at the beginning of the play, when Faust meets the demon Mephistopheles, there is a scene in which he translates the first verse of the first chapter of John's Gospel into German.
Instead of translating this important verse, he mistakenly translates it as "In the beginning was the action," instead of translating it literally.
This self-serving restatement of God's word is similar to Eve's response to the serpent in Genesis 3, where in verse 1 the serpent asks the woman to confirm her knowledge: “Has God said, you shall not eat of every tree of the garden?”
And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, you shall not eat of it, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.”
But God says to Adam, chapter 2, verses 16 and 17. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it: for in the day that you eat thereof you shall surely die.“
The difference is that God did not say, " Neither shall you touch it. Therefore, the wise serpent hears Eve's words and realizes that she is not hearing the Word of God in person.
And the serpent said unto the woman, "You shall not die. For God knows that in the day you eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”
And the woman who had not heard the word of God in person saw that the tree was indeed good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and desirable to make one wise.
So, she took it of her own accord and ate, and she also gave it to her husband with her, and he ate.
This is the moment when original sin (falling away from the Word of God) entered the human, which is repeatedly mentioned in the Bible.
Goethe uses this story directly in the encounter between Faust and Mephistopheles.
Immediately after departing by his will from the Word of God, Mephistopheles appears as a shaggy dog in the study.
But since his essence is a serpent, I have drawn a serpent above his head.
Then he makes a wager with this old scholar who has strayed from the path of God.
The wager is whether Faust, after all his deeds, faces one moment and says, "Stay on the moment, you are so beautiful.”
Then, it happens, Mephistopheles can Faust tie up. Then he shall be Mephistopheles‘s slave, in return, he shall be Faust’s servant until then.
So, Goethe has Mephistopheles introduce himself by saying, "I am part of a force that always desires evil and always does good."
Thereof he can walk with Faust, who is not all evil but part of the good, and who will seek to do good deeds in the future.
Mephistopheles then immediately goes to the Witch's kitchen to show Faust the beautiful fruit that had charmed Eva.
There, he rejuvenates Faust with a witch's potion to give him the power to act.
At that moment, Faust sees a vision of a beautiful woman in the smoke rising from the witch's kitchen and says, "Eros, lend me your swiftest wings and take me to her at once. Is there anything so beautiful on earth?”
is a perfect illustration of how Faust, having mistranslated God's words, "In the beginning was the action," and how his rejuvenated body is ready to take action at once.
Mephistopheles, who has been in darkness since the beginning of Genesis, when the earth was a vast nothingness, and has seen God's creation, replies, "Of course it exists.
God labored for six days in creation, and at the end, he exclaimed, ‘Excellent!’ So, there must be something a little smart about it.
For now, please look at it until you fully enjoy it. I'm sure I'll find you a pretty girl like that soon."
I one hundred percent agree with these words. The reason why the human race has been able to exist to this day, even though the wages of sin is death, is because women are beautiful and able to bear children, which is nothing but a blessing from God who created women.
So Faust, caught up in his young lust, seduces Margarete, a pretty girl he meets in the city, as Mephistopheles had intended, and together they stray from the path of God, and both strive toward tragedy.
I used Goethe himself as the model for Faust because Faust is his masterpiece, which he devoted himself to writing for sixty years from his twenties to his deathbed.
Now, to explain this painting, the two long-tailed monkeys represent the real world.
The caldron over the fire contains a thin porridge, which Goethe refers to in a letter to Schiller as this beggar's porridge to entertain the German masses.
In other words, this thin gruel is an indication of a boring, empty, and drab popular novel.
One of them is licking it with relish. In other words, it shows that the masses who like frivolous entertainment novels are monkeys.
The other is playing with a globe. This represents a rich globalist who will do anything for his pleasure.
The globe is made of glass, and the monkey is so absorbed in his play that he eventually drops it and breaks it.
The bottle held by the witch on the far left contains a potion for rejuvenation.
The witches know that the potion works and are itching to see the results as soon as possible.
Margarete is then caught in prison for accidentally causing the death of her mother with a sleeping potion given to her by Faust for a secret meeting, and for drowning the child she had with him.
She says, “He is dragging me to the dreaded beheading table, The white blade glints around my neck will send a chill down the necks of those who are watching.”
This line came from the true story. The execution of Suzanne Margareta Brandt, a crime of infanticide, took place in January 1772, just a few blocks from Goethe's house.
On the morning of Margarete’s execution, when Faust comes to her rescue, she refuses to run away with Mephistopheles and entrusts everything to God, saying, "Lord, I am your servant. Save me.”
And with these words, she disappears into the dew of the execution site.
At this moment, Goethe gives Faust a new name, Heinrich. He begins the second part, in which he must break away from the legendary Faust and create his image of Faust.
The second part of the tragedy consists of five acts and is a long story, so I will skip the middle of it to the final scene.
Faust, who has done all the good and evil in the world, is now an old man, living in a palace as a reward for saving his country from financial difficulties, but he asks Mephistopheles to evict the old couple because he wants to make the house surrounded by lime trees where they live his villa.
This is based on the Old Testament story of Ahab asking his wife Isabel to take over Naboth's vineyard in 1 Kings 21.
Through a mistake, the coals catch fire on the straw, and the old couple is burned to death.
As Faust is grieving over their deaths, four women named Lack, Sin, Sorrow, and Suffering arrive, three of whom leave, and only Sorrow remains.
Faust says to sorrow, " I have gone through the world. And I have pulled the hair of their head for every pleasure by.
And I have known the world. But, O sorrow! I will not at all recognize your great power that quietly sneaks up on me.”
But sorrow leaves, saying, " People are blind all their lives. So be blind, too.”
So, Faust becomes blind. But just then, a bright light shines in his heart.
He begins to envision an ideal world in his mind and starts to work on its construction.
Mephistopheles, on the other hand, knows that Faust has gone blind and that his life is about to end, so he orders the spirits of the dead to dig Faust's grave.
Faust, who is blind, thinks Mephistopheles is the construction site's foreman and tells him to gather all the help he can and complete the work.
He is no longer a despairing old man obsessed with melancholy but sees hope in a new earth, a life of abundance for his people.
Even the sound of shovels digging the graves of the dead sounds like joy.
Faust wants to live in a land of freedom with free people, dreaming of completing an ideal world.
He calls out, " Stay, you are so beautiful," as he faces that moment.
And fall into the arms of the spirits of the dead.
Mephistopheles sees this and murmurs: " Poor man, trying to hold on to his last, dull, dreary moment. He disobeyed me very hard, but he still couldn't beat nature's 'time'”.
He naturally thought he had won the bet. But then something odd happened to Mephistopheles.
He says, "The body has collapsed, and the spirit is trying to escape. I must hurry and show him the testimony he wrote in blood.
It is a problem in this day and age, for there are many ways to snatch the spirit out of the hands of the devil."
He is unable to capture the spirit that escapes from Faust's body. This is because, as the Bible said, darkness did not comprehend the light.
Mephistopheles, by the way, means to abhor light, and his abode was darkness.
Faust, on the other hand, who had been wandering between light and darkness, found a ray of hope in his heart thanks to his blindness, and fell into that light so that Mephistopheles, who could not comprehend the light, could no longer find him.
In this painting, the Word of God separates light from darkness.
So, was Faust saved? His behavior on earth was terrible.
First, he stabbed Margarete's brother to death when he interfered with their meeting, then he gave her a sleeping potion that caused her mother to die of poisoning, which drove her mad and she drowned their child, for which she went to the beheading.
In the second part of the story, Mephistopheles, in his wisdom, rescues the country, and later, Faust takes over the home of an elderly couple who live a luxurious life and still live in peace, sending them to their deaths because of his greed.
Finally, blinded by his eyesight, he commands Mephistopheles to create in his mind a utopia in which all people would live in abundance.
This is an ironic ending since he was never satisfied by his deeds, and as soon as he lost the light of the world, he found a ray of hope in the darkness.
However, Goethe, as expected, felt that his readers would not sympathize with him if were to save Faust so easily and easily, so he came up with a secret plan that is uniquely his own.
He came up with a radical and secret plan that was typical of him: to change Faust while he was being raised to heaven.
Goethe, who was also a natural scientist, applied the phenomenon of metamorphosis from caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly to Faust.
As a playwright, I think this is a wonderful visual effect. The cocoon ball is suspended by silk threads by young angels.
He also introduced Mary, the mother of Jesus. Faust, who has become a butterfly, is attracted by the scent of the roses she gives off.
Margarete, too, is drawn to Mary. And says, “The Virgin, who shines in the light of the day, looks graciously upon me and sees how happy I am. The One whom I longed for so long ago has returned, without a trace of obscurity.”
Mary also replies, "Come, let us go higher into the sky. Go on, ascend higher, for he will also ascend with you, feeling you faintly.”
The doctor who praises Mary as the Queen of Heaven also appears. It is surprising to me that this scene was written in the German language that gave birth to Luther.　
The structure of the second part is like a huge Catholic church, with all kinds of elements.
So, from a Catholic point of view, everything seems to perfectly foreshadow Faust's salvation, but the important thing is the Word of God.
As Luther said, “Works do not save one.”
Mary can also lead Faust high above the heavens, but she cannot save him. She is not God.
In this second part, the angels chant, "Whatsoever works hard, we can save.”
This is sung in high spirits as the main theme, but as one who is led by the Holy Spirit, one must depict the will of God.
So, to find out Goethe's true meaning, I paid attention to the closing words of this play.
The last line of the play ends with the mystical chorus singing, “All that perishes is a metaphor.
The unreachable has been accomplished; the unspeakable has become fact. The eternal woman leads us to the high sky."
Goethe ended the play with the glowing words of the mystical chorus, and I feel led by the Spirit to say that this glowing is the same as Margarete's words in prison.
" The white blade glint around my neck will send a chill down the necks of those who are watching. "
In other words, the original meaning of the chorus of the mystery is that all of us, sinners and saved alike, are equally lifted to heaven and can go to the gates of heaven, but just because we are invited here does not mean we are saved, and beyond that is left in the hands of the mystery, God.
And we all meet Jesus there.　
Matthew chapter 7 verse 21 says, “Not everyone who says to Me,’ Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven.
And Jesus said, (Matthew chapter 22.) “The kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who arranged a marriage for his son and sent out servants to call those who were not willing to come.
He said to his servants, ‘The wedding is ready, but those who were invited are not worthy. ‘Therefore go into the highways, and as many as you find, invite to the wedding.’ “
So those servants went out into the highways and gathered together all whom they found, both bad and good.
And the wedding hall was filled with guests. “But when the king came in to see the guests, he saw a man there who did not have on a wedding garment. “
So he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you come in without a wedding garment? And he was speechless.
“Then the king said to servants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ “For many are called, but few are chosen.”
Margarete was saved by confessing her faith, "I am a servant of the Lord (Jesus).”
That is why she wears a white robe. This is the garment of all those who will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
Faust, on the other hand, who came out of a cocoon ball, does not have it.
The unspeakable has become a fact, and what is sung about is that Faust will be punished by God and cast down from heaven.
For Goethe, who always said that those who strive will be saved, it is hard to say that Faust, his alter ego, will be cast into hell.
However, it seems that it was also Goethe who wished for this to happen in the end.
As a young man, Goethe was suicidal and created "Werther," and by having him kill himself, he survived. In his later years, records show that he was plagued by constant anxiety and melancholy.
I believe, however, that he was relieved of his worries by using his last strength to cast Faust, his alter ego, into hell, completing and sealing the story.
He was a great playwright and a great admirer of Shakespeare. Then the tragedy must end in tragedy, and it is the reader, the audience, who must be saved from the lesson of the tragedy.
His last words are reported to have been "More light.” We do not know if he said this in the darkness or if he was surrounded by light and still asked for a light. God knows. Amen.
　

June 2024　Oil 910mm×1167mm
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