Night

Midnight in Faust's Gothic study. He opens the scene with his famous inventory of futility: philosophy, jurisprudence, medicine, theology — all of it mastered, all of it insufficient. He has nothing to teach, cannot heal anything, has no possessions. He has burnt through every discipline the medieval university offers and concludes he knows nothing. "Poor fool that I am, no wiser than before." He looks at the moon, at the books, at the instruments crowded around him, and feels the prison of it.

He opens a book of signs and finds the sign of the Macrocosm — a vision of the universe in ordered activity — beautiful, but he cannot touch it, only behold. He turns to the Earth Spirit and invokes it; it appears in fire. He addresses it as a being near to his own kind. The Earth Spirit is contemptuous: "You are like the spirit you conceive, not me!" It vanishes. His assistant Wagner knocks and enters, speaking cheerfully about how much he enjoys his scholarly work, how satisfying it is to unroll an old parchment. The contrast with Faust's inner storm is comic and exact. Wagner leaves.

Faust, alone, takes the vial of poison from the shelf. He addresses it almost tenderly. This, at least, will be a transition — from one world to another. He raises it. The Easter bells begin outside, and the choir sings of Christ's resurrection. He stops. He cannot drink — not because he believes, but because the sound carries memory: childhood, holidays, the feeling of faith before he understood what faith required. He weeps. The poison is put away. He will greet the Easter morning instead.