Before CHAPTER VI THE BATTLE FOR DELIVERANCE FROM THE MOTHER
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Jung, C. G. (Carl Gustav) and Hinkle, Beatrice M.
Faust’s desire, like that of every hero, inclines towards the mysteries of rebirth, of immortality; therefore, his course leads to the sea, and down into the monstrous jaws of death, the horror and narrowness of which at the same time signify the new day.
“Out on the open ocean speeds my dreaming:
The glassy flood before my feet is gleaming,
A new day beckons to a newer shore!
A fiery chariot borne on buoyant pinions,
Sweeps near me now! I soon shall ready be
To pierce the ether’s high, unknown dominions,
To reach new spheres of pure activity!
This Godlike rapture, this supreme existence....
· · · · ·
“Yes, let me dare those gates to fling asunder,
Which every man would fain go slinking by!
’Tis time, through deeds this word of truth to thunder;
That with the height of God’s Man’s dignity may vie!
Nor from that gloomy gulf to shrink affrighted,
Where fancy doth herself to self-born pangs compel,—
To struggle toward that pass benighted,
Around whose narrow mouth flame all the fires of Hell:—
To take this step with cheerful resolution,
Though Nothingness should be the certain swift conclusion!”
It sounds like a confirmation, when the succeeding vision of Miss Miller’s is une falaise à pic, “a steep, precipitous cliff.” (Compare gouffre.) The entire series of individual visions is completed, as the author observes, by a confusion of sounds, somewhat resembling “wa-ma, wa-ma.” This has a very primitive, barbaric sound. Since we learn from the author nothing of the subjective roots of this sound, nothing is left us but the suspicion that this sound might be considered, taken in connection with the whole, as a slight mutilation of the well-known call ma-ma.