/lit/ - Literature

FAUST:
Your real being no less than your fame
Is often shown, sirs, by your name,
Which is not hard to analyze
When one calls you the Liar, Destroyer, God of Flies.
Enough, who are you then?
MEPHISTO.:
Part of that force which would
Do evil evermore, and yet creates the good.
FAUST:
What is it that this puzzle indicates?
MEPHISTO:
I am the spirit that negates.
And rightly so, for all that comes to be
Deserves to perish wretchedly;
'Twere better nothing would begin.
Thus everything that your terms, sin,
Destruction, evil represent—
That is my proper element.
FAUST:
You call yourself a part, yet whole make your
debut?
MEPHISTO:
The modest truth I speak to you.
While man, this tiny world of fools, is droll
Enough to think himself a whole,
I am part of the part that once was everything,
Part of the darkness which gave birth to light,
That haughty light which envies mother night
Her ancient rank and place and would be king—
Yet it does not succeed: however it contend,
It sticks to bodies in the end.
It streams from bodies, it lends bodies beauty,
A body won't let it progress;
So it will not take long, I guess,
And with the bodies it will perish, too.
FAUST:
I understand your noble duty:
Too weak for great destruction, you
Attempt it on a minor scale.