Goethe’s Mephistopheles ruminates on FaustGoethe’s Mephistopheles (In Faust’s long gown.)Reason and Science you despise,Man’s highest powers: now the liesOf the deceiving spirit must bind youWith those magic arts that blind you,And I’ll have you, totally – Fate gave him such a spiritIt urges him ever onwards, wildly,And, in his hasty striving, he has leapt Beyond all earth’s ecstasies.I’ll drag him through raw life, Through the meaningless and shallow,I’ll freeze him: stick to him: keep him ripe,Frustrate his insatiable greed, allowFood and drink to drift before his eyes:In vain he’ll beg for consummation, And if he weren’t the devil’s, whyHe’d still go to his ruination!Pasted from <http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/German/FaustIScenesIVtoVI.htm>
The legend of Faust from the Renaissance times. The end of civilization.