Excerpt from Americana Germanica, Vol. 3: A Quarterly Devoted to the Comparative Study of the Literary, Linguistic and Other Cultural Relations of Germany and America; 1899-1900 It must certainly be regarded as a curious fact that that very scene of the Classical Walpurgis-Night, which seems to have been conceived first of all, and was the principal cause for the composition of the whole Night, should finally neither have found a place in the second nor in the third act of Goethe's Faust. Various explanations of this have been advanced. Loeper supposed that Goethe convinced himself that the scene might dramatically be dispensed with. But we now know that Goethe clung to it until after he had finished the entire Walpurgis-Night. Veit Valentin maintains: die strenge Folgerichtigkeit seiner Entwickelung der Handlung verbot es ihm (Goethe), in die durch Zauber fur eine Nacht lebendig gewordene Geisterwelt eine Handlung einzuschalten, die in der mit bleibendem Dasein ausgestatteten natiirlichen Wirklichkeit der antiken Gotterwelt vor sich gehen miisste. Yet an examination of the schemes and sketches shows that Goethe never thought of inserting the scene into the Night, but always intended to put it at its close. Richard Meyer says: der gealterte Dichter traute sich dann doch die Kraft dieser Rede (Fausts vor Proserpina) nicht mehr zu, an explanation to which one should only resort after all others have failed. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.