The first “Night” scene in Faust I, set in a “high-vaulted narrow Gothic room.” As Karl Barth has noted, Goethe classed Christianity among “the four annoyances, ‘tobacco-smoke, bugs, garlic, and +’” (Barth, CD 3/2:240). Unlike Nietzsche though, Goethe is credited by Barth with knowing “when to stop” criticizing Christianity (Barth, CD 3/2:232).
6. Faust I, “In Front of the [City] Gate.”
7. The English idiom is “out of the frying pan into the fire.”
8. Magda’s pun is carried over from the German Wohlstand (prosperity) and Wohlsein (well-being).
9. Beschimpfung (insult or affront) and Unverschämtheit (impudence or effrontery).
10. Faust I, “In Front of the Gate.” The German Bürger is a citizen or city-dweller, bourgeois in French.
11. Luke 18:1–8, the parable of the persistent widow. The theme of perseverance in prayer is picked up by Paul (Rom 12:12; Col 4:2; 1 Thess 5:17).
12. William Congreve, The Mourning Bride (1697).
13. Herod Antipas, first-century Tetrarch of Galilee, was the son of the Idumenean Herod the Great and a Samaritan woman, Samaria being the former capital of the Northern Kingdom of Israel—thus Magda’s assertion that Herod Antipas had some Jewish ancestry.
14. “O du Kleingläubiger, warum zweifeltest du?” (Matt 14:31b, BLRT).
15. In her eagerness to poke fun at Peter’s name, which is Greek for stone, Magda has overlooked the fact that Jesus called Peter out of the boat (albeit at Peter’s prompting), and she has mistakenly attributed to Peter the ambition of James and John revealed in an episode from Matt 20 and Mark 10.
16. Kierkegaard called his frequent trips out of town in hired coaches, going at “an extremely fast pace,” “air-baths” (Garff citing Israel Levin, Kierkegaard, 478). The Hongs list thirty-six such outings in 1847, mostly day trips, not including visits to the home of his brother Peter Christian (Kierkegaard, Journals 5:548).
17. Faust I, “[Faust’s] Study.”
18. Ibid.
19. Karl Barth has commented on this interaction as an exemplary instance of “taking Jesus at his word” (Barth, CD 1/1:177).
20. “Der Mensch gewöhnt sich an alles.”
21. Kierkegaard, a variant spelling of the Danish for “churchyard,” refers more precisely to the church graveyard.
22. John 1:4–5.
23. An allusion to the parable of the good Samaritan, Luke 10:25–37.
24. “Confession” is meant here in the sense of profession of faith.
25. Faust I, “Auerbach’s Cellar.”
26. An allusion to Dante’s Inferno 1.1–3: “In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost” (Alighieri, Inferno, 23).
27. The poisoned rat, object of cruel fun in one of Mephistopheles’ drinking songs, is likened to Luther. Magda extends the analogy to Faust.
28. Matt 17:20: “ho de legei autois : dia ten oligopistian humon : amen gar lego humin, ean exete pistin hos kokkon sinapeos, ereite to orei touto : metaba enthev ekei, kai metabesetai : kai ouden adunatesei humin” (NovT) [He said to them, “Because of your little faith. Amen, I say to you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you” (NAB)]. Magda is struggling to make sense of Luther’s mistranslation, oligopistian [littlebelief] as unglauben [unbelief] (LBVN), which has since been corrected to read Kleinglauben (BLRT). Cf. Matt 14:31b, where Luther’s translation is consistent with the Greek and Magda has no difficulty (June 10 entry, n. 13).
29. Phil 1:13–17, 21, 23, and 24. Todeslust is a longing for death distinct from the Freudian “death wish” (Todeswünsch).
30. This rich Christian and chivalric concept has no adequate English counterpart, though its simplest meaning is “clear.” Other possibilities for Phil 1:10, 17; and 2:12–14 (following) are pure, sincere, and genuine.
31. Faust I, the tavern scene referenced in Magda’s June 20 entry.
32. Zinsgroschen in the first complete Luther Bible (LBVN), meaning tribute money. Magda has converted the concept into actual currency, the Zweigroschenstück, anticipating the revised Luther Bible (BLRT).
33. Ps 139:13–16.
34. Clarissa Harlowe, protagonist of Samuel Richardson’s 1747–48 novel of Sensibility, Clarissa. Magda would have had access to the eighteenth-century Göttingen editions translated by Johann David Michaelis.
35. When asked by a scribe what is the greatest of God’s commandments to Moses, Jesus answers first out of Deuteronomy, “you shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength” (NAB). He then adds a commandment from Leviticus: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (NAB). Magda adds a pair of New Testament imperatives regarding children, which appear in all three Synoptic Gospels, but not in John (Deut 6:5; Lev 19:18; cf. Mark 12:28–34; Matt 22:35–40; Luke 10:25–28).
36. John 10:14–15.
37.
