November 08, 2024
Letter

Famous last words

Katherine Heidinger (BDN, Feb. 19) is incorrect; the last words of Goethe’s “Faust” are not “More light,” but eight lines from a “Chorus mysticus.” The lines rhyme in German. In rough translation, the last two lines, the very last words, are, “The eternal feminine draws us on.”

Goethe’s dying words are supposed to have been “Mehr Licht,” or more plausibly if less dramatically, the German for, “Open the second shutter too, so that more light can come in.”

Marty Hrynick

Benedicta


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