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The third Act of Faust 2, is a formal celebration of the union between the Germanic and the classic, between the spirit of Euripides and that of romantic drama.
The motif of Faust's love for Helen of Troy goes back to the sources of the Faustian legend.
It tells us of the ancient human desire to see the highest wisdom joined to the highest sensual beauty.
There can be no greater magic than to wrest from death her in whom the flesh was all, in whom beauty was entirely pure because it was entirely corruptible.
It is thus that the brightness of Helen passes through Marlowe's Faustus.
Goethe used the fable to more elaborate ends.
Faust rescuing Helen from Menelaus' vengeance is the genius of renaissance Europe restoring to life the classic tradition.
The necromantic change from the palace at Sparta to Faust's Gothic castle directs us to the aesthetic meaning of the myth -- the translation of antique drama into Shakespearean and romantic guise.
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