When, in the
teeth of his protestations, Jesus pursued his mission and was finally
condemned to death, Ahasuerus would only have hard words for his
folly. Judas was then to be represented as entering the workshop and
explaining that his act of treachery had been intended to force Jesus
to become the national deliverer and declare himself king, but Judas
receives no comfort from Ahasuerus, and straightway takes his own
life. Then was to follow the scene retailed in the legend--Jesus
fainting at Ahasuerus's door on his way to death; Simon the Cyrenian
relieving him of the burden of the Cross; the reproaches of Ahasuerus
addressed to the Saviour for neglecting his counsel; the transfigured
features on the handkerchief of St. Veronica; and the words of the
Lord dooming his stiff-necked gainsayer to wander to and fro on earth
till his second coming. As the subsequent narrative was to be
developed, it was to illustrate the outstanding events in the history
of Christianity--one incident in the experience of the Wanderer marked
for treatment being an interview with Spinoza.
In concluding the sketch of the poem as he originally conceived it,
Goethe remarks that he found he had neither the knowledge nor the
concentration of purpose necessary for its adequate treatment; and in
point of fact, in the fragment as it exists there is little
suggestion of the original conception.
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