natematias · November 12, 2013 16:26
diff --git a/gistfile1.txt b/gistfile1.txt
 Faust, by now aged and blind all over again, gives orders for thousands of workers to be summoned to dig canals and drain the marshes. His brain, senile for the second time and-- or so the cynic Mephistopheles thinks -- crazed and clouded, is aglow with a grand idea: to make mankind happy. At a signal from Mephistopheles, hell's servants appear and start digging Faust's grave. Mephistopheles has lost all hope of winning his soul and simply wants to bury him, to be rid of him. Faust hears the sound of many shovels. "What is that?" he asks. The spirit of mockery has not deserted Mephistopheles. He paints Faust a false picture of the draining of the marshes. Soviet critics like to interpret this passage in the spirit of socialist optimism: As they would have it, Faust, feeling that he has benefited mankind, and finding in this his supreme joy, exclaims: "Stay, fleeting moment, thou art beautiful!" But we have to ask ourselves whether Goethe was not ridiculing the idea of human happiness. Because in reality nothing whatsoever has been done for mankind. Faust pronounces the long-awaited sacramental phrase one step from the grave, deluded and perhaps truly insane, and the lemurs immediately hustle him into the hole. Is this Goethe's hymn to happiness, or is he ridiculing it?"

 (from In the First Circle, uncensored edition, published by Harper Collins, chapter 8)
 (conversation at #1book140, http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/category/1book140/)
	Faust, by now aged and blind all over again, gives orders for thousands of workers to be summoned to dig canals and drain the marshes. His brain, senile for the second time and-- or so the cynic Mephistopheles thinks -- crazed and clouded, is aglow with a grand idea: to make mankind happy. At a signal from Mephistopheles, hell's servants appear and start digging Faust's grave. Mephistopheles has lost all hope of winning his soul and simply wants to bury him, to be rid of him. Faust hears the sound of many shovels. "What is that?" he asks. The spirit of mockery has not deserted Mephistopheles. He paints Faust a false picture of the draining of the marshes. Soviet critics like to interpret this passage in the spirit of socialist optimism: As they would have it, Faust, feeling that he has benefited mankind, and finding in this his supreme joy, exclaims: "Stay, fleeting moment, thou art beautiful!" But we have to ask ourselves whether Goethe was not ridiculing the idea of human happiness. Because in reality nothing whatsoever has been done for mankind. Faust pronounces the long-awaited sacramental phrase one step from the grave, deluded and perhaps truly insane, and the lemurs immediately hustle him into the hole. Is this Goethe's hymn to happiness, or is he ridiculing it?"

	(from In the First Circle, uncensored edition, published by Harper Collins, chapter 8)
	(conversation at #1book140, http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/category/1book140/)