Yahtzee Fill: Poetry: Ambitious: Gen

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Title: Ambitious
Fandom: Faust [Goethe]
Form: Terza rima
Rating: Gen
Length 100
No. of lines: 14
Prompt: Ambitious

In Gothic chamber sits ambitious Faust,
a scholar, apt, but restless, ill at ease;
he spars with Life in wild, pernicious joust

until he calls up Mephistopheles.
A bargain’s driven home. A pact is signed.
They set about, a pair of circus fleas,

performing tricks and sucking blood divined.
When draught from witch’s pot is drained,
the learned Doctor finds his soul consigned

to beastly woo. He leaves poor Gretchen chained
to darkness, lunacy, dishonour, strife,
and then advances down a path most pained.

At last, Faust winnows wheat from chaff most rife:
his striving wins salvation, not his life.

Comments

[smallhobbit]

Ooh, very clever!

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Thank you!

This is part of my research for my Faust femlock AU. I hadn't read Goethe's Faust before and I have to say that for inspiration purposes, I prefer Marlowe's. I think the reasons Faust makes his bargain jibe better with what I am thinking about for my Sherlock. But still I was good to have read it (and listened to it) and known exactly what it was about (rather than just vague notions of a pact with the devil).

[ancientreader]

"A scholar apt, but restless, ill at ease" -- that's just great. And I am in awe of your skill at finding unforced rhymes -- years ago I read someplace (and what do you know, Wikipedia backs up my memory) that whereas terza rima comes naturally to Italian, it's very difficult in English, owing to the relative paucity of rhyming words.

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Aw. Thank you so much! It's like that with most forms, Italian, French, Japanese. You try to play by the rules, then sort of fiddle with it when it doesn't quite fit.

[debriswoman]

Nicely done, and chilling.

[stonepicnicking_okapi]

Thank you very much!