At the end of Faust Part I, there comes a moment that would have met the terms of Faust’s wager with Mephisto in a surprising way. Recall the wager:
If the swift moment I entreat
Tarry a while! You are so fair!
Then forge the shackles to my feet,
Then I will gladly perish there!
Then let them toll the passing bell,
Then of your servitude be free,
The clock may stop, its hands fall still
And time be over then for me. (1699-1706, Arndt)
In the final scene of Part I, Faust is in the dungeon with Gretchen, urging her to escape. Mephisto tells Faust they must not delay:
Up! Or you risk your ruin!
Unmanly mutter! Vain chatter and putter!
My stallions shudder,
The night is ending. (4597-4600, Arndt)
Gretchen then tells Faust to send Mephisto away, for she realizes Mephisto is there to collect her soul, which he will do if she yields to Heinrich's plea:
What does he want on this solemn day?
He wants me! (4603-4604, Arndt)
Faust hangs in the moment and tells Gretchen, "You shall be whole!" (4604) The meaning of this enigmatic line appears to be that at least she will not be executed if she escapes with him, though Heinrich may also be unwittingly prophesying her redemption. Gretchen replies not to him but to God:
Judgment of God! To thee I give my soul! (4605, Arndt)
Mephisto now with more urgency commands Faust "Come, come! Or I'll forsake both her and thee." (4606) We might well ask what it means to be thus forsaken. Faust lingers long enough to hear Gretchen say,
Thine I am, Father! Rescue me!
Ye heavenly host angels, sally
to my refuge, about me rally!
Heinrich! I shrink from thee! (4607-4610, Arndt)
If Faust does not leave immediately, he will be seized by the authorities for what Mephisto calls his “blood-guilt" for the death of Valentine (see "Dreary Field") and so be put in shackles and share the same fate as Gretchen. Faust fails to surrender himself to the moment. This is not the sort of golden moment either Faust or the reader was looking for -- but who would think the ways of God to be anything other than mysterious!
If this is right, then the tragedy of Part I is that Faust failed to recognize the very moment he sought. By staying with Gretchen and surrendering himself he would have, long before the final verses of Part II, experienced the eternal moment that divine love makes possible and which cannot be directly striven for. It may be that Mephisto’s urgency in this final scene is due to his realization that he is about to lose Faust’s soul and his wager with God in the Prologue. Thus, as the voice from above declares that Gretchen is redeemed, Mephisto for a third-time commands Faust to leave but this time more strangely: "Hither! To me!" (4013). Heinrich goes to Mephisto, but hears from within the dungeon Gretchen calling his name. Faust has made his choice.
So, why Part II? Surely because Goethe saw that Faust’s failure here leaves room for additional exploration of the terms of the wager. Faust Part I, as a tragedy, is complete. Part II puts into play the possibilities of the active imagination to achieve the golden moment, but all such attempts fail as well. Even at the end when Faust speaks the words that bring about his death he casts the moment into a conditional and indefinite future:
On acres free among free people stand
I might entreat the fleeting minute:
Oh tarry yet, thou art so fair! (11580-82, Arndt)
Faust is saved in the end by his striving alone and by the grace of God. If there were no God, it appears that the best we could hope for would be to tarry in that fair moment that art makes possible. It is a second-best sailing, as Aristotle might say, but it is enough perhaps to turn a tragedy into comedy.
At the very center of this 12111-line work are these apparently uplifting lines:
See then and hear ye the momentous screed
Which turned all woe to happiness indeed. (6055-56)
Have the momentous pages of Faust itself changed all woe into happiness itself. Yes and no. When gold was turned into paper (the context of these center lines), it was done by sleight of hand -- devilish work indeed.