Changing European Visions of Disaster and Development. Vanessa Pupavac
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Plotting Goethe’s Faust
Goethe’s Faust epitomises how nineteenth-century German writers wanted Germany to be a mediating nation in Europe, bridging what they represented as northern reason and southern sensuality (Kremer 2016: 58). The poem became a prism to reflect on different European cultural developments. The ambitious narrative encompassed European history from antiquity to the Industrial Revolution, from ancient city states to holy empire and the medieval church to independent industrialising modern states. Goethe’s Faust is in two parts and spans over 12,000 lines and six decades of literary composition from 1772 to 1832, bridging the Enlightenment and Romantic eras. His Faust, like Marlowe’s Dr Faustus, speaks to the rebellious human spirit and our yearnings for a better fate. Faust cried how ‘Two souls, alas, are housed within my breast’ (Goethe 1808 ‘Outside the City Gate’ in Wayne 1949: 67). One loves the earthly world, the other the heavenly realm. Goethe’s Faust was not Marlowe’s tragic Faustus, though, and escaped eternal damnation. Part I ends conventionally with Mephistopheles taking away Faust. Part II presents the possibility of human progress, while accepting humanity’s conflicted nature and flawed history. It ends with Faust’s salvation, where redemption lies not in spiritual acknowledgement of his sins but in his efforts to act and not yield to despair. Goethe strained traditional religious morality to affirm human striving and flourishing. Our persistent struggle amid our all-too-human failings is what matters and makes humans redeemable.
Goethe begins with a Prelude in the Theatre. The Prelude highlights the tensions between poetic geniuses and philosopher kings, and the public they are tempted to disdain. The theatre director warns that audiences have high expectations these days because they are now a reading public with their own opinions on events. The director demands the poet entertain people with plenty of action and forget giving them his perfect creation nobody would enjoy. The poet though wants to write ‘for ages yet unborn’ and not degrade his creativity to the theatre crowd. His heavenly gifts entitle him to higher activities than serving a ‘vulgar tide’ (Goethe 1808 ‘Prelude’ in Wayne 1949: 32). The clown, however, acting the wise fool, reproaches the poet for his contempt towards the people and life around him. The poet should ‘plunge into life’, for life is the source of his inspiration, and should fire people’s imagination with ‘human drama’ revealing that while ‘The act is common, the perception is not’ (Goethe 1808 ‘Prelude’ in Wayne 1949: 35).
The Prelude presents the poetic ‘spur of truth’ (Goethe 1808 ‘Prelude’ in Wayne 1949: 36). The paradoxical demonic spur of truth follows in the next scene. The Prologue in Heaven depicts a wager between God and the Devil over Faust’s soul. The wager concerns the use or misuse of human freedom and the divine spark in humanity. Personal struggle with the demonic spurs individuals morally to be more than beasts. Divine purpose underlies the diabolic tempting of Faust. The devil goads people out of their comfort, and his diabolic actions unintentionally induce human progress. For ‘unconditional ease’ risks humanity sinking below its proper level (Goethe 1808 ‘Prologue’ in Wayne 1949: 42). As such, satanic forces are ‘Part of a power that would/ Alone work evil, but engenders good’ (Goethe 1808 ‘Faust’s Study’ ii in Wayne 1949: 75).
Faust only agrees to forfeit his soul if he falls for Mephistopheles’ ‘flattering lies’ and succumbs to pleasure and ‘a bed of ease’ (Goethe 1808 ‘Faust’s Study’ iii in Wayne 1949: 87). The Prologue presents Goethe’s idea of goodness as revolving around belief in ‘Eternal growth, fulfilment, vital’ (Goethe 1808 ‘Prologue’ in Wayne 1949: 42). Goodness is attached to divine life-giving forces, and personified here in the Eternal Woman, and celebrated by the Chorus Mysticus in the final stanza of Part II. Or in Paracelsus’ words, if you only live within reason, you live without spirit (Paracelsus 1990 [1537]: 178–84). Evil is associated with diabolic separation from divine life-giving forces. Faust is conscious of his alienation from life, and his alienation spurs his pact with the devil. His companion Wagner has previously observed that scholarly remoteness from humanity makes their advice about human affairs inexpert:
If learning ties us, winter, summer,
With holiday so rare, that we see men
As through a glass, remote and ill-defined
How shall our counsel serve to lead mankind?
(Goethe 1808 ‘Night’ in Wayne 1949: 49)
Faust has been trying to overcome his alienation and re-engage with life outside his study before encountering Mephistopheles. He welcomes the Easter holiday crowds and rejoices seeing the overworked ‘motley multitudes’ in the sunshine resurrected from their ‘hovels and oppressive rooms’. ‘Here I am a man, and claim man’s element’, Faust declares in a phrase ironically reminiscent of Luther’s attributed declaration (Goethe 1808 ‘Outside the City Gate’ in Wayne 1949: 62). Faust’s life-affirming spirit flames his attraction to hell’s spirits, underscoring humanity’s dual nature ‘To prove in man the stature of a god /Nor blench before the cavern black’ (Goethe 1808 ‘Night—Faust’s Study’ i in Wayne 1949: 54). Faust’s bold assertion of human god-like independence resonates with the Enlightenment motto ‘Sapere Aude’, or having the courage to know for ourselves (Kant AWE 1996a [1784]). Faust’s reason continues resisting the devil. His sensibility melts his resistance, and he welcomes Mephistopheles disguised as a little black poodle yapping and wagging its tail.
Mephistopheles is contemptuous of humanity and resents having to ‘traffic on a smaller scale’ with ‘the plaguey state of men’, when his grand assault on the Lord of Creation failed. Humanity is merely a jumped-up grasshopper, who would be better off without any glimmer of divine reason (Goethe 1808 ‘Prologue’ in Wayne 1949: 40). Humans exercise reason only ‘to outdo the beasts in being bestial’ (Goethe 1808 ‘Prologue’ in Wayne 1949: 40). Yet gaudy clothes and promises of luxury do not impress Faust. ‘Have you not heard?—I do not ask for joy’, Faust protests (Goethe 1808 ‘Faust’s Study’ iii in Wayne 1949: 89). Faust wants to share humanity’s lot: ‘Shall no more shun distress, but take its toll /Of all the hazards of humanity’ (Goethe 1808 ‘Faust’s Study’ iii in Wayne 1949: 89).
Faust entered into a pact to pursue a life beyond both scholasticism and his father’s quackery. Still Faust is tempted to take a shortcut to life and love through Mephistopheles’ magic. Faust doubts himself and is wary of trusting others. He cannot believe Gretchen would love him freely. Fatally Faust lets Mephistopheles negotiate his own relations and distance him from the responsibilities and consequences of his actions. Mephistopheles’ nihilistic outlook leads Faust into falsehood and destroys Gretchen, their unborn child, and her family, and others.
Yet Faust escapes from his complete abasement to this ‘sterile son of Chaos’ and his ‘banal dissipations’ (Goethe 1808 ‘Faust’s Study’ ii and ‘Desolate Day’ in Wayne 1949: 76, 187). Faust wants more from life than the licence to consume, and he demands a larger scope for human freedom and activity. Faust’s pact was originally stirred by the godlike within him. His yearning for some transcendent human purpose protects his soul from full subjection to Mephistopheles. Goethe aimed to portray how ‘in Faust himself there is an activity that becomes constantly higher and purer to the end, and from above there is eternal love coming to his aid’ (Eckermann 1930 [6 June 1831]: 413). Faust has not totally succumbed to Mephistopheles. He has not given up life’s struggle. Gretchen’s love may therefore save Faust’s soul as the life-giving ‘eternal woman’, a force reconciling human worldly and spiritual nature.
Critically, this reconciliation suspends the traditional religious morality of Part I, condemning both Gretchen and Faust. Part II adopts the new progressive humanist outlook of Europe, looking beyond medieval theocracy, back to the ancient Greek classical world, and forward to the new scientific developments. As the Goethe scholar and translator David Constantine observes, Goethe’s ‘Part II is less a continuation of Part I than an explosion of its premises’ (Constantine 2009: xli). Symbolically, Part II breaks from the earlier events under Ariel’s spell of sleep and forgetfulness over Faust and allows his rebirth (Goethe 1832 Act I ‘Prologue & A Beautiful Landscape’ in Luke 1998: 3–6). In this renaissance ‘there is no