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My first thought was to skip Faust itself entirely and go direct to the essays about Faust. But reviewing my notes on Faust, I find that they mostly quote the commentary -- so I'm staying close to my original idea -- but I think even this, very cursory, exposure to the original text may prove helpful to the reader.
I should confess here that one of my favorite jokes in the movie Metropolitan is the character (Tom Townsend) who only reads criticism of literature and never the original text. I'm going to be channeling Tom for this book. I'm not even sure Goethe would mind this approach to his work as he was intentionally vague and refused to clarify what he may have meant. Goethe's Faust is a literary Rorschach test where what is most interesting is what the reader brings to the exercise of decoding the text.
Faust turns out to be as slippery as Talleyrand. Goethe’s Faust has been claimed by the 2nd and 3rd German Reichs and then by the Marxists and the ideologues of the GDR that ruled East Germany after WW2. Faust’s (or Goethe’s) best magic has turned out to be his knack for being all things to all people.
So, without further rambling justification, my notes on Goethe's Faust -- to be followed by a sampler plate of expert criticism and exegesis. (And recall that I've already given you one of these back in my last blog, see "The Presence of the Sign in Goethe’s Faust" - Neil M. Flax)
Faust by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Norton Critical Edition, W.W. Norton and Company 1998
translated by Walter Arndt, edited by Cyrus Hamlin
This work was begun (the Urfaust) before the American revolution, around 1775, but Part One wasn’t completed until 1808 over 30 years later. Goethe dropped the project for a couple decades before he was finally encouraged to resume by Schiller around 1798. And that's just Part One. Part Two is where the real craziness happens.
Here is a good source of info.
Prologue in Heaven
Line 283-186
Mephistopheles: “He [man] might be living somewhat better
Had you [God] not given him of Heaven’s light a glimpse;
He calls it reason and, ordained its priest,
Becomes more bestial than any beast.”
(There is going to be so little of Goethe's poem here that I've elected to display it in grey to distinguish it from the commentary.)
Mephisto then refers to “the serpent” as his cousin. Here Mephisto gives God credit for man’s reason or divine spark or soul, where I thought that credit belonged either to the serpent or to Prometheus. It seems everyone is just making this myth stuff up as they go along. Lesson learned.
Part One
Night
Faust: “I have pursued, alas, philosophy,/ Jurisprudence, and medicine,/ And, help me God, theology,/ With fervent zeal through thick and thin./ And here, poor fool, I stand once more,/ No wiser than I was before.” line 355
Spirit: [Summoned by Faust's magic]...”I yield, am here! What horrors base/ Now seize you superman! [Übermensch] Where’s the soul’s call you hurled?...” 486
So Faust is Nietzsche’s Übermensch? Interesting to note that Sils-Maria (Nietzsche’s Swiss hangout) is not far from Davos.
“As a teenager Nietzsche had already applied the word Übermensch to Manfred, the lonely Faustian figure in Byron’s poem of the same name who wanders in the Alps tortured by some unspoken guilt. Having challenged all authoritative powers, he dies defying the religious path to redemption. Nietzsche’s affinity with Manfred culminated in him composing a piano duet called Manfred Meditation...” Source
From Manfred by Lord Byron:
60 - And they have only taught him what we know—
That knowledge is not happiness, and science
But an exchange of ignorance for that
Which is another kind of ignorance.
This is not all; the passions, attributes
Of earth and heaven, from which no power, nor being,
Nor breath from the worm upwards is exempt,
Have pierced his heart; and in their consequence
Made him a thing, which I, who pity not,
Yet pardon those who pity. He is mine—
And thine, it may be;—be it so, or not,
And thine, it may be;—be it so, or not,
No other Spirit in this region hath
A soul like his—or power upon his soul.
138 - Look on me! there is an order
Of mortals on the earth, who do become
Old in their youth, and die ere middle age,
Without the violence of warlike death;
Some perishing of pleasure, some of study,
Some worn with toil, some of mere weariness,
Some of disease, and some insanity,
And some of wither’d or of broken hearts;
For this last is a malady which slays
More than are number’d in the lists of Fate,
Taking all shapes and bearing many names.
Look upon me! for even of all these things
Have I partaken; and of all these things,
One were enough; then wonder not that I
Am what I am, but that I ever was,
Or having been, that I am still on earth.
“Manfred is a Faustian noble living in the Bernese Alps. Internally tortured by some mysterious guilt, which has to do with the death of his most beloved, Astarte, he uses his mastery of language and spell-casting to summon seven spirits, from whom he seeks forgetfulness. The spirits, who rule the various components of the corporeal world, are unable to control past events and thus cannot grant Manfred's plea. For some time, fate prevents him from escaping his guilt through suicide.
At the end, Manfred dies, defying religious temptations of redemption from sin. Throughout the poem he succeeds in challenging all of the authoritative powers he faces, and chooses death over submitting to the powerful spirits. Manfred directs his final words to the Abbot, remarking, ‘Old man! 'tis not so difficult to die’.”
“Manfred shows heavy influence by Goethe's Faust, which Byron most likely read in translation (although he claimed to have never read it); still, it is by no means a simple copy.”
I might as well say something about Byron and Goethe here, though I'm sure there will be more to say later when I get to Part Two -- when there will be a character representing Byron. These two were the Rock Stars of English and German Romanticism respectively. There was also what looks today like a bromance, at least on Goethe's side. Since I don't read German, I can't speak to the relative quality of their poetry, but they were both known as much for their womanizing as for their verse. Byron's Don Jew-an would have appreciated Goethe's Gretchen story. It would be interesting to know what he would have thought of Gretchen's intervention for Faust at the very end of the poem.
And I can't help pointing out that Byron started Manfred late in 1816, the Year Without a Summer, not long after Mary Shelley started Frankenstein.
Faust’s nihilistic curse starts at line 1583.
Faust: “Should ever I take ease upon a bed of leisure,/May that same moment mark my end!/When first by flattery you lull me/ Into a smug complacency,/ When with indulgence you can gull me,/ Let that day be the last for me!/ This is my wager!” 1693
This sounds surprisingly Calvinist to me. And isn't this a perfect description of Hans Castorp's state in The Magic Mountain? Right down to the lounge chair of leisure. No wonder Settembrini was alarmed by the young engineer's "smug complacency." Hans Castorp is the anti-Faust.
“Once come to rest, I am enslaved --/ To you, whomever -- why regret it?” 1710
Faust: “...Let’s hurl ourselves in time’s on-rushing tide,
Occurence’s on-rolling stride!
So may then pleasure and distress,
Failure and success,
Follow each other as they please;
Man’s active only when he’s never at ease.” 1754
Faust: 1765 “You heard me, there can be no thought of joy,
Frenzy I choose, most agonizing lust,
Enamored enmity, restorative disgust.
Henceforth my soul, for knowledge sick no more,
Against no kind of suffering shall be cautioned,
And what to all of mankind is apportioned
I mean to savor in my own self's core,
Grasp with my mind both highest and most low,
Weigh down my spirit with their weal and woe,
And thus my selfhood to their own distend,
And be, as they are, shattered in the end.” 1775
Now this sounds like a profound saying Yes to life. Throw in some praise of gin and you have Mynheer Peeperkorn.
From the Interpretive Notes: p 364 - This talks about the importance of the moment or Augenblick but I don’t really see that in the text. “What Faust has in mind as the condition for his wager is not only a sense of satisfaction, which would complete and negate his striving... but also an absolute fulfillment of all desire, where the temporal and experiential process involved in such striving would be gathered together within such a single moment, so that time itself would be transcended.” p 364
“Ultimately, this concept of an absolute moment is understood by Faust to be aesthetic, in base agreement with idealist theories of beauty in art... Part Two offers more authoritative demonstrations for such beautiful moments along with the impossibility of sustaining such moments as the basis for a permanent reality of the world.” Where is this???
“...The description of Faust’s infinite striving...” Now this is closer to one of the things I thought “Faustian” meant. p 366
“...Mephistopheles will win only if he enables Faust to achieve the beautiful moment of fulfillment...
Where? And this sounds so close to Angel. I suppose I have to explain that...
In the Buffyverse, the TV reality Joss Whedon created where Buffy the Vampire Slayer exists, there is a vampire character named Angel who was previously a particularly vile vampire named Angelus. He was cursed with a soul so that he would experience all the harm he had done as a soulless vampire. He eventually switched "sides" and joined the forces for "good," and is an important ally of Buffy in the beginning of the show. It was revealed in season two that there was an escape clause in this curse should he experience a moment of perfect happiness. Which of course he did, causing him to revert back to a soulless and evil vampire again. I wouldn't put it past Whedon to be thinking of Faust's bargain.
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