The Individual and the Community in
the Gretchen Story
David Pan
Humanities Core Course
Winter 2012, Lecture 3
FAUST.
Be not afraid that I might break this pact!
The sum and essence of my striving
is the very thing I promise you.
I had become too overblown,
while actually I only rank with you.
Ever since the mighty spirit turned from me,
Nature kept her doorway closed.
He accepts that he cannot
The threads of thought are torn to pieces,
rule over nature.
and learning has become repugnant.
Let in the throes of raging senses
He rejects thought and
seething passions quench my thirst!
learning.
In never lifted magic veils
let every miracle take form!
Let me plunge into the rush of passing time,
into the rolling tide of circumstance!
Then let sorrow and delight,
frustration or success,
occur in turn as happenstance;
restless action is the state of man. (1741-1759, pp. 135-37)
Faust’s promise to never be
satisfied is the “sum and
essence” of his striving as
an individual.
Faust imagines a
merging of
individual ideal
and worldly reality
through human
action in society.
He embraces action
and wants to immerse
himself in the passions
and circumstances of
the human world.
STRUCTURE OF FAUST
Faust II
Act 5: Mountain gorges
Act 5: Burial
Act 5: Baucis and Philemon Story
Act 4: Counter-Emperor Story
GRETCHEN
STORY
•Gloomy Day
– Field
•Night
– Open Field
•Dungeon
Act 3: Helen Story
Faust I
WALPURGIS
NIGHT
•Walpurgis Night
•WalpurgisNight’s Dream
Act 2: Classical Walpurgis Night
GRETCHEN STORY
•A Street
•Evening
•Promenade
•The Neighbor’s
House
•A Street
•Martha’s Garden
•A Summer Cabin
•Forest and Cavern
•Gretchen’s Room
•Martha’s Garden
•At the Well
•By the Ramparts
•Night
•Cathedral
Act 1: Emperor Story
DEDICATION PRELUDE PROLOGUE FAUST STORY
IN THE
IN HEAVEN •Night
THEATER
•Before the Gate
•Faust’s Study
•Auerbach’s
Cellar in Leipzig
•Witch’s Kitchen
How does the Gretchen story
relate to the Faust story?
The Bourgeois Tragic Drama
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing,
Emilia Galotti (1772)
Heinrich Leopold Wagner,
The Child Murderess (1776)
•A prince tries to capture a bourgeois daughter
in order to make her into his mistress.
•The daughter’s father kills her at her request so
that the prince cannot capture and seduce her.
•A bourgeois daughter is seduced by an
aristocratic officer.
•Fearing her father’s condemnation, she flees her
home when she becomes pregnant.
•She kills her child in her despair over her
situation and is condemned to death.
The conflicts of these dramas focus on the formation and
defense of bourgeois morality as an alternative to the
licentiousness of the aristocracy.
Goethe alters the bourgeois tragic drama to shift the
perspective from the community to the individual.
Goethe’s Faust
Bourgeois tragic drama
•
The story is told from
the perspective of the
daughter.
•
•
The moral severity of
bourgeois fathers is
central for the action.
•
Fathers are absent,
and individuals must
decide for
themselves.
•
The daughter’s
situation involves a
defense of bourgeois
families against
aristocratic excesses.
•
The class conflict is
overshadowed by the
conflict between
Faust’s dynamic,
striving character and
Margaret’s static
attachment to her
family and community.
Perspective
Role of Fathers
Role of Community
The story is told from
the perspective of the
seducer.
The problem in
Faust I is not
the status of
the community
but the moral
decisions of
individuals.
Faust ‘s response to the “Gretchen question.”
The All-Enfolding,
All-Sustaining,
does He not uphold and keep
you, me, Himself?
Do you not see the vaulted skies above?
Is our earth not firmly set below?
Do not everlasting stars rise up
to show their friendly light?
Is my gaze not deeply locked in yours,
and don’t you feel your being
surging to your head and heart,
weaving in perennial mystery
invisibly and visibly in you?
Fill your heart to overflowing,
and when you feel profoundest bliss,
then call it what you will:
Good fortune! Heart! Love! or God!
I have no name for it!
Feeling is all;
the name is sound and smoke,
beclouding Heaven’s glow.
(3438-58, pp. 309-11)
God is one with creation.
Feeling is the
evidence for God.
The name is not important.
Faust is
concerned
more with
worldly
phenomena
than with a
personified
God.
Feeling rather
than the word
becomes the
source of
authority.
Faust turns to the Earth Spirit, not God
FAUST.
You roam the ample world, my bustling spirit;
how close I feel to you!
SPIRIT.
You’re like the spirit that you grasp.
You’re not like me.
(The SPIRIT vanishes.)
FAUST (overwhelmed).
Not your equal?
Then whom do I resemble?
I, the image of the godhead!
And not your equal?
(510-17, pp. 41-43)
Faust does not seek material
gain, but rather a god-like
experience of the world and of
nature.
He has no means to achieve the
power over nature that he seeks.
Goethe, Johann Wolgang von. Faust and Erdgeist. 1810/12 or 1819. Wikimedia Commons. Wikimedia, 31 January 2008. Web. 22
December 2010.
Faust’s motivations and justifications
Address to Earth Spirit
FAUST.
Sublime Spirit, you gave me everything,
gave me all I ever asked. Not in vain
you turned your fiery countenance on me.
You gave me glorious Nature for my kingdom,
the strength to feel and to enjoy Her.
(3217-21, p. 291)
Address to Mephistopheles
FAUST.
When in her arms, I need no joys of Heaven.
The warmth I seek is burning in her breast.
Do I not every moment feel her woe?
(3347, p. 301)
Feeling as highest justification
Words and Feelings
FAUST: You'll always be a sophist and a liar!
MEPHISTOPHELES: True enough; except I've peered a little
deeper.
For will you not, in words of great propriety
befog poor Gretchen, come tomorrow,
and swear your heart and soul belong to her?
FAUST: An that with all my heart!
MEPHISTOPHELES: That’s good of you!
And then you’ll speak of faith and love eternal,
of a single, overpowering urge—
will that flow so easily from your heart?
FAUST: Enough, I say it will.—When I am deeply stirred
and through the raging tumult seek
and grope in vain for name and speech,
sweep through the world with all my senses,
reach for the highest words that come to me,
and the ardor in which I burn
I call infinite, eternal fire—
can that be called a devil’s game of lies?
MEPHISTOPHELES: All the same, I’m right.
FAUST: Listen now! Mark this well,
I beg of you, and let me save my breath—
Anyone intent on winning,
if he but use his tongue, will win,
But come, I’m tired of this idle chatter,
for you have won your point, since what I do, I must.
(3055-72, pp. 269-71)
Mephistopheles points out that Faust
will lie to Margaret about the eternal
character of his love.
Faust claims that passion can
make his words true.
Words are not truth but only
rhetoric.
Faust agrees to lie to achieve his goals.
Words and Feelings
FAUST.
Oh, do not tremble. Look into my eyes;
let my hands which press your hands convey to you
the inexpressible:
to give oneself completely and to feel an ecstasy
which must be everlasting!
Everlasting!—the end would be despair.
No—no end! no end!
(MARGARET clasps his hands, frees herself, and runs off.
FAUST stands for a moment in deep thought, then follows
her.) (3188-94, p. 285)
The focus of
“everlasting” is not
on a promise of
marriage, but on
how he describes
his present feeling.
Goethe’s Faust is:
A. a villain for the play and for us. (Faustbuch, Michael Jaeger)
B. a villain for the play and a hero for us. (18 century Faust as farce)
C. a hero for the play and for us. (Frederick Amrine, Astrida Tantillo)
D. a hero for the play and a villain for us. (Alberto Destro)
E. don’t understand the question.
th
Trajectory of Margaret’s development
Individualism
Has no
father, but
takes 1st
jewelry
box to her
mother
Hides 2nd
jewelry box
from her
mother with
Martha
Asks
Faust
about his
belief in
God.
Respect for Community
Continues
with Faust
even after
he rejects
the name
of God.
Gives her
mother a
sleeping
potion to
spend the
night with
Faust.
Feels guilty
when she
hears
Lieschen
criticize
Barbara’s
behavior.
Though she would like at
this point to return to her
community, they will not
accept her.
Seeks
comfort
from the
Mater
Dolorosa
Kills
her
baby
Hears Evil
Spirit’s
repetition of
community
opinions.
Chooses
judgment
over
escape
from prison
Margaret vs. Faust
MARGARET.
I dare not leave; for me there’s nothing
more to hope.
Why escape? I know they lie in wait for
me.
It’s misery to go begging,
and with a guilty conscience too.
It’s a misery to wander where I am not at
home,
and in the end they’ll come to hunt me
down. (4544-49, pp. 417-19)
Margaret sees her life as
bounded by her surrounding
community.
FAUST.
Let me plunge into the rush of passing
time,
into the rolling tide of circumstance!
Then let sorrow and delight,
frustration or success,
occur in turn as happenstance;
restless action is the state of man.
(1754-59, p. 137)
Sees his experiences in terms of
his own continual movement
through the world.
The Evil Spirit repeats to Margaret the condemnations
from Valentine and Lieschen.
EVIL SPIRIT.
What misdeed
is lodged in your heart?
Do you pray for he soul of your mother,
who through your doing passed to never-ending
sleep?
Whose blood stains your doorstep?—
Is something not stirring and swelling
beneath your heart,
making itself and you afraid with stark foreboding?
(3787-93, p. 343)
EVIL SPIRIT.
Hide! Hide! Yet sin and shame
will not remain concealed. (3821-22, p. 345)
EVIL SPIRIT.
From you
the blessed turn their faces.
The pure recoil
from offering their hand.
Woe! (3828-32, p. 347)
VALENTINE.
Once you said farewell to honor,
you dealt my heart a heavy blow. (3772-73, p. 341)
LIESCHEN.
It stinks!
Now she must eat and drink for two. (3548-49, p.
321)
VALENTINE.
You will hide in dismal nooks and corners
among the cripples and the beggars,
and even if our God forgive you in the end,
you’ll still be damned on earth until you die! (376063, p. 341)
VALENTINE.
Even now I see the time
when all the decent people of this town
will turn, as from a festering cadaver,
away from you, you slut! (3750-53, p. 339)
Faust.
Given over to evil spirits and to the
unfeeling who presume to dispense justice!
(Gloomy Day—Field, p. 399)
Faust.
It was her life, her peace I had to ruin.
(3360, p. 301)
Faust criticizes the way the
townspeople persecute
Margaret by means of their
moral principles.
His feelings of guilt are related,
not to the transgression of
moral principles from the
community or the church, but to
the practical consequences for
Margaret.