FAUST
ROMANTICISM
Intensity
Innovation
Irreverence
Insubordination
Individualism
Imagination
P. 133
MYTHIC STATURE
As with the story of Don Juan, there
have again been many musical versions,
including operas by Berlioz, Boito,
Gounod, and Pousseur and other works
by Liszt, Wagner, Schumann, and
Rachmaninoff.
There have also been many important
literary versions, ranging from
Christopher Marlowe’s Elizabethan
play, two hundred years before
Goethe’s Faust, to more recent works by,
to take only the greatest masters, the
Russians Alexander Pushkin and Ivan
Turgenev, the Portuguese Fernando
Pessoa, the Frenchmen Paul Valéry and
Michel Butor, the German Thomas
Mann, and the American Gertrude
Stein.
The Don Juan and Faust stories are
among the modern Western world’s few
great myths, along with those of, say,
Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and Great
Expectations. On the one hand, the
themes these stories treat are central to
the modern Western experience. On the
other, the stories are open enough,
flexible enough, to accommodate the
concerns of very different kinds of
writers and audiences in different times
and places, and most of them have been
treated again and again by subsequent
playwrights and novelists.
To take just a few prominent recent
examples, there have been important
retellings of Don Quixote, Robinson
Crusoe, and Great Expectations by major
French, South African, Argentine,
Australian, and American writers.
These myths “basic plots, their enduring
images, all exhibit a single-minded
pursuit by the protagonist of one of the
characteristic aspirations of Western
man. Each of their heroes embodies an
arete and a hubris, an exceptional
prowess and a vitiating excess, in
spheres of action that are particularly
important in our culture. Don Quixote,
the impetuous generosity and the
limiting blindness of chivalric idealism;
Don Juan, pursuing and at the same
time tormented by the idea of boundless
experience of women; Faustus, the great
knower, whose curiosity, always
unsatisfied, brings damnation.”
CONTRARIES
Another principle of Romanticism, not
as central or widespread as the five I’s,
is best expressed in a famous passage
from William Blake, the English
Romantic poet-painter, who wrote:
“Without contraries is no progression.
Attraction and repulsion, reason and
energy, love and hate, are necessary to
human existence.”
We saw something like this in the
deliberate tensions of Don Giovanni. In
Faust, we see it more explicitly, in
passages such as these:
P. 171, ll. 1765-67
P. 186, ll. 2921-23
Contraries are like opposites, but they
are characterized by the possibility of a
transcending third term. In this, they are
like the dialectics of Blake’s
contemporary, the German philosopher
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, whose
method involved starting with a thesis
and its antithesis, and then finding the
resulting synthesis.
We can see all this in the “Prelude on
the Stage,” which presents a number of
the play’s underlying themes in terms of
contraries. The Director and the Poet
take antithetical positions, while the
Clown finds syntheses. [USE CHART]
The “Prelude on the Stage” also seems
surprisingly modern. Most playwrights
ask us to suspend our disbelief and
accept, as long as the curtains are open,
that what happens on stage is reality.
The “Prelude,” on the other hand,
deliberately reminds us that what
follows is a play. It does so, moreover,
by placing on the stage two actors
playing the fictional roles of the Poet
and the Director. Thus, the “Prelude” is
already distanced from reality at one
level, and the ensuing play is distanced
at two levels. Indeed, since the middleaged scholar Faust uses a disguise—that
of a youthful aristocrat—provided by
the witch’s potion to play his role as
Gretchen’s lover, there is a sense in
which the Gretchen story is yet another
play within the play, at a third distance
from reality. There have always been
occasional exceptions, but one doesn’t
see a lot of this sort of literary play until
twentieth-century Modernism.
PROLOGUE IN HEAVEN
”Neither the ‘Dedication’ nor the
‘Prelude on the Stage’ contains anything
that is related to the action of the play:
the first states the poet’s attitude toward
the material he is about to present, the
second indicates the special nature of
the spectacle to be produced. But the
bearing of the ‘Prologue in Heaven’
upon the subsequent plot cannot be
overemphasized—it is the key to
everything that is to come. Challenged
by Mephistopheles, the Lord insists that
the sense of discrimination between
good and evil, even though it may not
easily be realized in a life of positive
action, represents the true character of
the human being. As long as this
perception of values is active, it should
entitle man to eventual salvation. This is
the meaning of the term ‘striving’ which
the Lord recognizes as the essence of
man’s character and which, not in the
sense of aggressive and amoral
ruthlessness, but of a persistent power
of moral judgment, Goethe offers as the
central concept of Faust’s career.”
This scene has a very clear literary
precedent with which many of you are
familiar. What is it?
Job
Goethe certainly expected his
readers to make this connection.
What are its implications for our
understanding of Faust’s story?
In earlier versions of Faust’s story, the
use of black magic and/or the question
of damnation had often been the central
concern. Here it becomes “the nature or
condition of man himself.” (H)
This, as much as anything else,
makes Goethe’s version the most
universal, as well as the most
relevant for the essentially secular
modern world.
FELIX CULPA
Define
As in “felicitous” and “Feliz
Navidad”
As in “culprit”
The contemporaries of the real, 16thcentury Faust saw his story “as an object
lesson and a warning. To the age of
Goethe, on the other hand, it was
natural to look upon Faust as a
prototype of man’s ideal aspirations.
Faust appealed to Goethe as a symbol of
man’s emancipation from authority.
Regardless of whether Faust’s path
would eventually lead him to perdition
or to salvation, his courage in daring to
trespass upon the realm of the
forbidden makes him a heroic figure. A
century earlier the English poet John
Milton still founded his epic Paradise
Lost on the theme of ‘man’s first
disobedience.’ This involved the
axiomatic acknowledgment of divine
arbitrary authority: we must
unquestioningly follow God’s law. The
eighteenth century, on the other hand,
was set to challenge all arbitrary
authority.
Goethe’s friend, the playwright
Friedrich Schiller, while conceding that
the Biblical Fall precipitated a
catastrophe, takes pains to point out that
the Fall was also an absolutely necessary
first step in the higher development of
mankind. With the Fall, the mind of
man embarks on the realization of its
limitless potentialities. Without it, he
would forever have remained a child of
Nature, innocent but ignorant, unable to
develop the faculties of distinguishing
between good and evil.”—Weigand
PLOT
“When we first meet Faust he is a man
of incomparable learning who has
mastered every field of knowledge
without, however, having found
anywhere the reassurance of insight into
ultimate meanings. As he speculates
upon the symbols of cosmic
significance, he must admit his human
limitations; he can only hope, through
the Earth Spirit, to reach an
understanding at least of all earthly
experience. But that, too, is shown to be
impossible. His despair is profound.”—
Victor Lange
The bargain is struck, and Faust easily
resists the repellent temptations of the
drinking students and the witch’s
kitchen, but he succumbs to that of
Gretchen, with dire consequences.
“In the satanic frenzy of the Walpurgisnight, Faust seems for a brief moment
close to a total suspension of moral
perception. But the most powerful
means of seduction cannot destroy
Faust’s memory of Gretchen; as he
comes to rescue her, he is overwhelmed
by the spectacle of a moral decision in
Gretchen that is clearer and, in spite of
her madness, more resolute than he
himself can achieve. She refuses to be
freed by Mephistophelian devices and
submits to the judgment of God. Faust,
most deeply stirred and here, perhaps,
farthest from the kind of amorality that
Mephistopheles hopes to achieve, is
forcibly reminded of his attachment to
his servant; as a voice from above
promises Gretchen forgiveness,
Mephistopheles disappears with
Faust.”—Lange
“Gretchen’s initial response to Faust’s intention to save her is wanting him to
embrace her. But this would represent the loss of the bet for Faust because it
means returning to the past, asking for time to stand still, rather than wanting
more. Pure Gretchen is thus the strongest temptation Mephistopheles can offer to
win Faust’s soul. And paradoxically, to win his bet with Mephistopheles and to
be saved in the terms of the Lord in the ‘Prologue in Heaven,’ Faust must leave
Gretchen to her fate, not rescue her like a bold hero. Only when he refuses to kiss
her does she nobly decide to stay within the limitations of her social world and to
take the consequences of her action.”—Damrosch
CYCLICALITY
A central theme of Faust, although not
an obvious one, is time, and a particular
kind of time. There are essentially two
ways of viewing time, and thus viewing
life and history: moving in cycles or
moving toward a close.
Goethe foregrounds the cyclical view
almost immediately in Faust, by making
it the subject of the hymn of the three
angels on pp. 140-141.
ll. 243-46: the sun
ll. 251-54: earth
ll. 255-58: tides
ll. 259-60: weather
Form echoes substance: the regular
rhythms embody the cyclical subject.
“In fewer than a hundred lines after
Wagner leaves, Faust works himself into
a suicidal despair. This is partly because
Faust is merely human and incapable of
confronting the Earth Spirit as an equal,
but more because as human he is subject
to time and the conditions of mortal
life.”—H
This monologue exemplifies “what
has come to be called Romantic
despair.”—H
We see it, for example, in
English-language works such as
Wordsworth’s great poem
“Resolution and Independence,”
in which the poet takes a walk
and observes the joyfulness of the
natural world:
I heard the sky-lark warbling in the sky;
And I bethought me of the playful hare:
Even such a happy Child of earth am I;
Even as these blissful creatures do I fare;
Far from the world I walk, and from all care;
But there may come another day to me—
Solitude, pain of heart, distress, and poverty.
What pulls Faust out of it?
Easter music, evoking the festival
of resurrection, rebirth
Faust is not a Christian believer,
but he is stirred by the concept of
rebirth and cyclicality in both the
life of Christ and the return of
Spring.
“Easter is a new Christian form of
an ancient Spring celebration.”
The setting and the structure of
the scene also demonstrate the
effects of renewal as an
emergence, an opening outward.
The citizens of the town proceed
out of the narrow city gate and
into the countryside as if they
were being released from the
imprisonment of winter and
society. Initially, the perspective
of the scene is fixed at a
convenient vantage point near
the gate; later on, after Faust’s
opening speech, the setting
moves with Faust and Wagner
almost cinematically as they
make their way, first, to the
village with its rustic festival,
then to the top of a hill, where
they watch the sun go down, and
finally back to the city gate,
returning at evening to protection
and enclosure. The scene thus
assumes a cyclical structure,
moving with Faust as he makes
his journey from morning to
evening out from the city to the
limits of human habitation and
then back again.”—H
“Faust responds to the Easter
music as to a heavenly visitation.
Though he denies faith, he
nonetheless acknowledges the
validity of the Easter ritual as a
miracle of rebirth for the faithful.
In contrast to the appearance of
the Earth Spirit, who was
conjured by Faust through a
magical sign, the Easter Chorus
comes over him unexpectedly
and by surprise, a gift of grace at
the moment when he is about to
drink the poison. The balance
and contrast of these two
spiritual visitations is central to
Faust’s exsperience both in this
opening scene and in the drama
as a whole. The Easter
resurrection clearly prefigures
Faust’s ultimate salvation.”—H
Wager (p. __): Faust bets on cyclicality,
as opposed to stop-time.
What does the cyclicality theme imply
about this particular story?
Salvation
GRETCHEN STORY
The Gretchen story is entirely new in
Goethe’s version. “In two important
ways it introduced a perspective which
was entirely removed from the
traditional Faust and which addressed
central concerns of later eighteenthcentury thought. First, the theme of
seduction, a preoccupation of the age, as
we saw in Don Giovanni, was united
with the essential dynamic power of
will in Faust, his striving for infinite
knowledge and experience.
Second, a dimension of social
realism was introduced to Faust which
carried profound legal and moral
implications for Goethe’s own time. The
theme of infanticide, often involving the
seduction of innocent girls who
subsequently fell victim to the
intolerance of eighteenth-century
middle-class society, usually leading to
their execution while the seducer
escaped without penalty, attracted
many writers.
Gretchen, not Faust, is the central
figure of this part of the play. This part
is her tragedy.”—H
One of the major modes of latetwentieth-century literary analysis was
Marxist criticism. Marxist critics argue
that literature reflects the social,
economic, and political forces in the
society that creates it. One Marxist critic
(Lukacs) wrote that the Gretchen story was
“a glaring example of class oppression
of the bourgeoisie by the nobility.” We
could, of course, say the same of the
Zerlina story in Don Giovanni.
“The tragedy of the bourgeois maiden
seduced is only one of the many abuses
perpetrated by degenerate feudalism.
From the standpoint of poetic creation,
however, this theme has advantages
such that it became, not by chance, the
principal dramatic theme of the German
Enlightenment. It concentrates, in a
typical individual case which is easy to
relive imaginatively, the most
repugnant features of the oppression,
features apt to rouse spontaneously to
indignation the whole bourgeoisie.”—Lukacs?
Gretchen’s full name is “Margarete.”
Her naming may have been a response
to the execution for infanticide of a
Susanna Margarethe Brandt in the city
where Goethe was living and in the year
before he began writing Faust.—H
VALENTINE STORY
Great myths often share common
resonant elements. In relation to the
other modern myth we have seen,
Valentine assumes the role of the
Commendatore, and the serenade is
reminiscent of that “which Don
Giovanni, disguised as Leporello, sings
beneath the balcony of Donna Elvira in
Act II, accompanying himself on a
guitar, as he attempts to seduce Donna
Elvira’s servant girl. It is interesting to
note that the role of Don Juan in both its
aspects is assumed more by
Mephistopheles than by Faust, first
when he sings the song beneath
Gretchen’s window, then when he
manipulates the sword which kills
Valentine.”—H
There was, of course, no devil to take
much of the rap for Don Giovanni.
Faust, while obviously heavily
flawed, is certainly the nobler figure.
P. 137, ll. 89-90: The editors of your
anthology use this same word,
“spectacle,” on p. 133 to describe the
actual production of Faust.
ll. 99-103: Ironic, considering the
performance history
“Gretchen am Spinnrade” (p. 195)
“Erlkönig (p. 251)
MCD 2515
ERLKING
“Caught between his father, a rationalist
eager to dispel the mysteries of nature,
and the seductive Erlking, the child
recognizes the dangers acutely but is
powerless to ward them off. The father
and the Erlking, indeed, can be taken to
personify the tensions tearing apart the
child’s heart. Typical of Goethe are the
concluding nearly monosyllabic
understatements—the child’s last phrase
‘has done me harm’ [hat mir ein Leids
getan] and the equally spare conclusion
‘the child was dead’ [das Kind war tot]:
these may be felt to protect against the
power of the emotion and, at the same
time, to keep it in reserve, like a coiled
spring.
In Franz Schubert’s famous setting of
the ballad, the child’s last phrase is
virtually screamed, pounding out the
terror the poetry magnificently
understates. Conversely, Schubert sets
the end of the poem as a spare, lowpitched, unaccompanied recitative, the
bare bones left after nature has seized
the child back unto itself.”—Damrosch
“In the ‘Erl King,’ it is neither the
melodic expression nor the succession of
notes in the voice-part which gives
organic unity to the whole, but rather
the harmonic expression, the tone,
imparted to the work by the
accompaniment. This is the foundation
here, on which the tone-picture is laid,
and indeed quite in accordance with the
text, where night and tempest and the
father on horseback with his child
compose the background. With
profoundly moving truth the melodic
expression characterizes the inner
meaning of the action, the changing
emotions of the father, the child and the
erl king, while its outward aspects, such
as the galloping horse and the
intermittent howling of the gale, are
outlined by the most appropriate figures
of accompaniment. Such a treatment
was the only possible one in this case,
since the uniform romance-like tone of
the poem demanded a similarly uniform
tone in the musical representation. In
order to weave this tone into the whole,
without sacrificing anything of the
necessarily different characteristics in
the words of the acting exponents, the
separate melodies, the disparate parts of
the significant vocal expression, had to
be unified by the accompaniment. The
latter thus did not serve as a foil to the
voice-part, but also as musical painting
outlining the atmosphere.”—early
review
GRETCHEN AM SPINNRADE
Gretchen’s “state of mind, in which the
feelings and sensations of love, of pain
and of rapture take turns, are so
affectingly depicted by schubert’s music
that a more heart-stirring impression
than that left by his musical picture is
scarcely imaginable. Apart from that,
the composition is also remarkable for
its pianoforte part, which so successfully
sketches the motion of the spinningwheel and develops its theme in such a
masterly way.”—early review