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GOETHE’S FAUST

Faust has been called the fundamental icon of Western culture, and
Goethe’s inexhaustible poetic drama is the centrepiece of its tradition
in literature, music and art. In recent years, this play has experienced
something of a renaissance, with a surge of studies, theatre produc-
tions, press coverage and public discussions. Reflecting this renewed
interest, leading Goethe scholars in this volume explore the play’s
striking modernity within its theatrical framework. The chapters present
new aspects, such as the virtuality of Faust, the music drama, the
modernization of evil, Faust’s blindness, the gay Mephistopheles, clas-
sical beauty and horror as phantasmagoria, and Goethe’s anticipation
of modern science, economics and ecology. The book contains an
illustrated section on Faust in modern performance, with contributions
by renowned directors, critics and dramaturges, and a major interview
with Peter Stein, director of the uncut ‘millennium production’ of
Expo 2000.

hans schulte was Associate Professor of German at McMaster

University, Hamilton, Canada.
john noyes is Professor of German at the University of Toronto.
pia kleber is Professor of Drama and Comparative Literature at the
University of Toronto.
GOETHE’S FAUST
Theatre of Modernity

edited by
HANS SCHULTE,
JOHN NOYES
AND
PIA KLEBER
 cambridge university press
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© Cambridge University Press 2011

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First published 2011

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Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data

Goethe’s Faust : Theatre of Modernity / [edited by] Hans Schulte, John Noyes, Pia Kleber.
p. cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-521-19464-8
1. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1749–1832. Faust. I. Schulte, Hans, 1935– II. Noyes, John
(John Kenneth), 1955– III. Kleber, Pia. IV. Title.
pt1925.g63 2011
8320 .6–dc22
2010042729

isbn 978-0-521-19464-8 Hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or

accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to
in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such
websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
 Contents

List of illustrations page vii

List of contributors viii
Preface xi
List of abbreviations xiii

Introduction
Hans Schulte 1

part i m odernity 15
1. Faust – today
Albrecht Schöne 17
2. Mephisto and the modernization of evil
Rolf-Peter Janz 32
3. Mephisto is the devil – or is he?
Peter Huber 40
4. ‘Schwankende Gestalten’: virtuality in Goethe’s Faust
Ulrich Gaier 54
5. Amnesia and anamnesis in Goethe’s Faust
Wolf-Daniel Hartwich 68
6. Magicians of modernity: Cagliostro and Saint-Simon
in Goethe’s Faust ii
Hans-Jürgen Schings 78
7. The blind Faust
Eberhard Lämmert 94
8. From Faust to Harry Potter: discourses of the centaurs
Gisela Brude-Firnau 113
v
vi Contents
9. Mistra and the Peloponnese in Goethe’s Faust ii
Wilhelm Blum 129
10. Goethe and the grotesque: the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’
Angela C. Borchert 138
11. Re-defining classicism: antiquity in Faust ii under the sign
of the Medusa
Ernst Osterkamp 156
12. Diabolical entrapment: Mephisto, the angels and the
homoerotic in Goethe’s Faust ii
W. Daniel Wilson 174

part ii theatre 195

13. Goethe’s Faust: theatre, meta-theatre, tragedy
Martin Swales 197
14. Faust beyond tragedy: hidden comedy, covert opera
Dieter Borchmeyer 209
15. Theatricality and experiment: identity in Faust
Jane K. Brown 235
16. Rhetorical action: Faust between rhetoric, poetics and music
Helmut Schanze 253
17. Directing Faust: an interview
Peter Stein 267
18. A contradictory whole: Peter Stein stages Faust
Dirk Pilz 280
19. Re-thinking and staging Goethe’s Faust at the State Theatre
Stuttgart 2005–6
Jörg Bochow 293
20. Strehler’s Faust in performance
Laura Caretti 306

Select bibliography 324

Index 330
 Illustrations

15.1 Bernardo Strozzi, ‘Old Woman at the Mirror’ (1615) page 245
15.2 Cesare Ripa, ‘Prudence’ in Iconologia (1758–69) 246
17.1 ‘This is my wager.’ – ‘Here’s my hand.’ (Photograph
from the Peter Stein production, Hanover–Berlin–Vienna,
2000–1, © Ruth Walz) 269
17.2 Helena and Phorkyas in Sparta. (Photograph from
the Stein production, 2000–1, © Ruth Walz) 271
17.3 Mountain Gorges: the heavenly spiral. (Photograph
from the Stein production, 2000–1, © Ruth Walz) 276
19.1 The three young men as Faust. (Photograph from the
Stuttgart production, 2005–6, © Staatstheater Stuttgart) 295
19.2 Margarete’s attempt at an abortion. (Photograph from the
Stuttgart production, 2005–6, © Staatstheater Stuttgart) 298
19.3 Mephistopheles and the Faust chorus. (Photograph
from the Stuttgart production, 2005–6, © Staatstheater
Stuttgart) 301
20.1 Prologue in Heaven. (Photograph from the Strehler
production, 1989–91, © Luigi Ciminaghi, Piccolo
Teatro, Milan) 308
20.2 Faust and Helena’s veil. (Photograph from the Strehler
production, 1989–91, © Luigi Ciminaghi) 314
20.3 ‘My lovely young lady, may I venture . . .?’ (Photograph
from the Strehler production, 1989–91, © Luigi
Ciminaghi) 319

vii
 Contributors

wilhelm blum teaches Greek, Latin and Philosophy at the Maximilians-

Gymnasium in Munich.
jörg bochow was Professor of Theatre History and Theory at the
University of Toronto 2000–5. Thereafter he was Head Dramaturge at
the State Theatre Stuttgart and Professor for Dramaturgy at the Academy
for Performing Arts of Baden-Württemberg.
angela c. borchert is Associate Professor of German and Comparative
Literature at the University of Western Ontario, London, Canada.
dieter borchmeyer is Prof. Dr Dr h.c., German and Theatre Studies,
at Heidelberg University and President of the Bayerische Akademie der
Schönen Künste.
jane k. brown is Joff Hanauer Distinguished Professor for Western
Civilization at the University of Washington and former President of the
Goethe Society of North America.
gisela brude-firnau is Professor emeritus of German at the
University of Waterloo, Canada.
laura caretti is Professor of History of Theatre and the Performing
Arts at the University of Siena, where she is also Director of the PhD
programme in Comparative Studies (Literature, Theatre, Cinema).
ulrich gaier is Professor emeritus for German Literature at the
University of Konstanz, Germany, and President of the Hölderlin-
Gesellschaft.
wolf-daniel hartwich was Assistant Professor of German at
Heidelberg University and a Heisenberg scholar of the Deutsche
Forschungsgemeinschaft.
peter huber is Assistant Professor of German at Heidelberg University.

viii
 List of contributors ix
rolf-peter janz is Professor of German at the Free University, Berlin.
eberhard lämmert is Prof. Dr Dr h.c. (emeritus) for German and
Comparative Literature. He was President of the Free University of
Berlin (1976–83) and President of the Schiller-Gesellschaft (1988–2002).
He was also the founder and director of the Centre for Literary Research,
Berlin (1991–9).
ernst osterkamp is Professor of German at the Humboldt University,
Berlin. He is also co-editor of the Jahrbuch der deutschen Schiller-
Gesellschaft.
dirk pilz is a theatre critic, freelance writer and editor of Nachtkritik (the
only German on-line theatre magazine). He holds lectureships in theatre
criticism and literature in Munich, Berlin, Leipzig and Essen.
helmut schanze is Professor of Literary and Media Studies at the
University of Siegen, Germany.
hans-jürgen schings is Professor of German (emeritus) at the Free
University, Berlin.
albrecht schöne is Dr phil. habil., Professor of German (emeritus
1990). He holds honorary doctorates in philosophy and theology, and is
a member of numerous academies of science. He has been awarded the
Great Cross of Merit of the German Federal Republic with star and the
Order Pour le Mérite for arts and science.
peter stein was a theatre director in Munich, Zurich and Bremen
(1966–70) and artistic director of the Schaubühne, West Berlin (1970–85)
and of the Salzburg Festival (1991–7). His credits include numerous
productions of plays and operas world-wide.
martin swales was Professor of German at University College, London
(1976–2003). He holds the Cross of Merit of the German Federal
Republic and is a Fellow of the British Academy.
w. daniel wilson is Professor of German at the University of Berkeley
and Vice-President of the Goethe Society of North America.
 Preface

In the summer of 2000, the World Exposition in Hanover, Germany,

presented visitors with an extraordinary experience: Peter Stein’s uncut
production, in twenty-three hours of stage time, of one of the most massive
pieces of world literature ever written. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe dedi-
cated over sixty years of his life (1749–1832) to the composition of Faust,
a Tragedy in two parts. The production, which moved on to Berlin and
Vienna over the next two years, was timely indeed: many other productions
followed. Faust was rediscovered not only as a vital document of Western
cultural memory, but also for its unsurpassed prophetic power. A major
symposium in Toronto, Canada, and the development of this book were
meant to take these discussions to the next, international, stage.
Obviously, there are numerous translations of Goethe’s Faust. Unless
cited otherwise, our default translation is that of Stuart Atkins, Faust i
and ii, Cambridge, MA: Suhrkamp, 1986. We have tried to maintain the
flow of the text by keeping the original German to a minimum. What we
have lost in philological precision we have gained in readability. But we
allowed Goethe’s full poetic text to stand in the longer, indented quota-
tions. This poetry counts among the most sublime in the history of
European literature, and the richness of its music and associations remains
ultimately untranslatable.
Our thanks are due to all those who invested much patience, thought and
energy into making this book possible – most of all, our contributors from
Europe and North America, who were more than understanding through-
out the long editorial obstacle course. Sadly, Wolf-Daniel Hartwich passed
away before this book could go to press; his untimely death has meant the
loss of a talented scholar.
We thank the team of stylists put together by John Noyes who corrected
and refined the English of our German authors, and Deirdre Vincent, Nina
Peters and John Koster, who translated some of our most demanding essays.
Our thanks go also to Peter Stein, who graciously granted a substantial
xi
xii Preface
interview, and to Samir Dobric, who took on the daunting task of tran-
scribing a near-inaudible CD. We thank the Staatstheater Stuttgart, Luigi
Ciminaghi of the Piccolo Teatro, Milan, and Ruth Walz for granting us
the copyrights for the illustrations. Finally, we are grateful to Vicki Cooper
and Rebecca Taylor, our editors at Cambridge University Press, for their
patience and encouragement.
 Abbreviations

BA Goethe, ed. Siegfried Seidel et al., 22 vols., Berlin: Aufbau, 1965–78.

Berliner Ausgabe.
FA Sämtliche Werke, Briefe, Tagebücher und Gespräche, ed. Dieter
Borchmeyer et al., 40 vols., Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker
Verlag, 1985–. Frankfurter Ausgabe.
FK Faust. Kommentare, ed. Albrecht Schöne, Frankfurt: Deutscher
Klassiker Verlag, 1994.
FT Faust. Texte, ed. Albrecht Schöne, Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker
Verlag, 2005. Our default edition.
GA Gedenkausgabe der Werke, Briefe u. Gespräche, ed. Ernst Beutler,
24 vols., Zurich: Artemis, 1948–60. Gedenkausgabe.
GG Goethes Gespräche: Eine Sammlung zeitgenössischer Berichte aus
seinem Umgang: Auf Grund der Ausgabe und des Nachlasses von
Flodoard Freiherrn von Biedermann, ed. Wolfgang Herwig, 5 vols.,
Zurich: Artemis, 1965–87.
HA Werke, ed. Erich Trunz, 14 vols., Hamburg: Wegner, 1948–60.
Hamburger Ausgabe.
LA Die Schriften zur Naturwissenschaft, ed. Dorothea Kuhn et al.,
20 vols., Weimar: H. Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1947–. Leopoldina-
Ausgabe.
MA Sämtliche Werke nach Epochen seines Schaffens, ed. Karl Richter
et al., 26 vols., Munich: Hanser, 1985–. Münchner Ausgabe.
P Anne Bohnenkamp. ‘. . . das Hauptgeschäft nicht ausser Augen
lassend’: Die Paralipomena zu Goethes Faust, Frankfurt am Main:
Insel, 1994.
WA Goethes Werke, 143 vols., Weimar: H. Böhlau, 1887–1919. Weimarer
Ausgabe.

xiii
 Introduction
Hans Schulte

People today should tremble before the relevance of this text.

Giorgio Strehler (quoted from Laura Caretti’s motto; see p. 306)

This book is an echo of the Faust renaissance currently sweeping through

Germany. The past decade has seen a surge of studies, press coverage, theatre
productions (most notably the twenty-three-hour uncut version by Peter
Stein), and public discussions. In the summer of 2000, while Stein’s
production was in full swing, I took part in such discussions of Faust and
found that the participants were mostly exploring their own contemporary
experience. To me, as a literary man, such a collective excitement about a
full and faithful performance of the classical work was exhilarating. It was an
excitement which decades of directorial experiments had failed to provoke.
One of the consequences of these discussions was the Faust Festival in
Toronto, a week-long extravaganza of lectures, theatre workshops, perform-
ances, concerts and exhibitions from which this book emerged. It contains
the latest interpretive insights by leading Faust scholars, as well as younger
authors with new and productive ideas. Most of them had presented papers
at the symposium which were then thoroughly revised and expanded for
publication. Albrecht Schöne, Eberhard Lämmert, Jane Brown and Dieter
Borchmeyer were brought on board, and a wide-ranging interview with
Peter Stein was conducted, translated and edited for the volume.
The need for a book that presents the latest significant Faust research
to the English-speaking world is obvious enough. This legendary figure
had matured in Goethe’s monumental work to become, according to
J. B. Russell in his Mephistopheles, ‘after Christ, Mary, and the Devil . . .
the single most popular character’ in Christian culture. It became a funda-
mental icon of Western modernity. Even so, Goethe’s opus magnum has
been rather neglected by English-speaking scholars over the past decades.
The present book, entitled Goethe’s Faust: Theatre of Modernity, explores
the phenomenology of modernity presented by Goethe as ‘theatre’, i.e.,
1
2 hans schulte
mystery, pageant, Baroque world stage, opera, spectaculum, panopticum,
plays within plays, roles within roles. It is obvious that a work of such
daunting complexity must be approached from new and multiple angles.
Some essays investigate the modern implications of its mythology. Gisela
Brude-Firnau, for example, gains new insights into the Helena ‘antecedents’
by placing them in a modern, mytho-poetic tradition. She compares the
centaurs in Faust and Harry Potter (Chiron and Firenze), revealing their
‘discourses’ with each other over the centuries. In the same ‘Classical
Walpurgis Night’, another ‘monster of antiquity’ (according to Goethe)
comes Faust’s way: the Medusa. Ernst Osterkamp analyses the symbolic
image of the incessantly growing Medusa as part of Goethe’s turn to
archaic-classical, non-idealized Greek mythos. Through Goethe’s poetic
contextualization, though, the ancient myth becomes charged with a highly
modern force of destruction, eliminating ‘not just the individual but any
concept of the individual’.
Another focus of scholarship is the symbolism and provenance of certain
intriguing scenes and motifs. Wilhelm Blum explores the significance and
historicity of the fortress where the medieval Faust meets the Greek Helena.
This ‘Arcadian’ fortress is revealed as the Frankenburg of Mistra near Sparta,
built in 1249 by Wilhelm de Villehardouin – in the drama, Faust becomes a
Frankish prince, and conceivably an embodiment of Friedrich II of
Hohenstaufen. We can witness here, in the centre of his phantasmagoria,
the acute historical conscience of Goethe’s constructive imagination. Angela
Borchert focuses on the grotesque in the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’, where
classical education is rendered absurd in a way that frightens even Mephisto.
And Daniel Wilson finds new access to the play by way of a close exami-
nation of Mephisto’s homosexuality, especially in the last act. The devil’s
lust and the angels’ love are both part of the ‘economy of desire’ in God’s
all-embracing plan.
These are essentially new perspectives and examples of the diversity of
modern interpretive approaches. But all contributions are tied together by
the general themes of modernity and theatre. Dividing the essays under these
two titles, which are not meant to be exclusive, was an easy choice. All
interpretations in the first part are focused on the modern significance of
Faust without ignoring its theatricality. The reverse is true in the second. Here
‘theatre’ is discussed in its two dimensions: as structure and as performance.
In a progressive book on Faust as theatre, performance critique must not be
excluded, in spite of its quotidian nature.
What is, in essence, this sixteenth-century alchemist’s ‘modernity’?
Goethe creates a typological synthesis of the crisis of early modernity
 Introduction 3
(the time of Faustus, Paracelsus, Machiavelli) and that of his own revolu-
tionary era (Romanticism, early industrialism). The first crisis becomes the
mirror of the second, because Goethe makes them transparent towards the
recurrent ‘ultimate formulae’ of human history. That way, Faust becomes
prophetic for a third dimension of modernity: our own. The reader or
spectator sees the present reflected in the mutually enlightening aspects of
the two modern crises – from the reformation to 1830.
What are the principles of this ‘modern’ phenomenology of Faust, in this
comprehensive sense? Faust embodies the human spirit residing solely in
itself and claiming unconditional autonomy; the need for universal knowl-
edge (Erkenntnis) as deification of the self; a moral indifference – that
ancient principle (in Mephisto’s cosmogony) of a highly modern devil;
the limitless availability of the world, of its natural, human and cultural
resources – even its history – to human activism; the futile striving (Streben)
for absolute joy, the joy of the absolute; the principle of impatience, which
forces itself on the world with ‘magic’ strategies, short-cuts and technology;
the ‘velociferous’ dynamics of eternal dissatisfaction (veloziferisch was
Goethe’s clever coinage which fuses ‘speed’ and Lucifer) which will spare
no human pains and sacrifices on the way to the elusive ‘schöne Augenblick’
(beautiful moment); and an ‘overleaping’ spiritual quest (line 1859), which
keeps pressing forward towards its utopia and never looks back in sorrow.
This sounds like a harsh verdict, on Goethe’s part, against both Faust and
modernity, but we have to beware of imbalance and misjudgement. Faust as
a whole is not a satire. Goethe himself never put a Faustian theodicy in
question. In the eyes of the Lord, Faust is ‘der gute Mensch’, which can only
make sense if we do not understand Goethe to be making narrowly moral
judgements. From early on, Goethe had established a Faust figure of
extraordinary standards and strengths, whose immortality is never in
doubt. This Faust had enough positive energy (‘entelechy’) to carry the
burden that the later Goethe, who became increasingly sceptical of his
times, kept heaping on him. Goethe himself seemed to sense this imposi-
tion. In a letter to K. E. Schubarth (3 September 1820), his remarks con-
cerning all those modern, ‘phantastischen Irrtümer’ (fantastic errors) which
he forces ‘the poor man’ to struggle through almost sound like an apology
for Faust. At the same time, Goethe does not acquit him of moral respon-
sibility. There is a school of scholars who claim that Faust cannot be blamed
for ‘experiencing’, with ever-changing identities, the shady spheres of
modern politics, society and commerce. This is part of the character
problem which we must deal with later. Here we should simply weigh
Act 5 of Part ii – with the old autocrat at his morally lowest but at the height
4 hans schulte
of his worldly power – against the redeeming forces, throughout the drama,
of love, Bildung and creative imagination, of nature, science and the better
half of his Streben.
Goethe’s prescience of our modern world is near-miraculous. Albrecht
Schöne, in our first essay, puts it to a simple test with the question: what did
the Faust text actually ‘know’ about these last 200 years of Western society?
‘Faust – today’, therefore, is not aiming at a new interpretation of what Faust
means to us today (Schöne has dealt with that in much of his previous
research), but at something more concrete and surprising: Goethe’s actual
anticipation of present-day discourses and discoveries, including genetic
science, economics, politics and our encroachment on nature. Schöne
shows us specifically how Goethe’s ‘ultimate formulae’, which make the
world and its history conceivable to him, have not only caught up with
present-day insights but opened windows to our future.
It is obvious that the modernity discussion likes to focus on the Mephisto
figure. Rolf-Peter Janz writes on ‘Mephisto and the modernization of evil’,
meaning the secularization of the devil, whose phenomenology becomes
inexhaustible in the process. Good and evil become inextricably inter-
twined, to such an extent that Mephisto himself can often play the part of
good reason and fairness. More often, of course, Mephisto is the agent of
modern expediency (invention of paper money, victory through violence
and deceit etc.): he is the moral price the protagonist, as the man of the
future, has to pay. Peter Huber (‘Mephisto is the devil – or is he?’) takes this
understanding of a morally indifferent Mephisto a step further. He explains
why Goethe always uses the word ‘devil’ ironically: it is a Christian concept
which the play renders absurd. Huber’s mythological analysis finds the key
in the Earth Spirit to whom Mephisto belongs: as a pre-Christian god and
nature daemon. He enables ‘polarity’ as the agent of darkness which,
together with light, produces the spectrum of life.
But let us now turn to the protagonist himself. When the traditional Faust
cult had run its course, the beginnings of the modernity discussion of Faust
(long after the Second World War) brought a backlash: a hero who is seen as
deeply problematic and defective. Four of the essays in the first part of this
book deal with this character problem. Ulrich Gaier and Wolf-Daniel
Hartwich attempt to deflect these accusations – Gaier by way of a formal
analysis which relieves Faust of the onus of a unified and therefore responsible
‘character’ altogether, and Hartwich through his understanding of a produc-
tive amnesia, which allows Faust to salvage his transcendental identity in
spite of a constantly changing persona. Gaier’s contribution (‘“Schwankende
Gestalten”: virtuality in Goethe’s Faust’) is as thought-provoking as it is
 Introduction 5
challenging for a production of the play. In his interpretation, Faust – like
Mephisto – is one of the ‘wavering shapes’ intoned by Goethe’s ‘Dedication’
(‘Zueignung’).
Schwankend means ‘ungraspable’ and ‘always changing’. Post-medieval
European history and culture are poured into the ‘shape’ of Faust, where
they attain a ‘virtual’ oneness which, however, always remains intangible.
Gaier contradicts Hartwich in this understanding of Faust’s fundamental
lack of identity, or rather, of his multiple identities and allegorical roles.
Understanding Faust as ‘the text with the highest calculated variability in
all literature’ is a radical, but clearly productive position which should
influence all future discussions.
The theatre-goers, though, will insist that ‘we are Faust’, a statement which
the Stuttgart production reviewed in this volume (see Chapter 19) was
based on – a persona they can react to with empathy (fear and pity in the
Aristotelian tradition), with admiration and disapproval. The allegorical as
well as the glorified Faust precludes such a balanced experience – as does
the third alternative: the negative Faust. Hans-Jürgen Schings and Eberhard
Lämmert, two of our most eminent contributors, make Faust fully account-
able for the trail of destruction he leaves behind. They see this destructiveness
as central to his identity. No tragedy, no allegory, no divine scheme, no
redeeming qualities or diabolical machinations are allowed as mitigating
factors.
There is a history behind this stance. One hundred and fifty years of
German Faust idolatry (including the East German Erbe (socialist heritage)
ideology) lie behind us, and a new understanding of Faust as a social and
political liability rather than a heroic incarnation of nationhood – and, in its
wake, of Western culture – became overdue. Gottlieb C. L. Schuchard was
a courageous but isolated early voice in 1935. He showed for the first time
how the 80-year-old author, in the last two acts, made his protagonist a
leading participant in the latest political and social experiments which he
despised (especially the July revolution of 1830 and the rise of Saint-
Simonism). Long after the war, the German theatre slowly began to topple
the national monument as well, and so did a small but growing faction
named ‘anti-perfectibilists’ (after the pietist Wilhelm Böhme): writers and
thinkers who call the perceived perfectibility of the Faustian world a
dangerous chimera. This faction is impressive enough, as Albrecht
Schöne, Heinz Schlaffer, Nicholas Boyle, Jochen Schmidt and – in this
volume – Hans-Jürgen Schings and Eberhard Lämmert can testify.
For Hans-Jürgen Schings (‘Cagliostro and Saint-Simon in Goethe’s
Faust ii’), Goethe places the Faust of Part ii next to to the magician and
6 hans schulte
swindler Cagliostro. Goethe was indeed fascinated by this famous
seducer of minds, who single-handedly launched a conspiracy against the
Enlightenment. To him, this self-serving trendsetter was one of the
‘modernist’ post-Enlightenment figures of which the Romantic va-banque
player Euphorion was only a slightly less dubious version. Similarly, the
social idealism of the Saint-Simonists (precursors of later and even more
explosive social utopians) provided a model for the final night scenes of the
colonization project. Like those ‘inspired ones’, Faust resorts to his ‘inner
light’ to set the stage for his project, having been blinded to its reality – both
in a physical and metaphorical sense. Eberhard Lämmert (‘The blind Faust’)
begins where Schings ends in applying this blindness to all of Faust’s life and
career. As in Oedipus’ case, his blindness is a metaphor for a character who
can only look inward, unable to consider the world outside. And in that, of
course, he has Mephisto’s vigorous support. The other characters are mis-
led, according to Lämmert, by his unconditional striving. It is their tragedy
to have paved his way and paid the price.
Clearly the hero’s negativity is splendidly argued in these two essays, and
such thrust was undoubtedly needed to counter traditional bias and myth-
making. But the fact remains that the other contributors do not follow this
path. A truly negative Faust would not be able to counter-balance the devil,
let alone carry the whole play. A void would be left which no abstraction like
‘modern society’ could fill. Brecht’s ‘epic theatre’ attempted exactly that:
reducing the traditional hero of Shakespeare’s and Goethe’s plays
(Coriolanus and Urfaust) to deadly threats to society. Both adaptations
were briefly famous in the post-war context, but they never really worked,
and neither did the numerous directorial experiments which followed
Brecht’s example. Radical deconstructions of the Faust figure, quite often
exposing it to ridicule, became an unfortunate, state-subsidized fashion
(see the interview with Peter Stein below). Lessing’s dramaturgy considered
a certain measure of ‘admiration’ for the tragic protagonist essential, and
with good reason.
But how would we, after Schings, Lämmert and others, fill the void and
restore ‘admiration’? Jane Brown (in the second part of this book) suggests
that ultimately we cannot pass judgement on moral grounds. Many of us
would agree. Jaspers saw the ‘greatness’ of the tragic character in his choice
to ‘take the human possibilities to their extremes, and to be knowingly
ruined by them.’ Tragedy, he says, ‘shows man in his greatness beyond
good and evil’.1 After Brecht, of course, and after Hegel and Nietzsche’s
separation of greatness and goodness (‘great’ historical figures being free
from socio-ethical concerns – with fascist consequences), we have much
 Introduction 7
sympathy with Hans-Jürgen Schings, who distances himself from any
‘monumental interpretation of Faust, beyond all morality’. Goethe, how-
ever, saw no problem yet in calling Napoleon ‘great’, and Faust the great
entelechy ensuring immortality. He clearly accorded his hero a positive
worldly as well as spiritual power – to such a man, he tells Eckermann, he
owed a higher, brighter, more dignified world in Part ii, after having him
toil through the small world of Part i. Faust is implicitly numbered by
Panthalis (at the end of the Helena scenes) among the immortals who made
a name for themselves and searched for noble truths, while all others ‘belong
to the elements’. And since we are weighing his achievements: Gisela Brude-
Firnau argues convincingly here that Goethe raised Faust to the status of his
poetic alter ego in Acts 2 and 3 of Part ii. Faust dreams up the most beautiful
story and moment (Augenblick) of his time, fleeting and transitory though it
may be – the marriage of modern Europe with Greek antiquity. Magic,
otherwise a ‘radical evil’ in the Kantian sense, becomes a high and redeem-
ing achievement in the poetic phantasmagoria. In short, we have to grant
him, as Goethe does, the gravitas of a powerful, astonishing and engaging
theatrical presence. There is no strong performance without this strength of
Faust’s personal presence, as Peter Stein has emphasized once again in the
interview below. As he points out, any stage production will have to make
Faust the commanding figure throughout, and Gustav Gründgens’ self-
serving replacement of the protagonist Faust with Mephisto has done much
damage in the history of Faust production and criticism. The interpretive
tradition that finds its greatest interest in Mephisto is still echoed, on
occasion, in the present book (see Chapters 3 and 12).
It is our difficult task, therefore, to see the old chapbook’s ‘gute und böse’
Faust fused into one. We have to take into account that Faust is indeed a
Renaissance man of universal activity, who is abnormally at risk because he
goes out on all possible limbs. He falls deeper because he reaches higher, to
reveal the often comical tragedy (Mephisto’s cicada image in the ‘Prologue’!)
of the human condition. Finally, it must not be forgotten that Faust – as
opposed to Mephisto – wanted the good where he achieves the bad. Both
Schings and Lämmert observe his noble enthusiasm, which almost invar-
iably goes awry where it turns to action. Faust’s spirit ‘overleaps’ the world.
Hegel talked about the self-estrangement of the spirit, when the purity of
the idea first gets mired in the material, historical world – the prime source
of tragic guilt. Faust rejects Hegel’s ‘synthesis’ of reconciliation. He remains
in the ‘error’, ‘twilight’ and ‘confusion’ of human activity. Hegel’s analysis
did not have modernity in mind. Goethe’s does: Faust ‘loses himself ’ in the
‘phantastic errors’ of modern society. Mephisto has come to throw him
8 hans schulte
right into it, and Faust can hardly wait. ‘Stürzen wir uns in das Rauschen der
Zeit’ (1754, Let’s plunge into time’s turbulence) without looking back!
There is another good reason for us to withhold any final judgement for
or against the protagonist. It is very Goethean and very theatrical to keep
things in suspense and maintain the force of contradiction in the leading
character. Schiller had Goethe’s example in mind when he created his
Wallenstein. The Faustian Streben itself is the most intriguing balancing
act, and any attempt to judge it one way or another is doomed to failure.
Even Faust’s utopia, the ‘paradise for millions’, is kept in such a suspense, in
spite of its resulting from piracy, slavery and environmental havoc. We
cannot simply take Mephistopheles at his word when he predicts that the
sea will reclaim it all. Whether we side for or against, it is equally easy to find
quotations and arguments. Schings quotes Goethe’s remark, in Wilhelm
Meister, that ‘unconditional activity . . . will end in bankruptcy’. This will
have to be weighed against the flawless credit of the seer Manto in Act 2 of
Part ii who embraces the orphic enthusiast who desires the impossible.
Goethe’s Ancient Greece giving the nod to this icon of Christian modernity
should count for something. But then again, such impossible desires foster
the demonic sub-currents of that same modernity. How far allegorical
interpretations can go in acquitting him of complicity (he is, after all,
Mephisto’s knowing accomplice!) will be explored, no doubt, in many
future discussions.

The second part of this book is devoted to an understanding of Faust as

theatre – which includes opera, but also performance in the widest sense.
Goethe supervised, as producer, director or dramaturge, over 600 plays and
operas in twenty-six years, and this massive drama, which he deemed
unperformable (see Chapter 4, p. 54), is in fact designed – to the minutest
detail of stagecraft – for the eyes and ears of an audience. Albrecht Schöne
has shown, in ‘Der Theatermann als Stückeschreiber’ (Programmbuch for
Peter Stein’s Faust), how Goethe uses the theatre to present the world and
its history as theatre, including the audience and on-stage audiences. The
playful complexity of ‘self-confident illusion’, of theatre-within-theatre up
to ‘the seventh power’ (Schöne), far exceeds any Brechtian experiment. The
theatrical structures of Faust must inform any valid interpretation.
Martin Swales (‘Goethe’s Faust: theatre, meta-theatre, tragedy’) sees
Mephisto in the role, within the mystery frame, of diabolical salesman: he
offers life as a theatrical extravaganza, and the radical individualist and
disillusioned secular spirit cannot refuse – the illusion. Theatre becomes
the key metaphor for human existence, two millennia of European history
 Introduction 9
and above all modernity. Mephisto is the agent of modernity (‘to say
nothing of postmodern nihilism and virtual reality’) driving Faust to dire
consequences. The chapter attempts a Faust in a nutshell, and is very
accessible and engaging for a non-specialist reader. Most importantly,
Swales recognizes this theatre as tragedy and Faust as a tragic character.
This is normally disputed nowadays. Tragedy lurks in Faustian discontent,
in the will to act and in the ‘impossible’ struggle between the two souls of
man (echoed in the polarities of the Earth Spirit). Dieter Borchmeyer (‘Faust
beyond tragedy: hidden comedy, covert opera’) contradicts this position
emphatically, arguing that there is no objectifiable self (see Chapter 4 and
Chapter 15) and no suffering, and therefore no tragedy. Faust only causes
suffering. In the case of Faust ii, where the hero seems to disappear in the
spheres of his action, many agreed in our symposium discussions. But not so
as regards Faust i , where his despair and suffering surge to near-suicide.
More significantly, though, Borchmeyer reveals the genres ‘hidden’ behind
the so-called ‘tragedy’: a Divina Commedia (complete with mystery frame)
and – opera. The operatic-musical quality of Faust has often been observed.
But never has it been tested so thoroughly, scene by scene in both parts, to
provide such surprising results. Theoretically, we recall, the classical Goethe
shared this love of opera with Schiller: it guaranteed a ‘pure’ dramatic poetry,
a symbolism unmarred by distracting illusions of reality.
Jane Brown (‘Theatricality and experiment: identity in Faust’) agrees
with Borchmeyer as far as the absence of tragedy is concerned. She also
agrees with his and Gaier’s claim that Faust lacks an identifiable self. But her
reasoning is different. While Gaier finds the multiplicity of character
identities ‘ungraspable’ and unplayable, because they are simultaneous,
Brown sees both protagonists as ideally crafted theatre figures who play
their various roles on the world stage successively – Faust from lover to wise
man, to poet, to imperial treasurer, to medieval prince, to Renaissance
knight, to elderly landowner etc. Helmut Schanze (‘Rhetorical action:
Faust between rhetoric, poetics and music’) confirms Gaier’s and Brown’s
analysis of Faustian roles from a rhetorical point of view. Faust displays a
multiplicity of ‘rhetorical actions’, even within one scene, such as the very
first (‘Night’). Exploring Goethe’s construction of rhetorical climax, he
distinguishes the rhetorics of Love, Evil, Nature, Power and Redemption,
and shows us how such (normally) lyrical evocations tend to break into
music. Goethe marks the musical parts (chorus and arias/madrigals/Lieder)
typographically with indented text. In the Helena act, for instance, 800 out
of 1,352 lines are indented. The essay complements Dieter Borchmeyer’s
examination of Faust as opera. To me, it was especially interesting how
10 hans schulte
Schanze introduced the rhetorical concept of ‘performance’ as the ‘persua-
sive staging’ of action and music, and referred to its rising prominence in the
‘performative turn’ of the discourse and theatrical experimentation of recent
decades. It ‘announces a “performative crisis” . . . in the “production” of
Goethe’s masterpiece’. The scope of his chapter did not allow the author to
argue this out, but the performative crisis plays such an important role in the
praxis section concluding this book that a brief excursion seems in order.
Performance as persuasive staging is obviously built into Goethe’s text,
while the ‘performative turn’ of the 1960s and early 1970s (part of the leftist
youth movement) required the text to be dismantled. A decade or so later,
‘performatism’ became part of postmodern discourse and blossomed into
astonishing theories complete with new ‘metaphysics’ (a confusing paradox,
given its deconstructivist provenance). The ‘performative turn’ simply
means the turn from ‘text culture’ to ‘performance culture’, from theatre
studies to performance studies, from elitist, literary or ‘reactionary’ theatre
to communal ritual.2 ‘Dismemberment’ as ‘sacrifice’ of the literary text
makes an ever-changing, ever-present performance possible. Only ‘bits and
pieces’ of historical texts can be productively incorporated in the perform-
ance of present culture – an excellent strategy would be the ‘parodic re-
using, dismantling, and recombining of classic texts, traditions and other
“found” performance idioms’.3 Interspersed political quotations and ad-lib
emoting would make the dish even more palatable. The performers or their
directors are the real authors, who freely weave such bits and pieces, their
material, into the patchwork of an ever-new ‘event’, a communal ritual that
takes place between them and the audience. Modern semiotics of theatre,
directorial productions and popular performance art keep feeding on such
theories.
As a result, a directorial performance theatre went mainstream – espe-
cially in Germany, where it had once received world-wide acclaim for its
creative renewals of classical texts. Backed by trend and theory, it turned
deconstructive with a competitive and systematic force which young direc-
tors seeking success could not and cannot escape. It despises ‘literary theatre’
(see the Stein interview, Chapter 17) and instals the auctorial director over
the dramatist. Critics have often exposed, through comparisons with the
original texts, the loss of relevance, structure and memory culture, which
may lead to the demise of such ‘emancipated’ theatre one day. There has
been a reaction already: conscientious, text-based productions like Strehler’s
and Stein’s turned out to be vastly more engaging, mysterious, complex and
revealing than the eleven Fausts of Einar Schleef, or nihilistic reductions like
the recent Berlin production by Thalheimer.
 Introduction 11
It is well known how aggressively Peter Stein has always confronted this
‘performative crisis’. Stein is a passionate advocate of literary theatre, the
only type of theatre that deserves, so he argues, its name as a cultural
institution. In this book, the interview with Stein is positioned between
studies of Faust as drama and as performance, because it embraces both. His
is the rare case of a director who is a literary critic as well as a great director.
Stein speaks about the productive dialogue between the text and its staging,
and how they inform each other. On the one hand, Stein’s interpretation is
based on solid research. The combined power of today’s scholarship and
stagecraft make the text ‘shine’. Conversely, the staging itself provided new
insights into the drama, insights which had not been accessible to Stein as a
reader. Faust’s refusal, for example, to look back with regret revealed itself as
Goethe’s own dramaturgic decision: there were to be no second thoughts
about the direction of this life of action. The modern–Freudian lens would
lead to the wrong conclusions. What Goethe and the theatre gained was a
relentless forward thrust, the theatrical equivalent of the hero’s indefatigable
Streben. This Faust’s striving is tragic, and ‘tragedy of modernity’ seems a
fitting label for Stein’s theatrical interpretation. He avoids it, though: his
concept of tragedy, including Faust’s, is firmly rooted in Greek antiquity.
Dirk Pilz (‘A contradictory whole: Peter Stein stages Faust’) gives us more
insight into this production. He emphasizes the modern validity of a Faust
which is pointedly staged as tragedy, a genre which has long been declared
officially dead. For Pilz, Stein presented the tragedy of a modern Everyman,
an existential paradox: a man who is born to act, to his moral demise, in
order to die. Pilz shows us how every detail of Stein’s direction reflects the
narrow confines of humanity from which no transcendent longing, no
‘magic’ activity can ever escape. The heavenly spiral, lowered after his
death, shows us that even then Faust cannot take a single step towards
heaven (the very purpose of his journey) – heaven has to come down to him,
in an act of grace.
Pilz, as a literary scholar and theatre critic, contrasts the strength of this
interpretation with two ‘directorial’ Faust productions of the following
years. One of these productions happens to be the subject of the chapter
following Pilz’s, written by its chief dramaturge. To be exact, Jörg Bochow
(‘Re-thinking and staging Faust at the State Theatre Stuttgart, 2005–6’) was
responsible for the staging of Faust i only, with its new narrative concocted
from various strains of the original plot. The end result of this alchemistic
shake-up of story lines and figures (two of three Fausts drink the fatal poison
and later return to life as two Mephistos, etc.) was baffling but imaginative.
It was based on Goethe’s text and seems to have enjoyed a degree of success.
12 hans schulte
That changed with the production of Faust ii by Volker Lösch, which
turned ‘communal’ (citizens of Stuttgart took over the stage). It would have
satisfied the theoreticians of theatre as ritual and ‘sacrificial dismember-
ment’ (above). Bochow’s chapter is fascinating and uniquely informative, as
it reveals the step-by-step genesis of a (post-)postmodern Faust production.
We have here a good example of the ‘performative crisis’: local citizens’
discussions of politics, the economy and urban projects with ‘bits and
pieces’ from Goethe’s play mixed in, all publicly funded and called Faust
21. Goethe’s life work, which had integrated 3,000 years of European
culture, becomes an instrument of communal navel-gazing. It is especially
ironic since this work, like no other perhaps, could have offered the
Stuttgart community a powerful collective memory. Such memory alone,
psychoanalysts have pointed out time and again, provides modern society
with a healthy identity. Goethe knew this already all too well: the Faust
drama is, in fact, a critique of self-involved modernity and also supplies its
antidote – our mythic memory, which is the very content and purpose of
Faustian time travel.
A good theatrical interpretation is not a question of textual completeness,
of course, in spite of Stein’s ‘mammoth’ uncut Faust. Stein himself highly
respected Giorgio Strehler’s older production at the Teatro Piccolo, Milan,
which used only about half of Goethe’s lines. Laura Caretti (‘Strehler’s Faust
in performance’), who was involved in the five-year production process,
shows us the very opposite of a ‘dismantling’ direction. Strehler was so
obsessed with the enormity of the literary challenge that he started his
directorial project with a new translation (as Stein did, by the way, with
his Oresteia project). Caretti tells us that Strehler endlessly tested, fine-tuned
and revised this translation on stage, and that he once spent an hour trying
to render in Italian the ‘ach!’ in Faust’s first line. Strehler re-created in Faust
the homo europeanus at a time when European unity was still at stake: the
man possessed by the visions and problems of our common history was a
bold and political, but thoroughly authentic, reading. Strehler’s Faust, like
Stein’s, was an ‘event’ of modern Western culture (to parody postmodern
performatism), and the following self-effacing description of directorial
discipline speaks for both: ‘Ours has been a work of humility in our attempt
to give real body, on the stage, to one of the greatest works of human
culture’ (Strehler, from Caretti’s motto).
Strehler’s Faust is proof that a bold and visionary production of the
classical work can be true to its author. It also bears witness to the fact
that memory, drama and theatre are intimately connected. Collective
memory is stored in dramatic texts, to be unlocked and celebrated in
 Introduction 13
theatres – collectively. This is responsible and, indeed, essential ‘ritual’
which subsidizing governments must focus their attention on. The conven-
tional wisdom, therefore, that the old texts are dead is little more than a
symptom of modern Vergessenszwang (compulsive oblivion). Those who
cannot answer for their past 3,000 years, Goethe once said in the wisdom of
his old age, ‘stay naïve in dark confusions, / Day to day live undiscerning’.
Modern society has largely forgotten how to find itself within a herme-
neutic tradition. People don’t understand any more how the most con-
structive challenges of modern culture may be found not in striking ‘events’
but in texts like Goethe’s Faust – re-interpreted. This understanding is
present in each of the contributions to this book. They are interpretations
(the word and concept were conspicuously absent from Fischer-Lichte’s
book on modern theatre) revealing a provocative classical text as it enters the
modern horizon. At the same time, such entry – or fusion, as hermeneutic
theory has it – redefines our modernity. It is of great interest to remember
that once, with the experience of totalitarianism and the holocaust, any
potential of a constructive presence of Goethezeit had seemingly disap-
peared. A cultural chasm had opened, Karl Jaspers argued at that time,
which seemed to place Goethe nearer to the Middle Ages than to our post-
war consciousness. But Jaspers’ cultural despair was miplaced, and this book
will contribute to proving it was.

not es
1. Karl Jaspers, Über das Tragische, Munich: Piper, 1952, 29.
2. Erika Fischer-Lichte, Theatre, Ritual, Sacrifice, New York: Routledge, 2005.
3. Shannon Jackson, Professing Performance: Theatre in the Academy from Philology
to Performativity, Cambridge University Press, 2004, 268.
 part i
Modernity
 chapter 1

Faust – today
Albrecht Schöne

‘Intimidation through Classicism’ was the heading Brecht gave to his notes
on Goethe’s Faust in 1964.1 The colossal scope of this work does indeed have
such an intimidating effect that many readers (and the vast majority of
directors as well) content themselves with Faust i , not even daring to
approach Faust ii, which is almost twice as voluminous. Furthermore, the
work as a whole is burdened by 200 years of reception and interpretation,
surrounded by countless scholarly interpreters, and completely armed
against the curiosity of uninhibited readers with its reputation of fearsome
profundity and overwhelming demands. It is easy to see why Thomas Mann
wrote to Hermann Hesse that one might be ‘tempted some time to write a
totally fresh, intimate commentary on Faust which would relieve people of
their all too pious timidity in the face of this sublime, serene, by no means
inaccessible work, exceptional and bold but humanly fallible as it is’.2
Such a ‘fresh, intimate commentary’ would also have to explain what
might otherwise be misunderstood and would certainly be worth under-
standing correctly. Goethe himself believed that such assistance was
required in the case of the great old masters:
Denn bei den alten lieben Toten
Braucht man Erklärung, will man Noten;
Die Neuen glaubt man blank zu verstehn;
Doch ohne Dolmetsch wird’s auch nicht gehn. (BA 1, 441)
For with the old and dear departed
They need explanations, they want notes;
The new ones they think they can understand;
Yet without interpreter they won’t succeed, either.

With this, he certainly had not least his Faust in mind, for here was a work
that was meant to compel the reader ‘to dare himself to go beyond himself’,
as he wrote to his friend Zelter on 26 July 1828, while working on it. ‘Even
someone with a good head and good sense’, he continued, ‘has his work cut
17
18 albrecht schöne
out for him if he wants to make himself the master of all the mysteries that
have been tucked away there’ (WA 4:44, 226).
If that was valid when the wood was green, it is much more so now that it
has aged. Today’s reader needs commentaries to supply meanings that
would have been evident to a contemporary. These commentaries therefore
tend to explain works such as this by going back to language usage and
objective knowledge from the time of writing. For them, the end of the
writing (i.e., the year 1808 for Part i, and 1832 for Part ii of Faust) signals the
end of their responsibilities. They leave the rest to the descriptive accounts
of reception and interpretive history. ‘Modernizations’, regardless of
whether they distort the text or are faithful to its own intentions, are
considered unrespectable and utterly uncritical. No wonder theatre direc-
tors took and continue to take matters into their own hands.
However: ‘If I read Homer today,’ Goethe wrote to Zelter (8 August 1822),
‘he looks different from ten years ago; if we could reach the age of three
hundred years, he would look different again’ (WA 4:36, 111). Which does not
mean, of course, that the traditional text of the Iliad or Odyssey itself would
change with the times, but that it would be perceived in a different way. The
reader is always a child of his own time: his perceptions are controlled by his
personal experiences, interests and expectations. While the later reader may
lose sight of certain meanings, he may be the first to see new meanings. The
contemporary context within which an author has composed his work will
fade away with time, enabling new contexts to enrich the great old works of
literature. They also enrich the Faust-drama, placing it in new relationships
and moving it into a different light (‘if we could reach the age of three
hundred years, [Homer] would look different again’!). That is why I did
not wish to neglect, in the commentary of my Faust edition in the Deutscher
Klassiker Verlag, what this mightiest, richest and most significant work in
German literature could mean specifically for our time, for our self-
understanding and world-view. I did not wish to patronize the reader, but
to make suggestions and to stimulate his own discoveries. I did not want to
simply explain the historical substance stored in the treasury of this work, in
the wonderful medium of poetry. Goethe wrote in the West-östlicher Divan:

Wer nicht von dreitausend Jahren

Sich weiß Rechenschaft zu geben,
Bleibt im Dunkeln unerfahren,
Mag von Tag zu Tage leben. (FA 1:3, 59)

Those who cannot draw conclusions

From three thousand years of learning
 Faust – today 19
Stay naïve in dark confusions,
Day to day live undiscerning.3
Rather, I wanted to draw attention as well to the emerging newness inherent
in this old text, feeling encouraged by the lines in the Zahme Xenien ii :
Wir sind vielleicht zu antik gewesen,
Nun wollen wir es moderner lesen. (BA 1, 648)

Perhaps we were too antiquated,

Let’s be more modern readers now.
This is not to justify in any way the ‘actualizations’ of the modern directorial
theatre. (Gründgens was still content in 1957 to place a model resembling the
Atomium of Brussels in Faust’s Gothic study and to bring an atom-bomb
explosion into the ‘Walpurgis Night’. In the time since then we have become
accustomed to quite different additions by our self-important directors.)
Clearly and unmistakably, Goethe’s ‘let’s be more modern readers’ refers to
what is written into the text itself and can be elicited from it again today.
Let me offer just two examples of this for clarification: Gottfried Benn
provides the first, Paul Celan the second.
In the third act of Part ii, the scene ‘Inner Courtyard of a Castle’, we hear
the thunder of the canons and experience ‘powerful armed forces marching
past’ (9441). In the role of supreme commander, Faust designs the strategy
of an imperial war of conquest aimed at the capture of the entire Greek
Peloponnese. This is truly ‘the empire’s gain’ (9465), as he himself declares.
In an address to the army leaders he steels the will of his troops for battle and
victory, saying:
In Stahl gehüllt, vom Stahl umwittert,
Die Schar die Reich um Reich zerbrach,
Sie treten auf, die Erde schüttert.
Sie schreiten fort, es donnert nach. (9450–53)
Encased in steel, its armour flashing,
The host that crushed so many states
Appears, and then the earth is shaken;
They march away, the thunder is still heard.
With a keen ear and sense of style, Benn wrote in a letter of 1948 about
the ‘steely romanticism’ of this commando stanza: ‘the SS-poetry in the
Inner Courtyard – “encased in steel, . . .” – a highly remarkable passage!’ (to
F. W. Oelze, 29 July).
With the lines ‘Your golden hair Margarete, your ashen hair Sulamith,’
Paul Celan’s ‘Todesfuge’ (Death Fugue), written in 1944–5, creates a clear
20 albrecht schöne
link to the Faust drama.4 And this one explicit reference draws attention, as
is often the case in Celan’s work, to further hidden correspondences. Faust’s
great colonization project in Act 5 of Part ii is cast in a gloomy twilight,
when the elderly Philemon reports ‘daring servants dug ditches’ (11091–2).
And the pious Baucis knows or senses the Mephistophelean, inhuman and
criminal source which made this enormous reclamation project possible:
Tags umsonst die Knechte lärmten,
Hack und Schaufel, Schlag um Schlag,
Wo die Flämmchen nächtig schwärmten,
Stand ein Damm den andern Tag.
Menschenopfer mußten bluten,
Nachts erscholl des Jammers Qual. (11123–8)
In the daytime noisy workmen
Hacked and shovelled, all in vain;
Where, at night, small fires flickered,
There was a dam the following day.
Human lives were sacrificed,
Groans of torment filled the darkness.
A great drainage canal has to be dug, and Faust, stepping out of his palace,
orders Mephisto (the overseer, as he calls him): ‘Get a plentiful supply of
laborers, / use benefits and discipline to spur them on!’ (11552, 11554). But as
soon as he has given him the order to take possession of all that belongs to
Philemon and Baucis – an order that is to be their death sentence – ‘Go and
rid me of their presence’ (11275), this Mephistophelean overseer of the
forced labour hordes gives one shrill whistle, and the guard of his unscru-
pulous ruffians goes into action.
‘A man lives in the house,’ says Celan’s poem, ‘he steps out, the stars glitter,
he summons his dogs, he summons his Jews, he makes them dig a grave in the
earth.’ There can scarcely be any doubt: in the lines of the pre-eminent work
of all German literature, the poet of the ‘Todesfuge’ saw prefigured what the
Germans did to the Jews – ‘Death is a master from Germany.’
Such new readings of an old text in the light of later experience defy the
schoolboy questions: ‘What did the author really mean? What did he want
to say there?’ They completely set aside pretentious praise of what Goethe
himself already said or meant or anticipated. They certainly do not presume
that the poet, as the chosen medium of a higher inspiration, can see further
into the future than other mortals. This is not about the author’s prophetic
potential, but about the prognostic potential of the great poetic texts
themselves. They already know more or provide more knowledge than
their author could possibly have held in many cases.
 Faust – today 21
These are not new insights. The author of Faust himself has reflected on
this as well: ‘Nobody understands good books, especially those of the
ancients, unless he can complement them with experience of his own life
and world. Someone who knows something will find infinitely more in
them than someone who just wants to learn.’5 He expresses this thought
repeatedly at the end of his life. Thus, to Nicolaus Borchardt (1 May 1828),
regarding his own kind of ‘poetic representation’, he says that the reader
may ‘find himself reflected in the images and discover, with his growing
experience, the most manifold results’ (WA 4:44, 79). Or to Boisserée,
8 September 1831, concerning Faust ii : ‘No one who has not learned and
experienced a few things, will know how to deal with it.’ If someone,
however, understands ‘gesture, hint and subtle implication’ he will ‘find
even more than I could give’ (WA 4:49, 64).
This is what happened to the young Karl Marx, for instance. An image
captured in four of Mephisto’s lines in the study scene provided him with
the definition of capitalist private property (which therefore virtually
appears as a Mephistophelean achievement, a work of the devil):
Wenn ich sechs Hengste zahlen kann,
Sind ihre Kräfte nicht die meine?
Ich renne zu und bin ein rechter Mann,
Als hätt’ ich vier und zwanzig Beine. (1824–7)

If I can pay for six strong horses,

Do I not own their power? –
as if my legs were twenty-four
I run about and am important.
Interpreting Faust with explicit reference to this passage, Marx says:
That which exists for me through the medium of money, that which I can pay for,
i.e., that which money can buy, that am I, the possessor of money. The stronger the
power of my money, the stronger am I. The properties of money are my, the
possessor’s, properties and essential powers. Therefore, what I am and what I can
do is by no means determined by my individuality. I am ugly, but I can buy the
most beautiful woman. Which means to say that I am not ugly, for the effect of
ugliness, its repelling power, is destroyed by money. As an individual, I am lame,
but money procures me 24 legs. Consequently, I am not lame. I am a wicked,
dishonest, unscrupulous and stupid individual, but money is respected, and so also
is its owner. Money is the highest good, and consequently its owner is also good.
Moreover, money spares me the trouble of being dishonest, and I am therefore
presumed to be honest. I am spiritless, but if money is the true spirit (Geist) of all
things, how can its owner be spiritless? . . . Since money, as the existing and active
concept of value, confounds and exchanges everything, it is the universal confusion
22 albrecht schöne
and exchange of all things, an inverted world, the confusion and exchange of all
natural and human qualities.6

If a reader sees present and future matters prefigured in this way, and
discovers today’s concerns in things past, he certainly does not find them
presented directly, and definitely not in the way that Goethe as theatre
principal criticized in the drama of his own time, which mimicked and
copied everyday reality. In Zahme Xenien v he writes:

‘Wie reizt doch das die Leute so sehr?

Was laufen sie wieder ins Schauspielhaus?’
Es ist doch nur etwas Weniges mehr,
Als säh man grade zum Fenster hinaus. (BA 1, 688)
‘Why do people find that so attractive?
Why do they run to the theatre again?’
It is really not much more
Than looking straight out of the window.

Rather, the reader sees his present world reflected in the images of the old
text. He sees this world at a distance, with a depth of field, and alienated to
the point of recognition, so that the old informs his new. Goethe did not
conceive the history of mankind as a purposive linear progress, but (in a
letter to Carl Friedrich Zelter of 11 May 1820) described the ‘Earthly
happenings’ (WA 4:33, 28) as ‘A recurrent circle or spiral’. In his poetic
endeavours too he became increasingly determined to focus this decidedly
structuralist understanding on model constellations, i.e., on what is of
necessity recurrent even under changed historical conditions, and hence
too in his changing dramatic subject-matter. In the end he declared (to
Boisserée, 3 November 1826): ‘As an ethical-aesthetic mathematician of
advanced years I must always press on towards the ultimate formulae
through which alone the world becomes conceivable and tolerable to me’
(WA 4:41, 221).
But I am not going to pursue such ultimate conditions any further at this
point. I would rather get my feet back on the ground and stay a while within
the economic sphere which Karl Marx touched on with his reading of the
Mephisto verses. In the first act of Faust ii at the Emperor’s court, this
emissary of hell promises a stabilization of the national budget through the
introduction of paper money. This paper money presents itself, therefore, as
a diabolical invention. And indeed, the gold reserves, which are to cover
these bank notes and bonds, are not deposited in national treasuries, but
buried as unrecovered treasures under the ground.
 Faust – today 23
The worldly knowledge in Faust derives from the fact that Goethe was
not only a qualified lawyer, but also a natural scientist, and a politician as
well (I shall refer to both later). He was also a connoisseur of art, a mining
engineer, a critic of war, and more. Decidedly competent in the realm of
national economics, he had forty-six books on this subject in his library.
A remark he made in 1829 reveals how highly he rated the importance of
economic questions, and how far-reaching – for human behaviour as well –
he considered the consequences of financial and economic revolutions: ‘The
liveliness of commerce, the continual rustle of paper money, the increase in
debts to pay off other debts – all these are powerful elements that the young
man of the present confronts.’7
A model for these pitfalls had been presented by the Scottish banker and
economic critic John Law, who redeemed all the king’s debts in 1716 with
the foundation of a central bank and the issue of insufficiently backed paper
money. Thus he achieved lower taxes and a general economic boom – until
the progressive financial expansion doomed his experiment to failure in a
far-reaching economic crisis. Goethe’s deep suspicion of these remedies was
based on his experiences of his own time, for example with the assignats of
the French Revolution, the treasury warrants of the Austrian government
bonds and the Prussian treasury issues in the nineteenth century. He knew
very well that the transition from coinage to more mobile paper money and
to the credit system can unleash powerful economic energies, and that an
increase in the amount of money can lead to an increase in the national
product and turnover of goods – provided that the increase in prices has not
fully caught up, and that the productive potential has not been exhausted.
But he also knew that Mephisto’s creation of paper money – with its sudden
and boundless rise in current cash through fraudulent bonds, and without
progress in productivity linked to purchasing power and demand – had a
catastrophic and inbuilt inflationary effect.
While everybody at court and throughout the empire plunges, with the
help of the new mass of paper money, into a reckless consumer frenzy, only the
old court fool acts differently: ‘And can I buy some land, a house, and cattle?’
(6167), he asks Mephisto, ‘A castle, too, with woods, a chase, and fishing?’
(6169), then:’ Tonight I’ll dream of my estates’ (6171). Mephisto comments:
‘Who still can doubt our fool has wit!’ (6172) – and ‘wit’ here means his
economic savvy which allows him to escape inflation in real estate. Whoever
has, in Goethe’s own words, ‘been around and experienced a few things’ will
find that Faust can teach us the abcs of today’s investment consultants.
And so to the natural sciences, for a change of perspective. When
the philosopher Karl Jaspers was honoured with the Goethe Prize of
24 albrecht schöne
Frankfurt am Main in 1947, he talked about ‘Our future and Goethe’ and
declared: ‘Goethe’s world is the end of millennia of the Western World, a
last realization, fulfilled and yet already turning into remembrance and
departure. This is the world which generated ours, but from which our
world is already so far removed that Goethe seems to be closer to Homer
than to us.’8
Without considering that even Homer could ‘look different’ ten years
later (not to mention three hundred years later), Jaspers justified his
apodictic judgement mainly by saying that Goethe closed his mind to the
natural sciences and ‘the emerging world . . ., without having understood it’.
‘This world has been lost to something that is now our fate, that signifies a
human greatness and an enormous new challenge which we must take up if
we wish to live.’9
That was said half a century ago. Agents of secret services or terrorists
occasionally talk about ‘sleepers’ who have been planted somewhere, remain
inconspicuous for a long time and do not draw any special attention to
themselves – until they are awoken from outside at a certain point and
spring into action. There are such sleepers among works of art, like sleeping
passages in literary works.
Occasionally, dealing with them is a somewhat risky balancing act.
Goethe put this ironically in Zahme Xenien ii : ‘When you interpret, be
happy. / If you can’t interpret, pretend’ (BA 1, 655). Faust’s report at the
time of the Easter walk on his father’s medical experiments during a plague
may serve as an example. These experiments were based on old alchemist
recipes written in technical jargon, the hermetic imagery of the initiated:
‘Red lion’, for instance, means a quicksilver oxide imagined as male, ‘Lily’
signifies hydrochloric acid and the combination of them in the ‘Young
Queen in the glass’ (i.e., test tube) then stands for quicksilver chloride,
which was accepted at that time as a pharmaceutical substance. Here are
Faust’s lines:
Da ward ein roter Leu, ein kühner Freier,
Im lauen Bad, der Lilie vermählt
Und beide dann, mit offnem Flammenfeuer,
Aus einem Brautgemach ins andere gequält.
Erschien darauf mit bunten Farben
Die junge Königin im Glas,
Hier war die Arzenei, die Patienten starben. (1042–8)
There a mercurial suitor, the Red Lion,
would in a tepid bath be married to the Lily,
then both be driven by tormenting flames
 Faust – today 25
out of one bridal chamber to another;
when in the beaker of the Young Queen
at last appeared a mass of colour,
that was our medicine – the patients died.
In the context of a psychoanalytic Faust interpretation published in 2001, it
is said (simply out of ignorance of this alchemist terminology): ‘The “Leu”,
the lion is the sperm cell, the lily is the egg; they fuse and become the queen.
Faust’s father understood this clearly as medicine. It did not work, though.’
Given our awareness of biomedical research today, such a misunderstanding
would undoubtedly lead to associations with embryonic stem cell research
and its therapeutic promises – a solid actualization, but based on a quite
obvious misunderstanding of the text.10
Let us turn then to a more valid example. In Act 2 of Faust ii, Faust and
Mephisto have entered the ‘laboratory’ of Professor Wagner, who whispers
excitedly ‘Something tremendous is almost completed’ (6833). Mephisto
says, more softly, ‘What’s going on?’ Wagner then, even more softly,
‘a human being is being made’ (6834–5).
According to the stage directions, this biochemist works with alchemist’s
equipment. Consequently, critics have traced his experiment, correctly,
back to corresponding endeavours of pansophist alchemists of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, specifically to directions (by Paracelsus) to make
it possible ‘that a human being may be born outside a female body and of a
natural mother’. His extra-corporeal in-vitro conception concludes with the
assertion that in the end ‘a truly living human child will come of it . . . yet
much smaller, which we would call a homunculus’.11
In December 1826, Goethe noted how he had planned this matter:
Mephisto was to talk Faust into visiting his former famulus, the now
‘academically employed Doctor and Professor Wagner . . . whom they
find in his laboratory rejoicing about a small chemical human being having
been brought to life. This being immediately bursts the luminous flask and
enters as a nimble, well-formed dwarf ’ (Paralipomena, FT 638).
The laboratory scene written three years later looks quite different,
however. Measured against the intended goal, it deals with a failing experi-
ment. No longer is there any creation of a human being who bursts the
alchemist test tube to step into life immediately. Rather, what has been
successfully crystallized (‘kristallisieren’ is Professor Wagner’s word, 6860)
remains locked in the flask, from which the ventriloquist voice of Paracelsus’
homunculus makes it known that he has come only half-way into the world,
and above all is trying to discover how one can evolve and transform. And
why? Because in the meantime contemporary scientists had interfered with
26 albrecht schöne
the prescriptions of the old alchemists and begun to make their own
contributions to the Faust drama. Friedrich Wöhler’s epoch-making urea
synthesis comes into play here.
Wöhler had written to his teacher Berzelius in Stockholm about a
‘crystallized’ substance extracted from cyanic ammonium and its identity
with animal urea: ‘I have to tell you that I can produce urea without . . .
requiring kidneys.’ And: ‘This artificial formation of urea – can you con-
sider it as an example of the formation of an organic substance from
inorganic matter?’ (22 February 1828).12 Berzelius replied, ten days later,
highly ironically to his former famulus, who worked at the Berlin trade
school: ‘If we should manage to progress a bit further in our productive
abilities . . . what wonderful art to make a child, however small, in the
laboratory of the trade school. – Who knows? It should be easy enough.’13
As the highest authority of the time in the field of chemistry, he also
supported the prevalent opinion that there was no hope at all for any
‘organic matter’ to be ‘artificially produced’.
That was in February and March 1828. In August, Berzelius visited
Goethe. Undoubtedly he told his keenly interested host about Wöhler’s
urea crystallization and did not understate the chemist’s fundamental
reservation concerning the possibility of ‘a child, however small’ being
made ‘in the laboratory of the trade school’. And Goethe had not stopped
learning.
What Wöhler had, in Berzelius’ sceptically dismissive view, contributed
to the laboratory scene had extraordinary consequences for the Faust drama.
The failed experiment, or rather, the experiment that had got bogged down
half-way demanded a continuation which had not been anticipated at all in
Goethe’s draft. Homunculus now would like to come to life. And the advice
given by Thales, the Greek philosopher of nature, and Proteus, the ancient
god of metamorphosis, was informed by ideas on natural history so
advanced that only now have we become aware of it: ‘All living things
evolved in water’ (7856). And: ‘You must begin out in the open sea’ (8260).
In the rocky bays of the Aegean Sea a dolphin will carry the Homunculus
phial to the place where it is smashed, in a hymnic-orgiastic act, on the shell-
carriage of Galatea. Wagner’s crystallized substance is dissolved in the
element from which organic life emerges. Thus ends the second act. And
with the first lines of the third act, after the boldest cut a dramatist may ever
have made (bridging about 3.5 billion years by the latest estimate), man
stands in front of our eyes, the paragon of female beauty: ‘I, Helena, who am
much admired, much berated, / come from the beach [i.e., from the sea,
from water] where only now we disembarked’ (8488–9).
 Faust – today 27
Accordingly, the theorem of Thales referring to the sea and directed to
Homunculus appears as a vivid formula for the emergence of life and the
evolutionary phylogenesis of man – ‘for you’ll evolve according to eternal
norms [natural laws!] / changing your shape uncounted times, / with lots of
time before you must be human’ (8324–6). What the author of Faust
developed, with the morphogenetic approach of his theory of metamor-
phosis, out of the premises of the natural science and natural philosophy of
his time, covers modern theories of a prebiotic-chemical phase of emerging
organic forms as much as the concepts of a selective development of genetic
information based on self-reproduction and mutageneity. According to the
biochemist Manfred Eigen, it covers advanced ideas of an immanent
‘purposiveness of the evolutionary process’ which under the ‘steering influ-
ence of natural laws determined the development of life from the molecular
system up to man’.14
But, finally, to politics. The scene of the last act of Faust ii is at first the
little hut of the old couple Philemon and Baucis, with a little garden, a few
lime trees with hollow trunks and a dilapidated chapel in which the pious
old people ring the chapel bell. Quite close by is the mighty residence of the
now centenarian Faust. The keywords – palace, wide ornamental garden,
large regular canal – were for Goethe’s theatre-going and reading contem-
poraries unmistakable political signs that referred to French garden art, with
its paradigm of the castle and park of Versailles, the embodiment of a
monarchic-absolutist state. Hut, therefore, and Palace present in this con-
text a binary formula of opposition which goes back to Horace, Seneca and
Virgil and had just been politically re-actualized by the slogan of the French
Revolutionary forces: ‘War to the palaces! Peace to the huts!’
Mephisto presents the deeply troubled old autocrat with his coastal realm
reclaimed from the sea: ‘admit that here, here from this palace, / you have
the whole world in your reach’ (11225–6) – which causes Faust to foam
with rage:
Das verfluchte hier!
Das eben leidig lastet’s mir.
Dir Vielgewandten muß ich’s sagen,
Mir gibt’s im Herzen Stich um Stich,
Mir ists unmöglich zu ertragen! (11233–7)
Confound your here –
that’s what’s so terribly oppressive!
I have to tell you, you who know so much,
it causes me such endless heartache,
it’s something I can bear no longer!
28 albrecht schöne
In a popular commentary written well over fifty years ago we read that Faust
wanted to ‘acquire Philemon and Baucis’ hut with its premises, because
from there he would have the best view of his property’ (HA 3, 611). That is
indeed what the old man claims, but the matter is by no means so harmless.
This we can see because we too have experienced a few things. If Faust
plainly contemplates world supremacy and now rages about two decaying
lime trees on a sand dune, and about a dilapidated hut and an old chapel, we
are really dealing with a fundamental phenomenon of power politics: the
timeless essence of totalitarian control, which feels threatened in its absolute
rule by even the smallest enclave, even the tiniest element of divergent
selfhood. Faust calls it ‘resistance’ (11269) and ‘obstinacy’ (11269). He
himself spells it out clearly: ‘The freedom of an invincible will / is blunted
by this pile of sand’ (11255–6). And: ‘The few trees spoil, because I do not
own them, / everything that I possess on earth’ (11241–2). And still earlier,
locked in a strange formula: the two resistant old people are for him ‘A thorn
in the eyes, a thorn in the soles of the feet’ (11161). The ‘intertextual’
reference of these words is to Numbers 33, where the Promised Land is
announced. When the Lord caused an order to be issued to the children of
Israel that they must conquer Canaan, expatriate its inhabitants and destroy
its sacrificial sites, it said: ‘But if you don’t drive out the country’s inhab-
itants before you, those that you leave behind will become thorns in your
eyes and thorns in your sides, and they will plague you in the country where
you live’ (Numbers 33:55). These biblical words entering into Faust’s speech
provide the formula of an ancient and persistent history of disastrous and
violent expulsion.
‘Go and rid me of their presence!’ (11275) Faust commands Mephisto,
who gives a piercing whistle to summon his Three Mighty Men. This
expulsion will cost Philemon and Baucis their lives. Mephisto, turning to
spectators still well versed in the bible, says: ‘Here’s an old story, ever the
same – / Naboth’s vineyard once again’ (11286–7). These words relate to the
story of the pious Naboth in the Old Testament, who refuses to yield his
vineyard near the royal palace to the ruling king. He is executed, and king
Ahab takes over his property. ‘A thorn in the eyes, a thorn in the soles of the
feet’ and ‘Naboth’s vineyard once again’ – this drama of mankind reaches as
far back into the depths of time as it does forward into the distant future.
The further someone pulls back the string of his bow, the further his arrow
can fly.
During the winter semester of 1989–90 in Göttingen, I was dealing in a
lecture with the scenes at the Emperor’s court of the first act of Faust ii. This
was during the highly dramatic weeks of the collapse of the German
 Faust – today 29
Democratic Republic (GDR). In the great ‘Throne Room’ scene the power
centre of the empire is visualized. It is worth reading again how the situation
reports presented by members of the Staatsrat (State Council) sketch the
picture, or rather the model, of a collapsing state. Note also that this was the
same name as the GDR’s highest political body. Public injustice, lawless
violence and general corruption are the rule. The progress of national bank-
ruptcy cannot be stopped. The commander-in-chief of the army has no firm
control of his troops any more. ‘Sedition’s growing turmoil’ (4794), we read,
is raging in a land which has become ungovernable. And even the session of
the State Council is now invaded by the murmurings of the crowd, the mass
of the people who have lost all confidence in any improvement in conditions.
At that time, it was quite superfluous to point out the simultaneous happen-
ings outside the lecture hall in Göttingen, beyond the border that was 15 km
away. There was nobody who would not have understood immediately how
the events outside were reflected and explained in the text read inside, the new
in the old. This venerable, dusty museum piece was revealing itself as an
exciting piece of contemporary literature.
When Faust at last stands in the courtyard of his palace, the desire of the
centenarian reaches beyond all he believes to have achieved, towards a vast
new land wrested from the sea which is to open up ‘Space for many millions’
(11563). This stands before his inner eye when he speaks the famous lines: ‘If
only I might see that people’s teeming life, / share their autonomy of
unencumbered soil’ (11579).
Shortly afterwards, he sinks down, dying – a second Moses, who was at
least allowed by the Lord to see the Promised Land from afar, a land which
he will not set foot on himself. These lines provided a basis for the
politicizing glorification of Faust – in the Wilhelmian era and then (with
a different twist) by the National Socialists, and finally (twisted differently
again) by the rulers and cultural functionaries of the GDR. Walther
Ulbricht, chairman of the GDR’s state council, had proclaimed these verses
as a visionary anticipation of the Stalinist land reform and the first Workers’
and Peasants’ State on German soil, and they can still be found on the
building marking the south entrance of the former Stalinallee in Berlin.
Worth preserving!
It was a despot, however, who spoke these verses, one who had just
attempted to mobilize the subservient masses for an all-out effort, and who
had his overseer Mephisto drive the forced-labour gangs. ‘The traces of my
days on earth / will survive into eternity!‘ (11583) – these are the words of a
blind old man who thinks he hears the spades of the slaves clank as the
lemurs dig his grave. But Mephisto murmurs, aside:
30 albrecht schöne
In jeder Art seid ihr verloren,
Die Elemente sind mit uns verschworen,
Und auf Vernichtung läuft’s hinaus. (11548–50)
All of your kind are doomed already; –
the elements have sworn to help us;
the end will be annihilation.
Both perspectives are side by side, unreconciled and undecided, and reflect
the central problem of modernity which stands behind the late passages of
the Faust drama written at the beginning of Germany’s industrial revolu-
tion. The fire of steam engines accompanies the work on Faust’s enormous
canal construction project: ‘Fires flowed down to the sea / there, at dawn,
was a canal’ (11129). The feud of the interpreters concerning a positive or
negative understanding of Faust (as the incessantly striving, great and
exemplary figure, or as the protagonist of an ultimate demise, hopelessly
entangled in crime) – this feud corresponds to the schism of the optimists
and pessimists foretelling the end of what has now begun with our
encroachment on nature, the deciphering of genomes, or nanotechnology,
or computer-based robotics.
In the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of 19 June 1999, the then minister
Otto Schily wrote that everybody ‘ought to have read two books: the bible
and Goethe’s Faust’. This is not a bad piece of advice, coming from the
Federal Minister of the Interior (especially if we can distinguish between
these two books, if we don’t take Faust, as we once did – in opposition to
Goethe aiming at ‘European, even world literature’ – as the bible of the
Germans). This, after all, had been the aged poet’s hope at the very end of
his life: that this work of art ‘would continue to delight and challenge
humanity’ (letter to Zelter of 1 June 1831), in other words, that it might
entertain and delight us theatre-goers or readers today, occupying our
minds, causing us concern, driving our thoughts and actions.

notes
Translated by Hans Schulte.
1. Bertolt Brecht, ‘Einschüchterung durch die Klassizität’, in Große kommentierte
Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe, ed. Werner Hecht, Jan Knopf and Werner
Mittenzwei, vol. xxiii, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1988–, 316–18. We thank
Albrecht Schöne for adjusting a pre-published version of this chapter for us and
for allowing us to translate it for this volume. First published as ‘Faust – heute’,
in Moderna Språk, vol. c, 1 (Växjö, Sweden, 2006).
2. Thomas Mann to Hermann Hesse, 25 November 1947, Letters of Thomas Mann,
trans. Richard and Clara Winston, New York: Knopf, 1971, 540.
 Faust – today 31
3. Goethe, Poems of the West and East, trans. John Whaley, Frankfurt: Lang,
1998, 189.
4. Paul Celan, Mohn und Gedächtnis, 6th edn, Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-
Anstalt, 1963, 37–9.
5. Goethe, Zur Farbenlehre, GA 16, 331.
6. Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, trans. Martin
Mulligan, Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1959.
7. Goethe, Wilhelm Meister’s Journeyman Years or The Renunciants, Collected
Works, vol. x, New York: Suhrkamp 1989, 298.
8. Karl Jaspers, ‘Unsere Zukunft und Goethe. Rede, am 28. August 1947
anlässlich der Verteilung des Goethepreises der Stadt Frankfurt am Main
gehalten’, Die Goethe-Schriften, Zurich: Artemis, 1948, 14.
9. Ibid., 21.
10. Oskar N. Sahlberg, ‘Goethes Faust. Homunculus und die Neuzeugung der
Schwestergeliebten’, The International Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal
Psychology and Medicine 13/1–2 (2001), 193–200, 194.
11. Paracelsus, Sämtliche Werke. Erste Abteilung: Medizinische, naturwissenschaft-
liche und philosophische Schriften, ed. Karl Sudhoff, Munich and Berlin:
Oldenbourg, 1922–33, xi, 317.
12. Jöns Jakob Berzelius, Briefwechsel zwischen J. Berzelius und F. Wöhler, ed.
O. Wallach, vol. i, Leipzig: W. Engelmann, 1901, 205–8.
13. Ibid., 208–9.
14. Manfred Eigen, Stufen zum Leben. Die frühe Evolution im Visier der
Molekularbiologie, Munich: Piper, 1987, 20, 79–80.
 chapter 2

Mephisto and the modernization of evil

Rolf-Peter Janz

When Goethe created Mephistopheles, his version of the devil, he was well
aware that he had to get rid of most of the attributes traditionally ascribed to
this opponent of God. There is plenty of evidence that this character no longer
stands for one principle of evil, for instance the schemer or the Machiavellian
ruler, but is deliberately constructed to bring together a large number of
different qualities. Mephistopheles, one might say, is excessively overdeter-
mined. Goethe lets him enter the stage in many masks. He plays the role of
‘Kuppler’ (matchmaker) and the tempter of Faust (following the story of Job),
as well as the seducer, the schemer, the gambler, the magician, the art expert,
‘Souffleur’ (prompter), entertainer, the envoy of hell, the satanic Don Juan etc.
The phenomenology of evil in Faust is almost inexhaustible. If we compare
Mephistopheles with the traditional picture of the devil, it is quite clear that he
has become more complex – and more ambivalent.1 His art of metamorphosis
turns him into a legitimate successor to Proteus. (Faust, by the way, also excels
in this role.)2 So he can well be called a ‘man without qualities’,3 and in this
respect Mephistopheles is more modern than the epitomes of evil on the
Elizabethan stage – such as Richard III – and elsewhere.
But if Mephistopheles is similar to Proteus and lacks identity, how can he
still be regarded as a devil? Or does Goethe’s drama explore precisely the
enormous multiformity of Mephistopheles as the modern version of evil,
appropriate for the nineteenth century? How can evil and one of its main
principles, destruction, be represented and visualized on the stage? One
option is to give it a deformed, grotesque body. But the fact that the body is
intact does not mean that Mephistopheles is any less destructive; rather, the
evil which Mephistopheles stands for often finds its correlative in an ugly
body. The supreme ugliness that he finally achieves by wearing the mask of
the Phorkyas is to be read as the appropriate sign of absolute evil. Goethe
leaves him only a few parts of his old trappings and costume: a cock’s plume,
a red robe and a cloven hoof. But Mephistopheles can easily change clothes
and wear all kinds of costumes in order to hide his physical appearance.
32
 Mephisto and the modernization of evil 33
The qualities, however, that the drama ascribes to Mephistopheles
cannot be isolated from those given to Faust. While playing the role of
Faust’s counterpart, Mephistopheles at the same time is designed as Faust’s
alter ego. To be more precise, Mephistopheles nourishes and provokes the
evil that is part of Faust’s character. He demonstrates Faust’s own ambiv-
alence. If Mephistopheles is defined as the personification of destruction –
‘Ich bin der Geist, der stets verneint!’ (1338, I am the spirit which always
negates)4 – he also shows Faust’s inclination towards self-destruction.5 If
Faust calls Mephistopheles a monster, he involuntarily addresses himself, too.
Given these kinds of contradiction, we might enquire as to the concept of
anthropology that simultaneously generates characters like Mephistopheles
and Faust. Evil is at work in Faust as well as in Mephistopheles.
The answer seems to be rather simple. Faust desperately tries to escape his
dilemma as someone caught between heaven and earth. He does not belong
to either of them. Faust carries too much of heaven with him to live on earth
and is too much involved in worldly life to belong to heaven; therefore, he
needs Mephistopheles and the latter’s appropriate diagnosis:
Vom Himmel fordert er die schönsten Sterne,
Und von der Erde jede höchste Lust,
Und alle Näh’ und alle Ferne
Befriedigt nicht die tiefbewegte Brust. (304–7)

He’d ransack heaven for its brightest star

And earth for every last delight that’s to be found;
Nor all that’s near nor all that’s far
Can satisfy a heart so restless and profound.
Mephistopheles’ deal with God is made up like an anthropological experi-
ment. And the question is: does Faust stick to metaphysics even if he is
offered a variety of robust physical pleasures? The moment when
Mephistopheles approaches Faust is indeed well chosen. Faust desperately
calls his own metaphysical aspirations into question:
Der Gott, der mir im Busen wohnt,
Kann tief mein Innerstes erregen;
Der über allen meinen Kräften thront,
Er kann nach außen nichts bewegen;
Und so ist mir das Dasein eine Last,
Der Tod erwünscht, das Leben mir verhaßt. (1566–71)
And though a god lives in my heart,
Though all my powers waken at his word,
Though he can move my every inmost part –
34 rolf-peter janz
Yet nothing in the outer world is stirred. –
Thus by existence tortured and oppressed
I crave for death, I long for rest.

Mephistopheles’ task is to seduce Faust into a ‘real’ life without a shadow of a

metaphysical dimension. For Faust lacks experience of life and, more than
that, of the world. Mephistopheles promises Faust happiness, success with
women, property and power – all in place of knowledge. He satisfies Faust’s
thirst for life. According to Mephistopheles’ programme, ‘life’ means to be
active (tätig) and effective (tüchtig). Given that, all those who want to reach
their goals must be unscrupulous. Faust wants to colonize the whole area
and orders Mephistopheles to expel Philemon and Baucis. He needs
Mephistopheles in order to realize his ambitious plans. The guilt, however,
is entirely Faust’s. Projects of this kind necessarily require victims. Evil here is
the name for the price that has to be paid in order to give impetus to the
process of civilization. At least in the eyes of Faust, evil has to be understood as
man’s laziness in his creative abilities. This indeed is a modern notion of evil.
Mephistopheles wants to annihilate the world. However, he finally has to
acknowledge the power of ‘life’ that resists his destructive forces:
Was sich dem Nichts entgegenstellt,
Das Etwas, diese plumpe Welt,
So viel als ich schon unternommen,
Ich wußte nicht ihr beizukommen,
Mit Wellen, Stürmen, Schütteln, Brand,
Geruhig bleibt am Ende Meer und Land!
Und dem verdammten Zeug, der Tier- und Menschenbrut,
Dem ist nun gar nichts anzuhaben.
Wie viele hab’ ich schon begraben!
Und immer zirkuliert ein neues, frisches Blut. (1363–72)

The Something, this coarse world, this mess,

Stands in the Way of Nothingness,
And despite all I’ve undertaken
This solid lump cannot be shaken.
Storms, earthquakes, fire and flood assail the land
And sea, yet firmly as before they stand!
And as for that damned stuff the brood of beasts and men
That too is indestructible I have found;
I’ve buried millions – they’re no sooner underground
Than new fresh blood will circulate again.

It is quite obvious that Mephistopheles reveals negative and positive qual-

ities, and as it turns out they can hardly be distinguished in the end. To
 Mephisto and the modernization of evil 35
begin with, what makes Mephistopheles a villain? His list of sins is long
enough. Crime and violence, ‘destruction’ are his business. He is an
egocentric, and his cynicism is unsurpassed. He supports Faust’s colonial
ambitions and lets Philemon and Baucis be killed without the slightest
scruple. His main aim is ‘to achieve great things’ (10126) and that means
‘chaos, violence and nonsense’ (10127). Mephistopheles achieves greatness
first as ‘the beloved son of chaos’ (8026), secondly as an advocate of violence.
But his third claim is to be in charge of ‘nonsense’. It is rather surprising to
find nonsense affiliated to chaos and violence: a peculiar trinity.
Mephistopheles here refers to his role as a fool, which prevails over many
other roles. What is really new about Mephistopheles is that Goethe lets
him take over a double role. He attaches the function of a fool to the
traditional one of the devil. The devil as a fool, the fool as a devil: how do
they fit together? I shall return to this point.
Last but not least Goethe’s devil is marked by his monstrous sexual
appetite. That is one of the well-known characteristics of the devil, and
Mephistopheles is no exception. Desire, in a Christian context, is strongly
associated with the discourse of evil, and within this discourse the utmost
evil is woman’s sex drive (FK 350). This is the message already derived from
the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise. Of course, Mephistopheles’
colossal sensuousness is not denounced; rather, it is treated ironically.6 The
great seducer lets himself be seduced – and by characters who are far from
attractive:
Wo man sie anfaßt, morsch an allen Gliedern.
Man weiß, man sieht’s, man kann es greifen,
Und dennoch tanzt man wenn die Luder pfeifen! (7717–19)
In every limb they crumble at a touch,
One knows all this, eyes and hands tell as much,
And yet when these sluts play the tune, one dances!
Some of the exotic objects of his desire, however, dare to doubt his potency.
They turn him down because his virility does not come up to their expect-
ations. So his extraordinary sensuousness that is part of his traditional image
proves to be mortal in fact. Mephistopheles shows human, or rather male,
weakness.
It is not surprising that Goethe’s devil with his manifold metamorphoses
possesses some positive qualities too. First he acts as an excellent critic of Faust
and demonstrates that the idealistic pretensions of his opponent, his ‘pro-
fundity’ and titanic ambitions are ridiculous. Mephistopheles takes over the
role of the fool. Goethe endows him with all the wisdom of a cosmopolitan,
36 rolf-peter janz
and with a lot of common sense too: Mephistopheles feels uncomfortable
among the archaic personnel that he meets at the beginning of ‘Classical
Walpurgis Night’. Like a modern tourist he praises the customs of home
when he is abroad. The north is familiar to him, the south is different. He
belongs to the Harz region and feels like a stranger in pre-classical Greece:
Die nordischen Hexen wußt’ ich wohl zu meistern,
Mir wird’s nicht just mit diesen fremden Geistern.
Der Blocksberg bleibt ein gar bequem Lokal,
Wo man auch sei, man findet sich zumal. (7676–9)
Up north the witches would respect one’s rights
I just can’t deal with these damned foreign spirits.
The Blocksberg – that’s a snug spot, I must say;
One feels at home there, wander as one may.
And later he continues:
Man denkt an das, was man verließ,
Was man gewohnt war bleibt ein Paradies. (7963–4)
Things one was used to, they still haunt the mind;
Paradise is what one has left behind.
We laugh at the expense of Faust because Mephistopheles presents himself
as a close ally of materialism, of the body, of the obscene; in short, of
the pleasures of life. Faust’s interminable striving really deserves
Mephistopheles’ ironic commentaries, for Faust is ‘A luckless egocentric
without measure’ (FK 37). Moreover, Mephistopheles gains our sympathy
because he is self-ironic. When he finds out that Gretchen’s mother has
handed over the jewellery to the priest – a present that he had stolen and
Faust had given to her – he starts to rave like a madman. And he adds:
Ich möcht’ mich gleich dem Teufel übergeben,
Wenn ich nur selbst kein Teufel wär’. (2809–10)
May the devil take me, I would say
If I weren’t the devil myself.
Mephistopheles is a devil who makes us laugh (primarily at the expense of
Faust) and – even more importantly – one who laughs at himself. He is a
self-reflexive devil, and in this respect he offers a modern version of evil. He
also mischievously fraternizes with the audience and, with a knowing wink,
invites it to share his comic performance. But a devil who makes us laugh
and who also makes a fool of himself, ending up as ‘The stupid devil’,7 loses
his terror. Or does he?
 Mephisto and the modernization of evil 37
One could object and argue that Mephistopheles’ various qualities can
hardly be identified as positive or negative. I agree with that objection. In
view of the long tradition of either idealizing Mephistopheles in order to get
rid of all the moralistic judgements that hampered the debate on Goethe’s
drama, or demonizing him mainly in order to wash away all the stains on
Faust’s costume, it might be useful to recall some of the main qualities that
Goethe preserved for him. Mephistopheles is a character who presents not
only the coexistence of good and evil in one person, but also demonstrates
that the good does not exist without the evil. Evil is the necessary precon-
dition for good – and vice versa.
Likewise, beauty cannot exist without ugliness. To underline their inter-
relation is a privilege that Goethe allows no one but Mephistopheles:
‘Though for ugliness they chide me, yet I know true beauty well’ (8912).
This is his commentary in the mask of Phorkyas looking at Helena.
He is familiar with this subject because he is the son of chaos. And chaos – I
here refer to one of Goethe’s main assumptions – is also the basis of the
beautiful and the ugly. Mephistopheles knows the beautiful as he is an expert
on ugliness, but that does not prevent him from trying to bring Helena, the
epitome of beauty, under his control. He does so by adopting for this special
occasion the role of the Christian devil, who confronts Helena with an endless
list of her sins. Helena, however, escapes this kind of taming.
To return to the correlation between good and evil visualized in the
drama: the otherness of the devil must be an integral part of human life –
otherwise it is not human. The drama takes that for granted, and thus the
moral dimension of evil becomes less relevant.
There is even a tendency in Goethe’s drama to make good and evil
virtually indistinguishable. Already the witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth
know that to produce moral indifference is one of the noble aims of the
devil: ‘Fair is foul, and foul is fair.’8 To eliminate the distinction between
good and evil is one of the strategies for playing down the terror of evil.
Another one is to enlarge the number of evil deeds. If so many things can be
imbued with the notion of evil, each of them becomes trivial and irrelevant.
It is no longer dangerous (nor is it fascinating). The evil that occurs in
countless variations can of course be more easily integrated into a concept
that takes evil and good alike as an integral part of a whole. On the other
hand, is it not precisely the multiplicity of evil that constitutes its dangerous
power? The drama about Mephistopheles, as far as I can see, offers both
options and allows both readings.
Let me ask another question: is evil in Goethe’s Faust to be conceived as
the other of good so that both can be integrated in one concept of human
38 rolf-peter janz
life? Or is evil, because of its genuine destructive and subversive energies,
something that cannot be integrated into our world order? In other words: is
not evil more than the other of good and therefore in need of exclusion?
Goethe’s tragedy here again negotiates both options. But ultimately it
prefers the model of integration. And for this reason Goethe decided to
exclude the ‘Black Mass’ from the main body of his Faust manuscript.
The unfinished parts of the ‘Black Mass’ (which are still the subject of
ongoing controversy)9 might prove that evil – strictly speaking – in the end
resists any attempt to control it. It is the main feature of evil that it is
essentially incalculable.10 It has no function within the economy of a whole.
In its radical version, evil successfully shatters any faith in the world, a faith
that we need in order to find our place within it. Mephistopheles’ manifold,
if not unlimited, qualities, all the metamorphoses he goes through, could be
read as a sign that evil ultimately cannot be included. It remains inacces-
sible. Mephistopheles seems to know about his extraterritorial position. For
he suggests: ‘Remember that the Devil’s old – / When you’re his age you’ll
understand him too’ (6817–18).
In what way does Goethe’s drama about Faust and Mephistopheles dis-
close new aspects of evil? Mephistopheles is no longer defined by one
principle, as is Richard III, who is preoccupied by nothing else but to attain
and maintain power. Goethe’s hero presents himself in an almost unlimited
variety of masks. Therefore we could call him a man without qualities. Yet
among all those masks, Mephistopheles prefers that of the devil and that of
the fool. To add the task of the fool to the traditional one of the devil is one of
Goethe’s inventions. But by no means does either the devil who behaves like a
fool or the fool who behaves like a devil prevent the spread of terror. That is
new too. Even the humour of the elderly Goethe does little to change that.11
Faust ii confronts us with a new version of the subject insofar as it partly
eliminates the boundary between good and evil. What seems to be right in
Faust’s view is wrong in Mephistopheles’. The play is in favour of some kind
of moral indifference not because Goethe is an immoralist, but because things
are thematized that cannot be reached or enclosed by moral or theological
categories. Mephistopheles is no longer a grandiose product of hell, but often
an average character, unremarkable and sober, rather down to earth compared
with Faust, with his sometimes abstract and dark aspirations. He is also used
to thinking in terms of economics – and in that respect he is a modern
character: a bourgeois, and therefore quite familiar, in a strange way.12
Faust’s and Mephistopheles’ crime, the killing of Philemon and Baucis, it
seems to me, reveals what Hannah Arendt in the early 1960s called ‘the
banality of evil’.13 Neither Mephistopheles nor Faust follows what we might
 Mephisto and the modernization of evil 39
call a satanic master plan. Faust just refuses to foresee the consequences of
his decision to possess and to colonize the whole land. He is not prepared to
imagine what will happen to the old couple. He is not stupid. If there is a
crime, it is a result of mere thoughtlessness. And that, too, is a very modern
version of evil.

not es
1. See Ernst Osterkamp, Lucifer. Stationen eines Motivs, Berlin, New York: Walter
de Gruyter 1979; Peter-André Alt, ‘Aufgeklärte Teufel. Modellierungen des
Bösen im Trauerspiel des 18. Jahrhunderts’, in Die deutsche Tragödie. Neue
Lektüren einer Gattung im europäischen Kontext, ed. Volker C. Dörr et al.,
Bielefeld: Aisthesis, 2006.
2. See FK 52.
3. Gert Mattenklott, ‘Der Medien-Mephistopheles. Gustav Gründgens als
Mephistopheles in Goethes Faust’, Theater heute 2 (2000), 23–7.
4. All further references to Faust are by line number from FT. Unless otherwise
indicated, all translations are taken from Goethe, Faust, trans. David Luke,
Oxford University Press, 1987, 1994.
5. See Jochen Schmidt, Goethes Faust. Erster und Zweiter Teil. Grundlagen–Werk–
Wirkung, Munich: C. H. Beck, 1999, 122.
6. See Rolf-Peter Janz, ‘“Vom Harz bis Hellas immer Vettern.” Mephistopheles
in der “Klassischen Walpurgisnacht”’, in Peter Stein inszeniert Faust von Johann
Wolfgang Goethe, ed. Peter Stein and Roswitha Schieb, Ostfildern: DuMont
Reiseverlag, 2000, 274–6.
7. See 11832 ff. and FK 777.
8. Macbeth I, i. 11.
9. See for instance Albrecht Schöne, Götterzeichen, Liebeszauber, Satanskult. Neue
Einblicke in alte Goethetexte, Munich: C. H. Beck, 1993; FK; Thomas Zabka,
‘Dialektik des Bösen. Warum es in Goethes “Walpurgisnacht” keinen Satan
gibt’, DVJs 72 (1998), 201–6.
10. This thesis is strongly advanced by Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann in ‘Über die
unfaßliche Evidenz des Bösen’, in Das Böse. Eine historische Phänomenologie des
Unerklärlichen, ed. Carsten Colpe and W. Schmidt-Biggemann, Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp, 1993, 7–12.
11. If we look at plays of the 1970s and 1980s, I would suggest that a play like Mein
Kampf by George Tabori could be understood as one of a few examples that
show the double identity of devil and fool, the intimate alliance of terror and
laughter.
12. Hans Richard Brittnacher, Ästhetik des Horrors, Frankfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1994, 241.
13. Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem. A Report on the Banality of Evil, New
York: Viking Press, 1963. (German translation: Eichmann in Jerusalem. Ein
Bericht von der Banalität des Bösen, Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1978, 16.)
 chapter 3

Mephisto is the devil – or is he?

Peter Huber

This question seems too obvious to be stated and discussed seriously.

Doesn’t Faust refer to Mephisto as the devil several times, as when he says
‘Who holds the Devil, hold him tight!’ (1428)?1 Does not even Mephisto
repeatedly call himself ‘devil’, as after his liberation: ‘You are not yet the
man to hold the devil captive’ (1509)? There should not be any doubt about
Mephisto’s origins. Nevertheless, having the question of Faust’s modernity
in mind – a modernity which, inspired by Nietzsche, has developed a more
differentiated view on what is good or evil – it may be worth playing the role
of the advocatus diaboli and arguing that the hellish client is not the devil, or,
at least, not in the common sense: that is, not as evil personified. It can in
fact be argued that he even incorporates characteristic traits of some hon-
orable individuals. Recapitulating Mephisto’s deeds and actions, one has to
conclude that he performs pranks and jokes rather than committing crimes.
What does he actually do after signing the pact with Faust? He gives
amusing academic advice to a would-be student, he fools the tipplers of
Auerbach’s cellar, he prescribes a rejuvenation drug for Faust, he organizes
some gifts for Gretchen, he encourages Faust to face Valentin in self-defence
and he provides horses for Gretchen’s prison escape. The only possibly
illegal act in the first part is the testimony asserting Mr Schwerdtlein’s death,
but even this is questionable. Given the depravity of this world, one can be
assured that, whenever and wherever a person dies, Mephisto will be present
or at least informed. So it’s only Faust who definitely lies.
In the second part we find Mephisto in the roles of Emperor’s fool and of
avarice in the carnival scene. He rationalizes the Emperor’s finances by
introducing bonds and ious, makes a journey to Greece, disguises himself
as an old maid and house-keeper and conducts Helena and her women to
Faust’s castle. In the fourth act, Mephisto rescues the Emperor from an
almost successful rebellion. So far, there have been no unlawful acts; on the
contrary, Mephisto turns out to have been quite a useful creature. Only the
fifth act of Part ii is an exception. Here we encounter a malicious and brutal
40
 Mephisto is the devil – or is he? 41
daemon who unscrupulously eliminates Philemon and Baucis, and who
gathers wealth through piracy. This change from a comedian to a criminal is
indeed worth thinking about. Did Goethe intend to withdraw sympathy
from the figure through the final motif of the deceived deceiver, where the
angels snatch Faust’s soul away from Mephisto? Even if this were the case,
there is another possible explanation, which I shall develop in the following
manner: Mephisto is not a sharply defined, clear-cut character – he always
remains open, inconsistent and even contradictory. He represents what
Goethe has called a ‘schwankende Gestalt’ in the very first line of his
Faust poem: a changing, iridescent, unstable and undefined character.2
While the eponymous role of Faust gained some homogeneneity during a
process of creation lasting more than fifty years, Mephisto never obtained
that degree of consistency in person and character – he is too much an
indicator of Goethe’s ever-developing Weltanschauung and philosophy of
nature.
Let me begin by illustrating Mephisto’s metamorphic appearance with a
fundamental consideration: is he the devil or is he a devil? And if the latter is
true: is he the head of his kind or is he just a subaltern daemon? In the
‘Prologue in Heaven’ we have a Mephisto acting as a counterpart to God,
initiating a wager for Faust’s soul. In this function he is presented as the only
antagonist, as the opposite principle to the divine. In this respect Mephisto
denominates his uniqueness by speaking of ‘the devil himself’ (353). This is
how Mephisto appears in most scenes of both parts. Goethe’s comparison
between the Titans and the devil in Dichtung und Wahrheit (Fiction and
Truth) fits into this context:

The Titans are the foil of polytheism, as the devil may be considered the foil of
monotheism; though, like only God to whom he stands in contrast, he is not a
poetic figure. The Satan of Milton, though boldly enough drawn, still remains in
the disadvantage of a subordinate existence, attempting to destroy the splendid
creation of a higher being: Prometheus, on the contrary, has this advantage, that
even in spite of superior beings, he is able to act and to create.3

In the ‘Prologue’ Mephisto seems to be the ‘foil of monotheism’ indeed. He

is the ‘spirit who always negates’ God’s creation, and his subalternity is
clearly outlined (1338). While God addresses Mephisto with the familiar
‘du’, Mephisto responds with ‘Herr’ or ‘Lord’ and uses the polite form ‘Ihr’.
In the manner of a domestic servant he refers to God in the monologue as
‘den Alten’ (350), which means ‘the old man’ in the literal and ‘the boss’ in
the figurative sense. Given that Goethe analysed Milton’s Satan and found
him boring in the sense of not being a poetic figure, should he be expected
42 peter huber
to provide Mephisto with exactly the same features? This is implausible,
especially since Mephisto is a very interesting figure – much more so,
clearly, than Faust. This indicates that Mephisto must be a lot more than
merely the ‘foil of monotheism’. We shall return to this point later. To
continue this line of argumentation, the devil as God’s counterpart is only
imaginable as a single being. On the other hand, there are choruses and
other groups of daemons commanded by Mephisto. ‘These are the smallest
of all / who are at my call’ (1627–8) is Mephisto’s commentary on the
singsong of the baby daemons in the ‘Study 2’ scene. In the last scene of
Part ii, while waiting for Faust’s soul, Mephisto demands support from two
‘tribes’ of devils, ‘Fat Devils’ and ‘Lean Devils’. According to this, Mephisto
is just a devil among others, even if it looks as though he is the chief of them
all. In the ‘Walpurgis Night’ a ‘Will-o’-the-Wisp’ responds to him: ‘You are
the master of the house’ (3866). On the other hand, the Walpurgis Night
paralipomena with Satan’s mass suggest that there is a Satan superior to
Mephisto. It is in this sense that Mephisto says to Faust in the pact scene
‘I am not one of the great ones’ (1641).
These examples show inconsistencies, if not outright contradictions, in the
dramatic development of the Mephisto figure. Yet this uncertainty in appear-
ance and apparition on Mephisto’s part seems to be a consequence of the
different periods during which Goethe worked on the Faust project. Let us
have a look at the earliest stage of the poem, represented by the Urfaust, which
contains scenes written down in the pre-Weimarian epoch before 1776. In
these years, the influence of the sources, such as the Volksbuch (chapbook)
‘Historia of D. Johann Fausten’, the Faust puppet play or other derivatives of
Christopher Marlowe’s Tragicall History of the Life and Death of Doctor
Faustus was still strong. In Marlowe’s play, Lucifer, Beelzebub and
Mephistopheles appear among other good and bad daemons. The puppet
play, as handed down by Karl Simrock, has eight other hellish daemons
beside Mephistopheles, called Auerhahn, Astarot, Megära, Haribax,
Polümor, Asmodeus, Vitzliputzli and Xerxes. And even the Historia distin-
guishes between Satan, Mephostopheles and other devils.
All these sources take a moral stance, allowing the frightening embodi-
ments of all these devils to give an impression of what will happen when one
leaves the path of virtue. In the pre-Enlightenment era, hell – just like the
Kingdom of Heaven – was understood to be a realm, an empire with a
Prince of Darkness and legions of warriors. The young Goethe, influenced
by mysticism, the Kabbala, magic and alchemy, adopted the conceptions of
the devil and their scenarios of hell from these sources. Decades later, when
the author came in contact with natural science and the philosophy of the
 Mephisto is the devil – or is he? 43
Enlightenment, especially Kant, the devil assumed a more abstract meaning
in the sense of the above-mentioned ‘foil of monotheism’. The reduction
from a variety of devils to a sole principal devil can be studied by comparing
the early version of Urfaust with the Faust fragment of 1790. In Marthe’s
garden Mephisto says about Gretchen: ‘she feels that I am certainly a
genius / Perhaps even a devil’ (1232–3, my emphasis). The Fragment and
the final version have a small but important textual variation: ‘Perhaps even
the devil’ (1843–4; 3541–2, my emphasis). This is not the only evidence of the
conceptual change. In Auerbach’s cellar Mephisto leaves the scene with the
words: ‘Remember well the devil’s joke’ (2321). The early version (Urfaust)
lacks this sentence, again denoting the singularity of the devil.
In this context it is instructive to look at the scene ‘Witch’s Kitchen’.
Goethe wrote it in 1788 while staying in Rome. The Witch, when she
recognizes Mephisto, exclaims: ‘I lose all sense and reason upon seeing the
nobleman Satan here’ (2503–4). Again, ‘Mephisto’ and ‘Satan’ are treated as
synonymous. As mentioned above, the paralipomena of ‘Walpurgis Night’
seem to have a Satan besides Mephisto, and it was possibly not only the
explicit sexual elements which caused Goethe to suppress the scene, but also
the discarded concept of a hellish hierarchy.
Some scenes of the Faust drama were written in Italy, and there the
author encountered Greco-Roman antiquity with its polytheism. For the
irreligious movements of the Enlightenment as well as for the pantheists –
both groups contribute to German classicism – polytheism became a
metaphor for non-revealed, self-determined human ethics. When Goethe,
Schiller and Hölderlin speak of gods instead of God, they refer to the fact
that these gods behave morally as humans and do not represent good or bad
in general.4
We know from the biography of Fichte that the propagation of a
theoretical atheism could be quite dangerous for one’s career around
1800. It was much safer to declare oneself for Spinozism or pantheism in
philosophy and for polytheism in poetry. What has all that got to do with
the figure of Mephisto? From a simple daemon in hell – according to the
sources – he progressed to being the ‘foil to monotheism’. But why should
the author, a Spinozist, let his most impressive character remain in
an antiquated position of religious philosophy? Admittedly, trying to
re-establish ‘polydevilism’ would not serve as a ‘foil of polytheism’ but
would, rather, seem to be a relapse into the pre-rationalistic theology of
the Faust sources. The integration of the devil’s figure of Mephisto into
Goethe’s Weltanschauung takes place much more subtly. To demonstrate
this, I would like to draw attention to a seemingly insignificant detail.
44 peter huber
Let us recall the scene ‘Witch’s Kitchen’. The Witch, not having recog-
nized Mephisto at first, asks apologetically, ‘Where is your pair of ravens?’
(2491), suggesting that these two birds usually serve as Mephisto’s compan-
ions. Two ravens, however, designate the Nordic father of the gods, Wotan,
rather than the devil. This impression is even confirmed by the fourth act of
Part ii. The Emperor’s army is – in spite of the aid of Mephisto’s Three
Mighty Men – just about to lose the battle when Mephisto’s ravens enter
the scene. Mephisto, now commanding the Emperor’s troops, sends them
around to communicate his orders: ‘War commands raven’s post’ (10678).
This scene is highly reminiscent of Wotan and his ravens Huginn and
Muninn. One could argue that in the Faust puppet play Mephisto is also
accompanied by a raven called Mercurius, and that Goethe simply adopted
this tradition. However, this is not the case. First, there is only one raven,
and secondly, it only appears in the pact scene, where the bird picks up the
contract and takes it to hell. Comparing these two scenes it becomes
obvious that with the introduction of a second raven and their employment
during a battle, Goethe was definitely alluding to the Wotan myth.
There has not been any real attempt to decode the raven scenes in which
Mephisto displays features of the Nordic god. The best available explanation
is that in the course of the Christianization of Northern Europe the Nordic
gods were discredited and interpreted as bad daemons, as devils.5 Yet this
argument only clarifies why Wotan was identified with the Christian devil; it
does not explain why Goethe had supplied Mephisto with the traits and
symbols of Wotan. I think the correct answer can be given in terms of the
argumentation presented above. Goethe’s humanism did not permit a
Christian devil as a ‘foil to monotheism’. If Mephisto belonged to an older
dynasty of gods (like the Aesir) defeated by the Christian God, there would be
at least theoretically a constellation which I call humanistic polytheism. And
let us recall that the Christian God does not like to be called by name.
Individuals are distinguished by name, and calling God by a specific name
means that there could be others. If there was something before God, then
God can’t be the creator of everything. Nor can the gods of polytheism, since
one dynasty is founded by defeating an older one. Polytheistic cosmogonies
always refer to the self-creation of nature out of ‘chaos’ – or whatever term is
chosen to describe ‘absolute nothingness’ – to end the succession of gener-
ations. This problem is mastered by monotheism when it declares God eternal
and the creator. On the other hand, to reveal the mechanisms of nature’s
creative forces was Goethe’s strongest incentive in his scientific endeavours.
In the research on Faust it has been pointed out that the Mephisto of the
‘Prologue’ does not correspond to the devil of the New Testament but rather
 Mephisto is the devil – or is he? 45
to that of the Old Testament. I shall go a step further by stating that Mephisto
represents a sphere prior to God but domesticated by him. The Wotan
allusion is just one indication of that complex. This generalized understand-
ing of the devil’s figure by the post-Italian Goethe can be demonstrated in the
‘Prologue’, created around 1800. In line 344, God calls the angels ‘true sons of
God’ compared with Mephisto, who is thus regarded neither as a son nor as a
creation of God. Mephisto must serve ‘as devil’ according to line 343, which is
not the same as being the devil. The status of Mephisto in the ‘Prologue’ is
much more respectable than expected: God and Mephisto enjoy seeing each
other, and God calls him ‘companion’. The German equivalent ‘Geselle’ in
line 342 does not refer to Mephisto as a ‘companion’ of Faust but to God’s
own ‘Geselle’. This word has more or less the same meaning as the old
German expression ‘Gesinde’ (see line 274), which is more a ‘friend’ and
‘confidant’ than a ‘servant’ or ‘domestic’. In this context, the last two lines of
the ‘Prologue’ reveal a hidden meaning: Mephisto says that God speaks
‘menschlich’ with the devil, where ‘human’ or ‘humane’ means more than
‘tolerable’ – it stands for ‘humanistic’. And God indeed uses a humanistic
idiom when speaking of ‘Göttersöhne’ (sons of the gods) instead of
‘Gottessöhne’ (God’s sons), in this way undermining his uniqueness.
Another hint as to Mephisto’s origin in Wotan comes from Faust’s
antagonist himself. In the ‘Witch’s Kitchen’ scene, when the Witch asks
for the ravens, he replies that the ‘Nordic phantom’s gone and vanished’
(2497). It is well known that the Witch is also part of Nordic mythology. If
Mephisto is her master, then logically he must be Wotan. This connection
is surprising, insofar as we have hardly any examples of northern myths in
Goethe’s work. And indeed, the author concedes in the fifth part of
Dichtung und Wahrheit (Fiction and Truth) that he was not able to integrate
them in his poetic work. Whereas Greek mythology is well documented in
literature and visible through myriad sculptures and temples, the Nordic
remains pale and inconceivable. Why should he, says Goethe, replace
Jupiter with Wotan and Mars with Thor and introduce fuzzy images instead
of well-defined southern figures into his poetry?

Nobly as they [the Nordic Myths] excited my imagination, they nevertheless were
inaccessible to the perception of the senses; while the mythology of the Greeks,
turned by the greatest artists in the world into visible, easily imagined forms, still
existed before our own eyes in abundance. I did not often allow gods in general to
appear; because they had their abodes outside of the Nature which alone I knew
how to imitate. Now, what could have induced me to substitute Wodan for Jupiter,
and Thor for Mars, and instead of the Southern, accurately described figures, to
introduce forms of mist, nay, mere verbal sounds, into my poems?6
46 peter huber
Well, with Mephisto Goethe did introduce a kind of ‘schwankende
Gestalt’, as we have seen above. According to the author’s confession, this
figure is – additionally and predominantly – given features of a figure from
Greek mythology: Hermes. Although the allusions are too numerous to be
listed completely, I shall concentrate on a few: Hermes is given the epithet
‘psychopompos’ because he guides souls to the underworld. This is exactly
what Mephisto intends to do with Faust. He has God’s explicit permission
‘to guide [Faust] gently along [Mephisto’s] road’ (314). Just as Hermes
mediates between Olympus and earth, Mephisto is the chain between the
transcendent God of the ‘Prologue’ and Faust on earth. Hermes is the god
of travellers and thieves, having stolen his brother Apollo’s cattle when he
was still a baby. Mephisto, too, cannot be completely exonerated from
larceny. The monkey in the ‘Witch’s Kitchen’ says, ‘You recognize the thief
and must not tell his name?’ (2420–1). Mephisto and Faust appear as
travellers in ‘Auerbach’s Cellar’ and in the Gretchen scenes. When
Marthe asks, ‘And you, Sir, will you always be travelling like this?’ (3085),
Mephisto replies, ‘Alas! that business and duties force us to!’ (3086).
Mephisto pretends to be a trader, which also conforms to the competency
of Hermes. He is the divine messenger, and in this function he brings the
news of Mr Schwerdtlein’s death. He also invents the lyre or kithara, and
with this instrument Mephisto performs his serenade under Gretchen’s
window. In this scene Mephisto acts as matchmaker for Faust and
Gretchen, and matchmaking also belongs to the patronage of Hermes,
because he is the god of mediation. In his translation of The Birds by
Aristophanes, Goethe uses the expression ‘The matchmaking messenger
Mercury’ (MA 2:1, 330), who is the Roman equivalent of Hermes. In his
capacity as god of matchmakers he is very impressed by Marthe. Mephisto
gushes about her: ‘That’s a woman predestined to matchmaking and gypsy
work’ (3029 f.). In the ‘Forest and Cave’ scene, the furious Faust yells ‘Get
lost, pimp!’ (3339), and the scolded companion retorts ironically that even
God acted as a matchmaker when he brought Adam and Eve together. Thus
we see that Mephisto is well versed in doing the job of Hermes. One more
feature: Hermes is the god of serendipity, so there is some hope that he will
discover the hidden treasures he had promised to the Emperor. ‘What a
lucky find’ (9955), gloats Mephisto, while he picks up what is left of
Euphorion. These examples should suffice to demonstrate that the charac-
ter of Hermes lies within the shell of Mephisto. In fact, the author himself
connected the two figures in the third act of Part ii, when Mephisto in the
mask of Phorkyas guides Helena and her women from Arcadia towards
Faust’s Gothic castle. With perceptible anxiety the chorus intones:
 Mephisto is the devil – or is he? 47
Siehst du nichts? schwebt nicht etwa gar
Hermes voran? blinkt nicht der goldne Stab
Heischend, gebietend uns wieder zurück
Zu dem unerfreulichen, grautagenden,
Ungreifbarer Gebilde vollen,
Überfüllten, ewig leeren Hades. (9116–21)
Can you see anything? Is that not Hermes
Who hovers before us, his golden wand gleaming,
Who summons, who orders us to return
To dreary, twilight-gray Hades,
which, filled to repletion
with impalpable shapes, is eternally empty?

In this context, it is the purest dramatic irony when, in a following scene,

the chorus tells the story of young Hermes and his thefts, assuming that
Phorkyas–Mephisto has never heard about them. To summarize: with
Wotan and Hermes, Goethe has packed two pre-Christian gods into the
character of Mephisto. There is no doubt that this symbolizes the demon-
ization of the polytheistic religions by Christianity. The author was fully
aware of this. In the ‘Walpurgis Night’s Dream’ a curious traveller believes
he can see Oberon, the king of the elves. An orthodox religiosus comments:
Keine Klauen, keinen Schwanz!
Doch bleibt es außer Zweifel,
So wie die Götter Griechenlands,7
So ist auch er ein Teufel. (4271–4)
No claws, no tail!
But there is no doubt:
Just like the gods of Greece,
So even he is a devil.
A variation of this motif dates from 1814, when Goethe added a scene for the
Faust performances of Fürst Radziwill in Berlin. Two baby devils examine
the winged figure of Amor and come to this conclusion:
Erlogen ist das Flügelpaar,
Die Pfeile, die sind Krallen.
Die Hörnerchen verbirgt der Kranz:
Er ist ohn’ allen Zweifel,
Wie alle Götter Griechenlands,
Auch ein verkappter Teufel! (MA 6:1, 1069)
The pair of wings is false,
The arrows, they are claws.
48 peter huber
The little horns are concealed by the wreath.
He is undoubtedly,
Like all the gods of Greece,
A disguised devil.
Regarding Goethe’s early dramatic play Satyros with its idolized devil
(‘vergötterter Teufel’) we have with Mephisto’s metamorphoses demonized
gods (‘verteufelte Götter’), where Wotan and Hermes stand for pre-
Christian polytheism and natural religion. By introducing this term we
are close to Goethe’s own religious ideas, since Goethe’s Spinozism can be
regarded as a ‘de-demonized’ natural religion. This gives us an opportunity
to look at the Mephisto figure from another point of view.
It is the ‘Forest and Cave’ scene that has always caused irritation, since
Faust seems to address his speech to the Earth Spirit. Faust’s expression of
thanks is usually interpreted in the following way: Faust thinks it was the
Earth Spirit that fulfilled his wishes and gave him Mephisto as companion.
Taking the ‘Prologue’ into consideration, this would be self-deception on the
part of Faust, assuming it was not the author who messed things up. If Faust
really connects Mephisto with the Earth Spirit, then he cannot be aware of
having made a pact with the devil. Thus the bet between God and Mephisto
would be invalid. Of course, this constellation could bring about the salvation
of Faust’s soul in the end, but this possibility is never alluded to in the play.
And besides, why should Faust be mistaken at all? Does he not refer to the
word ‘devil’ several times, e.g., ‘Who holds the Devil, hold him tight!’ (1428)?
I believe that the solution to this question lies elsewhere. When Goethe uses
the word ‘devil’, he does not primarily mean the Christian devil, but rather
pre-Christian gods and nature daemons which had been declared devils by
Christianity, as outlined above. So it may well be that Mephisto indeed
belongs to the sphere of the Earth Spirit. Just as the latter impersonates the
creative forces of nature, which humans may call ‘the good’, so Mephisto
represents the destructive forces, the so-called ‘evil’. Both together form the
polar principle of creation, of life – ‘stirb und werde’ (die and become) in the
author’s words.8 The principle of polarity, which Goethe had adopted from
Schelling, played an important role in Goethe’s Weltanschauung and philos-
ophy of nature. From about 1800 onwards, he tried to explain all physical
phenomena within these categories. Goethe’s most famous application of this
principle was the opposition of light and non-light (darkness) as a precondi-
tion of colour in his Theory of Colours. Here again, creative and destructive
forces act together to produce the variety of phenomena that includes life.
With this in mind, it is not hard to understand Mephisto’s self-
introduction along these lines: ‘I am the spirit of eternal negation’, he
 Mephisto is the devil – or is he? 49
says, calling ‘destruction’ – which humans may call ‘evil’ – his element (1338
ff.). He characterizes himself in terms of the Theory of Colours as ‘part of the
darkness’. From his optical studies Goethe knew that light is not visible by
itself, but only as the reflection of a body. In opposing light it must therefore
be Mephisto’s goal to destroy physical bodies. That’s exactly what he tries to
explain to Faust. But just as bush fires (fire is Mephisto’s tool of destruction)
create new life in the wilderness while they extinguish a withered bush,
Mephisto supports creation while he intends to destroy it. Understood in
this way, there is no paradox in Mephisto’s words ‘I am part of that force
which constantly intends evil and relentlessly creates that which is good’
(1335 f.). Once one regards Mephisto as part of the forces of nature, as the
principle of destruction and opposite pole of the Earth Spirit representing
the creative forces, there is no more reason to accuse Faust of self-deception.
These considerations cast new light on another passage as well.
Mephisto’s question ‘Did we force ourselves upon you or you upon us?’
(MA 6:1, 666) in the prose scene ‘Dreary Day, Field’ has been understood as
sarcasm, since it was the poodle that followed Faust. Once Mephisto is
understood to be part of the Earth Spirit’s sphere, it becomes clear that it
was indeed Faust who initiated the contact.
But if he belongs to the Earth Spirit, why does Mephisto have access to
heaven if he is the antagonist of God? He is a representative of all the older
generations of gods, such as Wotan and Hermes, including the earliest
principles of nature, such as the Greek Gaia, the ‘mother earth’, which is
nothing but a personification of the Earth Spirit. The acts of nature gods
and goddesses cannot be grasped with moral categories like ‘good’ or ‘bad’.
They create and destroy unconsciously9 like the (god of the) sun, which
provides for life on earth and yet would burn it if there was no rain.
Referring to this pre-moral property, Faust calls Mephisto ‘Oh you peculiar
son of chaos!’ (1384), where the Greek word chaos means Uranfang (the very
beginning). These gods and natural forces were defeated by the Christian
God and demonized, but also domesticated. This process of domestication
has a name: interpretatio christiana. As long as the devil deters humans from
evil, he does a good job and is welcome even in heaven.
Mephisto is a good example of the ‘trickster’, a mythological and arche-
typical character who challenges the established regime with fraud and
cunning, yet without calling its legitimacy into question. The classical
example of the trickster is Hermes, and I have shown why Mephisto is
modelled after him. God calls him a ‘wag’ (339) in the ‘Prologue’, and that’s
how Mephisto acts throughout the play, with the possible exception of the
last scene. The Christian God, at least the God of the New Testament,
50 peter huber
represents the principle of the ‘good’, rather than acting like a human
person as the ancient gods do. Just as the latter can be good and bad, so
Mephisto may be called the ‘devil’, but he is not evil in person. Once there is
no separation into ‘absolute good’ and ‘absolute evil’, it doesn’t make sense
to stick to the concept of original sin, according to which mankind can
never be good through itself but only through redemption. On the con-
trary: the humanist programme of self-education is based upon the con-
viction that mankind is able to gain salvation autonomously. This
conviction is, of course, the purest Pelagianism, an attitude Goethe was
familiar with since his earliest youth when he did not even know what
Pelagianism was. In the fifteenth book of Dichtung und Wahrheit (Fiction
and Truth) the author writes that he could never agree with the orthodox
view, the Augustinian doctrine of predestination. The opposition of light
and darkness, of good and evil, which Mephisto describes in the process of
introducing himself is sometimes termed Manichaeism. This is not the case:
Manichaeism teaches a strict dualism of good and evil. Goethe, however,
reconciles the good and the evil with the concept of polarity. They imply
one another, and they also turn into one another, just like Mephisto’s
disentangled paradox of ‘creating the good while intending the evil’.
The above considerations have omitted the fifth act of Part ii. This is the
only one in which we find an evil Mephisto, revealed in the murder of
Philemon and Baucis. This is furthermore the only act where we have a
multitude of devils; indeed, there is a confrontation between them (the forces
of evil) and the angels (the forces of good) over Faust’s soul. Undoubtedly
Mephisto conforms to the Christian conception of the devil in this act. This is
connected with what I call the ‘religious turn’ of Act 5. Salvation from sin,
redemption, ecstatic eremites and the cult of the Virgin Mary evoke a
Christian mysticism of Romantic and Catholic provenance. The redemptive
ending is much like an ‘unforeseen accident’. Originally, as we know from the
paralipomena, another ending was intended: after the purloining of Faust’s
soul by the angels, Mephisto applies to a celestial court to get back his legally
acquired soul. Then it turns out that Mephisto has erroneously taken Faust’s
life and therefore has no legal claim. According to the pact, Mephisto was
supposed to gain Faust’s soul whenever the latter might have said to a
moment in his life, from the depth of his heart: ‘Tarry awhile! you are so
fair!’ (1700). In fact, Faust never said that, or, if he did, he did not mean it that
way. Instead, he expressed the utopian idea ‘If I ever could stay with free
people on free ground, then I might say: “Tarry awhile! you are so fair”’
(11580–2). With this argument, Mephisto would have been refused Faust’s
soul. This would have been the proper trickster ending: the deceived deceiver.
 Mephisto is the devil – or is he? 51
In 1820, long before Goethe wrote the fifth act, he described in a letter to
Schubarth how he imagined the ending: ‘Mephistopheles must only win the
wager in part. And if half the guilt remains with Faust, then the Old Lord’s
right of pardon takes effect immediately, presenting us with a most amusing
and cheerful ending for the entire play.’10 Indeed, the redemptive ending is
sublime, but is by no means amusing. We do not know what caused the
author to withdraw the original plan. Was the ‘late’ Goethe inclining
towards Romantic mysticism and Catholicism? This is hard to believe.
Perhaps the redemption scene turned out to be too overwhelming and
too perfect an ending to be followed by a court scene. Be that as it may, this
decision must have been made at the last minute, so that the circumstances
of Faust’s death now appear as a blind motif.
Let us simply rate this ‘unforeseen accident’ as a private, eternal life-
assurance policy of the author’s – who is now over 80 years old – and let us
recapitulate. There are mainly four periods during which Goethe worked on
Faust; between 1772 and 1775, the period generally referred to as the pre-
Weimarian or ‘young’ Goethe; the two periods from 1788 to 1790 and from
1797 to 1803, which can be comprehended as the ‘classical’ Goethe; and the
fourth period, from 1825 to Goethe’s death in 1832, which represents the ‘late’
Goethe. According to this classification, we can discern three different stages in
the development of the Mephisto figure. The young Goethe oriented his
devil’s figure according to the sources. Here, Mephisto is a Christian devil
representing evil according to the morality play. The classical Goethe identified
Mephisto with ancient gods and nature forces as described above. Christian
allusions appearing in the Urfaust were omitted. So was the ‘Country Road’
scene, in which Mephisto was afraid of the cross. In the ‘Study’ scenes written
by the classical Goethe, Mephisto is no longer banned by the cross but by a pre-
Christian symbol: the ‘Drudenfuß’ or ‘pentagram’. Around 1800, he drafted
the Helena interlude with all the obvious Hermes allusions. In a sketch bearing
the paralipomena number 103, according to Hecker’s counting, we find the
notes ‘Polytheism and heroism nobly mythological’ and ‘Ideal salvation, setting
in mythology, pantheism’ (MA 18:1, 1000). With ‘polytheism’ and ‘pantheism’
we encounter two key words of Goethe’s new conception of Mephisto. The
‘classical’ Mephisto was possibly not intended to be given up by the later and
late Goethe, but at the very end the author seemed to rely more on the
impressive effect of the redemption scene than on figural integrity. Even if
we can discern three stages, there is no doubt that the proper Mephisto is the
classical one of the period from, say, 1780 to 1830. This is the conception of an
ancient, demonized god and divine wag, an archetypical trickster and, last but
not least, a representative of the humanistic attitude of his author.
52 peter huber
From the point of view of the religious fundamentalists of his days,
Goethe’s humanism needed to be criticized and even demonized. In this
sense Goethe’s seemingly paradoxical dictum about his drama Iphigenia,
calling it ‘diabolically humane’,11 appears under a new aspect. Just as
Iphigenia is ‘diabolically humane’, so is the Mephisto of the Faust play
‘diabolically humanistic’. He is not an evil devil, and a devil only by name.
He represents the value-free destructive force of nature and thus guarantees
the evolution of nature. He is beyond good and evil. A world of increasing
religious fundamentalism and decreasing tolerance deserves more than ever
a figure like him – a trickster and wag who tries to make even God laugh,
and a living reminder of the fact that the roles of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are never
distributed too obviously.

notes
This chapter is dedicated to Harry Seelig.
1. Line-number references to Faust are from MA. Translations are cited from
Walter Arndt, Walter Kaufmann and Stuart Atkins and some are by the author.
2. ‘Schwankende Gestalt’ is commonly translated as ‘wavering apparition’, but
‘fuzzy’ and ‘uncertain’ are more exact.
3. The Autobiography of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, trans. John Oxenford, 2
vols., Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1974, ii, 278.
4. In Die Götter Griechenlands (The Gods of Greece), Schiller laments the demise
of antique polytheism: ‘To enrich just one, the whole realm of the gods had to
vanish’, and the following sentence of the first version of Schiller’s poem
represents the very programme of classical humanism: ‘When the gods were
still more human-like / mankind was more god-like’. Friedrich Schiller,
Sämtliche Gedichte i, in Sämtliche Werke, ed. Gerhard Fricke and Herbert
G. Göpfert, vol. i, Munich: C. Hanser, 1965, first version [1788], 163–9, second
version [1800], 169–73.
5. Cf. Albrecht Schöne’s comment to 10664, FK 685 f.
6. The Autobiography of Goethe, ii, 161.
7. Goethe mocks literary critics (probably a particular one) of religious-orthodox
provenance, who had polemicized against Schiller’s philosophical poem The
Gods of Greece (see above).
8. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, West-östlicher Divan, BA 3, 22.
9. A theatrical Example of a natural goddess without consciousness is Wagner’s
Erda of the Rheingold.
10. Letter to Carl Ernst Schubarth, 3 November 1820, WA 4:34, 5.
11. Letter to Schiller, 19 January 1802. The first draft of Iphigenia reaches further
back than the Mephisto conception of Goethe’s classical period. Nevertheless
the humanist tendency of the drama is very much in accordance with the ‘good
and evil’ problem discussed here. One of the central points of Iphigenia is the
 Mephisto is the devil – or is he? 53
self-liberation from the ‘curse of Tantalus’, the progenitor of the Atrides. This
‘curse’ symbolizes Christian original sin and, according to the Augustinian
doctrine, such a (self-)expiation is impossible. As a consequence of his deviant
view, Pelagius was condemned as a heretic. The classical conception of human-
ity, as propagated by Goethe and Schiller, is based on this ‘demonized’
Pelagianism. So the expression ‘verteufelt human’ is not at all meant ironically
or paradoxically, but is strictly literal.
 chapter 4

‘Schwankende Gestalten’: virtuality

in Goethe’s Faust
Ulrich Gaier

Ask Goethe whether you should put Faust on the stage: he will tell you flatly
‘No!’ He never supported efforts to do so,1 even though readers and theatre
people urged him to stage the piece. When the actor Pius Alexander Wolff
and Goethe’s adlatus Friedrich Wilhelm Riemer planned a representation in
Weimar around 1810, Goethe was angry, saying that if he had wanted, he
could have staged it himself.2 Later he described his attitude towards it as
‘passive, if not suffering’.3 Finally he consented to draw sketches for some
scenes in Part i and revise the stage version, adding lines here and there in
order to stress the operatic character which Wolff had intended (FT 582–
90). When, in 1829, Weimar and Leipzig rehearsed for a representation of a
revised version of Part i, Goethe contributed a chorus for the ‘Study 2’ scene
and a final chorus for the ‘Prison’ scene (FT 591 ff.), again to enhance the
operatic character which he always had in mind. We think of the multitude
of musical inlays in the text, but also of his remark that only Mozart could
have set the play to music, and that after his death only Meyerbeer was
capable of rendering its more terrifying aspects.4 He consented to train the
actor LaRoche to portray Mephistopheles; indeed, LaRoche confessed that
each gesture, each step, each grimace and each word came from Goethe.5
Wilhelm Holtei, an aficionado of the Weimar stage, noted on LaRoche’s
Mephistopheles: ‘It was a symbolic appearance, fully on the level of the
poem. To tell the truth: it was an appearance which perhaps was as little
suited to the real stage as the poem itself.’6
Referring to the Leipzig production, Goethe himself wrote that it
revealed the old truth that one should not ‘paint the devil on the wall’,7
that is, one should not try to create a realistic image of that figure.
Apparently, it is not so much the difficulties which the stage technicians
might encounter in realizing Goethe’s ideas and imaginations, but the
symbolic nature of the figures, events and scenes. ‘Symbolic’ refers to a
54
 ‘Schwankende Gestalten’ 55
plurality of aspects and relationships in which a phenomenon has to be
understood, and such plurality will always exceed the spectator’s ability to
perceive a stage figure.

mephistopheles
LaRoche played Mephistopheles, and he succeeded in giving the figure a
symbolic appearance. Let me go into some detail with this figure. First,
Mephistopheles constantly changes costume, mask and function. In the
‘Prologue to Heaven’, we have his name only as a stage name for the figure
who, in this re-make of the biblical Book of Job, plays the role of Satan. But
at the same time this figure appears modernized in the same way as the
figure of the Lord, since the eminent object of their wager is not the pious
Jew any more but a non-believing Doctor of Theology. So, the intertextual
reference to the Book of Job suggests that the unknown opponent to the
Lord is Satan. Faust as the modern object of the wager, however, denies the
Satan identity, as does the stage direction that the actor of Mephistopheles
has to play this part. Before Faust conjures Mephistopheles in ‘Study 1’, he
calls for spirits in the air who might lend him wings on which he could
follow the sun. Such spirits, as Wagner warns, are dangerous because they
carry all the evils of the four winds. Just as Faust took the Earth Spirit as an
elementary daemon, Wagner speaks of the air demons and forgets that Saint
Paul had warned of the devil, the evil spirit who rules in the air between
earth and sky (Ephesians 2:2; 6:12). Thus the poodle who follows upon
Faust’s request is not only the dangerous shepherd’s dog with a predilection
for water, drawing behind himself a tail of fire and spiralling in on Faust
through the fields; it is also a spirit of the air and at the same time the devil
who rules in it, an animal composed of the four elements and possessed by the
evil spirit. When Faust conjures this creature, we see it swell and assume ever
larger form, filling the room as a cloud and finally appearing in human form
as the travelling scholar. All these, we learn, are masks of Mephistopheles.
Faust, seduced by an apparition he takes for a colleague, stops conjuring,
although he already had to use the holy cross for the exorcism. Had he gone
on, the devil would have had to show himself in his dreadful shape. The
scholar’s mask, however, which Faust takes to be the poodle’s core, offers his
services, appears easy to communicate with, and above all useful. It is the
domesticated nature of the poodle with some devilish spice in it, clad in viable
academic form – exactly what Faust had longed for when he asked for
technical assistance in flying. Already, the forms and functions are multi-
plying; Mephistopheles is becoming a symbolic figure.
56 ulrich gaier
Here, we can go on indefinitely: the outward appearance of Mephistopheles
changes continually. In ‘Study 2’, he is dressed in Spanish travelling attire; in
the ‘Witch’s Kitchen’, the Witch does not recognize him any more because the
‘Nordic phantom with horns, tail and claws’ has been relegated to the realm of
fable, and the horse’s leg and hoof are concealed. Here, Mephistopheles wants
to be called a baronet like the rich bankers of the era of the French Revolution
and the ensuing wars, Necker and Rothschild for instance (2490–513).8 In the
Gretchen scenes, Mephistopheles even reflects on his masks: ironically, he
praises Margarete for her physiognomic competence in reading his mask and
feeling that he is either a genius or the devil (3537–41). On the Blocksberg, he
appears in traditional costume; in the first act, he is a fool; in the second and
third acts, he is Phorkyas, first by distorting his face, then with a tragical mask
in the third act’s play within the play. In the fourth act, he mimics a medieval
knight, as does Faust. In the fifth, however, he is the captain of a war, pirate
and commerce fleet, and the overseer of the modern dyke project. Finally, he
falls back into the late medieval devil’s gear, following the imagery of the
paintings of the Camposanto in Pisa which inspire the scenery, figures and
content of the two final scenes.
Looking back on this constant play of masks and costumes, of animal,
human and daemonic figures, we detect a diversity which symbolizes the
infinite and unexpected, often unrecognizable ways in which we encounter
evil. We also find reflections on outdated and modern forms and figurations
of evil: ‘The Evil One / They may be rid of, evil ones still have not vanished’
(2509). Evil in the singular belongs to the realm of fable; now we have evil in
the plural. Or we see, in the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’, Mephistopheles’
attempt to transport himself, with a fake Phorkyas identity, back to the
mythical beginnings of the world (8010–33). Here Eros–Phanes and Lucifer
play the same role of creating from chaos a beautiful organic world while at
the same time contradicting its Greek beauty by ugliness – disrupting its
living biblical coherence by negative isolation.
Alongside the diversity of masks and chronological variations, we
encounter the fact that in each culture there are specific figures that negate
the principle and basis of that culture – beauty in Goethe’s view of ancient
Greek culture, and pious elevation to the divine in Christian culture.9 The
praise song at the beginning of ‘Prologue in Heaven’ even shows how this
principle of negation enters the world: the Archangels, in their function as
angeloi (messengers) to other angels and mankind, are at a loss in the
beginning because they are confronted with incomprehensible phenomena,
with two world models, encompassing both constructive and destructive
processes. They cannot but see these as ‘works’, but they cannot trace them
 ‘Schwankende Gestalten’ 57
back to a single will. Michael, the angel to sing the last strophe, finally
decides that these ambivalent and incomprehensible, albeit magnificent and
strengthening, works may be the Lord’s works, but what the messengers
revere and communicate is a Lord of slowly wandering daylight and benign
gentleness.
At this point, the Satan figure of Mephistopheles pops up; the negative
principle is provoked, even created by the reductive view of the Archangels.
And to confirm this, the Lord employs the satanic rogue as an instrument to
keep mankind from becoming lazy. Mephistopheles consents to this func-
tion, but not as a simple servant and dependant of the Lord. His final words
in this scene indicate that he could very well dissolve the treaty with the
Lord (351). It is only under this condition that a wager can be made between
the Lord and Satan/Mephistopheles in which the goal is to preserve or to
seduce Faust, and where triumph and lordship over the cosmos is at stake.
This initial situation in analogy to the Book of Job is overturned in an
ironic way at the end of the play. In the last chapters of the Book of Job,
Satan is not mentioned any more, the Lord is triumphant and Job is
rehabilitated after his submission. But in Faust the Lord is not to be
found at the end, Mephistopheles has no court of appeal – Faust’s entelechy
meets a kind of apotheosis. The Lord has given up lordship, and there is a
Lady, a heavenly queen and goddess, we are told by Doctor Marianus
(12103). And from Mephistopheles’ bitter complaints concerning the deceit-
ful methods of cheating the devil of his claims on a soul (11612–35) we
understand that with the new management in heaven, the customs and
principles have changed completely. Thus, at the end of the play,
Mephistopheles in the old devil’s function is an outdated figure, objectively
comical because he has been radically overtaken by the new developments.
We must not forget, however, that Mephistopheles, at the end of the
‘Interment’ scene has once again assumed the late medieval devil’s costume
and function, and is assisted by the grotesque daemons and hell’s jaws as
depicted by Buffalmacco in the Camposanto in Pisa. So it is only this
outdated phantom of evil which has become obsolete and objectively
comical, a mask that Mephistopheles has already ridiculed in the ‘Witch’s
Kitchen’. For Faust, the Doctor of Theology who is not afraid of hell or the
devil, Mephistopheles must match his modernity. As we saw in the
‘Prologue in Heaven’, Faust is a decidedly modern version of Job, and
Goethe seems to be asking how it is still possible for a modern man, a non-
believer, to be diabolically tempted. We saw that Faust asked for technical
assistance in flying, to follow the sun, and what he received was a contem-
porary with the devil inside. But after this devil in scholar’s clothing has
58 ulrich gaier
escaped him once, Faust becomes wary and does not simply renew the
twenty-four-year pact which the Renaissance Faust made with the devil.
Instead, he offers a wager that Mephistopheles could never divert him from
his infinite goal, and from his restlessness and dissatisfaction with himself
and everything that is offered to him. In accepting this wager,
Mephistopheles is reduced to a kind of sparring partner for Faust.
Actually, Faust makes a wager with himself, reducing Mephistopheles to a
provider of highest-quality solutions to every wish that Faust may have and
a constant source of new wishes. The pact itself seems to consist in Faust
giving himself up to Mephistopheles, should he pronounce the words of
Rousseau’s formula for happiness and say to the present moment ‘Verweile
doch! du bist so schön!’ (1700, Tarry, remain! – you are so fair!).10
In offering the wager, Faust replays the wager on Job, but Faust has read
the Book of Job and knows that Job is an exemplary figure, and that the
wager on Job is potentially made on every human being. The reader knows
from the ‘Prologue in Heaven’ that Faust is the object of such a bet and is
right in assuming that it will also apply to himself. It is a modern Faust who
can make a wager with his counterpart by himself. He is really challenging
himself; Mephistopheles (as we have seen) is reduced to a sparring partner
and technician. Faust is fully aware of the difficulty of keeping a promise to
himself through a lifetime, in view of the rapid changes the world is going
through (1720–3). With this kind of wager, compared with the story of Job,
Faust is not only his own Lord, but also Satan and Job in one. This devalues
Mephistopheles even more. The former devil can do nothing more than
provide high-quality treats, arouse wishes whose fulfilment might make
Faust forget his promise, let him ‘tarry’ and make him succumb to pleasure.
By embracing restlessness and dissatisfaction, Faust keeps not only
Mephistopheles but also himself on the move and unknowingly assuages
the Lord’s fear that man may get lazy. Here, too, Faust makes the devilish
rogue superfluous and becomes his own rogue.
How, then, could there be a temptation for a man who is so autono-
mous – even in making himself unhappy? In ‘Forest and Cave’, for the first
time, Faust understands that he cannot do without this technician and
fulfiller of wishes, and that he becomes more and more dependent on that
hateful cynic who constantly debases him and his ideal feelings. This
dependence is the temptation which, until the end, usurps Faust’s will
and decision-making completely. We may think of the way in which
Mephistopheles and his three terrible servants do away with Philemon
and Baucis, or how he makes fun of Faust, the blind and nearly deaf old
man who orders a ditch to be dug (‘Graben’) whilst they dig a grave (‘Grab’,
 ‘Schwankende Gestalten’ 59
11555–8). It is this growing autonomy of the instrument, the irresistible
magic of technology, commodities and wealth that can be termed tempta-
tion and evil for modern man.
This is also why, in the Nordic ‘Walpurgis Night’, Satan with his strategy
of tempting man with sexual sin has to step down from his reign in hell.
Faust, whose behaviour decides over the lordship in the world, warns
himself not to forget himself in that Walpurgis mass (4114), and when he
dances with the young witch, he is again warned by his disgust of a red
mouse, by enlightenment in the shape of the ridiculous Proktophantasmist
and by his projective memory of Gretchen (4124–209). With modern man,
Satan’s strategy of seducing Adam by the magic of sexuality is no longer
effective. So, as in heaven the Lord is replaced by the Lady, Satan in hell is
replaced by Mammon – on the roof of the illuminated palace (3915, 3932)
where the Walpurgis festival takes place. And it is Mammon who dominates
the world, as Acts 1, 4 and 5 of Part ii show clearly. Mephistopheles,
especially with the three terrible servants, works for Mammon and rebuilds
his hellish palace as Faust’s palace in which the world’s wealth is piled up.
And Faust cannot bear the sound of the sweet old couple’s bell, and the idea
that this little patch of land with a hut, a chapel and two lime trees does not
belong to him. Faust has been successfully seduced by this modern evil. The
only possibility of liberating himself from this magic is to pronounce the
ominous sentence (wishing the ‘beautiful’ ultimate moment to last) in a
situation that cannot qualify. The new land is poisoned by a stinking swamp
and endangered by the next flood; the colonists who are going to live there
are lemurs, half-natures sewn together from dead bodies, or workers of the
type found in the English coalmines of the time. Or in the immense
building project of Bremerhaven in the 1820s, which Goethe followed
with great interest: exploited workers with emaciated bodies, incapable of
organizing their own defence against the elements. And for them to be free,
on liberated land, and for Faust to be free with them, Mephistopheles, his
terrible fellows, and Faust himself would have to be eliminated. Would it be
possible for Faust, who cannot bear to leave a patch of land to its owners, to
consider giving away land where many millions can live and which he
himself has created?
What Faust describes in his final speech (outlining the wish that the
moment may last) contradicts all facts and possibilities in the present and in
the future. But Faust pronounces the sentence, using the magic of word-
charm, and falls dead as the pact foresaw. But Mephistopheles has not won
the wager with Faust, he has not put him to rest, not made him complacent,
not cheated him with pleasures; on the contrary, Faust enjoys his highest
60 ulrich gaier
moment in devising a future contrary to all given facts and even contrary to
his own existence. Thus Mephistopheles hears words, and Faust falls dead,
but the devil has been tricked out of a wager which would have given him
the right to take the soul he had worked for. As in medieval spiritual plays,
the devil is the dupe of a tricky human and an astute Lady in heaven. We
must not forget that this is part of the cheerfulness in which Goethe wanted
this tragedy to end,11 and that the dupe is the traditional devil who wants to
catch a soul, not the absolute ruler of the world who, with his three terrible
companions, rules and ‘colonizes’ the world. To be sure, he does this in the
service of Faust, but he performs all these tasks and carries out all his orders
in his own manner. As we shall see when we discuss the spatial aspects of the
play, after the beginning of the fourth act, this world has become hell, with
Mammon as its absolute monarch, and Mephistopheles as Mammon’s
obedient and Faust’s disobedient servant.
I have discussed the Mephistopheles figure paradigmatically in order to
show what Goethe meant when he intended the actor LaRoche to give the
figure a ‘symbolic appearance’. This appearance was – as Holtei observed –
on the level of the poem itself, and neither figure nor poem was suitable for
the stage. We have seen the diversity of costumes and masks, and found
chronological and cultural reasons for this diversity and elusiveness. I have
dealt with Mephistopheles’ functions in various religious systems of the
play, his decidedly modern relationship with Faust, an experimental figure
whose behaviour in the face of temptation and seduction decides the change
of rulership in hell and the character of evil in the world. On the one hand,
Mephistopheles – whose name, throughout the entire text, is never pro-
nounced fully (see 4183) – is a figure who appears, with some exceptions, as a
variable human figure on the stage. On the other hand, he is what men in
different times and cultures think of as ‘evil’ (1342–4). Then again, he seems
to be just a principle of negation or negativity, complementary to the ruling
affirmative principle of the Lord. He represents the male principle, together
with the Lord in Part i, as well as the opposite female principle in Part ii.
Mephistopheles is one of those ‘schwankende Gestalten’ of which the first
line of Faust speaks and which the Lord extends to the whole of creation
when he orders the Archangels to pin down by permanent thoughts what
floats in undecided appearance (348).
To be sure, what the Archangels pin down, define and solidify with their
thoughts is only meant for a certain duration; what embraces them eternally
is the love of what is eternally living, becoming and creating (346–9) – we
have seen this constant process of shaping and reshaping in the heavenly and
hellish governments. This is what I would like to call ‘symbolic’ and ‘virtual’
 ‘Schwankende Gestalten’ 61
in Goethe’s figures and, indeed, in the whole play: symbolic in the sense
that a multitude of aspects is present, as in the figure of Mephistopheles. It
makes him infinitely readable and elusive; virtual in the sense that all these
aspects are embedded in one principle (or tendency, or vector) which
remains ungraspable in terms of a visible figure or definable concept. It is
experienced, in Mephistopheles’ case, in the sheer force of negation, in
examples which are only a fraction of what is, in fact, one aspect of the
whole world.

faust
With Faust, we could go into similar detail; he is no less symbolic, elusive and
virtual than Mephistopheles. Let me mention some aspects of this. Most
prominently, there is the chronological line from the Renaissance to the time
around 1830, which we can follow from act to act, and of which Faust is the
exemplary representative. The Nordic Walpurgis complex, for instance, can –
by way of various textual hints – be dated to the time around 1800. This
shows that Goethe situated the main change in hell’s strategy – the shift from
the temptation by sin to the temptation by capital – in the years after the
French Revolution, allegorized in the ‘Witch’s Kitchen’. The search for
Helena in the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’ and the play within a play, the
birth and death of Euphorion during the ongoing Peloponnesian war, refers
to the Greek wars of liberation in the 1820s and to the Philhellenic movement
which absorbed the attention and interest of European intellectuals to the
detriment of the political and economic situation at home. Faust is the
exponent of European history; his seemingly private experiences are an
allegory of what were, in Goethe’s interpretation, the crucial developments
in general history. This applies as well to his symbol of domesticated nature –
the poodle as a well-trained animal comprising the four elements. Evil is its
real core, but Faust ceases conjuring as soon as the human shape appears, and
does not disclose evil. Nature, whose workings had, from the sixteenth
century onwards, been investigated with increasing success by science and
made useful by technology, proved a wonderful instrument to improve
human life and to increase the effects of action. Nature harnessed by tech-
nology, machines, electricity, chemical plants and artificial breeding suddenly
presents destructive consequences. But above all, it makes individuals and
societies dependent, creates coercions, channels human activity, deprives man
of free decisions. Faust complains in ‘Forest and Cave’ that he cannot do
without Mephistopheles who, while procuring commodities and delights,
debases him continually and reduces to cheap mechanics what Faust had
62 ulrich gaier
embraced as gifts of the Great Spirit, and for which he wants to feel gratitude.
One can easily see how, in Faust, Goethe not only registered historical events
from about 1500 to 1830, but also represented and made plausible the
enormous changes in spirit which took place during these two-and-a-half
centuries.
To make these changes plausible, Goethe continually sets up a confron-
tation of the two epochs between which Faust oscillates, ‘schwankende
Gestalt’ that he is. Take for instance the beginning, where Faust speaks his
first monologue in Hans Sachs’ old-fashioned Knittel-verse, which auto-
matically dates the figure back to the early bourgeois period of the German
renaissance. But after the first thirty-two lines the tone changes, the verse
runs smoothly, making way for Ossianic reminiscences: Faust speaks as a
sentimental youth of the late eighteenth century. The change is so audible
that, in the nineteenth century, Gustav Röthe hypothesized (with his
so-called ‘paper-scrap theory’) that Goethe had written a couple of lines
from time to time, then simply taken the scraps and copied them without
harmonizing them in a consistent character. Röthe has apparently not read
the first line of Faust: there is no consistent character in the play, only
‘schwankende Gestalten’. Here, Faust can be regarded as a Renaissance
man, ingeniously anticipating the coming centuries, or as a contemporary of
the eighteenth century stubbornly harking back to the old days and finding
no language for the new developments. For instance, the magic he uses for
the Macrocosm and the Earth Spirit signs is Renaissance magic, but Faust
counteracts its ecstatic character with ‘inward’ magic developed in the
eighteenth century. Consequently, both magic experiments fail half-way.
In Part i, the scholar’s tragedy, light falls especially on the Renaissance
aspect; in the Gretchen tragedy, the contemporary aspect is stressed. In Act 1
of Part ii, the Renaissance aspect of the Emperor Charles IV is blended
with the modern creation of paper money. In Act 2, structures of time and
history from the beginning to the end of the world are construed. Faust
becomes less and less active, and action is taken over by his aides and
partners, as we have seen. His last concrete action is at the end of Act 1,
when he presents images of Helen and Paris – which he obtained from the
Mothers – with a kind of slide projector. Infatuated with Helen and furious
at Paris who is about to abduct her, he tries to shoot him out of the show,
causing an explosion of the projector which places him in a coma. The next
two acts take place in his head, a situation which is impossible to reproduce
on the stage. In the fourth act, we have radical virtuality: a combination of
two historical periods – the struggle of Emperor Charles IV against Günther
von Schwarzburg, and the battles between Emperor Franz II and
 ‘Schwankende Gestalten’ 63
Napoleon – and the allegory of the three giants of aggression, greed and
avarice. It is explicitly stated that these figures are allegories (10329), but
when they fight in battle, they dissolve into a mass of individual fighters
(10581–3), like the ‘artificial man’ in the frontispiece of Thomas Hobbes’
Leviathan. In the fifth act, we are completely absorbed by virtual reality –
antique mythological figures watching an ultra-modern dyke-building proj-
ect in which armies of workers and magical powers are at work: half-dead
lemurs singing Shakespeare, devils and angels, pious fathers and children
who died before they could be baptized. All these figures have stepped out of
the late medieval frescos in the Camposanto of Pisa, and all of them are
mixed with Faust’s utopia, which in turn depicts the plans of the Saint-
Simonists in the 1820s for a social and industrial revolution. If we are led, at
the beginning of the play, to experience certain historical developments,
such historical presence is consequently and consciously dissolved into
virtuality in the course of the play, right up to the end. Faust is at the
centre of this process. He is present on the stage at first as an individual man
whose uneasy situation between progress and regression can be understood
psychologically; he is also present on stage at the very end as an entelechy –
not as an individual soul, but as accumulated energy which is about to take
ethereal shape for a new form of posthumous existence. As we can see, Faust
is as multivalent in his aspects and forms of existence as his counterpart,
Mephistopheles.

female figures
Turning now to the female figures – Margarete and Helena, not to speak of
the Mothers, the Hades goddesses and the Mater gloriosa in Part ii – we see
that they are elements of a series of configurations which starts with the
vision of the reclining female in the magic mirror of the ‘Witch’s Kitchen’.
According to Mephistopheles’ explanation that this female is the result of six
hard days of God’s creative work, it must be understood as the beauty of the
world enclosed in a female body; it is therefore not just any woman’s picture
presented to a naïve scholar who has until then seen nothing but books.
Actually, he has seen beauty in the scene ‘Outside the City Gate’ already:
the beauty of the evening sun gilding the mossy green huts. He experienced
beauty (in the sense of Goethe’s colour circle) as the unfolded totality of the
seven basic colours. What Faust perceives in the ‘Witch’s Kitchen’, then, is
Frau Welt, the medieval representation of the alluring world in a female
figure. Inflamed by the Witch’s potion, he wants to take possession of this
heavenly image. Margarete is the compromise between those extreme
64 ulrich gaier
spiritual and sexual desires with which he leaves the ‘Witch’s Kitchen’, with
Mephistopheles quoting Duke Theseus’ remark in Act V, Scene 1 of
Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream that the frantic lover will see
‘Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt’.
Margarete thus is not only a compromise between heavenly beauty and
sexual attractiveness, but also a Proto-Helena who is the mythical image of
god-like beauty and sexual attraction. Margarete, little more than 14 years
old, cannot unite the two projections of angel and whore thrown upon her
by Faust, although she tries hard to meet both desires. Goethe reveals the
split in her personality by using two stage names for the figure, Margarete
and Gretchen. In Goethe’s day, ‘Gretchen’ was still used as a generic name
for a girl of easy virtue, or even a prostitute, and it is in the scenes where this
aspect is prominent that Goethe uses this stage name. Margarete, on the
other hand, is the name of two saints, Margaret of Antioch and Margaret of
Cortona. The latter is the patron saint of prostitutes who returned to virtue;
her fate is very close to that of Margarete, while Margaret of Antioch with
her successful defence against the devil in her gaol gives the pattern for the
end of Part i. Thus, in a way, this figure has to be played by two actresses or
by one actress playing two parts. The saintly background of Margarete is not
just a pious reminiscence: in encountering Mephistopheles, Margarete
develops a bodily feeling of Mephistopheles’ radical negativity, his funda-
mental hatred and incapacity for love. This religion of the body also works
in gaol, where she feels similarly suffocated when Faust cannot kiss her any
more, and it is this religion of the body which, at the end of the scene ‘At the
Well’, makes her confess that what impelled her to sin was all good and
loving (3585–6). The same God–Father whom she prays to in this con-
fession contradicts Mephistopheles at the end of the ‘Prison’ scene.
Traditionally, the devil rightfully anticipates condemnation, but the
Lord’s voice from above confirms that she is saved. Or, as I would prefer
to put it, parallel to the change of management in hell, the Lord has already
stepped down, possibly because of Margarete’s new religion, and the Lady
with her new theology saves what was a sinner for the old Lord.
Helena, to whom Margarete is a stepping-stone, appears in the first act
on transparencies which Faust has obtained from the Mothers in the
universal archives of shapes, together with the poetic tripod which functions
as projector. This explodes when Faust, in his folly, takes the projected
image for reality – but this is the same folly that in the same act makes
people take a piece of paper money without the backing of real value. In the
second act, which already plays in Faust’s head, he projects Helena’s
conception by Leda through Zeus in a swan’s shape. Moments later he
 ‘Schwankende Gestalten’ 65
meets, in his dream, Chiron the centaur and learns that Helen is a mytho-
logical figure whom the poets shape and reshape according to their needs.
Feeling that he is a poet himself, Faust shapes a poetess Helena who can
shape herself according to the needs of the situations in which she finds
herself. This is experimented with in the third act, a stage play consisting of
three fragmentary plays: an antique tragedy in the manner of Euripides, a
medieval chivalrous drama, and an Arcadian opera in a literary landscape
but set during the Greek wars of liberation of the 1820s. In this act, Goethe
wanted the Helena figure to be played by two actresses, a tragical heroine
and an opera singer.12 So again, the character is split, albeit between a
theatrical and an operatic appearance.
These remarks may be sufficient to indicate first that the female figures
are ‘schwankende Gestalten’ as well, in the sense of multiple characters;
secondly, that they possess iconic depth (like Margarete referring to and
commenting upon the two saints); thirdly, that the mirror-woman,
Margarete, and the various figurations of Helena are parts of a series; and
fourthly, that all of them are expressions and allegories of the sensual beauty
of the world and of the principle of female attraction which is complemen-
tary to the principle of male expansion.

form
I have analysed the main characters of Goethe’s tragedy as variables being
held together only by a stage name and, in the case of Margarete, not even
by a single stage name. Now, the whole play is immensely variable in its
structure, form and Gestalt. To conclude, let me give some indications of
this. I have discussed the time problem in Goethe’s interpretation of history
from 1500 to 1830, and in his superimposing of epochs which contradict or
comment upon each other. Goethe was proud of the phantasmagorical time
span of 3,000 years in the third act which stretches from the battle of Troy
to the Greek wars of liberation, and to Lord Byron’s death in 1824.13
Similarly, there is immense variability and layering in terms of spatiality.
The ‘Prologue on the Stage’ speaks of encompassing the whole orbit of
creation, and of a passage from heaven through the world to hell (239–42).
Scholars have always wondered if Goethe had not somehow forgotten hell,
since, with the ‘Prologue’ and Faust’s passage through the small and the
greater world, only heaven seemed to rule. An important subtext of Part ii is
Dante’s Divina Commedia. Part ii starts with the characteristic situation at
the outset of Inferno, and Dante’s triplet verse. But Faust has no poet Virgil
to guide him through hell. He returns to the world, then to the world of his
66 ulrich gaier
head with its conflation of times and places, until at the beginning of the
fourth act, after orbiting the world in Helena’s garments, he lands on top of
the highest mountain. According to Mephistopheles’ serious myth, this was
originally the deepest point in hell, now turned downside up by a revolution
which transformed Dante’s funnel bottom of hell into this mountain top,
bringing all the damned sinners, as well as the devils who plagued them, into
full daylight. In climbing down the mountain, Mephistopheles calls the
three terrible giants with whose help the war is fought and Faust’s worldly
possessions are acquired. This means that hell is right here, that the nine-
teenth century, with its colonization, imperialism and exploitation of peoples
and nature itself, is hell in the sense understood by the elderly Goethe.
Poetically, Faust is the text with the highest calculated variability in all
literature. Apart from one or possibly two prose scenes, Goethe uses all
kinds of verse, not only with expressive inner variability, but also with the
value of a cultural or social index. Margarete’s naïve Knittel-verse differs
greatly from Faust’s high-tension use of the metre. Margarete’s use of the
French courtly Alexandrine verse is a proof intended for Faust that she is
educated and can move in higher society. But when he is gone and she
returns to her domestic Knittel, it is like kicking those painful high-heels off
and walking around in an old pair of slippers.
So much for the verse. As far as poetic genres are concerned, Goethe is
constantly quoting genres of literature from all times and cultures, again not
at random, but in calculated series or conflations. In Part i, for instance, we
find a number of genre inlays, from the late medieval Easter play in the first
scene to Margarete’s folk song in gaol, which the Romantic artist Philipp
Otto Runge had published in the fairy tale of Machandelboom. I have
already mentioned the three fragments of plays in Part ii, recalling the
epochs and cultures of antiquity, the Middle Ages and the present. Parallel
to the Renaissance and contemporary aspects of the Faust figure in Part i,
the scholars’ drama becomes a Renaissance drama of admonition in the
manner of Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, on which, in turn, a modern drama of
social conditions developed by Diderot and Lessing is superimposed. In the
Gretchen drama, a domestic tragedy in the tradition of Lillo’s London
Merchant is projected onto a Renaissance legend. The ‘schwankende
Gestalt’ extends from the figures, times, spaces and cultures to the poetic
form. The first line in Faust already reveals much of its poetics.
As I noted at the beginning, Goethe was convinced that Faust was not
stageable. I have tried to explain why: too many perspectives, surface
appearances and multiple readabilities, interfaces of reality and virtuality
come together and are symbolically bound up by a stage name which, like
 ‘Schwankende Gestalten’ 67
Mephistopheles, is never fully pronounced in the text. Finally, there is that
ungraspable deep reality in which all these aspects are one, and which
I called virtual. We saw how, in Mephistopheles, the force of negativity
appears as the negation of the central values of a certain culture – Greek
beauty, Christian piety, modern freedom – and which then works in
countless manifestations of that culture. Similarly, we have a virtual prin-
ciple of affirmative Lordship or Ladyship, virtual principles of male and of
female humanity, and a virtual principle of poetry.

not es
1. Hans Gerhard Gräf, Goethe über seine Dichtungen. Versuch einer Sammlung aller
Äußerungen des Dichters über seine poetischen Werke, vol. ii:2, Frankfurt am Main:
Rütten & Loening, 1904, repr. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft,
1968, 511.
2. Ibid., 468.
3. Ibid., 494.
4. Johann Peter Eckermann, Gespräche mit Goethe in den letzten Jahren seines
Lebens, ed. Otto Schönberger, Stuttgart: Reclam, 1994, 325.
5. Gräf, Goethe über seine Dichtungen, 185.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid., 511.
8. All further references to Faust are by line numbers from FT.
9. See the myth at the end of Book viii in Goethe’s Dichtung und Wahrheit.
10. For the Rousseau reference, see Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust-
Dichtungen, ed. Ulrich Gaier, Stuttgart: Reclam, 1999, ii, 256.
11. Gräf, Goethe über seine Dichtungen, 272.
12. Eckermann, Gespräche, note 4, 233.
13. Gräf, Goethe über seine Dichtungen, 350.
 chapter 5

Amnesia and anamnesis in Goethe’s Faust

Wolf-Daniel Hartwich

In the dual conception represented by the German words Gedächtnis and

Erinnerung, memory and remembrance has, for some time now, enjoyed
considerable academic and popular discussion. The paradigms of this dis-
cussion have proved popular in cultural studies, from where they have
migrated to general cultural and political debates. The programme of
memory studies continues to be closely associated with the concept of
identity in the sense of individual and collective self-definition. Since
Freud, psychology has taught that the individual can only attain a healthy
psychological existence through anamnesis, repetition and working through
of personal history. More recently, sociologists and historians such as
Maurice Halbwachs, Pierre Nora and Jan Assmann have shown how
communities, religions, peoples and states understand their own constitu-
tion through long-term strategies of memory. Identity and memory, it
would seem, are related proportionally to one another. The inability and
the refusal to remember leads to a questionable definition of self. If
individuals and collectives deny and repress specific (usually negative)
aspects of their past, they are not able to attain unity with themselves, and
their self-understanding becomes damaged, unstable and threatened.
It is interesting to note that, from the point of view of memory studies,
Goethe’s Faust is repeatedly evoked as an example of this kind of memory
deficit and of the ensuing weakening of identity. Applied to a fictitious
character on the stage, this syndrome is described as a lack of unity
pertaining to character and its dramaturgical functions. In his book
Goethe. Der Zeitbürger,1 Dieter Borchmeyer emphasizes the fact that Faust
is a ‘great forgetter’, removing himself from all conflict as it arises and before
it can be brought to its catastrophic dramatic climax. This means that he is
unsuitable as a tragic character.
On the other hand, in his book Lethe,2 Harald Weinrich reads Goethe’s
Faust as a tragedy that is motivated by the power of memory and oblivion.
For Weinrich, Goethe’s Faust figure represents a modern way of thinking
68
 Amnesia and anamnesis 69
obsessed with innovation. The ensuing faith in progress finds justification
in abandoning traditional views on faith, history and wisdom. According to
Weinrich, the consequence of this is the loss of social and moral bonds. In
the story of Faust, Mephistopheles plays the part of the virtuoso of forget-
ting. The devil drives Faust through a maze of various existences up to the
point where Faust completely forgets his own identity. At the same time,
however, the devil knows perfectly well what he wants and who he is. The
devil remembers that he wants Faust’s soul. In the scene where they make
their pact, the devil reminds Faust: ‘Consider well your words – we’ll not
forget them’ (1707). And in the ‘Witch’s Kitchen’, when Mephistopheles
rejuvenates Faust through black magic, Faust forgets his previous experi-
ence of life. Similarly, the loss of memory has tragic consequences in the
Gretchen drama. Here, Mephistopheles’ devious diversions, as well as
Faust’s notorious fickleness, make Faust forget about his love for
Gretchen. This happens in the scenes ‘Forest and Cave’, ‘Walpurgis
Night’ and at the beginning of Faust ii in the ‘Pleasant Landscape’. Here
the nature spirits remedy the protagonist with water from the river Lethe,
which, as Greek mythology has it, causes oblivion. Weinrich argues,
however, that Faust’s redemption at the end of the second part of the
tragedy demonstrates that the heavenly powers have their own strategy of
memory, which undermines the Mephistophelean tactics of forgetting.
Unfortunately, Weinrich doesn’t elaborate on this divine politics of mem-
ory, and at the conclusion of this chapter I shall be proposing how this idea
might be productively developed.
For the time being, however, I would like to approach the question of the
loss and regaining of memory in Goethe’s Faust from two different angles.
On the one hand, I shall offer an interpretation of the psychological
syndrome of Faust’s chronic oblivion from the perspective of psychological
theory as it was discussed in Goethe’s own time. On the other hand, I shall
be arguing that Goethe provides a staging of the work of memory within the
framework of historical ideas. Alongside rhetorical mnemonics taught in
classical antiquity, the Platonic and Neoplatonic doctrine of mnemosyne
plays a major part in Goethe’s Faust. Anamnesis, in the method of philo-
sophical education, is intended to remind the individual of the transcen-
dental world of ideas as perceived by the immortal souls before they acquire
physical form.
But above all, the play continually refers to Christian ideas of memory.
Faust is intimately acquainted with this tradition. He has after all studied
theology – ‘to his regret’, as he puts it. In the New Testament, memory is
understood as the medium of the divine. When Jesus celebrated the last
70 wolf-daniel hartwich
supper with his disciples, thereby establishing the Christian cult, Jesus
spoke the injunction: ‘Do this in remembrance of me’ (1 Corinthians
11: 24). In Christianity there is no salvation without Christ, but after his
ascension Jesus Christ only lives on in Christian acts of remembrance.
Through anamnesis, the remembrance of the congregation, the scene of
the last supper comes back to life, and when the words of the last supper are
solemnly spoken, Jesus is present in the bread and wine. Therefore, there is
no salvation without memory. This is why Christianity contains a theatrical
dimension. The tragedy of the redeemer and the drama of salvation are
re-enacted on the stage of the altar, the stage of collective memory. Through
the re-enactment of the lives of Jesus and the saints, the festivals of the
ecclesiastical year call to mind the history of the church. In discussing the
St Rochus festival in Bingen (WA 1:34.1, 1–45), which he attended in August
1814, Goethe gives a benevolent account of the Catholic veneration of the
saints. At that time Christian dramaturgy had been absorbed and modern-
ized by Romantic aesthetics, a tradition of which Goethe’s Faust is also part.
In contrast to the ecclesiastical tradition and the staging of memory in
acts of Christian devotion, modern psychiatry has focused on amnesia, the
loss of individual memory. Amnesia is regarded as an illness, whereby those
afflicted lose information necessary for their self-understanding as well as for
their orientation in society. People who forget too much are threatened with
madness and marginalization. In this respect, the medical reconstruction of
memory seems to be a social continuation of religious redemption through
memory.
In this chapter, I intend to draw attention to a psychological theory
which can shed light on Goethe’s Faust as a great forgetter. The theory was
developed in an article published in a journal edited by one of Goethe’s
close friends, Karl Philipp Moritz, one of the founders of empirical psy-
chology. Moritz developed the Pietist tradition of religious introspection
into a novel analysis of the submerged psychic motives of human action.
His interest in psychological matters is evident in two of his most important
intellectual products: his autobiographical novel Anton Reiser, in which he
attempts to analyse the hidden motivations of his personal development,
and the Magazin fiir Erfahrungsseelenkunde (the Journal for Empirical
Psychology), which he edited between 1783 and 1795. In the third volume
(1784), Moritz published an article by Johann Werner Streithorst entitled
‘Beispiel einer außerordentlichen Vergessenheit’ (An example of an extra-
ordinary loss of memory),3 in which it is apparent that extreme amnesia as
depicted in Goethe’s Faust was not a singular phenomenon in the late
eighteenth century.
 Amnesia and anamnesis 71
A clergyman from Halberstadt reports that several times he visited a sick
man who was in mortal danger because of a fever. Nevertheless, the man
remained lucid at all times. When the clergyman visited the afflicted man
again after he had recovered, the man suddenly talked to him as if they had
never met before. Streithorst chooses the very same image which Goethe
uses for Faust’s amnesia in the second part of the tragedy: ‘it was as if he had
drunk from the river Lethe’.4 In Streithorst’s article the patient describes
how, on the day before falling ill, he had turned away a boy begging for
alms. At the end of his illness the very same boy appeared as a vision in his
memory. All other occurrences in between these two impressions, however,
had been blotted out. This gap in the sick man’s memory can easily be
explained with Streithorst’s theory. He points out that only strong and vivid
impressions produce clear memories, but that the liveliness of the memory
impresssions depend on the strength of and stress on the nervous system.5
After he had sent the boy away, the patient’s nerves had become flaccid
because of his illness, and therefore he was only able to retain vague
impressions of his environment. Upon recovering, he was confronted
with so many new sensory impressions that the vague impressions from
his illness were suppressed. The appearance of the boy marks the boundary
of the two states of consciousness. The image serves as a point of orientation
for the powers of recollection and enables the recovered man to find his way
back into his own life story. However, the cost of this restoration of an
individual’s life narrative is the loss of his memory.
This case of an extraordinary loss of memory shows remarkable parallels
to the amnesia suffered by Goethe’s Faust. Helmut Schanze has attached a
great deal of importance to the fact that Goethe and Moritz exchanged ideas
on mnemotechnics in Italy.6 It is not far-fetched to suggest that these
conversations might also have touched upon the problem of forgetting,
thereby providing the impetus for Goethe’s incorporation of the amnesia
theme into Faust. My intention is not to reduce the psychological con-
stitution of a literary figure to that of historical individuals. Nor is it possible
to reduce the complex character development throughout Faust to the
aetiology described by Streithorst. Nevertheless, the theory of forgetting
derived from this aetiology may well have appeared useful to Goethe at a
time when he was reconsidering and reconceptualizing the figure of Faust
and the dramatical realization of his story.
There are two ways in which Goethe ascribes to Faust mental events
similar to those Steinhorst attributes to his patient. On the one hand, Faust
in his mental history also suffers from periods of apathy and over-
stimulation. On the other hand, Faust is also haunted by images produced
72 wolf-daniel hartwich
by his memory. And these visions cause a crisis in his memory which leads
to the extinction of whole stages of his life. The ‘Witch’s Kitchen’ defines
the end of a period of intellectual lethargy of the melancholic, bored Faust.
This tedium vitae reaches a climax in ‘Auerbach’s Cellar’ in Leipzig, a scene
where the students’ wild and mindless pastimes are regarded by Faust as
rather boring. The rejuvenation through black magic prepares the protag-
onist for the strain and emotional over-stimulation that will be caused by
the seduction story. Faust’s erotic fantasies are aroused when he sees
Helena’s image in the mirror, giving form to the cultural memory of the
most beautiful woman of antiquity. The ever-luring Mephistopheles prom-
ises the actual fulfilment of Faust’s desires: ‘With this drink in you, you’ll
soon see in every woman a Helen of Troy’ (2604–5). When he first meets
Gretchen in the ensuing street scene, the new and overwhelming impres-
sions make him forget his former life.
Just before Mephistopheles drags Faust into the pandemonium of
the ‘Walpurgis Night’s Dream’, Faust has a vision of Gretchen in the
‘Walpurgis Night’ scene in which her execution for infanticide is prefigured.
Faust then remembers the misery of the girl he has left behind as, in the next
scene, ‘An Expanse of Open Country’, he hurries with Mephistopheles on
magic horses to free her from prison. Having lost his ability to remember his
love, Faust isn’t able to connect emotionally with Gretchen. When
Gretchen tries to remind him of the story of their shared love, she is asking
too much of Faust’s imagination. Pointing out this lapse in his memory
means posing a vital threat to his identity. Faust tells her: ‘Let what is past,
be past, / You will be the death of me’ (4518–19). Subsequently, he falls once
more into an apathetic state and thus becomes a passive appendage to
Mephistopheles. Without hesitating, Faust obeys the devil’s imperious
command: ‘Away with me’ (4618).
In Part ii of the tragedy, the sequel to this crisis of Faust’s memory is
depicted when, in the first scene, Faust drinks from the river Lethe and thus
forgets about Gretchen’s tragic end. Faust’s lethargy is continued when the
opening stage directions show him ‘couched on grass and flowers, fatigued,
restless and endeavouring to sleep’. This scene marks Faust’s transition from
a psychological weariness to an even more challenging state of strain when
Mephistopheles makes Faust the political leader at the Emperor’s court.
Here, Faust conjures up the ghost of Helena with the assistance of an
astrologer. This vision is another important turning-point in the history
of his anamnesis. Faust wants to touch the image, but the projection of his
ideal explodes, and Faust drops back into an apathetic state. During the next
two scenes he remains in this state, oblivious to all that is happening around
 Amnesia and anamnesis 73
him. That is why he cannot remember anything from this period. Only
when the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’ begins does the protagonist awake.
The ‘Walpurgis Night’ floods his fantasy with chimerical figures from
ancient mythology, culminating in Helena’s incarnation. It is characteristic
for Faust that visions of a woman always cause him to forget about his
former life and adopt a new transformation of his identity. In keeping with
this, Faust now establishes a new identity as knight and lover.
Psychologically speaking, the vision of Helena has the same function as
the vision of the boy in Streithorst’s medical report. Both continue their
lives and forget what happened prior to their visions. Paradoxically, Faust is
able to salvage his identity through these acts of amnesia, although he is
constantly changing identities. It follows that the figure of Faust is not so
lacking in unity as has been claimed by many critics, beginning with
Madame de Staël. Goethe was able to derive a dramatic structure from
the psychological theory of forgetting, thereby compounding the episodic
multiplicity of Faust’s history into alternating sequences of over-stimulation
and fatigue, experience and amnesia. In this way, a psychological model of
forgetting, such as the one expounded by Streithorst, is used as a means of
poetic construction, resulting in the many-sided motifs and associations
that shape Faust’s character.
Apart from the psychological interpretation of memory, there is also a
recurrent motif from the Christian tradition of memory. This motif is
apparent in the opening ‘Night’ scene in the earliest prose version. In
Faust i the Christian concept of memory serves as a counterpoint to the
Mephistophelean temptation of amnesia. For example, Faust the scholar,
deeply despairing of human knowledge, is shaken out of his depression by
the Easter bells and is thus prevented from committing suicide. However,
Faust doesn’t accept the theological meaning of the liturgical sign of
memory any more: ‘Although I hear your gospel, I lack your faith’ (765).
Nevertheless, he is saved by remembering his faith: ‘And yet these sounds,
familiar with my youth / Summon me now again to life’ (769–70). It is in
keeping with this theme that Faust must renounce the redeeming power of
memory before concluding his pact with the devil. As Faust puts it, ‘the
sweet music long familiar’ (1584) had merely betrayed him with ‘echoes of
an earlier happier time’ (1585–6). The ability to remember a happiness
experienced in the past and experience it again seems to Faust a mere self-
deception. Faust prefers to place his trust in the sensually present, giving rise
to the stressful experience of constantly changing impressions flooding his
brain. In order to intensify his faculty of perception he makes a pact with the
devil, granting him an acceleration of impressions. His wish to go full speed
74 wolf-daniel hartwich
ahead with his experiences is evident in some of the paradoxical demands he
makes of Mephistopheles. With his wishes Faust puts the devil to the test
before he agrees to the pact: ‘Show me the fruit that, still unplucked, will
rot / And trees that leaf each day anew’ (1685–6). In this sentence Faust is
speculating on the extreme alternation of sensual stimuli, which leaves
behind natural laws. Faust’s thirst for experience can’t be drenched with
the present state of the objects; rather, he always wants to experience their
further development and even their destruction. In this context we also have
to interpret the famous moment when Faust and Mephistopheles wager
Faust’s soul. ‘If I ever say to any moment: / Tarry, remain – you are so fair!
Then you may lay your fetters, then I will gladly be destroyed’ (1699–1702).
Here Faust confesses that, for him, identity only means a transitional stage
from one stimulus to the next. But the fullness of experience is only attained
at the expense of loss of memory. Faust has dedicated himself to a diabolical
perversion of the Christian concept of self with its foundations in memory
and the acts of anamnesis associated with the history of salvation.
In Goethe’s Faust, the programmatic eradication of memory has direct
and violent consequences. Faust is quite content to accept the death of
anyone who stands between him and the realization of his changing
identities. The trail of blood leads from the murder of Gretchen’s mother
and brother to that of the old couple Philemon and Baucis and the
destruction of their chapel. It is the chiming of the bells of the chapel that
enrages Faust. The same cultic signs of memory that he had denied in the
first part of the tragedy now remind him of the earthly limitations of his new
project of colonization and sovereignty. In this scene, Goethe is making
implicit reference to a historical incident where a sacred place was destroyed
in the name of political progress. In his essay on the St Rochus festival in
Bingen, Goethe recounts how the chapel there had been ‘desecrated and
destroyed . . . because its position provided an advantageous view over the
entire surrounding area’ (WA 1:34.1, 9). The chapel of Philemon and Baucis
must also give way to Faust’s look-out tower. In the case of St Rochus, the
festival of the saint had managed to outlast the destruction of the chapel,
sustaining his memory among the people. Modernity was not able to cast
the mythic dimensions of the Christian cult into oblivion.
The famous turning-point at the end of Faust’s monologue at the end of
Part ii should be seen against the background of his temporal perception.
When Faust has the vision of a free society based on colonization, he
paraphrases the words spoken in the pact: ‘then, to the moment I could
say: / Tarry a while, you are so fair . . . Envisioning those heights of
happiness, I now enjoy my highest moment’ (11581–6). Faust’s perception
 Amnesia and anamnesis 75
of time is here defined by things to come. The allegorical figure of Care
formulates this as ‘caring only for the future’ (11465). The acceleration of
perception leads to its complete virtualization. The busy sound interpreted
by Faust as the beginning of the canal-building is, however, the sound of the
gravediggers’ spades. Faust also expresses this loss of reality in his perception
with the subjunctive form ‘could’. This means that Faust does not wish to
experience the present moment, but instead to anticipate the future
moment. Experience has become mere auto-suggestion. It’s true, he has
renounced the Christian culture of memory with its moral obligations, but
the devil will not win the bet.
When, in a scene that has been given a great deal of attention in the
critical literature, Goethe has Faust saved in the fifth act of the play, this can
also be interpreted as an anamnesis, Faust’s memory regained. This scene,
like the one discussed earlier, can be interpreted from the perspective of
Steinhorst’s psychology of extraordinary forgetfulness, as well as through
the Christian theology of total recall. Abducting Faust through the moun-
tain gorges into heaven, the angels save his ‘Unsterbliches’ (immortality)
from the devil. Faust thus emerges from his final lethargy, which had
culminated in his death, in a realm of abundant experiences. This new
change of identity is once again introduced by a remembered vision of a
woman. Gretchen appears transfigured in penitential robes and greets
Faust: ‘the love of my youth, / No longer unhappy, / Has now returned’
(12073–5). Gretchen’s entrance refers to the Christian culture of memory as
depicted in Christian hagiography: Gretchen is joined in the entourage of
the Mother of God by the three prominent holy sinners of church history:
Mary Magdalene, the woman of Samaria and Mary of Egypt. Gretchen’s
appearance in Part ii, unlike that in Part i, doesn’t throw the protagonist
into a new state of amnesia, but promises Faust redemption by anamnesis.
Gretchen asks Mary, the Mother of God, to initiate the reborn Faust into
his new existence: ‘Grant me permission to instruct him – / He still is
dazzled by the strange new light’ (12092–3). Goethe has already portrayed
Gretchen as the representative of a culture of memory rooted in
Catholicism. She regularly attends Mass, hears the Word and prays to the
Holy Virgin. But already in Part i her religiosity exceeds the bounds of
dogma. The golden chalice, which the King of Thule received from the
hand of his dying lover in the ballad sung by Gretchen, is a symbol of the
sacrament of remembrance and faith outside the church.
The idea that Gretchen will instruct Faust on his new path to salvation
alludes to the scene in Martha’s garden in Part i, where Gretchen asks her
lover the famous question ‘say then, what is your religion?’ (3415). When
76 wolf-daniel hartwich
Mephistopheles then mocks Faust with the words ‘I . . . heard the professor
catechized’ (3523), he is alluding to another medium of the Christian culture
of memory. Religious instruction aims at impressing upon the memory of
young believers the subjects of Christian faith, thus preparing them for
conducting their lives in the spirit of the gospel. For this, the literary genre
of the catechism uses as a mnemonic aid the alternation of question and
answer. Since Faust had renounced Christian memory long ago, in Martha’s
garden he cannot with all his will commit himself to a traditional image of
God. In the last scene of the play Gretchen announces her intention to
make up the skipped lesson in a post-mortem existence. Nothing is said in
the play about the contents of the teachings that are to prepare Faust for a
heavenly life. It can be taken for granted that these teachings will be less
dogmatic than the ones written down in the catechism.
What is of decisive importance is that the chronic forgetter Faust will be
given the capacity for memory. Here the heavenly policy of memory uses
the Platonic teaching method of eros as a means of education. Erotically
attracted by beauty, the student of philosophy is led to the memory of our
innate idea of beauty. When Gretchen says that Faust will be blinded by the
heavenly light, the text alludes to the Platonic cave simile about human
beings imprisoned in the cave of the sensual world. Since they are used to
living in darkness, they must be gradually led out of the cave to the bright
light of the heavenly realm of ideas. Without this thorough guidance to
enlightenment they will be blinded. Gretchen becomes Faust’s guide,
leading him through the celestial spheres. The vision of Gretchen helps
Faust to overcome his amnesia. Platonic eros serves as a protection against
the invading new impressions. This shield prevents Faust from being over-
stimulated and enables him to gradually absorb the impressions and to save
them in his memory. In this way he can begin to attain an everlasting
identity.
To summarize, reading Goethe’s Faust as an engagement with anamnesis
and amnesia, memory and forgetting, allows us to engage with the wide-
spread criticism of the unity of the central figure’s identity. I juxtaposed
Faust’s amnesia with a medical case history from contemporary empirical
psychology, in which loss of memory was explained as being caused by
alternating lethargy and over-stimulation. Memory images serve as markers
for the onset of a crisis in memory. The eradication of earlier sensory
impressions allows a reconstitution of the patient’s life narrative. Goethe
was able to apply a similar principle in order to consolidate the episodic
existences of Faust, forming them into a single character. The story of Faust
also cites the Christian theology of memory and its wider mythological
 Amnesia and anamnesis 77
context. The pact with the devil appears as the remainder of a stance
towards the world which has been preserved in memory.
Of course, Goethe’s Faust cannot be reduced to a mere psychological or
theological treatise. The author employs these diverse traditions as dramatic
means. The salvation of Faust combines Christian theology with the
mythology of classical antiquity, Platonic philosophy and modern psychol-
ogy. The memory image of Gretchen serves as an example of pedagogical
eros, overcoming Faust’s amnesia and suffering, and allowing him to be
reborn with a memory. But Faust’s salvation is not, finally, a coup de théâtre,
what might be called a stage spectacle in the sense of a theory of memory.
Goethe’s play uses dramatic means to bring to life the collective memory
archive of mythology and Christianity. Faust’s individual identity is
unfolded against the background of cultural memory. Goethe’s Faust
exceeds the theatre of the Christian cult by way of a collective act of
remembering in the medium of art. The purpose of the work of art is to
give form to personal and cultural identity in modernity and to free it from
the constraints of forgetfulness.

not es
1. Dieter Borchmeyer, Goethe. Der Zeitbürger, Munich: Hanser, 1999.
2. Harald Weinrich, Lethe. The Art and Critique of Forgetting, Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 2004.
3. Johann Werner Streithorst, ‘Beispiel einer ausserordentlichen Vergessenheit’,
Magazin fiir Erfahrungsseelenkunde 3/3 (1784), 1–14.
4. Ibid., 3.
5. Ibid., 8.
6. Helmut Schanze, Goethes Dramatik. Theater der Erinnerung, Tübingen:
Niemeyer, 1989.
 chapter 6

Magicians of modernity: Cagliostro and

Saint-Simon in Goethe’s Faust ii
Hans-Jürgen Schings

To be sure, Goethe stated repeatedly that what appears in the second part of
Faust is ‘a higher, more spacious, brighter, more dispassionate world’, and
that one must ‘lead a man like him through more worthy circumstances,
in higher regions’.1,2 Yet occasionally his intention also admits of more
apprehensive tones: ‘There are still a number of magnificent, real and
fantastical delusions on earth, in which the poor human, were he to lose
himself in them, would experience something nobler, more dignified and
higher, than he ever does in the first, common part. Our friend Faust should
also have to struggle through these.’ And to this Goethe adds that ‘in the
world’s daylight, it would look like a pasquinade’.3
Those who cling decidedly to the ‘higher regions’, like Max Kommerell,
Dorothea Hölscher-Lohmeyer or Wilhelm Emrich, run up against the great
entelechy and its spheres of being, the survey, if possible, of cosmic world-
regions, primordial ur-phenomena and histories of being – and tend towards
a monumental interpretation of Faust, beyond all morality.4 Those who, on
the other hand, keep in mind the ‘real and fantastical delusions on earth’ will
retrieve the Faust of the second part, too, from an ontological, ur-phenomenal
dimension and expose him to the ‘world’s daylight’. The Emperor plot of
Acts 1 and 4, as well as the land appropriation venture in the fifth act, are then
recognizable as a ‘poetic-symbolic representation of modern existence’, as a
more or less systematic sequence of historical-political phenomena, in which
‘symphronistically’ – to use Goethe’s expression from the Journeyman Years –
the German late Middle Ages are synthesized with the modern present. The
work of Gottlieb C. L. Schuchard was ground-breaking in this regard, though
belatedly so.5 Recently his trail has been picked up by Nicholas Boyle,
Thomas Zabka, Jochen Schmidt and Michael Jaeger, among others.6 And
from here the ‘pasquinade’ – that is to say, the disenchantment with Faust – is
indeed no longer so far off.
78
 Magicians of modernity 79
The political-historical sequence which appears in the second Faust
circumvents the phenomenon of the French Revolution, but playfully skirts
it as its secret kernel. In Act 1 we see: a state in crisis – ‘while fever rages
rampant in the state / And brooding evil breeds prolific evils’ (4780–1); an
empire on the brink of ‘turmoil’ (4794) and bankruptcy – ‘but here the lack
is money’ (4890); a ruler who celebrates anyway – ‘then let us pass the time
in gaiety!’ (5057), who does not know why ‘we should torment ourselves by
holding council’ (4769) and who confuses governance and pleasure – ‘it was
proper and commendable / To practise two activities at once – / To govern,
and to lead a life of pleasure’ (10249–51).7 An ancien régime ripe for
revolution, then, is exposed to the meddling of the magical ‘cronies’
Mephisto and Faust. In Act 4, after the overture about vulcanism and
revolution, which can be read as a ‘prelude’ rather than as a digression,
there follow stages of ‘anarchy’ (10261), usurpation, civil war and restora-
tion.8 Act 5 presents post-revolutionary modernity, the new world. Faust
the war profiteer disposes of the fiefdom which he has acquired by magical
intervention, he has ‘sovereignty and property [trans. modified]’ and
‘Eigentum’ (10187), ‘great holdings’ (11156) and ‘possession of the world
[trans. modified]’ (11242). The colonizer dies with a utopian vision for
‘millions’ (11563).
This all amounts to something like a complicated picture puzzle which
thornily resists any solution. A wealth of names and events from history
have been read into this scenario: Louis XVI, but also Duke Carl August, or
Prussia and Napoleon, Charles X and Louis Philippe, the 1806 battle of
Jena and the battle of the nations at Leipzig, or the Congress of Vienna and
the July revolution in France.9 What is at issue in particular are develop-
ments in French history stretching from the pre-revolutionary ancien régime
to the ‘restaging of the tragedy of 1790’, which Goethe saw arrive in the July
revolution of 1830.10 Even if, as is self-evident, mimetic exactitude is not to
be expected of Goethe’s symbolic typology, a sequence of phenomena can
nonetheless be discerned grouping around the omitted centre, the French
Revolution. Does Faust thus also partake of what Goethe, in 1823, called the
‘boundless effort to poetically master, in its origins and consequences, this
most terrible of all events’ (WA 2:11, 61)?
But what part does Faust himself play? Does Goethe draw his hero into
this era as well? This is what he is supposed to have suggested to the painter
Burmeister in a splendid, unfortunately not entirely dependable, statement
of 1830: ‘What if you drew a modern Faust, a distiller of the invisibly
daemonic in all life and activity? A discloser of the dire future and the
seemingly good present?’11
80 hans-jürgen schings
Let us recall how he had proceeded in the case of Euphorion, for whom
he could ‘use no one’ but Byron as a ‘representative of the latest poetic
period’.12 If we look for representatives who might serve typologically –
‘symphronistically’ – as models for the ‘distiller’ Faust, then Cagliostro and
Saint-Simon appear good candidates – both great, dubious, daemonic
adventurers of historic scale and ‘Faustian’ restlessness, exemplary of deci-
sive tendencies of the age of revolution and modernity, one a subversive
occultist, the other armed with utopian explosive power, and both active
prior to the revolutions of 1789 and 1830, respectively. The one stumbled
early on, the other only later, into the sights of the poet of Faust.

Goethe called Cagliostro ‘one of the most peculiar monstrosities . . . to have

appeared in our century’.13 The man embodies a double trauma: on the one
hand, there is the daemonic power by means of which he incites a desire for
miracles, spirits and treasures, and so stages a magical conspiracy against the
Enlightenment. On the other, there is his covert entanglement in the
Necklace Affair, which appears to Goethe as a highly explosive conspiracy
against the French court. As a ‘sinister omen’ it painted the Revolution on
the wall and was part of its ‘foundation’.14,15 It opened up an ‘immoral abyss
of city, court and state’, outrageously exhibiting the ‘head of Medusa’.16,17
Riemer reports: ‘The Necklace Affair is a reversal of world-history. For
Goethe the most horrible, Medusa-like symbol of the recent and latest
events. Debauchery on a monstrous scale’ (GG 2, 1138). Hence Goethe’s
conviction that the charlatan magician Cagliostro was involved.
Neither his piece Der Großcophta (The Grand Kophta) nor the man
himself left Goethe in peace during his work on Faust ii. ‘Spoke a lot
about The Grand Kophta’, Eckermann wrote on 17 February 1829. ‘I’m
talking about The Grand Kophta, which I re-read these last days’,
Eckermann reports again on 14 February 1831. It is worth noting at this
point, however, that Goethe himself, in a letter to Zelter of 20 November
1829, suggests the analogy between Cagliostro and Faust. The context is the
origin of the ‘Faustian Legend’ in Protestantism. This movement had done
away with the fear of ecclesiastical punishments, so that ‘diabolical and
magical elements’ could ‘more methodically’ step to the fore – thus giving
Faust an open field.
The Protestant devil-conjurers were not immediately threatened with excommu-
nication, and there were all the more Kophtas, who knew how to make use of
people’s foolishness, helplessness and impassioned appetites; for of course it would
be easier to get rich by means of a few drawn characters and nonsensical mumbling,
than by earning one’s daily bread by the sweat of one’s brow. (WA 4:46, 157)
 Magicians of modernity 81
‘Kophtas’ – that is the sarcastically Egyptianizing code word which Goethe
had borrowed from Cagliostro, and here it extends to Faust. The connec-
tion is not new, by the way – Nicolai’s Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek had
already called the historical Faust a ‘Cagliostro of his times’ in 1792.18 With
no lack of clarity, Goethe’s letter delineates the constellation of our first act.
Here, Faust is anything but the ‘Upright Man of Court’ (the title of a
novel by Goethe’s great-uncle Johann Michael von Loen) desired by the
proper political morality of the Enlightenment.19 The magic with which he
and Mephisto delight the Emperor’s court no longer has the playful,
adventuresome elements still present in the Faust tradition, and only with
difficulty can one find in it the striving towards ‘being’s highest form’ (4685)
which Faust announced in the tercets of the ‘Pleasant Landscape’. The
magic of the first act is deceptive and subversive, and, as will become
apparent, it imperils the state.
Money and spirits are what matters at the imperial court: ‘Now that
we’ve made him rich, / We are expected to amuse him’ (6191–2). The magic
of the two ‘friends’ (cf. 6311) thus amounts to two undertakings – the
fabrication of paper money and a spirit conjuration. Embedded are
the treasure magic with the chest, which catastrophically ends the
‘Masquerade’, and Faust’s invocation of the Mothers, which brings about
the apparition of Helen and Paris, which likewise ends explosively. It is no
accident that Mephisto is the one who ‘publicly’ has an alchemistic term
handy for both of these principal undertakings: ‘great work’ (6110; 6425),
the opus magnum, that is. He also enjoys speaking, in the role of the fool,
about ‘wisdom’ (4892) and the ‘wise’ (5030), even about ‘mysteries’ (5032).
With the enticing aperçu ‘a man that nature has endowed with spiritual
might [trans. modified]’ (4896), he ingratiates Faust with the Emperor. The
actual status of the magical events, however, is indicated by other expres-
sions. Faust apologizes for the ‘fiery illusion’ (5987) of the Masquerade,
Mephisto speaks in private of ‘entertaining tricks’ (6176), of ‘phantom
money’ (6198) and finally of a ‘spectral masque’ (6546). He’s not lying.
Suspicion, present from the start, is swept under the rug by the wondrous
events. The Chancellor, properly orthodox, warns right away of ‘heretics
and sorcerers’ (4911). The society at court is heard to murmur: ‘The fellow’s
a rogue. – And clever too. – / Lies gain him favour’ (4885–6). And then:
‘They both are rogues . . . – and hand in glove. – / The visionary and the
fool’ (4951–2). And later: ‘Astrology – or alchemy! – / I’ve heard it all before’
(4974). Even referring to Plutus with the chariot, someone drops the word
‘charlatan’ (5641) during the Masquerade. Against such a heavily laden
semantics, Faust’s speech about the ‘dauntless sorcerer’ (6436) stands all
82 hans-jürgen schings
alone. Does it balance the scales? Ever since Albrecht Schöne uncovered the
secrets of the laterna magica (FK 479 ff.) the magical essence of the first act
has come increasingly under suspicion; the enigmatic passage to the
Mothers in particular has had a hard time selling itself as anything but satire.
It is not by chance that the venture with paper money is connected to the
registers of treasure-hunting, sorcery, alchemy and gold-making, which had
drawn Mephisto into the ‘Throne Room’ scene, where the problem of
backing the magical currency was fantastically obfuscated and downplayed.
The signature of the Emperor, which he gave – although he doesn’t know
quite how – in the frenzy of carnival, is reminiscent of the ‘drawn characters’
which Goethe mentioned in his letter to Zelter. ‘Quick conjurors’ (6072)
are at work here, ‘magical leaves’ (6157) is the designation for the paper bills;
the ‘Intendant of the Treasury’ greets in Faust his colleague the ‘magician’
(6142). And the end result is – as the scholarship has demonstrated
with recourse to Goethe’s knowledge of economics, as drawn from
Johann Georg Büsch’s Abhandlung von dem Geldumlauf (Treatise on the
Circulation of Money, 1780) – inflation.20 The Emperor has been served
‘false riches’ (10245), as Mephisto admits in the fourth act. The consequence
was ‘anarchy’ (10261). ‘Tomorrow this imperial magnificence / Will be the
ash-heap of one night’ (5968–9) is the Herald’s commentary on the ‘fiery
illusion’ with the treasure chest – but the statement far outreaches the
occasion.
Money and spirits. In high style, at the level of the state, treasure-
hunting, alchemy and spirit-seeing are staged to the great detriment of the
empire. The sorcery of the first act, deceptive and subversive, thereby takes
on recognizably ‘kophtic’ traits. The connection with the dealings of
Cagliostro is not hard to make.21
Cagliostro’s success depended on his enormous stature. That he was ‘a man
that nature has endowed with spiritual might’ and ‘that he is very powerful
in magic’ Lavater, for example, believed.22 In letters to Goethe he calls
Cagliostro ‘power personified’, ‘a highly original, powerful, unsublime and
in a certain respect ineffably banal person . . . Just as he is, he is no doubt a
rock-solid man of great consequence.’23,24 Or elsewhere: ‘powerful slave of
stars and conjurer of spirit-forms, lacking greatness and simplicity’.25
Goethe’s cool response is: ‘Cagliostro is always someone worth taking note
of. But a fool with power and a scoundrel are still such close kindred. I
mustn’t say anything about it. I am inflexible on this point.’26
In Cagliostro, the promises of the old esoteric sciences celebrated their
return in the Age of Enlightenment. Goethe’s Grand Kophta himself enacts
them:
 Magicians of modernity 83
When a man, not satisfied with his natural powers, senses something better, desires
something higher; when he aims to acquire for himself, step by step, unassailable
health, everlasting life, inexhaustible riches, the affection of people, the obedience
of beasts, even control over elements and spirits, he cannot do so without a
deep understanding of Nature. This is what lies beyond the gate I now open to
you. (MA 4:1, 59)
These are, formulated in exact correspondence with Elisa von der Recke, the
‘demands of higher sensibility’, just as the historical section of the
Farbenlehre (Theory of Colours), in the section ‘Alchymisten’ (Alchemists),
states in the same context (MA 10, 614).27 The repertoire of a ‘kophtic’
personality, which promised everything ‘worth desiring’ in the twinkling of
an eye, was of course readily available to the reader of the voluminous
Cagliostro literature: ‘Connection with the spirit world’, i.e., apparitions,
‘metamorphosis of metals’, i.e., gold-making, and so on down to treasure-
hunting, magical operations and miraculous acts of healing.28
This ensemble returns in its entirety in Faust. In the ‘Brightly Lit Rooms’
scene, Mephisto even demonstrates the ‘kophtic’ cures. He irritatingly
makes his appearance as ‘court physician’ just at the moment when his
‘crony’ Faust is tarrying among the Mothers.29 That Goethe not only
orchestrates the whole affair ‘kophtically’, but that he even makes use of
detailed ‘kophtic’ allusions, I shall try to demonstrate by means of an
example which deals with the money motif of Plutus.
Plutus–Faust, who will destroy the ‘cheerful entertainment’ (5067) by play-
fully reducing the ‘pretty show’ (5733) to the ‘coarse reality’ of ‘gold’ (5730),
notoriously gives the Herald a hard time. The latter describes him as follows:
Er scheint ein König, reich und milde,
Wohl dem, der seine Gunst erlangt!
Er hat nichts weiter zu erstreben,
Wo’s irgend fehlte, späht sein Blick,
Und seine reine Lust zu geben,
Ist größer als Besitz und Glück. (5554–9)
He seems to be a rich and kindly king
Whose favour would ensure prosperity.
He looks not for new realms to conquer,
But to discover where there’s want,
And the pure joy he takes in giving
Outweighs all the delights of ownership.
Probably the most widely disseminated portrait of Cagliostro, which
introduced his francophone apologia and was well-known to Goethe,
closes:
84 hans-jürgen schings
De l’Ami des Humains reconnoissés les traits,
Tous ses jours sont marqués par de nouveaux bienfaits,
Il prolonge la Vie, il secourt l’indigence,
Le plaisir d’être utile est seul sa récompense.30
Recognize the features of a friend of man.
All his days are marked by new acts of generosity,
He prolongs life, he aids the destitute,
The pleasure of being helpful is his only recompense.
The similarity goes without saying. The Herald describes Faust, in the guise
of Plutus, as the miraculous and altruistic do-gooder Cagliostro. Known for
giving away his miracle cures for free, Cagliostro was stormed by hordes of
the needy, to whom he also gave away money.31 And it just so happens
that the philanthropist also has seemingly endless means at his disposal.
The Journal für Freimaurer (Journal for Freemasons) of 1786 lets a critical
eyewitness speak his mind: ‘This is the miracle man, spirit-seer, spirit-
conjurer, philanthropic unpaid doctor and hero, who has been living it
up in these parts for years, without anyone ever knowing where he gets his
money.’32
His physiognomic features, his ‘face that glows with health’ and ‘ample
mouth’, the ‘well-rounded cheeks’ as well as the ‘jewelled turban’ (5563–5)
are also explicable without recourse to fantastical-oriental elements. The
portraits of Cagliostro depict a chubby-cheeked, conspicuously rotund head
with exceptionally pouty lips.33 Occasionally, Cagliostro appeared in his
séances as an ancient Egyptian Grand Kophta (just as in Goethe’s play), in
which case he wore ‘a large turban on his head’.34 An eyewitness from
Warsaw also reports that ‘the Grand Kophta rolled into the city every
morning in a cabriolet to visit his female patients. A philosopher, an
adept, a Grand Kophta en cabriolet!’35 ‘A magnificent quadriga’ (5512) is
how Plutus arrives at the Emperor’s court.
The terms ‘Werk’ (opus) and ‘le Grand Oeuvre’, are of course also applied
to Cagliostro’s spirit-dealings.36 There is a report that he planned to summon
Henry IV, Rousseau and Voltaire before Cardinal Rohan, the cardinal collier
(Jules Michelet).37 Elisa von der Recke described the details of such an
invocation from her own experience. There we find the medium, a manip-
ulated young boy, the wild stamping of the sorcerer (‘then he stamped his
feet, first on the ground, then on the door’, repeatedly), the opening-up of the
earth, the appearance of ghosts (‘seven very good-looking people’) and
Cagliostro’s convulsive fainting – in the third act of his comedy, Goethe
changes this into the fainting of the medium and adds a tripod and incense to
the magic ritual for good measure (MA 4:1, 55–61).38 From here the trail leads
 Magicians of modernity 85
all the way to Faust. The ‘spectral masque’ which Mephisto organizes with
Faust in ‘dim lighting’ likewise draws on the detailed and well-tried repertoire
of ‘kophtic’ necromancy, including the shibboleth ‘the great work’ (6425) and
the designation ‘thaumaturge’ (6422), which Faust is allowed to share with
Cagliostro.39 It is particularly unfortunate for Faust that his stamping on the
way to the Mothers – ‘mephistopheles “To sink you stamp your foot, to
rise you stamp again” (6304). faust stamps his foot and sinks out of sight’ – has
an obvious model in Cagliostro’s techniques.40
One thing, however, fundamentally differentiates Faust from the Grand
Kophta: Faust himself takes it all quite seriously. In the midst of the
‘kophtic’ confusion unleashed by Mephisto, he always manages to find
his very particular, enthusiastic tone. He raves – for instance, when he says
of the paper money and its backing beneath the ground of the imperial
lands, ‘Yet minds that can look deep will have / The vast assurance that vast
undertakings need’ (6117–18); but he remains untouched by the surround-
ing greed. Yet this in no way mitigates the deceptive and subversive
character of this undertaking, or its fateful consequences. A portentous
cloud hangs over the first act. Even if the majority of the Cagliostro allusions
can be chalked up to Mephistopheles, a shadow falls on Faust as well.

In the ‘Historical Section’ of the Farbenlehre (Theory of Colours), Goethe

explains, with regard to the origin of superstition and alchemy, ‘It is the
misuse of the genuine and true, a leap from ideality, from the possible to
reality, a misapplication of genuine feelings, a fraudulent confirmation by
which we flatter our most cherished hopes and desires’ (MA 10, 614).41
Goethe diagnoses it as caprice (‘Willkür’). And just as caprice – that is, the
hasty, impatient leap beyond the law-like necessities of nature and society –
seizes Faust at the Emperor’s court, so it remains, supported along the way
by often brute force, Faust’s symptom until his demise.
In the fifth act we step into a new world. Faust has meanwhile become a
colonizer and power-holder, a merchant prince and the master of an army of
labourers. Magic switches elements. It is no longer ‘kophtic’, but becomes
technological and industrial, passing finally into a utopia of modernity. But
the foundation is still caprice or, as Faust’s own ambitious formulation puts
it, ‘the untrammelled power of the will’ (11255). This is the field in which a
new, likewise pre-revolutionary ‘distiller of the invisibly daemonic’ could
leave its imprint on Faust – namely, Saint-Simon and the teachings of his
disciples, the Saint-Simonists.
Claude Henri de Rouvroy (1760–1825), comte de Saint-Simon and
descendant of the duc de Saint-Simon, probably first came to Goethe’s
86 hans-jürgen schings
attention when he read Saint-Simon’s obituary, and underlined it, in his
favourite newspaper, Le Globe.42 His interest was ignited when the July
revolution in Paris presented him with ‘the greatest thought problem he
could have faced at the close of his life’.43 He had to watch as Le Globe
transformed itself into an emphatic organ of Saint-Simonism and printed
the catchwords ‘Religion, Science, Industry’ next to the respective maxims
on the front page. Schuchard was the first to thoroughly document
Goethe’s engagement with Saint-Simonism. Goethe read publications of
the Société Saint-Simonienne and reviews of them, and informed himself
through conversation, above all with Soret. On 30 May 1831, he notes:
‘Efforts to get to the bottom of the Saint-Simonist phenomenon. Therefore
read until the evening’ (WA 3:13, 83). This was happening during the last
phase of his work on Faust. He left no doubts about his aversion. On
17 October 1830, he writes to Carlyle: ‘I bid you keep your distance from the
Société Simonienne’ (WA 4:47, 300). What did he see in it that was
apparently so fascinating and at the same time so disconcerting?
First of all, here is a man whose biography, as Nicholas Boyle correctly
attests, bears all the traits of a modern Faust: ‘a period of fruitless study, an
attempt at suicide, a subsequent metaphysical reorientation, a life of per-
manent striving and permanent disappointment, of grandiose schemes
(including canal-building) and a desire for a “gloire” that would embrace
all humanity, an end simultaneously in dereliction and resurrection’.44 Of
particular interest is Saint-Simon’s early pet project, canal-building; to the
viceroy of Mexico he suggested building a canal through Nicaragua, for
Spain he planned a canal to Madrid. It is no accident that Ferdinand de
Lesseps was, if not an old Saint-Simonist, at least a sympathizer. Quite
innocent of any intentions regarding Faust, of course, modern scholarship
has exposed the grandiose Suez Canal project as a symbol of Saint-
Simonism and its claim to nature-altering productive power.45
In a letter ‘to the gentlemen workers’ Saint-Simon writes in 1821 that, in
order to master nature and develop the earth, ‘fallow tracts must be made
arable, wetlands drained . . . and all those canals built which can be used for
shipping and irrigation’.46 In the pamphlet De la Religion St Simonienne
(1830), ‘embanking the sea becomes a symbol of the mastery of nature in
general’.47 All of humanity is called upon to take a new pride in itself: ‘Calm
and superb, I see you mastering the tempest; you rule over the winds; the
tamed lightning follows the paths which you have traced for it: it is you who
have erected the dyke, and it is you who have said to the angry sea: you shall
come only this far, and not go any further.’ That the author (Abel Étienne
Transon) here rearranges and redirects a passage from the Book of Job, and
 Magicians of modernity 87
delegates to humans the power of the creator, is one of the principal ironies
which also helps us see Faust’s dyke project in a new light.48
The motives and aims of the Doctrine de Saint-Simon (the title of the
manifesto which Goethe read in May 1831) are most succinctly grasped in
the words of the Globe obituary which Goethe underlined for himself:

Il rapporta du Nouveau-Monde un caractère qui devait le distinguer entre tous les

amis de la liberté: il avait vu des sociétés de proscrits malheureux s’élever par le
travail et la fraternité au bonheur et à la plus haute civilisation; l’industrie devint sa
divinité. Quand tout le monde en France s’occupait d’intérêts purement politiques,
dans le vieux sens attaché à ce mot, il sentit qu’une ère nouvelle s’ouvrait pour les
nations, et que le travail allait jouer le premier rôle dans le dix-neuvième siècle. Dès
lors toutes ses pensées, toutes ses actions, eurent pour but le perfectionnement de
l’industrie, l’éducation des classes laborieuses, et l’élévation des producteurs au
gouvernement des affaires.49
He came back from the New World with a quality which could only set him
apart from all the friends of liberty: he had seen societies of dejected exiles raise
themselves through work and fraternity to happiness and to the highest degree of
civilization; industry became his divinity. While everyone in France was occupied
with purely political interests, in the old sense of that word, he sensed that a new era
was beginning for the nations, and that work would play the leading role in the
nineteenth century. All his thoughts, all his actions, henceforth had the aim of
perfecting the industry, the education of the working classes and the appointment
of producers to the government of affairs.

To paraphrase this ‘religion de notre siècle’ (as the obituary calls it), its main
ideas are as follows: abolition of the parasitic feudal system, the ‘classe
féodale et théologique’; development of science, production, technology
and labour in the direction of the dominant world system, to the ‘système
industriel et scientifique’, to the ‘grande société d’industrie’; and formation
of the ‘citoyen industrieux’ as the new type of human.50 All of this is to be
organized by an elite class of intellectual and practical producers, the ‘chefs
naturels et permanents du peuple’. If this restructuring succeeds, the
supposedly lost Golden Age will be close at hand: ‘L’âge d’or, qu’une
aveugle tradition a placé jusqu’ici dans le passé, est devant nous!’51 The
will is what counts, and beside it all sceptical reservations pale: utopia
becomes reality.52
Can the will, the ‘god of recent times’, which Goethe had long been
pursuing, manifest itself any more clearly?53 To the poet of Faust it was ripe
for the picking, and Schuchard has demonstrated the affinities. The mod-
ernizing push that Goethe gave his hero in the final phase of writing
borrows boldly from the new utopian magicians of modernity.
88 hans-jürgen schings
‘To rule’ and ‘have possessions’ (10187) is what Faust wants, not a feudal,
hereditary patrimonium, but a free dominium. The Emperor disappears into
nowhere; the old world, the ‘dilapidated chapel’ (11158) and ‘our fathers’
God’ (11142) are liquidated along with Philemon and Baucis. Mastery over
nature and the elements, hence dykes, canals; the draining of marshlands
continues to fascinate Faust up to his final vision. The Three Mighty Men
stand for his productive power, and with them he has at his disposal an army
of ‘workmen’ (11503) and ‘labourers’ (11552). Be it of feudal, neo-feudal or
already bourgeois orchestration, Faust appears in any case as the uninhi-
bited ‘master’ (11169) of an empire of trade and labour. And he too directs
his final glance, ‘the final wisdom we can reach’ (11574), towards a Golden
Age, ‘a land of Eden’ (11569), as he says.
Faust’s striving takes a turn towards the very latest, modern configuration
of the world. The ‘great work’, the signal word first for archaic, then for
‘kophtic’ magic, now becomes the ‘greatest work’ (11509), magic in the
highest possible style, the technological-industrial utopia of the new age.
And its building-blocks are provided by the doctrine of Saint-Simonism.
Having just been blinded, the ‘master’, the ‘patron’ (cf. 11170) heralds the
coming of this new world:

Die Nacht scheint tiefer tief hereinzudringen

Allein im Innern leuchtet helles Licht:
Was ich gedacht ich eil es zu vollbringen;
Des Herren Wort es gibt allein Gewicht.
Vom Lager auf ihr Knechte! Mann für Mann!
Laßt glücklich schauen was ich kühn ersann.
Ergreift das Werkzeug, Schaufel rührt und Spaten,
Das Abgesteckte muß sogleich geraten.
Auf strenges Ordnen, raschen Fleiß,
Erfolgt der allerschönste Preis;
Daß sich das größte Werk vollende
Genügt Ein Geist für tausend Hände. (11499–510)
The darkness seems to press about me more and more,
But in my inner being there is radiant light;
I’ll hasten the fulfilment of my plans –
Only the master’s order carries weight. –
Workmen, up from your beds! Up, every man,
And make my bold design reality!
Take up your tools! To work with spade and shovel –
What’s been marked off must be completed now!
Prompt effort and strict discipline
Will guarantee superb rewards:
 Magicians of modernity 89
To complete the greatest of all projects,
One mind suffices for a thousand hands. [trans. modified]

An attentive inspection of Faust’s vocabulary will show that Saint-Simonist

ideas now permeate his key concepts. Travail (tools, spade, shovel), organ-
isation (strict discipline), industrie (prompt effort), production (the greatest
of all projects), patron (master, one mind) – the lexicon of the new doctrine
can still be discerned in Faust’s speech. The expression ‘actively free’ (11564),
which appears in Faust’s final monologue, is a succinct formulation of
the Saint-Simonist linking of labour, as mastery of nature, with freedom.
The bold word ‘communal impulse’ (11572) is evidently a translation of the
Saint-Simonist ‘impulsion commune’ which is supposed to lend wings to
the workers of the future.54 Even the contentious verses in which Faust
qualifies his blindness by reference to his ‘inner light’ have a certain
plausibility in this context.
The colour theorist Goethe leaves no doubt about it: given such a
disproportion of the internal to the external, what is at hand is a pathological
phenomenon, and not the condition for a heroic-creative state of excep-
tion.55 No less significant is the polemical weight of the epiphany motif,
which was a familiar one to the enlightened century. The evocation of ‘inner
light’ was a mark of visionaries and inspirationalists, of fanatics, chiliasts and
utopians of every stripe.56 This is the neighbourhood into which the blind
Faust stumbles. It is particularly telling that the Saint-Simonists also
thought of their message, which they understood to be a new secular
religion, in terms of God-sent light: ‘Gentlemen, do not shut your eyes to
the light which god sends to you, and allow the one who carries this new
light to you to make your acquaintance.’57
Goethe stated unambiguously what he thought of the Saint-Simonists.
To Zelter, 28 June 1830:
At the head of this sect are very shrewd people who know precisely what is lacking
in our times and also how to present what is desirable; but when they presume
to overcome this dreadful state of affairs and foster something desirable, their
ineptitude is apparent. The fools believe they can competently play the part of
providence, and promise that every man shall be rewarded according to his
contribution, if he commits himself body and soul, without reserve, and becomes
one of them. (WA 4:48, 259)

Journal entry of 31 October 1830: ‘Discussion about the Société

St. Simonienne, as a repetition of those general demands, which can’t
even be called ideal, for they are without the slightest concept of the
conditions which are to be accounted for, to which one must necessarily
90 hans-jürgen schings
attend’ (WA 3:12, 324). In accordance with this, he formulates a well-known
maxim: ‘There is nothing sadder to see than unmediated striving towards an
unconditional state in this throughly conditioned world; it appears in the
year 1830 perhaps more inappropriate than ever.’58 The short version of this
is: ‘Unconditioned activity, regardless of its kind, ultimately leaves one
bankrupt.’59 It is certainly possible that Goethe had in mind the words he
had read in Saint-Simon’s obituary: ‘in the end he went bankrupt’.
Should we not fear that this sentence applies just as well to Faust, at the
end of his earthly career? Those who cling together, swing together, accord-
ing to the adage – Faust’s similarity to the Saint-Simonists is, at any rate, not
a good sign. It delivers him up to those who see him as an agent of modern
bankruptcy and want to make him answer for it. A strong faction of
contemporary Faust interpreters is determined, and thus also prepared, to
show that, in the battle for Faust, Mephisto was right. But Goethe doesn’t
make it quite that easy for Faust’s critics. His benevolence denies Mephisto
victory in the contest and preserves Faust’s ‘immortal part’. Of course, this
doesn’t amount to a seal of approval for Faust’s earthly tenure, either.

notes
Translated by John Koster.
1. Gespräch mit Eckermann, 17 February 1831.
2. ‘Helena. Zwischenspiel zu Faust’, WA 1:41.2, 291.
3. To Karl Ernst Schubarth, 3 November 1820, WA 4:34, 5.
4. Max Kommerell, Geist und Buchstabe der Dichtung. Goethe, Schiller, Kleist,
Hölderlin, Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1940; Dorothea Lohmeyer,
Faust und die Welt. Der zweite Teil der Dichtung, Munich: C.H. Beck, 1975;
Lohmeyer, ‘Einleitung und Kommentar zu Faust ii’, MA 18:1, 535–1213;
Wilhelm Emrich, Die Symbolik von Faust ii. Sinn und Vorformen, 5th edn,
Königstein: Athenäum, 1981.
5. G. C. L. Schuchard, ‘Julirevolution, St Simonismus und die Faustpartien von
1831’, ZfdPh 60 (1935), 240–74 and 362–84. The citation there is on 370.
6. Nicholas Boyle, ‘The Politics of Faust ii. Another Look at the Stratum of 1831’,
Publications of the English Goethe Society 52 (1983), 4–43; Thomas Zabka, Faust ii –
Das Klassische und das Romantische. Goethes ‘Eingriff in die neueste Literatur’,
Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1993; Jochen Schmidt, Goethes Faust. Erster und Zweiter
Teil. Grundlagen–Werk–Wirkung, Munich: C. H. Beck, 1999; Michael
Jaeger, Fausts Kolonie. Goethes kritische Phänomenologie der Moderne, Würzburg:
Königshausen & Neumann, 2004 and Global Player Faust oder Das Verschwinden
der Gegenwart. Zur Aktualität Goethes, Berlin: WJS Verlag, 2008.
7. Faust citations are from FT. Unless otherwise indicated, all Faust translations are
taken from Goethe’s Collected Works, vol. ii, trans. Stuart Atkins (Boston:
Suhrkamp, 1982).
 Magicians of modernity 91
8. Schuchard, ‘Julirevolution’, 371.
9. See for instance Manfred Birk, ‘Goethes Typologie der Epochenschwelle im
vierten Akt des Faust ii’, Jahrbuch der deutschen Schillergesellschaft 33 (1989),
261–80; Katharina Mommsen, ‘Faust ii als politisches Vermächtnis des
Staatsmannes Goethe’, Jahrbuch des freien deutschen Hochstifts (1989), 1–36;
Heinz Hamm, ‘Julirevolution, Saint-Simonismus und Goethes abschließende
Arbeit am Faust’, Weimarer Beiträge 28 (1982), 70–91; John R. Williams, ‘Die
Deutung geschichtlicher Epochen im zweiten Teil des Faust’, Goethe-Jahrbuch
110 (1993), 89–103; Zabka, Faust ii.
10. To Knebel, 12 September 1830, WA 4:47, 217.
11. The passage is quoted in Schuchard, ‘Julirevolution’, 372. Cf. GG, 4, 424 f. and
5, 182.
12. Gespräch mit Eckermann, 5 July 1827.
13. ‘Zur Italienischen Reise. Zweiter Teil’, WA 1:31, 304.
14. Campagne in Frankreich, WA 1:33, S. 264; Goethe’s Collected Works, trans.
Thomas P. Saine, New York: Suhrkamp, 1987, v, 744.
15. Gespräch mit Eckermann, 15 February 1831.
16. Tag- und Jahreshefte 1789, WA 1:35, 11.
17. Campagne in Frankreich, WA 1:33, S. 261.
18. Klaus H. Kiefer, ‘Balsamo, Giuseppe’, in Goethe-Handbuch iv/i , ed. Hans-
Dietrich Dahnke and Regine Otto, Stuttgart-Weimar: Metzler, 1998, iv/1, 98.
19. See Wolfgang Martens, Der patriotische Minister. Fürstendiener in der Literatur
der Aufklärungszeit, Weimar-Cologne-Vienna: Böhlau, 1996.
20. Fundamental: Bernd Mahl, Goethes ökonomisches Wissen. Grundlagen zum
Verständnis der ökonomischen Passagen im dichterischen Gesamtwerk und in
den ‘Amtlichen Schriften’, Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1982. Particularly plau-
sible: Zabka, Faust ii, 230 ff.
21. Faust scholarship has, as far as I can see, only rarely been interested in
connections to Cagliostro, probably because they came too close to Faust’s
prestige. See Pierre Grappin, ‘Zur Gestalt des Kaisers in Faust ii’, Goethe-
Jahrbuch 91 (1974), 107–16; John R. Williams, ‘Mephisto’s Magical Mystery
Tour. Goethe, Cagliostro, and the Mothers in Faust, Part Two’, Publications of
the English Goethe Society 58 (1989), 84–102; Michael Jaeger, Fausts Kolonie,
289 ff.; Yvonne Wübben, ‘ “. . . und dennoch spukt’s in Tegel” – Zu Goethes
Cagliostro-Rezeption’, Goethe-Jahrbuch 119 (2002), 96–119, esp. 108 ff.
(Michael Jaeger and Yvonne Wübben were among the participants in an
Oberseminar at which I discussed the Cagliostro question.)
22. To Goethe, 19 May 1781, in Heinrich Funck (ed.), Goethe und Lavater. Briefe und
Tagebücher, Schriften der Goethe-Gesellschaft xvi (1901), 179. Gespräch mit
Eckermann, 17 February 1829: ‘“Lavater”, said Goethe, “believed in Cagliostro
and his miracles. When he was debunked as an impostor, Lavater held that it was
a different Cagliostro, for the miracle-worker Cagliostro was a holy person.”’
23. Lavater to Goethe and Knebel, 10 February 1781, in Funck (ed.), Goethe und
Lavater, 147.
24. Lavater to Goethe, 3 March 1781, ibid., 152 f.
92 hans-jürgen schings
25. Lavater to Goethe, 10 December 1783, ibid., 235.
26. Goethe to Lavater, 18 March 1781, ibid., 162.
27. Charlotta Elisabeth Konstantia von der Recke, ‘Nachricht von des
berüchtigten Cagliostro Aufenthalte in Mitau, im Jahre 1779, und von dessen
dortigen magischen Operationen (1787)’, in Klaus H. Kiefer (ed.), Cagliostro.
Dokumente zu Aufklärung und Okkultismus, Munich: Beck, 1991, 90.
28. Now easily accessible in Kiefer’s anthology, ibid.
29. FT, 547 (paralip.).
30. See the print by Ch. Guérin in Kiefer (ed.), Cagliostro, 67, fig. 3. The print
Goethe mentions in regard to his research in Palermo (WA 1:31, 126) may have
been of this type; cf. Kiefer’s commentary, Cagliostro, 648.
31. Von der Recke, ‘Nachricht’, in Kiefer (ed.), Cagliostro, 46 ff.
32. Reproduction in ibid., 283.
33. See figures 3–12 in ibid., 67 f., 129–32 and 193–6, and physiognomic descrip-
tions at 179, 213, 418 f.
34. Augustus Moszinsky, ‘Cagliostro in Warschau (1786)’, in ibid., 160. See also
Ludwig Ernst Borowsky, ‘Cagliostro, einer der merkwürdigsten Abenteurer
unsres Jahrhunderts’ (1790), in ibid., 390.
35. Moszinsky, ‘Cagliostro in Warschau’, in ibid., 161.
36. See ibid., 89, 188.
37. Heinrich Düntzer, Studien zu Goethes Werken, no. 6: ‘Graf Cagliostro und
Goethe’s Großcophta’, Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und
Literaturen 5 (1850), vii, 1–60, here 14.
38. Von der Recke, ‘Nachricht’, in Kiefer (ed.), Cagliostro, 55 f. and 79 ff.
39. Ibid., 41, 47, 60, 83.
40. Von der Recke, ‘Nachricht’, in ibid., 79–81.
41. Goethe’s remark about Roger Bacon also pertains to this: ‘But it wasn’t his time
alone which was guilty of this overhastiness, in which it presumed to subjugate
those things which are possible for profound, solidly founded, consequent,
eternal forces of Nature, to will and and to caprice, treating them, against God
and Nature, as if they were arbitrary’ (MA 10: 587).
42. Heinz Hamm, Goethe und die französische Zeitschrift Le Globe. Eine Lektüre im
Zeichen der Weltliteratur, Weimar: Böhlau, 1988, 303–6.
43. F. v. Müller to F. Rochlitz: ‘The impression which this lightning-fast revolu-
tion has left here, too, is indescribable. Goethe says he can only keep calm
about it by seeing it as the greatest thought problem which he could have faced
at the close of his life.’ GG 4, 291.
44. Boyle, ‘The Politics of Faust ii’, 13–14.
45. Cf. R. Martinus Emge, Saint-Simon. Einführung in ein Leben und Werk, eine
Schule, Sekte und Wirkungsgeschichte, Munich-Vienna: Oldenbourg, 1987, 46
ff. and 181 ff.
46. Quoted in Zabka, Faust ii, 255.
47. Ibid., 256.
48. This quotation, which is otherwise attributed in the literature to the Doctrine
de Saint-Simon, I have here taken from the MA thesis by André Renis, ‘Der
 Magicians of modernity 93
Schlußakt des zweiten Faust als staatswirtschaftliche Denkübung’ (Berlin,
2004), 29. The reader is there also referred to Ulrich Gaier, who notes the
significance of Job 38: see his Johann Wolfgang Goethe. Faust-Dichtungen,
Kommentar I, Stuttgart: Reclam, 1999, ii. 1043.
49. Hamm, ‘Goethe und die französische Zeitschrift Le Globe’, 304.
50. Ibid., 305.
51. For summaries of the doctrine see Emge, Saint-Simon, 99 ff.; Thomas
Petermann, Claude-Henri de Saint-Simon. Die Gesellschaft als Werkstatt,
Berlin: Duncker & Humboldt, 1979, 100 ff. Quoted in Schuchard,
‘Julirevolution’, 266.
52. Quoted in Schuchard, ‘Julirevolution’, 272.
53. ‘Shakespeare und kein Ende!’, WA 1:41.1, 61.
54. See Schuchard, ‘Julirevolution’, 272; Zabka, Faust ii, 256.
55. An excellent discussion is Peter Michelsen, ‘Fausts Erblindung’ (first published
1962), in Peter Michelsen, Im Banne Fausts. Zwölf Faust-Studien, Würzburg:
Königshausen & Neumann, 2000, 161–70.
56. See H. J. Schings, Melancholie und Aufklärung. Melancholiker und ihre Kritiker
in Literatur und Erfahrungsseelenkunde des 18. Jahrhunderts, Stuttgart: Metzler,
1977.
57. Jules Lechevalier-Hippolyte Carnot, Religion Saint-Simonienne. Enseignement
central, Paris, 1831, 15.
58. Goethe, Maximen und Reflexionen, BA 18, 620.
59. Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, HA 8, 286.
 chapter 7

The blind Faust

Eberhard Lämmert

Once a play has been written, it is the beginning and end that are least in
keeping with life beyond its artistic representation. The author who narrates
or brings to the stage the life of various human beings is obliged to provide
an artificial beginning and end to his presentation, and the life that unfolds
between these two moments derives its particular shape from them.
It is for this reason that Jean Paul in his Vorschule der Ästhetik (para. 74)
explicitly calls the first chapter of a novel the ‘Omnipotence Chapter’, in
which ‘the sword that cuts through the knot in the last [chapter] actually has
to be sharpened’.1 Thus, by already proclaiming in the ‘Prologue’ the aged
Faust’s unquenchable thirst for knowledge, and by making this the overall
theme with Faust’s first appearance on stage, Goethe sets a theatrical world-
review in motion that from one phase to another takes in ever more people
and ever greater spatial expanses.
The end of a drama – as opposed to all life outside the realm of art – gives the
author the opportunity to stop the hands of the clock for one ideal moment,
and to take stock of whether or not the main characters, indeed all those
involved, have been apportioned the right measure of satisfaction or atone-
ment. Such a stock-taking according to the rules of poetic justice is most clearly
seen in comedy when the good are rewarded at the end with marriage or riches
or both, and due punishment is meted out to the wicked. But tragedy, too,
allocates to everyone a fate at the end, so that even the death of the hero can
provide the grounds for sympathy and hence also for aesthetic enjoyment.
In order to take stock in this way of Faust, Goethe’s life’s work, we shall
turn our attention first of all to the last act of this sprawling drama. We want
to see how it all ends, this wager that Mephistopheles makes with the Lord
in ‘Prologue in Heaven’ and that Faust seals with a pact in his study.
Goethe spent no fewer than sixty years of his life weaving this pact with
the devil into one huge theatrical work that he filled out with everything
that concerned him, with art and science, with love affairs and affairs of
state, with despair and thirst for action, but above all with a knowledge of
theatre. His taking hold of the ‘fullness of human life’ (167) develops into a
94
 The blind Faust 95
panopticon of the small world and the great, and in the end the centenarian
must come to terms with both the pact and himself.
This is supposed to be the moment when Faust’s promise to the devil is
realized. But does it ever actually come to that moment? What has become
of those people whose lives he has utterly shattered, even ended? What
happens to Faust in the end? What becomes of his soul after death? And
what happens to the land on which he finally erected his palace, and the
territory that he sought to create for a free people?
When the curtain goes up on this last act of Part ii, the audience catches
sight – like the wanderer who has just come on stage – of ‘Open Country’
with a hut on a small piece of high ground and a beautiful landscape which the
wanderer soon declares to be ‘like Paradise’ (11086). Yet here is by no means a
primal nature landscape in the manner of Rousseau; rather, it has buildings on
it, a meadow, pasture, garden, village and forest as well, while in the distance
sails are seen drawing into a harbour. This is an artificially constructed
paradise and yet almost too perfect to be the work of human hands.
Four scenes follow which present the dimensions of Faust’s palace,
together with his ornamental garden, a canal that runs nearby, his outer
courtyard and the inner one, with the slightly raised cabin visible in the
middle distance. Faust’s burial will take place slightly off to one side. This
panorama is followed only by the last scene in a wasteland, ‘Mountain
Gorges, Forest, Cliffs, Wilderness,’ which is completely removed from the
previous setting. Here, rising from the valley below and spreading out across
the mountains are hermits, boys’ choirs and in higher up the Mater gloriosa
with female Penitents, all of whom gather together around the angels that
raise Faust’s soul up into heaven or, more cautiously put, into a higher region.
Understandably, this fifth act of Faust ii belongs to the most heavily
interpreted parts of the whole drama. More than all the other pièces de
résistance of Part ii – the ‘Pleasant Landscape’ at the beginning, the
‘Classical Walpurgis Night,’ the appearance of Helena and the cloud scene
in ‘High Mountains’ at the beginning of Act 4 – this act gives rise to the
liveliest arguments about Goethe’s intentions, as well as to a broad spectrum
of admiring, conflicting or dismissive judgements on the entire play.
This response can be traced back to the early life of the play: a commentary in
the year of Goethe’s death, praising the end of Faust for its ‘genuine mysticism’
and ‘beatific fusion’ of God and nature;2 the lament of the aesthete Friedrich
Theodor Vischer about the overloading of the play with ‘incomprehensible
ballast of knowledge,’;’3 and the fit of rage of a leading critic at the time,
Wolfgang Menzel, concerning Goethe’s presentation of the Catholic-Christian
heaven; it seemed as repulsive to him, a dyed-in-the-wool Protestant, as
96 eberhard lämmert
the way in which the genial Marie Antoinette held court. . . . Around her we see
only ladies-in-waiting and pages, as larger and smaller angels, with a few adoring
mystics as devoted doormen. The poor sinner is now brought in . . . a young
lady-in-waiting makes supplication for him, the Queen of Heaven smiles and –
the sinecure in heaven is his. – Where is God? Is there no man in heaven any
more?4

This is how the rattle of arms from the desk of scholars swiftly drowns
out the harmony of the spheres in which Goethe enveloped Faust’s
elevation.
But quite apart from the innumerable pages that have been written about
this relatively short final act, far more single lines and set expressions have
found their way from here than from any other part of this sprawling drama
as idioms into everyday German. Remarkably, these are almost exclusively
positive, praising life, encouraging the worthy and able (Tüchtigen), and
heralding a bright future:
Dem Tüchtigen ist diese Welt nicht stumm. (11446)
No good and able man finds this world mute.
Das ist der Weisheit letzter Schluß:
Nur der verdient sich Freiheit wie das Leben,
Der täglich sie erobern muß. (11574–6)
It is the final wisdom we can reach:
He only merits freedom and existence
Who wins them every day anew.
Auf freiem Grund mit freiem Volke stehn. (11580)

On acres free among free people stand.

Im Vorgefühl von solchem hohen Glück
Genieß ich jetzt den höchsten Augenblick. (11585–6)
Envisioning these heights of happiness,
I now enjoy my highest moment.
Gerettet ist das edle Glied
Der Geisterwelt vom Bösen:
‘Wer immer strebend sich bemüht,
Den können wir erlösen.’ (11934–7)
This worthy member of the spirit world
Is rescued from the devil:
‘For him whose striving never ceases,
We can provide redemption.’
 The blind Faust 97
And at the end:
Das Ewig-Weibliche
Zieht uns hinan. (12110–11)
Woman-Eternal
Draws us on high.
If one also takes Mephistopheles’ outburst of fury ‘A great expense, for
shame! is thrown away’ (11837), then the much-lauded vernacular in any
case has no doubt that ‘a worthy soul through the dark urge within it’ (328)
has been well aware of the right path, and that it was no more than just for
the heavenly hosts, collected by the Lord around himself in the ‘Prologue’,
to wrest his soul away from the devil for rescue in the Elysian fields. One
must compare this with the terse little sentence of the Lord’s, also in the
‘Prologue’: ‘Es irrt der Mensch, so lang er strebt’ (317, Men err as long as
they keep striving). With this, up to the last act, Goethe has his Faust make
his path through the world not as a benefactor; nor does he by any means
offset all the disasters that his hero causes on this path by laying it to
Mephistopheles’ account. Nevertheless, Goethe named his Faust ‘A
Tragedy’ after some deliberation. So does he come to the realization, as at
the end of a proper tragedy, that a sense of guilt arising from the contra-
dictory state of the world demands his death? Doesn’t the author have his
hero die instead as a child of Fortune?
Faust’s last wish – and he announces this himself in the ‘High
Mountains’ scene – is ‘to lock the imperious ocean from the coast’
(10233). Mephistopheles knows how to stage a proper war, allowing Faust
to function in it as commander-general, so that the Emperor will reward
him in the end with a strip of coastal land for the defeat of the enemy. This
land he gives to Faust as a fief, though also mindful of the archbishop, who
immediately claims one-tenth of all the returns for himself, wanting to build
a cathedral there.
In Act 5 we encounter Faust again, on a vast piece of land won back from
the sea. No longer is there any talk of a fief or of a cathedral: Faust is lord of
this new land. It is only from Baucis, who, with her somewhat senile
Philemon, inhabits the raised cabin by the sea, that the wanderer and the
public learn how things happened. The place where the sea had once
pitched the shipwrecked wanderer ashore is now transformed into a harbour
and a ‘densely settled territory’ (11106) with a splendid palace. How all this
has come about disturbs the old woman greatly:
Wohl! Ein Wunder ist’s gewesen!
Läßt mich heut noch nicht in Ruh;
98 eberhard lämmert
Denn es ging das ganze Wesen
Nicht mit rechten Dingen zu. (11111–14)

Marvel is the word to use!

Even now I’m still uneasy;
I’m convinced that the whole bus’ness
Was not done with proper means.
Menschenopfer mußten bluten,
Nachts erscholl des Jammers Qual;
Meerab flossen Feuergluten,
Morgens war es ein Kanal.
Gottlos ist er, ihn gelüstet
Unsre Hütte, unser Hain;
Wie er sich als Nachbar brüstet,
Soll man untertänig sein. (11127–34)
Human lives were sacrificed,
Groans of torment filled the darkness;
Fires flowed down to the sea –
There, at dawn, was a canal.
He’s a godless man who covets
Both our cottage and our grove;
Boasting that he is our neighbour,
He would have us be his serfs.

While Philemon goes to the chapel with the intention of ‘greeting the
parting sun once more’ (11140), the watchtower keeper, Lynceus, announces
from the palace the arrival of new ships and the great good fortune of living
in this time of joyous industriousness and increasing wealth. Faust, how-
ever, makes his appearance with a curse because the bell in Philemon’s
chapel begins to ring out while he is strolling through his ornamental
garden. He curses the ringing because it reminds him that this hill and
this chapel, which abut his own new land, do not yet belong to him, and
that he could best survey his whole new territory from the vantage-point of
that raised ground:
Der Lindenraum, die braune Baute,
Das morsche Kirchlein ist nicht mein.
Und wünscht’ ich, dort mich zu erholen,
Vor fremdem Schatten schaudert mir,
Ist Dorn den Augen, Dorn den Sohlen;
O! wär’ ich weit hinweg von hier! (11157–62)
That linden grove, its old brown cottage,
And the dilapidated chapel are not mine.
 The blind Faust 99
Although I would enjoy its restful quiet,
I cannot bear the thought of shade that’s not my own,
That pricks the eye and stabs the flesh like thorns –
Oh, would that I were far from here!
Albrecht Schöne finds a precursor to these lines in Numbers 33:50 ff.5 There
the Lord advises the children of Israel to take over Canaan, the promised
land, to destroy the inhabitants’ places of worship on the high ground and
to drive them out. ‘But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land
from before your face, then they will become, if you let them remain, thorns
in your eyes and thorns in your sides.’
Faust orders Philemon and Baucis to be expelled, albeit peacefully, and
this time – drawing on the legend in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (viii, 618–724) –
he has the vision at night of a spacious new manor house for the couple. But
Mephistopheles, together with his Three Mighty Men, goes to work in a
more brutal way, destroying the cabin and chapel with fire, along with the
two old people.
Do we read this scene differently today from the way it looked more than
a century and a half ago to an author well-versed in the bible, adhering to
the Old Testament and to classical writers? Are we alarmed because what
happens here to two human beings happened in our century in the Congo,
in Solingen and a million times over in Poland at the hands of Hitler’s
thugs? It is true that Faust says nothing more than ‘go then and clear them
out of my way!’ (11275) and promises them a ‘handsome little estate’ (11276),
but Mephistopheles, overseer of the great project, only whistles shrilly and
promises his Three Mighty Men a festival at sea to follow.
At this point Albrecht Schöne sees a connection with that part of Celan’s
‘Todesfuge’ (Death Fugue) in which a man comes out of the house, whistles
for his hounds and has his slave labourers engage in making preparations for
the death of others as well as himself.6 Celan’s recollection of Faust in this
poem is very clear, given his allusion to Gretchen’s golden hair. But is it
justifiable to establish this proximity on the basis of Goethe’s text, and then
without further ado apply it to what is going on around us right now, or
what we clearly remember from our most recent past?
Here we need a more comprehensive view. The Old Testament makes
use of the – long-since clichéd – image of the thorn in the eye. Goethe not
only takes up the image, however, but also does more. The small hill is
important for the dramatic action, since it had previously offered the
wanderer a safe escape from the raging sea at the home of the hospitable
old couple. Those familiar with Ovid’s Metamorphoses will rediscover, in
this hill and chapel, the hallowed heights of the Canaanites, as well as the
100 eberhard lämmert
temple which the gods had erected as thanks for the couple’s hospitality.
Goethe fits these biblical and classical prefigurations together to create a
scene with many associations, and the ancient names of the old couple are
meant as their own contribution to the whole scenario: a timeless image of
helpfulness and peace before it is overtaken by the brutal murder and fire
enforced by Faust, the military general, and his thugs.
As long as poet worship has been restricting us to questions concerning
the poet’s intention, huge efforts have been made by scholarship to research
‘sources’ or ‘precursors’ and, as here, to measure Goethe’s artistic powers
against these. Today, scholarship for many reasons no longer pays serious
attention to the writer alone, but also to the audience and readers, as it is
only they who continually bring the text alive in a new and different way.
Therefore scholars who deal with those inferable images no longer look at a
text’s origins only, but also at its future – indeed, its lease on life, granted
ever anew by readers from different parts of the world or generations to
come. To the literary work worth reading they bring memories and images
from their own sphere of life, and sometimes even recognize the universal
validity of their own experiences when they encounter the images and
symbolic actions of an attentively examined text.
Albrecht Schöne gives the text this kind of new life in his own way. In
expressing what has in the meantime come to concern us all and is of
importance for many of us, he demonstrates that poetic texts always have
possible subject-matters far beyond that determinable common ground they
may share with earlier works of world literature. This is because of their
power of imagery – one might also call it creative power – whose very
medium, language, at all times makes room for new meanings. Nobody
knows this better, incidentally, than a judge who, for a new case with no
exact precedent, is obliged to make use of laws whose application has not yet
been tested. Poetic texts, on the other hand, which are actually calculated to
have multiple significances, are meant to make us aware of what they bring
to us from the world of the author. At the same time, when we listen to
them or engage in close reading, they hold up a mirror to our own lives.
Goethe was a master of this mirroring technique, and Faust is possibly the
greatest and most multifaceted hall of mirrors of the human condition –
even in those minor passages which did not necessarily aspire to any special
significance.
But of course there are limits to this where misuse begins, and that is
wherever a portion of the text is cast adrift from its context and used as a
weapon in a feud, to make one’s own opinion prevail, or just to instruct
modern life. Here, however, Schöne uncovers and reclaims, in an important
 The blind Faust 101
scene for the text itself, additional meaning for our day. That is exactly what
a text requires in order for it to remain alive and significant.
Shadowy clouds drift over the balcony from the smoke of the burning
cabin in which Philemon and Baucis lose their lives, that balcony on which
Faust gazes out over the conflagration. These clouds become the four grey
crones – Want, Debt, Care and Need – of whom Faust sees only three
continue on their way. With the material problems in Want, Debt and
Need as well as a guilty concience unable to reach him, he then finds Care in
his palace; she can enter any time she likes.
She herself says as much: she ‘slips in through the keyhole’ (11391). This
may have always been the place in popular belief where demons and spirits
of all kinds made their entry, but here it is particularly appropriate. This last
test which Faust undergoes and the manner in which he deals with it bring
us to a key point in the tragedy. Accordingly, this scene has become the
object of numerous studies. The Deutsche Vierteljahresschrift, for a long time
the most important journal in Germany for literary and intellectual history,
began its first issue in 1923 with a lengthy essay by Konrad Burdach on
‘Faust und die Sorge’ (Faust and Care).7 Max Kommerell wrote a large
study on the same topic, and Heidegger alludes to it, together with Goethe’s
source, in his Sein und Zeit (Being and Time), where he devotes a whole
chapter to Care as the existential foundation of being.8,9 He too makes
reference to the two meanings of the word cura in Latin, that is, as a state of
being (‘worrying about something’) and as active doing (‘taking care of
something’).
And how does Faust understand Care in the drama itself? Already in the
very first night scene in his study he spoke of how the high flight of
the imagination and all the power given to man to feel as the ‘image of
the godhead’ (516, 614) was dragged down into the dust by Care, which
nestles ‘deep within the heart’ (644), where it hides ‘secret sorrows’ (645).
She disguises herself ‘as house and home, as wife and child . . . / As fire,
water, dagger and poison’ (648–9). In short, she appears to him as the sum
of all that can prevent the individual’s self-realization. Both as care for others
and as tormenting worry she becomes for him the worst impediment to his
own path through life. From the moment Wagner disturbs him in his study
right up to the prison scene, Faust seems to be concerned only about
himself, and Mephistopheles supports him in this. The consequences are
felt by Gretchen’s brother, a soldier, later a whole army of soldiers, and in
the end a whole army of workers. All of them, as well as the many whom he
falsely leads to believe in the swift acquisition of wealth with his invention of
paper money, pave the way to his final goal. And even this goal – here we
102 eberhard lämmert
have the decisive about-turn from Faust i to Faust ii – is transformed from a
striving for the recognition of ‘what holds the world together in its very
essence’ (382–3) into a boundless yearning for wealth and land ownership.
Does Care stop him at the very end, or make him understand? Many
important interpreters believe the latter, because Faust responds to the
blindness with which Care afflicts him with the memorable lines:
Die Nacht scheint tiefer tief hereinzudringen,
Allein im Innern leuchtet helles Licht (11499–500)

The night, it seems, turns deeper still,

And yet within me gleams a brilliant light.
This motif of illumination, which God grants to man as ‘inner light’, has a
long tradition in European mysticism, especially from Jakob Böhme on. At
the time of the First World War, Thomas Mann praised this as German
‘inwardness’, which tends to lower one’s opinion of the external world for
the sake of one’s own internal values. But after his ‘republican turn’ he
portrayed it as a burden inherited from past history that has tragically
blinded the Germans. And yet many admirers of Faust, that very German
dramatic hero, did not go along with this change of direction. Thus
Wilhelm Emrich wrote in 1943, and maintained until 1981: ‘Blindness
here stands for the deepest, most joyful act of mercy’ because it ‘points
him to the eternal creative power of the inner being’.10
Thomas Mann’s contemporaries already discovered what this kind of
disregard of external reality in favour of lofty goals could mean for entire
nations. For that reason it is highly important to note what follows these
two lines in Goethe’s text. Faust’s ‘inner light’ does not lead him to new
insights. Immediately after, and bound up by rhyme with the previous line,
Faust goes on with renewed zeal:
Was ich gedacht, ich eil’ es zu vollbringen;
Des Herren Wort, es gibt allein Gewicht.
Vom Lager auf, ihr Knechte! Mann für Mann!
Laßt glücklich schauen, was ich kühn ersann.
Ergreift das Werkzeug, Schaufel rührt und Spaten!
Das Abgesteckte muß sogleich geraten.
Auf strenges Ordnen, raschen Fleiß
Erfolgt der allerschönste Preis;
Daß sich das größte Werk vollende,
Genügt ein Geist für tausend Hände. (11501–10)
The darkness seems to press about me more and more,
But in my inner being there is radiant light;
 The blind Faust 103
I’ll hasten the fulfilment of my plans –
Only the master’s order carries weight. –
Workmen, up from your beds! Up, every man,
And make my bold design reality!
Take up your tools! To work with spade and shovel –
What’s been marked off must be completed now!
Prompt effort and strict discipline
Will guarantee superb rewards:
To complete a task that’s so tremendous
Working as one is worth a thousand hands.
Once again Mephistopheles the overseer obeys promptly and gets the
digging done, with shovels clattering. Faust presses further: ‘Overseer!’
Mephistopheles responds ‘Here!’, to which Faust then comes back with:
Wie es auch möglich sei,
Arbeiter schaffe Meng’ auf Menge,
Ermuntere durch Genuß und Strenge,
Bezahle, locke, presse bei!
Mit jedem Tage will ich Nachricht haben,
Wie sich verlängt der unternommene Graben. (11551–6)
Use every means you can
And get a plentiful supply of labourers;
Use benefits and discipline to spur them on,
Make payments, offer bonuses, conscript them!
And day by day I want to be informed
How the canal I’ve started is advancing.

It is Faust’s blindness that makes the complete delusion possible: what

Mephistopheles has dug out is not a trench (Graben), to drain the last
swamp before the mountains, but his grave (Grab). Since Faust had never
been concerned about his own death, Mephistopheles’ preparations give
Faust’s delusion a universal quality. His last speech, which ends with the
foretaste of ‘the highest moment’ of his life, reveals again, but now to the
gravedigging beat, his great impatience. The marshland which threatens to
contaminate the new lands is to be cleared so that ‘an earthly paradise’ for
many millions can arise, green, fertile and defended by all against the might
of the sea. This is to be a free territory on which he would stand ‘with a free
people’. Then he would have his final assurance: ‘My path on earth, the
trace I leave within it / Eons untold cannot impair’ (11583–4). And with that
Faust’s ‘appropriation of the world’, as Max Kommerell calls it, is rendered
complete for all time to come. But does this exist anywhere other than
within his own head?
104 eberhard lämmert
For Goethe, more than for any other author, observation (Anschauung)
was a great deal more than mere seeing; rather, it was the sole path to secure
judgement and the discovery of truth. He deliberately made the Augenblick
(the moment, or literally the blink of an eye) decide Faust’s life. If we take
this word not only metaphorically but also literally, as the expression of
what one has to have truly seen at a glance in order to gain an insight, then
Faust’s blindness completely blocks all such insight. He therefore cannot
take pleasure in the moment itself but only in its Vorgefühl, the presenti-
ment of it – Goethe’s text reflects this precisely. There is no mention any
more of a Verweilen (lingering) of this moment.
There is no need therefore to engage in the tedious controversy as to
whether Mephistopheles has won the wager, or whether it has never been
brought to its conclusion. Faust’s blindness makes any true fulfilment of the
pact impossible. That is not to say, however, that his redemption will
follow. At the core of the wager are the words ‘should ever I take ease
upon a bed of leisure, / May that same moment mark my end!’ (1692–3).
These words had been spoken when the wager was first made. Right up to
the point when Faust sinks down into a natural death, he has not suc-
cumbed, and it is worthwhile looking back now on both parts of the tragedy
to see whether he ever achieved a calm and true insight into the reality
unfolding before his eyes.
Even in Act 5 itself his first words are a curse upon the damnable bell-
ringing that does not permit him the enjoyment – ‘before [his] eyes’
(11153) – of his boundless new realm, but rather quite spoils it for him.
The highest look-out point which Faust seeks at the beginning of the fourth
act in ‘High Mountains’ leaves him at best with some awareness that the
cloud which had brought him there takes with it, as it moves away, images
of past happiness which had been hastily registered but not held on to
(10066). But this opportunity for reflection is quickly shattered by the
appearance of Mephistopheles. When Lynceus in Act 3 has seen and under-
stood the full extent of Helena’s beauty and loses his speech, Faust places
him in chains (9191–212), instead of understanding the enormous widening
of his horizon to include other times and the depth of the ancient world.
Even when he calls out ‘Have I still got eyes?’ (6487) he remains blind when
he thinks that he recognizes in this Helena (whom he himself has conjured
up) the same magical image he had seen earlier in the mirror of the ‘Witch’s
Kitchen’.
Long before he was physically blinded, Faust was and remained blind to
everything that magic offered him to see, blind to whatever insight he might
have gained from it. And this is true of the entire union with Helena, this
 The blind Faust 105
great phantasmagoria of Faust, including their son Euphorion’s fatal crash
from the sky. While he understands himself as the great master of a union
between antiquity and modernity, the unexpected demise of Euphorion
and the physical dissolution of Helena are met without a single word
that might reveal any insight. He remains mute for the rest of the great
Helena act (9987–10038), and the conclusion only employs Phorkyas–
Mephistopheles and the chorus, with which Goethe, as he says himself,
stages yet another ‘symphony’ of all the spirits of nature (FK 637 note 5).
But even nature, of which Faust says in the famous ‘Forest and Cave’
scene that she ‘suffered me into her inner depth, / To gaze as in the bosom
of a friend’ (3223–4), is incapable of holding him for one moment of satisfied
contemplation. Even here his unstilled yearning for enjoyment, derived
from an image in his own head, swiftly destroys the opportunity to gain self-
knowledge through the contemplation of nature, since he believes that he
already has that knowledge. Already at this point – in the significant pause
which Goethe has inserted between the blissful and the disastrous phase of
the Gretchen drama – Faust is no less blind to everything outside himself
than at the end of his life. And he is no less in pursuit of an inner light. Only
here, more or less at the beginning of his journey, he makes Mephistopheles
responsible for the restlessness of his desires. And yet the very first scenes in
his study had already shown him in this same frame of mind. Indeed, from a
dramaturgic point of view and seen from the perspective of the conclusion,
these scenes are indeed the ‘Omnipotence Chapters’ which Jean Paul
required of a good novel or a good play. So, from Faust’s very first
words – ‘Habe nun, ach! Philosophie’ (354, I have pursued, alas!
Philosophy) – Goethe himself, in reworking the old folk play about Faust
the magician into a tragedy representative of his own age, wanted to portray
the doctor of all disciplines as a blind man, just like Oedipus, the model of
all tragic heroes – one who looks only inward and perceives nothing outside
himself, one who therefore cannot bear the Earth Spirit, caring for nobody
but himself.
Whatever visions he has on this journey through life, and what repeatedly
attracts the admiration of readers and audiences, have the effect of what the
Lord in the ‘Prologue’ prescribes for Mephistopheles, who ‘stimulates and
acts, and must create in his own devilish way’ (343). But we must pay heed
to the divisions throughout the whole play. Faust speaks for the most part,
even though often in despair, in a manner that is constructive, winsome and
pious. Yet wherever he takes action, he causes harm not to himself but to
others.11 The exception – and this is all too often overlooked – is when he is
engaged, with Mephistopheles, in entertaining himself and the theatre
106 eberhard lämmert
public in a masterful and adventurous way with masquerades, Walpurgis
nights, magic lantern games and great phantasmagorias.
Goethe’s sources for Faust’s various actions are mostly from his legendary
material, but he repeatedly emphasizes the problems and demands of his own
time, and in this he appears today as a reflective writer critical of that time. For
the dramatic core of Faust i he chose one of the most controversial conflicts of
his age: society’s punishment of the murder of children born out of wedlock.
The very fact that public understanding reduced it to a societal offence
inspired the ‘Sturm und Drang’ generation of writers to produce numerous
stories and plays in which women who had murdered their babies were
publicly exposed. While crimes of this kind, despite their gravity, rarely
became known in the circle of court mistresses, the condemnation of serving
maids, farmers’ daughters or daughters within the houses of student landladies
always occurred in a very public place, accompanied by a large procession.
Moves had just been made to abolish various methods of capital punish-
ment that had been in place since the sixteenth century, such as burying
alive, impaling or drowning, replacing them with more merciful forms of
execution. At the time, this very crime had fired up Enlightenment dis-
cussion about circumstances that might alleviate or heighten the punish-
ment, though without lessening the public contempt for women who had
committed infanticide. For this reason too, preference was often given to
execution. Goethe himself had many dealings with judgments on child
murderers, both as a law student and in his later Weimar posts, and his
decisions were varied. Seen in this light, the last scene cannot just be read as
a psychological study, but also as a drastic condemnation of the accepted
law: Goethe hands Gretchen over not only to the judge but also to madness,
expressing his sympathy only by means of a celestial ‘saved!’ (4611). Even a
pardon would have made her an outlaw, and she would have been delivered
up to starvation or prostitution. The last scenes of Part i, however, are also a
graphic example of how although Faust can talk with glowing sympathy
about Gretchen’s horrific torments in gaol and her abandonment to a
‘judging, unfeeling mankind!’ (HA 3, 137), his actions let her down instead
of coming to her rescue.
It is with this in mind that we must evaluate the conflict between Faust’s
last deed – the land reclamation by means of evacuation and slave labour –
and the vision of a peacefully developed space where many millions of
people might live in brotherly coexistence ‘on acres free among free people’
(11580), in a state of prosperity secured through diligence and public spirit.
Mephistopheles soon makes it known that the marshland will not be
drained dry, having already determined, when the last precious shiploads
 The blind Faust 107
arrived, that war and piracy are an inevitable part of the profitable trade
from the newly built harbour. But above all, and tellingly enough just
decades after the American Declaration of Independence and the French
Revolution, the ground remains ‘free’ only for the one who owns it. The
free nation can at best refer at this time to the yeomen freed from bondage,
who pay for the acquired land with a lifetime of work and with the
mercenary services of their sons. After that, they have to emigrate in droves
because they are forced out of work by growing mechanization. Goethe’s
critical view of these offshoots of early industrial development has been
documented often enough.12 Like his misgivings about thoughtlessly
printed paper money, his criticism affords a proper balance to his productive
interest in the land reclamation of Dutch and Friesian dyke-builders, and to
the great arterial waterways of the Panama and Suez Canals.
Seen in this light, it is not altogether wrong if Faust’s utopian speech is
interpreted a century later, and even today, as a vision of a future nation
living together in freedom, or even of the democratic constitution of whole
nations in contexts different from those Goethe had in mind. It is, after all,
part of the fullness and strength of this great stage play that it allows us to
hear wisdom and even watchwords that have an ongoing impact. But there
is a risk in laying claim to these as confirmation of one’s own actions, or of
the situation in which a society finds itself, without giving due thought to
the consequences which have been, at the endings of both Part i and Part ii,
staged as a reversal of things. To do so is to miss their meaning and do
harm not only to the play, but also to its audiences. It is significant that the
‘upgrading’ in the nineteenth century of Faust’s ‘capacity for action and
the justification for his deeds’ as the expression of his titanic striving parallels
the transition in the history of philosophy from the good to the great human
being, as reflected by Carl Jacob Burckhardt and celebrated by Nietzsche.13
Before and after the turn of the century, Faust was apostrophized without
hesitation as ‘a true member of the master race’ or even as a ‘superman’.14,15
But this elevation of ‘Faustian man’ achieves its full virulence only with
the chorus of voices which, beginning with Schelling, declared Faust to be
‘the characteristic German poem’ and which, since then, have seen it as a
reflection of ‘German enthusiasm for the true dignity of man, German
tenacity and vigour, and all of German life’.16,17,18 Today we distance
ourselves from the enthusiasts who, after 1870, took Faust’s titanic striving
as proof that ‘God still has great plans for this nation’.19 By the 1870s,
Goethe’s drama had already been declared to be ‘the most sacred work of all
our national literature’, representing the very ‘life principle of the Germanic
family of nations’, as August von Loeper, the co-founder of the Weimar
108 eberhard lämmert
edition of Goethe’s works, had announced in his introduction to Faust ii in
1871. In this way the myth of ‘Faustian man’ spread to the point where it was
declared, by Alfred Rosenberg in his Mythus des 20. Jahrhunderts (1930), to
be the German myth, thereby setting it up for Germans not as a path to self-
understanding, but as an example to be followed. And Rosenberg was by no
means alone. The author of a book with the title On Free Ground with a Free
Nation (1944) sees the last acts of Faust ii as a testimony to ‘the masterful
leadership in a grand style’ which Faust displays before his end.20 No less
crass is the way in which these lines were later exploited for the state
socialism of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), claiming Goethe
as the intellectual forerunner of a post-bourgeois social order.21
Why then is this most popular hero of any German-language tragedy,
who seduced Gretchen and then later became the seducer of a nation, saved
in the end? And where does this salvation take him? Is old Menzel’s grim
assumption accurate when he claims that Faust finds his sinecure in a
Catholic heaven without any purgatory whatsoever?
Before that point can be reached, Goethe presents one last piece of
tomfoolery and stage magic in front of the theatrically gaping jaws of hell.
Mephistopheles surrounds all the bodily orifices of the corpse with his fat
and thin devils in order to prevent Faust’s soul from flying away. Yet a host
of angels strew these devils from above with rose petals which burn them,
outwitting Mephistopheles with their erotically attractive backsides. It is a
stroke of theatrical genius for which even the far from prudish Mme de Staël
did not forgive the arrangeur of this scene, even though it surely belongs,
with all its sexual explicitness, to those ‘very serious jests’ (letter to Wilhelm
von Humboldt, 17 March 1832, WA 4:49, 283) which Goethe talked about
in quiet reflection at the end of his life. Thus it is not just anywhere, but
here at the open graveside that the ascent or retrieval of Faust’s earthly
remains can begin; the same Faust who ‘with his dark urge within’ (328) has
served the Lord ‘only in clouded ways’ (308).
In fact Goethe tells us in an occasional remark that the angels bear Faust’s
soul to the mountain gorges straightaway, that the elevation – as the step-
by-step raising of the soul, with the support of alternating voices and
choruses – takes place from there, and that his soul will finally, beyond
the mountain tops, ‘return to the ether’ (to Zelter, 19 March 1827, WA 4:42,
95).22 But what is the meaning of this return or ‘retrieval’, reconstitution or
reconciliation, all of which are derived from the Greek apokatastasis pantōn
(see Schöne, FK 788 ff.)?
In his commentary Schöne refers to the doctrine, which historically
became a heresy, of the Greek Church Father Origen. In this vision, all
 The blind Faust 109
human souls originally existed in a state of perfection, and those who
absorbed matter temporarily are purified step by step after their death,
thus being raised to a blessed state of ‘one with the All’ – Goethe’s word
Allverein occurs in the song of the angels (11807).
This doctrine, with which Goethe was familiar in some considerable
detail, did indeed link up almost seamlessly with his own doctrine of the
metamorphosis of all beings, according to which Faust, as an indestructible
creature but capable of change after death, can find his way back to a higher
communion of souls. Origen’s teaching has no intermediary judicial court
such as Goethe had once planned in heaven for both Faust and
Mephistopheles. Such a process of transformation and redemption is
granted to all souls, and therefore its first stages do not begin until after
the liberation of the soul from matter. This is why Faust can remain blind
for his whole life, up to and including his last breath, why he can be
concerned only with himself right from his study up to his dictatorship
over land and people – and yet be ‘saved’ nonetheless after his death. Of
course, others are needed to bear him upwards, for nothing in these spheres
comes about by means of one’s own power. Others must therefore bend
down to him and lift him up to their level and teach him how he, once
admitted to this Allverein, may also use his story to teach others.
To all those who inhabit these spheres Goethe gave different names, even
though a few are recognizable from the Christian tradition, or from the play
itself. For that reason the ending does give the impression that we are
dealing with a very late confession of faith in the Christian-Catholic concept
of heaven. However, it is Goethe the playwright whose considerations have
led him to such provisions. He explains this to Eckermann nine months
before his death:

Incidentally, you’ll admit that the ending, where the saved soul is raised upward,
was very difficult to do, and that in dealing with such supernatural, barely
imaginable things it would have been very easy for me to get lost in vagueness, if
I had not imposed some pleasantly limiting form and firmness on my poetic
intentions by making use of the clearly defined figures and concepts of the
Christian church.23

A consideration towards his public, therefore, providing common ground

for their ideas while facilitating his own shaping of the poetic vision, allowed
those ‘higher spheres’ to which Faust is now to rise to turn into an almost
Christian heaven.
This too is the reason Gretchen, now under the impersonal name of ‘a
Penitent’ (12069), is permitted to appear among those female Penitents
110 eberhard lämmert
familiar from the bible, while yet being rendered distinctive as a figure that
inclines towards him in particular. In this way, the puzzle of the cloud
formation at the beginning of Act 4 is finally resolved, where Faust believed
he could acquire in the high mountains the most expansive look-out over
the world. There he had already felt, for a fleeting moment, ‘what when
young I valued most’ (10059) in the form of a streak of mist rising higher to
form a cloud: it will draw ‘the best part of my inmost self ’ (10066) up with
it. What Gretchen’s appearance had managed to do there – namely, to
convey to him the first dim awareness of a higher reality – now enables her
to carry Faust along with her towards a blessed union. No longer, however,
as Gretchen, but as one of those who have arrived there – Gretchen is
already ‘only a symbol’ (12105) of the ‘Eternal-Feminine’ (12110), which
comes to the rescue of a man who has always thought only of himself.
Women who at the end of an epos or drama come to the hero’s rescue
have, since antiquity, been reserved for literature’s great wanderers – for
Odysseus, for example, after a year of traversing the seas that lay between the
known and unknown coasts of the world of that time; and still for Peer
Gynt, to whom Ibsen even grants, with Anitra’s dance, a parodic elevation
through ‘the Eternal-Feminine’, before he lets him bury his face in Solveig’s
lap. Oedipus too, who blinds himself after having gained sight, belongs to
the circle of such wanderers, given the reception among the gods that
Sophocles accords him in a second play. Their authors make use of these
wanderers in order to provide a world stage within and beyond the
inhabited earth. And so, when all is said and done, Goethe’s Faust too
must not be misunderstood as a play that finds its essence in the fate of its
hero. Auspiciously, the Director had said in the ‘Prologue on the Stage’,
even before the first curtain:
Ihr wißt, auf unsern deutschen Bühnen
Probiert ein jeder, was er mag;
Drum schonet mir an diesem Tag
Prospekte nicht und nicht Maschinen.
Gebraucht das groß’ und kleine Himmelslicht,
Die Sterne dürfet ihr verschwenden;
An Wasser, Feuer, Felsenwänden,
An Tier und Vögeln fehlt es nicht.
So schreitet in dem engen Bretterhaus
Den ganzen Kreis der Schöpfung aus . . . (231–40)
As well you know, these German theatres
Let everyone do exactly what he wants;
Since that’s the case, this is no time to stint
 The blind Faust 111
On scenery or stage effects.
Put both the sun and moon to use,
Be lavish with the stars and planets –
Nor are we short of fire or water,
Of precipices, birds or beasts.
So now on our modest stage act out
Creation in its every aspect. . . .
In this drama with the brief title Faust: A Tragedy – from the ‘Prologue on
the Stage’ through to the ‘Walpurgis Night’, the great carnival procession,
the path to the Mothers, up to the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’ – more than
one-third of its lines are devoted to an unbridled theatre of hundreds of
mythological, ghostly and folksy figures, as well as those born of the
imagination and surrounded by hundreds of choral voices, not even count-
ing the great phantasmagoria of the Helena act. In view of this, everything
that scholarship, criticism and religious, anthropological and political
debates have ever distilled from this drama is as insufficient, after all, as all
the attempts to fill the universe of the play with life on the stage.

not es
Translated by Deirdre Vincent.
1. Jean Paul, Sämtliche Werke, Part i, Leipzig: Zentralantiquariat, 1977, v, 262.
2. Johannes Falk, Goethe aus näherem Umgange dargestellt, Leipzig:
F. A. Brockhaus, 1832, 217. For this and following evidence of the historical
impact of the work, see Andreas Anglet, ‘Faust-Rezeption’, in Goethe
Handbuch, ‘Dramas’, ed. Theodor Buck, Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1996, ii,
478–521; also Bernd Mahl, ‘Bühnengeschichte von Goethes Faust’, ibid., 532–8.
3. Recurring judgement in the Faust criticism of Friedrich Theodor Vischer, cited
by Anglet, ‘Faust-Rezeption’, 483.
4. Ernst Beutler, Essays um Goethe, 4th edn, Wiesbaden: Diederich, 1948, i, 367–8.
5. FK 722. See also Chapter 1 above.
6. FK 726.
7. Konrad Burdach, ‘Faust und die Sorge’, Deutsche Vierteljahresschrift 1 (1923),
1–60.
8. Max Kommerell, ‘Faust Zweiter Teil. Zum Verständnis der Form’, Corona 7
(1937); also in Max Kommerell, Geist und Buchstabe der Dichtung. Goethe,
Schiller, Kleist, Hölderlin, Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1940, 9–74.
9. Martin Heidegger (first published 1927), Sein und Zeit, Tübingen: Niemeyer,
1986; cf. especially para. 42: ‘Die Bewährung der existentialen Interpretation
des Daseins als Sorge aus der vorontologischen Selbstauslegung des Daseins’,
196–200.
10. Wilhelm Emrich (first published 1943), Die Symbolik von Faust ii. Sinn und
Vorformen, 5th edn, Königstein: Athenäum, 1981, 397. See Albrecht Schöne’s
112 eberhard lämmert
commentary (FK 740). Hans-Jürgen Schings has passed harsh judgement on
the ‘defenders’ of this kind of ‘heroic-creative self-assertion’ – see ‘Faust and the
“God of the Modern Age”. Goethe as Critic of the Faustian Urge’, Goethe-
Jahrbuch der Goethe-Gesellschaft in Japan 43 (2001), 33–43.
11. See also Gert Mattenklott, ‘Faust ii’, Goethe-Jahrbuch, Stuttgart: Metzler, 1996,
ii, 454 note 2: ‘All that is best in Faust’s inner being always has to remain out of
play when he gets ready to act.’
12. Hans-Jürgen Schings compares ‘Faust’s Vocabulary’ in his last monologue with
the basic tenets of the Saint-Simonists in ‘Faust and the “God of the Modern
Age”’, 37–42.
13. Andreas Anglet, ‘Faust-Rezeption’, 485.
14. Jeannot Emil Grotthuß, Probleme und Charakterköpfe, Stuttgart: Greiner &
Pfeiffer, 1897, 9 f.
15. Bertold Litzmann, Goethes Faust, Berlin: Fleischel, 1904, 164.
16. The term ‘Faustian’ and its susceptibility to be used in the service of ‘every
ideology’ is dealt with by Günther Mahal, taking into account Hans Schwerte’s
book; see Gunter Grimm (ed.), ‘Der tausendjährige Faust. Rezeption als
Anmaßung’, in Literatur und Leser, Stuttgart: Reclam, 1975, 181–95, esp. 182
and 189. See Schings, ‘Faust and the “God of the Modern Age”’.
17. Ernst Beutler, ‘Der Kampf um die Faustdichtung’, Essays um Goethe, 3rd edn,
Leipzig: Dieterich, i, 365.
18. Heinrich Düntzer, Goethes Faust, Leipzig: Dyk, 1850, 117.
19. Heinrich von Treitschke, Deutsche Geschichte im 19. Jahrhundert, Leipzig:
Hirzel, 1879, i, 317.
20. Hans Volkelt, Auf freiem Grund mit freiem Volke stehen. Goethes Faust
und Deutschlands Lebensanspruch, Leipzig: Psychol.-Pädag. Institut d. Univ.,
1944, 1.
21. See Paul Michael Lützeler, ‘Goethes “Faust” und der Sozialismus. Zur
Rezeption des klassischen Erbes in der DDR’, in Basis. Jahrbuch für deutsche
Gegenwartsliteratur 5, Frankfurt: Athenäum, 1975, 31–55. Lützeler begins with a
speech by Walter Ulbrich to the National Assembly that draws widely on
Faust’s last monologue, making connections between ‘marshland’ and ‘free
ground’ with West Germany and the GDR, and setting the pattern for the
‘creative’ treatment of this ‘legacy’. See Albrecht Schöne, FK 749–52 and 760 f.
Schöne also attributes a ‘utopian energy’ to ‘Faust’s powerful last lines’ but
without ignoring Goethe’s own remarks of 1830 on ‘real and fantastical errors’
in ‘striving for the absolute’.
22. Goethe to Zelter, 19 March 1827, WA 4:42, 95. See also FK 787.
23. Goethe to Eckermann, 6 June 1831; FK 783.
 chapter 8

From Faust to Harry Potter: discourses

of the centaurs
Gisela Brude-Firnau

It may be called daring, or merely naïve, to relate Faust, the crown jewel of
German-language literature, to Harry Potter, a series of seven children’s
books.1 The pressure to justify oneself that sets in when one takes Rowling’s
novels seriously as literature can also be seen in the qualifying titles of some
of the publications that have so far appeared: Why Nabokov Would Have
Liked H. P., or The Charm of H. P.; another subtitle is On the Trail of a
Charming Bestseller.2 All these titles try to vindicate Rowling’s novels as a
relevant subject for academic analysis.3 Although a publicity machine of
global dimensions may raise suspicions, popularity is not in itself a disquali-
fication; it cannot change the text. Anyone able to ignore the media vortex
and concentrate on the text will find sufficient quality to induce him to read
further; and very quickly, Germanists will stumble across parallel motifs
that practically invite the comparison with Faust.
For the young magician Harry Potter, who learns and practises sorcery at
Hogwarts Boarding School, has more in common with the magician Faust
than merely his first name, since German Heinrich is English Harry; more,
too, than the academic milieu and the encounter with evil; and although
Harry never concludes a pact with the devil, there exists a mysterious and
life-threatening relationship between him and the Evil Lord. Faust and
Harry both see the object of their deepest desire in a mirror, and both are
air-lifted from their confining quarters by adapted versions of a magic
carpet: Faust on Mephisto’s coat, Harry Potter in his friend’s flying car.
Both ride safely on the back of a centaur at night through magic terrain.
There are similarities in the supporting characters as well: Harry’s best
female friend at school is named Hermione, exactly like the daughter of
Helen, whom Goethe mentions only once (8859).4 Just as Helen exists
‘outside of all time’, Rowling’s Hermione has at her disposal a Time-Turner
that can transport her back in time (Azkaban, 426). Both protagonists have
113
114 gisela brude-firnau
to put up with bothersome Philistines, but enjoy dealing with their stu-
dents. Harry, as much as Faust, is keenly aware of his ‘two souls’ and gains
insight into his own self while the sun is slowly rising – the alchemist’s
symbol of enlightenment (Phoenix, 728–40). Both experience the empow-
ering truth of fiction and poetry, ‘a power beyond the reach of any magic’
(Hallows, 568). Both texts emphasize that, in the end, it is not magic
techniques that change the world; rather, every human being possesses
the mental strength with which he can oppose the power of evil. In both,
the main characters emerge victorious from war and struggle. And yet where
Faust avails himself of the devil, Harry must above all use his courage and
laboriously learned magical powers to wrestle with the exponent of black
magic, as well as the aid of fellow students, teachers and mythical creatures.
The course of his vita ultimately leads to a bourgeois family life, not in the
least comparable to the metaphysical ascent of the great individualist Faust.
Similarly, the fundamental differences hardly need to be mentioned: the
two works belong to different periods and genres, to different levels of
literature, and they thus make different statements. It would be absurd to
overlook these circumstances and to compare such unequal texts with one
another in terms of aesthetics, for instance, or intellectual content. Likewise,
it cannot be denied that Rowling’s novels suffer from a certain schematic
quality in their construction. There are also some concessions to juvenile
tastes shaped by television; again and again, for example, adventure and
battle episodes follow one another in much too rapid succession.
What keeps such a comparison from falling into absurdity, however, is the
conspicuous analogy of numerous themes and their respective constellations.
The reference of both texts to the European literary tradition leads to a striking
multiplicity of similar themes, both central and peripheral, whose significance
varies. In any case, Rowling’s novels remain complex texts, crafted according
to the maxim that children’s books that appeal simply to children are just not
good enough: there is one reading code for young readers and a decidedly
different code for adults.5 It is the code for adults that we wish to pursue here.
Let us recall on the other hand that parts of Goethe’s Faust do not
deny their chapbook origins; that the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’ is seen
by several critics as fairy-tale drama; and that there are numerous other
scenes that definitely appeal to the ‘culturally less competent perception’ of
young people.6 There is more common ground if we remember that
some of the best examples of youth literature, as for example Lewis
Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, are considered part of world literature.
Furthermore, Heinrich Faust and Harry Potter are born of texts, and as
such they are bound to a number of literary and subliterary sources: both are
 From Faust to Harry Potter 115
nourished from medieval spell-books, alchemists’ handbooks and fairy tales
from the entire European literary tradition.
More importantly: in both works elements of Graeco-Roman mythology
abound. This chapter will therefore concentrate specifically on one motif,
the mythologem of the centaurs that trot lively through both texts. And we
shall pose the question: what additional significance do these half-and-half
creatures gain in Goethe’s ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’ and, on the other
hand, in Rowling’s novels? What specific insight do we obtain from the
comparison of the two literary realizations? This comparative attempt in
mythopoetics does not establish any direct relationship between the two
texts, and it would be futile to maintain any influence as long as the author
declines to answer any enquiries.7 Our venture therefore rests on the
premise that comparative observation leads to scholarly knowledge. Thus
Gerhard R. Kaiser, too, asserts that ‘scholarship begins with the comparison’
and explains its importance for comparative literature, which goes beyond
the usual bounds of national literatures or literatures bound to one linguistic
community. Kaiser discusses the significance of such a ‘complex confronta-
tion’ between literary texts and concedes: ‘Here too comparison, in Hegel’s
and Gadamer’s sense, ultimately remains a subordinate means in the
service of a specific historical knowledge; and yet one that is implemented
somewhat more consciously than others, and is capable of doing particular
justice to literature, which is both diverse in a specific way and yet a single
object of research.’8 Therefore we proceed from the assumption that the two
texts, similar in aspects of their plots and in their complexes of motifs but
otherwise thoroughly disparate, can be placed side by side with the aid of
a method that is ‘subordinate’ in this sense, but particularly well suited to
literature. It is to be expected that a comparison of the centaur motif
grounded on the common mythological basis will lead to insights into
each specific depiction and their correspondences with one another. The
resulting gain in knowledge ought ultimately to speak to the value of the
method.
To be sure, it must be kept in mind that the myth that both centaur
characters have in common also represents no methodologically clear-cut or
stable basis. For a myth has neither a primary source nor a single authori-
tative text. Since a myth usually has no beginning and no end, every author
who creatively appropriates a mythologem adds new meaning to it. We
therefore agree with the definition of Carl Kerényi, for whom mythology
consists of ‘tales already well known but not unamenable to further reshap-
ing. Mythology is the movement of this material: it is something solid and
yet mobile, substantial and yet not static, capable of transformation.’9
116 gisela brude-firnau
Mythology is thus twofold: the handed-down material and the shaped
material, the literary work; and the task at hand is to observe the pendulum
of the author’s creativity as it swings back and forth between the two. Thus
Goethe, for example, oriented his basic concept of the centaur Chiron
towards Karl Philipp Moritz’s Götterlehre; he consulted Hederich, and
knew Homer and Dante, as well as other texts in which the motif
appears; moreover, in Italy he had seen the famous depictions of centaurs
recommended by his guide, Johann Jacob Volkmann, among them the
Pompeiian fresco in which Chiron instructs the youthful Achilles on the
lyre, which continued to occupy Goethe into the last years of his life.10 But
in the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’ the mythologem is expanded by means of
a new variant: Chiron appears as the ironic, self-reflexive teacher, whose
discourse transforms Faust into a poet. Rowling, by contrast, whose sources
of mythological information have not yet been determined, takes the
centaur Firenze well beyond the status of the self-reflexive teacher: she
makes him an ethical sceptic, and a rebellious critic both of his origins
and of the system that offers him shelter and security – a system that he
nonetheless defends with all his might in the crucial battle (Prince, 598,
Hallows, 489, 530, 597).
In order to contextualize the following comparison of centaurs, we
need to cast a brief glance at the significance attributed to Greek myth in
both texts: it is essential that – besides a few semi-divine beings – there
are practically no Olympian gods in Goethe’s ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’.
Instead there are numerous mythical creatures, such as nymphs, sphinxes,
tritons, sea-gods and others, also originating from other mythologies. With
regard to the Helena act, Goethe considers them intermediaries, best suited
‘to mediate the encounter between gods and humans’.11 Instead of the one
narrated myth, as for example in Iphigenia, elements from various mytho-
logical strands are interwoven with new fictitious parts; thus disparate time
dimensions intersect. Instead of the pronouncements of binding ethics,
dialogues sparkle with wit, irony and satire; they burst with encyclopaedic
knowledge. The author is no longer shaping the myth, but transforms it as
he pleases. Jamme stresses that this is ‘a myth already disrupted by inter-
pretation, because it consciously relativizes classical antiquity by equating it
with Nordic and Oriental classicism’.12
While Goethe’s use of Greek myth has been well analysed and discussed,
the mythological elements that can be found in all seven volumes of the
Harry Potter novels have so far received little or no attention; thus a more
detailed description seems required in order to show the context and the
relevance of the centaur motif. Here the integration of mythologems is
 From Faust to Harry Potter 117
decidedly less complex, although ironic scepticism and self-doubt or
caricaturish depiction raise several characters far above the level of stereo-
typical unambiguity. Quite noticeable is the lower realm of magical crea-
tures, populated with hippogriffs, a phoenix, a basilisk, werewolves and
owls, used to deliver the post. Fluffy, the three-headed dog, is a genuine
Cerberus, and Argus Filch, the evil and rather shortsighted keeper of the
castle, is a caricature of the Greek many-eyed model. This grand mytho-
logical game then widens into a cosmos of its own: headmaster Albus
Dumbledore, on the basis of his first name alone, appears as Zeus, the
bright one, the radiant. He is described with such qualifiers as these like a
leitmotif (Stone, 113, 144, 318; Secrets, 86, 283, passim). On feast days,
therefore, the meals at Hogwarts are Olympian banquets in a gigantic hall
whose ceiling shows an ever-changing image of the real heavens (Stone, 129).
The students dine off golden plates (Stone, 128), and Zeus–Dumbledore is
enthroned ‘at the centre of the High Table, in a large gold chair’ (Stone, 134).
In anger, he also hurls thunderbolts of mental energy (Fire, 736, 767).
His element is fire, and accordingly he possesses a phoenix, which climbs
into the sky in a pillar of fire at Dumbledore’s funeral, an image that
could also be read as the fiery ascension of the deceased into heaven. This
character could easily ossify into a stereotype,13 were that not prevented by
ironic touches. But he remains wise and commands respect, embodying
the elder Zeus, who in an imperceptible manner tries to steer Harry’s
life. Yet ultimately even the Zeus-like Dumbledore is ‘demythologized’
when he confesses to Harry the failure and sin of his youth. Thus, however,
he strengthens his now almost grown-up pupil with courage and self-
confidence (Hallows, 572–9).
Minerva McGonagall, a Scottish Athena-figure, is equally protective. In
her care for Harry the emancipated woman lives up to her mythical model,
for Athena too raised a child that she had not borne. Dolores Umbridge, a
virginal but formidable caricature of Artemis–Diana, is as little at home at
Hogwarts as Artemis initially was on Mount Olympus. Just as the Taurian
Artemis was originally offered human sacrifices (a source of conflict in
Goethe’s Iphigenia), so the Spartans used to scourge their boys before the
image of Artemis Orthia until they bled. Dolores Umbridge attempts to
gain Harry’s respect in a more modern, but no less bloody fashion, by
carving her rules of behaviour into the backs of his hands over and over
again. She viciously pursues all who do not bend to her will, particularly the
keeper of magical creatures, Rubeus Hagrid, an Orion-figure with bow and
arrow (Stone, 153, 270) who is gigantic in size and good-hearted, and has a
gift with dragons, hippogriffs and winged horses. These teachers are not
118 gisela brude-firnau
allegories; they are less identifiable as Olympian gods by external accesso-
ries. Instead, they incorporate the actions and reactions, values and patterns
of behaviour of their models: they exist up to a certain point ‘in the form of
mythical identification, of mnemonic survival, of following in the foot-
steps’, as Thomas Mann perceived the characters of his Joseph und seine
Brüder.14 Although these pedagogues are steeped in irony and caricature,
they are conceived ad usum delphini and lack any kind of ribaldry.
Consequently, there is no attempt to depict or even hint at a metaphysical
realm. Similarly, the magical abilities of the professors are not comparable to
the might of Greek gods, but rather they are based on educated intelligence
and practice; they can be taught. Thus the students are not dependent upon
their teachers to the same degree as the Greek heroes are upon the gods.
Some of the other teachers are disguised adherents of evil and are well
integrated into the background plot that runs through all seven novels: the
opposition between the humanistically oriented wizards and the adherents
of destructive evil, represented by the black magician Lord Voldemort. His
name has its origin in Judaeo-Christian myth: vol de mort, a flight of death,
is the deadly fall of the angel of evil who fell away from God, the ‘dragon’ of
Revelations who ‘saw that he was cast unto the earth’.15 Mythologems of
various origins are here intertwined.
How, then, does Harry Potter himself fit into this mythological universe?
Similar to Goethe’s Faust and Thomas Mann’s Leverkühn–Faustus, he is a
‘highly synthetic figure’. For he possesses traits of different mythologies, yet
at the same time he is also a modern and quite loveable teenager. Rowling’s
protagonist is conceived according to a well-known mythologem that Carl
Kerényi describes as the ‘primordial’ or ‘divine’ child which existed ‘in the
older strata of Greek religion’ (Essays, 65). Such a child enters the world in
diverse forms, often as orphan and foundling under mortal threat; often
humiliated, he grows to become a hero or a saviour. Rowling’s protagonist
almost exactly parallels Kerényi’s well-known definition: the infant Harry
was orphaned when his parents fell victim to the evil Voldemort. The
mother, as Kerényi defines it, has ‘a peculiar part to play: she is and is not
at the same time’ (Essays, 28). Rowling realizes this mythological paradox
by means of the death of Lily Potter, who sacrifices herself to save her child’s
life and thus imbues him with a protective enchantment. This mystical
absence–presence of the mother is described as ‘an ancient magic’ and
Harry’s ‘strongest shield’ (Phoenix, 736), reminiscent of Kerényi’s ‘older
strata of Greek religion’. The little foundling growing up in his aunt’s
family, humiliated and pestered by all, remains enigmatic and contradic-
tory: magical occurrences take place around him. More and more,
 From Faust to Harry Potter 119
particularly at the school, he takes on the traits of heroes of various
mythologies: Harry is cunning like young Hermes, courageous like
Perseus, gifted like Orpheus (Stone, 36); he solves the riddle of the
Sphinx like Oedipus (Fire, 683); he has an Invisibility Cloak and a
wondrous sword like Siegfried (Stone, 218) and he also kills a Basilisk
(Secrets, 343–4). Like the Saviour in Judaeo-Christian mythology, Harry is
pure of heart (Phoenix, 743); he withstands the temptations of the Evil
One (Stone, 316; Secrets, 17, 167) and is prepared to sacrifice himself for
others, which brings about his rescue (Hallows 566–7). Yet, like the
primordial child, he is at once the lowest and the highest, until he achieves
the final victory (Hallows, 506, 595–6).
To summarize Rowling’s fictional integration of Greek mythologems:
they are on both the lower and the Olympian level an essential element and
tie the various parts together with an encompassing iconographic system,
thus creating a more universal level of understanding. The integrated
mythologems have little predeterminative function and do not cancel
out the individual’s responsibility for his actions. This is particularly true
for the protagonist, who as a realization of Kerényi’s ‘divine child’ seems to
be mythologically overdetermined. But being at the centre of the all-
embracing struggle between good and evil, he has to overcome the asso-
ciated difficulties more by means of reflection and courage, more with the
help of his friends and teachers than with the help of magical arts.
Narratologically, mythologems constitute another level of fiction, in that
they refer to a possible earlier reality; they increase the credibility of the plot.
In Goethe’s as well as in Rowling’s text, the encounter between the
protagonist and the centaur takes place within the respective mythological
contexts: both meet the man-horse at night in magic terrain and gratefully
ride on his back to safety. Neither of the two episodes, to our knowledge,
has received the attention it deserves. Goethe, who every night during his
work on the ‘main business’ habitually reflected on and laid out the next
day’s composition, opined on 24 January 1830, regarding Faust’s encounter
with Chiron: ‘I hope that the scene will succeed at my hands.’ And a mere
three weeks later, he affirmed that he was making daily progress on the
‘Classical Walpurgis Night’ ‘and that he was producing wondrous things,
beyond expectation’.16
The Chiron scene in the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’ depicts the third
stage of Faust’s journey through a ‘fable-land’ (7055). His goal is Hades,
whence he intends to fetch Helen (7319–494). Strangely enough, we never
see or retrospectively hear whether Faust arrives in the underworld and
addresses Persephone with the great petitionary speech Goethe had
120 gisela brude-firnau
planned. I maintain that Faust’s dialogue with Chiron made Goethe realize
that this speech had become obsolete. During the exchange with Chiron
Faust had been transformed into an artist who would then re-create Helen
as a poetic work of art. He did not have to implore the gods once he had
become aware of his own god-like creativity. The text will have to corro-
borate our thesis.
Referred to Chiron by the Sphinxes (7198–9), Faust believes himself
to be experiencing a unique marvel (7324) when ‘the famous son of
Philyra’ (7329) appears. By invoking the name of the nymph Phylira,
Faust alludes to the immortal Chiron’s ‘halbgöttliche’ (7362) or semi-divine
status, which differentiates him from other centaurs. While riding on
Chiron’s back, Faust invokes the achievements of the mythic teacher and
physician. However, what is intended as a captatio benevolentiae is little
more than the encyclopaedic accumulation of formulae. Accordingly,
Chiron corrects the recitation with high-handed irony and his own better
knowledge, unmasking it as mere flattery. He refutes his own myth with a
mythologem, referring to Pallas Athena, who had no lasting success in
teaching. Goethe’s Chiron is obviously no longer the pedagogue-figure of
the ancient myth, who does not call his own story into question. The
traditional mythic hero acts and believes; Chiron reflects and doubts. He
appears as a consciously modern, fragmented mythologem, attempting to
shatter Faust’s book-learning.
Similarly unexpected is the answer to Faust’s next question, about the
greatest hero among the Argonauts. Chiron – a sceptic and not a poet – tries
to undo mythological illusions. Therefore his answer is not the adventure
story of an Argonaut-superman, but rather a didactic poem about the sense-
lessness of the hero cult. The lesson: ‘Danger is best endured in company with
others: / What one achieves obtains the praise of all’ (7379–80). Solidarity and
consensus, Chiron concludes, are as important as the individual deed. This
interpretation is again anti-mythological, since it ignores both the typical
deeds of the lonely hero and the crucial metaphysical intervention. Two
constitutive mythological dimensions are replaced by social ones: co-existence
and reciprocity.
Faust’s third question, ‘And aren’t you going to mention Hercules?’
(7381), is unexpectedly answered by Chiron with a classical lamentation
about an extraordinary being and its ephemerality. Sorrow replaces the
attitude of ironic rationality. Chiron depicts Hercules as the ideal of
masculine beauty – ‘When with these eyes I saw before me / What all
men worship as divine’ (7386–7) – which neither the visual arts nor poetry
are capable of reproducing. This lamenting paean remains within the
 From Faust to Harry Potter 121
tradition of mythic hymnic poetry, communicating the picture of an
apotheosized demi-god. Here myth is taken seriously as a bygone world, a
narrated realm of exceptional beings who occupy mind and soul.
Only now does Faust dare to enquire about ‘the greatest beauty’ (7398),
referring unequivocally to Helen. The answer given is a treatise on aes-
thetics: using concepts from Schiller’s philosophy, Chiron explains that it is
not beauty, but rather grace, that is the highest aesthetic value in a woman,
mentioning his encounter with Helen as a paradigm. Faust’s book-learning,
however, knows of no such encounter, as his exclamation testifies: ‘You
carried her?’ (7406). In response, Chiron further elucidates the example for
his thesis. Schiller’s definition of grace as ‘beauty in motion’ is translated
into the description of Helen’s movements and actions.17 One might
consider this a short treatise in verse, demonstrating the adaptability and
usability of myth for other realms of thought, such as aesthetics.
Even now Faust has understood little of the true character of myth
demonstrated to him so far, as can be seen from his interjection ‘And only
ten years old!’ (7426), referring to the beautiful Helen’s ride on Chiron’s back.
Once again he appears as the eager know-it-all who seeks to impress with
book-knowledge. Again Chiron ironically reprimands Faust, and all scholars
who at the time considered similar chronological calculations as serious
scholarship. Reflecting the Enlightenment, however, Chiron explains that
they are nothing but self-deceptions, overlooking the essence of mythological
figures: their timelessness. His conclusion, that ‘poets ignore the constraints
of time’ (7433), draws a line between poetry and all other fields of knowledge.
He maintains nothing more than that Kant’s thesis, which states that the
category of time is a component of all perception, is not valid for the literary
work of art.
This section thus represents an abbreviated mythopoetics, explaining it as
‘a language of the imagination’ according to which mythologems are not
the object of an exact science, but rather inspiration for poets.18 They
remain independent of place and time; they develop and reveal their essence
in the freedom of the poetic imagination. The verses reflect upon their own
content: for Chiron becomes the promulgator of possible modes of recep-
tion of the myth. He reflects upon and – sometimes mockingly – distances
the material upon which the dramatic plot is built and of which he himself is
a part. He remains the didactician of the mythological process to which he
owes his existence.19 Thus, however, he remains a contradiction: himself a
part of mythology, Chiron gives an account of the Argonauts, Hercules and
Helen as real, active beings whom he has actually encountered in some
indeterminate past. In conversation with Faust, by contrast, he himself
122 gisela brude-firnau
belongs to a more recent period, in which the figures of myth are nothing
more than poetic evocations. His consciousness swings back and forth
between mythic occurrence and contemporary poetic re-creation. This
is the literary game that Helen articulates in the next act, because it
confounds reason and sense (8838–40, 8875, 8880–1). Chiron’s observations
thus summarize Goethe’s mythopoetic process in the ‘Classical Walpurgis
Night’ as a great ‘Self-reflection of art’.20
Faust has finally understood and does not ask any further questions.
Instead, his exclamation testifies to his transformation. He makes
Chiron’s words his own, but with a difference: the teacher’s conclusion,
‘poets ignore the constraints of time’, becomes in Faust’s words ‘Then
time shall not constrain her either!’ (7434). To Chiron’s rational conclu-
sion Faust replies with an emotional exclamation, to the distancing irony
with a fiery enthusiasm; instead of a logical summation, Faust utters a
desire and an invocation.
Likewise, he has changed registers and strikes up a paean to Helen,
anticipating some of the most beautiful lyrical stanzas he will recite in the
third act. This is the summary as well as the creative application of all of
Chiron’s indirectly communicated instructions. Faust first confirms the
mythopoetic lesson, but then also surpasses it: he understands mythological
timelessness and knows that the myth will enable him to vanquish time and
death. Chiron’s first reprimand has helped Faust achieve a sovereign atti-
tude towards mythological characters and the events surrounding them.21
The lamenting paean to Hercules inspires Faust’s hymn to Helen; but
where Chiron mourns the past, loss and bereavement, Faust is assured of
the future. In contrast to Chiron’s condemnation of all artistic depictions of
Hercules, Faust feels himself capable of making Helen become real as a
work of art. In disputing with the tutor of demi-gods, scientists and heroes,
Faust has become a poet.
However, as such he is beyond the understanding of his teacher, who
diagnoses: ‘In mortal realms you may be just exalted, / But in the spirit
world the way you act seems madness’ (7446–7). Since ecstasy is a disorder
of the mind for those who cannot share in it, Chiron expects the seer Manto
to heal Faust from his insanity. Goethe, at a time when he had just
completed and sealed the Faust ii manuscript, declared his own poetic
productivity conditioned by ‘a mysterious psychological transformation’
which, he continues, ‘Aristotle and other prosaic minds would ascribe to a
kind of madness’.22 Goethe thus raises Faust to his own rank by endowing
him with the ‘Muses’ madness’ that Plato declares to be the mental state
which alone permits poetic creation. The Chiron scene, following Goethe’s
 From Faust to Harry Potter 123
own self-assessment, may therefore be called the drama of Faust’s ‘psycho-
logical transformation’: he has become aware of the same potential with
which his author created him. The seer Manto eventually confirms this by
comparing Faust, ‘the man who wants what cannot be’ (7488), to the poet
Orpheus (7493).
Faust, on the other hand, having been transformed from hypnotized
lover into loving poet, gains the certainty that he can re-create even Helen, a
figure of Hades. He no longer has to go there and plead with the gods. His
entrance into the tunnel leading to Persephone has thus changed into a
mere finale to his hike through the mythological realm; it is now a ‘blind
motif’, not needed for the intellectual content of Act 2 or the development
of Act 3.23
The change in perspective from Goethe’s Chiron to Rowling’s Firenze is
something like the landing of an astronaut: unbounded space is followed by
terrestrial limitation – with the understanding, of course, that this limita-
tion is by no means monotonous. Centaurs appear in the first, fifth, sixth
and seventh volumes of the Harry Potter novels. Close to the mythological
tradition, they appear as members of a collective in the Forbidden Forest,
secretive yet argumentative. At first they seem to be guided by pride and
self-interest, yet when the all-encompassing struggle intensifies, the centaurs
act as good guardians (Prince, 600, 602; Hallows, 583) and valiantly fight
against the dark forces (Hallows, 587, 588). Further, the image of a centaur is
part of the sculpture at the ‘Fountain of Magical Brethren’ (Phoenix, 118).
We shall focus here on Firenze, the one centaur who leaves the collective,
since he almost demands comparison with Goethe’s creation. However,
Firenze is distinguished not by a nobler birth, but by his sense of respon-
sibility, which is already indicated by his name. It derives – I assume – from
Florentius Radewin, the promoter and teacher of a chapter of the ‘Brothers
of Communal Living’ active in the Netherlands and in Northern Germany
from the twelfth to the sixteenth centuries.24 These societies distanced
themselves from church orthodoxy in order to lead a more liberal religious
community life. Similarly, Firenze, his modern Italianized namesake, is a
responsible teacher as much as a moral rebel: after first saving Harry from a
murderous attack by Lord Voldemort, he carries him, not unlike Chiron,
through a ‘fable-land’ called the Forbidden Forest and back to safety. This,
as well as his alliance with Dumbledore, is seen as a betrayal by his fellow
centaurs, who threaten him with death, so that he has to flee the forest and
work as a teacher at the School of Wizardry. There his first class is ‘the most
unusual lesson Harry had ever attended’ (Phoenix, 532), for Firenze is
concerned less with content than with attitudes. First, he tries to instil in
124 gisela brude-firnau
the teenagers respect for the dignity, the intelligence and the wisdom of
beings different from themselves: ‘Centaurs are not the servants or play-
things of humans’ (Phoenix, 530). Then he explains the centaurs’ prophecies
by causing a starry sky to appear above the classroom and emphasizing how
very different these prophecies are from the absurd astrology of humans.
However, Firenze’s teaching remains a pedagogical paradox: he puts in
question not only all didactic methods, but even his own instruction. And
although he predicts a war for wizardkind from reading the stars, he assures
them that scepticism towards cherished beliefs and towards magic in general
is needed – for, as he says, ‘it was foolish to put too much faith in such
things, anyway, because even centaurs sometimes read them wrongly’
(Phoenix, 532). Ultimately, it is of little importance to him that none of
the students see the signs that he causes to rise from the smoke of a fire,
because the content of his lesson is less important than the underlying
convictions and values. Scepticism and doubt are at the centre of Firenze’s
teaching, and he calls all pedagogical effort into question: ‘His priority did
not seem to be to teach them what he knew, but rather to impress upon
them that nothing, not even centaurs’ knowledge, was foolproof ’ (Phoenix,
532). He thus reflects on the realistic plot strand that constitutes the school
novel, the teaching of magic at Hogwarts School of Wizardry. The novel
here reflects critically upon itself: the centaur, a mythological character who
belongs to an older tradition than fiction, hints at the uncertainty and
fictitiousness of magic, the main reason for the existence of the school and
of the novel.
However, Firenze is a doubter not on principle, but rather on the basis of
modern humanist convictions. He knows that intelligent beings have the
freedom to decide, just as he made use of his own freedom and is willing to ally
himself with humans in order to combat the Evil Lord (Stone, 279). Firenze
the teacher knows that neither the social status nor the qualities of a human,
nor prophecies of any kind, exert as much influence on one’s life as the ever-
endangered ability to doubt, from which independent decisions are born. In
the School for Wizardry, the centaur Firenze teaches a freedom that is proof
against all determinism, be it of magical, mythological or natural origin.
We have seen that our experiment relating the ‘Classical Walpurgis
Night’ and the Harry Potter novels yields new insight into each text. The
comparison makes clear that both texts are firmly embedded in the fabric of
Western literature and reactivate a considerable number of the same
mythological elements. Playing with congruence and difference has drawn
our attention to the many potential interrelations of texts and opened up
their ‘communicative dimension’.25 Our reading of one text has influenced
 From Faust to Harry Potter 125
the understanding of the other, and the more the pendulum of our atten-
tion swang back and forth, the more the function of the centaur as self-
reflective teacher came to the fore. In conclusion, however, it remains to ask
what we have learned about the Chiron myth from our comparison. In what
way do the two texts extend and surpass the established mythologem?
First of all, both attest to the vitality and plasticity of the Chiron
mythologem.26 They corroborate Kerényi’s definition of mythology as
something ‘substantial and yet not static, capable of transformation’
(Essays, 2–3). Since antiquity, the intellectual man-horse seems to illustrate
the paradigmatic balance between nature and culture – one of the goals of
education; thus both characters are ideally suited to teach and bring about
their pupils’ transformation. Unlike their classical model, both centaurs are
conceived as intellectual mavericks, without the security of a collective or
faith in a metaphysical realm. On the basic pattern of the humanistically
oriented teacher, both authors have constructed the figure of a modern
sceptic and doubter who strives above all to dismantle stereotypes, even his
own: Chiron’s rhetoric liberates the encyclopaedically petrified images of
mythic figures into a new poetic configuration. Firenze, by contrast, teaches
his less mythologically literate pupils that even what is outwardly wholly
other deserves respect and indeed admiration. True to his model Florentius,
he remains the radical moralist for whom there is no inviolable truth except
the struggle against evil. Chiron and Firenze belong to modernity, in that
they teach scepticism towards everything that is conventional and held to be
true. However, while Chiron, who lives in two eras, is still sure of his own
experiences and opinions, the more simply and unambiguously conceived
doubter Firenze is closer to Brecht’s Galileo, who himself despairs on
account of doubt and yet goes on teaching doubt. The ‘transformation’
described by Kerényi can be seen in the manner in which the two characters
treat the myth. Chiron, the narrator of myth, has learned from both the
Enlightenment and the historical and comparative mythological research of
the Romantics, and he demonstrates that both myth and mythological
fiction are to be understood as a language of the imagination. Chiron’s
reflection on the myth, and its presentation anew, effect Faust’s trans-
formation from pining lover to loving poet. Rowling’s centaur is composed
of elements of myth and of the historical vita of a ‘Brother of Communal
Living’. His individuality is narrowly limited by his origins and his occu-
pation; and limited, too, is the contribution that Firenze the teacher makes
to his pupil’s transformation. And yet his didactic intelligence, coupled with
an unshakeable humanistic attitude, make him a figure that may be placed
beside Goethe’s teacher Chiron as a simpler counterpart.
126 gisela brude-firnau
notes
1. J.[oan] K.[athleen] Rowling, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,
London: Bloomsbury, 1997, cited in text as: Stone; Harry Potter and the
Chamber of Secrets, London: Bloomsbury, 1998, cited as: Secrets; Harry Potter
and the Prisoner of Azkaban, London: Bloomsbury, 1999, cited as: Azkaban;
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, London: Bloomsbury, 2000, cited as: Fire;
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, London: Bloomsbury, 2003, cited
as: Phoenix; Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Vancouver: Raincoast
Books, 2005, cited as: Prince; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Vancouver:
Raincoast Books, 2007, cited as: Hallows.
2. Michael Maar, Warum Nabokov Harry Potter gemocht hätte, Berlin: Berliner
Taschenbuchverlag, 2003; Sandra Bak, Harry Potter. Auf den Spuren eines
zauberhaften Bestsellers, Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2004; Paul Bürvenich, Der
Zauber des Harry Potter. Analyse eines literarischen Welterfolgs, Frankfurt: Peter
Lang, 2001.
3. The Institute for Applied Children’s Media Research at the Stuttgart Media
University judges the Harry Potter novels to be ‘entertaining and of good literary
quality’, although it also claims that many children are overtaxed by these
‘aesthetically complex’ books and will not read them all the way through. See
Sigrid Tinz, ‘Spaghetti mit Gruselsoße’, Die Zeit 59, Sonderbeilage 19 (April
2004), 15. Undergraduate courses on the Harry Potter novels have been intro-
duced in various universities in North America and the UK. The academic
discussion is rather polarized between Harold Bloom’s condemnation of
Rowling’s prose as ‘governed by clichés’, and on the other hand English
Literature professor John Granger, who evaluates the series as ‘classics – and
not just “kid-lit” but as classics of world literature’. Other critics compare
Rowling to Dickens, Lewis Carroll and Rudyard Kipling. See ‘Harry Potter.
Criticism, Praise and Controversy’ – Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Harry_Potter
4. All further references to Faust are by line numbers to HA.
5. Forty per cent of Rowling’s readers are between 25 and 40 years of age. The
publishers release a portion of each edition with a cover specifically designed for
adults.
6. Pierre Bourdieu, ‘Künstlerische Konzeption und intellektuelles Kräftefeld’, in
Soziologie der symbolischen Formen, trans. Wolfgang Fietkau, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp,
1974, 106.
7. The author is seemingly unable to answer questions ‘due to an extremely hectic
schedule and fighting to find time writing’. Reply of Ms Rowling’s personal
assistant, 15 September 2004.
8. Gerhard R. Kaiser, Einführung in die vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft,
Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1980, 9.
9. Carl Kerényi, ‘The Primordial Child in Primordial Times’, in Essays on a Science of
Mythology. C. G. Jung and C. Kerényi, Princeton University Press, 1973, 2–3. Cited
as: Essays.
 From Faust to Harry Potter 127
10. Ernst Volkmann, ‘Gestalt und Wandel der Kentauren-Idee bei Goethe’, in
Lebendiges Erbe. Festschrift für Dr Ernst Reclam, ed. E. Reclam, Leipzig: Philipp
Reclam, 1936, 123–37.
11. Myrons Kuh, HA 12, 136.
12. Christoph Jamme, ‘“Alter tage fabelhaft Gebild”. Goethes Mythenbastelei im
Faust ii ’, in Interpreting Goethe’s Faust Today, ed. Jane K. Brown et al.,
Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1994, 207.
13. This was the case in the otherwise successful film version of the Prisoner of
Azkaban (dir.: Alfonso Cuarón, 2004).
14. Thomas Mann, ‘Freud and the Future’, in Essays of Three Decades, trans.
H. T. Lowe-Porter, New York: Knopf, 1947, 426.
15. Revelations 12:13. See also Maar, Warum Nabokov, 60.
16. Hans Gerhard Gräf, Goethe über seine Dichtungen. Versuch einer Sammlung
aller Äußerungen des Dichters über seine poetischen Werke, Part ii, Frankfurt
am Main: Rütten & Loening, 1904, repr. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche
Buchgesellschaft, 1968, 538. Critics have been sharply divided in their estima-
tion of the Chiron scene: for example, Hans Arens declared the first half as
‘functionally superfluous . . . an insignificant little scene’ (Kommentar zu
Goethes Faust ii , Heidelberg: Carl Winter Verlag, 1989, 454). Erich Trunz
had stressed four decades earlier that ‘Faust’s conversation with Chiron and
Manto is one of the greatest poetic achievements of the later Goethe’ (HA 3,
637–8).
17. Friedrich Schiller, ‘Über Anmut und Würde’, dtv-Gesamtausgabe, ed. Gerhard
Fricke, Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1962, xviii, 7.
18. Karl Philipp Moritz, Götterlehre oder mythologische Dichtungen der Alten, ed.
Horst Günther, Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1999, 9. The treatise, published in
1791, was produced in Rome in close collaboration with Goethe.
19. As genre the exchange corresponds paradigmatically to Goethe’s definition of
didactic poetry, which he considered ‘a hybrid creature, between poetry and
rhetoric’. ‘Über das Lehrgedicht’, WA 1:41, 2, 225.
20. Jamme, ‘“Alter Tage fabelhaft Gebild”’, 216.
21. Faust claims that Achilles met Helen at Pherae (7436) instead of Leuke; he does
not object to Chiron calling Manto not Tiresias’ but rather ‘Aesculapius’
daughter’ (7451).
22. Goethe to Wilhelm von Humboldt, 1 December 1831, WA 4:49, 166. Cited
following the translation in Faust: A Tragedy. Backgrounds and Sources, the
Author on the Drama, Contemporary Reactions, Modern Criticism, ed. Cyrus
Hamlin, trans. Walter Arndt, New York: Norton, 1976, 430.
23. The paralipomenon 123 C of 17 December 1826 outlines the Hades scene with
Manto pleading for Faust. Goethe abandoned this plan only after 18 June 1830.
Albrecht Schöne assumes that he eventually gave it up for structural reasons:
FK 52–28.
24. Thomas à Kempis, trans. J. P. Arthur, The Founders of the New Devotion. Being the
Lives of Gerard Groote, Florentius Radewin and Their Followers, London: Kegan,
1905. Florentius Radewin, head of the order from 1384, died in 1400.
128 gisela brude-firnau
25. Karlheinz Stierle, ‘Werk und Intertextualität’, in Das Gespräch, ed. Karlheinz
Stierle and Rainer Warning, Munich: Fink, 1984, 50.
26. For the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the electronic edition of
Kindlers neues Literatur-Lexikon lists the centaur as a motif or character
in nine novels, one narrative, one epic and one play, as well as in several
poems.
 chapter 9

Mistra and the Peloponnese in Goethe’s Faust ii

Wilhelm Blum

introduction

The year 1204 and the Frankenburg of Mistra

By 13 April 1204, the so-called crusaders had conquered Constantinople, the
capital of the Byzantine empire, which they systematically plundered over
the course of the following days. The area of the former empire was carved
up by the victors, each of whom tried to obtain as much as possible. The
Greeks had withdrawn to Asia Minor to found the empire of Nikaia-
Nymphaion, and it was not until 1261 that Emperor Michael VIII
Palaiologos could take his capital back.
The Peloponnese peninsula had also fallen to the crusaders and was
granted to the Villehardouin family. In 1249, Wilhelm II de Villehardouin
built a Frankish fortress above the city of Mistra, 7 kilometres north-west of
Sparta. But already in 1261 or 1262, William, Prince of Achaia, had to
relinquish the fortress to the emperor. Therefore, relatively soon after its
foundation by the Franks, the fortress became Greek and was to remain so
until 1460. In the political reality of the thirteenth century, Greek and
Frankish culture came together in the town of Mistra. It is this fortress that
qualified as the location of Goethe’s third act of Faust ii. Goethe never
mentions Mistra, only Sparta. But it is clearly Mistra that he intends.1

Goethe and Mistra

Already towards the end of 1800, Goethe had intensively studied the history
of Sparta. We know, for, example, that he read La Guilletière’s Lacédémone
ancienne et moderne at that time. It took over a quarter of a century before he
completed the Helena act. On 25 January 1827, Goethe tells Eckermann
that the Helena act is at last finished. It takes place in Sparta–Mistra. In its
fortress, Faust meets Helena, and the city of Mistra becomes the centre of
129
130 wilhelm blum
‘Arcadia’. Goethe never visited the Peloponnese, but his studies had pro-
vided him with a thorough knowledge of Mistra.

the centaur chiron and helena

In the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’ at the end of Act 2 – which is played out
in Thessaly, not the Peloponnese – Faust is already searching for Helena
(7070–9). He even asks the Sphinxes if they have seen her (7196), and they
suggest he should speak with Chiron. This Chiron is, according to the
ancients, ‘the justest of the Centaurs’ and, most importantly, a teacher and
educator of Achilles, Asklepios, Jason and many others.2,3,4,5 In Goethe’s
text he is ‘the noble pedagogue’ (7337). Faust is carried by the Centaur
(7332–6), who tells him during the ride that he had once carried the
beautiful Helena (7405–25). This is very important, since he is therefore
Helenephóros, which is phonetically identical with Hellenephóros, the ‘carrier
of the Greeks’.
For Goethe, Helena is the embodiment of Hellenism, the symbol of
everything Greek.6 Goethe himself used the pun Helenen–Hellenen in the
first stanza of a poem in honour of Lord Byron (1829):7
Stark von Faust, gewandt im Rath,
Liebt er die Helenen;
Edles Wort und schöne Tat
Füllt sein Aug’ mit Thränen. (HA, 1, 349)
Of mighty fist and shrewd advice
He loves Helena;
Spirited speech and noble deed
Fill his eyes with tears.
Obviously, the play on ‘Helenen’ and ‘Faust’ is the very point of these
four lines.

the meaning of sparta–mistra

In Act 3 of Faust ii, Helena enters the stage in Lakedaimon (8547). Phorkyas
describes the land in detail (8984–9002) so that nobody can have any doubt
about the location.8 It is not Sparta, the city in the valley, but the mountain
of Mistra, where the Franks have ‘raised a towered fortress that no one can
scale’ (9001). Mistra stands for the land of Ancient Greece, for Hellas, as
Helena stands for the Greeks.
 Mistra and the Peloponnese in Faust ii 131
We should ask why Sparta–Mistra is the centre of Ancient Greece for
Goethe, and not the much more famous Athens. There are many reasons
for this, within the context of classical antiquity, the Middle Ages and
Goethe’s own life. On 22 October 1826, he wrote in two letters to
Wilhelm von Humboldt and Sulpiz Boisserée, and in almost identical
words, that his play deals with ‘the richness of the times, a full
three thousand years so far, from the demise of Troy to the conquest
of Messolonghi’ – the decisive event of Greek history in Goethe’s own
time.
Goethe’s main reasons for his choice of location are these:
(1) Menelaus, the husband of Helena and brother of Agamemnon, is King
of Sparta, not of Athens.
(2) The Spartans, a Doric tribe, were considered more hardened and robust
throughout antiquity than all other Greek tribes.
(3) There is only one temple to Helena, and it is in Sparta.9
(4) It has often been said – and already in antiquity – that the Peloponnese
are the real Greece, and that the peninsula should be called its
Acropolis.10 The fact that the fortress was built on the mountain of
Mistra in 1249, and was still intact in Goethe’s time, is of great
importance. Medieval Athens had Frankish governors as well, but no
remarkable building survived from those times.
(5) We should not lose sight of Goethe’s own time. In the Greek wars of
liberation against the Turks (1821–9), the first Greek victories were won
on the Peloponnese. Mistra was one of the very first cities to be
liberated. In 1825, however, Ibrahim Pasha was to destroy Sparta and
Mistra, and only King Otto, the son of King Ludwig I of Bavaria, had
Sparta rebuilt, in 1834.
(6) The fate of Athens was quite different, and Goethe certainly knew it. In
1821, the garrison of the Acropolis capitulated. Whereas the later capital
was unable to cast off the Turkish yoke, the Peloponnese, along with
Sparta and Mistra, had been instantly victorious. Hellenism had stood
its ground.

building the frankish fortress, according

to goethe
Phorkyas explains the construction of the Frankish fortress as well as the
origins and civilization of these Franks (8994–9024). The mountain and
valley had stood deserted when suddenly:
132 wilhelm blum
Dort hinten still im Gebirgtal hat ein kühn Geschlecht
Sich angesiedelt, dringend aus cimmerischer Nacht,
Und unersteiglich feste Burg sich aufgetürmt.
Back in those mountain valleys, quietly, bold men
Have settled, a horde emerging from Cimmerian night,
And raised a towered fortress that no one can scale.
The castle of Mistra was established by a Frankish ruler from the French–
Latin West. Goethe, however, speaks of ‘cimmerischer Nacht’, referring to
the nation of the Cimmerians. According to Homer, these were the inhab-
itants of the farthest western lands, while Herodotus claims that they had
migrated to Asia Minor.11,12 They are identified as the Cheimérioi, the
nebulous ones. They were from the edge of the world.
The Franks who built the fortress were, in the eyes of Phorkyas, no
brigands and – more importantly for Greek ears – no barbarians. Their
buildings are not ‘cyclopic’, everything is ‘vertical, horizontal and regular’
(9020–2). Twenty years they had needed for the construction, which was
executed with the greatest skill. This praise of the western people in the
mouth of Phorkyas should not be ignored. Specifically, it should be noted
that ‘one is the master’. Helena learns from Phorkyas that Faust (whose
name she does not yet know) is the leader, a monarch. This praise of
monarchy was already sung by the ancients. Homer had coined the phrase
‘The rule of the many is not good, one must be master.’13 And Aristotle had
quoted this very line, in order to reason the existence and rule of one god,
the unmoved mover.14 Monarchy achieves the virtue of regularity. In
Goethe’s view, the monarchies of the Western nations in the Middle Ages
were more viable than the democracy devised and practised by the Greeks.
Goethe always believed in this: he always appreciated Karl August of
Weimar in his role as sovereign of his state.

mistra and the franks

With these explanations by Phorkyas, the encounter between Faust and
Helena is prepared. The meeting and subsequent marriage take place in the
land of Helena, of Hellenism, but in medieval times. Faust appears in the
knightly attire of the Middle Ages. The time of the crusades takes shape on
the Peloponnese peninsula, on the fortress mountain of Mistra. In his
brilliant synthesis, Goethe has connected a place and time which lie so far
apart and yet belong so closely together. In Mistra everything is concen-
trated: Helena’s marriage with Faust, and the birth and death of Euphorion,
the son of Frankish leadership and Greek beauty.
 Mistra and the Peloponnese in Faust ii 133

the partition of the peloponnese

Faust rules as a prince, and so he divides the Peloponnese among his vassals.
The previous ruler was Helena, the queen, but now this privilege is taken
from her. Faust reviews his war heroes (9443–81) and assigns to each of
these heroes a territory. We have seen that the conquerers were called
Cimmerians, and when Faust turns to the ‘youthful blossoms of the
north’ and to the ‘abundant strength of the east’, he emphasizes that the
Cimmerians ‘who came out of the fogs’ have their admirable virtues.
The various dukes are to govern, as Faust decrees, the various provinces of
the Peloponnese: the German duke is to rule over Corinth, the Goth over
Achaia, the Frank over Elis, the Saxon over Messene, the Norman over
Argolis and Faust himself over Sparta, ‘the queen’s former seat’.
This distribution makes the whole Peloponnese more Frankish-Western,
or more exactly it becomes German and then Western European. Lines
9466–73 represent, if we look more closely, 1,000 years of German and
European history condensed into a few verses:15
(1) The German is the symbol of the time between the first and the third
centuries ad. The first encounters between the Romans and the
Germans occurred towards the end of the second century (the actions
against the Cimbri and Teutons), but the great coup was the battle in
the Teutoburg forest of ad 9. The conflicts with the Germanic tribes
continued throughout the second century under Emperor Marcus
Aurelius, who battled against the Quades and the Marcomanni.
(2) The Goth symbolizes the time between the third and the fifth centuries.
For the first time, we hear about the invasions, in 238, of the Goths into
the imperium romanum. The first catastrophic event for the Romans
was the battle of Adrianople (today’s Edirne) of 378, where the Emperor
Valens was killed. It was surpassed only by the events of the year 410,
profoundly shocking to the world of that time, when the Goths under
Alarich stood on the Capitol.
(3) The Franks prospered in the time of the Merovingians and Carolingians,
i.e., between the fifth and the beginning of the tenth centuries. Around
500, Chlodwig had vanquished the Goths and other tribes, and estab-
lished the Frankish kingdom comprising parts of today’s France and
Germany. The fulfilment of this kingdom came with Charlemagne,
who led the Franks, being crowned ‘Emperor of the Roman Empire’,
to unforeseen heights of glory.
(4) From 911 to 1024, the Saxons rule the empire. Otto I the Great had again
been crowned emperor by the pope and became the founder of the
134 wilhelm blum
‘Holy Roman Empire of the German nation’. His son, Otto II, married
the Byzantine princess Theophanu, niece of Emperor Johannes I
Tzimiskes, in Rome. This was the momentous joining of the two
imperial houses of the Greeks and the Germans.16
(5) Historical logic would lead us now to expect the Salic and
Hohenstaufen houses, yet Goethe chooses the Normans. This is based
on the fact that the Normans’ political activity was much more exten-
sive than that of the German emperors in the eleventh and twelfth
centuries. Their real entry into the history of Europe, where they had so
far settled in northern France, was the victory of their Duke William
over King Harold II at Hastings in 1066. He was crowned king of
England and became ‘William the Conquerer’. Yet this was not all – in a
brilliant campaign the Normans took Sicily from the Arabs and spread,
under Roger II and William II, their political and cultural influence.17
Emperor Henry VI married a daughter of Roger II, who gave birth to a
son who became Emperor Friedrich II of Hohenstaufen.
(6) After his partition of the Peloponnese, Faust commands: ‘Yet Sparta
shall rise above your highest throne.’ Faust himself will rule from the
Frankenburg. Helena’s Greece will be at his feet; Greece and Germany
will live as one. May we not ask whether, according to Goethe’s
chronology and its climax, Faust’s reign becomes a symbol for the
universalist empire of Friedrich II? It is not unlikely, since of all
Western emperors Friedrich II is the one who established the most
extensive and intensive connections with Hellenism.18 He was the only
one who spoke Greek. Moreover, there is the political dimension of
Friedrich’s kinship.19 The Hohenstaufen and the Greeks are related to
each other, but also to the Frankish family of the Villehardouin. It
becomes more obvious that Faust, in this act, represents the great
Hohenstaufen emperor Friedrich II, who was the climax and the end
of the Middle Ages at the same time.

the landscape of arcadia

‘Arcadia was disvovered in 42 or 41 bc’, the classical philologist Bruno Snell
says in a famous article.20 He means that Arcadia as a literary landscape was
introduced by Virgil. At the end of the fourth century bc, the poetess Anyte
of Tegea (from Arcadia!) accidentally started pastoral poetry, yet the real
founder of bucolica is Philetas of Cos. His successor Theocritus then raised
pastoral poetry to unexpected heights. However, these poets see Sicily as the
land of the shepherds, whereas in the novel Daphnis and Chloe by Longus,21
 Mistra and the Peloponnese in Faust ii 135
from the third century ad, it is the island of Lesbos. But only Virgil made
the fictive Arcadia a place of fulfilment, a poetic paradise. After Virgil,
Arcadia remains the locus amoenus, and so the famous motto of Goethe’s
Italian journey was ‘Auch ich in Arcadien!’ (I, too, in Arcadia!).22 The
Renaissance celebrated this land of joy and peace as well. We think of the
Neapolitan Jacopo Sannazaro (1456–1530) and his pastoral novel Arcadia, or
of the Pastor fido by Guarino (1538–1612). Goethe hailed this tradition in the
splendid vision of his prize song (9514–73): things are good and beautiful in
this country, here ‘in the shaded stillness the warm flow / Of mother’s milk
provides for lamb and child’, all are ‘immortal where they are’, here in ‘the
first world’, in that Golden Age of which Hesiod and Ovid sang.23 Faust’s
vision of Arcadia, the earthly paradise, culminates in a pure utopia: ‘Our
thrones shall now become a bower, / Our happiness Arcadian and free.’

helena and euphorion

Here in Arcadia, the union of Faust and Helena is consummated (9586–93),
and here their son is born.24 Euphorion himself knows that he is ‘in the
centre of Pelops’ land’ (9825), in Mistra, the heart of the Peloponnese. Here
he flies high up in the air, and here he falls ‘to his parents’ feet’. 25 And here
his mother Helena also dies, understanding that ‘beauty and happiness can
form no lasting union’ (9940). Arcadia and Mistra, as its centre, is the
purpose, the culmination and the end of the third act, the place of creation
and destruction, the centre of the earth.
In the background of Faust ii, Act 3, there is the long history of conquests
of Greek–Byzantine lands. But this was also Goethe’s chance: he could make
Sparta–Mistra the location of his Helena act, because Western–Frankish
history has such a strong role in it. In the medium of literature, a reconcilia-
tion of West and East, of Orient and Occident is achieved. Such a reconcilia-
tion was always a matter of great importance for Goethe. We think about
the West-östlicher Divan, which appeared in 1827, the year of the completion
of the Helena act. Such reconciliation, however, is also Christian and
(Ancient) Greek.26 It permeates the Helena act, which takes place in the
Frankish–Greek–Byzantine knight’s castle of Mistra.

not es
Translated by Hans Schulte.
1. For the history and sights of Mistra, see Ernst Kirsten and Wilhelm Kraiker,
Griechenlandkunde, Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1967, ii, 393–4 and 410–15. See
136 wilhelm blum
also Steven Runciman, Mistra. Byzantine Capital of the Peloponnese, London:
Thames & Hudson, 1980.
2. Homer, Iliad xi, 832; Ovid, Fasti v, 413.
3. Iliad xi, 832; Hesiod, Fragments 96, 48–55 Rzach. This Hesiod fragment is of
special importance in our context, since it concerns the courting of Helena by
Menelaus.
4. Pindar, Pythian Odes 3,5–7, and Nemean Odes 3, 54 f.
5. Hesiod, Theogony 1001; and Fragment 19 Rzach.
6. Here we remember the Helenephória, the feast and celebration, in Brauron, in
honour of Artemis, and the Helène, the torch or light. Helena shines for
Greece, is the light of Greece.
7. Gerhard Schulz, Die deutsche Literatur zwischen französischer Revolution und
Restauration, Part ii, Munich: C. H. Beck, 1989, 672.
8. Mephisto assumes the identity of Phorkyas. Ernst and Erika von Borries com-
ment: ‘As the representative of ugliness and chaos, Mephisto can help reveal the
beautiful as the polar opposite. Chaos is necessary for the creation of order and
harmony, and beauty can only be formed out of contrasting ugliness.’ Deutsche
Literaturgeschichte, Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1991, iii, 290.
9. Herodotus, Histories, vi, 61.3.
10. Strabo, Geographica, 8, 1.3.
11. Homer, Odyssey xi, 12–19.
12. Herodotus, Histories, i, 15.
13. Homer, Iliad ii, 204.
14. Aristotle, Metaphysics xii, 10: 1076, a4.
15. Goethe speaks of world history but really means German and European history
when he talks, to Eckermann, 25 January 1827, about the finished Helena act:
‘The modern, romantic part is very difficult, with half of the world’s history
behind it.’
16. Today, as in Goethe’s time, the tomb of the Empress Theophanu rests on
German soil, in the church of St Pantaleon in Cologne.
17. Line 9472: ‘Norman, clear the seas!’ Goethe appreciated Norman rule on the
two great European islands.
18. See Michael B. Wellas, Griechisches aus dem Umkreis Kaiser Friedrichs II,
Munich: Arbeo, 1983.
19. Konstanze, daughter of Friedrich II, marries the emperor of Nikaia-
Nymphaion, Johannes III Vatatzes. Manfred, Friedrich’s son and king of
Sicily, marries a daughter of Michael II, prince of Epiros, with the name of
Helena. He was also a brother-in-law of Wilhelm II of Villehardouin. And this
prince of Achaia (1246–78) with his seat in Mistra, builder of the Frankenburg,
was the husband of Anna, sister of the Helena of Epiros mentioned above.
20. Bruno Snell, ‘Arkadien. Die Entdeckung einer geistigen Landschaft’, in Antike
und Abendland, Berlin: Watter de Gruyter, 1945, i, 26 ff.
21. Goethe valued this novel very highly. See his conversations with Eckermann of
9 and 20 March 1831, and Eckermann’s report of Goethe’s conversation with
Soret of 15 March 1831.
 Mistra and the Peloponnese in Faust ii 137
22. See Ernst Robert Curtius, Europäische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter,
Berne: Francke, 1967, 199.
23. Hesiod, Erga, 109–26; Ovid, Metamorphoses i, 89–112.
24. The name Euphorion is easy to translate: the son of Euphoros, the well-carried,
the noble sufferer – both Helena and Faust had been carried by the Centaur
Chiron. The figure of Euphorion may have been invented by Ptolemaios
Chennos (first to second century ad): his Euphorion is a son of Achilles and
Helena, and he is killed with a lightning-strike from Zeus.
25. See the stage directions to 9903: Goethe erects a monument, in the character of
Euphorion, to Lord Byron, who died in 1824 in Messolonghi, Greece.
26. As for the Christian perspective, see Paul, Letter to the Colossians, 1:20 and
Letter to the Romans, 5:10. For early Greek culture, see Homer’s Odyssey
(xxiv, 541–8), where the reconciliation is affirmed by oath, in a sacred bond.
The Odyssey is also of more fundamental importance. Eckermann was the first
to see that Faust ii is comparable to Homer’s work. See Dieter Borchmeyer,
Goethe. Der Zeitbürger, Munich: Hanser 1999, 339–40.
 chapter 10

Goethe and the grotesque:

the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’
Angela C. Borchert

introduction
In the past two decades a new direction has emerged in the interpretation of
Faust ii. While earlier interpreters, like Wilhelm Emrich and Heinz
Schlaffer, produced primarily complex symbolic and allegorical readings,
the commentaries to the new editions of Faust ii by Albrecht Schöne and
Ulrich Gaier illustrate how recent work has focused on material contexts, on
media technology and on the performative character of the theatrical
spectacle.1 Scholars have examined, for example, Goethe’s inter-medial
references to the iconography of the Renaissance masque and seriously
considered the impact of modern media techniques like the panorama,
the laterna magica and its development into the phantasmagoria.2,3 As a
consequence of this new direction in interpretation, the ambiguous, decep-
tive character of certain scenes has gained more significance (FA 1:7.2, 466).
This new interpretive direction has, however, not yet been fully pursued
with regards to the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’ in Act 2, even though the
scene begins with a thematization of the media of aesthetic presentation.
Mephistopheles hopes to see ‘as if through ancient casements in the wild and
dismal North, very horrid ghosts’ (7044–6) on the ancient battlefield.4 To his
surprise, however, the medium is deceptive. He feels alienated (7081) by the
masses of suspicious figures that surround him (7757). Yet these ‘throngs’
(7648) serve as a reflective medium for the actions of Faust, Mephistopheles
and Homunculus. Indeed, in their double characteristic as amorphous and
shaped, the masses present a poetical key for the whole spectacle. The
aesthetic category that unites the Janus-facedness of chaos and shape, of
ghost and body, of contourlessness and contour, is the grotesque.
The grotesque has not yet been discussed as an interpretive principle for
the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’, although scholarship has noted the pres-
ence of the element of the grotesque, particularly in descriptions of the
heterogeneous figures and in the contourlessness and deformation of many
138
 Goethe and the grotesque 139
figures.5,6 The ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’ is usually read by primarily
focusing on Bildung (self-development). Karl Reinhardt’s classic interpre-
tation in the tradition of Ernst Robert Curtius remains representative;7
Arens has recently called it ‘Bildungsdichtung’.8 For Reinhardt, the
‘Classical Walpurgis Night’ unites a collection of humanistic knowledge
with scientific and philosophical thinking, mythic remains gathered from
primarily late sources and pure poetic inspiration, all shimmering with
greater or lesser complexity through a mass of Bildung.9 In fact, the
commentaries by Schöne and Gaier illustrate how the text seems to mention
almost the entirety of knowledge around 1800 (FA 1:7.2, 28–9; FR-II, 12).
In consequence, the discussion of Bildung in the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’
has, in the last few years, focused on knowledge; certain grotesque figures
function as personifications of the discourse of knowledge or represent the
sensual demonstration of ‘Bildungswissen’.10,11
I shall show how Goethe, rather than presenting us in the ‘Classical
Walpurgis Night’ with a history of ideas, employs the grotesque to offer us
his own specific story of ghosts, spectres and phantoms as if viewed through
an antique lens. The antique grotesques, ‘fabled shapes’ (7028) of the
imagination, come to life in a very modern, multivalent media-savvy
poetology. My thesis is that although the grotesque was an ambivalent
subject for Goethe, he employs inter-medial references to the ornamental
grotesque to choreograph the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’ and plays with a
very radical form of the aesthetic grotesque in Mephistopheles’ experience.
I shall examine this thesis by exploring three questions.
(1) What is Goethe’s understanding of the grotesque?
(2) How does he employ the ornamental grotesque in the ‘Classical
Walpurgis Night’?
(3) What are the consequences of Mephistopheles’ experience of the aes-
thetic grotesque?

goethe’s understanding of the grotesque

Scholarship on Goethe’s grotesque has followed Wolfgang Kayser’s seminal
work of 1957, Das Groteske.12 The reason can be easily exemplified by a scene
from the Masquerade. The poets are so eager to outdo one another that in
their competitive jostling no one comes to speak.
The Herald announces various Poets: Nature Poets, Court Singers, Chivalric Minstrels,
Sweet Singers, and Rhapsodists; in the press of rivals competing for attention, none will
allow another to declaim, although one manages to say a few words as he passes.
140 angela c. borchert
satiriker
Wißt ihr was mich Poeten
Erst recht erfreuen sollte?
Dürft ich singen und reden
Was niemand hören wollte.
satiric poet
Perhaps you’d like to know
What most would please this poet?
To be allowed to say
What no one wants to hear.
Poets of Night Thoughts and Graveyard Poets beg to be excused, since they have just
become involved in a most interesting discussion with a Vampire visibly fresh from his
grave, which might possibly permit the development of a new poetic genre. The Herald
cannot gainsay them. (5295–9)
Here, the grotesque functions on the boundary between the desire to
speak and the performative representation of the inability to speak. Kayser
would describe the aesthetic concept of this scene as an abrupt tipping-over
from laughter into horror, from the comic into the abysmal, the ghastly, the
frightful. He calls this phenomenon the Weltentwurf of ‘das Groteske’ and
defines this aesthetic grotesque through several obviously contradictory
emotions: a smile at deformation and a revulsion at something monstrous
in itself. The basic feeling is astonishment, horror and a helpless anxiety
when the world falls apart and nothing supports us.13 The aesthetic grotes-
que represents an existential experience of apocalyptic dimensions.
Developed around 1750, in the so-called Sattelzeit (‘saddle’ or ‘threshold’
period), the almost sublime form of the aesthetic grotesque has, according
to Kayser, dominated ever since.14 From this perspective, Kayser treats the
ancient and Renaissance figuration of ‘die Groteske’, the ornamental gro-
tesque, as a mere precursor.15,16 He characterizes the ornamental grotesque
as playfully joyful, full of carefree imagination, but at the same time
harbouring something oppressive and eerie with respect to a world in
which the order of our reality is discontinued: technical, plant, animal
and human realms are no longer separated, while simultaneously the rules
of statics, symmetry and natural order are suspended.17
Kayser is interested primarily in the similarity of effect and the resulting
continuity between the ornamental and aesthetic grotesque; he does not
emphasize that shock is the dominant existential experience of the aesthetic
grotesque. In contrast, elements of ars combinatoria, of variation and surprise,
characterize the ornamental grotesque. Furthermore, Kayser forgets here, as
Günter Oesterle has recently argued, that the iconography and structure of
 Goethe and the grotesque 141
the ornamental grotesque pattern books (Vorlageblatt), with their principle of
the varied combinations of existing heterogeneous patterns, continue to
create an effect within the aesthetic grotesque. The different structural
elements of the ornamental grotesque can become productive inter-medially
within the aesthetic category of the grotesque. The ornamental grotesque is
thus continuously present in the aesthetic grotesque.18
In the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’, Goethe explores all three possibilities of
the grotesque, the aesthetic grotesque, the ornamental grotesque and the
inter-medial reformulation of the ornamental grotesque within the aesthetic
grotesque. The aesthetic grotesque comes to predominate around 1800. Recall
Friedrich Schlegel’s famous dictum that the French Revolution was the most
horrible grotesque of the time.19 Accordingly, at the centre of the ‘Classical
Walpurgis Night’, Goethe plays with the existentialist shock that the aesthetic
grotesque creates for Mephistopheles. However, in contrast to Kayser, who
has devalued the role of the ornamental grotesque after 1750, Goethe not only
revives the ornamental grotesque in the representation of his figures and in the
configuration of the scene, but also attempts to banish the aesthetic grotesque
through an inter-medial reformulation of grotesque elements.
Before analysing these forms of the grotesque in the ‘Classical Walpurgis
Night’, it needs to be noted that Goethe never lost sight of the grotesque as a
phenomenon of the boundary of the aesthetic. He dealt with it, analysed it
and attempted to integrate it poetically in his work between 1786 and
1831. He thought the representation of the ugly in the Villa Pallagonia in
Sicily embodied madness (FA 1:15.1, 260–5), and he translated Benvenuto
Cellini’s representation of the grotesque as monstrous (FA 1:11, 67). And,
adopting the more common term for the ornamental grotesque,20 he wrote
a critique of the arabesque for Christoph Martin Wieland’s Teutscher
Merkur (FA 1:15.2, 877). More important reflections may be found in his
review of Nepomuk Strixner’s ‘Albrecht Dürers christlich mythologische
Handzeichnungen’, which deals with inter-mediality (FA 1:19, 383), and his
renewed engagement with the Pompeiian wall decorations following the
publication of Wilhelm Zahn’s Die schönsten Ornamente und merkwürdigsten
Gemälde aus Pompeji, Herculaneum und Stabiae.

the ornamental grotesque in the ‘classical

walpurgis night’
If we divide the history of the grotesque into a polemic against the grotesque
from Vitruvius to Descartes and an apology for the grotesque from Vasari to
Diderot, Goethe would not position himself simply on either of the two
142 angela c. borchert
sides, but would take a more complex position. When Descartes discussed
the dangers of the imagination in the Méditations, he used as an example
traditional monsters from mythology like the Chimera to illustrate how the
imagination is reproductive, only combining existing elements. Descartes
wished to banish such grotesque deformities as the Chimera as paragons of
the uncontrolled imagination. Goethe returns to Vasari and Diderot’s
arguments that the grotesque is associated with the invention of the surpris-
ing, the new and the hypothetical. In his Lettre sur les aveugles, Diderot
maintains that nature continually creates new monsters through chance
combinations. Monsters are then not Chimeras but, as Vasari had already
acknowledged, reality. Since they are reality, monsters can be imagined as
normal in the past and future. On these premises, Diderot reconsiders the
role of the imagination in the development of scientific hypotheses.21
Having refreshed his understanding of Vitruvius and Vasari, Goethe nego-
tiates a position between the two sides in the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’.22
Initially, Goethe explores a hypothesis based on Karl Philipp Moritz’s
Götterlehre oder mythologische Dichtungen der Alten which he borrowed while
working on his drafts.23 Moritz’s Götterlehre centrally acknowledges the func-
tion of the ‘boundless, chaotic, amorphous’ within antiquity.24 In the para-
lipomena, Goethe accordingly envisions Sphinxes and Griffons losing
contour, reproducing and proliferating by seeming to unfold and develop
from themselves.25 In the final version of the scene, Goethe does not concretize
this path of the imagination beyond maintaining the presence of masses. He
moderates his vision to include ‘innumerable throngs’ (7659, 7648).
Goethe also borrowed numerous volumes representing the grotesque and
arabesque ornamentation of Herculaneum and Pompeii,26 a fact surpris-
ingly not mentioned in the commentaries to Faust.27 These volumes of
images are of particular inter-medial value, because they represent the
ornamental grotesque. Inspired by these volumes, he playfully indulges in
Diderotian inventio when he creates his lists of ‘monsters and deformed
figures’ (P 419) with the hope of including ‘all the monsters of antiquity,
Chimeras’ (P 442). Goethe told Johann Peter Eckermann that ‘without a
life-long occupation with the visual arts, [this work] would not have been
possible’ (FA 2:12, 447).
With such an abundance of antique monsters the issue becomes how to
choose the figures from the ornamental grotesque for the theatrical scene.
Goethe emphasized the difficulty of selection: ‘The difficulty was to remain
moderate with such bounty, and to reject any figures that did not fit my
intention’ (FA 2:12, 447). Scholars have argued for a wide range of – at times
symbolic or allegorical – interpretations of Goethe’s intentions in the
 Goethe and the grotesque 143
selection of grotesque figures.28 In contrast, I contend that Goethe began by
rehabilitating the imaginative garnering of the combinatory power of the
ornamental grotesque; then, in his final selection of figures, he returns to
Descartes’ admonitions regarding the uncontrolled imagination. Goethe
does not develop the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’ as an exploration of the
grotesque per se.
First, he limits the nature of the figures. He omits both the Chimera,
which is characteristic of the form of the grotesque in antiquity, and the
‘birds of prey with feet for swimming’ (P 454) that he draws in the margin of
the paralipomenon from December 1826. He restricts the parameters for the
combinations based on two, rather than multiple, features. The figures
combine primarily animal and human features, beginning with the Sirens,
whom he draws as a bird with a female head, and ending with the many fish
and human combinations that Homunculus encounters.29 These latter
combinations tend more towards the arabesque, while the ugly women
Mephistopheles encounters, ranging from Erichtho, Empusa and the
Lamiae to the Phorcydes, all represent grotesque iconography outside the
ars combinatoria.30 However, all the figures he chooses permit the orna-
mental grotesque to be inter-medially transformed into the theatrical spec-
tacle of the antique phantasmagoria, exemplararily demonstrated by Peter
Stein’s production.31
Secondly, he places the figures in a new constellation. In the paralipo-
mena, Faust and Mephistopheles interact with the figures taken from
grotesque iconography. Initially, Faust was to speak with the Sphinxes
and the Griffons (P 453, 441, 459) and encounter the seductive Lamiae
(P 461, 490). In the final theatrical scene, however, many of the figures
chosen from the multiple lists of the paralipomena change their interloc-
utor, so that not only the most grotesque figures, but also most female
grotesque figures come to interact with Mephistopheles. While Faust
encounters female and male figures associated with knowledge, such as
the Sphinx and Chiron, Goethe employs the criterion of gender to focus
the sensual issue of how to represent extreme ugliness.

inter-medial figurations of the ornamental

grotesque
In the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’, Goethe does not only negotiate a position
between Diderot and Descartes regarding the ornamental grotesque. More
fundamental is the inter-medial transformation of the ornamental grotesque
as a principle for the structure of the scene. Goethe uses the concept of the
144 angela c. borchert
ornamental grotesque, which spread through grotesque pattern books after
the Renaissance, as a source of inspiration for his dramaturgic transformation
of the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’. He adopts four main principles from the
grotesque pattern books, which continue and summarize the repertoire of
European grotesque iconography.32
The grotesque in Germany involved confrontation between two cultures:
the antique, and the German Trollerie or witches’ tradition associated with
Christoph Jamnitzer. Here the German grotesques, which Carsten-Peter
Warncke calls ‘antikisch-tedeskische Grotesken’, develop beyond the
Roman ornamental genres.33 Because of the similarity of the daemons and
goblins of Germanic mythological tradition with the fauns and satyrs of
ancient Roman grotesques, they were easily combined.34 In the ‘Classical
Walpurgis Night’, Goethe not only confronts Mephistopheles’ Nordic world
of witches with the ancient world, he also shows his familiarity with legends
and mythology. With the Cranes of Ibykus there are direct references to
grotesque iconography: the ‘fat-paunched-bow-legged villains’ (7669).35
The second principle of inspiration is the fundamental irony of grotesque
ornament reflected in the persiflage of humanistic Bildungs-knowledge.36,37
In the paralipomena, Goethe already sketched general ironic allusions to all-
knowing, learned society: ‘one may speak oh-so-Greek / If a German hears
it, he understands’ (P 484). The final text develops the tradition of the
reciprocal double-barrelled ironization of the northern and the ancient
world of phantoms. One can find a whole chain of satires, including the
criticism of philology when Chiron informs Faust: ‘chiron: Philologists,
I see, / Have led you, as they have themselves, astray’ (7427–8). The
reciprocal ironization of the northern and the ancient world of phantoms
ranges from the English Dilettanti and their preoccupation with antiquity
(7117–21) to medical discussions about the health and illness of the
Romantic and the antique (7148–51).38
After the confrontation of the German with the antique ghosts and
witches and the persiflage of humanistic Bildungs-knowledge, Goethe
allows himself, thirdly, to be particularly impressed by the structure of
grotesque pattern books. The ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’ permits itself to
be described in words similar to those in the grotesque pattern books: a
strange overview of a totally open row composition arbitrarily continued
yet appearing closed, based on playful symmetry, careful balance and a
grotesque presentation of individual motives.39 What scholars have called
a review-like presentation, a ‘row composition’,40 had been given a more
specific description by Goethe. The term that Goethe used to characterize
the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’ in the paralipomena was ‘boundless’ (P 436,
 Goethe and the grotesque 145
440, 449); after completing the text, he confirmed ‘that the Classical
Walpurgis Night has tapered off into the boundless’ (FA 2:11, 300).
The fourth principle is the permanent change of perspective, the ‘schwei-
fen’, which could be translated as ‘roaming, meandering’, up to the point of
being lost in a labyrinth (7079).41 The idea of ‘Verirren’ ranges from ‘being
lost’ to ‘being bemused’, even ‘to err’ (7800). This constant metamorphosis
implied in the changes of perspective through ‘schweifen’ is revealed by hard
juxtapositions and unstable aesthetic perception. It is not the arabesque,
graceful and wave-like ‘floating’ (8284) that Homunculus experiences in the
‘Rocky Inlets of the Aegean Sea’ scene.
These four principles of the ornamental grotesque pattern books – the
confrontation of the ancient and the Nordic witches’ worlds, the persiflage
of humanistic Bildungs-knowledge, the open composition and the ‘schwei-
fen’ – are all impressively transformed by Goethe dramaturgically when
he allows his three Nordic protagonists, Mephistopheles, Faust and
Homunculus, to experience the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’ in radically
different ways. Astonishingly, it is Mephistopheles and not Faust who is
frightened by the impudence and heinousness of the antique phantoms. As
he comes to experience the aesthetic grotesque, he feels ‘alienated’ (7081).

faust’s perspective in the ‘classical

walpurgis night’
Faust’s approach to the fantastic world of antiquity is distanced by mem-
ory.42 Filtered through Bildung and remembrance, he views the fantastic
world of antiquity only as ‘the strangest’ (7078). He sees that ‘in ugliness
there’s strength and grandeur!’ (7182). Greatness and the heroic past are also
principles of selection for the antique personae he encounters:
Auf Sphinxe bezüglich. Vor solchen hat einst Ödipus gestanden;
Auf Sirenen bezüglich. Vor solchen krümmte sich Ulyß in hänfnen Banden;
Auf Ameisen bezüglich. Von solchen ward der höchste Schatz gespart;
Auf Greife bezüglich. Von diesen treu und ohne Fehl bewahrt. (7185–8)
Regarding the Sphinxes: Long ago Oedipus stood facing one of these;
Regarding the Sirens: These saw Ulysses writhe in hempen cords;
Regarding the Ants: These gathered stores of treasure never equalled,
Regarding the Giants: Of which these were the faithful guardians.
This constant idealization extends even to Chiron as the great pedagogue
and mentor with his fixation on heroic figures, and it is relativized by Faust’s
encounter with Chiron himself.
146 angela c. borchert
Faust succeeds in igniting a debate over the history of the most stalwart of
heroes and the most beautiful of women, claiming that Hercules in his
divinity is unrepresentable and that Helena as eternally young exists outside
time. Both Chiron and Faust agree in their discussion about art, their
Kunstgespräch, that Hercules is unrepresentable in song and in sculpture:
chiron Vergebens mühn sich die Lieder,
Vergebens quälen sie den Stein.
faust So sehr auch Bildner auf ihn pochen,
So herrlich kam er nie zur Schau. (7393–6)

chiron In vain the lyre labours to evoke him,

In vain the sculptors martyr stone.
faust As much as sculptors [try to] shape him,
So beautifully he has never been represented.
In this way, Faust projects the ideal of the beautiful and the great;
Mephistopheles, on the other hand, will experience this in the most ugly
and in the grotesque.
Through his remembrance of heroic antiquity Faust is clearly immunized
against any experience of the grotesque.43 In the whole fantastic ‘turbulence’
(7483) he only pursues one goal, which he mentions several times. The goal
is simply defined: ‘And where is She?’ (7056). Even when Chiron declares
Faust ‘mad’ (7447), he perseveres. Almost like a ‘fairy tale hero’, he believes
in the ‘marvel’ (7324) of his destiny.44

mephistopheles’ experience of
the aesthetic grotesque
In Faust’s journey, Goethe employs grotesque figures like the Sphinx and
Chiron as Faust’s interlocutors to explore the possibilities of representation. In
contrast, Mephistopheles’ journey begins with the ethnological clash of the
cultures of southern antiquity and northern modernity, establishing the
experience of the aesthetic grotesque. The antique mythological creatures see
him as the ‘uninvited witch’s son’ (7787) from the north, the ‘nasty one’ (7139)
with the ‘shrivelled horse’s hoof ’ (7150). He in turn experiences the ulteriority
of the ancient ghost world unfiltered and without distance. He ‘wanders’
(7080) aimlessly through the ‘labyrinth of flame’ (7079), initially seating
himself with ironic self-consciousness between two Sphinxes – expressions of
an antique–modern grotesque (7111) – then becoming more and more besieged
 Goethe and the grotesque 147
both haptically and phonetically by the antique phenomena. ‘As if intimidated’
(7224) and ‘vexatious’ (7798), Mephistopheles says ‘What I touched gave me
the willies’ (7798). Nevertheless, he gets mixed up against his better judgement
with the Lamiae, who erotically entrap him.
Faced with the unfamiliar, ‘naked’ (7082), lifelike appearance of these
ancient seductresses, Mephistopheles loses his ironic superiority and his
cynical security. Instead of the clear differentiation between the ‘gloomy’
north (6975) and ‘sinful pleasures’ (6974) of the south, he himself experi-
ences the radical anxiety, insecurity and disorientation of the aesthetic
grotesque.45 Indeed, he feels himself totally ‘alienated’ (7081) because he
clearly cannot move adroitly (7329) in the foreign space, in these antique
‘horrifying circles’ (7788).
Left without orientation, the self-confident prancing ‘gallant’ (7764)
metamorphoses into a comically grotesque gawk. Not only does he lose
his way (7800), he also loses his footing. This is related from the perspective
of his ancient seductresses, the Lamiae:

Mit starrem Fuße

Kommt er geholpert
Einher gestolpert;
Er schleppt das Bein,
Wie wir ihn fliehen,
Uns hinterdrein. (7704–9)
With such stiff feet
He only can hobble
And stumble along;
We keep escaping
While he pursues us,
Dragging that leg.

He actually becomes that which he pretends to be in front of his ancient

questioners, namely ‘Old Iniquity’ from the ‘Mysterien’ plays.46
In a paradoxical reversal the ancient phantoms dismiss him in a manner
tainted with Christian traits. In the context of the ‘healthy heterogeneous
beings’ (7149), the ‘uninvited’ (7787) Nordic witch’s son is unmasked as a
‘double-dealer’ (7148), who refers in a quite suspiciously Romantic vein to
heart and sentiment (7177). Thus different antique mythological beings
twice demand that he of all people must do penance (7148, 7155) and not get
off too ‘cheaply’ (7790). In this emergency, Mephistopheles’ only choice is
to agree to face the most excruciating challenge of ancient horror: to survive
an encounter with the most ugly of the ugly, the Phorcydes.
148 angela c. borchert
Mephistopheles’ encounter with the Phorcydes must be understood
against the background of the contemporary controversy between the
classical and the Romantic. At the climax of the ‘Classical Walpurgis
Night’, during the encounter of the Nordic Mephistopheles with the
antique ‘Daughters of chaos’ (8028), something quite surprising occurs:
the antique primordial ugliness of the Phorcydes surpasses to a large extent
all Nordic extremes of ugliness, like for example the ‘vilest forms of sin’
(7973) or ‘mandrakes’ (7972). Mephistopheles now comes to know, in the
face of this ugliness, that which has previously been unknown to him, the
primary principle of aesthetic grotesque reception: ‘astonishment’ (7969),47
the shock of perception of a totally ulterior order:

mephistopheles Ich sehe was, und staune. So stolz ich bin,

Muß ich mir selbst gestehn:
Dergleichen hab’ ich nie gesehn,
Die sind ja schlimmer als Alraune . . .
Wird man die urverworfnen Sünden
Im mindesten noch häßlich finden,
Wenn man dies Dreigetüm erblickt?
Wir litten sie nicht auf den Schwellen
Der grauenvollsten unsrer Höllen.
Hier wurzelt’s in der Schönheit Land,
Das wird mit Ruhm antik genannt. (7969–79)

mephistopheles What I now see astounds me!

Although it hurts my pride, I must confess
That I have never seen such creatures –
They’re worse by far than mandrakes.
Can one who sees this monstrous trinity
Still find the vilest forms of sin
In any way repulsive?
We wouldn’t even let them stand beside the door
Of the most dreadful of our hells.
When such things flourish in this Land of Beauty,
They’re glorified as classical.

aesthetic grotesque, ornamental grotesque

and their inter-medial integration
In the face of this all-surpassing figure of antique ugliness, in the face of the
aesthetic grotesque, Mephistopheles reacts with appropriate devilishness.
 Goethe and the grotesque 149
He breaks into ‘delight’ (7993) in order to react then with cunning adapta-
tion to the daughters of chaos. Symmetrical to the conversation about art,
the earlier-cited Kunstgespräch between Chiron and Faust, Mephistopheles
poses the central question for the aesthetic boundary phenomenon of the
grotesque. With its proximity to chaos and its hybrid position between
shapelessness and deformation, it evades artistic aesthetic representation as
an overall phenomenon. Mephistopheles says: ‘Still, I’m surprised no poets
sing your praises. / And tell me how it is I’ve never seen / Such worthy
subjects treated by an Artist?’ (7995–7). The three female figures of the
Phorcydes share among them one tooth and one eye. At any time one or two
Phorcydes have neither an eye nor a tooth. How then can the three-
dimensional, unsightly ugliness in its mixture of being without contour or
shape be ‘transferred’ (8013) into an image, onto stone, onto paper or even
in a process like mimicry from person to person?48
In Goethe’s ingenious solution to this problem, Mephistopheles’ mimicry
of the ‘monstrous trinity’ (7975) of the Phorcydes becomes possible through
the about-face from a frontal view to the profile. In profile the primal ugliness
gains contour. The monstrous trinity divides into two dimensions: in profile
the monstrous becomes condensed, and thus transferable and ready for
reproduction. Here, the ornamental grotesque tests the boundaries of differ-
ent media in the form of a three-dimensional space and a plane surface,
hovering between them.49 Reproducibility is its precondition. In this way,
Mephistopheles can use the ornamental grotesque to banish the feeling of
alienation that resulted from the experience of the aesthetic grotesque. His
devilish trick pushes back the horror in favour of the surprise effects resulting
from the play of variation. In a draft, Goethe imagines Mephistopheles saying
‘it is, if it succeeds, the most cunning of my tricks’ (P 517).
Part of this cunning trick is the inter-medial integration of the ornamen-
tal grotesque into the aesthetic grotesque. Mephistopheles’ mimicry not
only elicits an irresolvable and paradoxical double determination between
the fantastic and sensual, between the mimetic and amimetic, between
illusion and delusion;50 it maintains at the same time the aesthetic grotes-
que. Mimicry represents a formation of the grotesque as an attempt to
banish the demonic from the world by evoking it.51 Goethe thus does not
see the discontinuity that Kayser posits between the ornamental figure in
visual arts and the aesthetic grotesque. In fact, Goethe actually considered
the possibility of representing Mephistopheles’ mimicry of the ugly in art:

Ich eile nun und such im vollem Lauf

Der neuesten Tage kühnsten Meisel auf
150 angela c. borchert
Mit Gott und Göttin laßt euchs dann gefallen
Gesellt zu stehn in heiligen Tempelhallen. (P 523)

In haste I hurry forth and rushing seek

The most courageous chisel that these times can yield;
Allow yourselves the pleasure then to stand
With god and goddess in holy temple halls.

Goethe, however, omitted these lines in the final version, not because
‘poetic metamorphosis’ is generally unrepresentable,52 but because he
wanted to avoid ridiculing the effect of the aesthetic grotesque created by
the imitation of the Phorcydes in mime. Had he allowed this, he would have
shifted to the comic, just as if he had allowed the Sphinxes to see the
transformation of Mephistopheles, as originally planned (P 509). The
desired effect – the comic tipping into horror characteristic of the aesthetic
grotesque – is better achieved by Mephistopheles’ exit lines: ‘Since I must
hide from public view / I’ll go and scare the devils down in hell’ (8032–3).
With this statement, however, the grotesque spiral turns back to the
ornamental. One of the structural elements of the ornamental grotesque
that informs the aesthetic grotesque here is the combination of different
cultures in media.53 Mephistopheles, himself an incarnation of the Nordic
grotesque with his shrivelled horse’s hoof, had experienced the aesthetic
grotesque encountering the grotesque figures of antiquity in the ‘Classical
Walpurgis Night’. But Mephistopheles not only meets Homunculus’ chal-
lenge: ‘Romantic spectres are the only ones you know / But any proper
ghost has to be classical’ (6946–7); he exceeds it when the Nordic devil
mimics antique ugliness. This imitation seemingly erases both the ethno-
logical differentiation of north and south and the gender differentiation
between Mephistopheles as ‘Chaos’ well-loved son’ (8027) and the
Phorcydes as Chaos’ daughters (8028). This is how antique ugliness needs
to be hidden.
However, this means frightening the Nordic devils through Mephistoph-
eles’ mimicry of antique ugliness. Goethe employs the structural potential
of the ornamental grotesque to perpetuate the experience of the aesthetic
grotesque through repetition. Through his use of space, of surprise and
recognition, opposition and unification, Goethe moves the play to another
level of organization. This is seen in the ornamental grotesque in the
invention of festive processions. Going beyond Geoffrey Harpham, Günter
Oesterle reads arabesques as an artificial suspension between the modus of
the ornamentation and the modus of the image, which changes, often with
unnoticeable transitions from one dimension to the next. It is a complicated
 Goethe and the grotesque 151
interplay of creative factors that demand and hinder illusions. Oesterle
emphasizes the arbitrary yet calculating transition from one method of
representation to the other, from one logic of perception to the other.54
Mephistopheles’ plan to scare his Nordic compatriots provides the transi-
tion banishing the aesthetic grotesque by exploring the ornamental grotes-
que and its metamorphic integration into the arabesque in the experiences
of Homunculus.

conclusion
Throughout his life, Goethe had and expressed a great interest in and
ambivalent relationship to the arabesque and the grotesque. He admired
the artistic and ludistic potential of the grotesque, but was at the same time
alarmed by its character as a boundary phenomenon of the artistic. In the
Propyläen he even speaks of the arabesque as ‘sins of antiquity’ (FA 1:18). As a
reaction to the alarming disquiet of the grotesque, one can ascertain moves
to integrate it or at least to theoretically attenuate it. Is this also true for the
‘Classical Walpurgis Night’?
While working on Faust ii, Goethe allowed himself to be inspired by
collections of images from the Renaissance on the one hand and on the
other by the masques which he himself organized at the Weimar court. We
can see this inspiration – if not in the iconographical details, then in the
overall composition of the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’, the dramatic con-
frontation of Nordic and antique ghost worlds, the persiflage of humanistic
Bildungs-knowledge, the sequence of figures, and finally the meandering
ramble, the ‘Schweifen’.
The ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’, however, does not consist only of the
grotesque representation of the conflict of cultures between the ancient and
the Nordic ghost worlds. The three adventurers experience three quite
different ‘marvels’ (7069).55 There is first the world of Faust, for whom
the grotesque appearance of the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’ reduces itself to
the colossal and the archaic heroic. There is, on the other side,
Homunculus, who does not experience his process of becoming as a
grotesque phenomenon, since it is appropriate to the process of metamor-
phosis found in nature. These two world-views – Faust’s world-vision
filtered through memory and the world of arabesque and metamorphosis
appropriate to evolution for Homunculus – are not grotesque. Both are
interwoven as bodies of text by the grotesque confrontation of the Nordic
with the ancient world of ghosts. But, for both, this world of the grotesque is
highly selective, in that it limits itself to the non-ugly. Thus one could first
152 angela c. borchert
consider this a classicist cushioning of the grotesque. But this is only true to
a limited extent. Incited by the polemic confrontation with the Romantic,
Goethe dares to create a grotesque figure that surpasses the Romantic
grotesque. The antique grotesque chaos is in its hermaphroditic mixture
of shapelessness and ugliness larger than the Nordic grotesque.
The potential of the antique grotesque proved to be significant. We can
trace its far-reaching effect into the twentieth-century controversy about a
non-Eurocentric, non-Nordic grotesque. When Ernst Bloch reviews Carl
Einstein’s programmatic work Negerplastik (1915), he demands that an ulterior
grotesque be developed similar to the Australian aboriginal grotesques. Bloch
characterizes these as ‘extinct sins, before which the vilest phantasies are
mute’, and thus echoes Mephistopheles’ surprise at the sight of the
Phorcydes: ‘Can one who sees this monstrous trinity / Still find the vilest
forms of sin / In any way repulsive?’ (7973–5).56 Goethe’s antique grotesque
becomes one key to an aesthetic conception of modernity.

notes
1. Wilhelm Emrich, Die Symbolik von Faust ii. Sinn und Vorformen, 5th edn,
Königstein: Athenäum, 1981; Heinz Schlaffer, Faust Zweiter Teil. Die Allegorie
des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, Stuttgart: Metzler, 1981; Albrecht Schöne, Faust.
Kommentare, Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1994; Ulrich
Gaier, Kommentar, Faust ii, in Goethe. Faustdichtungen, Stuttgart: Reclam,
1999; cited as FR-II.
2. Jane K. Brown, Goethe’s Faust. The German Tragedy, Ithaca: Cornell University
Press, 1986, 156–62.
3. Helmut Schanze, Goethes Dramatik. Theater der Erinnerung, Tübingen:
Niemeyer, 1989, 179–82.
4. All further references to Faust are by line number from FT. Stuart Atkins’ 1984
translation of Faust ii is referenced, modified if necessary. Apart from Faust ii, all
translations are mine.
5. Hans Arens, Kommentar zu Goethes Faust ii, Heidelberg: Carl Winter Verlag,
1989, 417; Schanze, Goethes Dramatik, 184; Steffen Schneider, ‘Mnemonische
Imaginationen in Goethes Faust ii. Eine Lektüre der Klassischen
Walpurgisnacht’, Goethe-Jahrbuch 119 (2002), 77; Luciano Zagari, ‘Natur und
Geschichte. Metamorphotisches und Archetypisches in der Klassischen
Walpurgisnacht’, in Bausteine zu einem neuen Goethe, ed. Paolo Chiarini,
Frankfurt am Main: Athenäum, 1987, 156.
6. Zagari, ‘Natur und Geschichte’, 179.
7. Ernst Robert Curtius, Europäische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter, Tübingen:
Francke Verlag, 1948; Karl Reinhardt, ‘Die klassische Walpurgisnacht. Entstehung
und Bedeutung’, in Tradition und Geist. Gesammelte Essays zur Dichtung, ed. Carl
Becker, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1960, 309–56.
 Goethe and the grotesque 153
8. Arens, Kommentar, 406.
9. Reinhardt, ‘Die klassische Walpurgisnacht’, 309–10.
10. Schneider, ‘Mnemonische Imaginationen’, 77.
11. Schanze, Goethes Dramatik, 184.
12. Wolfgang Kayser, Das Groteske. Seine Gestaltung in Malerei und Dichtung,
Tübingen: Stauffenburg Verlag, 2004; see also Dominique Iehl, ‘Goethe et le
grotesque’, Litteratures 12 (1985), 95–106; Peter Firchow, ‘Conrad, Goethe and
the German Grotesque’, Comparative Literature Studies 13 (1976), 60–74.
Oesterle’s edition of Kayser’s Das Groteske provides an up-to-date bibliography
of scholarship (xxxi–lii).
13. Kayser, Das Groteske, 32.
14. Ibid., 472–94.
15. Ibid., 20–9.
16. The grotesque is a form of antique ornamental pattern found first in excava-
tions in Rome in Nero’s Domus Aurea after 1480. With the discovery of
Herculaneum in 1738 and Pompeii in 1748, the great interest in the grace and
brilliance of the antique arabesque and grotesque plant and animal ornamen-
tation developed into a decorative fashion across Europe. The ornamentation
permeated everyday culture and the culture of festivities. See Elisheva Rosen,
‘Grotesk’, trans. Jörg W. Rademacher and Maria Kopp, in Ästhetische
Grundbegriffe. Historisches Wörterbuch in sieben Bänden, ed. Karlheinz Bark
et al., Weimar: Metzler, 2001, ii, 881; Günter Oesterle, ‘Arabeske, Schrift und
Poesie in E. T. A. Hoffmanns Kunstmärchen “Der Goldne Topf”’, Athenäum.
Jahrbuch für Romantik 1 (1991), 273.
17. Kayser, Das Groteske, 22.
18. Günter Oesterle, ‘Zur Intermedialität des Grotesken’, introd. to Kayser, Das
Groteske, xviii. Mikhail Bakhtin’s conception of the grotesque is developed on
the basis of the work of François Rabelais (1494–1553), whose Pantagruel can be
read as an intertext to the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’. See John R. Williams,
‘The Flatulence of Seismos. Goethe, Rabelais and the “Geranomachia”’,
Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift 64 (1983), 106–10. However, the inter-
medial component is lacking from the outset in Bakhtin’s conception of the
grotesque.
19. Kayser, Das Groteske, 55.
20. Ibid., 50–1.
21. Andreas Gipper, ‘Von wirklichen und eingebildeten Monstren. Über die Rolle
der Imagination in Diderots Lettre sur les aveugles’, in Historische Anthropologie
und Literatur, ed. Rudolf Behrens and Roland Galle, Würzburg: Königstein &
Neumann, 1995, 167.
22. Elise von Keudell, Goethe als Benutzer der Weimarer Bibliothek. Ein Verzeichnis
der von ihm entliehenen Werke, Weimar: H. Böhlaus Nachf., 1931, 350, 354.
23. Keudell, Goethe als Benutzer, 324.
24. Karl Philipp Moritz, Götterlehre oder mythologische Dichtungen der Alten, ed.
Horst Günther, Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1999, 23.
25. Keudell, Goethe als Benutzer, 426, 442.
154 angela c. borchert
26. Ibid., 285–6, 331–2.
27. See Arens, Kommentar, 405.
28. Reinhardt, ‘Die klassische Walpurgisnacht’, 314; Dorothea Hölscher-
Lohmeyer, Faust und die Welt. Der 2. Teil der Dichtung. Eine Anleitung zum
Lesen des Textes, Munich: C. H. Beck, 1975, 206–77; Arens, Kommentar, 561–2.
29. FR-II, 801.
30. Carsten-Peter Warncke, Die ornamentale Groteske in Deutschland. 1500–1650,
Berlin: Spiess, 1979, 28–53.
31. See Roswitha Schieb, ‘Probentagebuch’, in Peter Stein inszeniert Faust, ed.
Roswitha Schieb, Cologne: DuMont, 2000, 144–51.
32. Warncke, Die ornamentale Groteske, 20–78.
33. Ibid., 54–5, 78, 82, 86–7.
34. Frances Barasch, The Grotesque. A Study in Meanings, The Hague: Mouton,
1971, 40. In fact, the word ‘grotesque’ only begins to replace ‘antique’ or
‘anticke’ in sixteenth-century England at the time when Christopher Marlowe
(1564–93) published his Doctor Faustus. ‘Faustian grotesquerie’ produces an ‘old
comic chill’ in ‘ludicrously horrifying situations’ (Barasch, The Grotesque, 47).
The term ‘antiquus’ is furthermore an adjective for the Christian devil, whose
protean characteristics link him to the antique representation of chaos. See
Rainer Lengeler, Tragische Wirklichkeit als groteske Verfremdung bei Shakespeare,
Cologne: Böhlau, 1964, 25–7.
35. Stuart Atkins, ‘Goethe, Aristophanes and the “Classical Walpurgisnacht”’,
Comparative Literature 6 (1954), 76.
36. Friedrich Piel, Die Ornament-Groteske in der Italienischen Renaissance. Zu ihrer
kategorialen Struktur und Entstehung, Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1962, 79–83.
37. See Reinhardt, ‘Die klassische Walpurgisnacht’, 355; Thomas Gelzer,
‘Aristophanes in der Klassischen Walpurgisnacht’, in J. W. Goethe. Fünf
Studien zum Werk, ed. Anselm Maler, Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1983, 80;
Andreas Anglet, ‘Der reflektierte Mythos in Goethes “Klassischer
Walpurgisnacht”’, Jahrbuch des Freien Deutschen Hochstifts 32 (1992), 142–4.
38. See FR-II, 729–31.
39. Warncke, Die ornamentale Groteske, 87.
40. Anglet, ‘Der reflektierte Mythos’, 153, 159; Arens, Kommentar, 403; Zagari,
‘Natur und Geschichte’, 161.
41. See Kayser, Das Groteske, 24.
42. Katharina Mommsen argues that Faust experiences the ‘Classical Walpurgis
Night’ as a dream. See Natur- und Fabelreich in Faust ii, Berlin: Walter de
Gruyter, 1968, 117; Luciano Zagari calls it a voyage into collective memory
(163–4). Gaier’s Kantian approach considers Faust to be split between repro-
ductive imagination (memory) and productive imagination (dreams) (FR-II,
669), allowing the focus to move to perception.
43. With regards to the plan that Faust would encounter Medusa (P 449), and with
it new forms of the grotesque, please see Chapter 11 in this volume.
44. Mommsen, Natur- und Fabelreich, 119.
45. See Kayser, Das Groteske, 36.
 Goethe and the grotesque 155
46. FR-II, 748–9.
47. Kayser, Das Groteske, 199.
48. The more common interpretation is that an actual mask is created, so that
Mephistopheles puts on a mask like an antique actor (Anglet, ‘Der Reflektierte
Mythos’, 139) or creates a mask by his own mimicry (FR-II, 670).
49. See Oesterle, ‘Intermedialität’, xxi.
50. Angela Borchert, ‘Grotesque’, in Feminist Encyclopedia of German Literature,
ed. Friederike Eigler and Susanne Kord, London: Greenwood Press, 1997, 221.
51. Kayser, Das Groteske, 203.
52. Friedmann Harzer, ‘“Hinweg zu Proteus!” Goethes “Poetische Meta-
morphosen” in der Klassischen Walpurgisnacht’, in Goethe nach 1999. Positionen
und Perspektiven, ed. Matthias Luserke, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
2001, 36.
53. Oesterle, ‘Intermedialität’, xx.
54. Oesterle, ‘Arabeske, Schrift und Poesie’, 90–3.
55. See Arens, Kommentar, 415.
56. Ernst Bloch, ‘Negerplastik’, in Die Argonauten. Eine Monatsschrift, ed. Ernst
Blass, Heidelberg: Verlag von Richard Weissbach, 7 (1915), 10–20. The exact
quotations are, for Bloch, ‘ausgestorbene Sünden, von denen selbst die ver-
worfensten Phantasien [. . .] versagen’ (13) and, for Goethe, does one find
‘urverworfenen Sünden / Im mindesten noch häßlich / Wenn man dies
Dreigetüm erblickt?’ (7973–5).
 chapter 11

Re-defining classicism: antiquity in Faust ii

under the sign of the Medusa
Ernst Osterkamp

This chapter enquires into the image of antiquity which Goethe employed
in order to come to terms with the experience, central to his age, that the
horrors of history seem not to decline over time but to increase. Classicism
generally assumes not only that antiquity represents the aesthetic model for
modernity, it also offers an ideal of human perfection that modernity must
emulate. The classicist understanding of artistic representation prevalent in
Goethe’s time was, however, challenged by the apparent failures of two
tenets of philosophical thought: the striving after human perfection, and the
humanism of the optimistic Enlightenment. If the underlying picture of
antiquity was to serve as an artistic mirror of even the most advanced
aesthetic, political and social problems of the age, it would have to incor-
porate the historical resistance to the Enlightenment’s very concept of
humanity. Goethe experienced the nineteenth century not as increasingly
humane but, on the contrary, as increasing in its horrors. In the paralipo-
mena to Faust ii, he captured this experience in an image that gave an
ancient myth a striking modernity: the image of the incessantly growing
Medusa. The picture of antiquity he developed in the second and third
acts can be understood as an aesthetic attempt to adapt classicism to the
historical realization that the growing Medusa could not in his time be
stopped. The first part of this chapter locates the Medusa image in the
original conception of Faust ii ; the second part describes the conception of
history implied by this image and its consequences for Goethe’s under-
standing of antiquity as he develops it in his play.
In the paralipomena to the second act of Faust ii, Goethe sketched an
‘aesthetics of horror’ up to a point the surpassing or transgressing of which
would have literally brought about the death of the audience. In 1827,
Goethe decided to publish the completed third act of Faust ii in volume iv
of the Ausgabe letzter Hand under the title Helena, klassisch-romantische
156
 Re-defining classicism 157
Phantasmagorie. Goethe was therefore obliged to explain how the plot
of this ‘interlude to Faust’ related to the already published Part i.
On 15 December 1826, he sketched a short introductory note to the
Phantasmagoria based on several brief drafts for the second act that
he had written a month previously. In this sketch, he detailed for the
first time the plot and motifs of the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’. Just two
days later, on 17 December, he revised and greatly expanded this intro-
duction, adding several important scenes. These drafts and introductions,
with a teeming abundance of characters and episodes, were created in
just six weeks (readers are seldom given the opportunity to follow so
closely Goethe’s creativity in actu). Goethe decided to confront Faust
and Mephistopheles with ‘all the monsters of antiquity’ (P 123C, 442).
Here, his creativity, supported by all his knowledge of antiquity, advanced
with obvious pleasure to areas it had hitherto carefully avoided. Following
the principle of escalation, Goethe wanted to increase the horror in the
second act. The act takes the audience from Wagner’s laboratory via the
dark moonlit fields of the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’ to Hades, where
Faust, as a ‘second Orpheus’, pleads with Proserpina for the release of
Helena (P 123B, 430). In December 1830, Goethe finally abandoned this
concept, when Galatea’s maritime celebration of life and love replaced
Proserpina’s realm of the dead.
Already in the earliest version of his introductory note, Goethe developed
the panoply of the ‘monsters of antiquity’ which Faust and Mephistopheles
would meet in the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’ (P 123B, 426). What Faust
would have encountered in Hades, however, if he had come to ‘Proserpina’s
throne’ is only vaguely suggested (P 123B, 430). This was certainly due to the
absence of literary precedents for the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’; the image
of the journey to Hades, by contrast, had been prepared by literary tradi-
tion. By using the key phrase ‘second Orpheus’, Goethe had already given
sufficient clues as to how he intended to elaborate the Hades scene, namely,
as the finale of an opera enriched with ‘boundless incidences’. But he must
have quickly realized that the enrichment of the Hades scene by these
‘boundless incidents’ would pose a genuine artistic problem. The under-
world of the nineteenth century could no longer be what it had been under
the ancien régime; the well-ordered movements of a Gluck-like ballet of
furies could no longer offer an aesthetically plausible image of Hades in a
world full of political strife and social conflict, revolutions and wars. So, in
the few hours he had in the two days between the first and second versions
of his introductory note, Goethe worked both on emphasizing the ‘tumult’
(P 123C, 444) of the ancient ‘monsters’ (P 123B, 426) and on grappling with
158 ernst osterkamp
the task of visualizing the horror that awaits Faust on his way to the Orcus.
To boost the tumult of the monsters in the ‘Walpurgis Night’ was to
humorously neutralize the threat posed by any individual one. By contrast,
the death that reigned in the underworld created an absolute horror that
could only be captured by an image of the highest existential seriousness;
multiplying the horrors in individual episodes would have meant relativ-
izing each at the same time. In the second version, Goethe therefore
condensed the horrors of Hades into a single picture of absolute terror.
In the text of the introductory note, it was Manto, daughter of Tiresias,
who guided Faust into the underworld:
All of a sudden Manto covers her protégé with the veil and pushes him off the
path against the rocks, such that he fears he will be asphyxiated and die. Upon
uncovering him soon after, she explains this precaution; the head of the Gorgon,
growing bigger and wider with each century, had been coming towards them
through the canyon; Proserpina likes to keep it away from the festive plateau
because the congregated ghosts and monsters, unnerved by its appearance, would
quickly disperse. Manto herself, of much talent, would not dare to look at it; if
Faust had faced it, he would have been destroyed at once, such that, of his body and
soul, nothing would be found again in the universe. (P 123C, 449)
The origin of this vision of absolute horror, unequalled anywhere in Goethe’s
oeuvre, has of course long been known to philologists: it is the ninth Canto of
Dante’s Inferno. What Odysseus, in the Nekyia episode of the Odyssey, merely
feared – that Proserpina would send the horrendous Gorgon to meet
him1 – is actually experienced by Dante. When Dante suddenly encoun-
ters the Medusa, it is Virgil who covers his eyes:
‘Turn thyself round, and keep thine eyes closed shut,
For if the Gorgon appear, and thou shouldst see it,
No more returning upward would there be.’
Thus said the Master; and he turned me round
Himself, and trusted not unto my hands
So far as not to blind me with his own.2
To convey the horror of the ancient Hades, Goethe returned to the
imaginary inventory of a Christian epic that was otherwise alien to him,
an epic that had created a vision of the horrors of the Christian hell by
populating it even with demons of antiquity. Thus the Medusa, mytho-
logically enriched with the terrible suffering depicted in the Inferno, enters
Goethe’s Hades. Goethe pushed Dante’s imaginary world, however, to a
poetic extreme that was supported neither by ancient myth nor by
Christian theology; instead, it responded to his experience of his own
 Re-defining classicism 159
historical age. This extremity of horror was physically transferred to
Faust’s experience in the presence of the Medusa, even though he never
actually sees her himself. In fact, throughout the entire play, Faust never
comes as close to a violent death as in this unwritten scene.
Goethe heightened the horror of the Medusa in a threefold manner.
Whereas Dante integrated the Gorgon into the Inferno’s well-organized
apparatus of suffering, Goethe isolated her from the other mythological
figures, the ‘ghosts and monsters’ (P 123C, 449). Among the monsters she
has no equal. Were she to appear, she would disrupt at once the festivities of
the ‘Walpurgis Night’. The horror she emanates is absolute, not relative.
Secondly, whereas in ancient mythology the look of the Medusa turns
those she sees into stone, so that the living body becomes a dead sculpture
and is immortalized, the look of Goethe’s Gorgon has the power of
ultimate destruction, approaching the effects of a nuclear bomb. It dis-
solves body and soul into nothingness. This is no longer the ancient
Medusa, but a highly modern force of destruction, equipped with the
annihilating aim of a laser gun that eliminates not only the individual, but
also any concept of the individual. Thirdly, although the devastating
powers of the Medusa are already beyond comprehension, her destructive
potential continues to grow. This vision of horror, created when Goethe
was 27 years old, is eternally expanded and drawn into a totalizing
perspective – when Manto observes that the head of the Gorgon has
been ‘growing bigger and wider with each century’. Goethe’s imagery
was seldom closer than it was here to a fundamental historical pessimism.
Proserpina may have been keeping the Gorgon in Hades, but the Medusa
is vigorously pushed forward into the canyon that leads from the under-
world into the dark fields of history, fields that would be depicted as
battlefields in the second act of Faust ii. This mythical picture suggests
that the destructive horror of the Medusa cannot be kept at bay by the
Enlightenment; it grows uncontrollably, and with it grows the sum of
historical destruction that endangers not just bodies, but souls. It comes as
no surprise, then, that even Faust is scared to death, for any pact with the
devil will seem harmless in comparison with an annihilating power that
develops its destructive potential independently of all contractual rationality.
None of the changes Goethe made to Dante’s invention are explained by the
mythological tradition; nor do we find a draft for those changes in Goethe’s
most important source for mythological knowledge, namely, Benjamin
Hederich’s Gründliches mythologisches Lexikon. The changes are understand-
able, I am suggesting, only as a response by Goethe to his experience of his
own historical times.
160 ernst osterkamp
That Faust’s encounter with the Medusa is crucial for Goethe’s under-
standing of the journey to Hades is further evidenced in the few lines he
actually sketches of their encounter. We hear Faust asking, ‘Why are you
covering me in your coat? And pushing me violently off the path,’ and
Manto answering, ‘I’m saving you from greater harm. / Honour wise
guidance’ (P 161, 531). It is difficult to know how Goethe actually envisaged
the theatrical realization of this encounter with the Medusa. The drafts
suggest only that Faust was to be in the immediate vicinity of her. Goethe
may have planned to let her appear on stage, just as many decades before he
had staged the Earth Spirit. This possibility is further supported by another
paralipomenon from Goethe’s hand that is connected to the scene when
Faust sees ‘something giant and long’ protruding from the dark (P 160, 530).
That Goethe might have wanted this would have meant that the audience
would have suffered what Faust was spared having to face: the petrifying
image of the Medusa. This highlights how radical Goethe’s idea was: in
meeting this mythical picture of absolute horror, the audience would have
been confronted with the ever-growing horror of history from which one
cannot turn one’s gaze. It is suggestive that Goethe envisaged the encounter
in the Hades scene with Proserpina, Queen of the Underworld, very differ-
ently. Two drafts for the second act, dictated in February and June 1830,
show that while the horrible head of the Medusa appears on stage, the
figure of Proserpina always remains veiled (P 125, 510; P 157, 525). The first
draft indicates the reasons for this: ‘Head of the Medusa / Proserpina veiled /
Manto celebrating her beauty’ (P 125, 510). Proserpina is veiled because she
is beautiful, yet beauty has no place in the underworld; hence Proserpina
reveals her beauty only when she returns periodically from the underworld
to the light of day. In the draft for the Hades scene, Goethe casts Medusa
and Proserpina as contrasting figures. The horrors of the inferno appear
with all their power, while beauty hides itself. Yet Hades is the place where
Helena is also housed, so that Medusa and Helena, absolute horror and
absolute beauty, can be seen as contrasting figures. Proserpina and Helena
both show that the earthly existence of beauty is only of short duration, that
beauty must eventually return to the underworld. Horror, however, con-
tinually grows, and there is no Perseus in sight to halt its destructive force.
Towards the end of 1830, Goethe decided to finish the ‘Walpurgis Night’
act not with Faust’s journey to Hades, but rather with Galatea’s maritime
festivities. As a result, the appearance of the Medusa was dropped, and with
it a motif that was meant to connect the ‘Walpurgis Night’ of Faust i
significantly with the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’. In the German
‘Walpurgis Night’, Faust encounters ‘a pale, lovely girl’ (4184) with ‘the
 Re-defining classicism 161
eyes of someone dead’ (4195).3 To stop Faust from recognizing that the girl
is an image of the dead Gretchen, Mephistopheles pretends that it is really
the ‘magic image’ (4190) of the Medusa:
Ihm zu begegnen ist nicht gut;
Vom starren Blick erstarrt des Menschen Blut,
Und er wird fast in Stein verkehrt,
Von der Medusa hast du ja gehört. (4191–4)
It is dangerous to meet up with it;
Its stare congeals a person’s blood
And almost turns him into stone –
You’ve surely heard about Medusa!

For Mephistopheles – whose limited competence in matters of classical

mythology is demonstrated, for example, by his use of the relativizing
adverb ‘almost’ – Medusa is nothing but a mythical quotation, known
from hearsay. As such, she poses no real historical threat. The recall of the
ancient myth is only supposed to cover up the horrendous reality for which
Faust bears responsibility. In the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’, on the other
hand, the myth of the Medusa becomes an allegory for the destructive force
of history that can no longer be tamed. In the first part of the tragedy, the
Medusa myth functions as a deceptive image; in the second part, the myth
reveals its power as an interpretation of history by condensing the destruc-
tive potential of history into a single, tight image.
It would have been surprising had Goethe ignored the Medusa when he
planned, in December 1826, to introduce ‘all the monsters of antiquity’
(P 123, 442) into the ‘Walpurgis Night’ scene, because, in that year, he was
particularly affected by the magic of her. On 21 December 1825, Goethe
finally received a long-awaited copy of the Medusa Rondanini. While in
Rome he had owned a plaster copy. Having received the new copy, as a
present from the Bavarian King Ludwig, Goethe shared this ‘high pleasure’
with many visitors and friends.4 The new copy reminded him of his early
period in Rome, yet his thank-you letter to the king shows just how
dramatically his view of the Medusa Rondanini had changed. In place of
the psychologizing view with which he had sought earlier to capture the
‘antagonism between death and life, between pain and pleasure’ (MA 15,
642) in Medusa’s expression, he now combined historical and symbolic
observations so as to sustain his more mature aesthetic vision, which takes
the depth of the image’s symbolic content to derive from the original age of
the sculpture. The Medusa Rondanini was an early imperial copy of a
Gorgon mask dating back to the fifth century bc. But Goethe referred to
162 ernst osterkamp
it in his letter to the king as a ‘significant, ancient image’ (WA 4:40, 194),
hence a work of art with manifold symbolic content that stems from a
‘mythische Urzeit’. ‘I lift my eyes and see the ominous figure. The head of
Medusa, otherwise threatening in its disastrous effects, appears to me
beneficent and therapeutic’ (WA 4:40, 195).5 Apparently, the poet could
do what Faust was forbidden from doing: he could look at the Medusa and
recognize in her an ‘uraltes’ (ancient) image, which nonetheless symbolized
as ‘ahnungsvollste Gestalt’ (most ominous figure) the problems of his own
times. It was precisely the closeness that the image had to a ‘mythische
Urzeit’ that guaranteed its contemporary historical significance. That this
was so explains, moreover, why only archaic and sub-Olympian mytholog-
ical figures appear in the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’, and why the cultivated
and refined world of Olympus is excluded. The head of the Medusa, so
threatening in the myth, turns into a ‘significant, ancient image’ and, as art,
becomes ‘wohlthätig und heilsam’ just because it displays the power to
interpret history. It is no surprise, then, that this extreme example of an
ancient aesthetics of horror should have assumed a significant place in the
‘Walpurgis Night’ scene.
The process I have described was characteristic of Goethe’s general
artistic attitude towards the mythical creatures in the ‘Classical Walpurgis
Night’: he used the timelessness of myths for his own purposes and trans-
formed the archaic creatures into contemporaries. These figures, rather than
Olympian gods, assumed a significant and ominous appearance. Goethe
sees in them what he sees in the Medusa: significant ancient images that
reflect upon his own age. Thus Faust, upon initially encountering the
mythical appearance of ‘what’s ugly and fantastic’ (7157) – the Sphinxes
and Sirens, the Ants and Griffons that populate the Pharsalian Fields –
relives the experience that Goethe himself had when he unwrapped the copy
of the Medusa Rondanini. Seeing the archaic monsters is not threatening.
Rather, it proves surprisingly beneficial and therapeutic; they are significant
symbols of humanity’s unresolved problem. Faust says:
Wie wunderbar! Das Anschaun tut mir Gnüge,
Im Widerwärtigen große tüchtige Züge.
Ich ahne schon ein günstiges Geschick;
Wohin versetzt mich dieser ernste Blick?
. . . Vom frischen Geiste fühl’ ich mich durchdrungen,
Gestalten groß, groß die Erinnerung. (7181–90)
How strange that contemplation satisfies me thus –
Even in ugliness there’s strength and grandeur!
Transported by this solemn spectacle,
 Re-defining classicism 163
I sense already that the future is auspicious.
. . . I feel sustained by new vitality –
The forms are grand, and grand what they recall.

Faust looks at the archaic and sub-Olympian creatures of the ‘Classical

Walpurgis Night’ as instantiating the central notion of Goethe’s morpho-
logy, namely, Gestalt. From his letter to King Ludwig we know Goethe saw
the Medusa similarly. The creatures may be ugly, yet they are fully shaped,
organic wholes. Faust expresses their special significance by using in just a
few lines of description the epithet ‘grand’ three times and the term
‘strength’ once. Goethe could not have expressed his appreciation with
higher words. But just as Goethe projects his own positive view of the
‘ugly’ mythological creatures onto Faust, who is so hungry for beauty, so
Mephisto’s sarcastic response to Faust’s sudden sympathy for the archaic
and fabulous creatures could just as well have been aimed at Goethe:
Sonst hättest Du dergleichen weggeflucht,
Doch jetzo scheint es dir zu frommen . . . (7191–2)
Time was you’d have abominated shapes like these
Yet now you seem to thrive on them.

Mephistopheles is right about both Faust and Goethe – both would have
‘abominated’ such images in times past. At the time of the Propyläen,
when Goethe wrote the first draft of the Helena act as a ‘Satirical Drama’
with the title ‘Helena im Mittelalter’ (Helena in the Middle Ages), his
classicism combined the notion of Gestalt with principles of internal law
and harmony. The notion of form thus coincides with the notion of ideal
beauty. In the 1798 introduction to the Propyläen, Goethe wrote:
‘Comparative anatomy has united all organic natures under one idea; it
leads us from form to form, and while we contemplate near or far-removed
natures, we rise above them all, to see their individualities in one ideal’
(MA 6:2, 15).6 The aesthetic classicism implied here was intended to force
upon the human figure more beautiful proportions, ‘the nobler forms, the
higher characters’, and stay within ‘the circle of symmetry, excellence,
significance and perfection’ (MA 6:2, 17).7 From this perspective, the irreg-
ular, the ugly and the repulsive conflicted with the notion of Gestalt. During
and after his classicist decade, Goethe’s conception of Gestalt was dominated
by a notion of ideal beauty that he drew from antiquity. He went so far as to
say that German artists who are unable to draw on ancient art or copies of
such art would find ‘the transition from the Formless to Form . . . hard, nay
almost impossible’ (MA 6:2, 19).8
164 ernst osterkamp
In the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’, the situation changed fundamentally.
Among the panoply of mythological figures which Goethe ordered onto the
stage, one certainly looks in vain for beautiful proportions and noble shapes,
regularity and perfection; we do not see these again until we reach the final
scene, ‘Rocky Inlets of the Aegean Sea’. And yet, in their ultimate ugliness
and irregularity, these creatures embody the grandeur and liveliness, i.e., the
very characteristics of the forms that Goethe, in his classicist period,
attributes to ideal beauty. Thus Mephistopheles’ objection that ‘Time was
you’d have abominated shapes like these / Yet now you seem to thrive on
them’ is completely justified.
What has changed here? Did Goethe give up his classicist credo to
propound in Faust ii a romantic aesthetics of ugliness? This is unlikely,
not least because, if that had been his intention, he would have avoided the
world of antiquity altogether. Instead, both the second and third acts are
dominated by the encounter of modernity with the figures of antiquity.
Goethe radically expands the range of characters drawn from antiquity to
reach beyond the scope of ideal beauty. He reveals the fundamental change
in the relation of modernity to antiquity and by doing so redefines his
classicism. This change was a necessary response to something apparently
urgent in Goethe’s view, the fact that in his artistic endeavours he had to
accommodate his contemporary historical experience, the sort of experi-
ence, I have been arguing, that he put into the image of the Medusa.
During the classical decade, Goethe’s classicism was primarily founded
on Johann Joachim Winckelmann’s work, which idealized Ancient Greece.
Yet Goethe also paid close attention to, and absorbed into his work, the
rapid advances and conclusions of contemporary archaeology. Despite
the strongly normative component that remained part of Goethe’s art
criticism until his death, the concept of antiquity he used was dynamic
and flexible, caught up, as it was, in the tensions between classicist
aesthetics and aesthetic historicism. Goethe remained surprisingly faithful
to the maxim that ‘we are to depart as little as possible from classical
ground’ (MA 6:2, 9),9 the maxim he offered in the introduction to the
Propyläen. But the archaeological ground was rapidly expanding and being
restructured; its excavation led to many surprising discoveries. Goethe
profited enormously from this expansion; it deeply affected the under-
standing of the classics during the early decades of the new century. One
could almost think of the ‘classical ground’ Goethe did not want to
depart from as volcanic terrain; and yet Goethe, the anti-volcanist, stood
steadfast on the shifting ground, continuously enriching his image of
classical antiquity with the newest discoveries.
 Re-defining classicism 165
Goethe was remarkably open to any new finding or discovery, even if it
contradicted his aesthetic maxims. He stood in sharp contrast to dogmatic
classicists like Johann Heinrich Voß, who focused on Homer and the
autonomy of Greek mythology and wanted to maintain the purity of the
classical ground. In his battle with Friedrich Creuzer’s romantic investi-
gation of myths, Voß declared that all images of demons with wings,
grimaces and mixed imagery were post-classical signs of aesthetic decline.10
Goethe was willing, rather, to adapt his principles to the findings, so that
his Greece of 1830 could not be what it had been in 1800.11 Following
the archaeological advances, Goethe began to see Greece as more archaic
and historical than he had hitherto; his view, one might say, became less
idealized and more scientific or empirical. Goethe must have been pleased
with this development: the more scientific approach to Greece accorded
well with Winckelmann’s general research programme.
The new archaeological surveys of the classical ground shaped the aes-
thetic form of the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’. In its textual landscape, one
finds both an archaic and a historical terrain; each of the ‘ugly and fantastic’
ancient monsters that return, if not to light then at least to life, demonstrate
the depths of their archaic existence. Yet they also accord with modern
archaeological knowledge. No surprise is it then that these figures are all
ironists, for how else could one bridge the gap between the archaic and the
modern consciousness of being archaic? The ancient ghosts are, on the one
hand, timeless, like archaic pre-classical myths; on the other hand, they are
historical through and through, because philology has finally come to
recognize them as the archaic pre-classical, and, as they are not time-
bound, they are completely aware of being identified as archaic. ‘Our line
died out before her time’ (7197) is how the Sphinxes respond to Faust’s
question about Helena, which is to say, self-reflexively and conscious of
their historical position. On the other hand, Chiron, when confronted with
Faust’s bookish knowledge about Helena’s age, offers a sharp aside about
the ‘philologists’ (7426) and insists on the timelessness of myths protected
by the creative power of poetry: ‘poets ignore constraints of time’ (7433).
This double character of the ancient monsters, their archaic timelessness
and historical self-consciousness, means that Faust and Mephisto must
struggle to position themselves in the ironic textual landscape of the
‘Classical Walpurgis Night’. Without a guide, they would be lost. But if
the archaic and the historical jointly define the landscape of the ‘Classical
Walpurgis Night’, there is no room in it for the classical notion of ideal
beauty: in the second act, Proserpina only appears behind veils, while
Helena has no place at all.
166 ernst osterkamp
For Goethe, the ‘ugly and the fantastic’, the ‘repulsive’ and demonic
cannot be expelled from the classical ground in the way Voß suggested;
instead, all of Goethe’s efforts aim aesthetically at integrating the counter-
classical moment into the classical. This is consistent with the high accord the
fine arts find in Goethe’s image of antiquity. Winckelmann’s notion of ideal
beauty was shaped by the canon of sculptures from the fourth century bc that
were passed on to Goethe’s contemporaries through Roman copies of the
Greek originals. This notion, however, became indefensible in the face of
the discoveries, publications and exhibitions of Greek originals – the
Parthenon sculptures, the Bassae temple frieze in London, the archaic
Aegines in Munich, to mention only the most prominent examples.
However great Goethe’s misgivings were about the aesthetic appearances of
some of these works, he was always willing in the end to modify his judge-
ment and accept the empirical evidence. In a conversation with Eckermann
on 21 February 1831, in which Eckermann praised him for the ‘Sharply
outlined individualities’ of the ghosts, Goethe acknowledged the importance
of the fine arts for his conception of the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’. Here one
sees that Goethe’s judgement is derived from new evidence he has of
antiquity’s artworks. ‘Without a life-long interest in the fine arts, Goethe
said, this would have been impossible for me’ (MA 19, 417). Using the ancient
artworks as examples, his mythological monsters now gain their plastic
physicality. They gain a sensual presence and precisely the same ‘ahnungs-
vollste Gestalt’ (most ominous figure) that Goethe saw and praised in the
Medusa Rondanini. For Goethe, such characteristics differ sharply from the
more formless and amorphous ones of the romantic ghosts of the north.
Goethe underscored the point to Eckermann on 24 January 1830, stating that
for the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’ he chose only those mythological figures
‘that made the right kind of figurative impression’ (MA 19, 535). ‘Figurative’
refers here to the fully formed bodily presence that the arts of antiquity gave
to all mythical figures, and through which Goethe was able to integrate the
‘ugly and fantastic’ into his dramatic universe. As he said to Eckermann on
21 March 1830: ‘I have striven to show everything in clear outline, in the
ancient sense; and that nothing vague, uncertain be present that may be
agreeable to the romantic method’ (MA 19, 367).
Goethe’s guidance from antiquity was not limited to his depiction of
individual mythological characters; he also tried to find ways to expand the
canon of representation, to include the ugly and the repulsive, without
abandoning the examples set by antiquity. Goethe’s ‘Letter to Counsellor
and Director Sickler’, written in 1812, is particularly important for under-
standing Faust ii. Here, Goethe develops an iconographic interpretation of a
 Re-defining classicism 167
three-piece stucco relief which Sickler had found in 1809 in a tomb near
Cumae. Two of the reliefs show a woman dancing before an audience,
although the backdrops in each differ; the third depicts three skeletons also
in a dancing pose. Goethe regarded the reliefs as the plastic decoration of the
tomb of a female dancer. In the first picture, she is a beautiful young woman
who is the ‘crowning attraction at a banquet’; in the second, she performs a
sort of death dance ‘in the dismal realm of the lemurs’; finally, in the third,
she is in the underworld. Here she has regained her beautiful body and
dances in tragic poses (MA 9, 621).12 Goethe became intensely interested in
the reliefs again in October 1831 when better copies were made available.
The lemurs of the final act, ‘patched-together, half-live creatures / Of sinew,
ligament and bone’ (11513–14), were particularly vivid reminders of the
influence the piece would have on Goethe’s conception of Faust ii. For
our purposes, the most important consequence of this case was the aesthetic
conclusions which Goethe drew from the relief, for they contrasted strongly
with the classicism of the Propyläen, which had demanded that art be
exclusively guided by the classical notion of ideal beauty. In his letter to
Sickler, Goethe thus wrote:
Art, which is god-like in that it ennobles and elevates, will not reject the repulsive
and the loathsome. It is here where it will exert its divine prerogative. But it has only
one way of doing so: art can only master ugliness by treating it comically. Zeuxis
comes to mind, who is said to have died from laughter at his supremely ugly
rendering of Hecuba. (MA 9, 624)

Faust’s author was sticking to the maxim, borrowed from antiquity, that
through the comic even ugliness can be subjected to the ‘divine prerogative’
of ‘god-like’ art. He did not die of laughter while he wrote the ‘Classical
Walpurgis Night’; and yet, this act, populated by the ugliest creatures that
appear anywhere in his oeuvre, is one of the merriest of Goethe’s texts. In
Faust, humour, satire and irony became the means to integrate ugliness into
art. The principles of representation that shape ancient artworks, such as the
Medusa Rondanini and the reliefs from Cumae, expand Goethe’s classicism
to allow it to assimilate unbeautiful works of art. These works stand outside
the classical canon. Their force rests on two features: on the one hand,
on the plasticity of form that the monsters display and, on the other hand,
on the transformation of the ugly by the comical. Goethe’s maxim to
‘depart as little as possible from classical ground’ gives him licence to
incorporate into the classical the ugly and the repulsive. Throughout,
Goethe was fully aware that the continuous expansion of the classical
paradigm and the increasing historicizing of ‘classical ground’ which had
168 ernst osterkamp
resulted from the advances of archaeology were going to undermine the
traditional norms of classicism. He fully acknowledged this in his article on
the tomb of the female dancer, and by doing so helped further to historicize
antiquity. ‘Indeed, I must confess that the lemurian jest simply does not
seem genuinely Greek to me. I am more inclined to say it dates back to those
times from which the older and the younger Philostratos got their more or
less fictive stories, their poetic and rhetorical descriptions.’13 The norm of
the ‘genuinely Greek’ is undermined by history; Goethe contributed to this
undermining when, in 1818, he published his version of Philostratos’ third-
century descriptions of a picture gallery. His aim here was to make antiquity
attractive to the young artists who had joined the Romantic camp. Quite
simply, he did this by bringing to their attention pictorial themes from late
antiquity that had put the horrible, discordant and ugly centre stage.14
The tensions between the ‘genuinely Greek’ and the ‘lemurian jest’,
between ideal beauty and ugly form, between norm and history that
Goethe identified in the three reliefs had a real impact on Faust ii. They
appeared as the artistic upshots of an increasingly historicized ‘classical
ground’; he modelled Faust ii on what he had learned. He called the
combination of the three reliefs a ‘humorous stroke of genius from
antiquity, whose magical power interposes a ghostly farce between a
human drama and a spiritual tragedy, interjects a grotesquery between
the beautiful and the sublime’ (MA 9, 624). One could similarly describe
the artistic constellation of the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’ as a humorous
stroke of genius from antiquity. This scene is the ‘ghostly farce’ between
the ‘human drama’ of the first part of the play and the ‘spiritual tragedy’ of
the Helena act. The ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’ is the ‘grotesquery
between the beautiful and the sublime’; it is the humorous intermezzo
that mediates between the historical world of Faust i and the timeless
norm of ideal beauty that briefly appears in the Helena act. Goethe not
only borrowed the humorous integration of the ugly and the repulsive
from the ancient arts, he also took over their modes of representation in
order to achieve a dramatic integration of disparate elements. The second
part of Faust ii is marked by the connection of humane drama and
grotesque tragedy, of mythical and historical action. Although the tragedy
may seem extremely modern, and certainly appears an unlikely instance of
classicism, its author never sensed that he had departed aesthetically or
artistically from the ‘classical ground’.
The role that antiquity plays in Faust ii does not just reveal the internal
dynamics of Goethe’s conception of classicism; as a moment in the history
of theatre, this is also when classicism is finally displaced by historicism. In
 Re-defining classicism 169
Faust ii, Goethe borrows from antiquity in the same way contemporary
architecture and painting help themselves to the unlimited reservoir of
past ideas and pictures, of historical material and past styles. Friedrich
Schinkel added a Greek temple façade to his design for a Gothic cathedral;
similarly, in Faust ii, antiquity, the Middle Ages and modernity are so
closely interconnected that archaic monsters can only make themselves
understood if they use the modern idiom of verse rhyme. It is certainly
true that for a very long time historicism did not shed the idea that antiquity
was a particularly privileged period in the history of art and humanity; yet
historicism could not and would not derive a normative conception of art
from this conviction. This is the stylistic attitude expressed in the antiquity
that figures in the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’ and the Helena act. In Faust,
antiquity is still a happy period for humanity; yet it does not reveal a
standard for future aesthetics; nor does it offer an understanding of ideal
beauty that could be binding. Both aesthetic norms and standards of beauty
submit to the universal pressure towards historicizing the past. One can
thus justifiably say that Faust ii is the greatest poetic masterpiece of aesthetic
historicism.
How does this aesthetic historicism affect the notion of ancient ideal
beauty that had dominated Goethe’s poetic oeuvre and aesthetic thought
for half a century? Could such a notion still influence an age in which the
Medusa grows inexorably, in which ugliness advances from all sides? It is a
sign of the genius of Goethe’s tragedy that it focuses on the situation of
beauty in modern times with an unparalleled analytical clarity. Here, beauty
becomes a phantasmagoria. The ancient notion of ideal beauty and kaloka-
gathia no longer counts as an aesthetically adequate representation of the
ultimate goal of a fulfilled humanity that classicism transposed from the
utopian Ancient Greek past to modernity. At best, these are historical
quotations or residues of classicist dreams. The relation between the
‘Classical Walpurgis Night’ and the Helena act reveals the precarious
situation of classical ideal beauty under conditions of modernity.
When, in 1830, Goethe imagined where the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’
would be set, he did not think of it as a mythical but as a historical Greek
location (the only exception is the final scene in the rocky inlets of the
Aegean Sea, where the mythical creatures transform into symbols of natural
forces). This shift from the mythical to the historical reflects the actual
condition of Greece at the time: as a country, it was no longer defined by the
longings of German artists who, instead of visiting it, consumed its liter-
ature and art. Greece had entered the historical stage. In February 1830, the
political powers of Europe agreed to the constitution of the independent
170 ernst osterkamp
state of Hellas. ‘Realpolitik’ had substituted history for ideals. The play
mirrors the reality insofar as it characterizes the Greece of the ‘Walpurgis
Night’ as a battlefield – as Greece had been a battlefield for more than a
decade in the wars of liberation against the Turks. The first location for the
‘Walpurgis Night’ is the plain near Pharsalus, where in 48 bc the civil war
between Caesar and Pompey was decided. The second location, on the
Peneus, is – incorrectly – described by Chiron as the battlefield where
Macedonians and Romans met in 168 bc: ‘Between the Peneus, on our
right, and on our left, / Olympus, Rome confronted Greece’ (7465).
Ancient Greece is thus rescued from the timelessness of the ideal and
drawn into the movement of history. There, all countries are subject to
the same laws recited at the start of the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’ by the
Thessalic witch Erichtho:
Wie oft schon wiederholt sich’s! Wird sich immerfort
In’s Ewige wiederholen . . . Keiner gönnt das Reich
Dem Andern, dem gönnt’s keiner der’s mit Kraft erwarb
Und kräftig herrscht. (7012–15)
How often it has been repeated! And it must
Recur eternally. Each wants to rule alone
And, holding power gained through power, neither yields
It to the other.

In these lines, Greece loses its special status as the home of a utopian past;
Ancient Greece disappears in the ‘darkness’ of universal history. Here is an
example of ‘how power always meets some power greater still’ (7019).
The characters that inhabit the landscape of the ideal transformed into
history correspond to this vision of the world. The realistic, historical
ground can no longer give birth to ideal Gestalt, although Goethe can still
bring forth from it the ancient ghosts that remain in tense harmony with the
discoveries of archaeology. These archaic-pre-classical creatures are mythical
virtuosi of disillusionment; they clean out the classical dream of an ideal
beauty that originated on Olympus; they do so all the more easily because
this dream was never dreamt in their mythical realms. They mirror the
expansion of the classical canon that was achieved by historical research into
myths. As a result of the bitter feud between Friedrich Creuzer and
Gottfried Hermann, this research was itself a battlefield, but this made it
all the more impossible to ignore the mythological findings. Archaeology
had made it impossible to limit the representation of Greek antiquity to the
Olympian aristocracy and its beau idéal. More and more layers of myths
came to the surface, and the ever-growing range of mythical creatures from
 Re-defining classicism 171
all the different historical layers contributed to the displacement of the
old European ideal of beauty by a pluralistic, historicized aesthetics. Goethe
was aware that this aesthetic development mirrored the simultaneous
political process by which modern republicanism displaced the monarchies.
After all, the revolutionary fervour of July 1830 in France was already in the
air when Goethe had conceived of the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’. As
Eckermann noted on 21 February 1831: ‘The old Walpurgis Night, said
Goethe, is monarchical, since the devil is there respected throughout as
a decided leader. But the Classical Walpurgis Night is thoroughly repub-
lican; since all stand equally beside one another, so that each is as prominent
as his associates, and nobody is subordinate to or affected by the rest’
(MA 19, 416).
Historicism’s stylistic pluralism is the aesthetic result of the dis-
placement of monarchy by republicanism. Here, one style is as prominent
and valuable as another; the ‘strange’ (7078) can stand near the ‘ugly
and fantastic’ (7157), the ‘repulsive’ (7182) is on a par with the sensually
pleasurable; anyone can show their own ‘strength and grandeur’ (7182).
The second act of Faust ii prefigures the aesthetic ‘Walpurgis Night’ of the
historicist and bourgeois nineteenth century that had been brought about
both by art history and archaeology and by fundamental political revolu-
tions. Below the surface of the new century, however, Goethe already saw
the Medusa growing.
The third act answers the question of how the beautiful ideal could
survive the stylistic pluralism of historicism and the simultaneous increase
in historical conflict. In the modern age, the classical, and with it the notion
of ideal beauty, turns into phantasmagoria. As the Helena act shows, it takes
a gigantic effort to revive the ancient ideal of beauty under the conditions of
modernity. The effort must be at least as great if we are to keep it alive for
any amount of time against the modern dominance of ugliness exempli-
fied by Mephisto–Phorkyas. Goethe gave the subtitle ‘Classical-Romantic
Phantasmagoria’ to the first edition of the Helena act, and, indeed, the
effect is dreamlike and deceptive when Goethe revives the highest beauty of
antiquity in a Middle Ages that are themselves already a modern phantas-
magoria. All is ‘a dream, and time and space have fled’ (9414) – this is how
Faust puts it at the end of his conversation with Helena, the embodiment of
ideal beauty. And just before the fall of Euphorion, Helena and Faust jointly
ask, ‘Is the joy we share a dream?’ (9883).
In Goethe’s final great work, the classical ideal of beauty, the normative
standard for all the classical ideas of artistic and philosophical renewal,
becomes real – but only as a phantasmagoria. The ideal is conjured up in
172 ernst osterkamp
the play like the central hope that nostalgic lovers do not want to part with,
although they recognize that it is not realizable. In this historic tumult of
stylistic quotations ideal beauty has no chance of survival. Helena, as
representative of ideal beauty, is revived repeatedly by the nostalgic
followers of the classical ideal of humanity who inhabit schools and
universities, theatres and academies; but she has lost her power. The
historical resistance to the realization of the humanistic dreams that
inspires the German classics grows in conjunction with the sum of all
things ugly and repulsive. The dream may be conjured up over and over
again; ultimately it disappears in the Hades of classical proverbs. The
Helena act shows how the dream of ideal beauty, the embodiment of
perfect humanity, descends into the shadowy realm of intellectual pro-
grammes. All the while historical reality follows the completely different
laws that are depicted in Acts 1, 4 and 5 of Faust ii – the laws of economy,
of military might and of technological progress. The dream of realizing the
ideal of humanity gains, in modernity, the reality status of a classical-
romantic phantasmagoria. Helena descends inexorably into the under-
world. And inexorably the Medusa grows.

notes
I would like to thank Daniel Viehoff for his kind help with the translation of this
essay.
1. See Karl Reinhardt, ‘Die klassische Walpurgisnacht. Entstehung und
Bedeutung’, in Tradition und Geist. Gesammelte Essays zur Dichtung, ed. Carl
Becker, Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1960, 309–56; esp. 312.
2. Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, trans. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,
New York: AMS Press, 1966, 61–2.
3. All further references to Faust are by line number from FT.
4. See the accounts in Ernst Grumach, Goethe und die Antike, eine Sammlung,
Potsdam: Walter de Gruyter, 1949, ii, 539–42, and in Max Wegner, Goethes
Anschauung antiker Kunst, Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 1944, 53 f. The quote from the
thank-you note to the king is taken from Grumach, Antike, ii, 541.
5. Quotation follows Grumach, Antike, ii, 541.
6. Translation follows J. W. Goethe, Essays on Art, trans. Samuel Gray Ward,
Boston: James Munroe and Company, 1845, 9.
7. Ibid., 12.
8. Ibid., 15.
9. Ibid., 2.
10. Johann Heinrich Voß, Antisymbolik, Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1824 and 1826.
See Reinhardt, ‘Die klassische Walpurgisnacht’, 338.
11. For an overview of the change in Goethe’s perception of antiquity leading up to
Faust ii that is still readable today, see Richard Alewyn’s essay ‘Goethe und die
 Re-defining classicism 173
Antike’, in his Probleme und Gestalten. Essays, Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1982,
255–70.
12. Goethe’s Essays on Art and Architecture, ed. John Gearey, New York: Suhrkamp,
1986, 29 ff.
13. Ibid., 627.
14. See Ernst Osterkamp, Im Buchstabenbilde: Studien zum Verfahren Goethescher
Bildbeschreibungen, Stuttgart: Metzler, 1991, 185–223.
 chapter 12

Diabolical entrapment: Mephisto, the angels and

the homoerotic in Goethe’s Faust ii
W. Daniel Wilson

The major works of German erotic literature in the eighteenth century

included crucial homoerotic moments, and sometimes much more than
moments. The most important of these are: Christoph Martin Wieland’s
Comische Erzählungen of 1765, one of which was the tale Juno und
Ganymede, omitted in later editions; Wilhelm Heinse’s notorious novel
Ardinghello, not to mention his translation of Petronius’ Satyricon with a
translator’s preface defending homosexuality;1 Goethe’s Römische Elegien,
one of the central works of Weimar classicism; and Friedrich Schlegel’s
novel Lucinde, the major document of sexual liberation in the Romantic
generation. To be sure, these works generally portray ‘Greek love’ as
contrary to nature and valorize heterosexuality; homosexuality is often
treated only as a stepping-stone in the hero’s development to heterosexual
safety. The only work that openly treats homoerotic love on a par with
heterosexual love is the obscure novel by Duke August of Saxe-Gotha-
Altenburg, Ein Jahr in Arkadien (1805). However, the canonical authors
obviously felt compelled to include homosexual love among the varieties of
sexuality, even if they ultimately adopted a traditional Christian stance
towards it.
Goethe has something of a special place in the various intersecting
discourses on homosexuality, both in his life and his works. It is now
generally agreed that Goethe had a remarkably liberal attitude towards
‘Greek love’ – commensurate with his reputation as a pagan. Most striking
is the letter from Italy to his close friend, Duke Carl August of Weimar, at a
time when he was confronted with uncloseted homosexuality on a large
scale in Rome. Here he remarks on:
a peculiar phenomenon that I’ve never seen as prominent as here: love between
men. Assuming that it is rarely pushed to the highest degree of sensuality, but
rather remains in the middle range of affection and passion, I can say that I’ve been

174
 Diabolical entrapment 175
able to see with my own eyes the most beautiful manifestations of it, which we only
know from Greek sources (see Herder’s Ideen, vol. iii, 171). I have been able to
observe its physical and moral aspects as an alert observer of nature. It is a subject
that can hardly be talked about, much less written about, so I’ll save it for future
conversations.2
While Goethe seems to explain homosexual love as a replacement for
unavailable heterosexual contacts, and of course takes on the air of a
distanced researcher, complete with a learned reference to his friend
Herder,3 he shows remarkable appreciation of the homosexual scene in
Rome and obvious fascination with it.
This fascination is also apparent among others in his early Weimar circle.
Recall that in his first few months there, Goethe, the 18-year-old duke, Carl
Ludwig von Knebel, Carl von Seckendorff and others staged a full-fledged
revolt against courtly propriety, riding around the countryside raising hell
and sleeping together under the stars in the woods – a more prototypical
male-bonding, homosocial experience can hardly be imagined. The rela-
tionship between Goethe and Carl August was apparently especially inti-
mate and has been described by the psychoanalyst Kurt Eissler as latently
homosexual.4 And a still-unpublished letter of Carl August to Knebel (who
had been the duke’s tutor) shows that homoerotic love must have been
discussed in this group: ‘I want to tell you about a bon mot of
D’Ablancourt: At a certain place Jupiter says of Ganymede: “qu’il vouloit
lui donner dix baisers.” Now, the translator says in a footnote . . .: “il n’y a
dans l’original que deux baisers, mais dix ont plus de force”.’5
Even before he came to Weimar, Goethe had published his famous poem
‘Ganymed’ – although the homoerotic discourse is still rarely mentioned in
commentaries on the poem. Around the same time, Goethe had also written
a nasty satire on Wieland entitled Götter, Helden und Wieland, and here,
alluding to Wieland’s previously mentioned story Juno and Ganymede,
which, as we saw, supposedly provoked a flowering of gay culture in
Germany, Goethe refers obliquely to Wieland as ‘Ganymede’s tutor’
(MA 1:1, 683).6 In the context of the play, this passage seems to have a
mildly homophobic flavour,7 but it also shows the almost casual treatment
of this theme, which is typical for the eighteenth century. The catalogue of
Goethe’s collection of priapic and erotic art and objects (first published in
1992) includes a drawing of a man being penetrated anally by a typical
ancient statue of Priapos. The editors suggest it is a rape scene, consistent
with a tradition of erotic poetry to which Goethe also contributed in the
aforementioned passage of the Römische Elegien. However, the man’s hat
and stick are neatly leaning against the statue, and his arm is wrapped
176 w. daniel wilson
around the statue’s neck, indicating to me that there is nothing here but
consensual anal sex with an immobile priapic statue.
Finally, there is Goethe’s relationship with his male servant, Philipp
Seidel, which was certainly described by Seidel as homoerotic. In a letter
from 1777, at a time when they shared the same bedroom, Seidel writes to a
friend in Frankfurt about Goethe:
Oh if only I could give up my soul in love to this man and were worthy to thank
God, who gives me so much bliss to enjoy with him. Our relationship is just like
that of man and wife. In just this way, I love him and he me, I serve him in this way,
and he exercises just this authority over me. But why do I commit to paper what is a
holy, dear secret?8

The sum of this evidence suggests a homosexual subculture in classical

Weimar, or, at the very least, demonstrable fascination with homoerotic
themes in this circle of men – none of whom, it might be added, was
conventionally and monogamously married at this time.
This fascination with homoeroticism makes its mark in Goethe’s works,
even if it has received due attention only since the 1990s. One of the
Venezianische Epigramme that Goethe left unpublished consists of this
bold distich:
Knaben liebt ich wohl auch doch lieber sind mir die Mädchen
Hab’ ich als Mädchen sie satt, dient sie als Knabe mir noch.9
Well, I suppose I’ve loved boys as well; but girls are much better.
When she’s lost charm as a girl, give her a turn as a boy.
Since the Epigramme are almost all frankly confessional, it is difficult to
explain away this brazen valorization of pederasty and anal sex as merely a
literary pose. But even if it is, it carries considerable weight as an effort to
make ‘Greek love’ acceptable – although Goethe shied away from publish-
ing it. More relevant, perhaps, are passages from more major works that
scholars have increasingly seen in queer terms – the relationships between
men, for example, in over-the-top masculinist plays like Götz von
Berlichingen or Egmont, not to mention amazing passages in such canonical
works as Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre and the West-östlicher Divan.10
And then there are Goethe’s defences of the publicly known homosexuals
of his day, the Swiss historian Johannes von Müller and particularly Johann
Joachim Winckelmann, who has been called the founder of modern art
history and who laid part of the aesthetic groundwork for Weimar classi-
cism. There is some evidence that, as Paul Derks claims, even in Goethe’s
account literary classicism owed its ideal of beauty to a homosexual who was
 Diabolical entrapment 177
able to develop this ideal and convey it so effectively because of his
sexual orientation.11 Goethe did this in his book Winkelmann und sein
Jahrhundert (1805), in which he included previously unpublished letters
of Winckelmann’s and added an empathetic interpretive essay. Goethe
doesn’t shy away from the theme of homosexuality, devoting a section of
the essay to it under the heading ‘Freundschaft’. Referring to ‘friendship
among people of the male sex’, Goethe writes: ‘Winckelmann felt that he
was born for a friendship of this kind, not only capable of it, but in need of it
in the highest degree; he sensed his own self only in the form of friendship,
he knew himself only in the image of a whole made complete by a third
one.’12 Thus he indicates clearly that Winckelmann considered his homo-
sexual desires innate, and Goethe seems to accept this interpretation; later,
he doesn’t hesitate to stress that Winckelmann was ‘happy’ in this love –
referring to the unperturbed felicity that, indeed, is one of the most striking
features of Winckelmann’s ‘Greek love’ as he practised it in Italy.13
Furthermore, Goethe suggests that Winckelmann’s queer ‘nature’ was in
many ways superior to others’. In the section ‘Antike’, he portrays Greek life
as happily unalienated, the very image of totality and integration. ‘Feeling
was not yet fragmented’, Goethe writes of antiquity – perhaps hinting at the
core aesthetic project of Weimar classicism as enunciated by Schiller in his
Aesthetische Briefe. And I think we might find here a suggestion that desire,
too, was not yet fragmented when Goethe adds: ‘Such an ancient nature . . .
had reappeared in the person of Winckelmann’ (MA 6:2, 352). Hovering
over these sections of the essay is the charged question of whether ‘Greek
love’ was ‘natural’, and it seems clear that Goethe leans towards a positive
response.
The same attitude can be seen in his conversation on 7 April 1830, at the
age of 80. This conversation holds particular importance for our central
subject, a scene from the second part of Faust. The interlocutor reports:

The conversation turned to Greek love, Johannes Müller etc. He [Goethe] argued
that this aberration actually was based on the fact that the man, in purely aesthetic
terms, is, after all, much more beautiful, superior, more complete than woman.
Once it had arisen, such a feeling then can easily veer off into the animalistic, the
coarsely material. Pederasty is as old as humanity, and we can therefore say that it is
in nature, although it is against nature.14

The last phrase seems more like a conventional nod at standard mores; the
rhetorical thrust of the entire passage amounts to a defence of Greek love as
natural. The argument from the supposed superior beauty of men – an
ancient topos – suggests, too, that same-sex desire is part of nature, even if
178 w. daniel wilson
the mention of lower animal drives tends to evoke deviance. Central to
Goethe’s view is that this desire, even if it is deviant, is part of nature.
It is important to reinsert this conversation in its historical setting. There is
no indication how the conversation turned to Greek love, but I think that
Paul Derks is right to suggest that it was partly based on the highly public feud
following the known homosexual poet August von Platen’s attack on
Heinrich Heine, and Heine’s reply in the witty but homophobic satire in
Die Bäder von Lucca. (We know that Goethe knew about this conflict, since
he had referred to it a few weeks earlier in a conversation with Eckermann.)15
Thus, in his conversation on ‘Männerliebe’, Goethe took up the cause of
homosexuality when it was under massive attack. Those attacks had begun in
earnest in 1807, not only in response to Goethe’s championing of
Winckelmann in his essay of 1805, but in a politically charged campaign
against the supposedly treasonous homosexual Johannes Müller, who seemed
to support Napoleon’s rule after the end of the old empire in 1806. The
attacks on Müller, one of the most celebrated historians of his day, were
venemous, for the first time bringing nationalism to bear on the interpreta-
tion of homosexuality (at the same time, incidentally, when antisemitism also
took on a particularly modern virulence). Goethe not only defended Müller
(though without mentioning the issue of Greek love), he also befriended and
supported him when the historian visited Weimar.
It is clear, I hope, from all this evidence that Goethe had a very broad-
minded attitude towards ‘Greek love’, having befriended one of its adher-
ents (Müller), possibly practised it himself (Carl August and Seidel),
described it in glowing terms as ‘beautiful’ at a time when it was under
vicious attack (the Winckelmann essay) and portrayed it casually as part of
normal sexuality (the epigram and the conversation with Eckermann).
However, the question arises: if this is so, how could Goethe have por-
trayed, in the penultimate scene of his most important work, same-sex
desire as something devilish, as ‘absurd’, ‘base’ and ‘foolish’? While the
‘Interment’ scene in the second part of Faust is certainly complicated, even
grotesque (the term most often used for it), I shall argue that it hardly
shows – as the critics assert – that in Goethe’s eyes homosexuality was
‘perverse’, ‘unnatural’ or even ‘evil’.16
The scene contains all sorts of ‘queerness’. It begins with lemurs from the
previous scene, burying Faust’s remains – but the lemurs themselves are sort
of undead: they are ‘half-natures’ (11514),17 they reside ‘in a region of decay
and half-deadness’.18 Faust, too, is supposedly dead, but Mephisto casts
doubt on this deadness when he raises the Enlightenment’s widely discussed
question of when you can really tell whether a person is dead. Such
 Diabolical entrapment 179
half-dead half-natures already evoke gender trouble through their analogous
blurring of distinctions. And in these lines, queer desire is alluded to when
Mephisto uses sexually laden terms to describe his desire for dead bodies, in
this case the body of a man; the word lüstern, as we shall see, is used later in
the scene in a homoerotic sense and is used here in a series of double-
entendres: ‘I’ve often coveted some limbs in rigor mortis – / It was only an
illusion! They stirred and began to move again’ (11634–5).
These lines are immediately followed by a curious stage direction:
‘Phantastisch-flügelmännische Beschwörungs-Gebärden’, with which he sum-
mons his demonic minions. Atkins translates this difficult locution as
‘fantastic gestures of conjuration, in the manner of a squad leader’. Forms
of Flügelmann are used sparingly in Goethe’s works, but appear twice in this
single scene. The word, which would literally translate as ‘wing man’,
traditionally refers to the first man in a line of soldiers, the tallest, whom
the others can see and follow.19 Thus he represents a sort of over-the-top
masculinity. One of the most telling of Goethe’s few uses of the term
appears in connection with homosexuality. Just two years before his book
on Winckelmann, Goethe had published his translation of Benvenuto
Cellini’s delightful autobiography, in which the Renaissance artist’s bisexual
adventures receive due attention. In one of his interpretive notes, Goethe
uses the same term when writing of Cellini:
In such a lively city [Florence], at such a significant time, a man appeared who can
be seen as the representative of his century and, perhaps, as a representative of all
humanity. Natures such as this can be seen as spiritual squad leaders
[Flügelmänner], who hint, with their forceful expressions, at what is doubtless
inscribed in every human breast, though often with weak, illegible strokes.20
As if this valorization of a bisexual man as a model for all humanity were not
enough, later on in the same essay Goethe writes:
Given this receptivity for sensual and moral beauty, given his continued residing
and living among everything great and significant that ancient and modern art
produced, the beauty of male youth, more than anything, was bound to have an
effect on him. And indeed! the most charming passages of his work are those in
which he expresses his feelings on this. Have poetry and prose depicted for us
situations as alluring as we find in the banquet at which the artists gather with their
girls . . . and Cellini brings a cross-dressed boy?21
This passage is loaded with broad hints, including the suggestion that moral
beauty resides in this gender-bending performance directed by the bisexual
Cellini. At this point, I want to stress the connection to the scene in Faust in
which Mephisto, too, appears as a Flügelmann. If in both texts the
180 w. daniel wilson
Flügelmann is associated with queerness and acts as a sort of leader and even
director, are we to see Mephisto in this light?
In ‘Burial’, it is not only Mephisto who is associated with this big fellow.
Very shortly afterwards, he himself uses the same term to refer to the tall devils
under his command: ‘flügelmännische Riesen’ (11670). Only a few lines
before that, he had referred to Faust’s (presumably masculine) soul as ‘the
little soul, Psyche with her wings’ (11660), a clear echo of the Flügelmann.
Psyche is indeed considered to represent the soul in Greek mythology, and
she is portrayed as a butterfly with wings.22 This line reverberates with gender
confusion in at least four aspects relevant to this discussion. First, it feminizes
Faust’s soul. Secondly, it strongly suggests eroticism. Psyche was so beautiful
that even Eros himself fell in love with her (just as Mephisto had expressed his
erotic desire for souls) – even Love loves her, as it were. The German rococo
was practically obsessed with the erotically charged figure of Psyche – and also
with butterflies, which represented ‘flighty’, promiscuous sexuality, a role
they play in Goethe’s own poetry.23 Thirdly, by introducing Greek myth, the
line hints at the theme of ‘Greek love’ that dominates the text a bit later; in the
eighteenth century, any mention of things Greek was apt to conjure up this
association. And fourthly, the wings bring Faust’s feminized soul into a
dizzying association not only with Mephisto as hyper-masculine
Flügelmann but also with the winged angels who appear a few lines later.
Angels, in turn, are figured as masculine, but barely so: the gender of angels,
of course, is ambiguous or androgynous, and Goethe’s earlier character
Mignon – a figure whose own gender is so confused that in the earliest
version of Goethe’s Bildungsroman she is referred to alternately with mascu-
line and feminine pronouns, er and sie – views angels as androgynous.24 But
we do not need to turn to another of Goethe’s works to confirm the angels’
androgyny. Mephisto’s own reaction to them is clear on this point: he refers
to ‘das bübisch-mädchenhafte Gestümper’ (11687, such juvenile-androgynous
bumbling). This and the following lines have cost the critics endless puzzling:
. . . Wie frömmelnder Geschmack sichs lieben mag.
Ihr wißt [addressing the other devils] wie wir, in tiefverruchten Stunden,
Vernichtung sannen menschlichem Geschlecht;
Das Schändlichste was wir erfunden
Ist ihrer Andacht eben recht. (11688–92)
. . . is what the sanctimonious enjoy.
You will remember how, in our most heinous hours,
We plotted the destruction of mankind:
The vilest method we invented
Exactly suits the needs of their devotions.
 Diabolical entrapment 181
Among the many explanations of these lines the one that seems to me most
convincing is Buchwald and Daur’s, namely, that Mephisto is referring to
castrati – so that the word Geschlecht would be meant quite literally,
referring to the male genitals.25 This interpretation is bolstered by a fact
unnoticed by its purveyors: one of the most common tricks that witches,
beholden of course to the devil, are supposed to have played was to make the
male reproductive organ disappear (along with the associated prank of
causing impotence) – the fifteenth-century Malleus maleficarum or
Hexenhammer lists numerous examples of it.26 So the idea that ‘castrating’
(broadly understood) could be seen as the plan of the devils for the
Vernichtung of humankind makes perfect sense. Castrati, in turn, play an
important part in the aesthetics of Winckelmann; it is precisely the shape of
castrati buttocks that aroused Winckelmann’s sensibilities,27 just as it does
Mephisto’s desire for equally sexless rear ends later on in this scene.
By the time we arrive at the overtly homoerotic part of the scene, the
theme has been amply prepared. There is the definite suggestion here that
queerness is a comprehensive aspect of nature and humanity, one that is
difficult to bring under control. Now, in the ensuing action, Mephisto
attempts to impose order on this gender confusion. The angels fling roses –
and the rose stems themselves have wings (11703), completing the nexus
associating them with the devil and with human beings – and Mephisto
instructs his devils to blow on them; they blow too hard, setting the roses
afire. The devils are defeated, flung arse-first (‘ärschlings’; Atkins: ‘breech-
first’) into hell. Mephisto stands his ground. But when the roses touch him,
he is consumed with same-sex desire for the angels.
Mephisto’s responses to his homosexual desire have hardly ever been
looked at in much detail. His first response is that now he knows what lovers
feel. This is absolutely crucial: the devil suddenly experiences not only love,
but also empathy with heterosexual lovers – which suggests that they could
have the same understanding of his same-sex desire. Mephisto remarks that
this love is something ‘alien, strange’ (11762) – but the following lines
suggest that he is not referring to same-sex desire as such, but rather to,
first, love itself, and, secondly, love for angels. He cannot reconcile his
desire for angels with his hatred of them (11767–8). He cleverly tries to
rescue himself from this dilemma by defining the angels as not really angels,
but rather devils – for the second time in this scene (see 11696) – and this is a
claim supported by the first part of the scene, where, as we have noted, the
distinction between angels and devils becomes blurred. He now asks:
‘You lovely children, may I ask / If you’re descendants too of Lucifer?’
(11769–70). As Derks points out, Mephisto seems concerned about
182 w. daniel wilson
avoiding one kind of sodomy – sex with another species, bestiality – but
unconcerned about avoiding the other.28 He seems to have satisfied himself
that the angels are the same species as he is, for the lines following this
question express his comfort in homoerotic desire more tangibly than
anywhere else, and with signifiers that echo Faust’s heterosexual passion:
Ihr seid so hübsch, fürwahr ich möcht euch küssen;
Mir ists als kommt ihr eben recht.
Es ist mir so behaglich, so natürlich
Als hätt ich euch schon tausendmal gesehn,
So heimlich-kätzchenhaft begierlich;
Mit jedem Blick aufs neue schöner schön.
O nähert euch, o gönnt mir Einen Blick! (11771–7)
You are, I swear, so pretty that I’d like to kiss you;
I have a feeling you would suit me nicely.
I am as much at ease and natural
As if we’d met a thousand times already,
And am as eager as a stalking kitten,
While you grow lovelier each time I look.
Please don’t hang back – look at me at least once!29
Important here is the word ‘natural’ (11773), suggesting that homosexual
love is, as Goethe was to say a few years later, ‘in nature’. However,
Mephisto never entirely gives himself over to desire – he repeatedly exhibits
sovereign awareness of what is going on, even as he expresses his desire. He
suggests that he would be taken for a fool if he gave in (11765–6). It would be
tempting to say that Goethe has here portrayed with amazing sensitivity the
emotional dilemma of closeted homosexuals, who must maintain reflective
distance from their desire even as they express it, in order to avoid discovery
and ostracism. But Mephisto shows no signs of being closeted.
Connected with this reflective awareness of his desire is a move that,
amazingly enough, has never been really interpreted in the voluminous
commentaries: Mephisto at first lures the angels onwards, pleading for a
glance from them, and then, when they move closer, he retreats to the
proscenium (11777–9, with stage directions). The proscenium or apron of
the stage is the area between the curtain and the audience. As such, it is
perfectly suited to bringing the characters into play with the audience and at
times breaking the illusion of the dramatic action. Mephisto likes the
proscenium – this is the fourth time in the second part of the play that he
has appeared here.30 Each of these earlier occasions saw him, indeed,
disturbing the audience’s sense of dramatic illusion – once appearing in
the prompt’s box (6399) and another time speaking directly to the audience
 Diabolical entrapment 183
(6772; see 6815–18). And on another, extended occasion, after he has spent
most of the third act cross-dressed, playing the role of the old woman
Phorkyas, he reveals himself as Mephisto directly to the audience at the
end, on the proscenium (9955, 9962, 10038) – thus suggesting an association
between the proscenium and gender confusion.
The instance at hand functions slightly differently. He doesn’t speak
directly to the audience, but I would suggest that he does so indirectly: his
first words to the angels from the proscenium are ‘You call us spirits
damned, but prove to be / The actual sorcerers yourselves, / For you seduce
both men and women’ (11780–2). It is perhaps important to note that these
lines, together with the stage direction indicating Mephisto’s retreat to the
proscenium, were a later addition to this scene, which was otherwise written
out with unusual completion and sureness, in quick handwriting and with
relatively few corrections.31 This addition suggests that Goethe had a fairly
clear conception of what he was doing, but he left open a space in the
manuscript at this point, to be filled in later. Thus I think we are justified in
seeing Mephisto’s position in the proscenium in connection with his first
three lines there, all of which was added together to the manuscript.
What is the purpose of Mephisto’s move, and of his lines here? Leaving
aside for the moment the association, yet again, of angels with devils, I think
Mephisto at this point draws the audience into his desire. By bringing
women into the circle of desire, Mephisto again tacitly sets homosexual and
heterosexual desire on an equal plane. And he thus invites the entire
audience to share with him in the ensuing fantasy in which he becomes a
sort of would-be director of a porn play. But it is an interactive play in which
Mephisto figures as both director and primary audience, instructing the
angels on how best to arouse him (11780–800). In all of this, Mephisto’s
audience joins him in a sort of vicarious voyeurism, bringing together all
humankind, men and women, in desire for these boys. Of course, the boys
are only marginally male, as we saw: they are attractive to both men and
women precisely because they are ‘bübisch-mädchenhaft’, androgynous.
The larger dramatic function, then, of Mephisto’s move to the proscenium
is to draw the audience into his desire, and to problematize the easy dis-
tinction between heterosexual and homosexual – a bold move, needless to say
(but one that Goethe had prefigured in the Venetian epigram quoted above).
From Mephisto’s own limited perspective, however, the purpose is different:
he is avoiding sexual contact with the angels. Otherwise, there is no good
explanation of his retreat to the proscenium in the first place. One could ask:
is he perhaps avoiding contact because they are sexless, and sex with them
would therefore be impossible?32 I think the larger reason is that he wants to
184 w. daniel wilson
retain his identity as a devil (as various critics have pointed out), for of course
he has a job to do that goes far beyond Faust’s single soul. His tactic, however,
involves making the angels into devils, or, perhaps more accurately, playing
on the devilish aspect of these angels in order to arouse himself. He does so
not only by sexualizing them, but also by singling out an especially tall one as
his favoured object of desire – the Flügelmann of the angels, as it were. He can
only survive as a devil, however, if he keeps his distance from them, prompt-
ing them to adopt voluptuous poses and gazes to arouse him at a distance.
Mephisto is practising ‘safe sex’ with the angels, and it is difficult to
imagine what he is doing if not trying to achieve an erection – or even
masturbating. This latter possibility would explain why his passion sud-
denly subsides, without explanation; it would explain the three dashes in the
space of two lines at the height of his arousal (11798–9) and some otherwise
odd locutions in his speech after recovering from the spell the angels have
cast over him (11809–16). Whatever he is doing, he is ultimately the dupe.
There is no indication that the angels cooperate as actors in his scenario, at
least until the end, when they consciously turn away from him – in order to
snatch Faust’s soul, it turns out – and drive him to the height of his passion
by giving him full view of their buttocks (11798–800). Thus the angels
actually remain fully in control, the masters of Mephisto’s passion, which
they turn to their own advantage. This move also draws in the audience, at
least by analogy: for if the ‘director’ Mephisto is not really the director, is the
audience really only the audience? Whatever the wider effect, the angels
exploit Mephisto’s same-sex desire rather mercilessly. Regardless of how one
tries to twist and turn it, they really have behaved diabolically – as Mephisto
points out (11781), and the reminiscence of the doctrine of ‘pious fraud’
cannot really change that.33 The angels engage in diabolical entrapment, in
both senses: they trap the devil, and they do so with devilish methods.
Mephisto’s response is to pull himself together (‘sich fassend’, 11809) –
possibly because of ejaculation – lick his wounds and curse the angels. At
this point, he seems fairly unperturbed – he expects such behaviour from
angels and such battles with them, and feels that he has come away relatively
unscathed – his same-sex desire doesn’t even rate a mention at this point. It
is only later, after he learns that they have absconded with Faust’s soul, that
he expresses remorse, frustration (he even wants to enter a judicial appeal,
which Goethe originally intended to stage) and, above all, self-hatred: he
curses his own desires as ‘base’ and ‘absurd’ – ‘base desire, absurd affairs’
(11838). The crucial question is whether it is really his homosexual desire that
he is cursing, as the critics all assume – could it not as easily be his desire for
the angels? As other recent interpreters have pointed out, Mephisto shows
 Diabolical entrapment 185
signs of same-sex desire throughout the play.34 By way of illustration,
consider a scene that Goethe excluded for reasons of self-censorship, as
Albrecht Schöne has convincingly argued, in which a satanic mass is
portrayed. Here we find the requisite kiss of the devil’s behind by which
the initiates indicate their fealty; the one who is bestowed with the largest
fief – ‘millions of souls’ – is the one who desires to crawl into Satan’s anus
(FA 1:7.1, 555–6). Thus there’s no inherent reason that homosexuality in
itself – either sexually passive or active, I might add – should be embarrass-
ing to Mephisto (or to Goethe). He only expresses this self-deprecation after
he learns that he has been tricked.
But more important, other scenes in Faust ii suggest that ‘absurd’ does
not refer to homosexuality, but rather to Mephisto’s attraction to angels.
Most important is the attempted seduction of Mephisto by the Lamiae in
the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’. Lamiae are a sort of female vampire.
Mephisto is attracted to these beautiful creatures, but when he touches or
approaches them, they transform themselves into various forms of ugliness,
which seems to reveal their true nature. The salient fact here is that these
female figures, and among them Empusa, seem to be related to him: ‘I
thought that here there’d just be strangers, / And find, alas! close relatives; /
It’s an old, familiar story: / From Harz to Hellas, always cousins!’ (7740–4).
Thus, by his attraction to these creatures, Mephisto is in danger of commit-
ting a sort of metaphorical incest.35 But this sort of proscribed sexuality
doesn’t disturb him in the least. When he finally awakens from his attempts
at sexual contact with these creatures, Mephisto speaks and acts strikingly
like he does in the ‘Burial’ scene:
lamien Fahrt auseinander, schwankt und schwebet
Blitzartig, schwarzen Flugs umgebet
Den eingedrungnen Hexensohn!
Unsichre, schauderhafte Kreise!
Schweigsamen Fittichs, Fledermäuse!
Zu wohlfeil kommt er doch davon.
mephistopheles (sich schüttelnd )
Viel klüger, scheint es, bin ich nicht geworden;
Absurd ist’s hier, absurd im Norden,
Gespenster hier wie dort vertrackt,
Volk und Poeten abgeschmackt. (7785–94)

lamiae Now separate and hover in the air!

At lightning speed, in sable flight
Surround, O bats, on silent wings
186 w. daniel wilson

This uninvited witch’s son

With baffling, horrifying circles –
He’ll still be getting off too cheaply!
Mephistopheles (shaking himself)
I’m not much wiser than before, it seems;
The world’s as [absurd] here as back up north;
Ghosts in both places are eccentric,
People and poets equally [vulgar].

Here we find striking verbal reminiscences of the ‘Interment’ scene: not

only in the way the Lamiae hover in the air and press Mephisto,36 but also in
the way that the stage directions, when he comes to himself, express a kind
of recovery (‘sich schüttelnd’, 7791; ‘sich fassend’, 11809); and in both scenes
he chastises himself for being seduced and uses the word ‘absurd’. In the
‘Classical Walpurgis Night’, he uses ‘absurd’ not for the incestuous sexual
desire for a relative, but rather for his desire for what have turned out to be
‘ghosts’ (Gespenster), who are as absurd in classical Greece as they are in ‘the
north’. Thus the sexual deviance itself – incest – is no cause for regret; he
had remarked on being ‘related to’ these spirits before he tried to approach
them sexually.
Earlier in the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’ there was yet another, similar
scene: Mephisto is confronted with classical mythological figures, Sphinxes
and Griffons. Here we find astonishing linguistic parallels to the ‘Burial’
scene, but with a certain reversal, at least with respect to nakedness: here,
‘nakedness everywhere, with now and then a shift’ (7082), while in the later
scene he asks them to get naked, saying that the shifts are prudish (‘Auch
könntet ihr anständig-nackter gehen, / Das lange Faltenhemd ist übersit-
tlich’, 11797–8). Like the angels in the later scene, the Griffons, too, are
‘beflügelt’ (7084, winged), and they even echo Mephisto’s later gaze at the
angels’ buttocks by looking at themselves in the mirror, front and back
(‘Von vorn und hinten sich im Auge spiegelt’, 7085; see ‘Von hinten
anzusehen!’ 11799). However, in the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’,
Mephisto is explicitly ‘alienated’ (7081) and remarks that he finds antiquity
too realistic (‘Doch das Antike find’ ich zu lebendig’, 7087), precisely
because of the brazen nakedness – he wishes that there were a few fig leaves
here and there, and explains why in lines that Goethe apparently left out in
error, or as part of his self-censorship, ‘The eye demands its tribute. / What’s
the fuss about naked pagans? / I like to have something to undress, / If
there’s going to be some sex.’37 Thus Mephisto doesn’t seem turned off by
the idea of sex with such creatures as Sphinxes and Griffons – after all, he
 Diabolical entrapment 187
had earlier complimented one of the Sphinxes on her bosom (7146) and
expresses sexual interest in these half-humans (7086). What explicitly ‘alien-
ates’ him is their nakedness – it is thoroughly alien to a northern sensibility
such as the devil’s, who requires the titillation provided by enticingly
arranged clothing.
The remarkable parallels of these scenes to the attempted seduction in the
‘Burial’ scene – parallels that, as far as I can tell, have gone unnnoticed38 –
are intended, I think, to make a point: Mephisto’s sexual proclivities are
nowhere at issue. He is willing to commit incest and the other kind of
sodomy as it was defined in the eighteenth century, namely, bestiality. So
sodomy in its purely human form – homosexuality – is hardly something
that should evoke the self-reproach of the phrase ‘gemein Gelüst, absurde
Liebschaft’. Rather, in all cases it is a non-sexual aspect of the love object
that is at issue: in both episodes in the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’ he is
confronted with creatures from antiquity. He rejects the first of them
(Sphinxes and Griffons) because they don’t play the game so popular in
Christian lands, using clothing to heighten sexual desire. He pursues the
Lamiae because they seem like northern creatures, but ends up being duped
by them and turns away, disgusted at their true natures. In the first case,
sodomy with half-animals doesn’t bother him, and in the second case, sex
with near relatives isn’t at issue. When he is finally attracted to the angels, it
is because they come from the Christian world; Mephisto is on familiar
turf.39 He is perfectly polysexual (or omnisexual), so desire for boys is simply
another part of his sexuality – an attitude that was not uncommon in the
eighteenth century, but had come under attack in the nineteenth. But
Mephisto’s desire for the angels represents a different kind of danger for
him: he is battling with his mortal enemies and risks betraying his very
essence and losing his battle if he succumbs to his love for the angels. That is
the reason for speaking of ‘absurde Liebschaft’ – dallying with angels, not
specifically with angel boys. Mephisto is frustrated and angry that they have
baited him, trapped him into relinquishing Faust’s soul.
There is another possible reading of the phrase ‘gemein Gelüst, absurde
Liebschaft’. Ulrich Gaier has argued convincingly that the male God has
been dethroned by the end of Faust ii , replaced by a goddess.40 And with
this gender change in heaven comes a subversion of the entire system of
values that Mephisto knows – he is a medieval devil unable to adapt to
modernity, as his judicial quibbling in this scene (11832–3), in close prox-
imity to the lines in question, suggests.41 Therefore, if his references to base
and absurd desires do refer to homosexuality, then his self-hatred belongs to
an obsolete value system, represented most brilliantly by the jaws of hell that
188 w. daniel wilson
are dragged onto the stage as a theatre prop that precisely because of its
‘deliberate staginess’ doesn’t scare anyone any more (as Mephisto says), least
of all the audience (11639–55).42 In this interpretation, the gender revolution
in heaven means that we can hardly trust Mephisto’s values at all (if we ever
could), including his views on his own Greek love. On this view, Mephisto’s
modernity consists not least of all in a newly hateful attitude towards Greek
love.
Thus I think Mephisto is simply referring to his desire for the angels when
he speaks of his ‘base’ and ‘absurd’ love; but even if he is speaking of his same-
sex desire, his self-hatred must be understood as a function of having been
aggressively ‘outed’ or entrapped, and of his outdated values. And of course
there are wider ironies here. Throughout the play, Mephisto has become a
much more fascinating and delightful figure than Faust. It will hardly do to
dismiss him as simply ‘evil’, especially since he had famously stated that he
was a part of goodness, while subjectively seeking evil (1336–7), and even God
seems to agree with this assessment (338 ff.).43 If the central theme of Faust is
love, then by the same token Mephisto’s lust is an essential part of the
economy of desire in the play and a part of God’s plan for Faust’s salvation.
More fundamentally, the scene highlights ‘a crucial element in Goethe’s
depiction of the devil: that his all-too-human traits place him firmly within
our world, whose qualities he must reflect to the widest extent that can be
achieved.’44 The roses that are used against him, we learn in the next scene,
have been given to the angels by female sinners (11942–53), further subverting
traditional sexual morality. And, ultimately, Mephisto’s desire is juxtaposed
with the treacherous angels who are figured, not incorrectly, as ‘hypocrites’
(11693). The angels pronounce one of the play’s most important principles,
namely the apokatastasis pantōn, the bringing-back of all, Origen’s heretical
principle that in an ultimate act of loving reconciliation all are brought back
to God, including those who have become alienated from him, fallen and
become lost – even the devils in hell.45 This reconciliation is offered to
Mephisto at the height of his sexual arousal (11801–8). But it is offered by
the angels, whom Mephisto considers hypocrites, at the very moment they
are tricking him, and he can hardly be blamed for rejecting it, especially if he
wants to retain his identity. Their act of inclusion could, paradoxically, erase
the difference that he – and Goethe – seems to cherish.46

notes
An updated version of these reflections (going back to 2004) will be published as
a chapter of my book on Goethe and Greek love, to be published in 2012 by
Suhrkamp Verlag, followed by an English edition.
 Diabolical entrapment 189
1. Despite the fact that the term ‘homosexual’ was only used beginning in 1869 and
with respect also to sexual practices has to be viewed as an anachronism when applied
to the early nineteenth century, I use it here heuristically in order to designate same-
sex sexuality that has not yet been pathologized or viewed as a character trait. On the
theoretical underpinning for this approach, see David M. Halperin, How to Do the
History of Homosexuality (University of Chicago Press, 2002).
2. Goethe to Duke Carl August, Rome, 29 December 1787, HA 2, 75.
3. On the Herder reference – and Goethe’s letter generally – see Paul Derks, Die
Schande der heiligen Päderastie. Homosexualität und Öffentlichkeit in der deut-
schen Literatur 1750–1850, Berlin: Verlag Rosa Winkel, 1990, 79–80, 251–2.
4. Esp. Kurt R. Eissler, Goethe. Eine psychoanalytische Studie 1775–1786, trans. Peter
Fischer and Rüdiger Scholz, Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1987,
1446–62; see also the passages referred to under ‘Homosexualität’ in the index.
Karl Hugo Pruys, Die Liebkosungen des Tigers. Eine erotische Goethe-Biographie,
Berlin: Edition q, 1997 has rightly been criticized for asserting Goethe’s homo-
sexuality on flimsy evidence.
5. ‘Ein bon mot von D’Ablancourt will ich Dir mittheilen: An einer gewißen
stelle sagt Jupiter vom Ganymed, qu’il vouloit lui donner dix baisers. Da sagt
nun der Übersetzer in einer Note (denn wie bekant zeigt er immer wo er mit
unter vom Grundtext abgewichen ist) il n’y a dans l’original que deux baisers,
mais dix ont plus de force.’ 3 Feb. [1781], Goethe- und Schiller-Archiv 54/249,
fl. 97r–97v (Knebel’s papers). The reference is to Nicolas Perrot d’Ablancourt’s
(1606–64) translation of Lucian. The passage occurs in the fifth of the Dialogues
of the Gods, in which Juno berates Jupiter for his pederastic talk (‘discours de
Pæderaste’). See Lucien de la traduction de N. Perrot Sr d’Ablancourt: Divisé en
deux parties. Seconde édition reveue et corrigée. Paris: Augustin Courbé, 1665,
vol. i, pp. 73–5, 652. (Editions from 1670, 1683 and 1709 are held by the
Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek in Weimar, the core of which is the ducal
collection.) Ganymede is the traditional code for a passive, boyish gay lover. See
Robert D. Tobin, ‘Faust’s Membership in Male Society. Prometheus and
Ganymede as Models’, Interpreting Goethe’s Faust Today, ed. Jane K. Brown
et al. (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1994), 19–20, and the literature cited
there, as well as the references to Goethe’s own knowledge of this meaning.
6. See Tobin, ‘Faust’s Membership’, 19. The use of ‘Ganymedes’ for the object of
pederastic love in Wieland’s own Agathon is part of Tobin’s evidence (26).
7. When Wieland appears in the play he speaks as if in a dream-state: ‘Lassen Sie
uns mein lieber Jakobi’, referring to Johann Georg Jacobi, whose flirtatious
published correspondence with Gleim was the subject of widespread ridicule.
See Wilhelm Körte, Johann Wilhelm Ludwig Gleims Leben. Aus seinen Briefen
und Schriften, Halberstadt: Büreau für Literatur und Kunst, 1811, 506–7. One of
the figures comments: ‘Man sieht doch mit was für Leuten er umgeht’ (MA 1:1,
683, You can see the kind of people he associates with).
8. Walter Schleif, Goethes Diener, Berlin and Weimar: Aufbau, 1965, 33, who
dismisses it as a ‘literarischer Versuch’. See also Robert D. Tobin, Warm
190 w. daniel wilson
Brothers. Queer Theory and the Age of Goethe, Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 2000, 96.
9. Nachlese zu den Venezianischen Epigrammen, MA 3:2, 151; translation is from
Goethe, Erotic Poems, trans. David Luke, introd. Hans Rudolf Vaget, Oxford
University Press, 1997, 73. Vaget remarks: ‘this catholicity of sexual taste in the
younger Goethe is needless to say not well documented, though it has been
suggested that his feelings for Charlotte von Stein’s young son Fritz, whom she
permitted to live in Goethe’s house for three years during the period of his
infatuation with her, were not always purely paternal or avuncular . . . [This
epigram] can at any rate stand as a particularly concrete example of the
conciliatoriness so much lauded and criticized in the author of Faust, that
aversion to stark alternatives which pervades all levels of his thought and
work’ (134).
10. On Götz: Susan E. Gustafson, ‘Male Desire in Goethe’s Götz von Berlichingen’,
in Outing Goethe and His Age, ed. Alice Kuzniar, Stanford University Press,
1996, 111–24, 257–8; on Egmont: W. Daniel Wilson, ‘Amazon, Agitator,
Allegory. Political and Gender Cross(-Dress)ing in Goethe’s Egmont’, in
Outing Goethe, 125–46, 258–64; on Wanderjahre 2.12 (MA 17, 499–505) and
‘Das Schenkenbuch’ of the West-östlicher Divan (MA 11:1.2, 95–106): Derks,
Die Schande, 262–7, 272–81.
11. Derks, Die Schande, 208, quoting Goethe, Winkelmann und sein Jahrhundert,
MA 3:2, 356.
12. Goethe, Winkelmann und sein Jahrhundert, ‘Freundschaft’, MA 6:2, 354.
13. Derks, Die Schande, 174–231.
14. Conversation with Friedrich von Müller, 7 April 1830, GG 3:2, 603 f.
15. On 14 March 1830; MA 19, 659.
16. For the last of these, see Eissler, Goethe, 1716. The scholarship on this scene is
not voluminous. It is reviewed by Silke Falkner in a perceptive essay whose
approach, however, is different from mine. Despite her departures from
previous critics, she still asserts that Mephisto’s ‘falling in love with the angels
is a humanizing experience that transgresses his devilish identity, and therefore
offers him a chance at redemption from the hell of which Mephisto is the
central part’. Silke R. Falkner, ‘ “Love only succors / Those who can love”.
Mephisto’s Desiring Gaze in Goethe’s Faust’, in Queering the Canon. Defying
Sights in German Literature and Culture, ed. Christoph Lorey and John
L. Plews, Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1998, 143, an assertion that I shall
challenge. She is right to suggest that Mephisto never acts on what she calls his
‘fraudulent’ heterosexual desires. However, she overlooks Goethe’s blurring of
the line between heterosexual and homosexual. An earlier article by Harold
Jantz presents the intriguing thesis that, in order to save himself from being
‘saved by the grace and love of God’, he consciously ‘twists the love surging
within him into a supremely hopeless pederastic passion for the boylike angels’
(168–9). This interpretation does not square with Mephisto’s clear loss of
control in the scene, and Jantz’s repeated references to ‘perversion’ do not
correspond to Goethe’s attitude towards ‘Greek love’. See Harold Jantz,
 Diabolical entrapment 191
‘Goethe’s Last Jest in Faust: or, “Faust holt den Teufel”’, in Festschrift für Detlev
W. Schumann zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Albert R. Schmitt, Munich: Delp, 1970.
17. All further references to Faust are by line number from FA 1:7.1 and Atkins’
1986 English translation, sometimes amended (in square brackets) for accuracy.
18. From an 1812 essay by Goethe, MA 9, 621; see FA 1:7.2, 755. He further
describes the ‘traurigen Lemuren, denen noch so viel Muskeln und Sehnen
übrig bleiben, damit sie sich kümmerlich bewegen können, damit sie nicht
ganz als durchsichtige Gerippe erscheinen und zusammenstürzen’ (MA 9:623,
with illustrations).
19. See FA 1:7.2, 769, referring to Adelung. Critics generally define the word without
attempting to interpret it; Falkner, an exception, says merely that it is ‘reminis-
cent of “weltmännisch”, or worldly’ (Falkner, ‘ “Love only succors” ’, 148).
20. Anhang zur Lebensbeschreibung des Benvenute Cellini, bezüglich auf Sitten,
Kunst und Technik, MA 7, 489.
21. MA 7, 491–2. The episode described here can be found in Goethe’s translation,
MA 7, 59–62. Considering the confusion regarding the gender of the angels in
the ‘Burial’ scene of Faust ii discussed below, it is perhaps not amiss to see in a
passage from this translation an inspiration for the later work. Here the host,
the sculptor Michelagnolo of Siena, admires Cellini’s ‘date’, not realizing that it
is a young man: ‘Er selbst fiel auf die Knie, flehte um Barmherzigkeit, rief alle
zusammen und sagte: sehet nur, so sehen die Engel im Paradiese aus! Man sagt
immer nur Engel, aber da seht ihr, daß es auch Engelinnen gibt. Dann mit
erhobener Stimme sprach er: O schöner Engel, O würdiger Engel, beglücke
mich, segne mich!’ (61).
22. ‘Psyche’, in Benjamin Hederich, Gründliches mythologisches Lexikon.
Reprografischer Nachdruck [der Ausgabe] Leipzig, Gleditsch, 1770, Darmstadt:
Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1967, cols. 2114–19.
23. On the theme Psyche, see the poem originally entitled ‘An Psyche’ (then ‘An
Lida’, MA 2:1, 65), and especially ‘Den Musen-Schwestern fiel es ein’ (MA 13:1,
180); on butterflies, see especially the poem ‘Der Schmetterling’, MA 1:1, 128,
143–4; see Alfred Anger (ed.), Dichtung des Rokoko, 2nd edn, Tübingen:
Niemeyer, 1969, 148–9. Psyche has been ‘an exceptionally fertile source of
inspiration in the figurative arts’, Irène Aghion, Claire Barbillon and François
Lissarrague, Gods and Heroes of Classical Antiquity, Flammarion Iconographic
Guides, Paris: Flammarion, 1996, 250; prominent was Raphael’s ten-part
depiction of the marriage of Amor and Psyche in the Villa Farnesina in
Rome, which Goethe knew, and he possessed a ten-part hand-coloured set of
Nicolas Dorigny’s etchings illustrating the theme (MA 15, 162, 916). Significant
in the context of this interpretation is the ‘Schmetterling’ in the description of
Knabe Lenker (5603).
24. ‘Sie fragen nicht nach Mann und Weib’, Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, bk 8,
ch. 2, MA 5, 517. The commentary: ‘Motiv der Androgynie, verbunden mit der
Lehre von der Geschlechtslosigkeit der Engel. In ihrem Aufsatz “Der
Charakter der Freundschaft” . . . hatte S[usanne] v. Klettenberg erklärt:
“Unsere Seelen sind weder Mann noch Weib” . . .’ (826).
192 w. daniel wilson
25. Reinhard Buchwald, Führer durch Goethes Faustdichtung, 6th edn, Stuttgart:
Kröner, 1961: ‘Wenn Mephisto etwas erfinden könnte, die Menschheit zu
vernichten, so wäre es solches Kastratentum; und gerade dies – in Gestalt der
Engel – diene der christlichen Andacht!’ (241); Albert Daur, Faust und der
Teufel. Eine Darstellung nach Goethes dichterischem Wort, Heidelberg: Winter,
1950: ‘Er wehrt sich, schmäht die Boten als Kastraten, schmäht die Phantasie,
die so Verruchtes andachtsvoll verehrt, er warnt vor ihnen, die den Teufeln
gleich verlocken [. . .]’ (344); see Hans Arens, Kommentar zu Goethes Faust II,
Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1989, 973.
26. Jakob Sprenger and Heinrich Institoris, Der Hexenhammer (Malleus malefica-
rum), trans. J. W. R. Schmidt, Berlin: Barsdorf, 1906; repr. Munich:
Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1982, ii, 78 ff.
27. See Simon Richter, Laocoon’s Body and the Aesthetics of Pain. Winckelmann,
Lessing, Herder, Moritz, Goethe, Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1992.
28. Derks, Die Schande, 286.
29. On the parallel of later lines in this scene to Faust’s language of love, see Arens,
Kommentar, 985.
30. The first scene in which Mephisto appeared, the ‘Prologue in Heaven’, had after
all ended with a direct address by Mephisto to the audience. His speeches ‘ad
Spectatores’ are repeated at the end of the ‘Laboratory’ and ‘Throne Room’ scenes,
both in Faust II, Act 1 (7003–4, 5061–4), as well as in Act 4, ‘High Mountains’
(10210–11, 10327–30) and at the end of the ‘Formal Park’ scene in Act 5 (11286–7);
see also in Act 3 lines 9578–9. See Schöne’s commentary in FA 1:7.2, 425.
31. Ulrich Landeck, Der fünfte Akt von Goethes Faust II. Kommentierte kritische
Ausgabe, Zurich: Artemis, 1981, 169.
32. This is Arens’ suggestion (Kommentar, 985).
33. See Ulrich Gaier, Johann Wolfgang Goethe. Faust-Dichtungen, Kommentar I,
Stuttgart: Reclam, 1999, ii, 1121. Gaier also perceptively points out the devilish
behaviour of the angels. Missing this point is the major flaw of Falkner’s
interpretation, since she views the angels’ activity solely from the viewpoint
of offering Mephisto redemption.
34. See esp. Falkner, ‘“Love only succors”’.
35. See also Mephisto’s threatened incest with the Phorcydes (7987); Hederich
(Gründliches mythologisches Lexikon, col. 1997) says that the Phorcydes’ father,
Phorcyn/Phorcys, lat. Phorcus, fathered them on his own sister!
36. In only two lines (7785–6) there are echoes from the ‘Interment’ scene:
‘schwanken’ (see 11787), ‘schweben’ (11701, 11722) and ‘Flug’ (11717).
37. Para. 150, FA 1:7.1, 663; see 7.2, 536.
38. Schöne says only that Mephisto is shown to be ‘der “dumme Teufel”’ in
‘Burial’, just as in the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’ (FA 1:7.2, 528). Arens points
out such oblique parallels as the one regarding nakedness (Kommentar, 422),
but without any attempt at interpretation. Falkner rightly notes that in the
‘Burial’ scene Mephisto is emotionally involved (he desires a reciprocal gaze),
whereas he is not in the scene with the (presumably female) Lamiae (‘ “Love
only succors” ’, 149–50).
 Diabolical entrapment 193
39. When he forces the identification of the angels as coming from Lucifer’s race
(‘Geschlecht’), he seems merely to be trying to arouse their sexual interest in
him.
40. Gaier, Kommentar I, 1125 ff.
41. Ibid., 1118–19.
42. Jane K. Brown, Goethe’s Faust. The German Tragedy, Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1986, 243.
43. See, in this context, Robert D. Tobin, ‘In and Against Nature: Goethe on
Homosexuality’, Outing Goethe and His Age, ed. Alice A. Kuzniar, Stanford
University Press, 1996, 103–4.
44. Osman Durrani, ‘The Character and Qualities of Mephistopheles’, in A
Companion to Goethe’s Faust: Parts I and II, Columbia, SC: Camden House,
2001, 91.
45. See FA 1:7.2, 788 ff.; Gaier, Kommentar I, 1118.
46. I would thus disagree with Falkner’s assessment that Goethe ‘. . . allow[s]
Mephisto an opportunity for salvation via homosexual love’ (‘“Love only
succors”’, 155); it is not Goethe who does this, but rather the angels whom
Goethe portrayed as hypocritical. It is not in this sense that ‘Goethe has
redeemed homosexuality not only for his contemporaries but for readers of
all generations’, but because he presents homosexuality as a form of love on a
par with others. Tobin is thus correct to state that Mephisto ‘underscores the
complication of another dichotomy, one that grounds the entire play: that
between heaven and hell’ (‘In and Against Nature’, 103). And this complica-
tion is parallel to the gender trouble that makes Mephisto’s homosexual
orientation (if that’s what it is) unproblematic.
part ii
Theatre
 chapter 13

Goethe’s Faust: theatre, meta-theatre, tragedy

Martin Swales

In this chapter I want to stress two matters in particular. One is that there is
an omnipresence of abundant, kaleidoscopic theatricality in Goethe’s Faust
project. The other is that that theatricality is not simply decoration, not
simply (as it were) icing on the cake, but is, rather, germane to the central
concerns of the drama. Whether we read Faust as a philosophical drama, as a
drama of desire or as the historical drama of modernity (and it is to this
aspect that I wish to pay particular attention), at every turn we find that the
theatrical statement is the correlative of the theme.
Let me begin with somewhat personal and anecdotal rather than scholarly
concerns. On two occasions I have been involved in directing students of
German at University College, London in theatre productions of Goethe’s
Faust. We performed an acting version of both parts. What resulted was a
three-act drama. At its centre was the so-called Gretchentragödie, the love story
of Faust and Margarete. This was our Act 2. It was preceded by the material
that is often referred to as the Gelehrtentragödie – the tragedy of the despairing
scholar – which extends, in Goethe’s Part i, from the opening monologue of
Faust’s lacerating despair, through the wager with Mephisto, to Faust’s
rejuvenation in the ‘Witch’s Kitchen’. This constituted our Act 1. And Act
3 consisted of five major scenes from the cultural-historical phantasmagoria
that is Goethe’s Part ii – Faust’s awakening, the invention of paper money at
the court of the Holy Roman Empire, the meeting of Faust and Helen of
Troy, the eviction of Philemon and Baucis, the death of Faust and the closing
scene depicting his salvation. We joined, then, a long tradition that started
with Eckermann in 1834, one that enshrines the quest for a performable
version of Goethe’s great project that gives at least some idea of the totality of
its statement.
To produce the play with gifted young actors is to be reminded of two
things: that the Faust drama really does come alive in the theatre; that it
works at two levels of statement – a visceral, immediate one and a reflective,
self-conscious one. Now in one sense, of course, it is true generally of all
197
198 martin swales
theatre that it is at one and the same time immediate and self-conscious,
both hyper-real and utterly fictive, engendering what Brecht liked to call
complex seeing. But I want to suggest that it is especially true of Goethe’s
Faust because those two aspects of theatre are embedded at the very heart of
Goethe’s drama. In ways I want to go on to explore, Faust is concerned to
understand the interplay of visceral experience, felt and known on the
pulses, on the one hand, and, on the other, of the imperative to stand
back from experience, to think, to question. Faust is about two kinds of
knowing, knowing in its biblical double sense of knowing carnally with the
body and knowing conceptually with the self-conscious mind.
This, as one might put it, dialectic of experiential modes informs the
three great strands of Goethe’s drama and of the theatrical statement which
they make. The strands are: the philosophical drama, the drama of desire,
the cultural-historical drama of modernity. These strands are not clusters of
watertight signification. Rather, they are in constant interplay. But for the
purposes of analytical and heuristic clarity it is helpful to treat them as
separate entities.
Let me start with the philosophical drama. It has centrally to do with the
mismatch, in the human subject, between mind and body, reflectivity and
activity. Faust is both an onlooker and a doer. When first we see him, he is
discontented with a surfeit of intellectual life, with an existence devoted to
ideas, concepts, words, abstractions. (I have, incidentally, never found it
difficult to explain this kind of resentment to university students; they know
it all too well from their own experience.) Faust longs for activity, not just as
a principle, but as a specific engagement with the material world. Hence he
translates the beginning of St John’s Gospel not as ‘In the beginning was the
Word’ but as ‘Im Anfang war die Tat’ (1237, In the beginning was the
Deed). Deeds enliven; but they are necessarily local and particular. They are
the limitation imposed by what is on what might be. Faust’s being both
reaches out for the circumscribed articulation of the self that is the deed, and
he also reaches beyond that constraining particularity into the play of
possibility. But that play is, as he says of the vision conjured up by the
sign of the Macrocosm, ‘alas, mere show’ (454). The theatrical metaphor is
crucial, and I shall want to return to it a little later.
The philosophical issue, the oscillation between the two kinds of knowing,
is felt in psychological terms. Anticipation expresses itself as desire, as the
craving of the self to enter experience. Yet once the desired object is reached, it
is never enough; and the desire rekindles itself as renewed anticipation. This is
the centre of Faustian energy; it is the discontent engendered by the friction
between the two souls within him. For Goethe, that process was part of the
 Theatre, meta-theatre, tragedy 199
necessary polarity, the process of systole and diastole that quickens all matter.
Yet what he explores in the Faust drama is the stressfulness of living within
that energy, the existential and moral disturbance and tragedy that is present
at every turn.
The two great ‘Study’ scenes between Faust and Mephisto bring us to the
heart of the philosophical drama. In earlier versions of the Faust fable, the
contract between Faust and the devil was a fixed-term pact: Faust sells his
soul for twenty-four years of service, at the end of which time he is damned.
In Goethe’s drama an extraordinary transformation occurs. Faust goes into
the contractual relationship with Mephisto in a spirit of intense scepticism;
he makes not a pact but a bet, a bet on experience. And the final arbitration
in respect of that bet is not something objectively measurable like the
passing of twenty-four years. In Goethe’s project everything depends on
what Faust says of, and by that token makes of, his experience. He proposes
the wager to Mephisto in the conviction that he, Faust, will never come to
rest, will never find satisfaction and fulfilment. He believes that the devil’s
traditional role – which is to provide limitless pleasure – will never bring
him to a point of contented stasis. Faust knows that, for him, the onlooking,
reflective persona, the (as one might put it) meta-self to the active self will
always assert itself, condemning each and every present moment to experi-
ential insufficiency. This discontent is both Faust’s glory and his tragedy; it
is both the cause of his salvation (in terms announced by the Lord in the
‘Prologue in Heaven’) and, as the play will amply demonstrate, the source of
his monstrosity. In other words, Goethe changes the whole value scheme
that informs the Faust material; from the traditional battle between good
and evil we move to a struggle between energy and activity on the one hand
and sloth and inertia on the other.
Mephisto’s task, then, as the antagonist of the Lord’s purposes, is to
switch off the dynamo that drives Faust. To this end he employs two
strategies – and they are interrelated. One is to adhere to his traditional
function, which is to purvey pleasure, to be the ever-eager salesman who
talks up every possible experience as the harbinger of all the heart’s desires.
But the other role is that of the cynic, of devaluing anything and every-
thing. Mephisto has seen it all before: Margarete is ‘not the first’; falling in
love is part of the ‘course of the world’ (3204). Mephisto is the master of
reductive interchangeability, of the throw-away line. And he knows that
he can appeal to the disparaging, debunking agency housed in Faust’s self-
consciousness. Mephisto’s magic has little to do with fairy-tale enchant-
ment. Rather, it is the acceleration of experience; and his conviction is
that the acceleration of experience will bring about the devaluation of
200 martin swales
experience. Ready availability will, in other words, render experience null
and void, insubstantial.
One could state this philosophical issue through the metaphor of theatre.
Faust oscillates between wanting to be both on the stage of life and a spectator
at it. Mephisto offers him life as a theatrical extravaganza – immensely
appealing, quick-fire experience, yet ultimately (in his, Mephisto’s, view)
tawdry and worthless. Let me give a particular instance of the theatrical
conceptualization of substantiality and insubstantiality. At the end of the play
Faust has a vision of what might be – a new community living courageously
on land reclaimed from water. He sees the image before him like some great
theatrical panorama. He is excited, moved; and he speaks the words of the
wager with Mephisto, the words of contentment and fulfilment that spell his
doom. But he utters the words conditionally, in quotation marks – almost as
though they were being spoken by an actor in some future play:
Werd’ ich zum Augenblicke sagen:
Verweile doch! du bist so schön! (11581–2)

Then to the moment I could say:

Tarry a while, you are so fair.
The active man, the man of activity is, in the last analysis, also an actor,
speaking his lines, meaning them as fully and substantially but also as
contingently, as fictively, as any actor does. Theatre is a key metaphor for
human existence in Goethe’s Faust; and this changes the way we receive the
play in the theatre. It becomes allegorically charged at every turn.
I want to pass on now to the second strand in Goethe’s Faust – the drama
of desire. The love story is, of course, the most visceral and immediate phase
of Goethe’s project. It is sustained by the issue of knowing, not just sexually
but also mentally, reflectively. The issue of anticipation and fulfilment, to
which I have drawn attention under the rubric of the philosophical drama,
is powerfully at work in the play’s understanding of desire. In Faust as lover
we register a spectrum of responses that moves from simple lust on the one
hand to a sensitive and generous response to Margarete’s whole being and
way of life on the other. Moreover, in the figure of Margarete Goethe gives
us the spell-binding portrait of a young woman who, under the impact of
the love she feels for Faust, is impelled to think, to reflect, to take stock of
herself in ways (we sense) that have not been part of her experience before.
This coming into being of consciousness confronts Goethe the dramatist
with a stylistic problem: how is Margarete to soliloquize? She needs a
cognitive and linguistic framework for self-analysis, but does not know
where to look for it. She has, as becomes clear from her account of the
 Theatre, meta-theatre, tragedy 201
daily routines of her life, not been given much education. Girls of her class
are, as we might put it, not meant to soliloquize; they are not meant to have
a complex inner life. Goethe’s resolution of the dilemma is as simple as it is
profound. Time and again, when she soliloquizes in a more considered way
than that of instinctive reaction to events (the finding of the jewels), she
does not simply sit and think. Rather, she needs to be doing something.
Her hands are busy – she is getting ready for bed, she is at the spinning
wheel, she is putting flowers in a vase in church. And the form of her
inwardness is in part borrowed: she has recourse to established forms of
utterance – folk song (‘There was a King in Thule’, 2759), work song (‘My
heart is heavy’, 3374), prayer (‘Deign, O deign’, 3587). The latter is, in the
German, miraculous for the touch of Frankfurt dialect that makes the
rhyme (‘Ach neige / Du Schmerzensreiche’) work. This drama of emerging
self-consciousness is, quite simply, electrifying. However immediate these
soliloquies are in their emotional impact, they also invite us to reflect on
relationships that obtain between inwardness, social class and literary form.
Moreover, because of the constant presence of Mephisto in the Faust/
Margarete story, other forms of theatrical self-consciousness are not far
away. A wonderful and crucial scene in this respect is the double wooing.
The scene is a garden; two couples, Faust and Margarete and Mephisto and
Marthe move back and forth. And as they do so, they come briefly into
earshot, and we eavesdrop on their conversation. From Faust and Margarete
we hear the rapture of lovers talking and discovering each other. From
Mephisto and Marthe we hear the dextrous sparring of two experienced
performers on the erotic roundabout. The scene ends with a characteristi-
cally debunking comment from Mephisto: ‘So runs the world its course’
(3204). At one level, of course, he is right; and the stage picture tells us as
much. The alternating appearance of now one couple, now the other
suggests the old mechanisms of love and seduction. The theatrical statement
has, indeed, something mechanical about it – it reminds us of figures on a
weather house. Yet at another level there is rapture and beauty in one of the
duets that we hear – perhaps even in the quartet as a whole. The scene is an
extraordinary moment of theatre, one that is both innocent and knowing,
both immediate and self-conscious.
I come now to the third essential strand of Goethe’s drama, the historico-
cultural dimension which comes massively to the fore in Part ii. It is an
enormous panorama, a phantasmagoria that brings the past and the present
into knowing interplay. Three epochs come into debate with each other –
classical Greece, the Christian Middle Ages and the emergent modernity
of Goethe’s own time (early capitalism). All three ages contribute to the
202 martin swales
definition of Faust as the self-conscious heir to some two millennia of
European history. He emerges as modern economic man, inventing paper
money and with it a speculative economy. In the closing phase of the drama
we see him as the modern entrepreneur, engaged in trade, commerce and
war, transforming the world by draining water from the marshes and
driving canals through solid land. His pupil Wagner undertakes experi-
ments in order to create artificial life. The Faustian energy, then, meddles
profoundly with the elements, with nature, and unleashes the dynamism of
modern living. Yet modern man is also profoundly in love with the past –
with classical Greece, as antiquarian, archaeologist, as lover of Helen of
Troy – and with the aesthetics, the estates and titles, of medieval Europe
which he is intent on abolishing. In all this complexly intertextual debate
Goethe offers not a realistic depiction of past ages but rather a postmodern
cornucopia, a kind of theme park. And hence the theatrical statement is as
knowing, as quotational, as the multiple textuality which it explores.
The historical argument about the forms of modernity also informs Part i
of the drama, of course. The philosophical thrust of Faust’s dilemma, of his
energy and discontent, also feeds into and nourishes a diagnosis of moder-
nity. Faust is a modern man in the sense that he is a radical individualist, a
scientist, a resolutely secular spirit. Moreover, Mephisto, in his manipula-
tion of the accelerative and destructive power of magic, is recognizably
a paradigmatic spokesman of modern nihilism – to say nothing of the
postmodern nihilism of virtual reality. Furthermore, the historico-cultural
argument extends richly into the drama of desire. When Faust destroys
Margarete, he destroys the pre-modern world, one bound by the institu-
tions of family, church, school, village. It is of profound significance that,
when Margarete tries to discover the values by which her lover lives, what he
lives for and by, she frames the question the only way she and her culture
know: ‘Nun sag, wie hast du’s mit der Religion?’ (3415, Say then, what is
your religion?). This question is a weighty moment in the whole rhetoric of
the play’s cultural-historical diagnosis, as well as a moment of marvellous
psychological truth.
The coexistence of these three strands – philosophical, erotic and
historical – demands of us the audience both an empathy with the sub-
stantiality of the experiences portrayed and a complex seeing that Brecht
would have approved of (had he allowed himself to understand the play).
Goethe’s great text demands, then, that we respond within (at least) three
shifting frames of reference. Moreover, that richly cross-textual argument
extends into our own postmodern situation. Goethe was happy to engage in
anachronism, as when Faust teaches Helena to speak in rhymed verse. So
 Theatre, meta-theatre, tragedy 203
we, too, may have the courage of anachronism – and many productions of
the play have done just this, one of the most famous being Gründgens’
incorporation of the Brussels Atomium into Faust’s study.
This trans-temporal creativity, or something like it, may occur, of course,
in any theatrical performance of any classical drama nowadays – of
Euripides, Shakespeare or Molière. My point is, however, that there is a
particular justification for it in respect of Faust because that multifaceted
theatrical mode is utterly germane to what the play is seeking to understand.
Just as the character of Faust himself is aware of multiple frames that
contextualize any given experience, so too the drama in which he figures
asks us, with particular intensity, to be aware of the frames, of spaces and
meta-spaces of signification. Goethe’s Faust plays within and with frames.
In the closing phase of this chapter I want, in fairly shorthand form, to
draw attention to various instances of frames and framing that are germane
to the play and to our response to it. Let me begin with an obvious moment
of framing – the prefatory statements that stand outside and circumscribe
the action that begins with Faust’s great soliloquy of despair. The poem
‘Dedication’ is, at the most immediate level, about the unpredictability of
Goethe’s own creativity, which means that figures from his creative past
come back to haunt him and displace immediate and present concerns. The
poem ends:
Was ich besitze, seh’ ich wie im Weiten,
Und was verschwand, wird mir zu Wirklichkeiten. (31–2)
What I possess seems something far away
And what had disappeared proves real.
The implications of this process extend, in my view, beyond Goethe’s
relationship to the figures from the Faust project. What is implied is a
general human process thanks to which things of the mind can be more real
than concrete and palpable things. The great philosophical theme of the
play – the interplay of mind and matter – sounds for the first time here in
the prefatory poem. In human perception and cognition, reality is not
merely a property of empirical immediacy, it also depends on frameworks
of significance. Matter comes truly to matter when it is underwritten
mentally, imaginatively.
The second framing statement – the ‘Prologue on the Stage’ – thema-
tizes the theatre as a social institution, as a privileged site of imaginative
expression and statement, and as a corporate place where illusion interacts,
as physical presence, as sensuous show, with its audience. Theatre is not
just the mode of the literary work that we are about to enter; it is
204 martin swales
aesthetically at the heart of its thematic universe. It is what we know and
how we know it.
The final frame, the ‘Prologue in Heaven’, brings us closer to the fable
that is about to unfold, in that it introduces a key theme – the wager on
the nature of human experience – and one of the key participants in that
wager, Mephisto. The Prologue expresses the transformed value scheme
of this version of the Faust legend. For this Lord, energy is the supreme
human good, not obedience or moral scrupulousness. The ‘Prologue’, an
immensely resonant meta-statement in respect of the drama that follows,
not only provides a framework for Faust’s experiential journey, it also
invokes a plethora of intertextual frames: the original Faust narrative of
1587, the Book of Job where the heavenly host bear witness to a test-case of
human goodness, and Genesis 3 with its story of the banishment of man
and woman from the Garden of Eden because they succumbed to the sin
of wanting to know.
The process of meta-contextual framing that begins with these three
prefatory statements recurs throughout the drama that unfolds – and it
sets up heightened reflectivity in us. At two crucial junctures we have, for
example, framed instances of cultural memory in the two Walpurgis Night
scenes. Homunculus spells out the all-important contrast when he says:
Nordwestlich, Satan, ist dein Lustrevier,
Südöstlich diesmal aber segeln wir. (6950–1)
Your favourite quarter, Satan, lies northwest of here,
But we must sail southeast on this occasion.
The ‘Walpurgis Night’ of Part i expresses the dark fantasies of modernity, of
north-west Europe; the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’ of Part ii takes us back
to the cradle of European civilization in the south-east Mediterranean. The
contrasts are powerful – above all in terms of the cultural relationship to
bodiliness and nature. The modern world has an unquiet, disturbed sense of
the body’s workings; it is driven by Mephisto’s voluptuous perception of
dirt and perversity, whereas the southern realm, for all its cruelty (of war,
rape and pillage) betrays no Manichaean belief in the sullied condition of
bodily nature.
This sense of intertextually contrasting cultural models has to do with the
focus on European modernity which, as I have already sought to suggest, is
central to Goethe’s Faust project.1 For this reason, the Faust fable belongs in
the company of two other major narratives that haunt and express the
imagination of modern Europe. Frankenstein is one; like Goethe’s Faust, it
articulates the fear that modern science may unleash energies that it cannot
 Theatre, meta-theatre, tragedy 205
control. And the other is Don Juan; like Faust, the Don Juan figure is the
overreacher whose motivation is primarily carnal. Faust, as we have seen, is
impelled by both carnal and mental imperatives to know. Both these myths
of modernity form a meta-text to Goethe’s Faust project; and frequently we
can hear that meta-text in the theatre as the stage picture shows us the
laboratory in which artificial life is made or the endless mechanisms of the
seducer’s initiatives.
One final instance of framing is, in my judgement, particularly note-
worthy. And it has to do with the generic subtitles that Goethe provides
for the two parts of his work – ‘The First Part of the Tragedy’ and ‘The
Second Part of the Tragedy’. The issues inherent in Goethe’s relationship to
tragedy are many and complex, and I cannot possibly do justice to them
here. Let me simply make three points. One is that scholarship has tradi-
tionally identified four periods in which tragedy comes particularly to
the fore: classical Greece (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides); Renaissance
England (the Jacobean playwrights, Marlowe, Shakespeare); neoclassical
France (Corneille, Racine); and modern bourgeois tragedy. Within this
latter phase, the German contribution is seminal, both in terms of aesthetic
theory (Schiller, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Benjamin) and of theat-
rical practice (Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, Kleist, Büchner, via Brecht to
Heiner Müller). My second point is that the legacy of tragedy is a rich
and constantly problematic one. Going as far back as Aristotle, theoretical
debates about the tragic form have highlighted the dialectical field of
force within which the genre operates – it is strenuously, viscerally physical,
and it also holds out the promise of aesthetic, perhaps even transcendental,
validation. Tragedy, to put the matter most radically, makes sadists and
metaphysicians of us all. Hence, it works as a mode of drama that is
terrifyingly immediate and also austerely stylized. In one sense, tragedy
always takes the risk of trying to justify human existence in spite of all
the negation and resistance (pain, suffering, mortaliy) that is ranged against
it. In the modern age, with the waning of religious belief, the aesthetic
justification may be as much validation as can be offered. Certainly this is
the case for Nietzsche and Benjamin, two great theoreticians of tragedy and
modernity. My third point is that Goethe’s Faust is complexly and crea-
tively enmeshed in the whole generic project of tragedy. His Faust is not an
avoidance of tragedy; rather, it makes an issue of tragedy. And our ability to
hear this issue depends on our ability to hear and reflect on the framing
intertext of tragedy from 500 bc to our own time.
I have more or less reached my conclusion. I want finally to register (no
more than) three further intertextual frames that can properly inform our
206 martin swales
sense of Goethe’s Faust. One is visual. It is important to remember how
powerfully our sense of the play is conditioned by paintings, images,
sketches, illustrations. One thinks of Goethe’s own drawings (for example,
of the Earth Spirit’s appearance), of the illustrations by Peter Cornelius and
Moritz Retzsch. A second intertextual frame is provided by music. The play
itself is constantly aware of the dimension of music as implicit in the
drama – one thinks of the various songs, of the whole Euphorion sequence
which Goethe conceives as an elaborate music drama. And also of the musical
responses to the play from Schubert, Schumann, Berlioz, Gounod, Liszt,
Mahler, Boito, Busoni, Schnittke. It is intriguing to wonder why the play has
so intensely triggered musical compositions. No other drama in European
literature – not Oedipus, nor Hamlet, nor King Lear, nor Phèdre – has inspired
such a musical after-life. One answer may have to do with the philosophical
import of the play. If we conceive of the being of music in Schopenhauerean
terms, as the conjoining of visceral emotional energy and intense spirituality,
if music is, as it were, sheer drive and pure maths, then perhaps we can begin
to see why music is utterly attuned to Faust: it embodies the dialectic of which
the play speaks at every turn.
My third and final intertext, perhaps more urgently present for German
than non-German audiences, is political. At various crucial junctures in
German history Goethe’s Faust drama has meant a great deal to the German
cultural psyche. One was the 1870s, where Faust is constantly seen as the
great drama that speaks to and for the German nation. In the 1920s and
1930s that legacy becomes part of Nazi ideology. Faust is held to express
German titanism and expansionism. In the period after 1945, two different
strands of reception emerge. One is based in the German Democratic
Republic (GDR), where the work is venerated as part of the humanistic
legacy of Weimar Classicism, a legacy that was redeemed by the existence
of the socialist state. Walter Ulbricht once claimed that the GDR’s existence
was the third part of Goethe’s Faust. In West Germany post-1945, there is,
by contrast, an intense problematizing of the classical inheritance. This goes
hand in hand with the highly sophisticated but often wilful influence of
what is sometimes called ‘Regietheater’, a form of theatre driven less by the
worded text of the play than by the director’s conception of the performance
as critical onslaught. After 1990, Germany and German theatre enter a new
phase, one in which (perhaps) the ideological loading of the preceding forty-
five years is replaced by a kind of ludic spirit that believes in theatrical
experiment.2
Let me bring this chapter swiftly to an end. I do so on a note of bad
conscience. What I have offered may sound forbiddingly learned. What are
 Theatre, meta-theatre, tragedy 207
we to make of all these intertexts, of all these frameworks of significance, of
all this play of theatre and meta-theatre? Do we have to become encyclo-
paedias of European culture before we dare venture into the theatre to see
Faust performed? The answer emphatically is no. Even if we do not know
many of the resonances linked to this work, we sense the richness and
profusion of its statement. And the theatrical experience before us at any
given time engages with these intertexts; we may find ourselves responding
to a philosophical, erotic, historical, theological, tragic, ironic, musical,
political Faust – perhaps even, on occasion, to all these Fausts at one and
the same time. In any event, the drama that Goethe has given us is one that
moves back and forth between various theatrical frames – morality play,
Baroque world theatre, balladesque narrative, realistic drama of social life,
pageant, masque, music drama, postmodern show. The play moves back
and forth – and so do we, the audience, with it. (The audience did so
literally, physically, in Peter Stein’s production, where they followed
the action from one venue to the next, from one framework to the other.)
This is as it should be: Goethe’s play is all about energies and processes,
about the shifting frameworks of human signification. The Faustian wager
moves with his experience; his judgements move with him; our judgements
move with us. Hence, Goethe’s thematic purpose necessitates a kaleido-
scopically shifting theatre as each form of drama and experience generates
meta-forms of drama and experience. The value-frame that contains any
one picture or image or scene changes its import when it gives way to
another picture or image or scene. (To put the matter in broader cultural
terms: articles of faith in one age become the – secularized – aesthetic forms
of another. I grew up in a city in England which was full of Greek temples
and Gothic cathedrals. But more often than not, they were places of
de-theologized rather than religious worship: they were banks, universities,
schools, libraries, railway stations.) This volatility, or something like it, is
the drama of our modernity and postmodernity that Goethe’s Faust cap-
tures. And the drama is not over and done with; it is not a foregone
conclusion. Nor is Goethe’s Faust ever over and done with. Hence, even
its closure, the defeat of Mephisto, the salvation of Faust is set about with
irony and open-endedness.
So what, finally, does this mean for theatre practice? Let me give two
answers.
First: while any drama only truly comes alive when it is performed on the
stage, this is especially true of Goethe’s Faust because theatre, as I have tried
to suggest, is at the heart of its theme. It is not simply a drama for reading, a
Lesedrama. Any performance realizes the play; it specifies it; it specifies the
208 martin swales
characters. Faust is 6 foot tall and has a beard; Margarete is 5 foot tall,
blonde and chubby – or whatever. That specification is a constriction of
the worded text. When we read Goethe’s lines, we see and hear, in our
mind’s eye, all kinds of Fausts, all kinds of Margaretes. Precisely that
dialectic of possibility and actuality is, as we have seen, one of the themes
of the play – and that theme comes alive in us as we watch and reflect on the
play on stage.
Secondly: how should one perform the play? At its heart is the threefold
possibility of tragedy: the tragedy of human self-division, of human desire,
of human cultural destructiveness. These tragic strands have to be heard,
heard both substantially and reflectively, heard with that constant interplay
of immediacy and detachment that is true of all theatre, true particularly of
tragedy, true particularly of Goethe’s Faust because of its multiple framings.
Like no other play in world literature known to me it is framed and self-
framing. This complex textual and intertextual condition can be expressed
on stage. Peter Stein’s production does it. Think of the visceral force of
Margarete’s tremor of horror at the presence of Mephisto, of Mephisto’s
flicking of the tongue across his lips; think also of the lucidity and know-
ingness of the double wooing, played amidst not trees but scaffolding,
suggesting the mechanics of wooing, of Mephisto’s highly self-conscious
comment to the audience at the end of Act 3 of Part ii. Few productions
have offered as much. Few dramas in world literature attempt and achieve
so much.

notes
1. In my discussion of the modernity of Faust I am particularly indebted to
Heinz Schlaffer, Faust Zweiter Teil. Die Allegorie des neunzenhnten Jahrhunderts,
Stuttgart: Metzler, 1981; Jochen Schmidt, Goethes Faust. Erster und Zweiter Teil.
Grundlagen–Werk–Wirkung, Munich: C. H. Beck, 1999; and Ulrich Gaier,
Fausts Modernität, Stuttgart: Reclam, 2000.
2. For an admirable discussion of the stage history, see Bernd Mahl, Goethes Faust
auf der Bühne, 1806–1998, Stuttgart and Weimar: Metzler, 1999.
 chapter 14

Faust beyond tragedy: hidden comedy,

covert opera
Dieter Borchmeyer

part one
Goethe called Faust a tragedy. Of course, its protagonist is nothing less than
tragic. Regardless of whether our reference point is Aristotle’s conception of
tragedy, or the modern, post-Schelling, metaphysical one, Faust lacks the
fundamental criterion of the tragic – suffering. He thus never evokes the
sympathy of the viewer or the reader. Why is that? In the thirteenth chapter
of his Poetics, Aristotle described ‘similarity’ between the hero and the
viewer as one of the conditions of the tragic effect, for it alone enables the
viewer to identify with the protagonist. Fear and pity are identificatory
affects. Now, Faust – the Übermensch who is constantly trying to surpass the
conditio humana (490) – is at no point ‘similar’.1 He raises himself above
every limiting, conditioning human form and thus permits no identification
which might be bound to this form. One who, in Mephisto’s words,
‘overleaps the joys that this world affords’ (1859), also bypasses its suffering.
In moments of impending failure, when ‘all mankind’s miseries’ (4406)
take hold of him, Faust always manages to evade the tragic consequences of
his actions by discarding his earthly form and taking on another. He flees
from science and from the collapse of the edifice of knowledge he has
erected, taking recourse first in white and – after ‘memory’ (781) has
preserved him from suicidal oblivion and returned him to the limiting
realm of ‘earth’ (784) – later in black magic. Faust is made young through
sorcery, i.e., he is robbed of a part of his life story and the memories and
values that accompanied it. He transforms himself into a youthful lover, but
when this form precipitates a tragic fate, he escapes catastrophe – after trying
in vain to circumvent it through separation (‘Forest and Cave’) or to repress
it (‘Walpurgis Night’) – by simply running away.
In the ‘Pleasant Landscape’ scene, convalescent sleep and nature magic
internally cleanse him ‘in the dew of Lethe’s waters’ (4629) of ‘angry strife
within his heart’ (4624) and remove ‘the burning barbs of his remorse’
209
210 dieter borchmeyer
(4624). Once again, a part of his life story, memories and regrets, is wiped
clean. The encounter with antiquity remains a phantasmagoria, carrying in
itself consequences which for Helena are tragic, but which Faust can avoid
by stepping back into reality. His physical blindness, which is the symbol of
his spiritual blindness, prevents him from taking cognizance of his ultimate
failure as a politician. He is subject to an illusion which divests him of
tragedy. And the mystery of redemption at the end dissolves tragedy into
meta-tragedy. Faust is the great forgetter! Only by erasing his memory can
he repeatedly start again from the beginning, trade in one form of existence
for another and enjoy within his ‘inmost being’ that which is ‘the lot of all
mankind’ (1770). While he does trigger tragedies, one after the other – from
Gretchen via Helena to Philemon and Baucis – he is not, in his innermost
being, affected by them. If Faust is a tragedy, it is one despite Faust himself.
There is no doubt that in its predominantly high style and moments of
pathos Faust remains a tragedy, even if – like the tragedies of Shakespeare –
it does not, according to the strict humanist rules for the separation of styles,
meet the criteria for a ‘pure’ exemplar of the genre. No less than the
Elizabethan theatre, Faust is chock-full of low-brow comedy and is thus,
like the tragedies of Shakespeare, a theatre of mixed styles. With a view to its
dramatic form, one would be equally, if not more, justified in calling it a
Divina Commedia after Dante’s great epic poem.
In the tenth part of his letter to Cangrande, Dante wrote that tragedy and
comedy were to be differentiated by their plot development. Whereas
tragedy proceeded from a peaceful and noble beginning to a terrible end,
comedy on the other hand should lead from a bitter beginning to a happy
end. This is, of course, the very movement of the Commedia itself, which
represents Dante’s passage from hell through purgatory to paradise. The
Manager suggests the exact opposite way at the end of Goethe’s ‘Prologue
on the Stage’: ‘From heaven, through the world, to hell’ (242), but this is
just a formal description of the scenic possibilities of the three-tiered
symbolic mystery stage formed by Faust’s model of theatre. It certainly
applies to the plot of Faust i , which begins with the ‘Prologue in Heaven’
and, in the ‘Walpurgis Night’, finally leads to the precinct of the devil.
Faust ii, on the other hand, will return at the end to heaven.
Dante also distinguishes tragedy from comedy first by the tendency of the
plot, but then also by the modus loquendi, which is a mixture of the –
specifically tragic – sublime and the – characteristically comedic – vulgar.
This mixture also marks Goethe’s Faust project, which is in this sense hardly
less of a Commedia than Dante’s poem. Yet it is not only from the side of the
modus loquendi, but also from that of the plot that Faust disclaims tragedy.
 Hidden comedy, covert opera 211
If the Lord relinquishes Faust to Mephistopheles in the ‘Prologue in
Heaven’, he does so with certain foresight of the happy, redemptive ending:
Nun gut, es sei dir überlassen!
Zieh diesen Geist von seinem Urquell ab
Und führ ihn, kannst du ihn erfassen,
Auf deinem Wege mit herab –
Und steh beschämt, wenn du bekennen mußt:
Ein guter Mensch in seinem dunklen Drange,
Ist sich des rechten Weges wohl bewußt. (323–9)

So be it! Do as you are minded!

Divert this spirit from its primal source,
And drag him, if you can keep hold of him,
Along your downward path,
And stand abashed when you must needs admit:
A good man, in his groping intuition,
Is well aware of what’s his proper course.
In the Christian drama of salvation, which is diametrically opposed to
tragedy, the devil never had a chance to begin with. The humour of the
cheated devil is as integral to the mystery play as the humour of personified
Vice is to the morality play. In particular we are reminded of the ‘Vice’ of
the English morality plays, that hybrid of demon and fool who was so
characteristic of the English stage of the sixteenth century and whose traces
reach, via his humanized descendants in Shakespeare’s dramas, all the way
to Goethe’s Faust. In the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’, Mephisto, who is
well-versed in the history of the theatre, places himself overtly in the
tradition of Vice, the comic figure of the morality play. ‘Are any British
here? – They’re usually great travellers’ (7118), he responds to the Sphinx’s
enquiry after his name: ‘My name’s attested in their ancient drama, / Where
I appeared as Old Iniquity’ (7122–3). ‘Iniquity’ was in fact one of the
monikers of Vice, whose task was to seduce the protagonist into a life of
sin – just as Mephisto has in mind with Faust, first in a coarsely sensual way
(‘Auerbach’s Cellar’) and later in increasingly sublime variations. In Faust
the model of mystery and morality plays, which harks back to the tragedy-
bereft Middle Ages, persistently challenges the paradigm of modern tragedy.
Mephisto betrays the tragic for the sake of the comic from the very
beginning. The register of his speech and the action he instigates are a
permanent boycott of the sublime and elevated style. The way for this was
already prepared by the ‘Prologue on the Stage’, where the Manager, the Poet–
Playwright and the Player of Comic Roles, with their widely divergent inter-
ests, were brought together in conversation. While the Manager, who is of
212 dieter borchmeyer
course concerned with the financial success of his venture, looks to the masses,
the Poet–Playwright may know nothing more of them, or of the outward
impact of his work at all, than would a windowless monad; he is thinking only
of that ‘posterity’ (74) about which the Player, for his part, cannot bear to hear
another word. For him, the ‘amusement’ of the ‘present generation’ is the
purpose and aim of theatre, and there is no doubt that with this maxim he is
closer to the Manager, and the Manager to him, than either is to the Poet–
Playwright or he to them. They both want a motley theatre of mixed styles, a
‘ragout’ (100) for every taste, while the Poet–Playwright in his distance from
the world and stage desires nothing other than to reveal the secrets of his
‘depths of feeling’ (67). The tragic Poet–Playwright, intent on sublime heights
without concession, cannot assert himself vis-à-vis the Manager and the Player.
In this theatrical play of forces, they outnumber him two to one.
The Player of Comic Roles is the comic figure of the commedia dell’arte
who had fallen into disrepute through the Enlightenment reform theatre of
such luminaries as Gottsched or Caroline Friederike Neuber. The tradition
of having the actor of Mephisto play the role of the Player in the ‘Prologue
on the Stage’ is wholly sensible, as this figure did develop in significant
measure from the devil figure of the medieval theatre, as the suggestion of
devil’s horns on the harlequin’s mask still signals. Just as the Player defies
the Poet–Playwright’s will to purity of style by sullying the sublime with his
trivial imponderabilia and ‘Folly’, and immediately drags down the Poet–
Playwright’s lofty ottava rima, replacing it with the parlando of the madrigal,
Mephisto will likewise in the following ‘Prologue in Heaven’ forsake the
angels’ solemn meter and slip increasingly into the same rakish madrigal of
which his comical brother had availed himself in the ‘Prologue’. If this is no
doubt a concession of the artist’s sacred artistic will to theatrical efficacy and
human delight in expectations fulfilled, Mephisto does not fail to disparage,
in his spirit of diabolical misanthropy, humans and their more exalted
endeavours: ‘They stick their noses into every dirty mess’ (292).
Despite his negativism he remains, throughout the whole of Faust, a
comic figure, and is tolerated as such by the Lord in the ‘Prologue in
Heaven’: ‘Of all the spirits of negation / Rogues like you bother me the
least’ (338–9). In God’s household he thus enjoys a fool’s licence in the
truest sense. Nearly every mythology has the figure of the divine or semi-
divine imp, the ‘trickster’ who is more or less grudgingly tolerated by the
other gods – a role played by Hermes in the Greek and by Loki in Germanic
mythology. In the Helena act of Goethe’s Faust ii (9645–78), the chorus
unravels the myth of Hermes, in a grand song, as that of a divine ‘rascal’.
From among the mythic trickster’s pranks are recounted, for instance:
 Hidden comedy, covert opera 213
Schnell des Meeres Beherrscher stiehlt
Er den Trident, ja dem Ares selbst
Schlau dem Schwert aus der Scheide
Bogen und Pfeil dem Phöbus auch,
Wie dem Hephästos die Zange;
Selber Zeus, des Vaters, Blitz
Nähm er, schreckt ihn das Feuer nicht;
Doch dem Eros siegt er ob
In beinstellendem Ringerspiel,
Raubt auch Cyprien, wie sie ihm kost,
Noch vom Busen den Gürtel. (9668–78)
Soon from the Lord of the Sea he has stolen
The trident and, right from its sheath,
Slyly Ares’ own sword,
As well as Phoebus’ arrow and bow,
And the tongs of Hephaestus,
And would, but for fear of fire,
Take even Zeus’s lightning, his father’s;
But he does, by tripping him up,
Vanquish Eros as wrestler
And steal, while Cypria holds him,
From off her bosom the girdle.

Hardly any significant mythic work of literature, even in modernity, can do

without the trickster. His human counterpart is the picaro, whose own genre
tradition no doubt harks back to the mythological one. We are reminded of
Goethe’s Mephisto, of Loge in Richard Wagner’s Ring des Nibelungen (in
whom Loki and Mephisto are to a certain extent fused) or of Thomas Mann’s
Joseph novels with their comedic variations on Hermes, which evince traces of
Goethe as well as of Wagner, and in which Joseph himself slips increasingly
into the role of Hermes, including and especially that of the trickster.
In a number of (particularly Native American and East Asian) mythol-
ogies, the trickster, the divine imp, has a phallic cast. The phallus attributed
to him is so enormous that he must wrap it around his body when he travels
or risk losing it, such as when he rolls it out one night only to have it gobbled
up by animals while he sleeps. It is not uncommon for the trickster to
embody an oppositional element within the divine order, a suspension of
it – conceded by its representatives, understandably, only with a marked
reservatio mentalis – which repeatedly expresses itself in the grotesque forms
of exaggerated sexuality and of the bodily organs that serve it.
As we shall see, Mephisto also partakes of this obscene, phallic connec-
tion. Yet even among the orders of the Christian heavens which Goethe
214 dieter borchmeyer
conjures once more, the trickster retains his place, despite having emigrated
to the devilish counter-world of the divine cosmos and having been dis-
tinguished by the Lord very clearly from the ‘true sons of heaven’ (344).
Mephisto is, in a certain sense, the jester at God’s court. In the form of the
‘Schalk’, the negating spirit is no bother to the Lord: ‘Ich habe deinesglei-
chen nie gehaßt’ (337, I have no hate for creatures of your kind), he admits
with the conciliatory tone of one who is certain of his world’s cohesive
order. And even in the human world he grants him minority rights: ‘When
that occurs, again come uninvited’ (336). Where rascaldom is given a free
hand and the inevitably diabolical implications of jest are permitted to
question the laws of the everyday world and kick against the pricks of the
established order – there, Man also remains agile:
Von allen Geistern, die verneinen,
Ist mir der Schalk am wenigsten zur Last.
Des Menschen Tätigkeit kann allzuleicht erschlaffen,
Er liebt sich bald die unbedingte Ruh;
Drum geb ich gern ihm den Gesellen zu,
Der reizt und wirkt und muß als Teufel schaffen. (338–343)
Of all the spirits of negation
Rogues like you bother me the least.
Human activity slackens all too easily,
And people soon are prone to rest on any terms;
That’s why I like to give them the companion
Who functions as a prod and does a job as devil.
God himself is an apologist for negation in the form of rascaldom. When
was the subversive power of comedy or of humour as a constant incitement
to human striving ever announced with greater authority? To be sure,
Mephisto seems to have every reason to visit the ‘Old Man’ (351) from
time to time and not to want to break with him. And so he closes the
‘Prologue in Heaven’ with a cosmic punchline, which parodies the inter-
action between God and the devil as the human relationship between lord
and fool: ‘It is quite decent of a mighty lord to chat / And be so human with
the very devil’ (352). The very devil, that is, who wants to undermine his
order with wickedness and jest.
Mephisto is the Christian–devilish version of the divine trickster. Of
course, he is not the one who laughs last. Having been so certain in the
‘Prologue’ that he would win the bet with the Lord and take Faust’s soul, it
is perfectly in keeping with his role in medieval mystery and salvation
dramas that it is he who is in fact fooled at the end. The Faust drama is
predestined and staged as a comedy by the Lord himself, with a devil as
 Hidden comedy, covert opera 215
‘Schalk’ and ‘Geselle’ (companion) who constantly stimulates the protago-
nist to activity, but who is ultimately transformed from the subject into the
object of comedy. The divinely planned comedy about Faust plays out with
Mephisto’s help, while God stands in the wings as the actual director.
God’s tolerance of Mephisto contradicts the latter’s estimation of the
Lord. Unlike the angels, he doesn’t resort to ‘high-flown language’ (275).
He justifies his avoidance of the elevated style with the verses: ‘Pathos from
me, in any case, would make You laugh / If You had not stopped laughing
long ago’ (277–8). Laughing is thus precipitated, in Mephisto’s (certainly
familiar) theory of comedy, by an incongruence: in this case, by sublime
pathos in the mouth of a vulgar character. Of course, Mephisto himself
consigns his pathos to the irrealis as surely as he does the laughter of the
Lord. God doesn’t laugh, at least not since Christianity abstracted him into
pure Spirit. Laughter without physis is not possible, for it means the
momentary triumph of the body over the spirit. In laughter a person releases
affects which, according to Plato in the Politics (606c), he should restrain by
means of his reason. But above all it was Christian monasticism and
patristics that rejected laughter as incommensurable with human dignity.
This tradition of orthodox animosity towards laughter stretches from the
Jesuit and Jansenist critiques of comedy in the seventeenth century to
Baudelaire’s essay De l’essence du rire, which discovers laughter anew as
the signature of a fallen humanity and a mark of the satanic in the human.
Goethe’s Mephisto likewise accuses the heavenly Lord of that dogmatic
Christian dislike of laughter, although he knows very well that God has
merely ‘abgewöhnt’ (got out of the habit of) laughing, that he was originally,
in a pre-Christian era, quite at home with it. Of course, these elements also
still exist in Christian cultures, as one can see in the devil comedy of the
medieval mystery plays, of the risus paschalis of the Easter celebration, with
all its over-the-top comic scenes. This union of the sacred and the comical
dissolved with the rise of the profane comical farce in the late Middle Ages.
But the Lord of the Goethean ‘Prologue in Heaven’ seems not to have
wholly forgotten his erstwhile sympathy for comedy; he lets the Faust drama
play out like a comic mystery play where, in the end, the devil is the one
who has been tricked.
The Faust drama’s comedic counterpointing has of course precedents in
the often droll sixteenth-century Faust book and in the burlesque scenes of its
dramatic adaptations, above all those of the puppet theatre, which was
Goethe’s first inspiration for Faust. In his ‘Sturm und Drang’ years he engaged
intensively with the over-the-top comic theatre of the sixteenth century and
composed his farces based on their model – such were Jahrmarktsfest zu
216 dieter borchmeyer
Plundersweilen (Fair at Plunderweilen), Ein Fastnachtsspiel vom Pater Brey
(A Carnival Play about Pater Brey) or his obscene fragment, Hanswursts
Hochzeit (Hanswurst’s Wedding). They stand in clear opposition to courtly
aristocratic norms of decency. But it was not only in comedy – where,
according to the traditional rules of the separation of styles, creatureliness
still held a more or less constricted right to express itself – but also in tragedy
(Götz von Berlichingen) that Goethe programatically flouted the model of
sixteenth-century drama in defiance of the rules of decency and style.
The extent of the comic reversal lying in ambush behind Faust’s seem-
ingly most serious parts can be demonstrated by a comparison of Faust’s
world-famous first monologue ‘I’ve studied now, to my regret’ (354) with
the beginning of the contemporaneous, anally fixated drama, Hanswursts
Hochzeit. Hanswurst’s guardian, Kilian Brustfleck, reports his failed
attempts to educate his ward in what the Russian theorist of literature and
laughter Mikhail Bakhtin called the ‘bodily canon of art, belles lettres, and
polite conversation of modern times’.2 Of what does this bodily canon
consist? Of making taboo the sex organs, the anus, the belly, the nose, of
everything that protrudes or sticks out, and of absolutely everything which
enters the body or emerges from it. The body thus becomes, according to
Bakhtin, an ‘opaque surface’ which shields ‘individuality’ from other
bodies.3 While this may be warranted in tragedy, such a relief-like levelling
of the body does away with the original meaning of comedy. As we know, in
the comedy of antiquity and in commedia dell’arte, protruding body parts
were intentionally exaggerated by means of masks, false bellies, foreheads,
loins and humps, if not phalluses. Goethe programmatically reintroduced
this costume tradition in his 1801 staging of Terence’s Adelphoe (The
Brothers) at the Weimarer Hoftheater – without phalluses, of course, as
the audience was already sufficiently disturbed by the grotesque accentua-
tion of the other body parts.
To return to Hanswursts Hochzeit: Kilian Brustfleck wants to educate his
protégé Hanswurst according to the modern canon of the body, in appro-
priate speech and conversation, and in the strict repression of everything to
do with extremities and discharges. And this pedagogical effort exhausts
itself in nearly the same resignation – and is recited in the same low-brow
Knittel-verse – in which Faust laments his universal studies:
Hab ich endlich mit allem Fleiß
Manchem moralisch politischem Schweiß
Meinen Mündel Hanswurst erzogen
Und ihn ziemlich zurechtgebogen.
Zwar seine tölpisch schlüffliche Art
 Hidden comedy, covert opera 217
So wenig als seinen kohlschwarzen Bart
Seine Lust in den Weg zu scheißen
Hab nicht können aus der Wurzel reißen.
Was ich nun nicht all kunnt bemeistern
Das wußt ich weise zu überkleistern
Hab ihn gelehrt nach Pflichtgrundsätzen
Ein paar Stunden hintereinander schwätzen
Indes er sich am Arsche reibt
Und Wurstel immer Wurstel bleibt. (FA 4, 575)
I’ve finally managed to educate
With moral-political diligence
My ward Hanswurst – and bend him more or less
Into the proper shape.
True, I was no more able to uproot
His coarse, uncouth style
Than his coal-black beard or his
Predilection for shitting in the road.
What I was unable to tame
I wisely pasted over,
Taught him to blather of duty on principle
For a couple of hours straight
While rubbing his arse and remaining
As much a dolt as he had ever been.

The enlightened pedagogue must admit his failure along the same lines as
the scientific thinker of Faust’s first monologue. Faust replaces failed science
with magic, ultimately through a pact with the devil. In calling himself a
‘Wretched fool’ (358) he reveals that he is, in his own eyes, a pathetic figure.
Such self-distancing makes him not at all comical – quite the contrast to his
intern, Wagner, who, proud of his knowledge, is the first comic ‘fool’ of the
Faust drama.
Wagner belongs to that species of learned pedants who populated
the comic stages beginning in the Renaissance; it was as the Dottore of the
commedia dell’arte that the pedant achieved this stereotypical status. Goethe
avails himself of this sterotype from the very beginning to counterpoint the
tragic pathos of Faust’s monologues. And this counterpointing is rigorously
continued in Mephisto’s scenes – such as in the straightforwardly humorous
student scene, which is, no less than the Wagner scenes, a satire of scholarly
industry. Even Gretchen’s story is, though certainly a tragedy for its female
protagonist, riddled with comic counterpoints. Mephisto’s game of
intrigue, his conjuring of the jewellery box into Gretchen’s wardrobe, his
narrative of its appropriation by a priest, the way he leads Martha around by
218 dieter borchmeyer
her nose and exploits her as a matchmaker – all this is reminiscent of the
farcical scenes of German carnival plays, as it is of ancient Roman comedy.
Mephisto’s primary aim is to degrade all of Faust’s lofty ambitions and to
drag down everything he does into the banal, wicked gutters of a coarse life,
while countering Faust’s elevated style with his obscene sense of humour
and cynical parlando. If he can bring people to sing, along with the students
in ‘Auerbach’s Cellar’, ‘we are as happy as cannibals, / Five hundred swine
can’t beat us!’ (2293–4), if he can pull them down from the spirit’s heights
into the depths of naked ‘bestiality’ (2297), he has reached his goal. The
wand – with which he conducts the farces he instigates, from ‘Auerbach’s
Cellar’ to ‘Walpurgis Night’ and the ‘Masquerade’, which mobilize low-
brow comedy to utterly negativistic ends – this wand is, directly or indi-
rectly, the phallus. It is with it that he reveals his identity in the ‘Witch’s
Kitchen’: ‘Look at the coat of arms I wear! He makes an indecent gesture’
(2513). The Witch, endowed with a hellish sense for the devil’s phallic
humour, ‘laughing immoderately’, states: ‘Ha, ha! I recognize your style! /
You always were a rogue, a rascal!’ (2514–15). In the ‘Forest and Cave’ scene
Mephisto likewise presents the phallus as the true director of all things. A
Faust who separates himself from Gretchen, for her sake as much as for his
own, and retires in solitude to devote himself to a new, no longer scientific,
but rather mystical-meditative contemplation of nature is a threat to
Mephisto’s plan and his wager with God. He must stimulate Faust’s
sensuality anew, with feigned sympathy, by calling his memory of
Gretchen to mind. Mephisto’s cynicism peaks in this bombastic exposure
of Faust’s nature mysticism as displaced sex act:
mephistopheles Ein überirdisches Vergnügen!
In Nacht und Tau auf den Gebirgen liegen,
Und Erd und Himmel wonniglich umfassen,
Zu einer Gottheit sich aufschwellen lassen,
Der Erde Mark mit Ahndungsdrang durchwühlen,
Alle sechs Tagewerk im Busen fühlen,
In stolzer Kraft ich weiß nicht was genießen,
Bald liebewonniglich in alles überfließen,
Verschwunden ganz der Erdensohn,
Und dann die hohe Intuition – Mit einer Gebärde –
Ich darf nicht sagen, wie – zu schließen!
faust Pfui über dich!
mephistopheles Das will Euch nicht behagen;
Ihr habt das Recht, gesittet Pfui zu sagen.
 Hidden comedy, covert opera 219

Man darf das nicht vor keuschen Ohren nennen,

Was keusche Herzen nicht entbehren können. (3282–96)

mephistopheles Superterrestrial delights –

To lie on mountain tops in dew and darkness,
Embracing earth and sky ecstatically,
To be puffed up as though you were a god,
To probe the earth with urgent intuitions,
To feel your heart at one with all six days’ creation,
Enjoying who knows what in your great arrogance
And, now no more an earthbound mortal,
Blissfully merging with the All –
And then to let your lofty intuitions [He makes an expressive gesture]
End in a way that I can’t mention.
faust For shame!
mephistopheles You find that, then, unpleasant?
You’re a fine one to cry for shame genteelly.
Before chaste ears one must not name
What chaste hearts cannot do without.

So much for the disingenuousness of all ‘polite’ speech. Mephisto’s attempts

to divert Faust from his ‘primal source’ (324) reach a high point during his
initiation into the ‘Walpurgis Night’. Faust and Mephisto’s obscene
dialogues with the naked Witches (4128–43) always – despite the polite
strike-throughs which replace the names of genitalia in the print editions
authorized by Goethe – incited the discomfort of bourgeois audiences.
What would they have said if they had known about the satanic mass on
‘Walpurgis Night’ which Goethe withheld from the final version? There,
Satan declares in a phallic ‘Bergpredicht’ (Sermon on the Mount) to the
‘Böcken zur Rechten’ (rams on the right):
Euch gibt es zwei Dinge
So herrlich und groß
Das glänzende Gold
Und der weibliche Schoß.
Das eine verschaffet
Das andre verschlingt
Drum glücklich wer beide
Zusammen erringt. (FT 553 (H P50))
For you but two things are
Excellent and great
The glittering gold
220 dieter borchmeyer
And a female’s embrace.
The first one procures
The second devours
Thus happy is he who
At once both acquires.
And to the ‘Ziegen zur Linken’ (goats on the left):
Für euch sind zwei Dinge
Von köstlichem Glanz
Das leuchtende Gold
Und ein glänzender Schwanz
Drum wißt euch ihr Weiber
Am Gold zu ergötzen
Und mehr als das Gold
Noch die Schwänze zu schätzen (FT 553 (H P50))
For you there are two things
Of exquisite gleam
The glistening gold
And a prick with a sheen.
Thus you women know well
In your gold to delight
Yet higher than gold
Pricks to cherish and prize.
A ‘junges Mädchen’ (young girl) who doesn’t understand the sermon
complains to her neighbour, Mephisto:
Ach nein! der Herr dort spricht so gar kurios,
Von Gold und Schwanz von Gold und Schoß,
Und alles freut sich wie es scheint!
Doch das verstehn wohl nur die Großen? (FT 554 (H P50))
Oh no! the sir there speaks so curiously
Of gold and of prick of gold and embrace,
And everyone seems so delighted!
But I suppose only the lofty understand?
Mephisto’s words of consolation:
Nein liebes Kind nur nicht geweint.
Denn willst du wissen was der Teufel meint,
So greife nur dem Nachbar in die Hosen. (FT 554 (H P50))
No dear child, don’t cry without reason.
For if you want to know the devil’s meaning,
Just give a reach into your neighbour’s trousers.
 Hidden comedy, covert opera 221
Once again, Mephisto slips into the trousers, that is to say, into the phallic
role, of the trickster. In a 1799 conversation recorded by Böttiger, Goethe
told Wieland, alluding to Aristophanes, ‘that the original, sole vis comica
consisted in obscenities and sexual innuendos, which could not even be
thought apart from comedy’.4
Gold and genitalia, greed for property and for sex have always been closely
related in comedy. From Plautus to commedia dell’arte, gold, money and sex
are the themes of choice, and in Satan’s sermon they are more or less
interchangeable, conceived through the same metaphor of Glanz (glamour,
lustre, brilliance). This is a motif which will later recur in the ‘Masquerade’ at
the imperial court in Faust ii. What does Mephisto, in his allegorical mask of
avarice, do when the imperial jewels contained in the treasure chest are melted
and transformed into money? He thinks only of the ‘one’ – of gold and the
womb. The herald of the mythological spectacle observes with dismay:
Was fängt er an, der magre Tor?
Hat so ein Hungermann Humor?
Er knetet alles Gold zu Teig,
Ihm wird es untern Händen weich;
Wie er es drückt und wie es ballt,
Bleibts immer doch nur ungestalt.
Er wendet sich zu den Weibern dort:
Sie schreien alle, möchten fort,
Gebärden sich gar widerwärtig;
Der Schalk erweist sich übelfertig.
Ich fürchte, daß er sich ergetzt,
Wenn er die Sittlichkeit verletzt. (5783–94)

What is our thin fool up to now!

Can he be both a hunger artist and a comic?
He’s kneading all the gold into a dough
That in his hands becomes quite slack
And stays a shapeless mass
No matter how he moulds or pummels it.
He’s turning towards those women there,
Who scream and try to get away
And act as if they all were much disgusted;
Our clown turns out to be a mischief-maker,
And one of those, I fear, who think it fun
To cause offence to decency.
Avarice, alias Mephisto, appears to have formed a phallus from the gold, and
he now proceeds to cause a public disturbance with it, shocking the female
members of the court in particular.
222 dieter borchmeyer
Let’s return once more to the satanic mass on ‘Walpurgis Night’. This
infernal comedy is the most radical spoof of the courtly code of conduct, of
the bodily regulations it inaugurated and of what it deemed appropriate
speech that we shall encounter in Goethe’s work or anywhere else. Goethe
satirically illlustrates this courtly code of conduct again at the end of the first
act of Faust ii with the example of Faust’s invocation of Helen. The courtly
spectators, blind to the ‘fourth wall’ separating stage and audience, are
irritated or voyeuristically agitated by the body language of Paris and
Helen. Uncensored by ‘courtly manners’ (6460), it is only tolerated as
‘natural’ (6472) by audience members of the opposite sex, respectively.
But in principle the maxim holds: ‘Here, even in a play, we want decorum’
(6470), where ‘here’ means ‘in the Emperor’s presence’ (6468), who is
sitting front and centre. The greatest breach of decency is, however, the
intimacy with which Helen kisses Paris: ‘A kiss! – His cup is full! . . . In front
of people! Really, that’s too much!’ (6512 f.). Physical love is strictly taboo in
tragic scenes.
In the satanic mass of ‘Walpurgis Night’, courtly decency is poetically
reduced to absurdity when it is replaced by its opposite, and its radical
sublation itself becomes a ritual. Satan holds ‘Audienz’, and his Master of
Ceremonies directs a subject ‘to kiss the lord’s rear end’. The ‘homage’ of
kissing Satan’s behind is in Goethe an obscene allegory of courtly ‘brown-
nosing’. The subject thus instructed by the Master of Ceremonies not only
acquiesces without delay (‘I am by nature a democrat’), but even supple-
ments the ritual with a pangegyric upon Satan’s rear end: ‘The smell of
Paradise is not as pleasant, / And this well-formed chasm incites / In me the
wish to crawl inside.’ Satan for his part prophesies to his laudator: ‘A man
who can praise the devil’s arse so well / Shall never lack of sycophantic
phrases.’ A more cynical satire of the ancien régime and court is not to be
found in Goethe’s oeuvre; it attacks a social sphere ruled by rigorous laws of
decency with poetic means which fly in the face of those laws (MA 6:1,
1063–4).
In the domesticated Christian world, it is only where the devil is in charge
that something remains of that Aristophanic sexual and faecal humour that
Goethe invoked in conversation with Wieland. After the infernal comedy of
‘Walpurgis Night’, Faust returns safely to the realm of tragedy in Gretchen’s
finale. Mephisto only wants her tragedy: ‘She is judged!’ (4611). In the same
verse, the director of the theatrum mundi wants it the other way around,
simply replacing the predicate of Mephisto’s sentence: ‘She is saved!’ (4612),
calls the ‘voice from above’ (4611–12). It is not the law or death that has the
last word: life’s tragic limit is transcended in a redemptive salvation drama.
 Hidden comedy, covert opera 223
If Faust i ends tragically despite this redemptive perspective, the first act
of the second part of the work leads us back into a world of comedy –
especially by means of the carnival staged by the Emperor for the sake of
political ‘cares’ (4766). In the carnivalizing of Faust ii, countless elements of
the comic tradition, ranging back to the fabula palliata, return: the typical
masks, ‘awkward’ Pulcinella (the southern Italian variant of the Zanni of
commedia dell’arte; before 5215), parasites (before 5237), droves of comic
figures, including a veritable fool, and furthermore ‘Greek mythology’
travestied ‘in costumes adapted to later tastes’ (before 5299). The comic
line continues in the second act, in the comic inversion of the schoolboy
scene from Faust i and in the laboratory scene where Homunculus appears.
Significantly, it concludes with the comic figure’s typical direct address to
the audience ad spectatores (before 7003), made here by Mephisto, who is in
this scene once more addressed as a ‘Schalk’ (6885) by Homunculus.
The most grandiose manifestation of Goethe’s comic imagination comes
in the second act of Faust ii: the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’, a Greco-
Roman contrafactum of the first part’s Nordic ‘Walpurgis Night’. It is
important that Mephisto feels ‘alienated’ (7081) in its morally uninhibited
coporality, for his is the censored, negatively regulated world of bodies,
which is sought out with the intention of breaking religious, moral and
societal taboos, precisely because it is forbidden. It is the forbidden, not the
sanctioned, body that is Mephisto’s element.
It is not until the third act of Faust ii that tragedy reasserts itself against
comedy, though of course not absolutely, for Phorkyas, alias Mephisto,
functions as a constant comic counterweight, finally unveiling, with the
typically disillusioning gesture of comedy, the phantasmagoric character of
what has occurred. ‘Phorkyas . . . pushes back mask and veil, and stands
revealed as Mephistopheles, prepared to comment on the play, as much as
may be necessary, in an epilogue’ (after 10038).
The fourth act, on the other hand, mixes the tragic with the satirical and
the grotesque-comical, embodied in particular by the Three Mighty Men.
The fifth act, staged on ‘unencumbered soil’ (11581), is not pure tragedy.
This is ensured by the ‘derisive’ (11531–2), black-humoristic song of the
lemurs (11531 ff.), who provide a contrast to Faust’s utopia, which is then
further reduced to absurdity by Mephisto’s cynicism. The ‘Interment’, with
its angel-and-devil humour, is a consciously anachronistic spoof of the
mystery play. Mephisto plays here, as mentioned above, the typical role of
the cheated devil. He falls for his own game when he – who was always
trying to enchant Faust and divert him from his ‘primal source’ (324) with
wantonness – is himself so seduced by the erotic allure of the angels that he
224 dieter borchmeyer
lets Faust’s immortal soul slip through his fingers. ‘Those mincing ways
have cost us many a soul, / Snatched from us as they wage their war with our
own weapons – / They’re devils, too, but in disguise’ (11694–6), Mephisto
remarks even before Faust’s soul is carried off. Heaven is likewise a master in
the techniques of the comedy of intrigue, a skilled practitioner of farce.
The tragedy, as we have seen, is a disguised comedy; in the final scene, its
low-brow form gives way to its divine-elevated mode. In rewriting the cycle
of self-advancement, redemption and divine-cosmological love, and raising
the earthly beloved – Gretchen here, Beatrice there – to the dignity of the
merciful intercessor, it meets Dante’s Divina Commedia across half a
millennium. Goethe’s Faust is commedia in a truly comprehensive sense.
In bringing together the ancient and the modern, the satanic and the divine,
it ascends from farcical sex comedy to heavenly mirth, encompassing
comedy’s most divergent forms.

part two
Faust does not, however, transcend tragedy only in the direction of com-
edy – it transcends it also in the direction of opera. Like none of his other
works, Goethe’s opus summum is full of music, ranging from realizable (and
often realized) stage music, i.e., instrumental, lied- and cantata-like inter-
ludes, across scenic analogies of music-dramatic forms, to imaginary or
symbolic worlds of sound. Hardly any other drama in world literature is
as full of inaudible music, or is as uncomposable, as Faust. This remains true
in spite of countless attempts to compose it and in spite of the clearly
operatic structures of Part ii.
‘Mozart ought to have composed Faust’, Goethe told Eckermann on
12 February 1829, when the latter enquired about the ‘right kind of music’
to accompany his life’s work, apparently meaning the second part of it.5
Even though Goethe played with the thought of a composition by Giacomo
Meyerbeer, who was a pupil of Zelter’s, he found it ‘absolutely impossible’
for a composer of his time to find adequate music for Faust. ‘The tone of
terror, the repulsive and loathsome tone that would have to be a character-
istic of it, at least in certain passages, goes quite against the times. The music
would have to be in the character of Don Giovanni’, Goethe remarked,
testifying to his unsentimental image of Mozart. To be sure, Faust is too
much of an imaginary opera to have become a real one. The composers who
made the attempt to find a musical equivalent for it confined themselves to
fragmentary approximations, the composition of individual scenes (like
Schumann and Mahler), or opted for their own free vision of a music
 Hidden comedy, covert opera 225
drama. This is the case with Busoni, whose musical imagination circled
around Goethe’s Faust all his life, but who ended up basing his Doktor Faust
on the chapbook and the puppet play.
But even if it was no longer Goethe’s original drama, as an opera Faust
became so popular on the stage of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
that it may be called the subject of modern opera par excellence. This of
course has much to do with the immanent musicality of Goethe’s drama. A
major part of the over sixty Faust operas since 1797 are derived from it. They
are mostly based on the first part of the tragedy, or on the fragment of 1790.
But Faust ii has also been operatically adapted, from Boito’s Mefistofele
(1868) to Lili Boulanger’s stage cantata Faust et Hélène (1913) and other, later
Helen operas. Besides the opera, countless compositions of Goethe’s poetry
have been attempted, whether in song or as a symphonic oratorio explicat-
ing the text, such as Franz Liszt’s Faust Symphony (1857), Robert
Schumann’s Faust Scenes (1862) and Gustav Mahler’s Eighth Symphony
(1910), in which Mahler achieves a monumental synthesis of the church
hymn Veni creator spiritus – which Goethe had translated and interpreted as
‘an appeal to the universal genius of the world’ (to Zelter, 18 February
1821) – with the ‘Mountain Gorges’ scene of Faust ii.6
Hardly any composer spent more of his life more intensely engaged with
Faust than Richard Wagner. At the age of 18 (in 1831, while Goethe was still
alive) he had already set a few ‘numbers’ of Part i to music, while perhaps his
most important instrumental work, A Faust Overture (1839/55), developed
from plans for a whole symphony on Goethe’s drama. Significantly,
Wagner called his opus a Faust overture, just as Liszt would title his
Wagner-inspired symphony A Faust Symphony. The indefinite article sig-
nifies in both cases that music can only achieve an approach to Goethe’s
incomparable work, but never the transposition of it – an idea which also
guided Schumann’s Scenes from Goethe’s Faust.
The intention of Faust, at least of its second part, approaches a musical-
dramatic Gesamtkunstwerk. The important role played by the basic forms of
opera, oratorio and other musical-literary genres in structuring Faust ii – not
to mention the work’s pervasive musical symbolism and lyrical entangle-
ment of phonetic and semantic elements – has often been observed. The
eminent significance Goethe attributed to opera, however – as the modern
form of dramatic art – is still not widely appreciated among his connois-
seurs. ‘This pure opera’, he wrote in the Tag- und Jahreshefte of 1789, ‘which
remains perhaps the most favourable dramatic form, had become so per-
sonal and natural to me that I used it for many subjects’ (BA 16, 13).
Without even including the hybrid forms between opera and drama
226 dieter borchmeyer
(Proserpina, Egmont and pageants), one-third of Goethe’s dramatic works
and projects are finished or planned libretti.
This recourse to opera was one of the most important reforms under-
taken by the Weimar stage to counter the ‘naturalistic’ tendencies of
the contemporary theatre. In his ‘conversation’ Über Wahrheit und
Wahrscheinlichkeit der Kunstwerke (1797, On Truth and Probability in
Works of Art), opera serves as a model for distinguishing ‘artistic truth’
from ‘natural truth’. Schiller’s oft-quoted letter (29 December 1797) to
Goethe on opera in the same year points in the same direction: ‘I have
always had a certain confidence in opera, thinking that from it tragedy
would develop a nobler form, just as the chorus of the old Bacchanalian
festival did.’ This is because opera succeeds through the ‘power of music’ in
making the soul, by necessity, ‘more indifferent towards the subject matter’.
Accordingly, it lacks that ‘servile imitation of nature’ which, according to
Schiller, any ‘reform’ of drama must begin by suppressing.7
Goethe must have agreed with this wholeheartedly. His fascination with
opera had much to do with his ‘suspicion’, as he writes to Zelter on
6 September 1827, that the ‘sense for music should accompany . . . any
sense for art’ (WA 4:43, 49). And this suspicion even becomes a ‘claim’
which he ‘would like to support by way of theory and experience’. And in
Maximen und Reflexionen (Maxims and Reflections) we read: ‘The dignity
of Art appears perhaps most conspicuously in Music; for in Music there is
no material to be deducted. It is wholly form and intrinsic value, and it
raises and ennobles all that it expresses.’8 This is exactly the reason for the
exemplary role of music in Goethe’s aesthetic theory and practice – a
practice which, especially in the theatre, aims at ‘deducting’ subject-matter
when dealing with art.
This same idea lies behind the closeness of Faust ii to opera. Goethe did
not, of course, have ‘real’ opera in mind – in which the poet was typically
unable to express himself freely – but its ideal form. ‘The text of an opera’,
wrote Goethe in a letter to Prince Lobkowitz on 7 October 1812, is one of
those ‘poetic genres’ the quality of which is ‘very hard to judge, because they
cannot be judged as independent works of art’ (WA 4:23, 110–11). Faust i is
already marked by countless musical references. To begin with, there are the
clear indications of music on and behind the stage, such as ‘church bells and a
choir’ (736–7) during Easter night in the first scene in Faust’s study. There is
the singing and dancing of the beggar and of the soldiers and peasants in the
scene ‘Outside the City Gate’ and of the spirits in the first and second
‘Study’ scenes. There is the solo and choral singing of the students, as well as
Mephisto’s flea song in ‘Auerbach’s Cellar’, Gretchen’s song about the king
 Hidden comedy, covert opera 227
in Thule, Mephisto’s serenade outside Gretchen’s door in the night scene,
and the cathedral scene with ‘Organ and Choir’ (3775–6), which, in its
blend of reality and imagination, with the voices of the Evil Spirit and
Gretchen alternating with the ‘Dies irae’ of the choir, gives the impression
of a veritable opera scene – no wonder it was set to music as a whole by
Robert Schumann. Nor can we forget the many musical elements of the
‘Walpurgis Night’ or Gretchen’s mad singing in the ‘Prison’ scene.
This unusually dense succession of incidental music is already enough to
distance Faust i from ‘classical’ drama and draw it into the vicinity of opera.
There are also scenes which are structured analogously to music. The
‘Prologue in Heaven’, for example, begins with the solemn quatrains of
the three Archangels, which are not literally sung but represent a meta-
phorical antiphony where the voices of the Archangels present themselves
soloistically at first and then unite in triphony. It is a musica angelica which
corresponds to the musica mundana, the harmony of the spheres invoked in
the first lines of the ‘Prologue’. Mephisto then consciously interrupts the
style of this ‘singing’ when he bursts in with his rakish and irregular spoken
verses of five or more stresses. Among other passages with musical structures
are several melodramatic moments in the study and in Gretchen’s lyrical
scenes ‘At Her Spinning Wheel’ or ‘By the Ramparts’ (3586–7, ‘Deign, O
deign, / You who are sorrow-laden’), which the young Richard Wagner
actually composed as a melodrama. Whether we focus on the pure inciden-
tal music or the above-mentioned analogous or metaphorical choral and
melodramatic scenes, Faust i is clearly marked by a counterpointing of
quasi-musical and spoken verse drama.
This is continued with even greater clarity in the second part of the
tragedy. The ‘Pleasant Landscape’ scene, which opens Faust ii as the pagan
counterpart to the ‘Prologue in Heaven’ of Part i, has such a consistently
musical structure that Schumann had no difficulty setting it to music. It
begins with Ariel, accompanied by aeolian harps, singing an eight-line aria
stanza in trochaic four-stress lines with alternate rhymes and masculine and
feminine endings. Formally, it could be the work of Metastasio, the model
librettist of Italian opera seria. This is followed by a recitative in iambic five-
stress lines with a free rhyme scheme. Then the chorus starts up with four-
lined stanzas in the same form as Ariel’s initial aria. In Goethe’s first draft
they bore the names of musical genres corresponding to Ariel’s four
‘watches of the night’ (4626): ‘Serenade, Notturno, Matutino, Reveille.’
The purely musical scene closes with a lyrically more relaxed ‘aria’ of Ariel.
This is followed by Faust’s monologue in terza rima which, while Goethe
usually intended it for spoken declamation, Schumann also set to music.
228 dieter borchmeyer
The actually or metaphorically sung opening scene is followed by the
state council scene at the Emperor’s court, which appears to be conceived as
a conventional theatrical scene. The ‘Masquerade’ that follows again mixes
spoken monologues and dialogues with soloistic and choral antiphonies,
but in the second part of this scene the borders once again blur between
what can be imagined and represented musically on the one hand and
verbally on the other. The remaining scenes of the first act, culminating in
the conjuring of Paris and Helen before the Emperor and his court, are
again only spoken. By and large, music disappears from the dramaturgy of
Faust after the ‘Masquerade’. The scenes in Faust’s former study are straight
theatre, and the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’ of Act 2 plays out on ancient
soil, far removed from the Western experience of music. Of course even
here we have (in addition to the musical imagery of the dialogues) the
singing of the Sirens (parodied ‘to the same tune’ by the Sphinxes), as well as
the chorus of the Nereids, Tritons and other mythological ensembles, up to
the mighty final chorus sung by ‘All’. Yet it is hardly imaginable musically,
since what Goethe wants to conjure here is not the Nordic-Romantic
musical world but its countercosmos, whose musiké sounded nothing like
what modern listeners think of as music. Remarkably, no composer has ever
had the daring to set this mythological cosmos to music. Schumann’s Faust
Scenes, for instance, skip straight from the first act to the fifth.
The third act, Helena’s ‘Classic-Romantic Phantasmagoria’, with its
change of scenes from Menelaus’ palace to Faust’s medieval castle, gradually
exchanges – thematically as well – the formal model of Greek tragedy for
that of modern opera. At the bottom of this ‘paradigm shift’ is Goethe and
Schiller’s fundamental notion that music is the exemplary art of modernity,
just as antiquity had been the heyday of the visual arts. The genre laws of the
visual arts are thus more congruent to naïve or classical poetry, while the
rules of music correspond more closely to those of sentimental or Romantic
poetry. Schiller speaks in his treatise on ‘Naïve and Sentimental Poetry’
about the ‘dual relationship of poetry with music and plastic art. . . .
According to whether poetry either imitates a given object as the plastic
arts do, or whether, like music, it simply produces a given state of mind,
without requiring a given object for the purpose, it can be called plastic or
musical.’9
Modern musical poetry arises from the marriage of Faust and Helena.
With the birth of Euphorion, music in the Western sense is born. The stage
directions between 9678 and 9679 read: ‘Pleasing, purely melodic music of
stringed instruments is heard from the grotto. All listen attentively, and soon
seem deeply affected by it. From this point to the pause after v. 9938 there is full
 Hidden comedy, covert opera 229
musical accompaniment.’ And now Phorkyas alias Mephisto appeals to the
ancient listeners, who are moved by a hitherto unkown feeling:
Höret allerliebste Klänge,
Macht euch schnell von Fabeln frei!
Eurer Götter alt Gemenge,
Laßt es hin! es ist vorbei. (9679–82)

Hear those strains of lovely music,

Liberate yourselves from myth!
Do not cling to ancient gods –
A sorry lot that’s now passé.
Music as new mythos antiquates ancient mythology:
Niemand will euch mehr verstehen,
Fordern wir doch höhern Zoll:
Denn es muß von Herzen gehen,
Was auf Herzen wirken soll. (9683–6)

What you say, no more has meaning;

We today are more exacting:
Nothing can affect our hearts
That does not have its source in feeling.
‘From the heart! May it go to hearts’, was Beethoven’s motto above the Kyrie
in his autograph of the Missa Solemnis. And true enough, the (ancient)
chorus confesses to being ‘moved to tears’ (9690). Not just ancient
Olympus, but the whole quotidian world of visible things collapses into
the nocturnal world of inwardness:
Laß der Sonne Glanz verschwinden,
Wenn es in der Seele tagt:
Wir im eignen Herzen finden
Was die ganze Welt versagt. (9691–4)
Let the sun’s light lose its splendour
Now that dawn is bright within us
And we find within ourselves
What the world will not provide.

Now Euphorion enters, the genius of modern musical poetry. This whole
scene with its sequence of arias, duets, tercets and ensemble numbers
involving the chorus follows an unmistakably operatic design, closing
with the four-stanza funerary chant of the chorus. All ends, therefore,
with the fatal fall of Euphorion.
230 dieter borchmeyer
The specifically musical expression of death is, according to a note made
by Beethoven in the draft of Egmont, the pause. Goethe employs it here as
well, and with the highest tragic pathos: ‘Complete pause. The music ceases’
(after 9938). While in an opera the music has to resume after a general pause,
however long it may be, this musical pause in Goethe’s Helena act does not
end. The music dies away once and for all, Helena and the chorus return to
their ancient modalities, and Panthalis bids good riddance to the now, in
her eyes fortunately, ‘dead’ music: ‘We’re rid at last of magic spells / And of
that roar of jingling, complicated notes / That disconcert the ear and, even
more, the mind’ (9963–5).
We can pass over Act 4; apart from some ‘martial music’ in the back-
ground, it is Faust’s least musical act. Only in Act 5 does the music, with the
singing Lynceus, gradually return. The midnight scene with Care – the first
one Schumann set to music after ‘Pleasant Landscape’ – marks a renewed
movement back towards musical dramaturgy. This becomes more obvious
in the subsequent scenes with Mephisto and the lemurs, and with Faust’s
interment and the chorus of angels. The final scene (‘Mountain Gorges’), in
which singing as such is nowhere thematized, presents itself less as an opera
than as a metaphorical oratorio, the musical allure of which need not be
gone into any further here.
What Goethe said (in reference to Orpheus, who built houses with the
sounds of his lyre) about architecture – he called it ‘silenced music’ – could
also be said about large parts of Faust. If not silenced, it is at least silent
music. This is true not only of its dramaturgy, but also of its thematics and
symbolism. Out of Faust’s dense musical mesh of images at least two motifs
can be highlighted here. From the very beginning, the ‘Dedication’ follows
the rhapsodic–epic tradition in presenting the poetry to come as Gesänge
and Lieder (songs), and ascribes to the latter a cathartic effect for the poet
himself:
Es schwebet nun in unbestimmten Tönen
Mein lispelnd Lied, der Äolsharfe gleich,
Ein Schauer faßt mich, Träne folgt den Tränen,
Das strenge Herz, es fühlt sich mild und weich. (27–30)

And like an aeolian harp my murmuring song

Lets its uncertain tones float through the air.
I feel a sense of dread, tear after tear is falling,
My rigid heart is tenderly unmanned.
The idea of catharsis could not be put in verse more pointedly. As is well
known, this Greek concept comes from two different fields: the cult which
 Hidden comedy, covert opera 231
used it to describe the cleansing and purification of a defilement, and the
medical sphere, which employed it for the excretion of incompatible sub-
stances. Catharsis, therefore, simultaneously means purifying and purging.
In the sixth chapter of his Poetics, Aristotle based his definition of tragedy
on catharsis, and in chapters viii, 5–7 of his Politics he described it exten-
sively as a specific effect of music; it calms undue excitement and relieves,
relaxes and discharges negative affects. In his Nachlese zu Aristoteles’ Poetik
(1827, On Interpreting Aristotle’s Poetics), Goethe had of course wanted
nothing to do with any definition of tragedy on the basis of its ‘effect’ and
falsely claimed that Aristotle had not included it in his definition of tragedy.
He cannot deny, however, that the author of the Politics understood
catharsis unambiguously to be a category of effect: ‘Aristotle had said in
his Politics that music could be an aid to moral education because sacred
melodies could soothe a mind that has been excited by orgies, and hence
could have a similar effect in counterbalancing other emotions.’10
Goethe himself often described the cathartic effect of music, which he
observed concretely in his own experience. The most moving example is his
letter to Zelter of 24 August 1823, where he explains how, in the midst of the
turmoil of his love for Ulrike von Levetzow, he had been shaken to the core
by the concerts of the the singer Anna Milder Hauptmann and the pianist
Maria Szymanowska: ‘The immense power that music had over me in those
days! Milder’s voice, the rich sounds of Szymanowska . . . untwisted me, just
as one lets a clenched fist gently flatten itself out.’11 Goethe dedicated to
Maria Szymanowska those verses which would become, four years later, the
third part of his ‘Trilogie der Leidenschaft’ (Trilogy of Passion), with its title
‘Aussöhnung’ (Reconciliation) clearly alluding to Aristotelian catharsis:
Da schwebt hervor Musik mit Engelschwingen,
Verflicht zu Millionen Tön’ um Töne,
Des Menschen Wesen durch und durch zu dringen,
Zu überfüllen ihn mit ew’ger Schöne:
Das Auge netzt sich, fühlt im höhern Sehnen
Den Götter-Wert der Töne wie der Tränen.
Then music to the fore like angels swarming,
A million tones in galaxy. We surrender
All of our inner fort to forces storming
– Irresistibly overrun with splendour.
The eye goes damp: in longings past tomorrow
We guess at the infinite worth of song and sorrow.12
If Goethe is taking this idea – which is also the final chord of Faust’s
‘Dedication’ – towards ancient melotherapy, the ‘Prologue in Heaven’ is
232 dieter borchmeyer
indebted to an altogether different tradition. Its first lines already evoke an
archetype of ancient Western music theory: the idea of the harmony of
the spheres, of musica mundana. ‘In ancient rivalry with fellow spheres / The
sun still sings its glorious song’ (243–4). This music of the Macrocosm, the
harmony of the spheres is – just as the subordinated musica humana is, in
Boethius’ De institutione musica, the music of the Microcosm as the
harmony of the human organism – a theoretical music far superior to
sensual, audible musica instrumentalis (which also includes vocal music).
Only gradually during the Middle Ages did musica mundana become that
musica angelica which is intoned by the Archangels in Goethe’s ‘Prologue’.
As the song of angels, this musica mundana becomes just as audible as it is to
the Spirits’ ears in Faust ii’s opening scene, ‘Pleasant Landscape’ (which is,
as mentioned, the pagan counterpart of the Christian ‘Prologue’ of Faust i ).
Indeed, the Spirits’ ears cannot bear the synaesthetically conjured sound of
the sun – ‘Light arrives with deafening din!’ (4671) – and they risk deafness
if they don’t withdraw to the ‘rocks below their leafage’.
The idea of musica mundana also informs Goethe’s most famous and
profound pronouncements concerning music, his homage to Bach in an
enclosure to his letter to Zelter of 21 June 1827. Recalling his 1814 Bach
retreat with the organist Schütz in Berka, he wrote:
I said to myself, it is as if the eternal harmony were conversing with itself, as it may
have done, in the bosom of God, just before the Creation of the world. So likewise
did it move in my inmost soul, and it seemed as if I neither possessed nor needed
ears, nor any other sense – least of all, the eyes.13

A highly unusual utterance for the sensuous, eye-minded Goethe. When

Goethe goes on in this letter to venture a summary of the history of music in
a single sentence, we can recognize in its steps the same musical develop-
ment encountered over the course of Faust: music proceeds from a meta-
phorically paraphrased, presensual-metaphysical condition, through a
surrender to the senses (‘step and dance, song and rejoicing’) and a develop-
ment from monophony (‘pure Cantilena’) to polyphony (‘the harmonic
Chorus’) up to the point where, according to Neoplatonic theory, ‘the whole
strives to return again to its divine origin’, i.e., the same spiritual movement
as in the ‘Mountain Gorges’ scene.14 Music becomes, with this almost
Hegelian developmental dialectic, the alpha and omega of all art, its tran-
scendental basis. From here we can understand why Goethe is inclined to
associate music with every sense of art, as the a priori condition, as it were, of
the possibility of all art, the essence of the universalia ante rem in the sense of
Schopenhauer’s musical philosophy.
 Hidden comedy, covert opera 233
Beginning with the transcendental musica mundana, the Faust drama
travels through every dimension of music, from the lowest to the highest,
from the drinking songs of students to the music of the angels, in order to
return at last, in the ‘Mountain Gorges’ scene, to its metaphysical origin. It
forms the meta-tragic frame of the Faust tragedy. Music in Faust – whether
as the expression of vulgar or sublime joie de vivre, as catharsis or as celestial
musica – always evokes a pre-tragic or supra-tragic world. But if the tragic
cannot be transcended in and through music, it simply stops, as in the
shocking general pause after Euphorion’s fatal fall, or the lamentation of the
chorus in the last part of the Helena act.
Goethe emphasized repeatedly, as in his letter to Zelter of 31 October
1831, that he was not ‘born to be a tragic poet’ since he was by nature
inclined towards reconciliation. The ‘purely tragic incident’ thus remained
alien to him, since it had to be ‘essentially irreconcileable’.15 To be sure, the
tragedy of Faust is resolved in the redemption of its protagonist. But the
artistic medium in which this tragic resolution takes place, actually or
metaphorically, is music. It is, like comedy, a medium of reconciliation,
and as such, it accords very closely with Goethe’s character. His nature is
truly congruent with his own idea of music.

not es
Translated by John Noyes and Hans Schulte.
1. Goethe, Faust, ed. & trans. Stuart Atkins, Collected Works, vol. ii, Princeton
University Press, 1994. All further references to Faust are by line number to this
edition. Other English translations provided by John Koster are referenced as
JK.
2. Mikhail Bakhtin, The Bakhtin Reader. Selected Writings of Bakhtin, Medvedev,
Voloshinov, ed. Pam Morris, London: Edward Arnold, 1994, 235.
3. Ibid., 235.
4. Karl August Böttiger, Literarische Zustände und Zeitgenossen. Begegnungen und
Gespräche im klassischen Weimar, ed. Klaus Gerlach and René Sternke, Berlin:
Aufbau, 1998, 251.
5. Johann Peter Eckermann, Conversations with Goethe, ed. Hans Kohn, trans.
Gisela C. O’Brien, New York: Frederick Ungar, 1964, 141.
6. Goethe’s Letters to Zelter, with Abstracts from Those of Zelter to Goethe, trans.
A. D. Coleridge, London: G. Bell and Sons, 1887, 202.
7. Goethe, Correspondence between Goethe and Schiller, 1794–1805, trans. Liselotte
Dieckmann, New York: P. Lang, 1992, 251.
8. Goethe, Maxims and Reflections, trans. Thomas Bailey Saunders, London:
Macmillan, 1908, 172.
9. Friedrich Schiller, Naive and Sentimental Poetry, trans. Julius A. Elias, New
York: Frederick Ungar, 1967, 133.
234 dieter borchmeyer
10. Goethe, Essays on Art, ed. John Gearey, Collected Works, Princeton University
Press, 1994, iii, 199.
11. Goethe’s Letters to Zelter, 221.
12. Goethe, Selected Poems, ed. Christopher Middleton, Princeton University
Press, 1994, 255.
13. Goethe’s Letters to Zelter, 293.
14. Ibid., 293–4.
15. Ibid., 474.
 chapter 15

Theatricality and experiment: identity in Faust

Jane K. Brown

The self, known in Western thought primarily as the soul, became, partic-
ularly under the influence of Rousseau, interiorized in the second half of the
eighteenth century. Troubled by the moral irresponsibility that accompa-
nies identity so interiorized that it is unknowable to itself, Goethe explored
alternative models of selfhood from the early 1770s on. Werther analyses the
solipsism of the modern self, while Egmont offers a notion of theatrical
identity – the self as a role to which one commits, at least for a time.1 The
questions surrounding Faust’s identity have always been central to the Faust
legend: the Faust of the chapbook is, after all, a sinner who barters his soul
for knowledge. One way to think of the modernity of Faust is to say that
Goethe substitutes interiorized identity for soul, and self-knowledge for
knowledge in the traditional schema.
The questions that have swirled around the morality of striving in the
Faust scholarship might be better understood as problems that Goethe
recognized with modern subjectivity. An unknowable self can only develop
blindly at the behest of nature; it will inevitably come into conflict with a
social world predicated on the control that arises from self-knowledge. The
Lord of the ‘Prologue in Heaven’ locates Faust’s capacity for salvation in his
participation in the eternal motion of a nature that never stands still but
always changes in time. At the same time, the Lord acknowledges the
concomitant violation of the human moral code inherent in such striving –
‘Man errs as long as he strives’ (317).2 The problem, for Goethe, is not
inability to know the moral code, but the relationship between epistemo-
logy and morality, between knowledge and action. But Goethe takes the
problem a large step beyond Rousseau, for the connection of human
striving to the eternal motion of nature ties the essential ineffability of the
interior self to the ineffability of the cosmos. Faust faces a double dilemma –
to know the unknowable self and to know unknowable nature. If science is
the way of knowing nature, and art of knowing the self, Faust needs them
both. Thus this chapter investigates the relationship of art to science in
235
236 jane k. brown
Faust – in particular that of theatre to Goethe’s experimental method – and
the importance of both for understanding Goethe’s notion of identity.
At the end of Act 3 of Part ii, Helena dissolves in Faust’s embrace, and her
dress becomes a cloud that carries him away from Greece. Mephistopheles in
the meantime removes the mask he has worn during the act to reveal that
Faust’s entire affair with Helena has been a play-within-the-play, pure theatre.
At the beginning of Act 4, the cloud deposits Faust at the top of the Alps and
withdraws eastward, looking more and more like a recumbent goddess or
even Helena as it goes. Then a different cloud, a wispy, high one appears,
that Faust readily identifies with Margarete, his ideal beloved from Part i
of the drama. The descriptions of the billowing cumulus cloud associated
with Helen and the cirrus that represents Margarete derive from the cloud
classification system of Luke Howard (1772–1864), still basically in use
today.3 Here this scientific system represents the two women whom Faust
has cast to represent his own ideals, and thus, in a certain sense, his own self.
This prominently located cloud imagery thus connects identity both to
science and to theatre.
Identity is, perhaps surprisingly, central to Goethe’s scientific method.
Normally since the seventeenth century the experimental method has been
oriented towards validating a hypothesis, but for Goethe the fundamental
problem was the role of the observer or, in the Kantian terminology of the
time, the problem of the subject and the object. In these terms there could
be no accurate scientific perception of the object, the other, unless the
mediation of the subject, the observing self, could be taken into account. In
Faust also the search for knowledge turns out really to be the search for
knowledge of the self and its relation to the other, or of the subject and its
relation to the object. As Faust learns, achieving knowledge of the subject is
anything but trivial: it takes a long lifetime and about 12,000 lines of
difficult poetry to learn that a self exists only in the present and is thus
always in flux, always unstable. Because they change shape so freely and are
so difficult to describe objectively, clouds are a particularly good image for
connecting problems of identity and objective knowledge. By linking the
clouds to the particular personal identities of Faust’s two beloveds, Goethe
pushes the basic problem to the extreme: both identity and phenomenon –
that is, both subject and object – are unstable.4 How can an unstable
observer ever establish objective knowledge of an unstable phenomenon?
The cloud monologue in Act 4 thus addresses Goethe’s fundamental
question regarding experimental methods. I shall show how it connects
Goethe’s scientific and theatrical concerns by describing first the connec-
tion of the subject–object problem in Goethe’s general scientific essays to
 Theatricality and experiment 237
Faust, then by exploring identity in Faust – how it is a problem – and then
how it is theatrical. After that I shall return to stabilize the clouds.

the subject–object problem in the essays

Just when Goethe was expanding the Faust fragment of 1790 into Faust i
(1808) he was rejoicing in a new harmonious interrelation of his two deepest
interests in life: art and science. In a late essay on the influence of Kantian
philosophy (1817) Goethe attributes an ‘especially happy epoch of my life’ in
the 1790s to the appearance of the Kritik der Urteilskraft (Critique of
Judgement), because it treated art and science together as mutually illumi-
nating phenomena,5 and in Faust Goethe makes art and science equivalent
paths by which the self can gain knowledge of the ineffable Truth or Other.
In both scientific essays and Faust Goethe struggles with this basic problem
of knowledge. In the language of an essay of 1792, ‘The Experiment as
Mediator between Object and Subject’, to know an object means to grasp
‘the infinite’ and to recognize the ‘forces of nature’.6 Faust uses the identical
wording: he justifies his pact with Mephistopheles at the end of the second
‘Study’ scene by his need to access ‘the infinite’ (1815), and sees ‘the forces of
nature’ (438) in the sign of the Macrocosm. As late as 1817 the thought of
Kant brings Goethe the essayist back to such Faustian language as ‘eternally
creative Nature’.7
The basic problem for scientific knowledge, according to ‘The Experiment
as Mediator’, is to escape the use of one’s own self as the measure of all
things – in other words, one must escape one’s own subjectivity.8 Goethe’s
term in the essay is Entäußerung (renunciation, or, literally, removal of one’s
self to the outside). Faust’s problem at the beginning of the play is in fact
‘removal to the outside’: he begins the play imprisoned in a narrow Gothic
study from which he is desperate to escape literally. At the same time he
longs to escape metaphorically from his past and present identity as a scholar
dependent on words. It is the same situation as in ‘The Experiment as
Mediator’, but now expressed theatrically in Faust.
‘Experiment’ is Goethe’s term for the particular process of scientific
observation that mediates between subject and object. The scientist’s mis-
sion is to observe, not to force phenomena into systems, nor to prove ideas
invented by the observer. Too much subjectivity causes the investigator to
draw arbitrary and often unwarranted connections among phenomena and
to become too attached to hypotheses (his objection to Newton’s theory of
light).9 Nevertheless, too much objectivity can reduce scientific knowledge
to a mere collection of isolated facts. ‘Experiment’ in Goethe’s terms
238 jane k. brown
establishes connections among facts by multiplying and varying the con-
ditions of observation; such pluralism allows the observer to escape the
limits of his own subjectivity.10 As a result, major discoveries are made not
by individuals, but by collectivities or by an age, as the accumulation of
individual perceptions and observations reveals a pattern implicit in them.11
For the individual observer, experiment means repeating observations
under varied circumstances to create what Goethe calls an Erfahrung (expe-
rience, or empirical observation), a slice of knowledge that consists of
many subsidiary ones. Such knowledge is then ‘of a higher order’.12 But
an Erfahrung is still not full knowledge of what Goethe calls a pure pheno-
menon; this, like a Kantian thing in itself, can never be known through
direct perception of its entirety; the insight of Erfahrung is as much as
observation can achieve. Thus in ‘Erfahrung und Wissenschaft’ (Experience
and Science),13 another unpublished draft of 1798, Goethe summarizes his
method for establishing the pure phenomenon, the thing itself as best it can
be known, as follows:
The pure phenomenon . . . emerges as the final result of all observations and
experiments. It can never be isolated; instead it reveals itself in a regular series of
appearances. In order to represent it, the human mind stabilizes the empirical
fluctuation, excludes random variation, separates out impurities, untangles con-
fusions, indeed dis-covers [un-covers] the unknown.14
This method developed into Goethe’s discipline of morphology and
forms, and constitutes the model for his epistemology. But as the cloud
monologue suggests, a self can also be a phenomenon, a subject is an object
to another subject. The phenomenon Faust studies is the colourful rainbow
that represents human life in the famous image at the beginning of
Part ii. The presence of specifically theatrical vocabulary in this passage –
‘reveals itself ’, ‘in a regular sequence of appearances’ (think ‘scenes’),
‘to represent’ – corresponds to the fact that Faust, also, is organized accord-
ing to this definition of scientific experimentation; it consists of a series
of repeated experiences from varied perspectives as Faust takes on a series
of roles.

identity as a problem in faust

In the beginning of Faust the observing self seems to be a secure concept.
The self is stable in time and knowable through memory, which easily
recovers childhood and other states of mind long past for the poets in
‘Dedication’ and the ‘Prologue on the Stage’, and for Faust himself when he
 Theatricality and experiment 239
hears the Easter chorus in ‘Night’. Furthermore, as the Lord puts it in the
‘Prologue in Heaven’, the self has an essential core (‘Urquell’) that cannot be
dislodged by any machinations of the devil. Faust himself speaks confi-
dently of an identity grounded in an internal sense of himself, perhaps most
famously to Margarete, when he says ‘Feeling is everything’ (3456).15 He
wants to believe that the same is true for nature also, whose inner core he
seeks to know in the first paragraph of his opening monologue.16 Nature –
the object – however, proves less accessible to knowledge than the self,
as Faust quickly learns when the Earth Spirit rejects him. Indeed, the
Archangels in the ‘Prologue in Heaven’ make clear that God and his
works are ‘incomprehensible’ and ‘unfathomable’; in the final chorus mys-
ticus of Part ii they are still ‘ineffable’ and ‘indescribable’. The initial
problem in Faust seems to be knowledge of the object, not of the subject.
Nevertheless, the self quickly becomes unstable. Already in his first scene
(‘Night’) Faust has to question his identity – ‘Am I a god?’ (439), he asks of
the Macrocosm, and when the Earth Spirit rejects him he can only ask
whom he then resembles (515).17 By the end of the following scene Faust has
two souls pulling him in opposite directions, one heavenward, and one into
the world (1112). The development is more than temporary, for in the next
scene his ‘better soul’ (1180) awakens as he translates the bible. As he makes
the pact Faust reverts (as he will frequently) to the rhetoric of an interiorized
core self: ‘And I will partake of the lot of all mankind / In my innermost self ’
(1770–1). But this self is about to dissolve into the world, because Faust
continues ‘and thus expand my own Self to that of all mankind’. The pact
requires, furthermore, that Faust renounce all stability in time: he is never to
ask the ‘moment’ to ‘tarry a while’. When Faust first recognizes the two
souls within himself, he calls for a mediator ‘between earth and heaven’
(1119) to heal the rift, and in response there appears – the black poodle who
turns out to be Mephistopheles. Mephistopheles, as poodle and as pact-
maker, is thus the sign of Faust’s discombobulated identity.
And indeed Mephistopheles disrupts Faust’s sense of self ever further. He
removes him from his familiar academic setting, has him dress in unfamiliar
clothing, brings him first to what Faust considers the entirely unsuitable
gaiety of ‘Auerbach’s Cellar’ and, finally, rejuvenates him in the ‘Witch’s
kitchen’. Mephistopheles transforms Faust from a passionate lover of
knowledge into a lover of flesh: he changes his identity. Faust acknowledges
as much when his encounter with the innocent Margarete makes him cry:
‘Pitiful Faust! I no longer recognize you’ (2720). When he withdraws from
her in ‘Forest and Cavern’, the spirit of nature grants him two revelations.
The first insight, into the breast of Nature, is his brotherhood with all
240 jane k. brown
beings and spirits of forest, air and water (3223–7); his identity is dispersed
into nature. The second is insight into himself (3232–3). But Faust scarcely
recovers his identity thereby, for in the next line he describes these reve-
lations within his breast as ‘secret, deep wonders’ (3234). This is not a self
whose essence Faust knows, but one that must be revealed and that evokes
amazement – it is evidently new and unexpected. By the end of Part i the
sincere Faust for whom feeling was everything has become an ordinary
street-brawler, the seducer and abandoner of an innocent woman, and an
outlaw. When Margarete recognizes him in prison it is amazing that she can
say so positively ‘It’s you’; she does, however, immediately add, ‘I can
scarcely believe it’ (4510). The fact that her line cites the recognition scene
of Tamino and Pamina in Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) only adds to
the irony. As Faust tries to drag her from the dungeon and refuses to kiss
her, her confidence in his identity dissolves completely. Readers have always
been puzzled by her calling him ‘Heinrich’ (Henry), a name for Faust used
only once before the final scene in Part i (also by Margarete) and used
nowhere else previously in the Faust tradition; Goethe probably chose the
alias to emphasize his hero’s lack of special or stable identity – by becoming
all of humanity he has become any Tom, Dick or – in this case – Harry.18
No one else has a stable identity in Part i either. When an innocent student
comes to Faust for advice, Mephistopheles makes his head spin, and in
‘Auerbach’s Cellar’ he renders the drinkers unable to recognize one another.
He invents the death of Frau Marthe’s husband and then leads her through a
labyrinth of feelings about him, until at last he reveals her total lack of core by
drawing her affections onto himself. Margarete’s brother Valentin has no
identity of his own – if his sister is dishonoured, then his life is destroyed.
Margarete is the most important of these examples. In her very first line she
denies the identity of ‘fair young lady’ (2605) that Faust first offers her as she
famously says, ‘I’m neither fair nor a lady’ (2607). There is no indication that
she ever comprehends how he has projected his own ideal onto her. We see
it when Faust describes her in her room; he makes it clear that he sees in
her the entire cosmos, the order of Nature, a representation of the absolute
knowledge he seeks. But she, as she says explicitly, is unable to compre-
hend what he sees in her (3216). Margarete is in effect really two people,
one for Faust and one for herself. For Faust, her tragic destruction results
from his attempt to possess the Ideal in literal terms; in the same way he
will destroy the shade of Helena he himself conjures up in Act 1 of Part ii
simply by embracing it. But for Margarete, her tragedy is the typical
bourgeois seduction tragedy of the eighteenth century. She puts on the
jewels Faust offers with excitement and, in ‘At the Well’, is unable to find
 Theatricality and experiment 241
her way back into the self she was before she met him. At the end of Part i
Mephistopheles claims she is condemned, while a voice from above asserts
she is saved. Productions of the play and the most famous Faust operas
give the salvation voice priority, but nothing in the text of Faust i suggests
that one voice is right and the other wrong. The contradicting claims
correspond to the duality of her identity.
One might argue the characters are all in some sense the puppets of
Mephistopheles, but even his identity is not firmly fixed. Playing the devil is
his assigned role, not his essence, for the Lord identifies him in the
‘Prologue in Heaven’ as his assistant who ‘must function as devil’ (343).
Faust asks after his essence when Mephistopheles first manifests himself in
‘Study 1’. Mephistopheles has already changed his outward identity several
times (from poodle to hippopotamus to elephant to scholar), so that clearly
physical form says nothing about essence. Even so, Faust should know
better, as Mephistopheles suggests, because he has also already acknow-
ledged the inadequacy of words, so you can’t tell somebody about your
essence. Mephistopheles then identifies himself to Faust with a famous
riddle, that he is ‘a part of that power that would always do evil and always
does good’ (1335–6). The riddle presupposes a dialectical universe in which
all phenomena are denied only to give birth to some new version of them;
identity in this universe is always unstable. Mephistopheles’ riddle also
presupposes a divided self in which will and deed are always at odds. For
Mephistopheles, as for Faust, there can be no action with self-knowledge.
As a poodle he can cross the magic sign on Faust’s threshold to enter the
room, but as a scholar with higher intellectual faculties he cannot cross it
again to leave.19 In Part ii the devil’s gender becomes unstable (female as
Greed in Act 1 and Phorkyas in Acts 2 and 3, homosexual in his relations
with the angels in Act 5), and Goethe considered saving him. If even the
devil can be worthy of salvation, what is there to hold on to? With typical
sardonic irony, Mephistopheles declares identity to be imponderable:
‘When all’s said and done, you are what you are’ (1806). It will take patient
experimentation in Part ii to establish the order that underlies this chaos.
In the first scene of Part ii, Ariel symbolically restores Faust’s shattered
identity by sprinkling him with the waters of Lethe; the remainder of
Part ii enacts this cure at greater length and with greater complexity in an
extended, almost psychoanalytic, allegory of identity. In fact, the waters of
Lethe do not cure Faust: they make him forget. We might even say they
repress the disastrous effects of the disunity of his identity. In place of his
individual disunity we see radical discontinuity between surface and depth
translated onto the court of the Emperor in Act 1. The court, the Emperor
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and all the courtiers are in a state of chaos or fragmentation due to the sorry
state of the Emperor’s finances. But money belongs to a network of images
in the play – including gold, fire, wine, sunlight – that has been associated
from early in Part i with the Absolute, with Truth. In Part i it hovered
consistently above Faust in some version of a divine realm, but now for
the first time it is located in the depths of the earth, which are interpreted
to be the depths of the past, of the cultural imagination and of Faust’s
own imagination. For, in order to produce his dumb-show of Paris and
Helen, Faust descends, as the stage direction tells us, to the depths to
find the mysterious Mothers. His personal origin is oddly pluralized to
become the origin of the culture, so that the Mothers represent the subcon-
scious, the unknown depths of the self.
In Part i Faust talked about himself as divided and confused; in Part ii he
is often actually represented in triplicate. In Act 1 he appears in the carnival
masque between Boy-Charioteer, his idealizing soul or self that wants to fly
upwards, and Mephistopheles dressed as Greed, the self that holds fast to
the gold that comes from beneath the earth. This trio actually appears for
the first time on the way to the ‘Walpurgis Night’ late in Part i, where Faust
climbs the mountain between a flighty will-o’-the-wisp and Mephistopheles
(again), who calls his attention to the gold of Mammon in the mountain.
The two outer figures appear again in the ‘Walpurgis Night’s Dream’
as Shakespeare’s two nature spirits, delicate Ariel and mischievous Puck.
In the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’ in Act 2 of Part ii the whole trio appears
again, with Faust and Mephistopheles in their accustomed places and
Homunculus as the flighty imaginative side of Faust. This dispersion of
the self, by objectifying its separate parts, begins to make it more visible, and
therefore legible, to the reader, if not to Faust himself.
As paradigms of human beauty, the shades of Paris and Helen that Faust
brings back from the Mothers enable the psychic and social integration so
sorely needed; accordingly, their arrival tames an audience that has been
most unruly during the carnival masque into something approaching a
community of spectators.20 By focusing Faust’s striving on Helen they
also provide him with a language for the object that Ariel’s gift of forgetting
in the first scene of Part ii had rendered temporarily nameless. In Acts 2 and
3 the descent to the Mothers from Act 1 is re-enacted as a more elaborate
descent into Faust’s own past and subconscious (when he is brought back
unconscious to his own study from Part i) and further yet into the historical
depths of European culture when he descends with Mephistopheles and
Homunculus to the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’. This elaborate detour
to the depths results in extraordinary moments of synthesis or psychic
 Theatricality and experiment 243
integration, the most obvious of which are the marriage of fire and water at
the end of Act 2 with Galatea and Homunculus, and the union of Faust and
Helena in Act 3.
By the beginning of Act 4 Faust’s identity seems on the way to
re-integration. Without anguish he watches the cloud that represents
Helena recede into the depths of memory, and welcomes the returning
consciousness of Margarete and his striving of Part i. Here for the first time
Faust finally seems able to read the objectifications of himself. He now
proceeds without wavering to his final stages of achievement, striving and
insight – building dykes for settlers to lead a free and productive existence of
eternal striving and creation in Act 5. Two additional motifs signal his
return to a stable identity: the inner light that shines when Care blinds him
(‘but inside me bright light shines’, 11500) and his revitalized faith in the
once-rejected word, which now, far from empty, ‘is all that carries weight’
(11502). And yet, as already noted, billowing clouds seem an odd metaphor
for a stable identity, while scholars still cannot agree whether Faust’s final
acts are to be understood triumphantly or with bitter irony. The stability of
Faust’s re-integrated identity still remains in question, indeed has become
less dependable than ever in the last part of the play.

theatrical identity and reflection in faust

The process of recurrent destabilization is largely driven by theatricality.
Theatre is the primary mode of representing the world in Faust. The
‘Prologue on the Stage’ and ‘Prologue in Heaven’ each transform what follows
them into plays-within-the-play, so that, as is so typical in the seventeenth
century, ‘all the world’s a stage, / And all the men and women merely
players’ (As You Like It 2.7.139–40). The ‘Walpurgis Night’s Dream’ is a
play staged within the play; so is the masque in Act 1 (in which Faust
performs); so is the creation and destruction of Seismos’ mountain in
Act 2 – like the ‘Walpurgis Night’s Dream’ it turns out to be nothing but
illusion. To enter the realm of the Mothers, Faust must take on a theatrical
‘stance’ (Attitüde), and the Helena he brings back performs on a stage set
up in the knightly hall. The tragedy of Margarete as well as the Helena
sequence are both plays-within-the-play (Helena is actually an opera within
the play) for which we see Faust donning his costume, in the ‘Witch’s
Kitchen’ for the first and in the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’ for the second.
The ‘Witch’s Kitchen’ itself contains the play of the apes, while ‘Auerbach’s
Cellar’ contains both musical performances and the drinkers acting out a
little play at Mephistopheles’ behest. Mephistopheles functions at different
244 jane k. brown
times as maestro, producer, director and, increasingly in Part ii, actor.
Marthe and even Margarete play their little roles at Mephisto’s direction,
Valentin proudly dies ‘as a soldier’ (3775) – in his chosen role – and even the
rat in Mephistopheles’ song in ‘Auerbach’s Cellar’ plays a role – ‘as if she
were in love’ (2132) is the refrain. In order to experience all that is open to
humanity, Faust must play all the possible roles. Accordingly, all the shifts
of identity chronicled above are also changes of costume: in Part i Faust
changes to the clothing first of a gentleman, then of a youthful lover; in
Part ii his roles as wise man, Plutus, imperial treasurer, medieval prince,
Renaissance knight, elderly landowner all call for different outfits. And the
roles are endless, if one takes account of the parodic or collateral versions of
Faust the striver, like the student, the Emperor, the Baccalaureus, Boy-
Charioteer, Homunculus, Lynceus, Euphorion. As these shifting roles
suggest, theatre is inherently unstable: the first line of ‘Dedication’ calls
for ‘wavering forms’ (1) to emerge from the poet’s own yellowed manu-
script. And Faust is all too aware that theatre is only metaphor, for he rejects
the sign of the Macrocosm as ‘just a play’ (454) and tells Wagner life is
nothing but a ‘grand-historical display’ (583). At the same time Wagner
takes his master’s genuine ranting for declamation of Greek tragedy. The
prominence of the play motif everywhere, but especially in the ‘Prologues’,
tells us that however hostile Faust may be to theatricality as well as to
words, he will have to learn that roles are his only access to Truth, just as we,
the audience, learn that the play is our only access to Truth (that’s what the
last chorus tells us). And this is precisely what Mephistopheles, clown that
he is, has to teach him. Faust wins his way through to a ‘stable’ identity by
accepting that no identity is permanent. Only conceived as a series of roles
can the subject exist in the flux of temporality. In a typical Romantic
paradox, theatricality offers stability precisely because it is so unstable.
Yet theatricality is, ultimately, only a metaphor in the play: its meaning
for the subject–object problem, however, can be clarified through the
mirror, a less prevalent, but precisely for that reason more readable, image
of identity in the play. (I shall use the terms ‘mirror’ and ‘reflection’
interchangeably here, since both are implied in German by the root
Spiegel-.) The mirror is an obvious symbol of subjectivity for our modern
sensibility (I mean here nineteenth-century and later), but in fact it
tends just about until Goethe’s day to reflect the world more than the
individual self, as, for example, in the well-known painting by Peter
Christus, ‘St Eligius in his Workshop’ of 1449, where the mirror reflects
the street outside. When the mirror does reflect the self, it signifies vanity, as
in Bernardo Strozzi’s ‘Old Woman at the Mirror’ of 1615 (see Figure 15.1), or
 Theatricality and experiment 245

Figure 15.1 Bernardo Strozzi, ‘Old Woman at the Mirror’ (1615)

self-examination, as in ‘Prudence’ in Cesare Ripa’s Iconologia (1758–69, see

Figure 15.2).
It most commonly reflects truth, although a magic mirror may very
occasionally reflect an enchantment or distortion of the devil.21 Thus in
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Figure 15.2 Cesare Ripa, ‘Prudence’ in Iconologia (1758–69)

Faust i the sea is a ‘mirror-flood’ (700) that attracts Faust to new worlds,
and, in the vanity mode, Frau Marthe, mother of all vices, invites Margarete
to come to her in order to parade before the mirror in her jewellery (2888).
Reflection in ‘Night’ catches both aspects simultaneously: when Faust is
 Theatricality and experiment 247
rejected by the Earth Spirit, he laments: ‘I, reflection of the Godhead, who
thought myself already / So near the mirror of eternal truth / Rejoiced in my
heavenly glory and radiance’ (614–16). The capacity of the mirror to reflect
eternal truth is distorted by the unwarranted substitution of Faust’s self in
place of the Godhead.22 Thus the two older meanings of the motif barely
raise the subject–object problem.
But when the mirror actually appears on stage as a symbol, something
new happens. When Margarete finds the first casket of jewels, she puts on a
necklace and steps up to the mirror. She indulges in vanity for only two lines
(‘If only the earrings were mine! / You look so different in them’, 2796–7),
then quickly shifts to an almost mystical incantation of gold: ‘For gold
contend, / On gold depend / All things and men . . . Poor us!’ (2801–3). She
sees in the mirror not herself, but the heightened self she could be with the
addition of gold. Part ii makes it amply clear that gold is the equivalent of
the light of the sun, ineffable Truth. Margarete thus sees herself idealized.
The point is even more obvious when Faust stands before the magic mirror
in the ‘Witch’s Kitchen’. He sees in the mirror not himself, but a recumbent
Venus. Yet the figure awakens not his lust, as one would expect from a
magic mirror and despite Mephistopheles’ predictions, but his sense of the
ideal; he addresses the figure in the same language he uses to address the sign
of the Macrocosm. Like Margarete, Faust does not indulge in vanity (self-
satisfaction), but sees in the mirror a projection of his imagination, the very
ideal he is about to project onto Margarete. In each case what is seen in the
mirror is not an identity, in the sense of a self-as-is, but rather an imagined
role to be played, in both cases by Margarete. The fact that Faust projects his
ideal identity across the gender boundary emphasizes even more the impor-
tance of imagination in generating identities that are in truth roles.
In Part ii reflection becomes a more objective form of knowledge. The
paradigmatic formulation comes, like all paradigms for Part ii, in the first
scene, ‘Pleasant Landscape’, when the glittering stars are described as
‘reflected’ (4646) in the lake. We might first read the phrase as a traditional
Renaissance personification – the stars are the eyes of heaven. But nature is
already personified in this scene, in the nature spirits who sing this line to
Faust; the stars are only the natural objects they describe. Reflection is of
the object by the object – no subjects involved, just as in the late poem
‘Dämmrung senkte sich von oben’ (Dusk Descended from on High),
where ‘Blacker still the darkness grown / Reflects within the lake’s deep
skies’. Mephistopheles peers about him in the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’,
and the indecency, ‘reflected in his eyes’ (7085), almost overwhelms him,
as the sunrise almost did Faust at the beginning of Part ii. The subject
248 jane k. brown
has apparently no engagement in this process; instead, the reflection pen-
etrates the viewer from outside his self. The Emperor sees himself reflected
in a Counter-Emperor (10407): only then, he says, does he ‘feel’ – not
‘imagine’ – his own potential greatness. The small shift in rhetoric is telling.
Reflection is now, as so often in late Goethe, a state of being.
At the same time, the mirror is no longer glass, but water.23 Water is
already reflective in Part i, but in Part ii its role is foregrounded more
explicitly. The paradigmatic moment, again, is the rainbow in ‘Pleasant
Landscape’: its colourful ‘Abglanz’, reflection and refraction simultane-
ously, represents all human life. In Act 2 Faust has two visions of Leda
and the Swan: as the conception of Helena they represent his deepest-rooted
desire – his subconscious, perhaps his inmost identity. Both feature the
surface of the water, which reflects the beauty of the mother of Helena
(6912, 7284). In the first, completely subconscious vision, a dream, the
water is described as crystal, but in the second description this last remnant
of the mirror’s former artificial character falls away. Homunculus must live
in a crystal phial because, he tells us, he is artificial: ‘What is artificial
requires confinement’ (6884). Hence we may conclude that the process of
mirroring in the water has become, by contrast, completely natural. The
reflective surface of the water is invoked twice when the members of the
Greek chorus dissolve into nature at the end of Act 3 and explicitly renounce
all claim to human identity (9999 and 10010). Mirrors began in Faust as
objects before which figures are costumed for their roles; they end as the site
at which role dissolves into nature.
The cloud monologue with which I began is the culmination of the
motif, the final manifestation of identity reflected in water. Now the water
is barely even water, but water vapour, and the clouds, unstable in shape as
they now are, reflect ‘fleeting days’ great meaning’ (10054). They represent,
of course, the memory of Helena, whose robe we have seen turn into these
very clouds at the end of the preceding scene. They exist objectively in the
play, they are connected objectively with Helena. Faust need supply no
subjective component to give them meaning. And yet, subject to tempo-
rality in their constant changes of shape, they also represent – reflect – the
profound significance of human history. If the mirror began as the solid
otherness of the world in contrast to the self, that objective other has now
become completely fluid. If the self is unstable, so is the nature in which it
mirrors itself. Both are unstable, because both exist only in time. Kant
suggested to Goethe that art and nature be seen as equivalent categories; so
Goethe’s mirror image shows us that self and world must also be seen as
equivalent or at least analogous categories – both are fluid enough to exist in
 Theatricality and experiment 249
time, and both nevertheless are capable of mirroring something more
permanent than itself on its surface. While both the water and the self
have depths, what can be known of them is only what lies on the surface.24
Whatever permanence and stability either the world or the self has, it is
ineffable and can only be comprehended from the summation of the
different temporary manifestations. With this insight, Goethe’s experimen-
tal method and his notion of identity as a series of theatrical roles come
together. To conceive the self as a series of roles on the stage of the world, or
as a series of roles taken on to experiment with different points of view –
literally, different places to stand – in order to observe the phenomenon of
life, comes to the same thing.
Faust’s monologue at the beginning of Act 4 introduces the last of Faust’s
transformations in the play. Right after this speech he identifies the seashore
as the venue for what turns out to be his last adventure, his final act of
striving to drain swamps and provide land for a free and active people. It is
not a more important, culminating or more typical adventure than any of
the others, but yet another in the series of roles Faust has played. For it to be
superior or definitive would not be in the spirit either of Faust’s theatricality
or of Goethe’s scientific method. As researcher in Faust he lays before us the
series of Erfahrungen. They are all equivalent but, laid out next to each
other, they enable us to see the underlying pattern, the natural law. Faust’s
divided and unstable identity appears to be integrated, and the theatricality
of Part i begins to appear more objective in Part ii – not because anything
becomes more real, but because more and more figures in the repeated
reflections of stage and mirror render the pattern that is the natural law ever
more visible. Thus we have seen Margarete, Helena, Galatea and all the rest
before that anti-climactic mystification, the ‘eternal feminine’, is spoken.
The articulation of such profound and ineffable truths cannot help but
seem simultaneously banal and esoteric. Natural laws, like theatrical roles,
must be ‘angeschaut’, to use Goethe’s word, must be seen, to be believed.
Identity is thus equivalent to natural law, or the subject to the object. Or
is it? Surely it defeats the purpose to be so reductive. The elimination of the
self, Entäußerung, as a scientific term reduces the observer to an unthinking
eye. This is the reflexive self-contemplation at which the mirror imagery in
Part ii arrives. But in the theatre Entäußerung means to take on a role in
the world. It means to create exteriority, to make the ineffable concretely
visible, to give it body: Homunculus in search of a body to house his spark
of life is the paradigmatic example of the process of theatricality. The true
self, like the thing in itself, is the equivalent of natural law, but the focus of
the two discourses is different. Experiment gazes inward towards what
250 jane k. brown
remains constant as the phenomenon is observed from different points of
view, while theatricality makes whatever is constant in the self visible to the
spectator in a series of roles. Experiment is epistemological; theatricality is
representational. Theatricality and experiment in Faust are thus reciprocal
and complementary processes, as identity and natural law, subject and
object are reciprocal and complementary phenomena.

notes
1. I have discussed Goethe’s reservations about Rousseau’s morality in Goethe’s Faust:
The German Tragedy, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986, 81–3, and, at greater
length, in ‘Goethe, Rousseau, the Novel and the Origins of Psychoanalysis’,
Goethe Yearbook 12 (2004), 111–28. On identity as role in Egmont, see my
‘Egmonts Daemon’ in Ironie und Objektivität. Aufsätze zu Goethe, Würzburg:
Königshausen & Neumann, 1999, 14–32.
2. HA 3, 317. All further references to Faust are by line number to this edition. All
translations are mine unless otherwise indicated.
3. Goethe’s interest in meteorology is well documented: he wrote about it, set up a
network of weather stations in the duchy of Weimar and kept a chart of local
barometric pressure pinned to the wall of his bedroom. His admiration for
Howard’s work is also well known; he even wrote poems about it.
4. Indeed, they remind us that the first appearance of Helen in Act 1 of Part ii as
shade was even less stable.
5. ‘Die Einwirkung der neueren Philosophie’ (The Influence of Modern
Philosophy), HA 13, 27. All subsequent citations to Goethe’s scientific essays
are to this volume. On Goethe’s interest in Kant, see Géza von Molnár,
‘Goethes Studium der Kritik der Urteilskraft. Eine Zusammenstellung nach
den Eintragungen in seinem Handexemplar’, Goethe Yearbook: Publications
of the Goethe Society of North America 2 (1984), 137–222; also Nicholas Boyle
demonstrates repeatedly in Goethe. The Poet and the Age, vol. ii, Oxford:
Clarendon, 2000, Goethe’s affinities for Kantian thought. An essay of 1792,
‘Der Versuch als Vermittler von Objekt und Subjekt’, sees art and science as
parallel in contrast (13, again 18), while a 1794 sketch for a never-published essay,
‘Inwiefern die Idee: Schönheit sei Vollkommenheit mit Freiheit, auf organische
Naturen angewendet werden könne’, attempts to capture for the natural scien-
ces the language of aesthetics (21–3).
6. Goethe, ‘Der Versuch als Vermittler’, HA 13, 10–11.
7. In the essay ‘Anschauende Urteilskraft’, which evokes the creative Earth Spirit
at the loom of time (30). The ethical aspect of Faust also enters into these
parallels, because Goethe explicitly connects the Kantian distinctions with his
own principle ‘Tun und Denken’ in ‘Einwirkung der neueren Philosophie’,
HA 13, 28.
8. Goethe, ‘Der Versuch als Vermittler’, HA 13, 10.
9. Ibid., 15–16.
 Theatricality and experiment 251
10. Ibid., 12, 18.
11. Ibid., 13: ‘I might add that knowledge, like an enclosed, spring-fed pond,
gradually rises to a particular level such that the best discoveries are made not
by people, but by the age.’
12. Ibid., 18.
13. Goethe, ‘Erfahrung und Wissenschaft’, HA 13, 23–5.
14. Ibid., 25. Emphases mine.
15. Thus Faust can also say things like ‘You have gained no relief unless it flows
from your own soul’ (568–9), ‘Here I am human, here I can be so’ (939), ‘Oh, if
only you could read in my inner self’ (1031).
16. ‘That I learn what holds the world together in its innermost core, see all cause
and effect’ (382–4).
17. NB Faust ‘feels’ himself to be like the Spirit, but the Spirit insists on compre-
hension – a different kind of self-knowledge. Faust returns to this theme in the
later amplification of this passage: ‘I, image of the Godhead, that already /
Thought itself so very close to the mirror of eternal truth, / Admired its
heavenly glory and clarity, / And shook off my earthly casing; / I, more than
cherub, whose free power / To flow through the veins of nature / And to enjoy
the life of gods by creating / Had already arrogated to myself in anticipation –
how I must now atone!’ (614–21).
18. Wilhelm Meister takes on the role of Shakespeare’s Henry V, Prince Harry, as
he leads his band of actors, in outlandish costumes, into the hands of outlaws in
an episode that is clearly an exercise in experimental identity. Wilhelm Meisters
Lehrjahre, Book 4, chapter 5.
19. In his recent production of both parts of Faust, Peter Stein had the role of
Mephistopheles played by two different actors with totally different personae,
and it worked brilliantly.
20. I take this concept from the central thesis of Benjamin Bennett’s Goethe’s
Theory of Poetry. Faust and the Regeneration of Language, Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1986.
21. Beginning in the fourteenth century, mirrors were also used as tools by
painters for developing perspective, for scaling, proportion and framing
scenes to create pictures; this technical use does not, however, seem to become
a metaphor for identity as other uses did. For a survey of the history of
mirrors, see Benjamin Goldberg, The Mirror and the Man, Charlottesville:
University Press of Virginia, 1985; for an excellent history of the mirror
in European culture, see Sabine Melchior-Bonnet, The Mirror. A History,
trans. Katharine H. Jewett, New York and London: Routledge, 2001. A
more specialized version may be found in Herbert Grabes, Speculum,
Mirror und Looking-Glass. Kontinuität und Originalität der Spiegelmetapher
in den Buchtiteln des Mittelalters und der englischen Literatur des 13. bis 17.
Jahrhunderts, Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1973. On magic mirrors, see Melchior-
Bonnet, The Mirror, 213–15.
22. Cf. also ‘What you call the spirit of the times / Is basically your own spirit / In
which the times are reflected’ (577–9).
252 jane k. brown
23. Mirrors only become consistently glass rather than metal or polished stone in
the late sixteenth century with the spread of Venetian glass. The term con-
sistently used in this and the seventeenth century is crystal (Goldberg, The
Mirror and the Man, 139; Melchior-Bonnet, The Mirror, 18). The water-mirror
in which Narcissus is trapped is its own independent commonplace of the
tradition of mirror imagery. It represents, however, not excessive subjectivity or
the depths of the self, but selfishness and self-love. See Emblemata. Handbuch
zur Sinnbildkunst des XVI. u. XVII. Jahrhunderts, ed. Arthur Henkel and
Albrecht Schöne, Stuttgart: Metzler, 1976, 1627–8.
24. Thus, in a closely related image, when Goethe’s fisherman sinks into the
water at the end of his poem ‘Der Fischer’ (HA 1, 154), his fate must remain
unknown. All that can be said is that he was never seen again.
 chapter 16

Rhetorical action: Faust between rhetoric, poetics

and music
Helmut Schanze

goethe’s rhetoric
The modern restriction of rhetoric to a ‘rhetoric of tropes’ seen as a
‘modernist return of rhetoric’, or ‘rhetoricality’ in an overall sense is
historically derived from a ‘discontinuity within tradition’, from a ‘histor-
ical gap’ between Enlightenment and (post-)modernity.1 It postulates an
‘end of rhetoric’ in the era of Romanticism. Goethe’s rhetoric is situated in
a crucial period, when this tradition still exists but aesthetic theories and
stylistics are bringing it to an end. Theories of staging, even Goethe’s
famous and most disputed ‘Regeln für Schauspieler’ (Rules for Actors),
are seen apart from their rhetorical tradition and context. Goethe himself
never underestimated the art of persuasion. His rhetoric marks an epoch in
the history of rhetoric. Rhetorical theory can be traced up to his concept of
Weltliteratur, which proves to be a cornerstone of a new nineteenth-century
rhetoric.2
Introducing the term of rhetorical actio, the last stage of the opus
rhetoricum, as a leading concept into an analysis of Goethe’s major work
Faust opens rhetorical analysis anew to questions of ‘performance’, theatri-
cality, musicality and mediality. In fact, the Romantic era of transition can
be examined as a period of aesthetic and medial transformation of rhetoric
itself. Rhetoric in Goethe’s Faust has to be examined not only as a relic of
tradition, but also as a formative and performative element in a process of
transformation of rhetoric, from classicist through Romantic to modern
rhetoric.
Faust scholars know that Faust, Goethe’s character, is a great rhetorician.
Wagner, his famulus, admits his superior ars rhetorica, his undisputable
firma facilitas. He strives to profit by this art. But when Wagner states ‘The
comedian may teach a priest’ (527), Faust answers ironically ‘If the priest is
a comedian’ (528).3 Homiletics are revealed as histrionic in using the
rhetorical tropes of irony. In response to Wagner’s statement ‘Actio makes
253
254 helmut schanze
the orator succeed’ (546), Faust disputes this art: ‘Intelligence and good
sense will express / Themselves with little art and strain’ (550–1). But on
closer examination, Faust’s anti-rhetoric not only reveals itself as tropical,
but also as rhetorical criticism in poetic form. To conceal art is a genuine
principle of ars rhetorica itself, a topos: ars est celare artem.
Mephistopheles, his counterpart, is a superb rhetorician as well. By
rhetorical devices he persuades even the Lord to put Faust on trial.
Mephistopheles also ‘likes’ to talk about the Lord ironically: ‘It’s very courtly
in so great a Lord as He / To talk so like a man even with the Devil’ (352–3).
And when Margarete denies being a ‘young lady’, Faust praises her humility.
The courtly art of greeting and addressing is rhetorically ironized. Faust’s
discourse with Margarete is, technically, a perfect rhetoric of seduction, but it
uses the elements of the new rhetoric of passion, the core of the Romantic
concept of love. Faust is conceived as ‘Don Juan’ and romantic lover in one
person, and he acts rhetorically in this double role.
Faust and Mephistopheles are virtuosi at playing with rhetorical registers.
Irony, using the argument of the counterpart, is truly a rhetorical device,
although it is used against rhetoric itself. By this strategy, the hierarchy of
Renaissance rhetoric is rhetorically proven to be outdated. The very prin-
ciple of the ‘Renaissance man’, his personal striving for knowledge, his
individualism, has sown the germ of decay into the hierarchical order of
speech, into the law of ‘decorum’, the relation between status and style,
codified in the social pyramid from the king, the noblemen and the
burghers down to the peasants, from sublimity to simplicity and humility.
This was taught and used in the epistolary art, even in Goethe’s time, and he
used it in his ‘official letters’ to the emperor, the princes, his great archduke
and his colleagues.
Faust i and ii are poetic documents of a new rhetoric and its critique. In
his schematic synopsis of the unfinished scenes of Part ii, sketched in
December 1826, Goethe announces their future performance ‘with all the
features of poetics and rhetoric’ (444). This implies actio too. In the
dramatic form chosen by Goethe, rhetoric – the art of prose – is not a
nostalgic remembrance of past orality, as it is in the ‘romantic book’. The
difference between the book and theatre is action. Written and even printed
drama has to be put into action in the full sense of the word. Action, which
has to follow the draft of a speech, not only reveals a theoretical term and
practical stage of production, it is also an inherent principle of Goethe’s
work, the performative principle itself.
Actio in an overall sense is a principal concept in Goethe’s Hauptgeschäft
(main task) from its very beginnings. Faust praises actio in translating the
 Rhetorical action 255
opening words of the Gospel of St John: ‘Im Anfang war die Tat!’,
translated by Stuart Atkins as ‘In the beginning was the Act’ (1237).
Action gave birth to the world. This is the credo of power, which is in
fact the credo of the powerful word, the dynamic principle, the very
energeia. In Faust’s second ‘Study’ monologue (1224–37), ‘action’ super-
sedes mere words (‘das Wort’), mere meaning (‘Sinn’) and mere dynamics
(‘Kraft’) .
Renaissance literature, as Heinrich F. Plett has argued, forms a theatrum
elocutionis, a theatre of the word. It lacks actio in the rhetorical sense. In
Wordsworth’s definition, poetry is ‘emotion recollected in tranquillity’;4
actio becomes a process of the inner life. Bodily actio has to be re-established
in written poetry by powerful poetic means and mainly by figurative,
energetic speech. It appeals to the imagination of the reader by poetic
imagery, by words and by bodily language.
Drama has to go further, since it entails close relations between rhetorical
action and dramatic action. The orator is, in fact, an actor. Persuasion has to
be established not only by words, but also by the musical dimension of
speech, by scenic devices, and by the actor’s body, gestures and voice. The
actor plays his role, and he plays with the imagination of the public.
Renaissance and post-Renaissance drama is printed literature and acted
play. It is ‘romantic’ in a broad sense, and ‘antique’ too, imaginative and
physical. It is concerned with a double public, the public of readers and the
public in the theatre.
In conceiving the tragedy of the ‘Renaissance man’, Goethe had to work
on two levels: literary imagination and physical representation. If Faust and
Mephistopheles are conceived both as perfect rhetoricians, they have to
play, as a perfect rhetorician must do, different roles.5 The roles of Faust and
Mephistopheles are roles of role-players; they act not only one role, but a
multiplicity of roles.
As a ‘Romantic’ and modern work, Goethe’s tragedy surpasses the rules
of classical dramatic unity, of character, of place, of time, and of Greek,
Roman and Renaissance rhetoric, by using the Romantic imagination and
modern theatrical devices. The Helena act, for example, spans three mil-
lennia, starting at Troy and ending in the political tragedy of the Romantic
poet (Byron) on the battlefields of Greece, in Messolonghi. The drama of
antiquity, the plays of the Middle Ages, Elizabethan theatre, Baroque ‘world
theatre’, ‘operatic’ scenes, modern theatre of the interior and even the pre-
cinematic apparatus of phantasmagoria are united.
If we take a closer look at the history of Goethe’s actio itself – the
‘performance’ (Ausführung) of the work – there is a crisis of rhetoric that
256 helmut schanze
deserves attention. The planned ‘great oration’ before Persephone, Faust’s
bid for Helen as New Orpheus, was never realized. His great address to his
‘people’ finds only the public of the spectres. And in the end Faust’s actions
and Mephisto’s quaerela have proved to be in vain: ‘A great expense, for
shame! is thrown away’ (11837).

the question of ‘performance’

In concentrating on rhetorical action, I shall show the different ways of
‘performing’, ‘presenting’, ‘acting’, ‘staging’ and ‘mediating’ a unity of
diversities, of ages and styles. This implies a short history of rhetorical
action from antiquity to modern times, and a short media history from
the body to a pre-cinematographic apparatus and even to the digital media
used in contemporary performances.
Goethe’s conception begins with forensic situations and rhetorical forms
of altercation. In its final form, handwritten and sealed, Goethe described
his finished work as a ‘poem’. This poem is designed to be printed. But
following Goethe’s intentions, the true Ausführung (performance) of the
‘work’ in its entirety requires theatrical, musical and even pre-cinematic
realization. Ausführung entails a series of what we can call medializations.
Goethe’s concept of performance is a double one: it means ‘performance’
aesthetically, in the sense of a perfect, sensitive oration, or poetry, and
‘performance’ in the sense of a perfect actio on stage or through other
media. The imaginative whole of the dramatic work has to be comple-
mented by physical action, in opsis and melopoiia, to use the terminology of
Aristotle.
Poetics, from its very beginnings, is confounded by a double notion of
‘performance’. Aristotle, in his Poetics, gives at least three highly controver-
sial solutions. The formative elements of tragedy are usually cited as a
sequence following the technical-rhetorical stages of production: plot,
character, words, thought, scenic presentation and lyrical song.6 This
sequence begins with the conceptual elements: plot, character, words and
thought. It ends with the performative elements: staging and music. But
there is another sequence in Aristotle, beginning with the performative
elements (staging and music) and ending with words, character and
thought. And there is even a third sequence beginning with staging,
followed by character, plot and words, with music and thought at the
end.7 In his theory of poetics, which Aristotle derived from his concept of
ars rhetorica, rhetorical action splits up systematically into staging and
 Rhetorical action 257
music. The philosopher Aristotle obviously hated the tailors and costume-
makers, and even music seems to be superfluous.
Goethe’s reception of Aristotle’s theoretical insights may be studied in his
Nachlese zu Aristoteles’ Poetik (Afterthoughts on Aristotle’s Poetics). Here
Goethe clearly states that the ‘work’ of ‘cartharsis’ has to be ‘closed’ in the
theatre: ‘Then it [a tragedy] must conclude its work in the theatre with
harmonization, with reconciliation of these emotions’ (HA 14, 343). In the
end there is ‘theatre’, that is, ‘staging’, and even ‘music’, that is, ‘perform-
ance’ as actio, in the rhetorical sense of the term.
Goethe’s Faust reflects the Aristotelian problem of staging. Aristotle’s
threefold solution is in fact ‘staged’ in Faust in the ‘Prologue on the Stage’.
Three figures are arguing for the different positions. The Poet–Playwright
in the ‘Prologue’ stands for the poetic sequence, stressing music (that is, of
the words) and thought. The Player of Comic Roles, the actor, stands for
the rhetorical sequence. He carries the Poet’s trade as a ‘love affair’ (160), or
a brewer’s craft:
Brewing the drink to cheer
and edify the multitude. (173–4)

The Director proposes the sequence of the staging:

How shall we plan that all be fresh and new
And with a meaning, yet attractive too? (47–8)

He concludes, marking the end of an altercation:

Words have interchanged enough.
Let me at last see action too! (214–15)

Technical action, staging, must follow wording:

Since that’s the case, this is no time to stint
On scenery or stage effects.
Put both the sun and moon to use. (233–5)

Goethe, of course, knew his Aristotle; as poet, jester and director in one
person, he discusses dramatically the theatrical and the operatic apparatus,
opsis and melopoiia. He didn’t like operatic people, dull dogs on stage, but he
used them whenever possible, even with the poodle in Faust. He knew the
misunderstanding – or true understanding – of Greek drama as
Gesamtkunstwerk. He dreamed that Mozart might compose music for his
Faust and – to the chagrin of some scholars devoted to Wagnerism – he also
named Meyerbeer as a contender for this eminent task.
258 helmut schanze
Under the complexity of actio we have to accept a controversial triad of
rhetoric, poetics and music, and at least three different concepts of action in
Faust: rhetorical, poetic and musical. They all form a unique ‘staging’ and
‘music’ which is ‘rhetorical’ at the beginning, corporeal on stage and multi-
medial in further medializations at the end.

topoi and genera in faust

Rhetorical action is defined as persuasive ‘energy’ (energeia). Rhetoric is
always ‘two-sided’; it operates on given questions. Looking at the thematic
(or ‘topical’) aspects of Faust, there are at least five basic ‘altercations’,
impassioned disputes in Faust:
(1) The Rhetoric of Love, personalized in Faust and Margarete, and in
Faust and Helena;
(2) The Rhetoric of Evil, personalized in Faust and Mephistopheles;
(3) The Rhetoric of the Four Elements, or of Nature, personalized in the
‘Spirits’ of ‘Earth’, ‘Fire’, ‘Water’, ‘Air’, and culminating in the
‘Classical Walpurgis Night’;
(4) The Rhetoric of Power; and finally
(5) The Rhetoric of Redemption, personalized in the Holy Fathers and the
Queen of Heavens.
These all demand different genres, rhetorical and poetic, and they are to be
executed in different forms of action: rhetorical, poetic and musical.
Goethe’s earliest conception, dating back to the 1760s, was the ‘unan-
swered question’ of the ‘limbi’, the in-betweens of heaven and earth, the
question of ‘redemption’ taken from a rhetorical quaerela such as was used
in schools as the progymnasmata (schools of rhetoric). A quaerela had to be
‘open’ in the strict sense of the word. The background to the Gretchen
tragedy is a rhetorical ‘model case’, discussed by Goethe in his doctoral
thesis, and solved in precisely the converse manner when he had to decide
the case in his official capacity in Weimar. It is a ‘two-sided’ case – providing
the argument for compassion and for the technical skills of the lawyer in
cases of litigation. Rhetoric and poetry are both open-ended, but forensic
rhetoric has to be concluded with a ‘sentence’. In the case of the infanticide,
this means that, in legal terms, the death sentence must apply.8
One may study the conflict between rhetoric and poetics, of public and
inward action, not only in Goethe’s rhetoric and poetics of love and evil, but
also in his rhetoric and poetics of power or hubris in Act 4 of Part ii, in
Goethe’s vision of the four allegorical warlords and in his anatomy of political
argumentation in the aftermath of war, which he wrote in the 1830s. They give
 Rhetorical action 259
an ‘essence’ of war and so-called peacemaking, from the Trojan war up to his
own age, the Napoleonic wars, as well as a prospect of an apocalyptic future.
The rhetorical ‘argumentation’ in Faust is transformed, by formative
means, from ‘prose’ into ‘poetry’. Thus the different rhetorical argumenta-
tions can form a poetic whole, organized as open ‘tragedy’. Rhetoric
becomes fiction, in the sense of energetic mimesis. It turns into poetic
action, into a ‘staging’ or great opsis of inner life, into a memorial theatre for
a reading public, intended to be composed musically and to be staged for
the public. There is, in the first part, one scene written in prose, and it seems
to be the most energetic one.
A rhetorical analysis of Goethe’s Faust cannot be restricted to more or less
elocutionary items in the theatrical text. Nevertheless, wording is by no
means a minor consideration. Rhetorical figures structure the text from its
very beginning to the final lines. The first line of the ‘Dedication’, a true
poetic privatissimum, constructs a complex of inversio and hyperbaton, and,
parallel to the final verses, the ‘mystery . . . long concealed’ (10093), it is one
of the most musical in German literature. These figures have to be executed,
performed; they are more than letters and words in abnormal sequences.
They form text in action, they have to be memorized by actors, either in
front of a public or backstage; and they can be shown to constitute a
theatrum rhetoricum. The problems of the rhetorical aptum (correctness),
or a multiplicity of styles, has to be analysed; and this includes the problem
of rhetorical genera as parts of speech in a wider sense of the word.
A closer look at the text will demonstrate that the Faust theme in fact opens a
multiplicity of perspectives even in respect to the generic status of the text. We
have to consider the three classical genera, judicial, deliberative and demon-
strative, and their transformations in Renaissance and post-Renaissance theory
and practice, as well as Melanchthon’s addition of a homiletic genre, and the
reduction of the genera to the sacred and the human by the most influential
theorist of the sixteenth century, Nicolaus Caussin. These rational divisions of
speech may be seen as the core of the Faust theme itself.
The central rhetorical matters in Faust can be proved to be generic. As
topos, genus and function are closely linked in the rhetorical officium, the
question of genera is not restricted to problems of drama, but reveals their
rhetorical background. The five main themes – the rhetoric of love, evil, the
elements, politics and redemption – are dramatically synthesized in a
framework of forty-eight scenes, each of which has its own focus, in a
structured path ‘from heaven, through the world, to hell’ (242) – and to
an intermediate place, called ‘Mountain Gorges’, at the end. This structure
as a whole follows the traditions of the programme of sacred and human
260 helmut schanze
rhetoric, the programme of Baroque Welttheater. The rhetoric of love,
which grounds the work as a whole, has a true homiletic structure. Its
topoi are invented on the basis of religious faith, and against the background
of a medieval setting, transformed into modern subjectivity.
The rhetoric of evil, as already shown, has the structure of a processus and
follows the topoi of the genus iudiciale. Systematically, the political ingre-
dients, the rhetoric of politics in the ‘Emperor’s Court’ scenes in Act 1, are
topically invented according to the rules of the deliberative genre. Faust is
conceived as a political agent and Mephistopheles as a jester and an offstage
prompter (6400), giving bad advice to a corrupt regime.
Act 2 performs a generic shift to the most figured of the rhetorical genres,
the genus demonstrativum. As Goethe stated, it should be executed ‘with all
the powers of the poetic and rhetorical arts’ (HA 3, 444). Since Faust’s
planned oration before Proserpina, a piece of the genus iudiciale, was never
realized, the proper rhetoric of the elements in Act 2 becomes purely
demonstrative: it ironizes, in the quarrel between ‘Neptunists’ and
‘Vulcanists’, modern forms of scientific discourse. The whole of Act 2,
from its beginning to its ecstatic ending, uses the forms of the Baroque
Festrhetorik, both in images and speech. The ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’
‘praises’ the elements and their genuine dynamics. Since the genus demon-
strativum, the art of praise and blame, is closest to poetry, Act 2 could be
described as the most poetic from the standpoint of a rhetorical analysis.
Act 3, the Helena act, simulates classical drama in a pre-cinematic medium
as a classic-Romantic phantasmagoria and mingles genres, too. The act begins
as processus – Helena is accused and she defends her right as ‘lady of the house’
(8797, 8804) – using poetic altercations between Helena and Faust, ‘invent-
ing’ rhyme, showing a poetic metamorphosis into an Arcadian situation and
ending in a tragic demonstration of Euphorion’s fate.
Act 4 is again a masterpiece of political argumentations and their mis-
fortunes, including war as the ultima ratio regum. Act 5 finally opens a
tableau of different styles, from the rural scene of Philemon and Baucis up
to ‘the indescribable’ (12108), in an enigmatic rhetoric of adoration in terms
of ‘Christian-clerical figures’ taken from homiletics.9 Thus the respective
topoi are extensively used in a work of art that supersedes all genres of
rhetoric and poetics by medial integration. The roles of the preacher, the
lawyer, the political agent, the official poet and even the saint take their
parts in a play of sacred and human rhetoric. They act in person and as
personae in different styles along their respective aptum, ironizing and
reflecting themselves in a system of ‘repeated reflections’ (HA 12, 322) und
‘very serious jests’ (WA 4:49, 283).
 Rhetorical action 261

the question of ‘musical theatre’

At the end of the process from ‘conception’ to ‘performance’, ‘staging’ and
‘music’ can be seen as the formative moments which supersede rhetorical
and poetic moments in the form of a ‘new rhetoric’ of medialization,
uniting the different forms of action. Goethe was familiar with the leading
figures of architecture, painting and sculpture, as well as music, not only
from his own experience, but also theoretically – as is evident from his
theory of the arts and his recently rediscovered musical theory. The ‘staging’
of Part ii is clearly inspired by Philostratos’ canon of ideal motifs in ancient
art, and, in the end, in the ‘Mountain Gorges’ scene, by means of ‘christlich-
kirchliche Figuren’.10 For Goethe, the problem of the opsis is apparently
solved, and in his famous letters, when he finished the manuscript in 1832,
he appears proud, indeed joyful, at having at last found a solution. But his
ideas, with their ‘retrograde’ or ‘Romantic’ dimensions, caused and still
cause theatrical problems.
The question of musical performance – musical action – is highly com-
plicated. On the one hand, there is the debate on Goethe’s preference for
Anschauung (evidence), in the sense that he is a ‘man of the eye’. Even the
metaphor for energeia is an optical one. But regarding his wording, Goethe is
a perfect ‘man of the ear’, and his outstanding musicality is proved by the
many adaptations of his lyrics, especially his Lieder, starting with Mozart’s
little piece ‘Das Veilchen’ and continuing right up to the twentieth century.
This applies particularly to the masterly musicality of Faust.11
Faust the ‘Renaissance man’ is the ‘man of the eye’ – but Goethe is a
contemporary of the age of Enlightenment and the age of revolution. He no
longer lives in an age of the great architects, painters and sculptors, but in that
of the geniuses of music and engineering. To Goethe, the musical genius par
excellence is Mozart, whom he once met. And there is an atmosphere of
competition between the genius of musical poetry and the genius of poetic-
operatic music. This competition is expressed in the section of the Italian
Journey based on the diary entries of November 1787. Goethe reports on his
musical experiences with Christoph Kayser, born in Frankfurt, whom he met
in Rome, and among whose compositions was a symphony on Egmont. The
composer had revitalized Goethe’s interest in the musical theatre:

He [Kayser] brought with him the symphony for Egmont, and so I experienced a
revitalization of my fundamental interests, which at the present time were
more than before, out of necessity and preferences, directed against the musical
theatre. (HA 11, 435–6)
262 helmut schanze
Goethe tried to enlist the composer’s help for the ‘performance’ of his
musical works of the early Weimar years: Erwin und Elmire, Claudine
von Villa Bella and Scherz, List und Rache. He obviously tried to go
further than the old intermezzo, envisioning a new form of Singspiel. But
Kayser definitely failed in achieving the new form of musical comedy
Goethe intended. Kayser composed, in Goethe’s words, ‘nach altem
Schnitt’ (in an old-fashioned manner). But Mozart more than matched
his intentions:
When Mozart came on the scene, all our striving to confine ourselves to the simple
and controlled was in vain. The Entführung aus dem Serail overwhelmed everything
[schlug alles nieder], and in the theatre nobody ever spoke of our carefully crafted
piece again. (HA 11, 437)
‘Schlug nieder’, in Goethe’s cryptic words, means also a real, personal
depression – in terms of psychopathology, a depressing defeat of the genius
of the musical word by the genius of music.
In musical performance, Goethe is restricted to words. He created
musical words, and he gave ‘literary’ advice to composers. This advice, or
musical framing, is to be found in the text itself, and beyond it. It is to be
formulated in the framework of the old musical genres of ‘intermezzo’ and
‘opera’. It uses the conventional stage directions and the formalism of
musical comedy before Mozart, but is clearly intended to be performed
using the musical means of the post-Mozart era. Goethe used the forms of
madrigal, lied, Singspiel and even operatic arias very consciously. On the one
hand, Goethe had to refer to conventions; on the other hand, he set his
hopes on the genius of musical performance.

faust – paratexts, frames, medializations

The Faust text is in fact commissioned by Goethe to be published according
to the conventions of the musical comedy, the libretto. In a letter to
the publisher Wilhelm Reichel, he refers to the mark-up of the Helena
act and new scenes of 1827, and gives the following ‘permissions’ for
typesetting:
With the next mail coach the first scenes of Part ii of Faust will be sent to you. I am
personally convinced, that you, in printing this poem [sic!], will supervise the
master typesetter as you did with ‘Helena’. Generally speaking, all verses spoken by
individual persons, should be full out, and all verses spoken by a mass or a group,
e.g. the murmuring, which is in shorter verses, should be indented. In the same way
everything which appears as a Lied or is to be performed lyrically (as most of the
 Rhetorical action 263
Carnival) must be indented. Nevertheless there may be ambiguous cases, where
taste has to guide judgement as to how to fix the reader’s attention on certain
passages, which then have to be marked according. But this will be rare, and I leave
it fully to your discretion. (HA 3, 449–50)
This mixture of clear advice and formal licence exposes the problems of the
performance of Faust. Formally, there are ‘full out’ and ‘indented’ passages
of the text, forming three categories: spoken text, chorus or ‘murmured’
text, and text to be sung. The spoken text is rhetorical and dialogical, the
chorus text is semi-rhetorical, and the passages to be sung are set up in a
broad variation of madrigals, arias and, in both parts of the tragedy, of
Lieder. There are, in the stage directions, additional hints regarding melo-
dramatic accompaniment and ‘pure’ symphonic music to be performed as
stage music. Thus the musical character is clearly announced to the future
reader, who is, ideally, a musician.
In Part i, around 750 verses out of 4,372 are indented, about one-fifth of
the entire text.12 In the Singspiel Claudine von Villa Bella the ratio is one to
four (lyrics to prose). In the Helena act, more than 800 verses out of 1,352 are
indented. It is worth remarking that ‘pure music’ in this scene begins more
or less with the Euphorion part of the Phantasmagoria, which is set in
‘modern’ times, just after the ancient and medieval passages. The stage
directions read:
Ein reizendes, melodisches Saitenspiel erklingt aus der Höhle. Alle merken auf und
scheinen bald innig gerührt. Von hier aus zur bemerkten Pause durchaus mit
vollstimmiger Musik. (After 9678)
Charming, purely melodic music of stringed instruments is heard from the grotto.
All listen attentively, and soon seem deeply moved by it. From this point to the
pause there is full musical accompaniment.
The musical ‘general pause’ ends the ‘dirge’ (9907) for Euphorion and
marks the disillusionment of Faust and Helena. There is no doubt about
Goethe’s intention: ‘Helena’ must be performed like an opera. The problem
of the singing actress could be solved by casting two performers, a singer and
an actress, as Goethe suggested in one of his conversations with
Eckermann.13 ‘Mountain Gorges’ is in fact indented as a whole. Goethe
uses highly melodious, hymn-like verses, in keeping with the scenic per-
formance of Christian figures. At the end of the scene the rhetorical,
dramatic and poetic actions are fully musicalized.
As shown above, the ‘performance’ of Faust, Goethe’s ‘execution’,
follows the Aristotelian stages of production, but leaves the staging
and the music only partly to the stage director and the musician. In his
264 helmut schanze
texts and paratexts Goethe provides a rigid framework in which he reveals
his scenic and musical intentions. He opens the text to performance in
the widest sense of the word, and his paratextual remarks must be seen
as a Derridean ‘frame’. ‘Scene’ and ‘music’ are both parerga and ergon. This
frame postulates not only a genius of rhetorical and theatrical performance,
but also of musical performance. In accordance with the concept of a new
rhetoric, this amounts to actio in an integrated and medial sense.
An analysis of the rhetorical components of Goethe’s Faust, especially his
paratextual elements (e.g., the layout), leads beyond marginal phenomena
and liminal devices to the very core of the production itself. These compo-
nents are designed by the author to effect the greatest energy.14 They open
the closed structure of the work to its medialization.
Since the emergence of a ‘performative turn’ in theoretical discourses in
the 1980s and 1990s,15 that is, in the age of digital media, the topic of
rhetorical action has once again become actual not only in theatre studies,
but also in literary and media studies. Goethe’s Faust and its paratextual
structure mark an epoch in media history. Faust acts as a ‘Renaissance man’
and as a man of ‘modernity’. The tragedy of Faust was written by Goethe in
a literary and musical age. Goethe’s imagination and his knowledge of the
‘machinery’ of theatre enabled him to propose the use of the pre-cinematic
apparatus of phantasmagoria in Part ii, namely in the staging of the Helena
tragedy.
Given the theoretical approach of a ‘performative turn’, which announ-
ces a ‘performative crisis’ even in the ‘production’ of Goethe’s masterpiece,
and proposes an integrative history of medialization, the question of the
interrelations of rhetoric, poetics and music in Goethe’s Faust is no longer a
theoretical question. It provides us with a complex structure for our
discussions on Faust in the twenty-first century. The combination of
‘word’ and ‘action’, as a combination of ‘competence’ and ‘performance’,
is essential to the so-called ‘persuasive’ staging which surpasses mere word-
ing; indeed, it surpasses the reader’s ‘theatre of memory’.
Theatrical action is more than pure design: it achieves the ‘wholeness’
of the drama. This ‘wholeness’ is split up in modern media production
into different professional stages. Since modern drama is a generic
Gesamtkunstwerk, it definitely lacks wholeness: it is fragmented, shows
upheavals, is never finished or is never to be finished. The history of
medializations of Faust therefore tends to be an infinite process or, in
Romantic terms, a process of ‘infinite rhetoric’, or of the new rhetoric of
implicit musicality.
 Rhetorical action 265
not es
1. See John Bender and David E. Wellbery, ‘Rhetoricality’, in The Ends of Rhetoric,
ed. John Bender and David E. Wellbery, Stanford University Press, 1990, 3–5.
2. See Helmut Schanze, ‘Goethes Rhetorik’, in in Rhetorik zwischen den
Wissenschaften, ed. G. Ueding, Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1991, 139–47.
3. All further references to Faust are by line number from HA. Translations are
based on Stuart Atkins’ translation: Faust i & ii , New York: Suhrkamp, 1984; on
Georg Madison Priest’s translation: www.levity.com/alchemy/faust01.html;
and my own translations, for the purposes of my argument.
4. See Klaus Dockhorn’s ground-breaking essay on English Romanticism and
rhetoric: ‘Wordsworth und die Rhetorik’, in Macht und Wirkung der Rhetorik.
Vier Aufsätze zur Ideengeschichte der Vormoderne, Bad Homburg: Athenäum,
1968.
5. See the note by Novalis (February 1800):

In a true speech an orator plays all the parts – moves through all the characters –
through all situations – only for the sake of surprise – in order to observe the
object from a new side, to provide the audience with an illusion, or to convince
it of something; a speech is an extremely vital and witty, variant tableau of
internal observations on an object. The orator will ask, then answer, then he
speaks and enters into dialogue, then he narrates, then he appears to forget the
object, only to return to it suddenly, then he pretends to be convinced, only to
resort to cunning undermining, then becoming simply moved, courageous – he
addresses his children – he acts as if it were all over and done with – then he
speaks to the peasants, to one then another, even with lifeless objects. In short, a
speech is a monologic drama.
Novalis, Schriften, ed. Paul Kluckhohn and Richard Samuel, Stuttgart:
Kohlhammer, 1968, iii, 648–9.
6. The Poetics of Aristotle, trans. S. H. Butcher, London: Macmillan, 1895.
7. See Michael Davis, Aristotle’s Poetics. The Poetry of Philosophy, Lanham:
Rowman & Littlefield, 1992, 45; Helmut Schanze, ‘Opsis und Melodia.
Zum “Apparat” und zur “Medialisierung” ’, in Das Musiktheater in den audio-
visuellen Medien, ed. P. Csobádi, G. Gruber, J. Kühnel, U. Müller, O. Pangl,
F. V. Spechtler, Salzburg: Mueller-Speiser, 2001, 80–91. Ulrich Gaier, in a
forthcoming study on Anthropology of Poetics, derives this triad of definitions
from Plato’s positions in his dialogues Phaedrus and Politics.
8. See Goethe’s aide-mémoire for the Duke of Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach, Carl
August, 1783. Goethe confirmed the legal arguments of the time and the legality
of the sentence, but he did not take part in the ‘processus’, as was recently argued
by Günther Jerouschek, ‘Skandal um Goethe?’, in Goethe-Jahrbuch 2004,
Weimar: Böhlau, 2005, 253–60.
9. Goethe, conversation with Eckermann, 6 June 1831. Goethes Gespräche. Eine
Sammlung zeitgenössischer Berichte aus seinem Umgang, auf Grund der Ausgabe
266 helmut schanze
und des Nachlasses, ed. Flodoard Freiherrn von Biedermann, rev. and ed.
Wolfgang Herwig, Zurich: Artemis, 1965.
10. See Helmut Schanze, ‘Christlich-kirchliche Figuren. Zur poetologischen
Bedeutung mittelalterlicher “Bilder” für Goethes Spätwerk’, in Kunst als
Kulturgut. Die Bildersammlung der Brüder Boisserée – ein Schritt in der
Begründung des Museums, ed. Annemarie Gethmann-Siefert and Otto
Pöggeler, Bonn: Bouvier, 1995, 206–11.
11. Goethe’s ‘Musical Theatre’ has recently drawn major attention. See Tina
Hartmann, Goethes Musiktheater. Singspiele, Opern, Festspiele, Faust,
Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2004. See also my book on Goethe-Musik, Munich:
Fink, 2009.
12. See also Detlef Altenburg, ‘Fürst Radziwills “Compositionen zu Göthe’s Faust”.
Zur Geschichte der Schauspielmusik im 19. Jahrhundert’, in Festschrift
Christoph-Hellmut Mahling, ed. Axel Beer et al., Tutzing: H. Schneider,
1997, 25–35, esp. 27. Altenburg also counts 20 per cent ‘musical’ text in Faust i .
13. See Helmut Schanze, Faust-Konstellationen. Mythos und Medien, Munich:
Fink, 1999, 93.
14. Jacques Derrida, La Verité en peinture, Paris: Flammarion, 1992, 73.
15. See Erika Fischer-Lichte, ‘Vom Text zur Performance. Der performative turn
in den Kulturwissenschaften’, in Schnittstelle. Medien und kulturelle
Kommunikation, ed. G. Stanitzek and W. Vosskamp, Cologne: DuMont,
2001, 111–15.
 chapter 17

Directing Faust: an interview

Peter Stein1

Directors are not supposed ‘to lose their way in libraries’ – that’s what an English
critic recently claimed. We have the impression that you don’t care much about
such wisdom. How exactly did you prepare for the staging of this difficult work?
Peter Stein: I’ve prepared for it all my life. In high school we read Faust i ,
of course, and my teacher had this great idea and told us that Faust ii wasn’t
for us – so I really got curious and dug in. I didn’t understand much, but
I knew that this was an incredible mountain to climb. I made a number of
attempts over the years to get on top of it, through seminars, the available
commentaries etc., but did not get much further. In 1969–70, Faust was on
a very short list for a Schaubühne production (Berlin – see ‘Contributors:
Peter Stein). I worked hard for it and at it, but again couldn’t pull it off. In
1985, I left Berlin for Paris and got involved with a medieval project. I was
reminded of much in Goethe’s play, re-read the whole thing and suddenly
found myself inside the text. I could read it almost like a newspaper, without
commentary. Apparently I had to go through various Faustian phases of
culture and life myself before I could find my orientation and pass it on
to actors.
Did you consult literary historians in preparation for your production?
Stein: Of course I did. As soon as I could read the text, the literature
became important. So I studied the commentaries by Schöne, Gaier,
Lohmeyer etc., but always came to the point where re-reading was more
interesting and productive.
Traditional scholarship presented you with a ‘heroic’ image of Faust, while
more recent criticism tends to project an immoral, self-centred exploiter. How
did you steer your own way through these alternatives?
Stein: I find this whole discussion rather stupid. Obviously, both ele-
ments in his character struggle with each other, that’s the very theme of the
play. Taking sides is completely un-Goethean. ‘Whoever strives in endless
toil’ (11936–7) is very ambivalent, of course – it is the destiny of his higher
nature, and yet it destroys the world. For a theatre director, this is no
267
268 peter stein
problem: he or she is used to thinking in contradictions. The paradox
is fundamental to the theatre, and that’s why it corresponds to human
existence. So I have never been interested in positions and taking sides; and
I find it hilarious how such a deeply conflicted and flawed character like
Faust could become a figure-head of German imperialism.
I cannot think of another piece of classical literature that has been read and
produced as selectively as Faust.
Stein: Nobody could read Faust ii ! That is one of the main reasons.
And yet a number of themes in Faust ii have come to the surface and are
accessible to young people – like environmental problems, the aimlessness
of our existence, the pitfalls of capitalism . . . old stories that read like our
own modern diary.
. . . a central theme of our book: Goethe’s prophetic genius . . .
Stein: . . . incredible! Especially if you add the reflections in Wilhelm
Meister, Maximen und Reflexionen and elsewhere. It makes you very humble.
You split the two main figures, and had each of them represented by two
actors. What was your reason?
Stein: With Faust, that is obvious: he goes through a transformation, so
we have the young and the old Faust. The doubling of the Mephisto figure
implies that he is not a person at all but a position, or a view of things, which
can appear in infinite incarnations.
The same, of course, this shifting from role to role, has been said about Faust.
Stein: Naturally. But there is a very clear line running through all his roles.
I absolutely had to avoid jumping on that bandwagon and denying Faust a
personal centre. That would not even work dramaturgically. Faust has to be
strengthened, he is the one who is talked about inside and outside the play. It
was a fundamental mistake of Gründgens’ production to claim the central
power of the play for himself, as Mephisto, and reduce Faust to his humour-
less victim. In fact, it was almost criminal how Gründgens imposed himself
on the history of Faust productions. So we had to weaken Mephisto’s power,
assign a more primitive, shallow and square devil to Adam Oest, and the
intellectual, more dangerous one to Robert Hunger-Bühler.
In fact we had four Mephistos: the black dog and the ugly woman
(Phorkyas) in Act 3 should be counted as well. We tried to emphasize the
fact that Mephisto actually shrinks in the course of Part ii, becoming the
constantly griping and grumbling assistant to Faust’s projects.
Let’s look at the principles of your work. German reviews like to deride
Werktreue (faithfulness to the author’s text) and Literaturtheater (literary
theatre). What is your position?
 Directing Faust: an interview 269

Figure 17.1 ‘This is my wager.’ – ‘Here’s my hand.’ (Photograph from the Stein
production, 2000–1)

Stein: I’ve never understood that. If you allow shouting theatre and
onanistic theatre, why not literary theatre as well? Especially since the
dramatic art of Europe is part of its literature.
Why Europe, specifically?
Stein: Well, there is no other ‘theatre’. Everything else is of relative or
local interest. Only European theatre has a world-wide echo, precisely
because of its literary foundation. If you destroy that, of course, you need
not wonder why this universal meaning disappears. Why this literary
‘faithfulness’ has fallen into disrepute is beyond me.
You have been the object of such attacks yourself.
Stein: Sure, they call me names, describe me as an imbecile, and yet they
cannot change me or eliminate me. Such polemics are launched by fools and
agitators who have no clue about literature. Fools can make theatre, too,
which then itself turns into foolish agitation, or silly and infantile antics. To
me, Werktreue (faithfulness to the text) is a very constructive and yet also
relative term – I prefer Autortreue (faithfulness to the author). I am attempt-
ing to understand the author’s textual intentions, and this understanding
already implies a modern awareness and aesthetics. Systematic ‘moderniza-
tion’ would be counterproductive, since our interest in the theatre expects
270 peter stein
the unfamiliar, the strange and puzzling story of other times and places –
that’s the same with literature.
And yet it seems that in contemporary productions the strict actualization of
the historical text has now become the norm.
Stein: This is the flip-side of democratization, this shallow sameness
spreading globally through the media, this standardization of perception
and reception which blocks any effort of original thought. Everything must
be made familiar – ‘Aha, this means this.’ Anything enigmatic is eyed with
suspicion. So my directorial colleagues start with familiar preoccupations
and say, ‘This and that has to be found or invested in those classical texts,
otherwise they can’t tell us anything.’
They don’t understand much, it seems, about hermeneutics. Gadamer has
shown us how our modern consciousness, in its process of understanding, moves
into the horizon of a cultural text to reconstitute itself. And Albrecht Schöne has
demonstrated [in this book!] how such a productive fusion takes place, with
Faust so remarkably ‘at home’ in our own time. While scholars have known this
for many decades, directors still believe they have to erase the historical horizon
from a play in order to achieve ‘presence’.
Stein: Suggesting ‘presence’ is indeed essential. The stage is populated
with people of our own flesh and blood, with legs that drive cars and eyes
that are accustomed to television screens. But they become engaging only
when their modernity is discovered through their strange deeds in strange
times and places. Mephisto’s carpet takes Faust not only to Greece but
3,000 years back in time – that is funny and fascinating, and releases creative
imagery with modern validity. But our theatre producers would rather take
it apart and ruin it, like boys do with toys. They are clearly not educated
enough and are without an intellectual conscience – just people who are
permitted, by the highly subsidized system in countries like Germany, to do
what they want. This is terrible, because it supports the audience’s worst
tendencies: not to reflect, not to wonder, not to be amazed. And just to say,
‘Oh there I am, yes that’s me.’
Directors like to ‘dust off classical plays’ (in Brecht’s words), partly through
sometimes drastic cuts. But you have recently presented the two mightiest
German classics complete and uncut.
Stein: I have to correct that: 10 per cent of Wallenstein was cut. But
nobody (except the Steiner gang) has ever staged both parts of Faust uncut,
so that was a great experiment in trust. I really felt like an art critic who
describes the structure of a painting as exactly as possible in order to find
perspectives and metaphors for his or her own existence. A literary scholar,
of course, could do something similar, but drama as a performing art – the
 Directing Faust: an interview 271

Figure 17.2 Helena and Phorkyas in Sparta. (Photograph from the Stein
production, 2000–1)

space–time coordinates, the mediation of actors, the musical and visual

experience etc. – would still be inaccessible to him or her. It was of great
interest for me to see if the whole interplay of these forces would really work,
or if cuts would be preferable. I’ll give you an example. Much of Act 4
272 peter stein
in Faust ii is so far out – all that re-organization of feudalism in the tents of
the Emperor and rival Emperor, endlessly recited – that it was very hard to do.
Theatre must never be boring. But then I realized that Goethe’s play breathes
that way, and a contemplative relaxation in Act 4 was necessary before the
most powerful elements of the whole drama swing into action in Act 5. I
wanted to enable the spectator to enter such a work like a grand building,
where he could freely look around and feel transported. It simply requires an
interested spectator. And I work only for the interested spectator.
It’s amazing how powerful Goethe’s theatrical instinct really was – this
instinct is traditionally ascribed to Schiller, not Goethe.
Stein: No doubt at all. The same goes for Wallenstein, of course. That
many critics could not see it in the case of Faust is understandable. The
theatre is wonderful in that it prevents you from being critical for more than
an hour at the most. Then you switch off your critical mind and surrender
to the drama. With Wallenstein, critical appreciation is much easier, since
Schiller is much more accommodating and effective for his audience. You
always know exactly where you are, whereas with Goethe that is never quite
the case – until you think you understand. That, too, is eminently theat-
rical, everything remains in suspense. I did not know this when I read the
text. It was only the theatre that brought it out.
You have been talking about your experience and experiments with this
production. Modern theatre theorists start there as well, but come to different
conclusions: texts are raw material for the director, who is the real author.
According to Erika Fischer-Lichte, the original text is only a ‘pre-text’ for the
actual ‘performative text’. And only the latter creates meaning.
Stein: It is normal for people in the public eye to throw their weight
around. So directors have for some time gone far, far beyond their historical
role and declared themselves authors, the authors even. Authors are every-
where nowadays. Theatre directors who act like that can remain unchal-
lenged, not only as a result of state subsidies, but also because they appeal to
universal but primitive, anti-artistic and anti-intellectual emotions. This has
always been a subcurrent in youth culture, and it has become the main
current – but I can’t call it theory. Meaning, what is meaning? Meaning is in
everything. Even in a fart, which works on the olfactory organs, etc. etc. It’s
the self-importance of these people that creates such theories.
It is unfortunately more than self-importance. We have to call it a wide-scale
modern movement, this self-emancipation of the performing arts. The praxis of
‘performative’ theatre and ‘event’ theatre has been supported by countless, more
or less scholarly, publications, revoking any textual orientation in contemporary
theatre.
 Directing Faust: an interview 273
Stein: Clearly this contradicts the very idea and history of the theatre as
it emerged in Ancient Greece. The textual basis has always been decisive –
for a very good reason: it makes theatre conceivable, conservable and
transportable – to the times and places and languages of this world. It unites
people and peoples; and it ‘globalizes’ by cultivating memory, not by
destroying it. It ought to be the fundamental responsibility of the subsidiz-
ing powers to uphold the institution of European theatre. Instead, irrelevant
‘performers’ are given blank cheques. If the literary texts don’t count, why
do they use them at all – why don’t they write or extemporize their own
texts? Because they are completely impotent. It goes even further than that:
instead of finding stimulation and invigoration in the study of these texts
(which are great works of art), they allow them to drift out of reach. Most of
our actors are already unable to speak and perform a classical text, since they
have lost the opportunity to practise this skill.
Why then do so many directors have a preference for the classics? Is it because
these well-known works allow them to demonstrate their de-constructive
powers?
Stein: Absolutely. And because they still sell tickets. But the label is
fraudulent: it doesn’t say ‘freely adapted from Goethe’, it says it is ‘Goethe’s
Faust’. This is sold to young people, schools etc., who see and learn things that
have nothing to do with Goethe or Faust. Again, why do directors get money
for this? If they feel like authors working in the theatre, they ought to finance
things out of their own pockets, like any literary author or composer. Another
aspect of this treatment of the classics is the prohibition of historical costumes.
I heard it again and again, ad nauseam, when I prepared my Wallenstein. If
anything goes in this ‘performative’ age, what justifies such a totalitarian
decree of what must and must not be? If I look at the film and television
genres, the most successful and most globalized of the performing media,
I see costume films, any century, en masse – why is it allowed there, but not
in theatres?
It may have something to do with the fact that Brecht never really broke
through in North America (especially Hollywood). Stanislavski’s psychological
theatre of illusion is still taught in American theatre schools.
Stein: There is no doubt that in Germany both Brecht and the collapse of
culture during the Nazi era played a big role.
Which may explain the fact that the arbitrary rule of theatre directors is much
more at home in Germany than anywhere else.
Stein: It’s called ‘German theatre’ in international theatre circles. German
style means: keep away from the stage, there are people in pyjamas running
around. With suitcases.
274 peter stein
We don’t know of any other director who has focused so keenly on the
language of Goethe and Schiller. Is the spoken word on stage a matter of great
importance to you?
Stein: Of course. I find the fact that theatre is spoken, and the way it is
spoken, highly interesting. There is no other place in society which deals
with the spoken language, and works on its enrichment and refinement –
supposedly at least. It’s not done in schools any more. The theatre is now
the place for it, and the importance of the theatre’s culture of the spoken
word cannot be overrated in view of the fact that language is the supreme
creator of a cultural identity. This alone justifies the investment of public
money. It does not justify the lack of control over this investment.
You are thinking about the decline of theatrical language – Goethe as a
reformer of the Weimar theatre found himself in a similar situation. I have seen
your Faust and Wallenstein productions, and it became obvious to me that you
invested much of your time and energy – and interpretive efforts – in the classical
language and poetry.
Stein: Yes, and I also love it! I constantly discover fundamental, everyday
behaviour in this language, I see how alive it is, and I try to communicate
this vitality. I even consider myself my own – trained and paid – spectator,
and this helps me find my function as director. I make sure that I never lose
my contact with the audience – I read papers, watch TV and keep myself
informed about the themes that move people, including young people. And
of course I try to get to know and speak to and correspond with as many
theatre-going people as possible. That way I can establish myself as my first
professional spectator and make sure that I never become a kind of sectar-
ian, somebody who has drifted away from the audience. I have to make my
actors play to this audience. But then comes the point when I am not
interested in people any more, just in the living language and performance
of the work of art.
It’s interesting that you are trying to reach young people as well. I’ve often
heard the argument that our directors have a special interest in – and respon-
sibility for – the younger generation, which can only be attracted by a contem-
porary event and performance.
Stein: Do you really believe that young people go to the theatre in order
to see someone on a bed of nails in a bath tub jerking off? Running after the
younger generation has never paid off. Inserting ‘youth culture’ into per-
formance texts to cater to 20-somethings also destroys a director’s artistic
integrity. People who work for the general infantilization of society can do
that – I won’t. Children are introduced into society ever earlier as a market
segment and grow up ever later. They claim for themselves the right to
 Directing Faust: an interview 275
remain infantile until the age of 35. But if the people who are running the
show at the age of 40 or 60 justify their arbitrary operations with the youth
vote, it is nothing short of appalling, and both artistically and intellectually
dishonest.
Mr Stein, we would like to lead you back to our text and ask you to
comment on the ‘sehr ernsten Scherze’ (very serious jests) in Faust. Dieter
Borchmeyer, in his contribution to this book, even called the play a covert
Divina Commedia.
Stein: Oh yes, I agree! It was only through my work on Faust that I
discovered how profoundly humorous this text really was. As a matter of
principle, the theatre needs humour. Not just because it has to tell jokes,
like a professor whose prolonged seriousness would otherwise bore people,
but also because it’s an essential part of the theatre. Tragedy cannot exist
without its comic elements. In all historical tragedies, the comedians have to
appear within an hour at the most, otherwise you can’t stand it. In Faust,
comedy sneaks in everywhere, especially through Mephisto – in short, these
Scherze were extremely important to me, and I find that formula (‘Divine
Comedy’) completely apt. Also because Dante’s epic poem was an essential
model for Goethe – the whole redemption process at the end would be
unthinkable without Dante.
Borchmeyer also calls Faust an opera. Would you comment on the operatic
and musical elements in Faust, and in your production?
Stein: The text of both parts is teeming with musical inserts and stage
directions, as you know. In Faust ii, moreover, the whole versification is tied
to music. A musicalization of language takes place, which reminds us that
language itself is a kind of dried or solidified music and wants to turn liquid
again.
So you would agree with the description of Faust as ‘opera’?
Stein: Absolutely. All the stage effects contribute to this: large choruses
appear and vanish, etc. Clearly, Goethe would have loved to see and hear the
third act of Part ii completely sung. Thank God it wasn’t done.
In the ‘Prologue on the Stage’, the director requests there be no skimping on
stage props and machinery. Modern directors therefore like to exploit the vast
offerings of media and technology. It seems that you engineered the ‘phantasma-
goric’ spectacles rather conservatively.
Stein: I would have liked to do more, but there were financial limits.
I would have liked to have Homunculus fly around freely. My solution was
a compromise. I invested an enormous amount of money in something
completely innovative: the heavenly spiral with all the moving lights slowly
unfolding at the end, and creating a path of redemption 50 metres in length
276 peter stein

Figure 17.3 Mountain Gorges: the heavenly spiral. (Photograph from the Stein
production, 2000–1)

(and requiring a stage far larger than Michael Jackson’s) – the planning
alone cost me 100,000 Marks (see Figure 17.3).
No, I didn’t spare the budget, but I always insisted on staying within
Goethe’s imagery and perceptions. Goethe researched possible stage repre-
sentations of the Earth Spirit himself and found a suitable laterna magica
projection developed in Paris. We followed his descriptions, created smoke
and projected the image onto the smoke – that was the Earth Spirit. It was
fun to explore how far we could go with the technologies that had been
available to Goethe himself.
We are very interested, finally, in your understanding of Faust as ‘tragedy’.
Modern productions (like that of Thalheimer recently) like to present the
protagonist as some kind of autistic person or egomaniac, incapable of tragedy.
Do they have a point? Faust does not seem to suffer, learn or feel remorse. He
seems oblivious, insatiable and blind even in the face of his own grave.
Stein: First, I don’t know anyone who is not egocentric and autistic, so
this definition does not apply. What is decisive is how it translates into
action. Faust’s action is a verdict against human activity as such. The futility
of all human ‘striving’ becomes evident – here we have the tragic founda-
tion. The reference to Greek tragedy is quite obvious. The famous law of the
 Directing Faust: an interview 277
Oresteia, the pathein-mathos, means that man acts, and he has to act because
otherwise his life is not guaranteed. But the decisions which human beings
take according to their insights and possibilities are punished by the gods.
Life itself becomes a matter of irony, as life-to-death. Man tries to learn and
adjust, for which he is punished again. Faust’s ‘striving’ is, of course,
cathartically reconstrued in the end, which seems outside Greek tragedy.
Seems – but implicitly you find it there, too. Also, the individual, Faust, is
never the tragic target. It is essential that we understand him as the
representative of the human condition. Then suddenly a new dimension
opens up, tragedy fills the space, and we are part of it.
Faust’s character does betray an increasingly consuming blindness towards the
consequences of his own deeds.
Stein: Sure. But we have to consider that the whole thing is constructed
like a kind of Bildungsroman (novel of education), with important expe-
riences happening in phases or stages. And Faust works through it without
revealing his reactions to the consequences. This was clearly not of vital
interest to the author. So we don’t know what Faust thinks about his role
in the Gretchen tragedy or about the collapse of his financial reform. His
life goes on. Psychologically, I have to confess, this does not pose a
problem to me. I see myself portrayed in Faust. I find myself incapable
of drawing any conclusions from my productivity, or working out its
mistakes in any consequential way, either personally or intellectually.
Many people have great problems with this Faustian ‘deficit’, and if we
take Freud’s understanding of humanity it looks bad, since this whole
process of self-consciousness is missing in the Faust saga. But to me it is
clearly Goethe’s method to propel this life of action, drive it further and
further, until at the end everything is turned into derisive laughter: every-
thing Faust seemingly achieved, his victories in war, his invention of
capitalism, his creation of a free society, ends up in his grave. This is
powerful tragic sarcasm.
It seems that this darkened vision of Faust in his last act corresponds to the old
Goethe’s deepened scepticism concerning ‘modernity’.
Stein: I wonder. I have never been particularly interested in Goethe’s
biography. But I know that keeping up the pace and working on in all kinds
of adversity, even of his own making, was very much his style of living. And
so this was Faust’s behaviour as well, right until death. I experienced much
of twentieth-century Germany, saw unbelievable destruction and depravity,
and yet life went on, shockingly as if none of this had happened, and the
country was accepted back into the family of nations. It would have
happened even without self-searching and guilty confessions.
278 peter stein
But once again: if Faust just muddles on, how can he be eligible for tragedy?
The tradition of the tragic genre implies conditions like freedom, character,
pathos, hubris, sacrifice, fate and guilt informed by some transcendent belief
system – these are not present any more, not in our time, nor in Faust’s behaviour
as you’ve just described it.
Stein: It’s hard for me to respond, since I have never understood tragedy
like that, in relation to some transcendence. In Greek tragedy, heaven is
totally humanized. You cannot encase tragedy in some religious or philo-
sophical system. The tragic situation is simply a protagonist confronting a
superior power against which any struggle would be futile – like nature,
societal forces and of course death. It is therefore inconceivable to me why
tragedy presented in the theatre should have lost its credibility with the
audience – in my opinion, the very opposite is the case. The tragic frailty of
the human race has come into the focus of our consciousness like never
before.
I did not make myself clear enough – I thought we were talking about the
‘tragic’ as a viable aesthetic concept in modern theatre. I do believe that you
‘pulled it off’ with your Faust interpretation. The mystery frame helped, Faust
had a free choice, etc. But tragedies aren’t really written any more, and past
tragedies tend to be turned into travesties by our directors. Why? Because we are
lacking a basis for the ‘pathos’ which can only arise from individual freedom.
His or her suffering and death bears witness to a higher spiritual order and can
therefore be cathartic. Schiller’s Maria Stuart, after much suffering before her
unjust execution, finds herself free at last to sacrifice herself to a moral world
order. ‘Tragic dignity’ is a lost concept today (when we talk about ‘tragic
accidents’ etc.). But its determinants – like freedom, pathos, guilt and catharsis –
are still powerfully present in classical plays. How do you put them on the
modern stage?
Stein: Well, I have my problems with Schiller. No, if I talk about tragedy,
I mean Greek tragedy; everything else is imitation or deviation. Chekhov
tried to create a tragic figure, and the situation is that someone sees his
existence determined by powers against which he can do nothing. And yet
he must, and will, continue the fight. There are theoretical switches in
people’s brains today that were installed in the eighteenth or nineteenth
century. The bourgeois tragedy of the Enlightenment cannot easily be
understood nowadays, but the globalized tragedy is understood – it is dished
out every day. In fact we invite this tragedy and walk into it with open eyes.
We live this paradox where black becomes white and vice versa, and it
always changes. It is no coincidence that over these last twenty years more
Greek tragedies have been performed than ever before. I took part in this
 Directing Faust: an interview 279
movement, too: my Oresteia production stirred up many things. People
simply understood, although I did not ‘modernize’ the text. It speaks to our
so-called democracies – we see, for instance, in the Eumenides what a fragile
achievement a democratic court really is. It assembles itself through such
tricks and lies and betrayal and corruption that the mechanism itself breaks
down and is barely – and only temporarily – saved by personal pleading and
pressures.
Are you involved in such a project right now?
Stein: I’ve just finished one, in Greece and in Greek. I would love to
continue directing in that country, especially since the people embrace my
work with incredible enthusiasm – as if I were their ‘tragic god’. You have to
understand, of course, that several plays of the canon have to be staged there
every year, and nothing good can come of that.
Mr Stein, we thank you very much for this conversation.

n ot e
1. This chapter was revised and translated by Hans Schulte.
 chapter 18

A contradictory whole: Peter Stein stages Faust

Dirk Pilz

The moment when Faust is finally allowed to hold Helena in his arms (he is
in fact paralysed by her, according to Mephisto, who watches with equal
amusement and impatience), they are seated on a little, gold-covered sofa on
a plinth under a canopy. ‘Now the soul does not look forwards nor back-
wards / The moment counts –’, says Faust, played by Bruno Ganz with a
touch of inner salvation and inner emotion (9381–2).1 And Helena, played
by Corinna Kirchhoff as equally moved by events and lost in the moment,
adds, ‘it is our happiness’ (9382).
Faust believes he has held this feeling of time-melting, moment-filling
happiness in his hands once before: in Part i of the tragedy, when the devil
helped him to understand and gain the ‘model of all women’ (2601), which
led him to indulge in ‘the sweet pain of love’ (2689). Margarete (Gretchen)
is played by Dorothee Hartinger as the epitome of naturalness, which is
only possible on stage, not in reality. On stage, the home for this happiness
is represented by a simple wooden bed, covered with a white, creased
bedcover which triggers in Faust a feeling of ‘awesome ecstasy’ (2709) and
seduces him into the high-flown yet honest words ‘I wish that I had hours to
spend here’ (2710). Gretchen’s bed is placed in a highly visible position
centre stage, surrounded by little houses in the background – it is a
measured area of happiness, the poverty of which enables Faust to recognize
‘abundance’ (2693). He calls it ‘bliss in a dungeon’ (2694). With these
words Faust already anticipates the real dungeon ending this bliss; he
doesn’t know it, but he does have some dark foreboding of it. The
set also underlines Faust’s foreboding: the dungeon in which Margarete
will be imprisoned at the end of Part i bears a striking resemblance to
Gretchen’s bed in size and shape; the latter is a cube with bars made of steel
stakes, its floor is covered with straw like an animal’s cage, and it takes up a
lonely spot on the stage. From the much-hoped-for delight has come the
much-feared horror, and from the sweetness has indeed come pain.
280
 Peter Stein stages Faust 281
Faust, on the other hand, has not become wiser. In Peter Stein’s pro-
duction, Faust is certainly able to learn, but this knowledge does not protect
him from further suffering: for Stein, Faust is a tragic character in a
comprehensive as well as a more fundamental sense. This Faust is a man
driven not only by the two souls in his breast, but also by a destiny of
inescapable recurrence. Even before making the bet with Mephisto he
reveals his motto to the devil: ‘If on a bed of sloth I lie contented / May I
be done for then and there!’ (1692–3). That is why he will repeat the
Gretchen encounter with Helena, in another guise and maybe under
other circumstances, but nevertheless it will run a similar course. At least
according to Stein – if not necessarily according to Goethe.
It is a clear directorial decision to make Faust find his ostensible happi-
ness with Helena at a place comparable to that of the encounter with
Gretchen. In this version, Helena is embodied by Corinna Kirchhoff,
who is graceful but distant and unapproachable. She is a ‘noble lady’
(9360), wrapped in golden clothing and with elaborately plaited hair, in
contrast to Gretchen, who has naturally curly hair and wears a skirt of coarse
material and a modest blouse. This time their different backgrounds and
different ways of thinking and feeling are signalled not only by their speech
patterns and choice of words, but also by their manner of speaking and
gestures. As far as Faust is concerned, they are both ‘passion’s essence’
(6499), leading him, what’s more, to the brink of ‘madness’ (6500) – to
such an extent that Mephisto feels compelled to admonish his pupil:
‘Control yourself and don’t forget your part!’ (6501). Although Faust
might believe that Gretchen, like the ‘lovely form’ (6495) in the ‘Witch’s’
Kitchen’, might be just a ‘feeble counterfeit’ (6497) of Helena’s beauty, he
does hope that with both of them his ‘dread ordeal’ with the Mothers (6489)
will turn into ‘glorious reward’ (6489). However, he is to be deluded in this
and by this – at least in Peter Stein’s production. The text depicts Helena as
the noble and universally desired representative of classical antiquity, in
contrast to Gretchen, who is a ‘simple girl’ (2644) of the people. Helena is
conceived as a heightening – a Steigerung in Goethe’s language – of the
Gretchen figure, and consequently Faust becomes an Entwicklungsfigur, a
character that continues to develop and realize its entelechy. Peter Stein, on
the other hand, emphasizes the resemblance between the two ideal women.
From Goethe’s point of view, Helena combines the spirit of antiquity and of
the Middle Ages. He allows her to remain a Greek symbol, a woman who is
then kidnapped by medieval horsemen. Faust encounters her in her coun-
try, but in his time. Thus she comes to signify the blissful moment of
timelessness. Stein, on the other hand, positions this timeless moment by
282 dirk pilz
placing Helena in the Gretchen context. And not content with that, the
production conceives the whole plot as a network of references going
backwards and forwards, not really as a linear development but rather as a
complex interweaving of symbols, action and scenes. It is in small details
that these differences from Goethe’s text become clear. The chain fixed to
Gretchen’s dungeon is the same one that chains Lynceus (played by
Michael Rotschopf ) when he kneels before Helena, praising her in the
‘Inner Courtyard of a Castle’ scene. Helena’s golden gown quite noticeably
resembles the light in the scene, where Faust (played by Christian Nickel)
encounters Gretchen for the very first time. And then there are the knights
surrounding the sofa–throne of Helena who wear the armour that dangles
from a cross-beam in the fourth act of Faust ii and, along with an overturned
chair hung from the top of the stage at the beginning, hints at the bottom-
less abyss over which Faust wanders. In precisely the same way, the elevated
sofa upon which Faust (now played by Bruno Ganz) and Helena solemnly
experience the bliss of the moment points to Margarete’s dungeon-bed.
Helena too will lose Faust, because he does not understand how to be
satisfied by and with her. Mephisto, in Robert Hunger-Bühler’s interpre-
tation a vain and sly daemon, urges him on, as his restless motor. Only
death will bring peace.
At first glance, some of these may be insignificant details of the costumes
designed by Moidele Bickel or of the set designed by Ferdinand
W. Wögerbauer and Stefan Mayer. The details, however, reveal crucial
aspects of the basic concept of Peter Stein’s interpretation. He views Faust as
an example of the all too humanly tragic nature of man; he knocks Faust
down from his pedestal of pretended uniqueness and at the same time lifts
him up as an outstanding literary example of tragedy.
All this is quite different from what the German critics usually empha-
sized. The reviewers were harshly critical of the fact that Stein did not
change the structure of the 12,111 verses of Goethe’s Faust, which required a
total performance time of 23 hours. Such phrases as ‘slavish fidelity to the
text’, ‘literary theatre’ and ‘Goethe idolatry’ were used against such an
undertaking. The critics referred to Stein’s inherent unwillingness or inabil-
ity to take on board the latest stylistic developments in theatre.
The simple fact of staging Faust without making any attempt to shorten
it is not necessarily worth commenting on, whether or not the director is an
outstanding and famous one such as Peter Stein. Stein’s Faust would not
deserve our discussion had he not come up with an independent interpre-
tation of the text. Admittedly, the excessive physical and mental demands
exacted by this lengthy performance could occasionally lead the viewer to be
 Peter Stein stages Faust 283
unclear about the director’s real intentions. And sometimes the audience
would feel that the production attempted to speak primarily to their sensual
desires, namely by the actors’ explicit manner of speaking and moving, by
means of the sumptuous pictures and by the exuberant lighting designs of
Heinrich Brunke, and Vera and Konrad Lindenberg. Such scenes as the
‘Masquerade’, which allowed the audience to marvel at an illuminated
quadriga, or the elaborate setting of ‘Auerbach’s Cellar’ are clear indications
of a certain love for stage effects.
Nevertheless, Stein’s essential artistic concept not only holds the whole
project together, but also reveals an understanding of the text which
presents a great gain for the stage. The fact that Goethe scholars have laid
the foundations makes this gain even more relevant. The realized text lights
up with numerous cross-references which are prefigured but not predeter-
mined. This is interpretation, not slavery. It is in fact a mode of under-
standing which Hans-Georg Gadamer defined in his theory of
hermeneutics: the art of interpretation lies in the ability to weigh the specific
‘volume’ of a text and thereby unveil its poetic truth. Its moment of truth
comes at the point of realization (Vollzugswahrheit). The performing arts
have the task of presenting the textual prefiguration in a given sensory
material through a unique re-creation. This way the ‘character of an original
creation’ is attained.2
It is precisely in this respect that Stein adheres to the original and yet
achieves an original work of theatrical art that does so much more than
follow Goethe’s ‘intentions’. The multidimensional meaning that Stein
creates reveals an image of Faust that not only refers back to the tragedies
of antiquity, but also looks forward to the present, to reveal the tragic
elements there as well. This is also the reason for the double casting of
Bruno Ganz as the older and Christian Nickel as the younger Faust. The
essential connection that draws the Faustian states and phases together is the
tragic line: it is not an exclusive concept of Faust as a failed and despairing
aged scholar, but clearly encompasses the generations, a whole lifetime.
The scenes in which both Faust performers appear together – such as the
‘Walpurgis Night’ scene in Part i – clearly reveal this aspect. This is a scene
in which the concepts and coordinates of time and space appear to be
abolished so that the past can appear alongside the future and the heavenly
can meet the earthly (or even the underworldly). According to the director’s
logic, it is precisely in the extraordinariness of this situation that the
ordinariness, the tragic nature of man, is most clearly revealed. The
‘Walpurgis Night’ scene, for example, uses the stage principle of simulta-
neity to account for the ‘volume’ (Gadamer) of the Faustian experience,
284 dirk pilz
beyond all probability, and to look behind the façade of the phenomenal.
Stein brings out a whole raft of dancing figures to serve that purpose: we see
characters wearing Baroque wigs, young people crouching on car tyres and
grilling sausages, witches riding on broomsticks through the mist and,
finally, Faust equipped with a radio microphone. These are all conflicting
stage elements that make up a contradictory whole and are dramaturgically
interlinked by recurring props and by repeated postures, gestures or stage
elements. This whole is indeed contradictory, as the individual elements are
in their separate spheres. Nevertheless, it is a whole, since it delineates the
fullness of Faust’s tragic nature. Belief in the existence of a whole is as
important as doubting its existence.
This technique of juxtaposition is characteristic of the entire production.
The most striking parallels are those between the beginning and the end. As
the play opens, concentric metallic circles hang over the small stage rostrum
that is surrounded by the audience on four sides. There is also a ladder
coming out of the sky that very much suggests Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape.
At the end, in the ‘Interment’ scene, these circles open up to make a
descending spiral. So the kingdom of heaven has descended to earth, leaving
no path for man to ascend to heaven but only for heaven to descend to man.
This also symbolizes the limits of man’s power, limits that once more refer
to the foundations of tragedy.
To understand this tragic foundation of the Faust production, we need to
explain Peter Stein’s concept of tragedy, because it reveals most clearly the
anti-fashionable character of this production. It seems to be a commonplace
of present-day theatre to regard tragedy as a dead genre – despite the fact
that many theatre directors, not only Peter Stein, continue to stage trag-
edies. If those advocating the death of tragedy are right, then this genre
should no longer exist, as contemporary authors and directors assure us that
tragedies are nothing more than witnesses to past times. At the same time,
the Greeks and Shakespeare are suitably updated, and Schiller, Goethe &
Co. are docked with the present. But the structures and meanings of
tragedy, we are assured on all sides, are hopelessly chained to yesteryear.
‘A tragic hero is a man who creates and destroys himself. The man of today
is able only to conform’, writes Imre Kertész in his Galeerentagebuch, and his
views are widely representative. The man of today is a functional man.
‘Nothingness pervades his fate, since the meaning is lacking which provides
the basis for tragedy.’3 Tragedy is lost.
Over half a century ago, in 1955, Friedrich Dürrenmatt poured some of
this history of loss into his story ‘Die Panne’ (The Breakdown) in the form
of an axiom: ‘Fate has left the arena of performance to lurk backstage,
 Peter Stein stages Faust 285
beyond a valid dramaturgy . . . Now there is no longer a threatening god, no
justice . . . just traffic accidents, or dykes that burst as a result of bad
construction. Or there is an explosion in a nuclear power station caused
by an absent-minded lab assistant or badly built core.’4 God is dead,
technology reigns. But technology without God does not allow for tragedy.
At best it can be resurrected as a farce or a comedy.
According to Peter Stein, this is ‘utter nonsense, old men’s pessimistic
reflections that have nothing to do with theatre. Traffic accidents, dyke
breaches – these are incarnations of fate! If, in a modern mass democracy,
there is a collection of individual tragedies and no superordinated fate, then
this has nothing to do with fate leaving the stage; it is simply presenting
itself in a different way.’5 Virtually any human existence, according to Stein,
bears the nucleus of tragedy, as the paradoxical nature of human life is
death: ‘Man is born to die.’ For Stein, this paradoxical nature is summarized
in the formula ‘to do, to suffer, to learn’ – his own translation of the pivotal
passage from the Oresteia.6 It does not simply sum up the core of ancient
tragedy, but the core of the tragedy of all time. First, because ‘man has no
other option but to learn . . . To change, to adapt onself is a law of nature.’
But more importantly, ‘a process of learning is always followed by an action.
Even after you have learned something you have to take action again – and
to suffer, because nothing good ever comes of action.’7
This is the situation for Faust. A universal law is revealed in the specific
Faustian situation. In Stein’s production it is even indicated by the manner
of speaking and is especially striking in the first, most famous monologue of
Faust. Bruno Ganz, dressed in a long, black robe and initially sitting in a
leather armchair with large wheels, stands up in front of a high wall of
papers, books and manuscripts that is enveloped in mists, first in a white,
then a blue and finally a green light. This Bruno Ganz speaks the lines ‘I’ve
studied now, to my regret’ (354) in a balanced rhythm; balanced because his
dark rolling voice admits the high tone of classical tragedy as well as ironic,
even mocking nuances which have become popular today as a means to
distance roles and the characters. It is as if Ganz kept the Faust figure in a
suspension between the various worlds of stage and performance, as if he
was already circling those existential and experiential modes which the inner
and outer action was holding in store. Bruno Ganz speaks as if his character
already has a premonition of what will happen, but is unable to translate this
feeling into certain knowledge. He too – especially he! – must take action
and as a consequence, according to Stein, must suffer. He is a tragic
character because he believes he knows everything, but has to learn that
through action he must suffer and make suffer. It is quite correct to see the
286 dirk pilz
analogy with the present. The scientific community today in its Faustian
blindness believes that it has ‘the world’ in its grip, although it is forced to
admit the self-deceit on a regular basis.
But that is not the only issue Stein is concerned with: by no means can his
production be tied to simple contemporary references – these are just
directorial hints. The shifting character of Faust is decisive for the dramatic
structure of the project, as it presents Faust as an all-in-one figure – not as
the fixed centre of a static production, but as the projection plane of all
thought and vision in this massive drama. In his character all the dimensions
developed in the unfolding action are united; all the other characters can be
seen as Faustian attributes in this context. They even ‘quote’ Faust in their
manner of speaking and performing: Helena uses his ‘high’ tone, the young
Faust leans towards his impetuous expression and Gretchen finds the level
of naturalness. Only Mephisto – played by Robert Hunger-Bühler and by
Johann Adam Oest – has really been divided into two roles. He is related to
Faust as the opponent who imitates him, while at the same time Faust
himself knows how to adapt to Mephisto. Faust and Mephisto are mirror
figures: their reflections always relate to each other, perhaps with fissures
and distortions, but relating to each other mimetically. Mephisto is more
than the representative of the dark side of the Faustian figure, just as Faust is
more than the victim of a diabolic pact. Mephisto also plays the part of
Faust’s leader, whereas Faust puts Mephisto under pressure in the way he is
pressurized by him.
Faust is essentially an all-in-one figure, but not, for Stein, a mixed and
moderated character. On the contrary. Since he assembles in himself a
totality of feeling, thought and experience, he becomes the stage of all the
conflicts that surround and happen to him and the action. This, too, is
tragic for Stein: Faust’s character has no ability to reconcile, there is no
prospect of any higher harmony, he is and remains a tragic figure. This
highlights again Stein’s definition of tragedy. The tragic process can never
come to an end; its cathartic effect aims not at cleansing the affects but at the
creation of consciousness. Stein therefore supports a concept of tragedy and
catharsis which decisively differs from Goethe’s own. For Goethe, the
pleasure specific to tragic catharsis is based on ‘aussöhnende Abrundung’
(conciliatory conclusion).8 It thereby takes up the classicist notion of whole-
ness and harmony: the unity of the autonomous piece of art is equivalent to
the metaphysical whole.9 In Stein’s production, however, conflicts are not
rounded off or transcended into harmony, but fully exposed in an open
process. Although his chorus mysticus speaks of the ‘symbol’ of transience as
well, it is meant not as a reconciliatory ending but as an accentuation of the
 Peter Stein stages Faust 287
tragic nature of Faust and humanity: the choir stands on the steel path
forming a spiral, and the most important word in those last verses is ‘the
unachievable’ (12106), which, according to the text, has become an ‘event’
and a revelation of tragedy. Exactly because Faust is the all-in-one character
and has absorbed every single conflict, there is no possible reconciliatory
ending: Faust dies, the conflicts which have been played out remain. The
essence of these conflicts is the irreconcilable side-by-side of death and life,
striving and arriving, happiness and desire. It is a whole, but a contradictary
(and not a harmonized) whole. Where Goethe gives us an antiphony of
conflicting voices, Stein gives us a polyphony of images and voices, a
concerted and orchestrated dramaturgy.
Stein’s production committed itself to this credo in several regards. Like
the relationship between the characters of Faust (and Mephisto), the
relationship of the scenes to each other is styled in accordance with the
law of contradictory unity. The sequence of the scenes is not dissolved in a
flawless continuity because Stein sets strong and distinct cuts and breaks,
without running the risk of arbitrariness. This cutting technique, also
borrowed from film, is already reflected in the multitude of different stages.
Nearly every stage type in theatre history is introduced: the picture-frame
stage, the central platform, the three-quarter-round, the ancient theatre
forum, the traverse, or an open scenario where the actors mingle with the
audience. Each type triggers different means of perceiving and receiving; no
single form is privileged. This also works for Stein’s non-hierarchical and
non-harmonious concept. It should not be mistaken, however, for a non-
referential coexistence of different types of presentation. The secret heart of
the play is always its tragic foundation, personified by the figure of Faust.
Like the diversity of the stage presentation and therefore audience recep-
tion, the palette of figure formations is displayed as a panorama of theatrical
appearances, always bound to specific metres. Stein stages the classical choir
(as, in the third act of Part ii, the choir of the Trojan women, which does
not consist of ‘figures’ in the modern sense), he depicts the Emperor (Stefan
Baumecker) as a stereotype of fading power. Characters such as the She-
Apes (Gisela Salcher and Daniel Keberle) are symbols turned into strong
figures acting expressively; Erichtho (Ana Kerezovic), Manto (Schirin
Sanaiha) and Panthalis (Elke Petri) become allegories in their manner of
abstract de-individualized speaking. Even more clearly, the figures of
Galatea (Tanja Kübler) and Lilith (Melanie Blocksdorf ) are not only
naked, but are in fact just pictures, appearances without any individual
traits. The frequent masks have a similar function, especially in the
‘Masquerade’ scene. All these serve not only the theatrical realization, but
288 dirk pilz
also the shaping of an all-too-human tragedy in the character of Faust. This
way Stein finds a form or, rather, he finds a meta-form by way of quoting
different forms. He reveals a Faust within his Faust that could be described
as the figure of figures, a melting-pot of what is possible theatrically. Theatre
itself makes an entrance: Stein depicts and reflects its potential by making
full use of it.
This is what makes Stein’s project so markedly different from other
attempts in more recent theatre history: they almost exclusively experiment
with the transfer of Goethe’s drama to an obviously contemporary context.
Volker Lösch, for example, had Faust ii (Faust 21 as he called it) premiered at
the Staatstheater Stuttgart in February 2006, where he used the original text
to launch a separate discussion: ‘What are you afraid of?’ ‘Why is going to
war necessary?’ ‘What are the good aspects of capitalism?’ Such were the
questions that Lösch asked the citizens of Stuttgart. They were at first a tool
to prepare a production which would short-circuit the Goethean universe
with the reality of Baden-Württemberg [Stuttgart is the capital of this
German federal state]. It was also zeitgeist-research into the realm of
people’s thoughts. Lösch brought unformulated preconceptions resident
in the mentality of the participants to light and integrated the results in his
production; there was a choir on stage that alternately spoke the drastically
shortened Goethean text or the subtext of the actors (see Chapter 19 in this
volume).
This is how Lösch always does it: he stages his work in a concrete context.
For his production of Gerhard Hauptmann’s Die Weber (The Weavers) at
the Dresdner Staatsschauspiel (in October 2004), which was famous for
having created a scandal, he worked with a choir of amateur actors who were
unemployed in real life. His production of Dogville (based on the film by the
Danish director Lars von Trier) in Stuttgart in October 2005 put a local
manager (of Mercedes-Benz) and Swabian folk songs on the stage. This idea
was as simple as it was superficially convincing: for Lösch, theatre cannot
take place in a void, there is no stage play without political, ethnic or
regional implications. According to him, theatre has the power to irritate
at the point where unspoken thoughts are expressed. He therefore not only
collected the answers to his questions, but opened them up to debate by
means of a big choir thundering at the audience. In Stuttgart, the choir
consisted of nineteen amateur actors and ten members of the ensemble – as
public representatives.
However, Lösch’s method of using the text as a source for contemporary
discussions failed this time, primarily because his new version of Faust was
reduced to slogans and obvious associations. Faust’s transformation from
 Peter Stein stages Faust 289
scholar to world ruler was used to launch a simplistic critique of global-
ization; the invention of paper money served to ridicule economic thinking.
In his production of Die Weber, Lösch derived the inserted texts from the
literary characters. Here, with Faust, he simply pastes the texts onto the
characters. Goethe’s original text was not charged with our present, but
rather trivialized by contemporary and random comments. The machinery
of the choir began to stutter because it had been fed all kinds of possible and
impossible material. That did not lead to the intended irritation. Helena
entered as a pretty choir of brides, Thomas Eisen and Ursula Renneke as
Philemon and Baucis were two eco-naïfs after Eisen had partly played
Mephisto and partly sung in the Faust choir, while Renneke had been
‘Miss Stuttgart 21’ and a stripper – all this offered more slapstick out of the
rag-bag rather than political friction. Reflection and discussion remained
superfluous, especially since the normally provocative difference between
amateurs and professionals could only be established by their degree of text
control. The congenial connection with content, usually Lösch’s forte, was
cut. Faust resisted this kind of abuse.
On the other hand, Michael Thalheimer’s Faust i (October 2004) and
Faust ii (a year later), both produced at the Deutsches Theater Berlin,
showed that a concentration on one motif or one line of thought does not
necessarily go awry, but would create revealing difficulties. For Faust i ,
Thalheimer had decided to concentrate on the Gretchen plot, and thus to
produce a Faust as a complete contemporary. More wrapped than dressed in
a beige shirt, he walked at a measured pace to the front of the stage, where he
stood and remained silent for a very long time – until he changed his posture
by straightening his hollowed back, glanced into the audience and cau-
tiously tried his first words, ‘Habe nun, ach!’ (354, I’ve studied now, to my
regret). There is no doubt that this tall Faust with the furrowed face has
been deeply involved in the study of science and philosophy. But does this
make him a wiser man than all the ‘doctors, magisters, officials and priests’?
He was unable to utter the words. He knew that we can know nothing, but
he also knew that nothing and nobody could ever change this fact. No
Mephisto, no Gretchen, no magic potion. This Faust (Ingo Hülsmann) had
learned his postmodern lesson: everything is in vain because everything is
built upon coincidence. Everything is as much a reason to despair as it is to
be happy. This alternately whispering and screaming Faust was well beyond
belief in otherness. And yet, being confronted with Gretchen’s question
about his religion he could not help but give the answer that he would
always repeat: earth without any heaven is hell. This state of mind charac-
terized him both as a comic and as a tragic character; he was more an
290 dirk pilz
inhabitant of Beckett’s world than of the German classical period – an
absurd anti-hero, sometimes amusing in his gymnastics of despair. And
when he later got involved with the devil, it was just another game for him:
he knew the outcome already. In the end, Gretchen was not saved. Instead,
Faust spoke words from Part ii: ‘What we have as life is many-hued
reflection’ (4727). It’s all just a game: the truth, the devil, love – it’s all
imagined.
What was exciting and stimulating in Thalheimer’s production was the
way he depicted a Faust who was overenlightened, and therefore he exactly
continued the bad game – out of a boredom or hopelessness that had
become his status quo. Moreover, Faust was no German oddball, no
flipped-out ideologue. All the figures that crossed the stage over the course
of two hours had been contaminated by the toxin of negativity. Even before
speaking the first line to her beloved Heinrich, Gretchen (Regine
Zimmermann) knew the end of their story, so she simply pretended to be
in love. Wagner (Peter Pagel) asked his master all the questions, although he
already knew the stale answers. Accordingly, the devil (Sven Lehmann) was
more of a slimy coach than a powerful seducer. He directed a play that
followed his rules: love, impregnate, leave.
With this production concentrating on the love(less) story Thalheimer
drove all metaphysical whims out of Faust. Out of the quintessentially
German protagonist he created a homeless man of the present, who checks
off life like a business appointment. That’s why the action was cut in favour
of the unhappy Gretchen story. The accents were set, by a good ensemble,
on naked existentialism, and poured into cold choreography. For an hour
this absurd tragi-comedy was played out in front of a black, turning
cylinder, which then revealed its great round emptiness: a bed in the middle,
a cross behind. The figures in it appear like forgotten ideas.
Thalheimer’s method of subjecting the text to a rigid rhythm and forcing
the actors to execute a programme of action rather than present a dramatic
plot almost became a mannerism. In his Three Sisters he actually missed the
core of the play with his method and was unable to deliver more than an
elaborated doubling of the text. This time, however, his surgical cuts had
uncovered a Faust who sometimes provided just good effects, but mostly the
rich potential for irritation. He treated his subject-matter like a physician
observing an interesting pathological case: sober and with no regard to the
person. The result of this autopsy of Faust: a homo egoisticus. A lost
candidate.
Apparently, even massive cuts can bring a text back to life. But they can
also suffocate the text if the creative intervention cuts to the quick and kills
 Peter Stein stages Faust 291
it with directorial ideas instead of reviving it. That is precisely what
happened with Thalheimer’s production of Faust ii set on Olaf Altmann’s
cold and functional stage. There were three Faustian threads: the first one
was Faust as a cool observer of the Emperor’s court at the time of the
invention of paper money, combined with the creation of man by man
himself; the second plot was Faust under the spell of the beautiful Helena,
trembling yet hopeful (Nina Hoss played Helena as a drug-addicted angel of
revenge); the third plot depicted Faust as a domineering colonizer doomed
to fail. This time, Thalheimer reduced Ingo Hülsmann’s figure to a present-
day footnote: Faust the unredeemed contemporary. This thematic and
formal reduction contained a wealth of political material: money, genetic
engineering, an imperial war. Thalheimer clearly politicized Faust ii, but
those political ideas were bereft of their context. That made them incom-
prehensible, victims of Thalheimer’s form. Faust served as a demonstration
of a stage language rather than as a transmitter of meaningful content. The
attempt to reduce Faust ii to slogans had to fail, since all these slogans lose
their power outside their context. They become nothing more than
headlines.
Apart from these productions there have been other projects that were
entertaining in the best sense of the word: Jan Bosse’s ironically embued
production of Faust i at the Hamburger Schauspielhaus in 2004 is one such
example. Other productions have been conceptually ambitious: Hasko
Weber’s Faust i at the Staatsschauspiel Stuttgart in October 2005 depicted
Faust as an epitome of the postmodern question of identity. Both produc-
tions focused on only one aspect of the whole in order to find a viable
theatrical form.
Peter Stein’s production, on the other hand, delivers poetic messages
about the tragic fate of man – the sort of messages that would defy any clear-
cut explanation. The length of the performance, the abundance of tableaux
and scenes, of moods and reflection taxed and even overtaxed the audience’s
capacity. Stein’s production of Faust was like Faust himself: it challenged by
overtaxing. This was precisely Stein’s admiring interest in this piece of
theatre. We might say, with Manto, ‘I love those who strive for the
unattainable’ (7488).

not es
Translated by Nina Peters.
1. All references to Faust are by line number to HA.
2. Hans-Georg Gadamer, ‘Wort und Bild – so wahr, so seiend’, in Gesammelte
Werke, Tübingen: Mohr, 1993, viii, 391.
292 dirk pilz
3. Imre Kertész, Galeerentagebuch, trans. Christina Viragh, Reinbek b. Hamburg:
Rowohlt, 1999, 8 f.
4. Friedrich Dürrenmatt, ‘Die Panne. Eine noch mögliche Geschichte’ (1955), in
Gesammelte Werke, Zurich: Artemis, 1996, v, 271.
5. Peter Stein, ‘Zum Tode geboren. Ein Gespräch mit dem Regisseur Peter Stein
über Theater, Tragödie und das Los des Menschen – von Dirk Pilz’, Theater der
Zeit 10 (2005).
6. Die Orestie des Aischylos, trans. Peter Stein, Munich: C. H. Beck, 1997, 23.
7. Peter Stein, ‘Zum Tode geboren’.
8. Goethe, Nachlese zu Aristoteles’ Poetik, HA 12, 343.
9. Ulrich Port, Pathosformeln. Die Tragödie und die Geschichte exaltierter Affekte
(1755–1888), Munich: W. Fink, 2005, 38.
 chapter 19

Re-thinking and staging Goethe’s Faust

at the State Theatre Stuttgart 2005–6
Jörg Bochow

the point of departure: why faust today?

In the five or so years since Peter Stein’s project of staging the complete
Faust, Goethe’s text has seen an astonishing revival on major German stages.
The Hamburger Schauspielhaus, Deutsches Theater Berlin and the State
Theatre Stuttgart presented their productions of Faust almost simultane-
ously. Clearly, there has been a surge of renewed general interest in Goethe’s
major dramatic and poetic work. Moreover, German theatres have begun
to feel the limits of ‘post-dramatic’ and ‘pop-theatre’ productions, with
their deconstruction of dramatic conventions and textual structures, and
returned to great narratives like Goethe’s Faust. This work also seemed to
present a much more relevant model for the discussion of our ‘postmoder-
nity’ than those experiments in style and performance. Goethe’s Faust had
emerged between the French and the Industrial Revolutions, the two
pivotal events of our modernity, and had anticipated, from this vantage
point, not only the evolution of post-medieval man and society, but also
their fate, our own rather rootless and anxiety-ridden world.
Of course, such a critique of our time is not immediately obvious to a
reader of Faust. We as theatre producers have to ‘reveal’ it. Staging the classical
play in such a relevant way serves one essential purpose: it allows us to step
out of our time and look at it from the viewpoint of the historical model.
Only by historicizing our experience can we subvert current ideologies and
stereotypes – Brecht taught us that many decades ago. We often hear that our
modern existence has become too complex to be touched by a classical text.
But Goethe’s Faust, like no other work of world literature, employs a vast
array of hermeneutic media – not only poetry and music, but also history and
politics, philosophy and theology, sociology, economics and science – to
provide a powerful focus for the discussion of our modernity.
Thus the conceptual foundation of the production of Goethe’s Faust at
the State Theatre Stuttgart was: we are Faust.
293
294 jörg bochow

the structure of the performances

After several sessions of discussing the text with the team of dramaturges it
was decided that there would be different teams producing the two parts of
Faust.1 At first there was even the idea of splitting the whole material into
four or five parts and letting them be staged by four or five different
directors. The reason for this approach lies in the structure of the text itself.
Thematically the poem can be divided into four parts: 1) the scholar’s
tragedy, which includes the scenes from ‘Night’ to ‘Witch’s Kitchen’, 2)
Margarete’s tragedy, which covers the second part of Faust i , 3) the Helena
tragedy, which includes the first three acts of ii, and 4) the old Faust’s
tragedy, which includes the last two acts of Faust ii. The themes of the first
parts have been widely discussed, but less attention has been given to the
differences between the themes of longing for a solution in the realm of play
and beauty, which determine Faust’s way at the Emperor’s court through
the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’ and the Helena act, and the search for a
solution in the ‘real world’, which begins with Faust’s new demand:
‘Herrschaft gewinn ich, Eigentum’ (10187, I’ll gain power and possessions).
Given the different magnitude of the four parts, and considering that the
two parts of Faust i are meaningful only when performed as a whole, Faust
could be produced as a tragedy of failure in three parts, each ending in
death (Margarete and her child in the first, Helena and Euphorion in
the second, Faust himself in the third part). However, the death of
Euphorion and the failure of the ideal marriage between beauty (Helena)
and science (Faust) neither determine a final solution for Faust’s pact with
Mephistopheles nor imply the end of Faust’s longings. Therefore Faust ii
needs a closure that only the last two acts provide. The idea of splitting Faust
into four or five parts and producing it with four or five different directors
was dismissed: the concept of traditional unities prevailed, and Faust was
produced in two parts.

faust i – the cast of characters: faust

and mephistopheles
The complexity and multivalence of the main character informed both
productions. In Faust i , three young men in identical costumes appear and
speak – partly as a chorus – the opening lines of Faust (see Figure 19.1). As
this unity of three, Faust meets the Earth Spirit and Wagner. The three
listen to the church bells that announce the beginning of the Easter
ceremonies. Faust intends to poison himself, but by listening to the bells
 Staging Faust at the State Theatre Stuttgart 295

Figure 19.1 The three young men as Faust. (Photograph from the Stuttgart
production, 2005–6)

he is reminded of his youth. The memory of the feeling of unity with the
world that he experienced as a child brings him back to the world, and the
wish to live prevails over his despair. ‘Die Erde hat mich wieder’ (784, I am
earth’s again), he announces. At this decisive moment of Faust’s story, the
Stuttgart production of Faust i splits Faust into the one who survives (he
does not drink the poison) and the two who go the way of destruction and
death in order to return as alter egos of Faust – they become the two
Mephistopheles who accompany Faust and lead him to Margarete.
Thus in the production of Faust i we presented the idea of reducing
the multitude of options that lay in the character of Faust. By joining
Mephistopheles, Faust gets rid of parts of his human qualities; the reduction
of moral and psychological constraints is the foundation of his new career.
The emergence of Mephistopheles out of the two personalities of Faust who
have died allows for no external framing of the Faust story: there is no
‘Prologue in Heaven’ in this production. Therefore it is not the ‘pact’
between the Lord and Mephistopheles that – as a metaphysical force –
drives the story of Faust’s transformation in our production. The leading
metaphysical force, the ghost of the ghosts, became the character of the
Earth Spirit.
296 jörg bochow

the earth spirit

The concept of the Earth Spirit existed in Goethe’s text long before he wrote
the ‘Prologue in Heaven’. For Faust and his driving impulse of under-
standing and experiencing the world as a whole, the Earth Spirit and his
refusal to accept Faust as one of his equals is a central motif of the narrative.
It is the reason for Faust’s despair and attempt at suicide, and it determines
his actions even after Faust has made his famous pact with Mephistopheles.
In ‘Forest and Cave’, the decisive scene in which Faust for a single and last
moment reflects on his deeds and almost refrains from going further on his
path of destruction, Faust again appeals to the Earth Spirit. The experience
of being one with nature in his love for Margarete appears to be a gift from
the spirit of nature, the Earth Spirit. Moreover, Mephistopheles himself is
described in this scene as an agent of the great spirit, another gift of the
Earth Spirit. For the production of Faust i we focused on the concept
of the Earth Spirit by presenting it as a female spirit of nature that
manipulates the narrative and also takes over the function of Ariel in
‘Pleasant Landscape’. The gifts the Earth Spirit provides are beyond ‘good
and evil’: nature does not know ethics. It is Faust’s task to deal with the moral
consequences of his deeds. In our production, the Earth Spirit takes on the
role of the leading metaphysical force: the female spirit of nature. Merging
different figures – Earth Spirit, Witches, Ariel – the character appeared in our
production as the Ghost.

wagner
The concept of the ‘trinity’ of Faust had further consequences for the
cast of characters. Attempting to reveal the solitude, the isolation of Faust,
the production settled him in a depopulated universe. There is only one
human figure Faust has contact with – his colleague, Wagner. This
colleague is eager to gain insight into Faust’s secrets, but on the other
hand he is careful enough to avoid looking for contacts with the daemonic
world. When Faust meets Mephistopheles, Wagner has to disappear. The
production of Faust i presented Faust as a restless but also an isolated
scholar: there is no room for students in his universe. Faust has already left
the centres of traditional academia. In his refuge, his self-inflicted isolation,
there is only Wagner to visit him. He cares for Faust, provides food and
interrogates him about his illegal experiments – he is the caretaker and the
ward in Faust’s retreat.
 Staging Faust at the State Theatre Stuttgart 297

margarete and her world

Leaving Wagner behind, Faust sets out on his way with his daemon
Mephistopheles and enters the world of Margarete. With her he encounters
two further characters: Marthe and Valentin, Margarete’s brother. But it is
Mephistopheles – in our production the dual character – who takes care of
them in order to lure Faust into his trap. When Faust has finally murdered
Valentin, there is only Margarete and a world of ghosts that surround him.
Goethe modernized the legend of Faust by linking the canonical character
with the story of a loving woman who finally murders her and Faust’s child.
Goethe was familiar with similar real cases, and characters like Margarete
became a new topic in literature, especially in bourgeois tragedy. Margarete
herself is presented by Goethe first through the eyes of Faust: he calls her
‘Dirne’ (lass) and ‘Engel’ (angel). On the one hand, the transition within his
terminology marks the change of feelings – from sexual desire to love. On
the other hand, the name ‘Margarete’ connotes a female saint, whereas the
diminutive ‘Gretchen’ reminds us of a prostitute. Ulrich Gaier has given a
thorough analysis of the different names and meanings of Margarete in
Faust i , and in particular the production of the Deutsches Theater Berlin
relied on this double image of Margarete (see Chapter 4 in this volume). In
the production of the Deutsches Theater (directed by Michael Thalheimer),
her bed stood under the sign of the crucifix, and Faust violates this space of
integrity by painting Margarete’s face and exposing her as a prostitute –
Margarete becomes Gretchen. However, Goethe’s Margarete is driven not
by poverty, but by her religious consciousness. Her religiosity is not naïve –
she clearly understands the conflicts of love, sexual desire and the law of the
church. And she recognizes Mephistopheles as an evil force. Her famous
question to Faust, ‘Nun sag, wie hast du’s mit der Religion?’ (3415, Say then,
what is your religion?), reflects a very rational attempt at figuring out
whether there is any chance of compromise between her love and the
rules of religion and society. The production in Stuttgart paid attention
to the conscious decisions Margarete makes. Her decision regarding her love
and all the attendant consequences marks a radical step of emancipation
which is no less radical than Faust’s decision to leave the realms of human
society and join the daemon Mephistopheles. By the end of the eighteenth
century, when Goethe wrote Faust i , the modern industrial states of the
West had all but erased the pre-industrial societies and cultures of the
colonized territories. Western industrialization and ‘globalization’ abused
and discarded traditions, just as Faust abused and discarded Margarete.
Faust becomes a colonizer, and not just at the end of Faust ii : he is already
298 jörg bochow

Figure 19.2 Margarete’s attempt at an abortion. (Photograph from the Stuttgart

production, 2005–6)

one by the end of the Gretchen tragedy. For Margarete there is no outcome
in Faust’s world except death.
Our production aimed at underlining the process of Faust’s colonizing of
Margarete and her resistance to this colonization. Faust, dressed in a suit
and a white shirt, enters Margarete’s bedroom, removes his trousers and
thus – half-naked – tries to overcome her religious concerns. When he gives
her the sleeping potion, the poison, she consciously takes it. Joyfully,
 Staging Faust at the State Theatre Stuttgart 299
Margarete returns from the night with Faust, and in the following scenes
she is scorned by Marthe. Left alone, Margarete discovers that she is
pregnant. She climbs up onto the kitchen counter and jumps twenty, thirty
times in order to rid herself of her unborn child (see Figure 19.2).
During this attempt at an abortion she sings and cries out the lines
dedicated to the Mater dolorosa: ‘Ach neige, / Du Schmerzensreiche . . .’
(3587–8, Deign, O deign, / You who are sorrow-laden). After the unsuc-
cessful attempt at killing the unborn child, she goes to bed. Her brother
Valentin appears and is about to kill her by smashing her head with a
stone – but is unable to do so. After he is killed by Faust, he re-emerges as
a ghost and threatens to disclose Margarete’s guilt. It is he who transforms
her into a witch; he puts artificial blonde hair on her head and stuffs her
belly with the puppet of the unborn child. Then three masqueraded black
figures appear: as black angels they celebrate a black mass, the ‘Walpurgis
Night’. Margarete gives birth to the puppet-child, but the child is taken
away by the black figures. Margarete fights to get the ‘child’ back. When
she does get it, she saves it from the reach of the black figures by drowning
it. The ‘Walpurgis Night’ is over, and Faust shows his face – he was one of
the three black angels. Now he has already become indistinguishable from
the other ghosts – the two Mephistopheles. Half-hearted is his attempt at
rescuing Margarete from her imprisonment. There remains only one way
to rescue her: when Mephistopheles says ‘She is judged!’ Faust takes a
pillow and suffocates her, replying to Mephistopheles, ‘She is rescued!’
This line belongs originally to the Lord – in Goethe’s text Faust simply
flees from Margarete’s cell. Thus the performance burdens Faust with the
full responsibility for murdering and ‘rescuing’ Margarete.

from faust i to faust ii

The performance of Faust ii begins where the first part ended: with the
awakening of Faust in ‘Pleasant Landscape’. Although the so-called
Gretchen tragedy dominated the second half of Faust i , it did not mark
the final point of this production. In order to show the way of ‘no return’ for
Faust after he has murdered Margarete, but also to present this deed as a
necessary step within the evolution of a new Faust, the performance did not
end with Margarete’s death, but with Faust’s rebirth. Through the Earth
Spirit (Ariel) Faust receives the gift of amnesia: awakening, he turns his eye
away from the heavenly sunlight – he has finally cast off all moral con-
straints. Having the rays of sunlight at his back, he is able to see and to
300 jörg bochow
conquer the world – but he is not alone. His final lines are spoken in unison
with the two Mephistopheles:
Des Lebens Pulse schlagen frisch lebendig,
Ätherische Dämmerung milde zu begrüβen;
Du, Erde, warst auch diese Nacht beständig
Und atmest neu erquickt zu meinen Füβen,
Beginnest schon, mit Lust mich zu umgeben,
Du regst und rührst ein kräftiges Beschlieβen,
Zum höchsten Dasein immerfort zu streben. (4679–85)

Life’s pulses beat with fresh vitality

And gently greet the sky’s first glimmering;
You also, Earth, have lasted out this night
And breathe new-quickened there below,
Compassing me already with inchoate joy.
You rouse and stir a vigorous resolve
To strive henceforth towards being’s highest form.
The first lines of our production of ii were Ariel’s words consoling the
sleeping Faust and giving him amnesia. Thus ‘Pleasant Landscape’ functioned
as a link between both productions. Otherwise there was no repetition of cast,
structure or setting, and the two performances followed different aesthetic
principles.

faust ii – the chorus

The idea of Faust’s multiplicity is expanded in the production of Faust ii :
the first scene presents a chorus of eighteen citizens of Stuttgart and eight
actors (see Figure 19.3). The eighteen citizens were chosen after a casting
process in which about one hundred citizens of Stuttgart participated.
Together with the eight actors of the ensemble, they formed the Faust
chorus that acts throughout the whole second part of the tragedy. The idea
of ‘we are Faust’ is therefore taken to its radical consequence: all performers
are Faust. Only one or two of them are temporarily singled out as the voice
of the provocateur Mephistopheles, who encourages the Faust chorus to
pursue the way of radical economic endeavour.
The concept of the Faust chorus shaped the dramaturgy and the per-
spective on Faust’s development entirely – not only Mephistopheles, but
also Helena, Euphorion, Philemon and Baucis are performed by members
of the chorus: these characters thus come ‘out of the womb’ of Faust and
his imagination. This approach does not allow the audience to enjoy any
form of identification with or compassion for any of the heroes of the
 Staging Faust at the State Theatre Stuttgart 301

Figure 19.3 Mephistopheles and the Faust chorus. (Photograph from

the Stuttgart production, 2005–6)

Faustian universe. The epic structure, the concept of collage and the
performance of the group – these are the aesthetic foundations of this
production.

the set: contemporizing faust

Both production teams found very different solutions to the problem of
connecting Faust to our contemporary world. For Faust i we were looking
for stories and careers of individuals who bear similarities to Faust. We
found the most interesting examples of similar developments of individuals
in contemporary Russia.
In 1989, the mathematician and noted scholar Boris Beresovsky founded
the motorcar trading company LogoWAS. It was the same year that he
published one of his many books on mathematical models of complex
networks for optimal decisions. Being at the top of his career as a scholar,
Beresovsky suddenly became a businessman, owning at first shares in the car
retail trade, and soon becoming the executive manager of a car empire. Only
a few years later, the former scholar had become one of the richest men in
the world. Buying a national TV channel, Beresovsky expanded his power
302 jörg bochow
into politics. Using his media power he helped Boris Yeltsin to win the
election and become president of the Russian Federation. The political
reforms of Gorbachev in the 1980s had paved the way for this unbelievable
career of a Soviet scholar.
Our production placed Faust in an imaginary world that was modelled
on post-Soviet Russia. At the beginning of the tragedy, Faust is just like
one of the many scholars who continue to work in the deserted research
laboratories of the former Soviet Union. A catastrophe, the collapse of a
society, has already occurred. When Faust is refused acceptance by the
Earth Spirit he has to decide: either to give up and destroy himself or search
for new approaches to life. The wish to live prevails and, with the help of
Mephistopheles, Faust’s analytical mind is now turned towards first con-
quering the ‘little world’ of Margarete, and then entering into ‘big business’.
Being inspired by the images of decay and destruction in Andrei Tarkovsky’s
movies, in particular his Stalker, the set designer found similar images in
photographs of the ruined landscape and the deserted areas around
Chernobyl, where many public and private places were destroyed and aban-
doned after the catastrophe at the nuclear plant. The image of a deserted
indoor sports arena served as a model for the stage: a vast hall, half destroyed
and completely empty. This is the place where – in the imagination of the
performance – Faust’s laboratory once was and where he now lives.
Faust ii places the story in the environment of the performance: Stuttgart.
The stage resembles a reception hall in the style of the 1970s. Wood panels
cover the floor and the walls. The ceiling is low above a space shaped in
a half circle. The set openly recalls the image of the reception hall of the
‘embassy’ of the state of Baden-Württemberg in Germany’s capital,
Berlin. Moreover, a Baden-Württemberg flag is presented during the
first scenes, and many inserted texts make it clear that the Faust chorus
represents contemporary citizens of Stuttgart. There are, of course, many
consequences that result from this approach: in the world of this produc-
tion of Faust ii there is neither place for the ghosts of the ‘Classical
Walpurgis Night’ nor for the story of Homunculus.

the texts of the performances: faust i

Like the concepts of the characters and settings, the treatment of Goethe’s
text also differs in the two productions. Both performances are of similar
length, each lasting less than two hours. The concept of the Faust–
Mephistopheles dualism in Faust i excluded two of Goethe’s three frames.
The performance opens with the ‘Dedication’. These thoughts of the
 Staging Faust at the State Theatre Stuttgart 303
author are spoken by the female performer of the Earth Spirit. Goethe’s
philosophy of nature and his conscious gender-transformation of the driv-
ing spiritual force in Faust (see the end of Faust ii) led us to identify the
(imaginary) narrator of the ‘Dedication’ with the Earth Spirit. The subse-
quent text of Part i was divided into forty scenes. To each of the scenes a
banner was assigned that characterized the main process in each scene
(for instance, ‘Rescue’ for the sequence when Faust hears the Easter bells
of the church, or ‘Refusal’ for the first meeting between Faust and
Margarete in Goethe’s ‘Street’ scene). The focus in the scenes of the first
part of Faust i (the scholar’s tragedy) was on Faust, therefore, and scenes in
which Mephistopheles dominates, like the scene with the student or the
drinking scene at ‘Auerbach’s Cellar’, were cut. In order to enhance the
isolation of Faust in his refuge, the appearances of peasants and dancing folk
during the Easter sequence were also cut entirely. During the black mass of
the ‘Walpurgis Night’ the emphasis was on visual imagery, the dance of the
vampire-like black angels, supported by music. A scene where Margarete
gives birth replaces the ‘Blocksberg’ scenes. Here, the original text is
closely linked with medieval imagery that was – we assume – provocative
in Goethe’s time, but seems ‘folkloristic’ today. In our production the
images of the ‘Walpurgis Night’ were presented as Margarete’s nightmare,
an apocalyptic dance without spoken text. Altogether the production
reduced the original text to its bare bones, leaving only the essential parts
and thus allowing the audience to focus on the tragedy of Margarete and on
the transformation of the main character, Faust. The popular and comic
elements of the ‘Volksstück’ (popular play) Faust were radically reduced.
The result could be described as a black ‘Lehrstück’ (didactic play) of the
evolution of modern individualism.

faust ii = faust 21?

Whereas the production of Faust i used only Goethe’s text – with one
exception where some lines by Karl Marx discussing the play were added –
Faust ii was presented as a collage, mingling passages of Faust ii with
contemporary statements from citizens, politicians and businessmen.
Goethe’s text was taken as a point of departure for exploring the hopes and
failures of contemporary society in Stuttgart. The most widely discussed
mega-project of the city, the construction of a new underground train station,
including the development of the whole area towards a new business district,
gave the production the impulse to choose the title Faust 21 – Stuttgart’s
current mega-project of a new city is called ‘Stuttgart 21’. This refers to the
304 jörg bochow
year of the project’s completion, 2010, but also has the meaning ‘twenty-first
century’. By adopting the name of this project, the production claimed not to
be performing the second part of Goethe’s Faust. After opening with Ariel’s
lines, spoken by the chorus, the scene shifts immediately from ‘Pleasant
Landscape’ to the discussion of the financial crisis at the Emperor’s court
(Act 1 of Faust ii). But the lines of Goethe’s text soon become mingled with
lines of the citizens of Stuttgart, which they had first improvised and then
studied for the production. One actor cites lines from a speech by Germany’s
president, Horst Köhler. Another replies with a line from Goethe:
citizen roloff (the name of the actor)
Germany is a beautiful part of the world.
Why shouldn’t we be happy?
(From Köhler’s speech)
chorus
That the Chinese take everything away from us:
Production, research, vaccines, raw materials
(Then, citizens’ text)
citizen manteuffel (Goethe’s text, Faust ii)
Everyone’s scraping, digging and amassing,
And still our coffers are unfilled. (4850–1)
all
I’m a good Swabian.
I’ve saved and inherited and so on.
But the monetary system in itself worries me a bit,
The general debt will catch up with us,
I see the social peace of our city in great danger.
They should start a revolution against the banking system.
(Then, citizens’ text)
mephistopheles
Be done with toying with your sorrows
That, vulture-like, consume your being;
The worst society there is could show you
That you are just another human being. (1635–8)
[. . .] I bind myself to serve you here,
Be at your beck and call without respite;
And if or when we meet again beyond,
Then you will do the same for me. (1656–9)

These excerpts may serve to exemplify the collage-like structure of the

performance text. The ‘pact’ sequence between Faust and Mephistopheles
from Faust i is repeated several times and serves as a link between the scenes of
the Faust ii collage. Focusing thematically on the evolution of the ‘economic
 Staging Faust at the State Theatre Stuttgart 305
man’, the Faust ii production used only those scenes of the original text that
are linked to the economic discourse. Having just overcome the economic
crisis at the Emperor’s court by the magic power of Mephistopheles’ ‘paper
money’, the Faust chorus hails consumerism, eternal beauty and youth. Thus,
cutting the second act entirely, the Faust chorus finds itself at an arranged
mass wedding, celebrating the marriage between Helena and Faust. In the
production, Euphorion (performed by an actress) leaves the stage, climbs up
the rows of the auditorium and ‘disappears’. After the death of Euphorion,
the male part of the Faust chorus gathers in a sauna and dreams about world
conquest.
One of them is dressed as a modern soldier by the female Faust chorus.
Speaking parts of the lines of the Three Mighty Men, the newborn soldier
goes into war (Act 4). The final scenes follow Goethe’s fifth act: Faust, now
performed in part by an older actor, destroys the last remnants of the old
world, Philemon and Baucis. In the end, the Faust chorus refuses to die.
Mephistopheles cannot lay him in the grave; Faust revels in the new world
of a global capitalist economy. He becomes the eternal bourgeois.

n ot e
1. Faust i was premiered on 30 September 2005, directed by Hasko Weber. Set
design: Cary Gailer; costumes: Regine Standfuss; music: FM Einheit; drama-
turgy: Jörg Bochow. Faust 21 (Faust ii) was premiered on 25 February 2006,
directed by Volker Lösch. Training of the chorus: Bernd Freytag; set design:
Cary Gailer; costumes: Carola Reuther; dramaturgy: Beate Seidel.
 chapter 20

Strehler’s Faust in performance

Laura Caretti

I believe above all that our production is the unequivocal demonstration of

the endurance, and thus of the modernity, of Goethe’s text. People today
should tremble before the relevance of this text.1
Ours has been a work of humility in our attempt to give real body, on the
stage, to one of the greatest works of human culture, which Goethe himself
had written and intended as a work for the theatre. On this point we have
never had any doubt. We have never hesitated to believe in the ‘perform-
ability’ of the Faust-Tragedy, deemed by so many to be ‘unperformable’ in
the case of the Second Part. For us there is no higher, more complex, more
experimental and dazzling theatricality than this journey towards the
Infinite.2
Giorgio Strehler

a project for a new theatre

A ‘challenge’, a ‘journey’, an ‘adventure’: these are some of the words which
recur in Giorgio Strehler’s presentation of his Faust. And the undertaking of
such a theatrical enterprise is described as ‘daring’, ‘risky’, ‘perilous’, ‘haz-
ardous’, ‘intrepid’ . . . Intense excitement together with the thrill of danger
are the pervading emotions conveyed by Strehler’s notes on the Faust
project. Not only did he conceive and direct the project, but he played
numerous roles, translated Goethe’s text, was dramaturge of the script and,
still more striking and unprecedented in the light of his career up to that
time, interpreted the role of Faust.
But let us go back to 1987, when this intrepid journey began, when the
ship of the Piccolo Teatro in Milan set sail on the vast ocean of Goethe’s
work. Strehler was 66, at the peak of his career, acclaimed world-wide for his
inspired, magical staging of some of the world’s greatest plays: from
Shakespeare’s The Tempest to Pirandello’s The Giants of the Mountain,
from the commedia dell’arte of Goldoni’s Arlecchino Servant of Two
306
 Strehler’s Faust in performance 307
Masters to Eduardo’s The Great Magic, from Brecht’s The Threepenny
Opera, Life of Galileo and The Good Person of Szechwan to Strindberg’s
The Storm. In 1987 he had just celebrated the fortieth anniversary of his
Piccolo Teatro. The old, glorious theatre (founded in 1947) had long
become too small for some of the productions and the ever-swelling number
of spectators. The company had frequently been compelled to seek hospital-
ity in other theatres (such as the opera house, the Lirico). At the same time,
Strehler had been gathering cultural and financial support for the building
of a new and spacious theatre, finally approved after years of setbacks and
postponements.
While battling for the longed-for and long-awaited construction of his
‘Grande Teatro’, Strehler had inaugurated the Teatro Studio – to study and
work with his company in extending the boundaries of theatrical perform-
ance and audience involvement. The new space proved ideal for this
purpose, as well as for the project of focusing attention on the ‘Faust
Myth’ and Goethe’s extraordinary re-creation of it.

In this exceptional, possibly unique, theatrical venue, with its wood, its simple
forms, its artisan severity and its poetic atmosphere which continues to affect me,
for over three years we’ve been creating not only theatre productions but also, I
hope, a new relationship between performance and actors, between actors and
spectators, between the magic of make-believe and the clarity of critical commit-
ment. A critical commitment which is never cold and ascetic or purely academic,
but always an attempt to communicate, to express ideas and emotions, to make
proposals, to embark on little-known paths. (Strehler, 20 January 1990)3

Situated in Milan’s artistic quarter, the Teatro Studio was an old variety
theatre before being restored for Strehler’s company. It differs from the
traditional teatro all’italiana (with its proscenium arch framing the stage and
separating it from the audience). Here, the acting area stretches out into the
audience seated in circular fashion in direct, intimate communication with
the actors, as in classical Greek theatre. A high ceiling makes for the creation
of scenographic areas, as in Goethe’s ‘Prologue in Heaven’ (see Figure 20.1).
Downstage, a huge curtain opens onto a deep inner stage.
The theatre then, when necessary, made it possible to alternate short and
long perspectives. In the central arena Goethe’s words were thus able to
resound with their full dramatic force, above all in the monologues and
dialogues illuminated by a single spotlight in the dark of the empty stage. In
other cases, by contrast, the backcloth revealed striking sequences of distant
landscapes, such as the idyllic, limetree-dotted hill of the Philemon and
Baucis episode, or mythic apparitions (the Sphinxes, the Mothers).
308 laura caretti

Figure 20.1 Prologue in Heaven. (Photograph from the Strehler production, 1989–91)

On this experimental stage, work on Goethe’s Faust began in 1987.

Unlike Strehler’s other productions, here there was no precise director’s
blueprint for the staging. Instead, the Teatro Studio itself provided the
space for a new creative ‘method’:
We started with the determination to carry through with the project, with some
intuitions – not certainties – some achievements, some images to test out. In short,
we started with a general idea for the mise-en-scène of Goethe’s Faust, but with no
precise vision of what the end result would be: the place itself, the Teatro Studio,
demanded this approach. (Strehler, 20 January 1990)4
 Strehler’s Faust in performance 309
In any case, it was not originally envisaged that the project would be staged
in its final form at the Teatro Studio. The idea was for the smaller theatre to
be a testing-ground for the project, as work in progress which would project
into the future and find its finished form in a new and spacious theatre
already under construction. ‘The project is divided into two phases’,
Strehler announced in November 1988: ‘a) the research phase; and b) the
phase of the production itself. The first phase is in progress at the Teatro
Studio of the Piccolo Teatro of Milan, Theatre of Europe; the second phase
is due to be accomplished in the Nuovo Grande Teatro.’
This link between the two theatres and consequently between the work
in progress and the full, finished production did not come about in
Strehler’s lifetime. When he died, the building of the ‘Nuovo Grande
Teatro’ (today dedicated to him) was almost complete, but had not been
assigned to his Piccolo Teatro by Milan’s majority right-wing administra-
tion. Anger, disappointment and frustration account for Strehler’s resigna-
tion from his role as director and a decisive crisis in the last years of his life.
Although never accomplished, the plan to stage the whole of Goethe’s
Faust did work as a catalyst of energy, an inspiring dream. It made the whole
project profoundly Faustian in its spirit of endeavour, its striving after the
highest achievement. What was actually staged, though not complete, was
even more exciting: the adventure of approaching that goal of completeness.
Not being under close pressure for a final production, Strehler was able to
give free rein to his desire to experiment with a new form of theatre focused
on multiple perspectives, and open to different modes and styles of perform-
ance. Which was, as he saw it, what Goethe’s text demanded.5

the production in progress

From the start, Strehler imbued the project with the full resources of his
volcanic artistry and imagination. At the Teatro Studio he set in motion an
extraordinary laboratory of words and visions. It was there that he planned
to show the development of the creative process, the gradual coming to life
on stage of scenes from Goethe’s work. But before and during rehearsal, he
revisited the multiple versions of the Faust myth in visual art, theatre,
music, cinema and so on.
Both performances, Faust Part i (in March 1989) and Faust Part ii two
years later (in April 1991), were preceded by a series of readings, dress
rehearsals and performances open to the public. The intimate connection
between research, rehearsal and production gave Strehler’s Faust its true
310 laura caretti
originality: ‘A fundamental novelty of the project and its enactment: true
live research is organized in performance and offered to the public.’6
Whilst working on the translation of Goethe’s play, Strehler promoted a
series of ‘encounters’ with artists, critics, historians and philosophers in
order to discuss the traditions and genres of the Faust legend from different
angles. The metamorphosis of the story in different contexts and times was
explored:7 from Marlowe to Thomas Mann, from Boito’s Mephistopheles to
Murnau’s film, from Bulgakov to Valéry, whose Mon Faust (directed by
Walter Pagliaro) was staged at the Teatro Studio in 1987. The aim was to
focus attention on the profound relevance of Faust’s human adventure for
us today and for our understanding of our Faustian times. Strehler wished
to kindle a new insight into Goethe’s work and to share the adventure of
rediscovering its dramatic power and inventiveness.8 Convinced of its
essentially theatrical nature, Strehler spoke out on many occasions against
the idea that it is a poem that can be appreciated only on the printed page.
We should not, he insisted, be misled by its overwhelming complexity, its
asymmetric structure and the multiplicity of its languages into believing
that it was not written for the stage. Witness his notes:

I’m aware that we are confronted with a theatricality that relies on different
necessities, different styles of performances, different expressive languages. But
what we have always is a work rich in asymmetries, variables, brimming with
imagination, extremely intricate and complex but conceived absolutely for the
theatre, for the stage, to be acted, body and voice, intelligence and heart, by the
actors.9

Challenging the stage conventions of his time, with this highly composite
work Goethe deliberately intended to expand the creative resources of
theatre itself. Strehler was ready to take up this challenge, to put to the
test all the potentialities of stage art. He admiringly recognized the greatness
of the work; and with (in his words) ‘humility’ and ‘love’ he worked
together with his actors to bring it to life on the contemporary stage.
It was idle, he said, to persist in discussing whether or not the play is
performable: the spectators themselves confirm that Goethe’s Faust is
made for the theatre and that it speaks in a way that stirs audiences even
today.
At the same time, the difficult work of translation confirms the theatrical
effectiveness of Goethe’s poetry. Strehler’s excellent knowledge of German
meant that he was able to produce a script which avoids the monochord
literariness of other Italian versions and which aims to give polyphony back
to the word.10 The result is a translation free of archaisms, clear in its intent
 Strehler’s Faust in performance 311
to communicate with a present-day public, yet remaining faithful to the
original (‘My translation has one sole purpose, besides textual correctness:
to be born above all for the stage, that is, for the live voices of the actors’).11
Printed words translated into spoken words make up a script which, above
all in the first part, is deliberately left naked, merely ‘said’ by the actors. In
this form of ‘dramatic reading’ spoken from the lectern, Goethe’s text
becomes the true demiurge of the stage: it gives material life to the charac-
ters, reveals their inner selves, visually conjures before the mind’s eye of the
audience illusory phantasmagoria.
In Part ii, by contrast, when Faust enters history, more space is given to
the theatricality of the scenes. And thus in some cases the ‘director’s
imagination’ influences his choice of lexis. A case in point is the Fourth
Hag, Care (‘Die Sorge’), who torments and blinds Faust in the closing
stages of the play. Here, by giving her the name ‘Angoscia’, Strehler
accentuates the interior nature of the confrontation: he sees her as Faust’s
female double, a projection of his guilty despair. The struggle between the
two takes place in a ring, in a hand-to-hand combat which is also a violent
embrace. It would of course be wrong to imagine that Strehler completed
the whole translation single-handed before starting rehearsing.12 The words
were endlessly tested out, tuned and even altered on stage. Very often,
while acting or directing, he revised a line, reordered the words, constantly
bent as he was on achieving a translation that would preserve the expressive
power of the original. The stage version thereby became an integral part of
the staging process: work in progress pursued in collaboration with the
actors.

a dramaturgy of fragments
Strehler’s belief that Goethe’s Faust is ‘an epic tragedy’ that can find its full
expression in the visual language of the theatre did not, however, prevent
him from foreseeing how arduous the enterprise would be. He was well
aware that the project would require ‘many years’, and that in this long
period the great poem could only gradually be revived on stage. He saw
Faust as a work with many doors that could not all be opened together. He
began with a selection of certain sections, adding to the title of his produc-
tion of Part i the word ‘fragments’ (Faust frammenti). Goethe’s Faust was
explored as an immense creative resource from which to draw characters,
situations, images. The fragments were lifted from the pages and each unit
carefully inserted into a new dramatic texture. Some were tried out on stage
and then put to one side, while others were immediately included or
312 laura caretti
excluded. In the end, this process of selection and montage became the basis
of Strehler’s dramaturgic work, a compositional metodo which left room for
additions and variations: ‘The performable material that we’ve found before
us is so vast as to require not so much “cuts” as “omissions”, to be kept in
reserve for next year’s research, naturally following the same method that
has accompanied our work so far.’13
On close examination, we can see that the ‘fragments’ are actually single
scenes or whole clutches of scenes with minimal cuts within the chosen
episodes. Strehler calls them the ‘bones’, the ‘pillars’, the ‘embryos’ of the
production. With these selected threads, he worked with his company for
five years (from 1987 to 1992), weaving together the web of his production of
the two parts of the poem.
The resulting structure which evolved in this way was then able to
include other pieces of the mosaic.14 This was Strehler’s purpose: to con-
tinue his journey, adding other fragments to the play during rehearsal.
Goethe’s written Faust was thus transformed into a ‘rappresentazione in
continuo divenire’ (performance in continuous development). We know
now that at a certain point the plan to enlarge the view to an ever-broader
spectrum of the poem stopped. After the first 2,000 lines of Part i others
were added, in successive performances; in the end, of Goethe’s 12,111 lines
6,500 were staged – a cause for pride, however, if one considers that in his
production, which Strehler had the good fortune to see in 1957, and which
was considered complete, even the great Gustaf Gründgens actually cut
away more than half the poem.
If we look at the table on page 313 of the chosen fragments we can see that
various sections were omitted. Yet despite these leaps, the tension of the
performance never slackened; in some cases (for example, the Gretchen
episode) it was actually intensified. The theatre lights flashed on certain
moments of Goethe’s work, and the selected scenes followed each other in
quick succession, as in a musical composition. The production never
once gave the impression of being unfinished, or slack. I would call
Strehler’s Faust an ‘opera aperta’ (to use Umberto Eco’s illuminating
expression, which is equally applicable to Goethe’s work): an ‘open work’
coherent in its dramaturgic design, powerful in its impact on our eyes,
minds and emotions. ‘The openness (apertura) and dynamism of a work’,
writes Eco, ‘consist in its receptivity to various acts of integration, concrete
complementary elements, channelling them a priori into the game of a
structural vitality which the work possesses even if in its unfinished state,
and which appears valuable even for diverse and multiple possible end
results.’15
 Strehler’s Faust in performance 313
Faust, fragments: Selection of scenes in Strehler’s production (in bold type)
Dedication FAUST PART ii
Prologue on the Stage ACT 1
Prologue in Heaven Pleasant Landscape
FAUST PART i The Emperor’s Court
Night Throne Room
Outside the City Gate Masquerade
Study 1 Garden
Study 2 Dark Gallery
Auerbach’s Cellar Brightly Lit Rooms
Witch’s Kitchen Great Hall
Street 1 ACT 2
Evening High-Vaulted, Narrow Gothic Chamber
A Walk Laboratory
The Neighbour’s House Classical Walpurgis Night
Street 2 Pharsalian Fields
Garden On the Peneius
A Summerhouse Sphinxes
Forest and Cave Peneius
Gretchen’s Room Chiron
Marthe’s Garden Manto
At the Well ACT 3
A Shrine Palace of Menelaus in Sparta
Night Inner Courtyard of a Castle
Cathedral Arcadia
Walpurgis Night ACT 4
Walpurgis Night’s Dream High Mountains
Dreary Day, Field On the Foothills
Night, Open Country The Rival Emperor’s Tent
Dungeon ACT 5
Open Country
Palace
Deep Night
Midnight
Great Courtyard before the Palace
Burial
Mountain Gorges

the arrow and the spiral

Two images give an idea of the difference between the two parts of Strehler’s
Faust, suggesting their respective dynamics and rhythms. The first of these
images, the arrow, conveys the breakneck succession of events: from
Mephistopheles’ appearance at the ‘Witch’s Kitchen’ to the immediately
ensuing meeting with Margarete and the drama of love and death which
occupies the final sequence. It has the impetus of youth and of sexual desire.
314 laura caretti

Figure 20.2 Faust and Helena’s veil. (Photograph from the Strehler production, 1989–91)

The precipitous descent of the action into tragedy is continuously accel-

erated by Mephistopheles, who urges Faust to abandon his meditative
seclusion and act.
By contrast, Part ii proceeds in a circular fashion. It takes the form of a
spiral ascent towards power and conversely a winding descent from the
purgatorial rebirth of the beginning towards the grave: a slow, unwitting fall
which concedes moments of illusory felicity only to reveal suddenly the
deception and vanity of the dream. Witness the fine scene in which Helena
dissolves into the void and Faust is left embracing a long white veil
(see Figure 20.2). Here is how Strehler imagines it, even before giving it
stage form, and how he describes it to his set designer:
Helena sorrowfully bids farewell to Faust and to life itself – ‘Persephoneia, nimm
den Knaben auf und mich!’ (Persephone, I come, take now the child and me) –
frees herself from the embrace leaving a hem of her marvellous white robe in Faust’s
hand and runs off. As she is retreating her robe unravels and little by little becomes a
long strip of veil, which Faust holds at its end – until the last layer falls away and for
an instant Helena, naked, divinely naked, vanishes in a flash of sunlight.16
 Strehler’s Faust in performance 315
Strehler’s constant exchange of ideas with Joseph Svoboda is fundamental to
the invention of the play’s scenography. In their dialogue every image is
conceived and tested out. The symbol of the ‘spiral’, suggested by Svoboda, is
discussed at length by Strehler, who appreciates its metaphorical value, but
sees the risk of reducing it to a stage prop. (‘The spiral is the infinite totalizing
and untouchable universe that dominates Goethe’s work. Your intuition is
absolute . . . It mustn’t, however, become a “utilitarian object”.’)17
At the same time, Gilberto Tofano, another of Strehler’s collaborators,
identified, in Part i, a structure of ‘almost uninterrupted linearity’.18 After
the great meditations and dialogues of the opening, the progress of Faust’s
life is ‘a tragic race’ which destroys everything he believed he could conquer
and possess. Faust’s subsequent journey no longer has the wings of youth
and love. It becomes an earthly journey that takes him into the maze of
history – not only the real and mythical history of Ancient Greece, but into
modern times, in Strehler’s staging, including our own. I have already
mentioned the different kinds of theatricality of the two parts, not least in
terms of performance. Part i is entrusted primarily to the actors’ voices. It
pivots on a marked contrast between the scenes read aloud at the lectern and
those in which the curtain opens and the ‘spectacle’ erupts suddenly onto
the stage. Strehler defines it as an ‘oratorio drammatico’ and insists on the
need for impersonal acting, in keeping with the ‘epic’ nature of the tragedy.
Faust’s and then Gretchen’s introspective solitude is therefore given greater
relief, while Mephistopheles acquires the role of antagonist of their tor-
mented conscience. The audience is called on to listen only to Goethe’s
words and simply to imagine places and objects on the empty stage. Their
only aids are a few visible signs (for example, the projection onto the floor of
a lighted window is all there is to designate Faust’s study or the interior of
the cathedral). The rest, as in Shakespearean theatre, is left to the imagi-
nation of the spectators, ‘capable, at the very instant of the performance, of
inventing for themselves the most extraordinary theatre possible, from the
weft of the words, sounds, gestures and atmospheres offered to them’.19
In Part ii, greater onstage scenic visualization transports the spectator
into the different places encountered on the journey in time and space. It is
a continuous, startling variety of forms: from Baroque theatre to Romantic
opera, from Greek tragedy to Brechtian contemporary drama. Here Faust
appears less central to the action, less alone with himself, except in the
epilogue. We see him immersed in the choral ensemble of the scenes,
possessed by the evils of our history. It’s the triumph of Mephistopheles,
that chameleon-like figure of the infinite masks on a stage dominated by the
trinity of ‘War, Trade and Piracy’.
316 laura caretti
Mephistopheles’ relation with the modern world is repeatedly stressed in
Strehler’s production, beginning with the scene in which his flying cloak is
substituted by a black air-balloon emerging from an infernal trapdoor on
the stage to bear Faust on high; and then in the ensuing scenes where the
signs of contemporaneity are still more recognizable. The ‘Witch’s Kitchen’
is transformed into a discotheque with young punks swaying to the deaf-
ening rhythm of hard-rock music, illumined by a stroboscopic light flashing
in the dark.20 Bawdy Mephistopheles delights in this orgiastic frenzy and
from this moment on assumes the role of director which Strehler deliber-
ately emphasizes. Faust, by contrast, wanders bewildered among this tribe
of metropolitan savages until, having drunk the Witch’s potion, he is
seduced by the virtual reality of the dazzling nudity of a gigantic projection
of Giorgione’s ‘Sleeping Venus’. This Fellinian scene has a marvellous visual
impact. In this utterly original manner Strehler settles the much-debated
question of this female apparition (Helena? Margarete?) in Goethe’s text.
The illusory vision of the great reclining body that Faust attempts to grasp is
shot through with an intense sensuality in keeping with the ‘Witch’s
Kitchen’ and in contrast to the virginal Gretchen, who materializes in the
luminous scene that follows (see Figure 20.3).
In the staging of the war we once again recognize our own predicament.
The spectator is suddenly deafened by the din of aerial bombing, which
Mephistopheles directs by remote control from the centre of the stage. And
again, in the play’s Brechtian finale, the figures of the lemurs in the service
of Mephistopheles evoke the alienation of our industrial world and the
slavery of a concentration camp. Strehler, in short, and above all in Part ii
with the shift from the small to the ‘great world’, accelerates the pace,
hurling the time machine that Goethe ignited towards us. Mephistopheles,
lover of the modern metropolis, inventor of paper money and the incarna-
tion of the accumulation of capital, delighting in war, robbing and killing
remorselessly, already belongs to a reality familiar to us and which Goethe
prefigures.

strehler and his company of actors

So far I have given prominence to Giorgio Strehler as the true dynamo of the
entire production in his multiple roles as project deviser, director, translator
and dramaturge. The time has come to speak of him as stage interpreter of
Faust, an interpreter applauded by many but also criticized by many. I do
not share the view of those who condemn his decision to play Faust claim-
ing that he should have concerned himself only with directing the work – or
 Strehler’s Faust in performance 317
that, if he had to play a part, he would have done better to play
Mephistopheles. Implicit here is a failure to recognize that Strehler’s inter-
pretation of Faust grew hand in hand with his acting, and that the two
cannot be severed one from the other. His idea of Faust the character has
many layers, including autobiographical ones. Deep down he identified
himself with Faust, with his loneliness, his philosophical quest, his rejection
of a dead culture, his desire for youth and beauty, his thirst for knowledge,
even with his delusions of power. And these themes come to the fore in his
performance. Besides, Strehler’s casting himself as Faust was from the
beginning part of the adventure. It lay at the core of his ‘Faustian’ project.
It is well known that as a director Strehler always valued and praised the art
of his actors, even to the point of envying them for truly belonging to the
stage and the audience. This time he wanted to be of their number. It meant
a new challenge and a passionate effort. He had been an actor in his youth
and with Faust wished again to hurdle the fence that excludes a director
from the actual performance of a play. It was not an easy hurdle. He had to
develop an impossible, double presence on and offstage, and when acting
alone, blinded by the lights, he missed the overview he was so accustomed to
having (‘I can’t see a bloody thing’, he would shout on numerous occasions
to his collaborators).
Pia Kleber recorded many hours of the Faust rehearsals, and there we can
see how confident Strehler is when working with the other actors, arranging
the scene, giving orders for the lighting, the sound, and how tense he
becomes when performing his role. At one point he is trying out Faust’s
first monologue. He keeps repeating the first lines over and over again,
changing the order of the words, unhappy with his own translation which
fails to render the German ‘ach’ at the very beginning (‘Habe nun, ach!
Philosophie’). He says the lines in German and then exclaims ‘It’s untrans-
latable!’ He listens to the sound of his own voice as if it were an instrument
he is learning to play in a new way. After a lifetime spent teaching other
actors, he discovers the difficulty of teaching himself.
Unlike Goethe, Strehler was not alone in his endeavour, but was accom-
panied by some of his best interpreters. He chose only a few, on whom he
could totally rely, and cast them in different roles.21 He gave Faust a
privileged space for his soliloquies, but often stood aside and let
Mephistopheles, played by Paolo Graziosi, occupy the centre of the action.
In Strehler’s production, Mephistopheles has lost all the trappings of
devilish iconography. Not only does he have human features, but also his
transformations, his constant disguises belong to the world of men. He is
the great actor of a theatre of artifice and illusion. From the very beginning
318 laura caretti
he catalyses the audience’s attention. He comes on stage in the ‘Prologue in
Heaven’, which sets Strehler’s play in motion.22 While the angels sing and
turn harmoniously on the upper stage, a large trapdoor opens (in the front
arena next to the spectators) to reveal a smoky, magmatic underworld which
contrasts sharply with the pure golden light of heaven. Mephistopheles’
shaved head and naked body emerge from this boiling quagmire of hell. It is
a stunning apparition (see Figure 20.1). From down there he challenges God
(a voice offstage). He is utterly confident in his own power, ready to prove
his evil skill, utterly contemptuous of the stupidity of humankind. With his
powerful, rich voice, the actor Paolo Graziosi gives strength to the bitter
humour and sardonic boldness of his Mephisto. We have already touched
on the multiple masks donned by Mephistopheles and of the fact that he
belongs to the modern world. Strehler invents continuous transformations.
Exceptional, for instance, is his stage entry, in Part ii, riding a motorcycle
which takes the place of Goethe’s ‘seven-league boots’. This is how Strehler
puts the idea in 1990, in a letter to Svoboda:
Obviously it’s impossible to think of the seven-league boots. But we might just try
something equally extraordinary, not of the kind found in fables but terrifying. The
terrible roar of a motorcycle, a Kawasaki or Suzuki or Yamaha approaching behind
the curtain. The curtain opens but not completely, and a monstrous, gleaming
machine can be seen, with all its side mirrors, accessories, headlights, radio aerials,
fumes, racing, it seems, towards the audience and on it an equally monstrous figure
in a terrifying red crash-helmet, and metallic, phosphorescent gloves and leather
jacket. A flash of quotidian terror in a Tokyo inferno!23

As well as this polyhedric Mephistopheles, Paolo Graziosi interprets the role

of Phorkyas, another mask, borrowed this time from Greek theatre. And
again, in the guise of tragic chorister, he recounts the birth and death of
Euphorion.

gretchen’s stream of consciousness

The composite form of Faust requires continuous changes in performance
style. Strehler is the first to recognize the difficulties that the actors have to
face, above all when they are not supported by the theatrical machine and
are left alone in the empty space of the stage. Nevertheless, he is convinced
that this nakedness restores dramatic force to Goethe’s text, and in Part i
saves the story of Gretchen from a conventional representation.
Determined to concede nothing to the romance (highly familiar to the
audience), he dramatizes the interiorized experience of the events in a
 Strehler’s Faust in performance 319
dramatic monologue. He cuts several scenes, accelerates the action and
divides the role of Gretchen, giving the first part to a young actress (Laura
Pasini) and the final delirium to one of his most accomplished actresses,
Giulia Lazzarini. Only the encounter is ‘represented’ on a stage flooded in
the brightest light.
When Margarete first appears she is just a silhouette, the image of a jeune
fille en fleur coming out of church. Walking home alone, she is lusted after
by a Faust whose desires have been aroused, but whose rejuvenation is an
illusion. A theatrical illusion, as if Mephistopheles had cast him in the role
of Don Juan, changing the Doctor’s long black tunic into the traditional
tights, cloak and sword borrowed from the wardrobe of a nineteenth-
century theatre company. Unlike other directors, such as Peter Stein, who
substitutes the old Faust with a handsome young man, Strehler plays the
role himself in a different costume and uses a backlight to pull off the
trick – an ironic coup de théâtre (see Figure 20.3). After this first brief
dialogue the dramaturgy jumps various scenes and we do not see the develop-
ment of the love story. As I have said, Strehler intentionally avoids the duets
between the two lovers – already exploited by opera. He tells the drama from
their different viewpoints. Faust the seducer recalls the meeting in Martha’s

Figure 20.3 ‘My lovely young lady, may I venture . . .?’ (Photograph
from the Strehler production, 1989–91)
320 laura caretti
garden, while Gretchen plays the last scene alone as a delirious stream of
consciousness. The lines are ‘played’ on a lectern and the scenery is left to the
stagecraft of Goethe’s words. The dialogues become solos:
There, a sole actress, in an almost absolute void, with a lectern, interprets, reads,
speaks, performs in diverse styles – from Stanislavskian identification to Brechtian
epic – her own part and that of Faust. One of the hardest ‘dramatic-interpretive’
exercises I know. (Strehler, 20 January 1990)24
Giulia Lazzarini begins as if reading from Goethe’s book, but then turns
away from it, as if she had been led to an imaginary scaffold, her hands tied
behind her back, her body bent, ready for the axe. Her performance is a
prodigious shifting of voices, tones and emotions. She is the loving young
girl who has given herself to Faust, the woman burdened with grief, beset by
terror, afflicted by haunting memories. Faust’s presence in the prison is
evoked in a delirium of fear, love, guilt and resignation. Her dialogue with
him is made real and imaginary at the same time. He is there, he grabs her
violently by the arm trying to force her out of her prison, yet she remains
utterly alone with her hallucinations. She seems overwhelmed by contrast-
ing emotions, tormented by the recollection of her drowning baby, torn
between desire for and horror of her lover. The solo voice of the actress turns
the dialogue into a visionary dream of reunion and a nightmare of separa-
tion. There is a subtle link between the roles played by the same actress in
the second part of Strehler’s production: she is the soothing Ariel who
comforts and revives the fallen Faust.25
She is Poetry, as against the power of money. Dressed in a harlequin’s
costume borrowed from a painting by Picasso, she offers the audience the
luminous sparks of her verses. Later in the story, she plays the part of the
generous, peaceful Baucis. All these characters, with their gift of love, stand
against the driving urge to grab and to destroy. They seem perilously fragile
in the cruel world they inhabit, yet they cannot be conquered. They are the
antagonists, not simply the victims. In the end, Faust–Mephistopheles’
dreams of power and possession fail. Only Care (Angoscia), also played by
Giulia Lazzarini, envelops and possesses Faust’s heart. She is Faust’s last
companion.

the last act

Several times, in his dialogue with Svoboda, Strehler speaks again of the
difficulty presented by the final scenes and of the responsibility he feels he
must shoulder as an actor on whom, at this point, the conclusion of the
 Strehler’s Faust in performance 321
tragedy depends (‘It’s an act I am wholly responsible for as an actor. I must
try it and retry it and correct mercilessly’). He asks the set designer to invent
something for Faust’s palace that must be simple, essential, but at the same
time have a powerful impact. It would be enough, he suggests, to have ‘a
usable stage object’ which enables the ‘Dictator Faust’ to mount and then
fall into the trap. What we see on stage is a symbolic pedestal, where Faust
suddenly appears transformed into a fearsome old man.
The contrast with the philosopher of the opening scenes is enormous. The
same dark tunic is no longer the full-flowing academic’s gown; it is now
drawn tight around his withered body, giving him the appearance of a black
insect. His head, by contrast, appears enormous, with its great shock of white
hair. He leans on a stick with which he beats the ground to give his orders.
While Mephistopheles is to the last ever more active and immutable, Faust’s
decaying change is horrific. ‘He has a crazed look on his face, a little like
Doctor Mabuse in Metropolis’, writes Strehler, but is also a tormented old
man. What we see represented on stage is not only the violence of his power,
but also its desperate loneliness. After the struggle with Care it seems that
blindness has given him an inner capacity to see. And yet he reverts to being
the ruthless master of a world of slaves and pirates. An utterly negative world.
In performance the work of the lemurs evokes the alienating mechanical
labour of the industrial world; it becomes the symbol of a society whose
‘progress’ devastates the earth and kills life. The foundations dug with a
view to the future are nothing other than the grave into which Faust falls.
Faust–Mephistopheles together create the modern world, a world in which
one vies for ephemeral possession, which lasts an instant, which is ferocious
and wants everything, which is an obsessive and voracious drive, uncontrol-
lable and lacerating.
Even his final dream of a free and happy humanity appears to be a way of
deferring to an eternal tomorrow a utopia which should instead change the
present. (‘Faust imagines paradisal visions deferred to tomorrow, always to
tomorrow, oblivious of today’s evil and of the ‘price’ that such visions costs
humanity.’) Does this glimmer of humanity save him? In Strehler’s inter-
pretation the ending acquires a different meaning. After the Brechtian
vision of a capitalist metropolis, we are shifted away from the reality of
time and history into the cycle of life and death. There is a sudden change of
style in the performance. Faust’s death is a downfall from his illusionary
pedestal of power and a return to the earth. The grave becomes the loving
womb of a feminine, maternal Eternity. The symbol of the spiral reappears:
‘The final image is the infinite which has absorbed Faust “into itself ”: a
foetus/embryo in a cloudy azure. All this, while the light descends in a
322 laura caretti
cosmic sound.’26 It is a striking, visual reinterpretation of Goethe’s ending.
Stripped of his individual identity, Faust’s naked body lies on the stage.
Mysteriously, the shadows of the Mothers and of Gretchen reappear to
draw over him and across the entire stage a black veil as the final curtain.

notes
1. Giorgio Strehler, ‘La nostra ricerca sul Faust continua’, in Faust frammenti parte
prima, Milano: Piccolo Teatro, 1989–90 (pages are unnumbered). This article,
dated 20 January 1990, is printed in one of the two programme-books devoted
to the presentation of Part i and Part ii (Parte prima e Parte seconda) of his Faust,
edited by the Piccolo Teatro, on the occasion of the 1989 and 1991 perform-
ances. In addition to Strehler’s director’s notes and critical remarks, these books
include other essays by critics and writers, as well as splendid photographic
documentation by Luigi Ciminaghi. These two programme-books, together
with the scripts containing Strehler’s unpublished translation of Goethe’s
Faust i–ii, unpublished letters, photographs and videos are part of the rich
documentary material of the staging of Goethe’s Faust kept in the Archivio
Multimediale del Piccolo Teatro di Milano (hereafter AMPT).
2. Giorgio Strehler, ‘Faust frammenti parte seconda’, in Faust frammenti parte
seconda, Milano: Piccolo Teatro, 1990–1 (pages are unnumbered).
3. Giorgio Strehler, ‘La nostra ricerca sul Faust continua’.
4. Ibid.
5. In his notes Strehler repeatedly insists on the fact that Faust cannot be reduced
to a single interpretation and on the need to resort to a plurality of expressive
languages.
6. Giorgio Strehler, ‘Il progetto Faust’ (dated November 1988), in Faust fram-
menti parte seconda.
7. Relevant to this analysis was Claudio Magris’ essay on ‘Le metamorfosi di
Faust’, in Itaca e oltre, Milano: Garzanti, 1982.
8. Speaking of his direction of Shakespeare’s plays, he defines the staging as ‘a
critical operation written with the material of the theatre, with all the material
of the theatre, on a stage, and which presupposes another initial critical
operation which then takes precise form in the theatre work’. Giorgio
Strehler, Inscenare Shakespeare, Rome: Bulzoni, 1999, 9.
9. Giorgio Strehler, ‘Il progetto Faust’.
10. In a note dated Milan 18 March 1989 Strehler thanks the translators who have
preceded him, above all acknowledging his debt to the poet Franco Fortini’s
‘poetic, often dazzling solutions’ in his version of Goethe, Faust, Parte I e II,
Milan: Mondadori, 1970, 2 vols.
11. Giorgio Strehler, ‘La nostra ricerca sul Faust è incominciata’, in Faust frammenti
parte prima.
12. Strehler translated the first part, but for the second he worked in collaboration
with Gilberto Tofano, another director with wide cultural knowledge and a
talent for theatre translation.
 Strehler’s Faust in performance 323
13. Giorgio Strehler, ‘Faust frammenti parte seconda’, in Faust frammenti parte
seconda.
14. Stuart Atkins also uses the image of a mosaic when speaking of Goethe’s work.
15. Umberto Eco, Opera aperta, Milan: Bompiani, 1962, 51–2.
16. In this long, typewritten letter, kept in the AMPT (Giorgio Strehler, Lettera a
Joseph Svoboda con indicazioni registiche sul disegno tecnico della struttura del
Faust, Frammenti parte seconda, 1990, unpublished, 14 pp., unnumbered),
Strehler proposes to Svoboda a whole series of illuminating scenic ideas to
solve the difficulties of Part ii of Faust (namely, the representation of Ancient
Greece, the tragedy of Helena, the war and above all the finale). Some of these
were duly staged, while others were discarded or modified. Strehler’s letter is an
exceptional document for the insight it gives us into his mental laboratory and
for understanding how his director’s vision always embraces the full range of
theatrical languages. Actors, scenes, lights and costumes coexist in his imagi-
native staging.
17. Giorgio Strehler, Lettera a Joseph Svoboda.
18. Gilberto Tofano, ‘Faust frammenti parte seconda: alle radici della storia
europea’, in Faust frammenti parte seconda.
19. Giorgio Strehler, ‘La nostra ricerca sul Faust continua’.
20. Strehler takes his cue for this leap in time from Gustav Gründgens, who had
already used rumba rhythms for this scene.
21. Giulia Lazzarini was Margarete, the flying Ariel, the Boy-Charioteer/Poetry,
Baucis, Care (Angoscia) and again Gretchen in the last scene. Tino Carraro was
Chiron and the offstage voice of God in the ‘Prologue in Heaven’. Gianfranco
Mauri played Wagner and Philemon. The first Helena was Eleonora
Brigliadori, and later the German actress Andrea Jonasson, Strehler’s young
wife, bestowed on the character her talent and beauty. When the scene required
many extras, Strehler cast the pupils of his theatre school.
22. As can been seen from his table of scenes, Strehler omits the ‘Prologue on the
Stage’.
23. Giorgio Strehler, Lettera a Joseph Svoboda.
24. Giorgio Strehler, ‘La nostra ricerca sul Faust continua’.
25. The actress descends, wafting down, suspended on a thread, as in Strehler’s
1978 staging of The Tempest. Regarding this production, see Pia Kleber,
Theatrical Continuities in Giorgio Strehler’s The Tempest, in Foreign
Shakespeare. Contemporary Performance, ed. Dennis Kennedy, Cambridge
University Press, 1993.
26. Giorgio Strehler, Lettera a Joseph Svoboda.
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 Index
alchemy, 25, 42, 81, 82, 83, 85
Arendt, Hannah, 38, 39
Aristotle, 231, 257
Atkins, Stuart, xi, 52, 90, 126, 154, 323
beautiful moment, der schöne Augenblick, 3, 7, 59,
104, 167, 168, 200, 239
Benn, Gottfried, 19
Berzelius, Jöns Jakob, 26, 31
blindness, blind, 6, 29, 58, 89, 104, 105,
109, 286
Boisserée, Sulpice, 21
Book of Job, 55, 57, 58, 86, 204
Borchmeyer, Dieter, vi, viii, xiv, 1, 9, 68
Boyle, Nicholas, 5, 78, 86, 250
Brecht, Bertolt, 6, 17, 125, 198, 202, 205, 273, 293,
307, 316, 321
Brown, Jane, vi, viii, 1, 6, 9, 152
Care, Sorge, 75, 101, 102, 230, 243, 311, 320
catharsis, 231, 233, 257, 286
chapbook, Volksbuch, 42
Chiron, 2, 65, 116, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 125, 130,
137, 143, 144, 145, 146, 149, 165, 170
classic, classical
classicist, 156, 163
Weimar, 51, 52, 172, 177, 206, 253, 286
‘Classical Walpurgis Night’, 2, 36, 73, 116, 122,
138, 157, 160, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 185, 186,
204, 228
colonization, 6, 20, 60, 66, 74, 298
daemon, daemonic, 4, 41, 42, 43, 44, 48, 79, 80, 85
despair, 9, 94, 105, 197, 203, 283, 289, 295, 296, 311
Dichtung und Wahrheit, 41, 45, 50, 67
directorial theatre, 1, 6, 10, 11, 19, 206, 288, 291
Divina Commedia, 9, 65, 275
Earth Spirit, 4, 9, 48, 49, 55, 105, 206, 239, 247,
276, 295, 299
Eissler, Kurt, 175, 189, 190
330
emperor, Kaiser, 22, 44, 46, 62, 72, 78, 81, 223,
228, 241, 287
Emrich, Wilhelm, 78, 102, 111, 138, 152
Enlightenment, 6, 42, 43, 80, 81, 82, 89, 106, 121,
125, 156, 159, 178, 212, 278
entelechy, 3, 7, 57, 63, 78, 281
enthusiasm, 7, 8, 107, 122
Euphorion, 6, 46, 80, 132, 135, 137, 171, 206, 228,
229, 233, 263
evil, das Böse, 7, 9, 32, 33, 51
metaphysical, 32, 40, 48, 49, 50, 55, 61, 241, 297
modern, 4, 32, 34, 36, 39, 56, 59, 60
phenomenal, 32, 33, 35, 37, 38, 52, 56, 60, 79, 318
fantastic errors, phantastische Irrtümer, 3, 7,
78, 112
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 43
Fischer-Lichte, Erika, 13
‘Forest and Cave’, 46, 48, 58, 61, 69, 105,
218, 296
French Revolution, 23, 27, 56, 61, 79, 80, 141
Freud, Sigmund, 11, 68, 127, 277
Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 115, 270, 283, 291
Gaier, Ulrich, v, viii, 4, 5, 8, 9, 138, 139, 152, 154,
187, 208, 265, 267, 297
Gestalt, 65, 66, 162, 163, 166, 170
God, the Lord, 3, 32, 33, 41, 44, 45, 46, 48,
49, 52, 55, 57, 60, 63, 64, 102, 199, 211,
214, 318
good and evil, 4, 6, 37, 38, 40, 49, 50, 52, 199
Gretchen, Margarete, 63, 64, 65, 109, 298
figure, 64, 72, 75, 224, 240, 247, 280, 281, 297,
299, 318, 320
tragedy, 69, 72, 105, 106, 210, 217, 222, 240,
243, 258, 277, 297, 298
grotesque, 138, 154, 168, 178, 223
in ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’, 2, 142, 143, 146,
150, 152
meaning, 139, 140, 141, 151, 153
Gründgens, Gustav, 7, 19, 203, 268, 312, 323
 Index 331
Hederich, Benjamin, 116, 159, 192 ‘Mountain Gorges’, 95, 225, 230, 232, 233, 259,
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm, 6, 7, 115, 205 261, 263, 276
Helena, 137, 165, 168, 169, 271, 314 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 54, 224, 257,
act, 9, 105, 135, 163, 171, 212, 243, 255, 260, 262 261, 262
antecedents, 2, 61, 130 music, musical
figure, 37, 63, 130, 132, 160, 260, 280, 281, 282 aesthetically, 9, 10, 226, 227, 228, 231, 232
symbol, 130, 136, 172 composed, 54, 224, 225, 228
hermeneutics, hermeneutic, 13, 270, 283 poetic, 9, 227, 228, 230, 233, 259, 261, 263, 264,
Hölscher-Lohmeyer, Dorothea, 78, 154 271, 275
Homer, 18, 24, 116, 132, 165
Homunculus, 25, 26, 27, 31, 138, 143, 145, 151, 204, Napoleon Bonaparte, 7, 62, 79, 178
223, 242, 244, 248, 249 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 6, 40, 107, 205
nihilism, 9, 202
immortality, 3, 7, 75
industrial revolution, 30, 63, 85, 297 opera, 2, 8, 9, 65, 157, 224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 230,
inner light, 6, 89, 102, 105, 243 263, 315
Origen, 108, 109, 188
Jaspers, Karl, 6, 13, 23, 24
pantheism, 43, 51
Kant, Immanuel, 43, 121, 236, 237, 248, 250 Paracelsus, Theophrastus Bombastus, 3, 25
Kommerell, Max, 78, 101 Pelagianism, 50, 53
performance, performative, 10
Lavater, Johann Caspar, 82, 91 concept, 256, 263
Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 6, 66, 205 deconstructivist, 10, 12, 206, 264, 274, 293
Liszt, Franz, 206, 225 review, 302, 309, 312, 315, 317, 318, 320
Lucifer, 3, 39, 42, 56, 181, 193 phantasmagoria, 2, 7, 111, 138, 143, 169, 171, 197,
201, 210, 255
magic Philemon and Baucis, 20, 27, 28, 34, 35, 38, 41, 50,
creative, 7, 82 58, 74, 99, 101, 197, 210
Mephistophelean, 3, 59, 79, 81 polarity, 4, 48, 50, 199
theosophic, 62, 80 ‘Prologue in Heaven’, 7, 41, 45, 48, 55, 57, 65,
Mann, Thomas, 17, 102, 118, 127, 213, 310 199, 204, 210, 211, 212, 227, 231, 307,
Manto, 8, 122, 158, 159, 160, 287 308, 318
Marlowe, Christopher, 42, 66, 154, Proteus, 26, 32
205, 310 psychoanalysis, 25
Marx, Karl, 21, 22, 303
Medusa, 2, 80, 154, 156, 158, 159, 160, 161, 163, 164, Renaissance, 7, 9, 62, 138, 140, 144, 151, 154, 179,
166, 167, 169, 171, 172 205, 217, 244, 247, 254, 255
memory Romanticism, 6, 19, 255
cultural, 12, 68, 69, 70, 73, 76, 273, 274 period, 3, 253
Faust’s, 68, 295 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 58, 84, 235
Mensch, der gute, 3, 211 Russell, Jeffrey Burton, 1
Middle Ages, 66, 132, 171, 201, 281
modernity, modern, 1, 2, 4, 8, 11, 12, 55, 146, 164, Saint-Simonism, 5, 6, 86, 88
169, 188, 202 salvation, 48, 50, 51, 70, 74, 75, 77, 108, 188, 193,
early, 2, 57, 202 197, 199, 207, 211, 214, 222, 235, 241
Goethezeit, 2, 30, 74, 79, 80, 85, 87, 201, 228, Satan, 39, 42, 43, 55, 57, 58, 59, 185, 204, 219,
253, 264, 277 221, 222
present, 2, 3, 4, 13, 40, 77, 205, 235, 270, Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph, 48,
293, 306 107, 209
Western, 1, 3, 8, 9, 12, 57, 105, 125, 152, 156, 171, Schiller, Friedrich, 8, 9, 43, 90, 121, 177, 205,
172, 187, 197, 198, 204, 205, 207, 293 226, 228
Moritz, Karl Philipp, 70, 71, 116, 127, 142, 206 Schings, Hans-Jürgen, v, ix, 5, 6, 7, 8, 93, 112
Mothers, the, 62, 63, 64, 81, 82, 83, 85, 111, 242, Schlaffer, Heinz, 5, 138, 152, 208
243, 281 Schmidt, Jochen, 5, 39, 78, 208
332
Schöne, Albrecht, v, ix, xiv, 1, 4, 5, 8, 39, 82, 99,
100, 108, 111, 112, 127, 138, 139, 152, 185,
192, 267
Schuchard, Gottlieb C. L., 5, 78, 86, 87
Schumann, Robert, 206, 224, 225, 227, 228, 230
schwankende Gestalten, wavering shapes, 4, 41, 46,
60, 62, 65
Spinoza, Spinozism, 43, 48
Stein, Peter
as a director, 1, 11, 12, 143, 207, 208, 281, 283,
285, 287, 291
on directorial theatre, 6, 11, 270, 272
on Faust, 7, 268, 270, 275, 276, 277, 281
Strehler, Giorgio, 10, 12, 313, 315, 316, 317, 318,
319, 321
striving, Streben
for the absolute, 3, 4, 6, 8, 30, 243, 254, 276, 277
self-centred, 88, 235, 267
technology, 3, 59, 61, 85, 87, 88, 172
Thales, 26, 27
Thalheimer, Michael, 10, 289, 290, 291, 297
theatricality, theatrical, 9, 243, 244, 250, 253
Index
totalitarianism, 13
tragedy, 168, 169, 217, 325
disputed, 9, 68, 209, 210, 211, 223, 224,
284, 285
Faust’s, 8, 199, 233, 278, 281, 282, 286, 314
structural, 6, 11, 65, 68, 94, 97, 199, 205, 208,
210, 231, 256, 257, 275, 276, 278, 284, 286,
311, 315
trickster, 49, 50, 51, 52, 212, 213, 214, 221
two souls, 9, 114, 198, 239, 281
ultimate formulae, 3, 4, 22
Urfaust, 6, 42, 43, 51
utopia, 3, 8, 63, 85, 87, 88, 135, 223, 321
wager, 41, 51, 55, 57, 58, 59, 74, 94, 104, 197, 199,
200, 204, 207, 218, 269
Wagner, Richard, 52, 213, 225, 227, 257
Weinrich, Harald, 68, 69
Wieland, Christoph Martin, 141, 174, 175, 189,
221, 222
Winckelmann, Johann Joachim, 164, 165, 166,
176, 177, 178, 179, 181, 328