More Faust Questions (for Meeting on December 27th, 2010)

If one reads Goethe's Faust as an allegory, what do the following characters represent:

Mephistopheles
Faust
Wagner
Gretchen
Martha
Valentine

Now that you've thought about this, is it correct to read Faust as an allegory?

Read and interpret the climactic last scene (the "Dungeon" scene). Must Gretchen resist Faust (p.291-292) in order to be redeemed? How and why is she redeemed?

During the initial scene in Faust's study (p. 179), Faust gives us his critique of the opening line of the Book of John, "In the beginning was the Word." What comes first, the Word, the Thought, the Power, or the Deed?

On page 202, Mephistopheles says,

It's exactly where a thought is lacking
That just in time, a word shows up instead.
With words you can argue beautifully,
With words you can make up a system,
A word's a beautiful thing to believe in,
Not one iota can be taken from a word.

Are words effective substitutes for thought?

Is Faust a critique of academic and intellectual culture? Of the "examined life" in general?

For example, on page 244 Faust says to Gretchen,

Believe me, dearest, what men call intelligent
Often is pedantry and self-conceit.

In the second scene in Faust's study, how does Faust, according to the Chorus of Spirits, destroy "the beautiful world" with his curses of hope, faith, and (most of all), patience (p. 191)? Interpret their response:

We carry
The ruins to nothingness
And weep for the lost beauty.
O mighty
Among the sons of earth,
Build it again, more magnificent,
Build it in your own breast!

Why do Faust and Mephistopheles go to Hartz Mountain for Walpurgis night? What is the significance of the events that take place there?

Why does God permit Mephistopheles to tempt Faust in the first place?

Why is Faust so despondent that he contemplates suicide at the beginning of the play?

Is Faust a hero? villain? antihero?

The Last Universal Man?

To the left you see a portrait of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832). It was painted by Gerhard von Kügelgen in 1808. That was the year Faust, Part One was first published. It was also the year that Goethe met Napoleon (a big fan of Goethe's novel The Sorrows of Young Werther) in the German city of Erfurt.

It is remarkable to note that Faust, Part One wasn't performed for the first time until 1829, twenty years later, in Brunswick. This speaks to some of the difficulties in staging this work. As one of our discussants noted in our meeting last week, getting horses up on stage (as directed) can be a challenge.

Goethe can be considered the last universal man. He was a man of letters and a man of science. He is credited with founding the science of morphology and "discovered" the intermaxillary bone in humans. He put forward a powerful critique of Newton's optics. He also had a longstanding interest in meteorology.

Goethe's aesthetic concerns jibed with this scientific interests. Morphology, for example, can be a form of poetry in the way it matches object and word.

It is the persistence of Goethe's intellect that most qualifies him as a "universal." A close reading of Faust confirms this. Goethe spent at least 40 years writing and revising the two parts of Faust. His motto, after all, was

Ohne rast aber ohne hast.

Which, translated into English, means "Without rest BUT without haste."

Resource: Steuer, Daniel, "In defence of experience: Goethe's natural investigation," In The Cambridge Companion to Goethe," Lesley Sharpe, ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.