Faust, Part One (1808)

One of the few books I read for school that I actually enjoyed! ( )

O Fausto de Goethe é um daqueles livros que sintetizam uma época, seus conhecimentos, aspirações, superstições, temores. Uma obra tão completa como A Divina Comédia de Dante. ( )

It's a strange notion, "reviewing" a text that is one of the pillars of German national identity and has had untold hectolitres of ink spilled over it by critics in the last couple of centuries. Maybe the most appropriate question to ask in a place like this is "What does Faust I have to offer the casual modern reader?"

Two main things, I think: amazing language and a cracking good yarn.

Like Hamlet or the KJV in English, reading Faust through is a bit like joining the dots between dozens of quotations you already know. The language has a very direct appeal to the reader: you don't have to be an expert in 19th century German verse to make sense of it (though I'm sure you would get more out of it if you were). After a few pages you entirely forget what a strange notion it is to be reading a verse drama, and just enjoy the sound of the words.

The story isn't as "big" and "epic" as you might imagine. The core story of Gretchen's seduction and fall is told in a very intimate, naturalistic way, and even the big Walpurgisnacht scene is essentially a series of little cameos rather than a big spectacular. ( )

Faust is Goethe’s masterpiece and the heart of his life’s work. He started thinking about it and writing it when he was bored with his studies at University and at the time he quickly cranked out “The Sorrows of Young Werther”, but by contrast he did not complete Faust (Part 1) until decades later, when he was in his fifties. He continued on with Part 2 right up until death at 82.

This is not the origin of what has been popularized in so many different ways over the centuries in “selling your soul to the devil” stories, but one of the better versions and certainly a standard reference for the others. It’s the story of not just the condition of Faust’s everlasting soul as he ponders the abyss of suicide, but the condition of man on planet Earth. Jacques Barzun summarizes it well in the introduction to this edition:

“…the torment comes from the awareness that man is at once wretched and great. He is wretched because he is a limited, mortal creature; he is great because his mind embraces the whole universe and knows its own wretchedness. No ordinary satisfaction can quench Faust’s desires; forever he sees and wants something beyond. The ultimate bliss would be to feel at one with nature, through knowledge not merely intellectual but emotional also, virtually instinctive; whereas all learning serves but to make Faust more self-conscious and isolated, till he scarcely feels that he lives. Clearly, this defines the situation of modern civilized man, whose increasing knowledge makes him more and more self-critical, anxious, beset by doubts, and hence more and more an alien in the natural world that is his only home.”

Epic and grand in scope. Man’s soul, his passions, his fate. Not quiiite as brilliant as I had hoped for from its reputation, but Part 1 is in the “must read” category.

Quotes:
On beauty:
“Often the perfect form appears
Only when ripened slowly many years.
What glitters lives an instant, then is gone;
The real for all posterity lives on.”

On living life:
“Yes, of this truth I am convinced –
This is wisdom’s ultimate word:
Only he deserves this life in freedom
Who daily earns it all anew.”

On transience:
“Here shall I satisfy my need?
What though in thousand volumes I should read
That human beings suffered everywhere,
And one perchance was happy, here or there?
Why grin, you hollow skull, except to say
That once your brain, perplexed like mine,
Yearning for Truth, pursued the light of day,
Then in the dusk went wretchedly astray?”

On the passing of youth. :-(
“Then give me back those years long past
When I could still mature and grow,
And when a spring of song welled fast
Out of my heart with ceaseless flow,
When all the world was veiled in mist,
When every bud a miracle concealed,
And when I gathered myriad flowers
Crowding the valley and the field.
Though naught was mine, I had enough in youth,
A joy in illusion, a longing for the Truth.
Give back the surge of impulse, re-create
That happiness so steeped in pain,
The power of love, the strength of hate –
Oh, give me back my youth again!” ( )

I'm not sure what to think of the tone of the book over all, as I come away from it with a feeling that Faust is being condemned to the devil for seeking too much knowledge. I feel like there is also something of the old "doctor wanting to be god" joke in here, as well.

But I get the feeling that, over time, Faust will come to be one of my favorite characters, along with Voltaire's Candide and Camus' Meursault. And there is definitely something "absurdly" tragic about Goethe's character, as well.

Because, to me, Faust isn't just about someone who makes a deal with the devil to make his life better. Rather, it's about someone whose thirst for knowledge is never slaked, who seeks to know everything and what it's like to be everyone. Or, should I say, Faust seeks to be omniscient. (And I have to wonder, is that necessarily a bad thing? Would the world be worse off if we knew just what it was like to be the millionaire in his mansion, or the low class beggar in the city?) But to get back on track: at the same time, he realizes he is merely only a human, and he is burdened, depressed, and frenzied by the knowledge that he probably can never know everything--and there is something so full of humility, so pathetically human about his situation.

This leads him to not just "make a deal" with the devil, but to acquiesce to Mephistopheles as a sort of last resort. Why not, if there is no other way he can gain omniscient knowledge, anyway? Of course, Mephistopheles makes him become enamored with a woman, and this love transports Faust, and makes him finally feel like he has gained everything he's ever wanted. Where am I going with this? I don't know, because I don't quite know what Goethe was going for, either.

But Faust's words say it all the better:

"And here, poor fool! with all my lore
I stand, no wiser than before" ( )