Faust, Part One

I loooove that in contrast to Marlowe's Faust, where he's actually just about power and self-assertion, and Mann's, where he really was about deep knowledge and piercing the physical mysteries and developing an inhuman logic, etc., this Faust is more like a disaffected humanist--learning, and swimming in ideas and art, is what's put a spring in his step and given him a reason, and that's worn thin, and he doesn't want to know it all or pound armies into dust, he just wants to fill with easy joy again. So what he's really missing is youth--and so it's kind of no wonder this is really a love story, not a cautionary tale (or a cautionary tale about love, not about the devil): Faust and Margaret could have been the boon companions of each show more other's age, but marinating in great books and the like he'd never bothered to develop his concept of love beyond adolescent infatuation--he tries to make her Helen of Troy. And to maintain that kind of fantasy of limitlessness, to fight against the human life arc because it was all too beautiful, summer evenings at lectures, boozy under oak trees, is a kind of rebellion against God, I suppose. And so in contrast to the other two Fausts, where a very simple version of the caution on offer might be "Be content," here it is "Grow and change." No one would argue with that, on paper, but change means watching your old self die, and many of us (cf., in literature, obviously, Dorian Gray) have turned to different kinds of devils to keep alive the old selves we'd loved being when it was time to let them go. When what we really wanted to preserve was there for us if only the devils'd quit flitting and let us take a good look and have a think on't.

I wasn't too impressed with this translation--clunky in the attempt to simulate the German metre closely--but the illustrations from Harry Clarke were something really special (http://www.openculture.com/2015/09/harry-clarkes-1926-illustrations-of-goethes-faust-art-that-inspired-the-psychedelic-60s.html). I can feel an echo of the power of the German, I think--I'd read it in the original next time, but I also think for translations there might be others better. show less

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 show more 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!” show less

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 show more 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. show less

Part One of Faust was one of the few books in my life that forced me to put on a pot of coffee and give up a night's sleep to finish it. The young Goethe simply nailed it. When I then got a hold of Part Two (written by the much older Goethe) and sat down with it, I was stunned. His style had completely changed; I never would have guessed it was by the same author. I'm not judging Goethe or the work as a whole, that would be arrogant and ridiculous given his stature as a writer, but simply noting that the experience of reading those two parts of Faust raised serious questions about critical editorial / literary analysis research which makes claims about authorship. It also convinced me that as a writer I should finish what I start. The show more idea of a long work being as organic and unified as a grapefruit--as John Gardner puts it--instinctively appeals to me. show less

`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'

-Percy Bysshe Shelley, 'Ozymandias'

Wer immer strebend sich bemüht,
Den können wir erlösen.
("Who ever strives with all his power,
We are allowed to save.")

-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust

In Faust, the name of the game is passion. Passion for learning, passion for love, passion for life in all its forms and facets. The deprivation of passion by the slow grind of facts and figures and hypocrisy, the boons of inheritance providing shortcuts without granting the necessary experience of true effort, and excess. When the world is at one's feet, what is there left for passion to strive for?

But until then, what will you do to achieve that world?

It's an almost show more impossible balance, especially when the rest of the world is thrown in at full tilt. The passion becomes split, and when one track is spent the next is sought, and the next, and the next, by any means to any measure. One may wish at the beginning to be good, but when the so-called custodians of morality sell it by the yard for a varying price, and all the esteem generated by the straight and narrow pales in comparison to the smallest glimpse of moonlit wraith, well. One must consider the odds when the devil comes a calling.

On the one hand, your wish at the immortal's command. On the other, all the ramifications of those wishes, bound as they are in a reality of finite glory, finite justice, finite truth. To go forth enraptured in the potential, and in the end consigning everything outside of that potential to the flames.

Now, who among you would proclaim yourselves worthy of judging just how far one can go?

---

Now, as this is Faust we're talking about, I know this first reading was nowhere near good enough to exempt me from future rereadings. Also, the German language is one that I am intent on mastering, and what better piece to work towards than one of, if not the, pillars of German literature? So, until we meet again, Mephisto, preferably on a span of stage that does full honors to your Walpurgisnacht. I'm very much looking forward to it. show less

What does Faust mean? Tough to find too many books more open to interpretation since Columbus landed on American soil. Obvious comparisons with Adam and Eve and the serpent: except the sinner/first one to bite the apple/knowledge-seeker here is a man (yup, feminists have jumped all over that one). interpretations still up for grab: is the sinner a rebel? overly ambitious? is wanting knowledge a deadly sin (ie. pride) -- should Faust be punished? ; or maybe the socialist interpretations are right and Mephistoles symbolizes dissidence -- truth seekers may just be rejecting oppression...down with the elites, closed minds and limited worldviews! Is Mephistopheles the tempter, trying to destroy Faust or is he freeing him? This book was also show more the center of a cultural war of interpretation in Germany between the Nazis and the spirit of the Weimar....we all know who won that battle... What Goethe was really trying to say, you'll have to decide for yourself...
The cultural war (or class war?) is far from over...so read it! show less

When I read this the first time I noticed, compared to Christopher Marlowe’s Faustus, this is funnier, I wasn’t expecting this, I don’t know why but I always thought this was a heavy-duty, serious play. If I had opened this book sooner, I would have seen just by its opening that the moral tale would have been an entertaining read.

If this was in prose maybe I would have enjoyed it less, it’s fascinating how the poetry delivers the Faust’s story, what comes through isn’t flat or boring, it’s vibrant where I just want him to wake up, especially when he meets Margaret / Gretchen.

And what surprised me more is I enjoyed reading this more the second time.