Comedy and Tragedy

David Pan

Humanities Core Course

Winter 2012, Lecture 4

MEPHISTOPHELES.The mother asked the priest to have a look,and he had scarcely heard what was afootwhen he eyed the gems with muted gleeand said: “You’ve done the proper thing!Who conquers self will be rewarded in the end.The church has always had an iron belly,has swallowed states and countries now and then,and yet it never overate.The church alone, dear woman, can digestill-gotten gains without a stomachache.”(2831-40, pp. 243-45)

The Catholic Church is hypocritical in its condemnation of worldly goods.

Satire against the Catholic church.

Satire of academic learning

STUDENT.But each word, I think, should harbor some idea.MEPHISTOPHELES.Yes, yes indeed. But don’t torment yourself too much,because precisely where no thought is presenta word appears in proper time.Words are priceless in an argument.Words are building stones of systems.It’s splendid to believe in words;from words you cannot rob a single letter.(1990-2000, p. 155)

In academic learning, words become a substitute for real ideas.

Satire of bourgeois marriage

MARTHA.The dirty thief! The robber of his children!All our misery and dire need did not sufficeto draw his shameful life from sin.MEPHISTOPHELES.Well spoken, and for that, you see, he’s dead.But now, if I were in your place,I’d spend a year in decent mourningwhile angling for a new prospective swain.MARTHA.Oh my! To find another one quite like my firstwill be no easy undertaking in this world.He was the sweetest little pickle-herring.But he liked too much to roam about—foreign wine and foreign women,and worst of all, those cursed dice. (2985-97, p. 261)

Bourgeois marriage is not about love but about self-interest.

17th century perspective on the witches’ sabbath: serious or satirical?

Christian legendWitches kill children and kiss the devil’s buttocks to show their loyalty.

Source: Herr, Michael. Zauberei, Witchcraft. 1638. Hollstein’s German Engravings, Etchings and Woodcuts 1400-1700, Volume XXVI, Matthaeus Merian the Edler. Ed. Tilman Falk. Roosendaal, The Netherlands: Koninklijke van Poll, 1989. Print. 156.

STRUCTURE OF FAUST

DEDICATION PRELUDE IN THE THEATER

PROLOGUE IN HEAVEN

FAUST STORY•Night•Before the Gate•Faust’s Study•Auerbach’s Cellar in Leipzig•Witch’s Kitchen

GRETCHEN STORY•A Street•Evening•Promenade•The Neighbor’s House•A Street•Martha’s Garden•A Summer Cabin•Forest and Cavern•Gretchen’s Room•Martha’s Garden•At the Well•By the Ramparts•Night•Cathedral

WALPURGIS NIGHT•Walpurgis Night•Walpurgis-Night’s Dream

GRETCHENSTORY•Gloomy Day – Field•Night – Open Field•Dungeon

Act 1: E

mperor S

tory

Act 2: C

lassical Walpurgis N

ight

Act 3: H

elen Story

Act 4: C

ounter-Em

peror Story

Act 5: B

aucis and Philem

on Story

Act 5: B

urial

Act 5: M

ountain gorges

Faust I Faust II

The Walpurgis Night is

A. A utopian alternative to the oppression of the church.

B. A diabolical diversion from the violence against Gretchen.

WITCHES (in chorus).The witches ride to Blocksberg’s top.The stubble is yellow, green the crop.On top of the cackling hordeSits Urian presiding as lord.Over rubble and stubble they stream in blustery weather,Witches and billy goats stinking and leaping together. (3956-61, p. 357)

MEPHISTOPHELES.Just look! You scarcely see the end of it.One hundred fires burning in a row;they dance, they chat, they cook and drink and kiss.Can you tell me where one offers something better? (4056-59, p. 367)

Witches celebrate, free of social constraints.

Focus on body and scatological humor

FAUST:But I prefer that higher regionwhere even now I see a smoky, churning glow,and crowds advancing to the Evil One;many riddles may be answered there.

MEPHISTOPHELES:But other riddles will be knotted.(ll. 4037-4041, p. 365)

MEPHISTOPHELES: Today there is no rest for you;the dance resumes. Let's get into the fray.

FAUST (dancing with the YOUNG WITCH):Once I fell to pleasant dreaming:I saw a sturdy apple treewith two apples on it gleaming.I climbed it, for they tempted me.

PRETTY WITCH: You want apples of a pleasing size;You've looked for them since paradise.I am thrilled with joy and pleasure,For my garden holds such treasure.

MEPHISTOPHELES: Once I had a savage dream:I saw an ancient, cloven treeIn which a giant hole did gleam:Big as it was, it suited me.

OLD WITCH: Let me salute and welcome you;The cloven hoof shows through your shoe!A giant stopper will ensureThat you can fill the aperture.(ll. 4123-43, p. 373)

Operetta: Comic theater with characters singing their parts.

Burlesque: Takes a serious genre and exaggerates it to make fun of it.

PROCTOPHANTASMIST:Shameless mob! What on earth is this?Has it not been proven long ago:Spirits do not walk on solid ground?Now you presume to dance like one of us!

PRETTY WITCH: What could he be doing at our ball?

FAUST: You may find him anywhere, my dear.When others dance, he's got to criticize,and if he fails to criticize a step,that step might just as well have not been taken.His chagrin grows most severe when we move forward.

PROCTOPHANTASMIST:You are still here! Incredible, such insolence!Clear out! We are enlightened, don't you know?The devil's pack ignores all rules and standards.We are so smart, but still the ghosts haunt Tegel.How I have worked to clear the air of superstition!But - such insolence - the folly still clings everywhere.(ll. 4144-63, p. 375)

Rationalist believes spirits have been disproven.

Intellectual criticizes rather than lives.

Enlightener believes superstition and folly should no longer exist.

SATIRE

Walpurgis Night overturns the tragedy by creating a utopian alternative to the oppressive world of Christian morals that condemns Margaret.

•As a space of nature, folk tradition, freedom, and fantasy, the Walpurgis Night presents an alternative to the community’s oppression.

•Enlightenment rationalist does not recognize the validity of spiritual or bodily concerns.

•Christian attack on witches is part of the same prejudices and fears that drive Margaret to despair.

FAUST. Mephisto, do you seea pale and lovely child, far away and quite alone?She is gliding slowly from her place;she appears to move with fettered feet.I must confess, it seems to methat she resembles my dear Gretchen.

MEPHISTOPHELES.Leave that be! It bodes no good to anyone.It is a lifeless magic shape, an idol;it is unwise to meet it anywhere.Its rigid stare congeals the blood of menso that they nearly turn to stone.You’ve heard of the Medusa, I suppose.

FAUST.Now I see a dead girl’s eyeswhich were never closed by loving hands.That is the breast which Gretchen yielded me,the blessed body I enjoyed.

MEPHISTOPHELES.You are too gullible, you fool! It’s make-believe!To all she seems their own beloved. (4183-4200, p. 379)

But Mephistopheles turns his attention away from her, diverting him with the Walpurgis-Night’s Dream.

Faust is reminded of Gretchen.

FAUST.In prison! In irremediable misery! Given over to evil spirits and to the unfeeling who presume to dispense justice! And meanwhile you soothe me with stale, insipid diversions, hide her ever-growing anguish from me, and let her perish without help and without hope. (Gloomy Day – Field, p. 399)

Faust blames Mephistopheles for distracting him from Margaret with the Walpurgis Night.

Walpurgis Night cannot establish its view of reality and ends up only interrupting the tragedy and distracting both Faust and the audience from Margaret’s plight.

•The scene distracts Faust from Margaret’s plight.•The scene diverts the audience from the tragedy.•The scene’s alternative perspective is an aspect of Faust’s ethic of individualism.

The Walpurgis Night is

A. A utopian alternative to the oppression of the church.

B. A diabolical diversion from the violence against Gretchen.

C. None of the above.

What is the role of Mephistopheles?

A. To discourage Faust from striving.B. To urge Faust to continue striving.

Mephistopheles threatens Faust’s goals by tempting him with empty activity.

• Mephistopheles recognizes Faust’s preference for striving rather than pleasure.

• He wants to make Faust’s activity into something meaningless and focused on sensual satisfaction.

MEPHISTOPHELES (in FAUST’s gown).If once you scorn all science and all reason,the highest strength that dwells in man,and through trickery and magic artsabet the spirit of dishonesty,then I’ve got you unconditionally—then destiny endowed him with a spiritthat hastens forward, unrestrained,whose fierce and overhasty driveleapfrogs headlong over earthly pleasures.I’ll drag him through the savage life,through the wasteland of mediocrity.Let him wriggle, stiffen, wade through slime,let food and drink be dangled by his lipsto bait his hot, insatiate appetite.He will vainly cry for satisfaction,and had he not by then become the devil’s,he still would perish miserably. (1851-67, pp. 143-45)

… provides a sleeping potion for Margaret’s mother, but then she

dies.

… defends Faust against Valentine, who Faust kills.

… provides Margaret for Faust, but she is cast into misery and death.

… saves Faust from prison, but Margaret is left to be executed.

Mephistopheles…

Gloomy Day – Field

FAUST.Given over to evil spirits and to the unfeeling who presume to dispense justice! And meanwhile you soothe me with stale, insipid diversions, hide her ever-growing anguish from me, and let her perish without help and without hope.(p. 399)

MEPHISTOPHELES.The blood-guilt by your hand still lies upon the town. Avenging spirits hover over the site of the murder, lying in wait for the returning killer.

FAUST.That too from you? A world of murder and death upon your monstrous head! (pp. 401-403)

Faust blames Mephistopheles for diverting him from Margaret’s suffering during the Walpurgis Night.

Faust blames Mephistopheles for the murder of Valentine.

Mephistopheles insists that Faust made the decisions that led to violence.

Gloomy Day—Field

FAUST.Save her! Or else beware! The most dreadful curse on you for ages!

MEPHISTOPHELES.I cannot undo the bonds of the Avenger, nor draw back the bolts.—Save her!—Who was it that plunged her into ruin? I or you?

Mephistopheles vs. Earth Spirit

FAUST.Can you conceive what new and vital powerI draw from living in the wilderness?If you could, I think you’d bedevilish enough to envy me my happiness.MEPHISTOPHELES.What supernatural delight!To lie in nightly dew on mountain heights,to encompass earth and heaven in a raptureand inflate one’s being to a godlike state,to burrow to the core, inflamed by premonition,to feel six days of God’s creation in your bosom,enjoy in pride and strength I know what not what,and flooding all in loving ecstasy,the son of earth is canceled out—then comes the lofty intuition—(Makes an obscene gesture)to end in … Well, I’ll keep it to myself. (3278-92, pp. 295-97)

Faust obtains a feeling of power by communing with nature.

Mephistopheles pokes fun at Faust, treating his feeling of power as a conceited, self-indulgent delusion.

Mephistopheles tempts Faust to return to Margaret.

MEPHISTOPHELES.Now she’s cheerful, but mostly she is sad,now her tears are streaming down,and then she’s calm again, it seems,and always, always loving you.FAUST.You snake! You snake!MEPHISTOPHELES (aside).Here now! So I’ve trapped you!FAUST.Get away from me, you cursed fiend,and never speak her blessed name!Lash not again my tortured sensesto lust for her whom I adore.(3320-29, p. 299)

In order to protect her, Faust tries to avoid going back to Margaret

What is the role of Mephistopheles?

A. Push Faust to continue striving.B. Convince Faust to stop striving.C. None of the above.

FAUST.And you, what led you to this chamber?How deeply you are stirred!Your heart is heavy, and you feel so out of place.Wretched Faust! Who are you anyway?

Am I moving in a magic haze?I came to seize the crassest pleasure,and now I dissolve in dreams of love!Are we the sports of every whim of the weather?

And should she enter at this very moment,how you would rue your crude transgression!Then Faust would suddenly be very smalland languish helpless at her feet.

MEPPHISTOPHELES (entering).Quick, my friend! I see her coming down below.

FAUST.Away from here, and never to return!(2717-2730, p. 235)

Faust seems to emphasize not just his guilt, but also his fear of weakness.

Are Faust’s misgivings a sign of morality or of weakness?

How do we judge Faust’s hesitation?

MEPHISTOPHELES.But come. Why all this fussing?You’re going to your sweetheart’s chamberand not at all to death and doom.

FAUST.When in her arms, I need no joys of Heaven.The warmth I seek is burning in her breast.Do I not every moment feel her woe?Am I not the fugitive, the homeless roamer,an aimless, rootless, monstrous creature,roaring like a cataract from crag to crag,madly racing for the final precipice?And she along the banks with childlike, simple sense,there in her cabin on an alpine meadow,with all the homey enterprisesencompassed by her tiny world.And I whom God abhors,I was not satisfiedto seize the rocks,and crush them into pieces.It was her life, her peace I had to ruin.You, Satan, claimed this sacrifice!Help, Satan, help abridge the time of fear!What has to happen, let it happen now!Let her fate come crashing down on mine,let us both embrace perdition!(3345-65, pp. 301-303)

Faust despairs because he knows that he is in continual movement…

…and Margaret is someone in stasis.

He blames himself for ruining her peace…

…but chooses to continue on his path in spite of the destruction it will cause.

Goethe’s Faust I is:A. A comedy that affirms the values of the Walpurgis

night.B. A tragedy because Margaret dies to affirm

Christian values.C. A tragedy because Christian values create so

much suffering for Margaret.D. A tragedy because Faust must continue to strive in

spite of the violence he causes. E. None of the above.

19th century reactions condemned Goethe’s Faust for its anti-Christian tendencies.

Eichendorff, Joseph von. Werke in sechs Bänden. Ed. Wolfgang Frühwald, Brigitte Schillbach and Hartwig Schultz. Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1985-1993.

But this new ethic undermines religion.

„...Goethe summed up the idea of humanity, not just as the cultivation of a sense of beauty through art, but the harmonious development of all human powers and capacities through life itself. He does not at all want to „follow an ideal“ but to allow his feelings to develop into capacities through struggle and play. [...] Clearly such an absolute focus on natural development makes all positive religion impossible, or at the very least superfluous (1052-53).

from Joseph von Eichendorff’s History of German Literature (1857)

Eichendorff sees Goethe’s Faust as central to the development of an individualist, humanist ethic.

Beginning with German unification in 1871, critics began to see Faust as a model for German identity.

Loeper, Gustav. Goethes Sämtliche Werke. Vol. 13. Ed. Gustav von Loeper. Berlin: Hempel, 1871. Fischer, Kuno. Goethe’s Faust. Ueber die Entstehung und Composition des Gedichts. Stuttgart: Cotta, 1878. Cited in Karl Robert Mandelkow, Goethe im Urteil seiner Kritiker : Dokumente zur Wirkungsgeschichte Goethes in Deutschland. 4 vols. Munich: Beck, 1989.

„Faust‘s true guilt and at the same time his true greatness lies in the struggle against the limits of human nature“ (XIV).

„Faust‘s pleasure lies in the fruit of his labor, the view upon the great and blessed sphere of influence that he has created and upon the land that he has wrung from the elements, settled, and transformed into a human world and into an arena for striving generations after his own image“ (3:55-56, emphasis in original).

Gustav von Loeper (1871)

Kuno Fischer (1878)

Loeper describes Faust’s guilt as part of his “greatness.”

Fischer sees Faust’s ideal of striving as the basis of activity for future generations.

The individualist ethic of Goethe’s Faust reaches the peak of its influence amongst established Goethe scholars in the Nazi period.

Korff, Hermann August. Faustischer Glaube: Versuch über das Problem humaner Lebenshaltung. Leipzig: J. J. Weber, 1938. My translation.

Hermann August KorffProfessor, University of Leipzig (1925-1954) Visiting Professor, Harvard University (1934)Visiting Professor, Columbia University (1938)

“The contrast between good and evil is not thereby dissolved. Faust feels deeply what in an elementary sense is good and what is evil. But though he always participates in the two as he participates in the play of pleasure and pain, elementary morality does not have final power over him. It becomes a preserved moment within a more total ideal that has a hyper-moral character because morality is only one value next to other values and is no longer the highest value.”

“For that which is placed above morality is the personality, whose fulfillment is the true goal of such a life.”

“Great personalities consume the smaller ones. That is the law of nature. And their unethical behavior only consists in the way in which they must obey their natural law without allowing themselves to be hindered by their still existing moral affects.” (161-63)

What seems unethical is actually the individual’s adherence to a natural law without allowing moral feelings to get in the way.

Morality is subordinated to the personality of the individual.

Nazi Goethe critics repeated the arguments of scholars like Korff.

Schott, Georg. Goethes Faust in heutiger Schau. Stuttgart: Tazzelwurm Verlag, 1940. My translation.

“Faust is the ingenious man who cannot be content with having and possessing either material or spiritual possessions. In this man there lives a drive to become a genius of the world and of the deed. The paltry contentment and the merely pleasurable that are the essence of the philistine are foreign to him, at least to the truly Faustian man. […] Yet, we must express this more clearly and more powerfully: here in the Faustian man there lives a passionate will that surges from the primal depths and does not shy away from any means of fulfilling the numerous tasks with which life confronts him – even to the point of allying himself with the devil!” (12).

Schott promotes a focus on the world and deed.

Schott refers to the Faustian man as someone who should not shy away from devilish means for fulfilling his goals.