Goethe's Faust

The following research is on the subject of Goethe's Faust. The great Faust by the German poet Goethe was not the first treatment of the Faust legend in literature, nor would it be the last. This tale of a man who sells his soul to the Devil began during the medieval period in Europe, and it has been treated in fiction by writers such as Christopher Marlowe, Thomas Mann, and Lawrence Durell, treated in opera by Charles Gounod and Arrigo Boite, as a symphony by Franz Liszt, and treated as a cantata by Hector Berliez. The morality tale inherent in the Faust legend strikes a chord with many artists, and a notable example is Ferdinand Delacroix, who worked with the legend on canvas. Goethe's version takes a different tack than did the earlier drama by Marlowe, and the major difference from a moral standpoint is at the end of the story. The character of Faust is treated differently, and in Goethe's version he is redeemed, whereas Marlowe's Faust is dragged away to the horrors of hell.

The earliest roots of the story are thought to be in the New Testament story of the magician Simon Magus, found in Acts 8:9-24. Witchcraft and magic in the Bible were looked upon as inviting eternal damnation for the soul of the practitioner. During the early part of the fifteenth century, the story of a man who sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for magical powers captured the imagination and spread rapidly. The original of the Faust story is lost, but in legends the name varies so

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e, and it leads, for example, to the murder of Gretchen's brother and indirectly to the murder of her mother and her child, as well as to her own execution. In Part II it leads to the death of an old couple, Philomen and Baucis, to the production of worthless paper money at the court of the Emperor, and to a questionable victory over the army of the enemy. This all occurs under the name of the highest aspirations. Faust's final redemption is obscure when considered against the fact that the hero can no longer be considered a "good" man. Santayana saw Faust as the skeptical, critical, dissatisfied, and insatiable seeker of a truth he will never find, and Santayana saw this as a romantic hero. Others more reasonably see it as a modern man who has lost faith in religion, philosophy, human relationships, and many other needed supports in life. Num] This question of redemption for Faust is one of the most difficult for critics to accept, for the reasons outlined above. This conclusion introduces Faust's immortal soul into a spiritual world conceived in terms of traditional Christian imagery, including penitent women, ascetic monks, and the Virgin Mary. Such imagery is employed in an unorthodox manner by Goethe, however, to se

Category: Literature - G