Faust
Authors: Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
FAUST
A Bantam Book
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Bantam Dual-Language edition published November 1962
Bantam World Drama edition published February 1967
Bantam Classic revised edition / May 1985
Bantam Classic reissue / September 2007
Published by
Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 1962 by Bantam Books
Revised translation copyright © 1985 by Peter Salm
Cover photo © Robb Kendrick/Getty Images
Cover design by Elizabeth Shapiro
Bantam Books and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
eISBN: 978-0-307-75497-4
v3.1
Walpurgisnachtstraum Oder Oberons Und Titanias Goldne Hochzeit
A
MAN WHO called himself Faust, or Faustus, lived in the early part of the sixteenth century and left his traces in cities like Erfurt, Leipzig, and Wittenberg. We have the testimony of Martin Luther, for example, who in the context of one of his “Table Talks” (1536–7) incidentally referred to Faust, his contemporary, as a conjurer and necromancer who was wont to refer to the devil as his brother-in-law. In the mid-sixteenth century, about ten years after Faust’s death, Philipp Melanchthon, Luther’s close friend and adjutant, spoke of Faust with a mixture of awe and fervent repugnance:
Once upon a time [Faust] intended to put on a spectacle in Venice and he said that he would fly into the heavens. Soon the devil took him away and pummelled and mauled him so terribly that, upon coming back to earth, he lay as if dead. But this time he did not die. (
Faust, eine Anthologie
, Reklam, Leipzig, n.d., p. 16, translation mine)
There are other bits of documentary evidence, but while Faust’s goings-about are not ascertainable in detail, the legends proliferated and in due time began to envelop the scanty verifiable facts. Whatever contributed to the object lesson in the necromancer’s reprobate life was worthy of being singled out and enlarged upon for the benefit of pious souls who lived in hope of salvation.
Magic and alchemy were related endeavors, and their practitioners inspired both awe and suspicion; awe because they could produce near-miracles in their vials, alembics, and retorts. They were, after all, in pursuit of ancient and persistent dreams: transmutating base metals into gold, discovering the elixir of eternal youth, achieving human flight, finding panaceas for the plague, and, finally, the dream of possessing superhuman wisdom. There were reports that the alchemists Paracelsus and Agrippa had performed feats that came close to attaining those wondrous goals, reports that, along with other fanciful tales, often became transmuted into Faustian lore.
On the other hand, the alchemists and necromancers were regarded with suspicion because to bring about their marvels in the laboratory they “obviously” had to resort to black magic and hence had to be motivated by evil purposes, much like the powerful “evil scientist” of our day as he appears in animated cartoons on Saturday morning television. In the sixteenth century, an age of great religious turmoil and fervor, the alchemist-magicians were seen as tampering with the divine order of things. They furtively took minerals, crystals, and waters out of God’s nature and carried them off into their laboratories and, by compounding, boiling, distilling, and filtrating, forced them to minister to their dark purposes. They were “speculating the elements,” illicitly prying into deeply hidden mysteries. In our own century, rather more tolerant of scientific probings into nature’s inmost recesses, Thomas Mann put to good use a tenacious ambiguity still embedded in the language. In his novel
Doctor Faustus
(1947), he has the narrator play on the common root in the German words
versuchen
, meaning to try or test,
Versuch
, experiment, and
Versuchung
, temptation—all by way of evoking the alchemists’ suspect trade. Here is the passage in English:
But the enterprise of experimenting on Nature, of teasing her into manifestations, “tempting” her, in the sense of laying bare her workings by experiment … that all this … was itself the work of the “Tempter,” was the conviction of earlier epochs. (Thomas Mann,
Doctor Faustus
, New York, 1960, p. 17, trans. H. T. Lowe-Porter)
Surely where there is temptation, the devil, or Mephistopheles, cannot be far behind. After all, Jesus himself, having been led into the wilderness by the Evil Spirit, had to confront three temptations, and three times he stood fast against their lure (Luke 4: 1–12).
The stories that were circulating about Faust were excellent raw material for the newly established printing shops. It should not be forgotten that during the sixteenth century printers were on the lookout for new, preferably sensational stories that might be offered to the public. After Johannes Gutenberg invented movable type, the books printed during the remainder of the fifteenth century were largely of a religious nature: editions of the Bible, collections of religious songs, and prayer books. But printing presses constituted a big investment and became economically interesting only if they were also used for nonreligious ends. There were the medieval legends about Virgil, the Roman poet and author of the
Aeneid
, whom the Middle Ages had endowed with superhuman wisdom and prophetic powers; and much entertainment was found in the rude tricks perpetrated by the arch-prankster Till Eulenspiegel. The printers produced cheap, pamphletlike chapbooks and hawked them at street corners and country fairs. The hair-raising episodes in the life of the mighty conjurer Johann Faust, who in the end paid in full for his impious life, quickly captured the imagination of people
looking to be both entertained and edified. The first Faust book, marketed by the printer Johannes Spiess in 1587, was a popular and financial success, which soon spread to the north of Europe by way of an English translation. It appealed powerfully to Christopher Marlowe, who was moved to compose
The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus
sometime between 1588 and 1593. Marlowe’s drama, in turn, became the basis for puppet and marionette shows that were given at various communal festivities, a ready market for slapstick versions of the damnable life of Faust.
In his autobiography, Goethe noted that “the important puppet fable [of Faust] continued to echo and buzz many-toned within me” (
Poetry and Truth
II, 10). While Goethe’s and Marlowe’s dramas arose from the same folklore, there is a spiritual and emotional distance between them that reflects a seismic shift in cultural history. To be sure, in one respect all the stories—the puppet-theater versions and the crudely written
Faust
chapbooks—were alike: in order to acquire limitless riches and power, Faust had succumbed to the blandishments of the devil; for twenty-four years Mephistopheles would do Faust’s bidding, after which he would collect his soul to be roasted in Hell. It was a plot made to order to be a warning not to do as Faust did—not to reach for powers that lay beyond one, not to “speculate the elements,” but to rest content with the approved answers that were provided by the Scriptures and by the inspired and approved ancient philosophers.
To the eighteenth century, however, the interpretation of the Faust story in the dim light of old biases and medieval superstitions must have seemed quaintly picturesque, superannuated, and irrelevant to the sensibilities of modern man. Faust’s chafing at his human limitations could no longer in itself be regarded as sinful. A new pride in the grandeur of the individual, fed by a rekindled confidence
in the capacity of human reason to unravel nature’s mysteries, made it possible to see in Faust not only the sinner but also a representative example of what is noble and divine in man: an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and an inborn need to explore—by spiritual as well as sensuous means—the limits of human potential. Indeed at the end of the second part of Goethe’s drama Faust has earned the right to divine Grace.
In 1773, as a twenty-four-year-old law student at the University of Strasbourg, Goethe sketched out the first doggerel verses of the opening monologue of
Faust
—intentionally “bad” verse, a reminiscence of the puppet theater. From then on—though with many interruptions—the ever-growing poetic edifice of
Faust
remained Goethe’s chief preoccupation, running like a red thread through an immensely productive life.
A momentous Goethean departure from the old legend occurred in Goethe’s version of the transaction between Faust and Mephistopheles. The traditional twenty-four-year contract was done away with and transformed into a wager. Faust says to Mephisto:
If ever I should tell the moment:
Oh, stay! You are so beautiful!
Then you may cast me into chains
,
then I shall smile upon perdition!
(
1699–1702
)
In his long life as a scholar, Faust has reached the melancholy conclusion that he will never know what is truly worth knowing, that he would be blinded by the light of truth, and must therefore be resigned to live with mere reflections and counterfeit images. Since he has little faith in even the devil’s ability to satisfy his craving to the full, he
is confident—though by no means cheerfully so—that he will win the bet. He fully expects that he will continue to live as he lived before, not truly advancing beyond the condition that made him say in the opening monologue:
yet here I am, a wretched fool
,
no wiser than I was before
.
· · · · · · · · · · · · · · ·
I don’t pretend to know a thing worth knowing
,
I don’t pretend that I can teach
,
(
358–72
)
