Faust

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FAUST. In sixteenth-century Europe, Faust was reviled as a godless man who, as a consequence of making a pact with the Devil, met a gruesome yet appropriate fate. By the nineteenth century, he had become the archetypal Romantic hero; the term Faustian, coined by Oswald Spengler (1880–1936), was taken as a positive epithet to describe those tormented, defiant individuals who strive for more than is humanly possible. Whether condemned or condoned, Faust is the protagonist of an enduring story that embodies fundamental religious and philosophical questions about humanity's place in the universe, the nature of good and evil, and the limitations of human knowledge.

Between 1507 and 1540, numerous references appear in German diaries, letters, and records to an unsavory character with the last name of Faust. The picture that emerges is of a fairly well educated man: He may have been the Johann Faust listed in the matriculation records of the University of Heidelberg for 1509, or he may have been the Georg Faust who received a hostile reception at the University of Erfurt. In any event, he traveled extensively, and he was viewed with a mixture of fear and contempt by his contemporaries, who describe him variously as a magician, a necromancer, a charlatan, an astrologer, an alchemist, a braggart, a sodomite, a gourmand, and a drunkard. His evil reputation, enhanced by his boast of having made a pact with the Devil, is confirmed by references to his expulsion from various cities. According to contemporary accounts, Faust died mysteriously. Philipp Melanchthon (1497–1560) says he was strangled by the Devil in a rural inn in Württemberg on the day their pact fell due.

The development of the Faust legend began in 1540, shortly after contemporary references to his activities ceased. The legend, a by-product of the Reformation, originated in Lutheran circles as a reaction against Roman Catholicism and Renaissance magic and science. It illustrates the anti-intellectual strain within the Christian tradition that has erupted periodically in campaigns of censorship and denunciations of "forbidden" knowledge. Faust became a convenient symbol of deviant religious, scientific, and philosophical thought. He was identified with several of the most controversial thinkers of the sixteenth century: Paracelsus, Trithemius, and Agrippa.

The earliest printed collection of Faust stories, known as the Spies Faustbuch, was published by Johann Spies at Frankfurt in 1587. Enormously popular, it was reprinted eighteen times in the next ten years. Before the end of the century, translations appeared in English, Dutch, and French. The German text went through several revisions, the last of which, republished frequently in the eighteenth century, was probably known to Goethe.

The basic story presents Faust as a scholar whose intellectual arrogance prompts him to abandon the legitimate study of theology for the forbidden science of magic. In return for a specified number of years of power and knowledge, Faust sells his soul to the Devil. He performs astonishing magical feats, conjures up the dead, flies over the earth, and eventually captivates the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen of Troy, by whom he has a son. When the pact expires, he is carried off to Hell.

The two most famous literary treatments of the story are Christopher Marlowe's The Tragicall History of Doctor Faustus (1604) and Goethe's Faust (1808, 1832). Marlowe based his play on the English Faustbook. His version of the story is in the tradition of morality plays, but he adds the specifically Protestant theme that Faust's damnation was due to his despairing fatalism and his refusal to accept justification by faith.

The first recorded performance of Marlowe's play was in Graz, Austria, by a company of English players. The play became a staple of German puppet theater, where it was seen by both Lessing and Goethe as children. As adults, both used the Faust story in plays of their own. Faust's defiant attempt to transcend the limits of human existence appealed to both men and fit in with the repudiation of Enlightenment rationalism that characterized the Sturm und Drang movement to which they belonged.

Only fragments of Lessing's proposed Faust dramas exist, but Goethe's two-part drama is considered the greatest work of Germany's greatest poet. By emphasizing the tragic elements only hinted at in earlier versions and by making them the source of Faust's salvation rather than his damnation, Goethe transformed the story of a venal, vainglorious magician into that of an inspiring, tragic hero. In Goethe's drama, God has the last word in the prologue: Striving and error go hand in hand ("Es irrt der Mensch, solang' er strebt"), but only those who dare to cultivate the divine spark within can hope to be saved ("Ein guter Mensch in seinem dunkel Drange / Ist sich des rechten Weges wohl bewusst").

The Faust story continued to be popular throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Among the many authors attracted to the legend were Lenau, Klinger, Chamisso, Grillparzer, Heine, de Nerval, Valéry, and Mann. Most of them, however, rejected Goethe's optimistic conclusion and stressed instead the danger inherent in Faust's insatiable thirst for knowledge.

In The Sources of the Faust Tradition (Oxford, 1936), P. M. Palmer and R. P. More discuss the background to the Faust tradition and print many of the sources, together with the English Faustbook of 1592, several early Faust dramas and puppet plays, and the fragments of Lessing's Faust dramas. Another important book on the tradition's development is Frank Baron's Doctor Faustus: From History to Legend (Munich, 1978). E. M. Butler has made a wide-ranging study of the Faust legend in three books: The Myth of the Magus (Cambridge, U.K., 1948), Ritual Magic (Cambridge, U.K., 1949), and The Fortunes of Faust (Cambridge, U.K., 1952). Geneviève Bianquis surveys the literature in Faust à travers quatre siècles, 2d rev. ed. (Aubier, 1955). Lily B. Campbell discusses Marlowe's Doctor Faustus in the context of Reformation theology in "Dr. Faustus: A Case of Conscience," Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 67 (March 1952): 219–239.

Grim, William E. The Faust Legend in Music and Literature. Lewiston, N.Y., 1992.

Mahal, Günther. Faust und Frankfurt: Anstösse, Reaktionen, Verknüpfungen, Reibungen. Frankfurt am Main, 1994.

Werres, Peter. Doctor Faustus: Archetypal Subtext at the Millennium. Morgantown, W. Va., 1999.

Wutrich, Timothy. Prometheus and Faust: The Promethean Revolt in Drama from Classical Antiquity to Goethe. Westport, Conn., 1995.

Ziolkowski, Theodore. The Sin of Knowledge: Ancient Themes and Modern Variations. Princeton, 2000.

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