SOURCE: "Faust en Pataphysicien," in Journal of European Studies, Vol. 13, No. 1, March-June, 1983, pp. 96-108.

Gillespie is an American educator and critic specializing in German literature. In the following excerpt, he examines the relationship of Doctor Faustroll to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's character Faust in order to define Jarry's beliefs about the nature of the artist and the imagination.

The vogue of Goethe reached an apogee in France during the Symbolist period from about 1880 to the outbreak of the Great War; translations and interpretations of his Faust abounded. Writing in the Revue indépendante in April 1882, Gustave Kahn asserted symptomatically:

Le Dante, Goethe, Wagner, Shakespeare, sont symbolistes. . . . L'exactitude à reproduire le mythe n'est rien; et il y a différence entre le mythe et le symbole. Hélène est un personnage historique ou mythique peu importe . . . Goethe, quand il personnifie en elle la beauté antique, l'élève à l'...