Death and Rebirth

In "Night" (355/12): The Earth Spirit challenges Faust, "a fearful writhing worm" (500/15), even though Faust asserts: "No, I am Faust, your match, I am the same!" (500/15). Faust despairs ("I'm of the earthworm's dust-engedered brood," 655/19) and almost poisons himself (735/21) until he hears the chorus of singing for Easter.

So "Outside the City Gate" (810/24) features many symbols of rebirth, which include fertility rites and symbols. Young people come out and discuss chasing after girls. The First Young Girl mentions finding a husband ("St. Andrew's Eve" 875/25) to Agatha.

Jane K. Brown identifies rebirth in Faust, Part II as "the creative life force or the Absolute" which Faust seeks in several forms and scenes (156).

Afterlives in Faust:

The second part begins and ends with reincarnation. At the end of Faust I, Gretchen and her family perish in "Dungeon" (4505/130) but at the beginning of Faust II, Act I, elves revive Faust with their "spirit power" in Charming Landscape (4615-4725/135-38) Click here for a spoiler of Mountain Gorges (11845/337), the final scene of Faust II.

Homunculus is united with Galatea in the sea.

Act II: Homunculus, "a little chemical man" (Goethe, "Second," 525) is born in "Laboratory" (6835/194) and dies in The Upper Peneios, as before (7495/214)

Helena exists in a mythical stasis in the underworld.

Act I: Faust goes to the Mothers in order to find a way to release Helena from the underworld at the beginning of II, Act I: Hall of Chivalry (6455/184). While the audience does not see it (off-stage action), Faust goes to Persephone, the queen of Hades, to ask for Helena's release.

Euphorion lives on as he began as an idea: the spirit of poetry.

Act III: The spirit of poetry, Euphorion, is born to Helena and Faust in Inner Courtyard of a Castle (9130/259) but soon perishes after chasing after life, lust, and thrills.

Immortality exists in other forms in Faust, like the concept of immortality through a long literary life that authors experience. Consider the many literary allusions, citations, characters, words, and tales that Goethe weaves into his own tale: the Bible; Homer's Illiad and Odyssey; Dante's Divine Comedy; Shakespeare's Midsummer's Night Dream, The Tempest, and Macbeth; Ovid's Metamorphoses, etc.

The Feminine, Death, and Rebirth:

Goddess Types:

Gretchen prays to the Mater Dolorosa ("By the City Wall" 3587/102).
Galatea subsumes Homunculus at the end of Act II (8465/239).
The Glorious Mother (Mater Gloriosa) appears in the final lines of the play (12030/342).

Gretchen

Gives birth to a child, and then kills it.
Presumably dies at the end of part one.
She transcends with Faust at the end of part two.

Helena:

Faust dreams twice about her conception.
She gives birth to Euphorion.
At the end of the phantasmagoria, they both go back to the underworld.

Witches:

A witch grants Mephistopheles a favor by giving Faust a youth potion. In return, he parties with them at Walpurgis Night.
In Classical Walpurgis Night, Mephistopheles seeks out the Thessalian witches, Greek witches who have the power to "transform men into beasts" (6975/198).
Mephistopheles disguises himself as a kind of old witch (the hag Phorcyas) in the Helena act.
Four Gray Crones visit Faust before he dies and one of them, Care, blinds him (Act V).

See, of course, the last lines of the play.

Striving to know universes
Human World	Supernatural World
"historical rush of the world" (Brown 183); "transitory real" (Brown 189) science and medicine theology, Christian God human law Wagner court of Emperor (II, Act I), Medieval castle (II, III)	"permanence of transcendence" (Brown 183); "eternal ideal" (Brown 189) magic Earth Spirit, Mephistopheles spiritual law witches, marmosets sea nymphs (II, Act II), Classical court of Helena in Hades (II, Act III)

Consider Goethe's essay on "Polarity:"

"Whatever appears in the world must divide if it is to appear at all. What has been divided seeks itself again, can return to itself and reunite. This happens in a lower sense when it merely intermingles with its opposite, combines with it; here the phenomenon is nullified or at least neutralized. However, the union may occur in a higher sense if what has been divided is first intensified; then in the union of the intensified halves it will produce a third thing, something new, higher, unexpected" (Goethe, "Polarity" 156).

This philosophy (which owes much to Friedrich Schelling) follows a dialectic:

- thesis: unity / all things start out as one
- antithesis: disunity / separated halves seek their opposite
- synthesis/hypothesis: "a third thing, something new, higher, unexpected"

Why is Faust attracted to Helena of Troy?

Beauty and prestige
Wants to be godlike, and all men want her (6540/186)
She's harder to get than Gretchen, and more of a challenge

Significance: Merging of Classical world (Helena) and German one (Faust)

→ Importance for German authors in writing themselves into the Classical tradition

= justifying the cultural importance of Germany

= justifying the importance of themselves as a nation

Classicism denotes a philosophical viewpoint as well. For Jane K. Brown, Helena embodies not only beauty but also "the beginning of history" (168).

> > Acknowledges history as a process of change, and the impermanence of aesthetic ideals

--> Helena = synthesis of the real and the ideal

George Gordon, Lord Byron / Euphorion

Author of satirical, epic-length poems Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1812-18) and Don Juan (1821-23), which refer to events from his scandalous life.

Goethe references his play Sardanapalus (1821), dedicated to Goethe (10175/290).

Notorious personal life: allegedly had sex with his half-sister, Augusta; fathered Claire Clairmont’s (Mary Godwin Shelley’s half-sister) child, Allegra; and one of his former lovers, Caroline Lamb, called him “mad, bad, and dangerous to know”

The Byronic hero has come to mean someone who is extremely proud, haughtily disdainful, solitary, a romantic dreamer and idealist contemptuous of the ordinary world

In 1823, he went to Greece to fight in their war of independence but died a mundane death: by fever, and loss of blood from leeches at the age of 36.

After Byron’s death, Goethe commented: “It is undoubtedly a misfortune that minds so rich in ideas should be so set on realizing their ideals and bringing them into real life. That simply will not do. The ideal and ordinary reality must be rigorously kept apart” (qtd. in Brown 212-13).

Atara Stein defined the Byronic hero as follows: "Self-reliance, autonomy, the creation of one's own moral code, isolation, disdain of society, self-absorption, a strong sense of his own superiority, very poor social skills, a guilty past, a mood of almost perpetual gloom and brooding, dark hair, dark clothes, piercing eyes, and a distinct heritage from the Gothic villain. Ambition, curiosity about "forbidden" knowledge, supernatural powers or extremely superior skills, asceticism, a violent temper, self-pity, inability to empathize with others, aspiration beyond his condition, aka a desire to transcend the human condition, individualism to an extreme, actually *everything* to an extreme as Byron says of Napoleon, a strong sense of responsibility for his own actions, defiance of institutional authority, *will,* he's an outcast, arrogance, ruthlessness, and a paradoxical admiration of the values and lives of ordinary humans.”

Similarities between Byron, Faust, Maturin's John Melmoth in Melmoth the Wanderer (1820), and even perhaps other protagonists we will be reading soon (Viktor Frankenstein in M. Shelley's Frankenstein, Nathaniel in The Sandman):

- all gothic hero-villains

- Who is the "Romantic hero"?

meaning protagonists in Romantic-era texts (1780 - 1830)
Are we supposed to take them seriously?
Are they good guys or bad guys?

What is romantic about Faust?

Setting

Medieval and Gothic
as well as (incongruously) Neoclassical (Classical Walpurgis Night/II and Helena/III)

2. Gothic hero-villain who is . . .

two-sided (in fact, is Mephisto his other side?)
a lover and a destroyer
a genius
in pursuit of immortality
a man of sensibility: love, remorse, passion, guilt
a rebel (KL)

3. Eclectic view of religion and the afterlife

Goethe's pantheism
magic and the supernatural
the coexistance of witches, the Greek underworld, and the Judeo-Christian god
relgious hermites/anchorites (V)

4. Idealism of nature and the bucolic life (V)

5. Musical, poetic in quality

Two Views of Faust:

"Two souls, alas, are dwelling in my breast" (1100/31)

Naive view of Faust / Appearance

Ironic view of Faust / Reality

Faust I: Strives to know all

Victim of a devil and an arbitrary Lord (315/10)

A doctor who masters the elements (355-65/12)

The Lover (Garden, 3155-89/87)

A man condemned? (4610/133)

A medieval knight (Faust II, Act III)

Strives to be all (a god)

Shrewd client of Satan (1690/45)

A potion maker who kills people (995 - 1005/28)

The Seducer and Libertine (3510/98)

Faust II, Act I: A man "revived" (4680/137)

A puppet in Mephisto's illusion

Works Cited:

Brown, Jane K. Goethe's Faust: The German Tragedy. Ithaca and London: Cornell UP, 1986. Print.

Goethe, J. W. v. Faust. Trans. W. Arndt. NY: W. W. Norton, 2001.

Goethe, J. W. v. "Polarity." The Collected Works. Vol. 12. Trans. Douglas Miller. NY: Suhrkamp, 1988. 156

Goethe, J. W. v. "Second Sketch for the Announcement of the Helena." Faust. Trans. Cyrus Hamlin and Dolores Signori. NY: W. W. Norton, 2001. 523-30.