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Faust's Pact with the Devil
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Faust's Pact with the devil surely presents the most baffling of all the problems raised by Goethe's poem. We are here at the very heart of the myth which the action of the drama illustrates. Goethe has used the wager between God and Mephistopheles and the pact between Faust and the Devil to symbolize the issues which are at stake in Faust's career on earth. In the background we see God waiting patiently for the moment when His trust in Faust will be vindicated. On this vital theme of wager and pact, if anywhere, we have a right to expect unequivocal clarity: on the terms of the pact, on the positions taken by the contracting parties, and on the outcome of the conflict between them. Yet, if we are to believe the critics and commentators, Goethe has hung a veil of confusion over this whole area, so that we are prevented from catching even a glimpse of his intentions. For the last fifty years critical opinion has been sharply divided on the fundamental question as to which of the two protagonists emerges victorious.1 Some hold with Faust; others either side with Mephistopheles or believe that the duel ends in a draw, and that Faust is saved only by an act of grace, which is bestowed on him as by a deus ex machina.
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1956
References
1 The relevant information will be found in Ada M. Klett, Der Slreit um Faust II seil 1900 (Jena, 1939).
2 My views on the parallel between Werther and the Urfaust are shared by Barker Fairley, who draws on Werther to shed light on the relation between Faust and Gretchen (Goethe's Faust, Oxford, 1953, pp. 50 ff.). The parallel with Werther is based on the first version of 1774, for in the revision of 1783 Goethe took pains to present Albert in a more favorable light. Cf. his letter to Kestner (2 May 1883) quoted in Ernst Feise's ed. of Werther (New York, 1914), p. 293. The latter part of this note was suggested by Professor Ernst Feise.—Hans Wolff suggests a second parallel in the triangle Wilhelm—Mariane—Norman of the Urmeister (Goethe's Weg zur Humanität, Munich, 1951, pp. 24 f.).
3 The conventional terms “hero” and “villain” are used here faute de mieux. Neither Albert nor Wagner is a wicked man; quite the contrary is true: they are both models of bourgeois goodness. But to the rebellious heroes of Werther and the Urfaust they represent the crippling effect that goodness and rationality may have on the growing mind of youth or on the soaring spirit of genius. In these characters Goethe has anticipated the “good villains” of Hebbel, Ibsen, Shaw, Hauptmann, etc.
4 Psychologie des deulschen Menschen und seiner Kultur (Munich, 1922), p. 107.
5 Rousseau and Romanticism (Boston and New York, 1919), chs. 4 and 5.
6 Stendhal, Le Rouge et le Noir, ch. 19.
7 Documentation in Hans Jaeger, “The Problem of Faust's Salvation,” in Indiana Univ. Pub., Humanities Ser., No. 22 (1950), pp. 109 ff.
8 Heidenlum, Judentum, Christentum (Munich, 1921), i, 28 ff.
9 Wege nunt spdten Goethe (Hamburg, 1949), p. 70.
10 Euphorion, xxxiii (1932), 73.
11 Cf. Korff, Geist der Goethezeit, ii, 418.
12 These quotations will be found in the Jubiläums-Ausgabe, iv, 246; xxi, 190; iv, 251.
13 Angel Flores, ed. The Kafka Problem (New York, 1946), p. 49.
14 Chaucer (New York, 1932), pp. 158–159.