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5 - Faust: The Instrumentalisation of an Icon
- from Part I - Goethe's Faust: Content and Context
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- By Osman Durrani, Magdalen College in Oxford
- Edited by Lorraine Byrne Bodley
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- Book:
- Music in Goethe's <I>Faust</I>
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 30 August 2017
- Print publication:
- 30 August 2017, pp 86-98
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Summary
Historical Faustus
Doctor Faustus emerges in vastly different guises in every age and culture following his appearance in late medieval times. Controversial from the outset, he has changed from villain to hero and, in the eyes of many, back to villain again, not at the mere whim of individual artists’ intent on reshaping the original material, but in accordance with the ever shifting values of successive epochs. The object of this chapter is to highlight key stages in the evolution of this extraordinary figure and thereby to convey a necessarily fleeting impression of some of the factors that made him an instrument of successive ideologies. The term ‘instrument’ is relevant in two senses: it reveals his dependence on each generation's necessarily shifting perspective, while at the same time referring to the playability and playfulness of the underlying theme. It is for this reason that Faustus has proved to be so attractive to the many musicians whose work is the focus of this volume. Their diverse settings and compositions are seen to mirror, complement and in some cases even anticipate literary reworkings of the theme.
Faustus is the product of an age from which few reliable documents have survived, but a lack of evidence has not prevented scholars from attempting to reconstruct elusive or absent data. A recent biography goes so far as to propose a precise date of birth, namely 23 April 1480. Wildly speculative as this suggestion may seem, it derives from a not totally implausible conjecture based on his first name. The given name most frequently associated with Faustus in the earliest sources is not Johann, as the chapbook would have it, and certainly not Heinrich, the alias employed by Goethe's seducer and hurled back at him by his distraught victim moments before her death. The earliest documents speak of Faustus as Jörg, a derivative of Georg or George. In those God-fearing times it was common practice to name children after the saint on whose day they were born; St George's Day is celebrated on 23 April.
2 - Roßhalde (1914): A Portrait of the Artist as a Husband and Father
- Edited by Ingo Cornils, University of Leeds
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- Book:
- A Companion to the Works of Hermann Hesse
- Published by:
- Boydell & Brewer
- Published online:
- 02 March 2023
- Print publication:
- 30 August 2013, pp 57-80
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Summary
Work on ROSSHALDE kept Hesse busy during a critical period in his life, and it is convenient to locate this short but multi-layered text at an intersection between the realist and symbolist phases of his career. It has been described as the culmination of his first creative phase, as his “most realistic novel,” yet it is riddled with ambiguities and told in an ironic manner that anticipates the less direct, more consciously encrypted style of the author’s later novels Demian, Der Steppenwolf, and Das Glasperlenspiel. The title itself is marked by an ironic distance from the human sphere, the term Roßhalde denoting a hillside where horses are kept, a place where they may disport themselves, but also an area in which they are restrained from free movement. It is an appropriate choice, directing attention away from individual people to a natural, shared environment. The designation of this text as a “novel” may also be questioned. It was originally published as an “Erzählung” and as such was serialized in a magazine. Despite running to eighteen chapters and having several centers of interest, it does in some respects straddle the generic divide between the novel and the long short story or Novelle. Like a tragedy in the Grecian manner — another comparison occasionally made — it observes the unities of time, place and action if not entirely, then surely more closely than most novels do.
The focus is on six characters, a husband and wife, two sons, a friend of long standing, and a manservant, all of whom are caught up in what at times seems like a hothouse experiment, interdependent on each other, emotionally and on other levels, who seek but rarely attain their individual freedom of self-expression and happiness.
There are good reasons for regarding Hesse’s fourth novel as autobiographical, as most of his critics do. Writing as recently as 2002, Klaus Walther allocates just two paragraphs to it, concentrating entirely on parallels with Hesse’s private circumstances: “Roßhalde reflects in many ways his life situation.” Not only does the artist at its center resemble the author, but the book possesses a prophetic quality, “eine merkwürdige Voraussage,” in that Hesse’s own son Martin was affected by a similar illness to Pierre’s just a few months after its completion.
The prevailing autobiographical approach to the novel is undoubtedly encouraged by the initial focus on an artist figure who has several commonalities with the author.
12 - Editions, translations, adaptations
- Edited by Julian Preece, University of Kent, Canterbury
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- Book:
- The Cambridge Companion to Kafka
- Published online:
- 28 May 2006
- Print publication:
- 21 February 2002, pp 206-225
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Summary
Manuscripts
The various bundles of handwritten pages that make up Kafka's literary legacy are remarkable for two antithetical qualities: a cryptic, idiosyncratic approach in combination with the almost childlike outward appearance of the surviving pages. The surviving manuscripts consist of notebooks in several formats, along with loose-leaf bundles and material in envelopes. These pages are covered in handwriting that varies from the neat and legible 'fair copy' to casual and messy jottings. Deletions and emendations are carefully executed, but the loose sides are rarely numbered. The author's handwriting changes noticeably over the years, and is sometimes replaced by that of another, most probably his sister Ottla, to whom Kafka sometimes dictated letters and messages. To describe the task of transcribing the manuscripts as daunting would be an understatement. It seems little short of miraculous that on these slender, unstable foundations rests a canonical oeuvre of unrivalled power and authority.
Scholars accustomed to the labyrinthine meanderings of Kafka’s prose have noted that a stark simplicity shines through the complexities of what has been written on the pages. The author’s preferred medium is the school exercise book in its most basic form: the small octavo booklets that were used by countless high-school fledglings as Vokabelhefte, handy pads and jotters for vocabulary and note-taking, and the larger quarto size, reserved for the young scholars’ exercises and homework. Sometimes, Kafka would avail himself of official headed stationery (Kanzleipapier).