Changing European Visions of Disaster and Development. Vanessa Pupavac

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СКАЧАТЬ 89). Faust wants to share humanity’s lot: ‘Shall no more shun distress, but take its toll /Of all the hazards of humanity’ (Goethe 1808 ‘Faust’s Study’ iii in Wayne 1949: 89).

      Faust entered into a pact to pursue a life beyond both scholasticism and his father’s quackery. Still Faust is tempted to take a shortcut to life and love through Mephistopheles’ magic. Faust doubts himself and is wary of trusting others. He cannot believe Gretchen would love him freely. Fatally Faust lets Mephistopheles negotiate his own relations and distance him from the responsibilities and consequences of his actions. Mephistopheles’ nihilistic outlook leads Faust into falsehood and destroys Gretchen, their unborn child, and her family, and others.

      Yet Faust escapes from his complete abasement to this ‘sterile son of Chaos’ and his ‘banal dissipations’ (Goethe 1808 ‘Faust’s Study’ ii and ‘Desolate Day’ in Wayne 1949: 76, 187). Faust wants more from life than the licence to consume, and he demands a larger scope for human freedom and activity. Faust’s pact was originally stirred by the godlike within him. His yearning for some transcendent human purpose protects his soul from full subjection to Mephistopheles. Goethe aimed to portray how ‘in Faust himself there is an activity that becomes constantly higher and purer to the end, and from above there is eternal love coming to his aid’ (Eckermann 1930 [6 June 1831]: 413). Faust has not totally succumbed to Mephistopheles. He has not given up life’s struggle. Gretchen’s love may therefore save Faust’s soul as the life-giving ‘eternal woman’, a force reconciling human worldly and spiritual nature.

      Critically, this reconciliation suspends the traditional religious morality of Part I, condemning both Gretchen and Faust. Part II adopts the new progressive humanist outlook of Europe, looking beyond medieval theocracy, back to the ancient Greek classical world, and forward to the new scientific developments. As the Goethe scholar and translator David Constantine observes, Goethe’s ‘Part II is less a continuation of Part I than an explosion of its premises’ (Constantine 2009: xli). Symbolically, Part II breaks from the earlier events under Ariel’s spell of sleep and forgetfulness over Faust and allows his rebirth (Goethe 1832 Act I ‘Prologue & A Beautiful Landscape’ in Luke 1998: 3–6). In this renaissance ‘there is no sitting in judgement and no asking whether he deserves it or not, as might be the case if they were human judges’ (Goethe to Eckermann [1827] in Constantine 2009: lxxix). Instead, Ariel expresses pity at ‘man’s distress’ (Goethe 1832 Act I ‘Prologue & A Beautiful Landscape’ in Luke 1998: 3). The symbolic break moves us from the small private world to the larger public world. Goethe described Faust Part I as ‘almost entirely subjective’ and Part II as having ‘scarcely anything … subjective’ (Eckermann 1930 [17 February 1831]: 384). The move demands we widen our social perspective and address the responsibilities of our era. Goethe was recorded saying:

      All eras in a state of decline and dissolution are subjective; on the other hand, all progressive eras have an objective tendency. Our present time is retrograde, for it is subjective … . Every healthy effort, on the contrary, is directed from the inward to the outward world: as you see in all great eras, which were really in a state of progression and all of an objective nature. (Eckermann 1930 [29 January 1826]: 126)

      So how does Faust cheat Old Iniquity and assert a new humanist outlook? Is there anything retrievable in Faust’s crooked course and Europe’s contradictory violent history? What is left of Faust’s vision of collective self-determination?

      Goethe’s Faustian powers

      Matthew Arnold’s Memorial Verses declared Goethe sought happiness, and happiness in addressing the ‘causes of things’ (Arnold 1908 [1850]: 247). If Goethe’s philosophy was about human happiness, it was found in an active life, not passive ease. Goethe believed ‘the existence of my soul is proved from my idea of activity’ (Eckermann 1930 [4 February 1829]: 287). His reworking of the Faust legend treated much human misery as having knowable causes, which human activity could overcome through the scientific and technological breakthroughs of the Industrial Revolution. Marlowe’s Dr Faustus imagined eradicating plagues and building bridges between continents (Marlowe 2005 [1592/1604] Act I Scene I: 8). Goethe’s Faust wanted to make such imaginings reality. The poem turned from words to deeds and rewrote the scriptural proclamation as: ‘In the beginning was the deed’. Faust’s foregrounding of deeds goes went beyond crude power over others and articulated a new belief in human transforming activity. Faust wanted to act and create something humanly significant. He was not content with ‘huckstering with words’ or sterile thoughts. Faust defied the myriad anxieties which make us shrink from life:

      Full soon in deepest hearts care finds a nest,

      And builds her bed of pain, in secret still,

      There rocks herself, disturbing joy and rest,

      And ever takes new shapes to work her will,

      With fluttering fears for home or wife or child,

      A thought of poison, flood or perils wild;

      For man must quail at bridges never crossed,

      Lamenting even things he never lost.

      (Goethe 1808 ‘Night Faust’s Study’ i in Wayne 1949: 52)

      Metaphors of seas and floods assailing humanity run through the poem and its translations and propel assorted human responses. Faust embraced being ‘in flood of life, in action’s storm’, and sharing ‘the shipwreck of mankind’, while ready to battle the seas (Goethe 1808 ‘Faust’s Study’ iii in Wayne 1949: 90). He embodied new human energies seeking to triumph over natural forces declaring, ‘Let him stand fast in this world, and look around / With courage’ (Goethe 1832 Act V Scene 20 ‘Midnight’ in Luke 1998: 219).

      Goethe gave moral redemptive significance to Faust’s flood prevention and land reclamation project. This significance was prompted by contemporary North Sea flood disasters. His 1825 essay on weather spoke of the elements ‘to be viewed as colossal opponents with whom we must forever battle; … we can overcome them only through the highest powers of the mind by courage and guile’ (Goethe 1995 [1825]: 147). Salvation through combating natural forces to establish free land for people to live freely and securely links spiritual and material transformation (Goethe 1832 Act V Scene 21 ‘The Great Forecourt of the Palace’ in Luke 1998: 223). Human emancipation required material emancipation from nature. Just as Faust’s reclamation work had to be renewed against destructive natural forces, so our humanity was vitalised in an active creative collective spirit. Mephistopheles sneered that all our creations were corrupt, mortal, and would be destroyed, while watching Faust’s great salvation project being subverted into digging his grave (Goethe 1832 Act V ‘The Great Forecourt of the Palace’ in Luke 1998: 221–3). Against Mephistopheles, the human spirit rose above its destruction and destructiveness, and through forgiveness, it participated in divine creation and renewal.

      Goethe’s progressive humanist ideals supported material improvement and technological advancements, limiting human suffering. In Part I, poverty tempted Gretchen into sin and caused her downfall: ‘The lure of gold … alas for all us poor’ (Goethe 1808 ‘Evening’ in Wayne 1949: 128). In Part II, readers’ sympathies are expanded to depict the plight of enslaved peoples. His mythical Emmets and the Dactyls cry:

      Who will save us?

      We make the iron,

      They chain us, enslave us.

      But now’s not the occasion

      To tear ourselves free,

      So: bend and obey.

      (Goethe СКАЧАТЬ