Goethe’s Faust, Part One (1808) First Lecture ¶ While this initial lecture will offer some content about Goethe’s Faust, Part One, it will primarily present key data concerning the Romantic movement, which followed the Enlightenment as the second great movement within Modernity, the overall theme of our course, World Literature Two. I • Strum und Drang; Romanticism ¶ Considered the preeminent modern German author, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (generally known as just Goethe [pronounced Gurr-ta]) lived from 1749 until 1832. We are studying his closet drama (a play to be read) — as opposed to stage drama (a play to be acted) — popularly referred to as Faust, Part One, which debuted in print in 1808. A sequel, Faust, Part Two, appeared in 1832, the year that Goethe died, aged 82. Many deem Faust, Part One the single greatest masterpiece of German literature. ¶ At just 24 years of age, Goethe became a cultural celebrity due to the success and influence of his novel The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), which is: (1) epistolary in style (i.e. it presents its content as a series of letters); and (2) somewhat autobiographical. The sensitive, melancholy title character, a young artist (painter), writes to a friend about his unrequited love for a “very charming young lady,” Charlotte, resident in the countryside, a “terrestrial paradise.” She is engaged to — and later marries — a man, Albert, 11 years her senior. ¶ Becoming emotionally frustrated in the Werther-Charlotte-Albert love triangle, Werther eventually kills himself with a pistol (although the attempt is not immediately successful). Certain authorities banned the novel in an effort to prevent young men from adopting Werther’s signature clothing style (yellow waistcoat; blue jacket) and, in addition, committing copycat suicides. ¶ The Sorrows of Young Werther receives mention in other important novels, such as Maria Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent (1800) and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818). It is part of the Sturm und Drang (German for “storm and stress”) movement in literature, music, painting, and other arts. That movement (1760s - 1780s) emphasized individuality and extremes of emotion, by contrast with the Enlightenment’s privileging of universality and cold, calm rationalism. ¶ Strum und Drang may be seem as a precursor to a major phase of modernity: Romanticism. (Thus, we call it proto-Romantic.) Some scholars claim that the Romantic movement opposed the Enlightenment; however, it’s more accurate to assert that it sought to provide balance. While the Enlightenment stressed rationality, dispassion, and the mind, Romanticism accentuated affectivity, passion, and the heart and spirit. ¶ Science and empiricism, intimately associated with the Enlightenment, did not go away. What the Enlightenment began, we continue; indeed, our age is sometimes called the STEM era, with the acronym STEM standing for science, technology, engineering, mathematics. ¶ By affectivity, we mean feelings and appetites of one kind and another, not least: • emotional states, such as anger, kindheartedness, and fear; • spiritual longings and/or the sense of a personal relationship with God; • cravings for money, luxury goods, food, alcohol, sex, and more; • the sense of patriotism, extending to a willingness to die for flag and nation. ¶ During the Romantic period, which we especially associate with the nineteenth century (i.e. the 1800s), the term “sentiment” was commonly used to indicate feelings, especially moral feelings. Having feelings towards — and/or recognizing and respecting the feelings within —others was called “sympathy.” Acting alongside others in response to shared sympathy was called “fraternity.” Sentiment à Sympathy à Fraternity Feeling Fellow-Feeling Action

1 ¶ Much of the anti-slavery, abolitionist, or emancipation movement, which expanded consequentially and achieved signal victories during the Romantic period, was based on the sympathy-fraternity dyad. Often driven by their membership in reform-based Christian denominations (such as Quakerism, Unitarianism, and Methodism), free individuals increasingly regarded enslaved individuals with sympathy; that is, they recognized the affective or emotional suffering — indeed, trauma — that the slave (whether man, woman, or child) chronically experienced. This religiously informed sympathy developed into programmatic fraternity; in other words, sympathetic free people organized themselves to act, as fraternities, to eradicate slavery. ¶ Due to the worldwide extent of the British Empire, one of the most important early fraternal efforts was the Society for Effecting the Abolition of Slave Trade (founded in 1787), whose core aim was to stop the transatlantic shipping of slaves from Africa to the Americas, a practice then dominated by British entities and individuals. Nine of the Society’s 12 founded members were Quakers. ¶ The significance of sympathy or fellow-feeling (i.e. recognizing and respecting the feelings of others) in the abolitionist movement is well illustrated in the iconic medallion that a successful English manufacturer of pottery, a Unitarian named Josiah Wedgwood, made — and donated for free — in support of propaganda efforts by the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade. ¶ A copy of the medallion appears in the top left corner of this page of the lecture. As ceramic cameos, Wedgewood mass-produced versions of this image, which emphasizes the shackled-and-chained slave’s feelings or sentiment (“Am I Not a Man …”), as well as his need for sympathy (“… and a Brother?”). Clearly, in addition to a Romantic appeal to sentiment, the Enlightenment’s preference for logical cogitation— an appeal to reason — is also manifest in the rhetorical question attributed to the slave. ¶ In 1788, Wedgwood mailed to Benjamin Franklin a parcel of the medallions. In his capacity as President of the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery, Franklin enthusiastically accepted the gift. ¶ In 1807, Britain’s parliament (sometimes known as Westminster) banned slave-trading by British subjects (i.e. citizens); however, it did not abolish slavery within the Empire. Legislation to mandate the latter outcome passed only in 1838, still several decades before President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation (January 1, 1863), issued towards the end of the second year of the Civil War between the anti-slavery United States of America and the rebel, pro-slavery Confederate States of America. ¶ In 1823 in Britain, a new abolitionist fraternity emerged, generally known by its short-form name: the Anti-Slavery Society. Within that movement, which underwent several reorganizations over time, one camp (the gradualists) held that slavery should be dismantled gradually; however, another camp (the anti- gradualists) advocated for the immediate and absolute cessation of slavery. ¶ By the 1840s, the most important international voice among the anti-gradualists was the Irish lawyer and politician Daniel O’Connell, a Roman Catholic. The American former-slave and leading abolitionist Frederick Douglass honored O’Connell as his foremost model and inspiration. II • Affectivity: The Passions; the Sublime (Awe); the Volk ¶ As we gain understanding of Romanticism, we can usefully invoke three categories by which to contemplate and assess affectivity — that is, the realm of feelings, emotions, and desires. Those categories are: the Passions; the Sublime; and the Volk ¶ The Passions (note the convention of using a capital “P”) refers to emotions that spring up internally — and generally spontaneously — within the individual. A classic example is sexual lust. Think, for a moment, about how many “In a Relationship” change-of-status notifications on Facebook result from

2 the posting individual’s having suddenly fallen in love/lust with another person. Fast forward some weeks, and the affair may be over, with the once-besotted individual wondering, “What (the ****) was I thinking?” The point, obviously, is that the party in question was not thinking, at least not with her/his cognitive faculties (i.e. “the head”; reason). Instead, she/he responded to spontaneous passion (i.e. “the heart”). Most likely, all of us are familiar with the head/heart dichotomy. ¶ Visceral, violent anger is another mainstream example of the Passions. When someone commits violence, prompted by an upwelling of anger, she/he will sometimes later reflect, “I don’t know what I was thinking” or “I lost my head.” These two statements indicate that the individual became temporarily divorced from thinking and reason as a result of strong stimulation by an internal surge of passionate feelings. ¶ As to the Sublime: while the term can cover various matters, for our purposes we will associate it with feelings provoked by grand, even overwhelming external phenomena. In the face a prodigious phenomenon — either natural or human-made — an individual may experience a sense of being entirely emotionally consumed, even stunned and debilitated. This sense is the Sublime. Consider one’s emotional responses to an incoming tornado or hurricane: a crushing feeling of fear; a humbling sentiment of existential jeapordy. Consider, too, the kind of battlefield terror that causes long-term post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a major reason for high rates of alcoholism, drug-abuse, divorce, and suicide among US military veterans considered as a whole. ¶ We particularly use the noun or substantive “awe” in connection with the Sublime. Indubitably, experiencing a category-five hurricane (a natural phenomenon) or the detonation of a US Army cluster bomb (a human-made phenomenon) will induce a sense of awe or, to use slightly different language, an instance of being awestruck. ¶ When President George W. Bush determined to invade Iraq in 2003, the overwhelming firepower that the US displayed was termed “shock and awe.” In essence, something awesome is something external to us as individuals that proves emotionally triggering because it is too big and powerful for our reason to fully contemplate and understand. ¶ Not all encounters with the Sublime need to be negative. The majestic scale and beauty of the Grand Canyon may induce awe — that is, an emotional experience of the Sublime — considered enriching and beneficial. ¶ The essentially Sublime nature of God or Allah is central to Muslim theology, as expressed in the Quran (6:103): “No vision can grasp Him [Allah], but His grasp is over all vision: He is above all comprehension, yet is acquainted with all things.” ¶ In Goethe’s Faust, Part One, three archangels express a similar sentiment. Having admitted that God’s creation, the universe, exceeds their ability to understand, they declare (in German), “alle deine hohen Werke sind herrlich” — “all your [i.e. God’s] high works are glorious.” ¶ Respecting the Volk: because the Enlightenment privileged reason, that movement became associated with the figure or type known as the philosophe: a highly learned individual, interested in and competent across a range of intellectual endeavors, from the hard sciences to mathematics, and from political and social science to theology. Gottfried Leibniz (model for Pangloss in Voltaire’s Candide) exemplifies the philosophe. ¶ As with the concept of the Sublime, that of the Volk is complex. With respect to it, we will concentrate on Romanticism’s insistence that wisdom and knowledge were not the exclusive preserve of the educated coterie within society, especially those with college degrees. One way of expressing this perspective is to credit the Volk with a cocktail of inborn intelligence, instinctual morality, and ingenuous affective wholeness that — over centuries of living in discrete communities, anchored to place and region — yielded

3 an achieved social order and set of traditions that did not need improvement by the rationalism and intellectualism of the Enlightenment. ¶ In earlier lectures, we identified how two political theorists, John Locke (died 1704) and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (died 1778), had a broadly positive take on humankind in the pre- rational (or pre-Enlightenment) state of nature. ¶ Volk is the German word for “folk,” and we see the term embedded in the twentieth-century coinage Volkswagen (“people’s car”). Romantic ideology held that — absent formal schooling in rationality — ordinary, laboring-class people possessed consequential wisdom and knowledge about: the natural environment; the sustainable care of the earth: efficacious farming practices; plant-based remedies; family and community values; and much more. Interest grew in ancient and traditional folkways (e.g., dancing around the maypole), folklore (e.g., the use of St. John’s Wort, a wild, oil-secreting plant, as a medicinal cure), and folktales (e.g., “Little Red Riding Hood”). ¶ An important dimension of Romanticism’s focus on the Volk was the deliberate documenting of folkways, folklore, and folktales, all of which (known by the umbrella term Volkstum [“folkdom”]) became increasingly threatened by the large-scale industrialization that emerged due to the scientific and technological advances wrought by Enlightenment discoveries. Well known in the field were a pair of German academics, brothers Jacob and Wihelm Grimm, who developed a methodology for collecting and disseminating German-language folktales, as well as findings about the diverse dialects of the German language, spoken by Volk communities. Kinder- und Hausmärchen (“Children’s and Household Tales”) is the title of the Grimm brothers’ most famous collection, published in two volumes (1812; 1815). ¶ A critical earlier work, which inspired the Grimm brothers, was a collection of German folk poems and songs titled Das Knaben Wunderhorn (“The Boy’s Magic Horn”). Edited by two men with the family names of Arnim and Brentano, it appeared as three volumes (the first in 1805; the second and third in 1808). Goethe asserted that every German home should own a copy! ¶ Whether in Germany or elsewhere, the amassing, publishing, and popularizing of a body of knowledge about the Volk helped instill an emotional pride in national history, culture, and identity. In many countries or emerging polities, a patriotic archetype — the hardy, unpretentious, and moral Volk figure, associated with the natural landscape and the native language, dress, and traditions— began to take on the status of national icon. This archetype conveyed individual integrity, poise, and agency precisely at a time when “mills” (i.e. factories) and crowded city “rookeries” (i.e. slums) were becoming the lived experience of millions as the Industrial Revolution expanded. Repetitive, noisy, unhealthy factory work alienated the worker from her or his humanity, soul, or affective self. ¶ The patriotic emotions provoked in the population by the Volk archetype are central to what scholars call Romantic nationalism. In several countries, a class of novel known as the National Tale emerged to promote cultural and political nationalism, in part by offering positive portrayals of Volk characters. Important authors within that genre include Walter Scott in Scotland and Sydney Owenson (also known by her married name, Lady Morgan) in Ireland, both of whom presented their work in English. ¶ In Owenson’s The Wild Irish Girl, a National Tale (1806), the reader encounters “a sturdy-looking [Irish- speaking] young fellow with that figure and openness of countenance so peculiar to the young Irish peasant.” He conveys such data as the fact that those in the community able to sing — “impromptu” (i.e. without rehearsal) — traditional Irish songs “are highly estimated by their rustic compatriots.”

4 ¶ In a famous painting, Goethe in the Roman Campagna (1787), the artist Johann Tischbein presented Goethe reclining in a rural landscape wearing a hat and breeches that may suggest the German peasant. Surrounding him are Classical structures that may put the viewer in mind of the Enlightenment’s identification with Classical Greece and Rome; however, the structures are in ruins, as if to suggest that Romanticism’s emphasis on affectivity is superseding (although not completely eradicating) the rationality of the long eighteenth century. ¶ Some scholars opine that Goethe’s exposed leg not only asserts peasant dress (an aspect of Volkstum) but also adds erotic frisson, in keeping with a Romantic consciousness of sex as a core component of the Passions. III • How Faust, Part One Begins ¶ In our focal work, Goethe’s Faust, Part One, the title character, Heinrich Faust, first appears as a middle- aged philosophe who has become disenchanted with the studying and intellectual effort demanded by the Enlightenment. Feeling suicidal, he concludes that his years of dedication to rational scholarship have resulted in no substantial gain or satisfaction. ¶ After pulling back from an attempt to kill himself, the despairing Faust engages an apparently supernatural being named Mephistopheles to guide him through a series of episodes, each in a different locale. Faust hopes that some or other occurrence will give him a transcendent affective experience — that is, sufficient emotional fulfillment to make up for the existential disappointment that, increasingly, has plagued him. ¶ Having, under Mephistopheles’s supervision, tried alcohol and then drugs, Faust ultimately achieves his goal through sex; however, the consequences are grave for Margaret (also known by the familiar name Gretchen), the young woman involved. ¶ Faust’s sexual desire for Margaret/Gretchen is an example of the Passions. In reluctantly dealing with the aftermath of his sexual congress with the young woman, Faust is brought by Mephistopheles through a wild, natural landscape full of features congruent with the Sublime. Their journey ends with Faust’s getting to witness a seasonal Volk ritual that teaches him a critical lesson about his sexual attitudes and actions. As you’ll see from the foregoing, Faust, Part One presents and interrogates the Passions, the Sublime, and the Volk. ¶ Prior to the reader’s having her/his initial meeting with Dr. Heinrich Faust, the text offers, first, a brief Dedication, followed by an episode titled Prelude on Stage and, then, an episode titled Prologue in Heaven. We’ll conclude this lecture by summarizing some essential points about those two episodes. ¶ The Prelude on Stage configures as a conversation between a Director (with a commercial agendum), a Dramatist (or poet-playwright), and a Comedian (or comic actor). ¶ The Prelude may be interpreted as a discussion about the best way to develop and use the German theater as a forum for conveying ideas about moral and social practices designed to yield a better Germany. You’ll recall that the theater was, for centuries, a civilization’s most potent mechanism for propagandizing and educating the general public. While Germany in Goethe’s lifetime consisted of multiple microstates, it was progressing towards consolidation into a single unitary state: the German Empire. That outcome did not occur until 1871, with the Prime Minister of the state of Prussia (Otto von Bismarck) taking the new Empire’s top political job: Chancellor. ¶ While Goethe was composing Faust, Part One, a major incentive for many German states to warm up to possible consolidation was the threat posed by the French leader, Napoleon, who posed a significant pan- European threat until his defeat was certified by an international conference, known as the Congress of Vienna, in 1815.

5 ¶ Arguably, the three-way conversation in the Prelude is particularly focused on how to entertainingly communicate “[w]eighty” matters (line 48) to young German men, who, in that era, constituted the rising generation of leaders — the coterie that would shape the German people’s destiny. ¶ The Comedian insists that no matter how high-minded one’s fundamental purposes and messages may be, nothing will get through to an audience unless a given play offers variety, including a degree of “Foolishness” (line 88). The Director concurs, arguing in favor of “a stew” (line 100) of approaches — plus compelling “scenery” (line 234) and stage effects — so that “everyone” attending a play gets something out of the performance and, thus “goes home contentedly” (line 98). Initially, the Dramatist resists; however, he begins to perceive that his plays must acknowledge and appeal to the “passion” (line 194) and “pain” (line 195) — in other words, the emotional intensity — characteristic of “youth” (line 197). ¶ In the next episode, Prologue in Heaven, three archangels discuss the awesomeness or sublimity of God. As the beings closest to God in reason (assuming God to be pure reason), archangels are a feature of the three major Abrahamic religions or “religions of the book”: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. ¶ Gabriel is the messenger archangel: in Islam, he conveys the word of God (the Quran) to the prophet Mohammad; in Christianity, he informs the Virgin Mary of God’s selecting her to conceive, gestate, and give birth to Jesus. Raphael is the healer archangel; while Michael is the warrior archangel, appearing in the Hebrew Bible’s Book of Daniel and the New Testament’s Book of Revelation. ¶ According to Gabriel in Faust, Part One, God’s achievement in creating the universe is “beyond conceiving [understanding]” (line 252). Despite their elevated reason, the archangels cannot comprehend the power and might of God; thus, humans, who possess less reason can have no chance of doing so, no matter how much application of their reason they attempt. Of all living humans, the philosophe Heinrich Faust, who holds Master’s and doctoral degrees, exhibits the most reason. ¶ In time, Mephistopheles appears, shifting the focus from a conversation between the archangels to one between Mephistopheles and God. Who is Mephistopheles? One might be inclined to say the devil, or one of the devil’s senior acolytes. However, one should not jump to conclusions. By the end of Faust, Part One, Mephistopheles has helped Faust to see the error of his ways. Such moral assistance or guidance hardly fits with standard understandings of the devil. ¶ Mephistopheles identifies Faust as “[t]he Doctor,” while God refers to him as “[m]y servant” (line 299). To Mephistopheles’s challenge that God might “give … permission” (line 313) for him to attempt to “win [Faust] yet” (line 312), God agrees, pronouncing that “while [i.e. so long as] man strives he errs” (line 317). The precise meaning of this phrase is debatable; however, it may signal a tolerant, forgiving God who, knowing that humans do not possess absolute reason, fully expects them to err — that is, sin or (at least) make mistakes. In other words, in permitting Mephistopheles to engage with Faust, God seems to expect some degree of error on Faust’s part — and, furthermore, seems open to exonerating it. ¶ As the drama continues, Mephistopheles infiltrates Faust’s home, where he convinces the philosophe to permit him to guide and mentor him, the promised outcome (as we have already established) being total affective satisfaction for Faust. The image on this page is a nineteenth-century engraving of the pact made between Mephistopheles and Faust before they set out on their quest. ¶ In developing his Faust narrative, Goethe was aware of the poetry-dominated Book of Job in the Hebrew Bible (or Old Testament), which opens with an earthy prologue and then a heavenly one. God gives Satan (“the accuser”) license to deprive Job — an established and respected citizen, living in the land of Uz — of his wealth, children, and bodily health, the aim being to see if he will remain devout. Initially, Job

6 steadfastly does so, but later, he berates God. In the end, God intervenes from a whirlwind, demonstrating to Job that, in common with all humans, he lacks the ability to understand and, therefore, opine about God. Once God has given Job a dose of perspective, he restores him to prosperity and health. ¶ Overall, Goethe’s Faust, Part One explores key dimensions of the human-God relationship, as we’ll discover as our lectures proceed. To some degree, Goethe presents new, radical takes on some Christian precepts. •••

7