Goethe's Faust, Part One (1808) Third Lecture I • Auerbachs Kellar
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Goethe’s Faust, Part One (1808) Third Lecture Please note: while you must focus on the highlighted material to prepare for your exam, you do not need to worry about the line numbers! I • Auerbachs Kellar (Auerbach’s Cellar) ¶ Having set out on the quest to provide the philosophe Faust with a transcendent affective experience, Mephistopheles and Faust first arrive in Leipzig, whose ancient university (Universität Leipzig) enjoys an international reputation for quality. Our author, Goethe, studied law at Universität Leipzig, which is in the eastern German state of Saxony. ¶ The Leipzig episode affords Goethe an opportunity to continue his advocacy for greater patriotism on the part of young German men. By being hard-drinking party-animals and eschewing lectures and homework, the students Faust encounters in the city squander the opportunities that the prestigious university offers. Instead of studying hard in an attempt to become smart and skilled — the better to make Germany great — they hang out at Auerbach’s Cellar, a pub, which has existed since the fifteenth century and is still going strong. ¶ According to Mephistopheles, so long as the students’ “hangovers aren’t too intense” (line 2165) — and so long as “the landlord gives them credit” (line 2166) — they continue to treat every day as “a holiday” (line 2161). ¶ Of course, by contrast with the unpatriotic German students in Faust, Part One, all Georgia Southern students are committed to making America great; thus, they don’t party, whether at bars or elsewhere, and they certainly always attend lectures; submit homework (such as Write Now exercises) on time; and generally honor the major financial commitment that, through the University System of Georgia, our state’s taxpayers make to their higher education, the assumption being that, upon graduation, the students will contribute to Georgia’s economic and cultural success. ¶ A version of the scene set in Auerbach’s Cellar also occurs in the Faust legend, a text that (as we discovered in a prior lecture) Goethe used as a base when creating his literary work, Faust, Part One. However, Goethe’s Dr. Heinrich Faust is much more passive when at the pub than is the Faust character that the legend presents. ¶ At Auerbach’s Cellar, the reader is introduced to four carousing students — Altmayer, Frosch (“frog”), Siebel, and Brander — who engage in loudly singing a “political song” (line 2092) about the “Holy Roman Empire” (line 2090), an alliance of microstates (including some German ones) that, at the time Faust, Part One debuted, had recently fallen apart, primarily due to the French leader Napoleon’s military campaigns. ¶ The students then turn to other themes, the first being a misogynistic view of women as sexually loose and unfaithful. The student named Siebel declares, “She [a typical woman] leads me a dance; she’ll lead you [any other man] one, too” (line 2110). (Make sure that you understand the meaning of misogynistic.) ¶ Additional songs follow, including one about a poisoned “cellar rat” (line 2126) with a “belly, round and fat, \ Just like Doctor Luther” (lines 2128-2129). This piece may be a satire on Protestantism, understood as originating in Germany with Martin Luther, who, in a theological debate in Leipzig in 1519 (before he was excommunicated from the Roman Catholic church), argued that the Pope did not enjoy special power and status. In general, Goethe (like Voltaire before him) was skeptical about both the Protestant and Roman Catholic traditions, the two major instances of organized Christianity in Western Europe. ¶ Initially, the student Brander assumes that Faust and Mephistopheles are “strolling players” (line 2178) — that is, itinerant actors. Mephistopheles offers to procure high-quality alcohol for him and his inebriated buddies; that way, they will not have to continue imbibing cheap booze. 1 ¶ Enthusiastically, Brander selects a luxury French sparkling wine: “Champagne for me is fine” (line 2270). Even as he makes the request, he indicates awareness of a lack of German patriotism on his part, saying, “We can’t always shun what’s foreign \ … \ Real Germans can’t abide a Frenchman, \ And yet they gladly drink his wine” (lines 2270, 2272-2273). ¶ Many Americans claim to be highly patriotic, yet they continually purchase foreign vehicles, foreign clothes, and more. (How many items of your clothing were made by Americans in America, using American cloth?) Major American companies, such as Apple and Nike, outsource the bulk of their manufacturing to China and other cheap-labor countries. Services, too, are regularly outsourced. ¶ For his part, having a taste for sugar, the student Siebel requests a sophisticated sweet wine called Tokay, produced largely in Hungary, using a fairly complicated viticultural (i.e. grape-growing) technique. ¶ Frosch is the sole student who opts for a German beverage: “I drink Rhenish. \ The Fatherland [Germany] grants those best gifts to us” (lines 2264-2265). The reference is to predominantly white wines produced from Rhine River vineyards. Being a northerly locale, the Rhine is challenging for wine-production; thus, considerable scientific skill has developed respecting what grape varieties to grow where, as well as how to process the harvested crop. Furthermore, a complex taxonomic system exists, with the rarest (and sweetest) type of wine being classified as Trockenbeerenauslese (German for “chosen dried berries”). ¶ As the students become ever more drunk, Faust determines that alcohol will not afford him the transcendent affective experience he seeks. He tells Mephistopheles, “I’d like to leave here now” (line 2296); however, prior to departing, Mephistopheles performs an act of “hocus-pocus” (line 2307), causing the students to believe that they are no longer in the pub but instead a vineyard, where they use (what some critics identify as) homosexually suggestive language, such as Brander’s comment to Siebel, “I’ve … got your nose in my hand!” (line 2323). ¶ The point here may be that the macho nature of German culture prevents men from opening up to each other. Alcohol — perhaps even an excessive amount of alcohol — is needed to create some degree of meaningful homosocial interaction. ¶ Certain sociologists and psychologists observe a similar situation among American men. Typically, one American guy will not ask another about his deep wellbeing; thus, “sports talk” becomes a substitute for meaningful interaction. When two American guys attempt to communicate, “How ’bout them Braves?” is more likely to be the question than “How are you really feeling?” Only when American guys get drunk might such a statement as “Bro: I love you, man!” emerge. ¶ Goethe’s point is that the default macho isolation and standoffish-ness in German culture is fundamentally unhealthy and can have deleterious social consequences. Some historians argue that, in the early- to mid- twentieth century, Germany’s macho culture was a consequential contributor to the rise of Hitler and Nazism. ¶ The next page opens by presenting a graphic summary of some key elements within the Auerbach’s Cellar episode. Any of the material in the image may appear on your exam. 2 II • Witch’s Kitchen (or Hexenküche in German) ¶ Faust’s rejection of alcohol as a means to gain affective transcendence prompts Mephistopheles to introduce him to drugs at a kind of pharmaceutical-production facility called the Witch’s Kitchen or Hexenküche). They fly there “[r]iding on a barrel” (line 2330). ¶ Mephistopheles hopes that some or other drug will yield a desirable outcome, such as making Faust feel “[t]hirty years” (line 2342) younger. Mephistopheles’s relative lack of power again becomes manifest: he admits to being unable to produce effective drugs, which require “[a] calm mind’s busy years” (line 2372) to research, test, and manufacture. ¶ Mephistopheles does indicate that another, radically different lifestyle choice can keep one feeling young, namely: laboring in a “field” (line 2353) (that has been fertilized with one’s own “manure” [line 2359]) to grow one’s own “purest fare” (line 2357) or nutritious food. One thinks perhaps of the following sentences from the New York Times of April 22, 2020: “In 1943, when food was scarce during World War II, Americans were urged to grow their own crops wherever they could. It’s estimated that 20 million victory gardens flourished in the United States that year, and New York City alone produced 200 million pounds of tomatoes, beans, beets, carrots and lettuce.” ¶ The Witch’s Kitchen contains a potion-filled cauldron bubbling on a fire, as well as a family of “ape creatures” (line 2484), which may imply the pharmaceutical industry’s historic use of non-human primates (NHPs) as laboratory test-animals. In our time, the US annually uses around 65,000 NHPs for biomedical research and other forms of scientific experimentation. ¶ Initially, the witch is absent, but the cauldron’s boiling over causes her to appear. Mephistopheles explains to her that the shift to modernity means that, by contrast with his former persona, he must now dress as contemporary humans do, aspiring to present himself as “a gentleman” (line 2511). Old markers, such as “horns” and a “tail” (line 2498) have become unacceptable. His non-human legs and feet are features he finds difficult to hide; thus, he wears “[f]alse calves and false in-steps” (line 2502). ¶ The Witch — also referred to as a “doctor” (line 2358)— agrees to administer a liquid drug to Faust; however, Mephistopheles insists that the philosophe should not consume it as an “unprepared” (line 2526) human. Thus, a ritual must be staged, a central element of which involves the Witch’s drawing a circle on the floor and declaiming from a large book. Faust criticizes the Witch’s “wild gestures” (line 2533) and “tasteless trickery” (line 2534), yet he does enter the circle and, furthermore, imbibe the drug-containing, fire-emitting cup that the Witch provides.