Goethe's "Faust" is a profoundly national drama. The most spiritual conflict of her hero, the obstinate Faust, who rebelled against vegetating in vile German reality in the name of freedom of action and thought, is already national. Such were the aspirations not only of the people of the rebellious sixteenth century; the same dreams dominated the minds of the entire generation of Sturm und Drang, with whom Goethe entered the literary field. But precisely because the masses of the people in modern Goethe Germany were powerless to break the feudal fetters, to “remove” the personal tragedy of the German man along with the general tragedy of the German people, the poet had to look more sharply at the deeds and thoughts of foreign, more active, more advanced peoples. In this sense and for this reason, Faust is not only about Germany, but ultimately about all of humanity, called to transform the world through joint free and rational labor. Belinsky was equally right when he asserted that Faust "is a complete reflection of the entire life of contemporary German society," and when he said that this tragedy "embeds all the moral questions that can arise in the breast of our inner man." time" Goethe began to work on "Faust" with the audacity of a genius. The very theme of "Faust" - a drama about the history of mankind, about the goal of human history - was still unclear to him, in its entirety; and yet he undertook it in the expectation that halfway through history would catch up with his plan. Goethe relied here on direct collaboration with the "genius of the century." Just as the inhabitants of a sandy, siliceous country cleverly and zealously direct every seeping stream, all the mean subsoil moisture into their reservoirs, so Goethe, over a long journey of life, with relentless persistence collected in his Faust every prophetic hint of history, all the subsoil historical meaning of the era.
The entire creative path of Goethe in the XIX century. accompanies the work on his main creation - "Faust". The first part of the tragedy was mostly completed in the last years of the 18th century, but published in full in 1808. In 1800, Goethe worked on the fragment "Helen", which was the basis of Act III of the second part, created mainly in 1825-1826. . But the most intensive work on the second part and its completion fell on 1827-1831. It was published in 1833, after the death of the poet.
The content of the second part, like the first, is unusually rich, but three main ideological and thematic complexes can be distinguished in it. The first is connected with the depiction of the dilapidated regime of the feudal Empire (acts I and IV). Here the role of Mephistopheles is especially significant. By his actions, he, as it were, provokes the imperial court, its big and small figures, pushes them to self-disclosure. He offers the semblance of a reform (issuance of paper money) and, entertaining the emperor, stuns him with a phantasmagoria of a masquerade, behind which the clownish character of all court life clearly shines through. The picture of the collapse of the Empire in Faust reflects Goethe's perception of the French Revolution.
The second main theme of the second part is connected with the poet's reflections on the role and meaning of the aesthetic assimilation of reality. Goethe boldly shifts the times: Homeric Greece, medieval knightly Europe, in which Faust acquires Helen, and the 19th century, conditionally embodied in the son of Faust and Helen - Euphorion, an image inspired by the life and poetic fate of Byron. This displacement of times and countries emphasizes the universal nature of the problem of "aesthetic education", to use Schiller's term. The image of Elena symbolizes beauty and art itself, and at the same time the death of Euphorion and the disappearance of Elena mean a kind of "farewell to the past" - the rejection of all illusions associated with the concept of Weimar classicism, as it, in fact, has already been reflected in the artistic world of his "Sofa" . The third - and main - theme is revealed in the fifth act. The feudal Empire is collapsing, innumerable disasters mark the advent of a new, capitalist era. "Robbery, trade and war," Mephistopheles formulates the morality of the new masters of life, and he himself acts in the spirit of this morality, cynically exposing the wrong side of bourgeois progress. Faust, at the end of his journey, formulates "the final conclusion of the wisdom of the earth": "Only he is worthy of life and freedom, who every day goes to battle for them." The words uttered by him at one time, in the scene of the translation of the Bible: “In the beginning there was a deed,” acquire a socio-practical meaning: Faust dreams of giving the land reclaimed from the sea to “many millions” of people who will work on it. The abstract ideal of the act, expressed in the first part of the tragedy, the search for ways of individual self-improvement is replaced by a new program: the subject of the act is proclaimed "millions", who, having become "free and active", in a tireless struggle against the formidable forces of nature, are called to create "paradise on earth".
"Faust" occupies a very special place in the work of the great poet. In it we have the right to see the ideological result of his (more than sixty years) vigorous creative activity. With unheard of courage and with confident, wise caution, Goethe throughout his life ("Faust" began in 1772 and completed a year before the death of the poet, in 1831) put his most cherished dreams and bright guesses into this creation of his. "Faust" is the pinnacle of thoughts and feelings of the great German. All the best, truly alive in Goethe's poetry and universal thinking found its fullest expression here. "There is the highest courage: the courage of invention, creation, where a vast plan is embraced by creative thought - such is courage ... Goethe in Faust"
The boldness of this plan lay in the fact that the subject of "Faust" was not a single life conflict, but a consistent, inevitable chain of deep conflicts throughout a single life path, or, in the words of Goethe, "a series of ever higher and purer activities hero."
Such a plan of tragedy, contrary to all the accepted rules of dramatic art, allowed Goethe to invest in Faust all his worldly wisdom and most of the historical experience of his time.
The two great antagonists of the mystery tragedy are God and the devil, and the soul of Faust is only the field of their battle, which will certainly end in the defeat of the devil. This concept explains the contradictions in Faust's character, his passive contemplation and active will, selflessness and selfishness, humility and audacity - the author skillfully reveals the dualism of his nature at all stages of the hero's life.
The tragedy can be divided into five acts of unequal size, in accordance with the five periods of the life of Dr. Faust. In act I, which ends with an agreement with the devil, Faust the metaphysician tries to resolve the conflict between two souls - the contemplative and the active, which symbolize the Macrocosm and the Spirit of the Earth, respectively. Act II, the tragedy of Gretchen, which concludes the first part, reveals Faust as a sensualist in conflict with spirituality. Part two, which takes Faust into the free world, to higher and purer spheres of activity, is allegorical through and through, it is like a dream play, where time and space do not matter, and the characters become signs of eternal ideas. The first three acts of the second part form a single whole and together form act III. In them, Faust appears as an artist, first at the court of the Emperor, then in classical Greece, where he unites with Helen of Troy, a symbol of harmonious classical form. The conflict in this aesthetic realm is between the pure artist, who makes art for art's sake, and the eudemonist, who seeks personal pleasure and glory in art. The culmination of Helena's tragedy is her marriage to Faust, in which the synthesis of classics and romanticism finds expression, which both Goethe himself and his beloved student J. G. Byron were looking for. Goethe paid poetic tribute to Byron, endowing him with the features of Euphorion, the offspring of this symbolic marriage. In Act IV, which ends with Faust's death, he is presented as a military leader, engineer, colonist, business man, and empire builder. He is at the pinnacle of his earthly accomplishments, but internal discord still torments him, because he is unable to achieve human happiness without destroying human life, nor is he able to create a paradise on earth with abundance and work for all without resorting to bad means. The devil, always present, is in fact necessary. This act ends with one of the most impressive episodes created by Goethe's poetic fantasy - Faust's meeting with Care. She announces his near death, but he arrogantly ignores her, remaining a masterful and imprudent titan until his last breath. The last act, the ascension and transfiguration of Faust, where Goethe freely used the symbolism of Catholic heaven, completes the mystery with a majestic finale, with the prayer of saints and angels for the salvation of Faust's soul by the grace of a good God.
The tragedy that began with the "Prologue in Heaven" ends with an epilogue in the heavenly realms. It should be noted that Goethe did not escape here a certain baroque-romantic pomposity in order to express the idea of the final victory of Faust over Mephistopheles.
Thus was completed the 60-year-old work, which reflected the entire complex creative evolution of the poet.
Goethe himself was always interested in the ideological unity of Faust. In a conversation with Professor Luden (1806), he directly says that the interest of "Faust" lies in his idea, "which unites the particulars of the poem into a whole, dictates these particulars and gives them a true meaning."
True, Goethe sometimes lost hope of subordinating to a single idea the wealth of thoughts and aspirations that he wanted to invest in his Faust. So it was in the eighties, on the eve of Goethe's flight to Italy. So it was later, at the end of the century, despite the fact that Goethe had already worked out the general scheme of both parts of the tragedy. However, it must be remembered that by that time Goethe was not yet the author of the two-part "Wilhelm Meister", was not yet, as Pushkin said, "on a par with the century" in socio-economic questions, and therefore could not put a more clear socio-economic content into the concept of "free land", the construction of which his hero had to start.
But Goethe never ceased to seek "the final conclusion of all earthly wisdom" in order to subordinate to him that vast ideological and, at the same time, artistic world that contained his Faust. As the ideological content of the tragedy was clarified, the poet again and again returned to the already written scenes, changed their sequence, inserted into them the philosophical maxims necessary for a better understanding of the idea. It is in this "embracing by creative thought" of vast ideological and worldly experience that Goethe's "highest courage" in Faust, about which the great Pushkin spoke, lies.
Being a drama about the ultimate goal of the historical, social existence of mankind, "Faust" - already by virtue of this - is not a historical drama in the usual sense of the word. This did not prevent Goethe from resurrecting in his Faust, as he once did in Goetz von Berlichingen, the flavor of the late German Middle Ages.
Let's start with the tragedy itself. Before us is an improved verse by Hans Sachs, the Nuremberg shoemaker of the sixteenth century; Goethe imparted to him a remarkable flexibility of intonation, which perfectly conveys both the salty folk joke, and the highest upsurges of the mind, and the subtlest movements of feeling. The verse of "Faust" is so simple and so popular that, really, it is not worth much effort to memorize almost the entire first part of the tragedy. Even the most "non-literary" Germans speak in Faustian lines, just as our compatriots speak in verses from Woe from Wit. Many of Faust's verses have become proverbs, national winged words. Thomas Mann says in his study of Goethe's "Faust" that he himself heard how in the theater one of the spectators innocently exclaimed to the author of the tragedy: "Well, he made his task easier! He writes with quotations alone." Heartfelt imitations of an old German folk song are generously interspersed in the text of the tragedy. The remarks to "Faust" themselves are extraordinarily expressive, recreating the plastic image of an old German city.
And yet, in his drama, Goethe does not so much reproduce the historical situation of rebellious Germany of the 16th century, but awakens to a new life the stalled creative forces of the people, which were active in that glorious time of German history. The legend of Faust is the fruit of the hard work of popular thought. It remains like this even under Goethe's pen: without breaking the skeleton of the legend, the poet continues to saturate it with the latest folk thoughts and aspirations of his time.
Thus, even in "Prafaust", combining in it his own creativity, the motives of Marlowe, Lessing and folk legends, Goethe lays the foundations of his artistic method - synthesis. The highest achievement of this method will be the second part of Faust, in which antiquity and the Middle Ages, Greece and Germany, spirit and matter are intertwined.
Faust's influence on German and world literature is enormous. Nothing compares with Faust in poetic beauty, and in terms of the integrity of the composition, only Milton's Paradise Lost and Dante's Divine Comedy.
Results of the Enlightenment: “Faust” by J. V. Goethe.
The greatest German poet, scientist, thinker Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749–1832) completes the European Enlightenment. In terms of the versatility of his talents, Goethe stands next to the titans of the Renaissance. Already the contemporaries of the young Goethe spoke in chorus about the genius of any manifestation of his personality, and in relation to the old Goethe, the definition of “Olympian” was established.
Coming from a patrician-burgher family of Frankfurt am Main, Goethe received an excellent education in the humanities at home, studied at the Leipzig and Strasbourg universities. The beginning of his literary activity fell on the formation of the Sturm und Drang movement in German literature, at the head of which he stood. His fame spread beyond Germany with the publication of the novel The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774). The first sketches of the tragedy "Faust" also belong to the period of the storming.
In 1775, Goethe moved to Weimar at the invitation of the young Duke of Saxe-Weimar, who admired him, and devoted himself to the affairs of this small state, wanting to realize his creative thirst in practical activity for the benefit of society. His ten-year administrative activity, including as first minister, left no room for literary creativity and brought him disappointment. The writer H. Wieland, who was more closely acquainted with the inertia of German reality, said from the very beginning of Goethe's ministerial career: "Goethe will not be able to do even a hundredth of what he would be glad to do." In 1786, Goethe suffered a severe mental crisis that forced him to leave for Italy for two years, where he, in his words, “resurrected”.
In Italy, the addition of his mature method, called "Weimar classicism" begins; in Italy, he returns to literary creativity, from his pen come the dramas Iphigenia in Tauris, Egmont, Torquato Tasso. Upon his return from Italy to Weimar, Goethe retains only the post of Minister of Culture and Director of the Weimar Theatre. He, of course, remains a personal friend of the duke and advises on the most important political issues. In the 1790s, Goethe's friendship with Friedrich Schiller began, a friendship unique in the history of culture and creative collaboration between two equally great poets. Together they developed the principles of Weimar classicism and encouraged each other to create new works. In the 1790s, Goethe wrote "Reinecke Lis", "Roman Elegies", the novel "The Years of the Teaching of Wilhelm Meister", the burgher idyll in hexameters "Hermann and Dorothea", ballads. Schiller insisted that Goethe continue to work on Faust, but Faust. The first part of the tragedy” was completed after Schiller’s death and published in 1806. Goethe did not intend to return to this plan anymore, but the writer I. P. Eckerman, who settled in his house as secretary, the author of Conversations with Goethe, urged Goethe to complete the tragedy. Work on the second part of Faust went on mainly in the twenties, and it was published, according to Goethe's wishes, after his death. Thus, the work on "Faust" took over sixty years, it covered the entire creative life of Goethe and absorbed all the epochs of his development.
Just as in the philosophical stories of Voltaire, in "Faust" the philosophical idea is the leading side, only in comparison with Voltaire, it was embodied in the full-blooded, living images of the first part of the tragedy. The genre of “Faust” is a philosophical tragedy, and the general philosophical problems that Goethe addresses here acquire a special enlightenment coloring. The plot of Faust was used many times in modern German literature by Goethe, and he himself first met him as a five-year-old boy at a folk puppet theater performance that played out an old German legend. However, this legend has historical roots. Dr. Johann-Georg Faust was an itinerant healer, warlock, soothsayer, astrologer and alchemist. Contemporary scholars such as Paracelsus spoke of him as a charlatan impostor; from the point of view of his students (Faust at one time held a professorship at the university), he was a fearless seeker of knowledge and forbidden paths. The followers of Martin Luther (1583-1546) saw him as a wicked man who, with the help of the devil, worked imaginary and dangerous miracles. After his sudden and mysterious death in 1540, Faust's life became full of legends.
The bookseller Johann Spies collected the oral tradition for the first time in a folk book about Faust (1587, Frankfurt am Main). It was an edifying book, "an awesome example of the devil's temptation to destroy body and soul." Spies also has an agreement with the devil for a period of 24 years, and the devil himself in the form of a dog that turns into a servant of Faust, marriage to Elena (the same devil), the famulous Wagner, the terrible death of Faust.
The plot was quickly picked up by the author's literature. The brilliant contemporary of Shakespeare, the Englishman K. Marlo (1564–1593), gave his first theatrical treatment in The Tragic History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faust (premiered in 1594). The popularity of the Faust story in England and Germany in the 17th-18th centuries is evidenced by the transformation of the drama into pantomime and puppet theater performances. Many German writers of the second half of the 18th century used this plot. G. E. Lessing's drama "Faust" (1775) remained unfinished, J. Lenz in the dramatic passage "Faust" (1777) depicted Faust in hell, F. Klinger wrote the novel "The Life, Deeds and Death of Faust" ( 1791). Goethe took the legend to a whole new level.
For sixty years of work on Faust, Goethe created a work comparable in volume to the Homeric epic (12,111 lines of Faust versus 12,200 verses of the Odyssey). Having absorbed the experience of a lifetime, the experience of a brilliant comprehension of all eras in the history of mankind, Goethe's work rests on ways of thinking and artistic techniques that are far from those accepted in modern literature, so the best way to approach it is a leisurely commentary reading. Here we will only outline the plot of the tragedy from the point of view of the evolution of the protagonist.
In the Prologue in Heaven, the Lord makes a wager with the devil Mephistopheles about human nature; The Lord chooses his “slave”, Dr. Faust, as the object of the experiment.
In the opening scenes of the tragedy, Faust is deeply disappointed in the life he devoted to science. He despaired of knowing the truth and now stands on the verge of suicide, from which he is kept by the ringing of Easter bells. Mephistopheles enters Faust in the form of a black poodle, takes on his true appearance and makes a deal with Faust - the fulfillment of any of his desires in exchange for his immortal soul. The first temptation - wine in Auerbach's cellar in Leipzig - Faust rejects; after a magical rejuvenation in the witch's kitchen, Faust falls in love with the young townswoman Marguerite and, with the help of Mephistopheles, seduces her. From the poison given by Mephistopheles, Gretchen's mother dies, Faust kills her brother and flees the city. In the scene of Walpurgis Night, at the height of the witches' sabbath, Faust sees the ghost of Marguerite, his conscience wakes up in him, and he demands from Mephistopheles to save Gretchen, who has been thrown into prison for killing the baby she gave birth to. But Margarita refuses to run away with Faust, preferring death, and the first part of the tragedy ends with the words of a voice from above: "Saved!" Thus, in the first part, which unfolds in the conditional German Middle Ages, Faust, who in his first life was a hermit scientist, acquires the life experience of a private person.
In the second part, the action is transferred to the wide outside world: to the court of the emperor, to the mysterious cave of the Mothers, where Faust plunges into the past, into the pre-Christian era, and from where he brings Elena the Beautiful. A short marriage with her ends with the death of their son Euphorion, symbolizing the impossibility of a synthesis of ancient and Christian ideals. Having received coastal lands from the emperor, the old Faust finally finds the meaning of life: on the lands reclaimed from the sea, he sees a utopia of universal happiness, the harmony of free labor on a free land. To the sound of shovels, the blind old man pronounces his last monologue: “I am now experiencing the highest moment,” and, according to the terms of the deal, falls dead. The irony of the scene is that Faust takes Mephistopheles' henchmen as builders, digging his grave, and all Faust's works on arranging the region are destroyed by a flood. However, Mephistopheles does not get the soul of Faust: the soul of Gretchen stands up for him before the Mother of God, and Faust escapes hell.
Faust is a philosophical tragedy; in the center of it are the main questions of being, they determine the plot, the system of images, and the artistic system as a whole. As a rule, the presence of a philosophical element in the content of a literary work implies an increased degree of conventionality in its artistic form, as has already been shown in Voltaire's philosophical story.
The fantastic plot of "Faust" takes the hero through different countries and eras of civilization. Since Faust is the universal representative of humanity, the whole space of the world and the whole depth of history becomes the arena of his action. Therefore, the depiction of the conditions of social life is present in the tragedy only to the extent that it is based on historical legend. In the first part there are still genre sketches of folk life (the scene of folk festivals, to which Faust and Wagner go); in the second part, which is philosophically more complex, the reader is given a generalized-abstract review of the main epochs in the history of mankind.
The central image of the tragedy - Faust - is the last of the great "eternal images" of individualists born in the transition from the Renaissance to the New Age. He must be placed next to Don Quixote, Hamlet, Don Juan, each of which embodies one extreme of the development of the human spirit. Faust reveals the most moments of similarity with Don Juan: both strive into the forbidden realms of occult knowledge and sexual secrets, both do not stop before killing, the irrepressibility of desires brings both into contact with hellish forces. But unlike Don Juan, whose search lies in a purely earthly plane, Faust embodies the search for the fullness of life. Faust's sphere is boundless knowledge. Just as Don Juan is complemented by his servant Sganarelle, and Don Quixote by Sancho Panza, Faust is completed in his eternal companion, Mephistopheles. The devil in Goethe loses the majesty of Satan, a titan and a God-fighter - this is the devil of more democratic times, and he is connected with Faust not so much by the hope of getting his soul as by friendly affection.
The story of Faust allows Goethe to take a fresh, critical approach to the key issues of Enlightenment philosophy. Let us recall that the critique of religion and the idea of God was the nerve of the Enlightenment ideology. In Goethe, God stands above the action of tragedy. The Lord of the “Prologue in Heaven” is a symbol of the positive beginnings of life, true humanity. Unlike the previous Christian tradition, Goethe's God is not harsh and does not even fight evil, but, on the contrary, communicates with the devil and undertakes to prove to him the futility of the position of complete denial of the meaning of human life. When Mephistopheles likens a man to a wild beast or a fussy insect, God asks him:
Do you know Faust? - He is a doctor? - He is my slave.
Mephistopheles knows Faust as a doctor of sciences, that is, he perceives him only by his professional affiliation with scientists, for the Lord Faust is his slave, that is, the bearer of the divine spark, and, offering Mephistopheles a bet, the Lord is sure in advance of his outcome:
When a gardener plants a tree, the Fruit is known in advance to the gardener.
God believes in man, that's why he allows Mephistopheles to tempt Faust throughout his earthly life. For Goethe, the Lord has no need to intervene in a further experiment, because he knows that a person is good by nature, and his earthly searches only ultimately contribute to his improvement, exaltation.
Faust, by the beginning of the action in the tragedy, had lost faith not only in God, but also in science, to which he gave his life. The first monologues of Faust speak of his deep disappointment in the life he lived, which was given to science. Neither the scholastic science of the Middle Ages, nor magic give him satisfactory answers about the meaning of life. But Faust's monologues were created at the end of the Enlightenment, and if the historical Faust could only know medieval science, in the speeches of Goethe's Faust there is a criticism of enlightenment optimism regarding the possibilities of scientific knowledge and technological progress, a criticism of the thesis about the omnipotence of science and knowledge. Goethe himself did not trust the extremes of rationalism and mechanistic rationalism, in his youth he was much interested in alchemy and magic, and with the help of magic signs, Faust at the beginning of the play hopes to comprehend the secrets of earthly nature. The meeting with the Spirit of the Earth reveals to Faust for the first time that man is not omnipotent, but negligible compared to the world around him. This is Faust's first step on the path of knowing his own essence and its self-restraint - the plot of the tragedy lies in the artistic development of this thought.
Goethe published Faust, beginning in 1790, in parts, which made it difficult for his contemporaries to evaluate the work. Of the early statements, two draw attention to themselves, which left their mark on all subsequent judgments about the tragedy. The first belongs to the founder of romanticism F. Schlegel: “When the work is completed, it will embody the spirit of world history, it will become a true reflection of the life of mankind, its past, present and future. In Faust, ideally, all of humanity is depicted, he will become the embodiment of humanity.
The creator of romantic philosophy F. Schelling wrote in his “Philosophy of Art”: “... due to the peculiar struggle that arises today in knowledge, this work has received a scientific coloring, so that if any poem can be called philosophical, then this is applicable only to Goethe's Faust. A brilliant mind, combining the thoughtfulness of a philosopher with the power of an outstanding poet, gave us in this poem an eternally fresh source of knowledge...” R. W. Emerson (Goethe as a Writer, 1850).
The largest Russian Germanist V. M. Zhirmunsky emphasized the strength, optimism, rebellious individualism of Faust, disputed the interpretation of his path in the spirit of romantic pessimism: history of Goethe's Faust, 1940).
It is significant that the same concept is formed from the name of Faust, as from the names of other literary heroes of the same series. There are whole studies of Don Quixotism, Hamletism, Don Juanism. The concept of “Faustian man” entered cultural studies with the publication of O. Spengler’s book “The Decline of Europe” (1923). Faust for Spengler is one of the two eternal human types, along with the Apollo type. The latter corresponds to ancient culture, and for the Faustian soul “the pra-symbol is pure boundless space, and the “body” is Western culture, which flourished in the northern lowlands between the Elbe and Tajo simultaneously with the birth of the Romanesque style in the 10th century ... Faustian - the dynamics of Galileo, Catholic Protestant dogmatism, the fate of Lear and the ideal of the Madonna, from Beatrice Dante to the final scene of the second part of Faust.
In recent decades, the attention of researchers has focused on the second part of Faust, where, according to the German professor K. O. Konradi, “the hero, as it were, performs various roles that are not united by the personality of the performer. This gap between the role and the performer turns him into a purely allegorical figure.
"Faust" had a huge impact on the entire world literature. The grandiose work of Goethe had not yet been completed, when, under his impression, “Manfred” (1817) by J. Byron, “A Scene from Faust” (1825) by A. S. Pushkin, a drama by H. D. Grabbe “ Faust and Don Giovanni” (1828) and many continuations of the first part of “Faust”. The Austrian poet N. Lenau created his "Faust" in 1836, G. Heine - in 1851. Goethe's successor in German literature of the 20th century T. Mann created his masterpiece "Doctor Faustus" in 1949.
Passion for “Faust” in Russia was expressed in the story “Faust” by I. S. Turgenev (1855), in Ivan’s conversations with the devil in F. M. Dostoevsky’s novel “The Brothers Karamazov” (1880), in the image of Woland in the novel M. A. Bulgakov “The Master and Margarita” (1940). Goethe's "Faust" is a work that sums up enlightenment thought and goes beyond the literature of the Enlightenment, paving the way for the future development of literature in the 19th century.
Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation
SEI VPO Cherepovets State University
Institute of Pedagogy and Psychology
Department of Philosophy
Essay on world artistic culture
On the topic: The philosophical concept of Goethe's tragedy "Faust"
performed:
4th year student
Groups 4ZTP-41
Smirnova Maria
Checked:
Associate Professor, Tselikova E.V.
Cherepovets 2010-11 academic year.
1.Introduction…………………………………………………………………………3
2. The legend of Faust ……………………………………………………………...5
Johann Wolfgang Goethe was born on August 28, 1749 in the city of Frankfurt am Main into an educated wealthy family. In the parental home, he received a good education. His father, a lawyer by education, paid a lot of attention to the upbringing and education of his children. Children studied languages, painting, exact sciences, as well as history, music, fencing. The poet's mother was the complete opposite of her husband. Young, blooming and cheerful, she was a loving mother and friend to her children.
Very early, young Johann became addicted to reading books. In this he was helped by his father's large library. Books awakened his imagination, and he took his first poetic steps: he wrote plays for the puppet theater, which his grandmother gave him.
Johann Wolfgang Goethe was an all-round gifted man. The versatility of his talent still amazes the minds of people. In addition to literary activity, Goethe was a philosopher, politician, and scientist. He was an excellent chess player and called it "a touchstone for the mind.
Goethe traveled a lot in his life. He visited Switzerland three times: this "paradise on earth" by the time of Goethe was repeatedly sung. Goethe also traveled to the cities of Germany, where he encountered an amazing phenomenon - puppet fair performances in which the main characters were a certain Faust - a doctor and a warlock and the devil Mephistopheles. It is with the national tradition that for Goethe the principles formulated by Aristotle lose the meaning of the eternal norm.
Italy was an indelible impression on Goethe. It became the starting point that determined a new - classical direction in Goethe's work.
Johann Wolfgang Goethe died in Weimar on March 22, 1832 at the age of 83. His last words were: "Mehr Licht..." ("More light...")
4. The idea of the tragedy "Faust"
Poetry is a gift peculiar to the whole world and all peoples,
And not private hereditary possession of individual thin
And educated people.
J. W. Goethe.
As noted earlier, Goethe traveled extensively. It was travels in Germany that led Goethe to the concept of Faust. Goethe refers to written sources - chronicles and legends. Little was learned from the chronicles, but the legend told that once a boy was born to quite prosperous parents, but from an early age he showed a daring disposition. When he grew up, his parents and uncle advised him to study at the theological faculty. But the young Faust "left this charitable occupation" and studied medicine, and along the way, "the interpretation of the Chaldean ... and Greek signs and letters." He soon became a doctor, and a very good one at that. But his interest in magic led him to summon a spirit and make a pact with it.... This was a purely religious assessment of the situation; here Faust and Mephistopheles were finally and irrevocably condemned, and all those who heeded were warned and taught - instructed in a God-fearing life. Mephistopheles deceives Faust throughout the legend, and the island conflict could be formulated as follows: “the conflict between good and evil”, without further discussion, what is good and what is evil ...
Goethe translated this legend into contemporary soil. In Faust, a variety of elements turned out to be organically merged - the beginning of drama, lyrics and epic. That is why many researchers call this work a dramatic poem. "Faust" includes elements that are different in their artistic nature. It contains real-life scenes, for example, a description of a spring festivities on a day off; lyrical dates of Faust and Marguerite; tragic - Gretchen in prison or the moment when Faust almost ended his life by suicide; fantastic. But Goethe's fantasy, in the final analysis, is always connected with reality, and real images are often symbolic.
The idea of a tragedy about Faust came to Goethe quite early. Initially, he got two tragedies - "the tragedy of knowledge" and "the tragedy of love." However, both of them remained unresolved. The general tone of this "great-Faust" is gloomy, which is actually not surprising, since Goethe managed to completely preserve the flavor of the medieval legend, at least in the first part. In "great-Faust" scenes written in verse are interspersed with prose. Here, in the personality of Faust, titanism, the spirit of protest, the impulse to the infinite were combined.
On April 13, 1806, Goethe wrote in his diary: “I have finished the first part of Faust. It is in the first part that Goethe outlines the characters of his two main characters - Faust and Mephistopheles; in the second part, Goethe pays more attention to the surrounding world and social structure, as well as the relationship between the ideal and reality.
We met Mephistopheles already in the Prologue in Heaven. Goethe reflects in Mephistopheles a special type of man of his time. Mephistopheles becomes the embodiment of negation. And the 18th century was especially full of skeptics. Everything that did not meet the requirements of reason was questioned, and mockery reeked stronger than angry denunciations. For some, denial has become an overarching life principle.
In my opinion, each of us is given this spark of search, the spark of the path. And each of us dies, spiritually dies, at the moment when he no longer needs anything, when time as a stream ceases to matter. The dispute between God and Mephistopheles is the decision of each of us where to go. And, oddly enough, they are both right. And God is well aware of this. Search atones for mistakes, and that is why both Faust and Margarita find themselves in paradise.
5. The concept of man in Goethe's tragedy "Faust"
Opposites colliding in the world in tragedy are embodied in two mythological images - the Lord and Mephistopheles. The first expresses goodness and creation, the second - denial and destruction. Traditionally, in legends, the images of God and the Devil are symbols of good and evil fighting for the human soul. But Goethe rethinks this opposition from the standpoint of contemporary philosophy.
Between the Lord and Mephistopheles there is a dispute about the possibilities of the human person. Mephistopheles - expresses a medieval, obsolete idea of a person - oddly enough, more recently it was the point of view of the church. Mephistopheles considers man to be insignificant, miserable, subject to the flesh, prone to sin. The Lord presents a different point of view. Man is the crown of creation, the beloved creation of God. The Lord expresses humanistic views on man - he believes in his ability to strive for good and fight for it.
Goethe's God is knowledge, truth and Universal Reason. God personifies the highest principle, but in accordance with the concept of the deists, he does not interfere in people's lives and only occasionally pronounces a sentence on them. God trusts man, gives him freedom of choice.
The embodiment of evil in the work is Mephistopheles. But its role is at least twofold. In his attempts to awaken the base in Faust, he acts as a devil-tempter. In Christian ideology, the devil is not equal to God, he is the absence of grace, he is darkness, lack of light. In Goethe, this feature acquires a philosophical understanding. Always and in everything Mephistopheles is a negative force. By his denial of the existing, Mephistopheles constantly not only tempts Faust, but also pushes him to search for a new one, thereby contributing to the transition to new stages in the development of self-consciousness. The proud Faustian impulse, combined with the Mephistopheles' determination in practical matters, turns out to be the lever that ultimately leads Faust to movement, search and development.
At the beginning of the tragedy, we see Faust as a scientist of advanced years, when he cursed his dreams of glory, and most of all - vulgar patience - this marked the moment of the awakening of self-consciousness. The turning point has come. Faust saw the enemy of his development, this is internal isolation and aimless absorption of other people's knowledge. True spiritual development is in the opposite - in purposeful cognition, productive thinking and vigorous activity. Being in such a mood, he concludes an agreement with Mephistopheles.
The essence of Faust's agreement with Mephistopheles is that Mephistopheles will receive Faust's soul into his power if he feels completely satisfied. This will mean that a person is insignificant in his aspirations. For searching and testing, Faust needs youth. The first thing Mephistopheles does for Faust is to restore his youth and strength.
From that moment on, each episode of the tragedy becomes, as it were, an experiment, a test of Faust's powers in the flow of real life. Mephistopheles suggests that Faust first get to know the "small world", that is, people in their private life, and then enter the "big world" - state life, the sphere of public life. On the path of external life, consciousness can stop at the level of family life, but it can also reach a state, wider scale.
In tragedy, Goethe both blames and justifies his heroes. The author shows that in the event of a clash between the public and the individual, a person must make a choice. In the episode with Marguerite, Mephistopheles laughs at what seems to be enamored with conventions. However, society does not allow violation of its age-old foundations - and Goethe allows us to think about their essence. The justification for the heroes is their ability to realize guilt and the ability to bear responsibility for their actions. At the worldly level, the question of happiness turns into questions about the ways to achieve it, about sin and redemption. It turns out that Mephistopheles' mockery cannot cancel these concepts.
In addition to the metaphysical side that Mephistopheles represents with his intrigues, evil in the work has another real side. These are the social and social conditions of human life. For Goethe, evil is the remnants of society, habits, prejudices and stable patterns of behavior. And in the second part of the tragedy, Goethe expands his ideas about the real side of evil. This part of the tragedy is replete with Goethe's caustic allusions to the political situation of his time and expresses enlightening criticism of the failure of monarchical regimes in Europe. Evil is represented by the state apparatus and the imperial power, whose aspirations are very base - prosperity and entertainment. Goethe vividly depicts a historical dead end - the intentions of the authorities do not lead to the prosperity of society, the people live in poverty, the state does not develop either economically or in socio-cultural terms.
Passing tests, Faust is gradually cleared, moving to a higher and higher level of self-consciousness. Faust is close to absolute power. And even at this stage of development, which not many people reach, he remains subject to established social patterns of behavior. Inadvertently, he becomes the murderer of Philemon and Baucis: Faust did not give a direct order to kill them, but the ruling principle recognizes only its own interest, trampling on the old morality and morality.
At the end of the tragedy, Goethe draws his hero as a deep old man. But, despite his old age, his imminent death, Goethe's Faust still looks optimistically into the future, still affirms the activity of human action as the most important principle of human life.
Faust at the end of his life does not say the phrase “Stop a moment, you are wonderful!”, In his last monologue, he dreams of a time when he can see his people happy. For Faust, not a complete immersion in the individual benefits of life, not getting pleasure was an end in itself, but a search and improvement, a constant struggle.
Goethe created the image of a whole person, but at the same time showed the complexity of the essence of man as such. Contradictions between the personal and the public, between reason and feelings become a tragic condition for human existence. Throughout life, a person resolves them and, constantly making a choice, develops. The man of the Enlightenment is endowed with will, but not always his choice, as Goethe shows, leads to positive consequences.
The medieval agreement between Faust and the devil takes on a new interpretation in Goethe's tragedy, endowed with a different, symbolic meaning. And the point is that movement is the only way life exists. Stopping leads to regression and degradation.
Goethe in his work affirms faith in man, in the unlimited possibilities of the mind for development. According to Goethe, the struggle becomes the life law of eternal becoming, which, in turn, becomes an eternal test.
Faust, as he is shown in the tragedy, is a titanic personality, equal in power to the possibilities inherent in it of the heroes of the Renaissance. Faust is not a warlock, not a magician, as he appears in the legend, he is, first of all, a free man, striving to penetrate the secrets of being with the power of his thought. Faust, like a true man, is dissatisfied, restless. In this Goethe sees the guarantee of the eternal perfection of the human personality.
Goethe showed in Faust the same features that worried the philosophers of the Enlightenment, but in a contradictory unity: Faust thinks and feels, he is able to act mechanically and at the same time is able to make deep conscious decisions. He is an individual striving for freedom, and at the same time, he finds the meaning of life in deeds for the benefit of other people. But the most important discovery of Goethe is Faust's ability to search and develop in the conditions of a tragic internal contradiction.
The finale is the apotheosis of the immortal essence of Faust and Gretchen, the apotheosis of Man, in which nothing can destroy humanity, love, a free seeking mind.
This is the outcome of the agreement between Faust and Mephistopheles. This is the result of the bet between Mephistopheles and the Lord. Having led Man through trials and temptations, through hell, paradise, purgatory, Goethe affirms his greatness in the face of nature, history, the Universe, affirms the prospects for the free development of man and mankind.
6. Conclusion:
When Goethe was asked what idea he wanted to express in Faust, he said on this occasion: “Here they come up to me and ask: what idea did I want to embody in Faust. As if I myself know this and can express it.” From heaven through the world to hell "- that's what I could say at worst; but this is not an idea, this is a process and an action. Further, if the devil loses the bet and if, amidst grave delusions, a person continuously striving upward for good achieves salvation, then in this, however, is a very effective, much explaining, good idea - but this is not an idea that underlies the whole and permeates each of its individual scenes. Indeed, it would be a good joke if I tried such a rich, colorful and in the most varied life that I put into my Faust, to string on a skinny cord of one single idea for the whole work.
Goethe's Faust is an outstanding phenomenon of world culture and at the same time a deeply national work. National identity is already reflected in the very universality, the philosophical nature of Goethe's poetic design. It manifests itself in the depiction of the hero, tormented by the gap between dream and reality. Goethe wrote "Faust" all his life, putting into the poem everything that he himself lived, all his impressions, thoughts, knowledge.
Faust is driven by the desire to find a way of existence in which dream and reality, heavenly and earthly, soul and flesh will coincide, merge. This was an eternal problem for Goethe himself. A man by nature very earthly, Goethe could not be content with the life of the spirit, ascended above meager reality - he longed for practical deeds.
Thus, the problem of connecting the ideal with real life became the central problem of Faust, and the hero's wanderings in search of its solution became the plot.
Goethe made it his goal to lead a person through various phases of development: through personal happiness - the desire for artistic beauty - attempts at reform activity - creative work. In Faust, therefore, there is no single conflict center; it is built as an endless series of again and again emerging conflict situations related to the search for the hero. They distinguish two major stages corresponding to the two parts of the work: in the first of them, the hero seeks himself in the "small world" of personal passions, in the second - in the sphere of social interests. Each episode in Faust, even if it is directly vital, also receives a symbolic meaning. The images of "Faust" carry several meanings, behind one meaning lies another.
Let's finish with the words of A. Anikst: Goethe's Faust is one of those phenomena of art in which a number of fundamental contradictions of life are embodied with great artistic power. The most beautiful poetry is combined here with amazing depth of thought.
7. References:
1. Anikst A.A. Goethe and Faust. From idea to completion. - Moscow, "Book", 1983 - 271s.
2. Anikst A. Goethe's creative path. M., 1986
3. Zhirmunsky V.M. The legend of Dr. Faust - M: Science, 1978.
4. Goethe. I. V. Faust. M., 1982
5. Konradi K. O. Goethe. Life and art. M., 1987. Volume 1, 2.
6. Locke J. Experience about human understanding // Man. M., 1991
7 Russell Bertrand The history of Western philosophy and its connection with political and social conditions from antiquity to the present day - Novosibirsk: Publishing House of the Novosibirsk University: 1994.- 393 p.
8. Turaev SV Goethe and the formation of the concept of world literature. M., 1989
The 18th century, which ended with the French Revolution, developed under the sign of doubt, destruction, denial and passionate faith in the victory of reason over superstition and prejudice, civilization over barbarism, humanism over tyranny and injustice. Therefore, historians call it the Age of Enlightenment. The ideology of the enlighteners triumphed in an era when the old medieval way of life was collapsing and a new, bourgeois order, progressive for that time, was emerging. Enlightenment figures ardently defended the ideas of cultural development, self-government, freedom, defended the interests of the masses, branded the yoke of feudalism, the inertia and conservatism of the church.
The turbulent era gave birth to its titans - Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau in France, Lomonosov in Russia, Schiller and Goethe in Germany. And their heroes - at the end of the century, Danton, Marat, Robespierre rose to the stands of the revolutionary Convention in Paris.
Artistic tastes of the era were diverse. The artsy baroque still dominated the architecture, the Alexandrian verses of the tragedies of Racine and Corneille sounded from the theatrical stage. But the works, the heroes of which were people of the “third estate”, were becoming more and more popular. In the middle of the century, the genre of a sentimental novel in letters arose - readers anxiously followed the correspondence of lovers, experiencing their sorrows and misadventures. And in Strasbourg, a group of young poets and playwrights appeared, which entered the literature under the name "Storm and Drang". The heroes of their works were brave loners, challenging the world of violence and injustice.
Goethe's work was a kind of result of the Age of Enlightenment, the result of his searches and struggles. And the tragedy "Faust", which the poet created for more than thirty years, reflected the movement of not only scientific and philosophical ideas, but also literary trends. Although the time of action in "Faust" is not defined, its scope is infinitely extended, the whole complex of ideas clearly correlates with the era of Goethe. After all, the first part of it was written in 1797-1800 under the influence of the ideas and accomplishments of the Great French Revolution, and the last scenes were written in 1831, when Europe experienced the rise and fall of Napoleon, the Restoration.
Goethe's tragedy is based on the folk legend about Faust, which arose in the 16th century. Her hero is a rebel, seeking to penetrate the secrets of nature, opposing the church's idea of slavish obedience and humility. In a semi-fantastic form, the image of Faust embodied the forces of progress that could not be strangled among the people, just as it was impossible to stop the course of history. This seeker of truth, who was not satisfied with German reality, was close to Goethe.
Enlighteners, including Goethe, did not reject the idea of God, they only questioned the doctrines of the church. And in "Faust" God appears as the highest mind, standing above the world, above good and evil. Faust in Goethe's interpretation is, first of all, a scientist who questions everything - from the structure of the world to moral norms and rules of behavior. Mephistopheles for him is an instrument of knowledge. The means of scientific research in Goethe's time were so imperfect that many scientists would agree to sell their souls to the devil in order to understand how the sun and planets or the human eye work, why plague epidemics exist, and what was on Earth before the appearance of man.
Faust's rebellion, his torment, repentance and insight, which consists in the fact that only work for the benefit of mankind makes a person invulnerable to boredom and despondency - all this is an artistic embodiment of the ideas of the Enlightenment, one of the geniuses of which was Goethe.
Essay on literature on the topic: The philosophical tragedy of I. V. Goethe “Faust” is an expression of the advanced educational ideas of the era
Other writings:
- Only he is worthy of life and freedom, Who goes to battle for them every day. I. Goethe Goethe created his "Faust" throughout his life. Although Goethe did not write Faust for the theatre, it is both a tragedy and a philosophical poem. In Read More ......
- The philosophical depth of Goethe's great work, as we know, was appreciated by such outstanding thinkers of the Goethe era as Schelling and Hegel. But they limited themselves to brief judgments of a general nature. Meanwhile, wide circles of readers felt that Faust needed clarification both in general and Read More ......
- Goethe is one of the greatest enlighteners. A subtle lyric poet, playwright, novelist, thinker, scientist and statesman who served as a minister - nature generously endowed Johann Wolfgang Goethe. He entered literature as a forerunner of romanticism: he was fond of the works of German folklore (confirmation of this Read More ......
- Goethe traveled a lot in his life. He visited Switzerland three times: this "paradise on earth" by the time of Goethe was repeatedly sung. Goethe also traveled to the cities of Germany, where he encountered an amazing phenomenon - puppet fair performances, in which the main Read More ......
- Goethe worked on Faust for more than sixty years. The image of the great seeker of truth excited him even in his youth and accompanied him until the end of his life. Goethe's work is written in the form of a tragedy. True, it goes far beyond the limits of the possibilities that the stage has. This Read More ......
- The ideas of the Enlightenment had a significant impact on the development of social thought. Despite all the national peculiarities, the Enlightenment had several common ideas and principles. There is a single order of nature, on the knowledge of which not only the success of the sciences and the well-being of society, but also moral and religious perfection are based; correct Read More ......
- It was written about 10 years before Goethe started working on Faust in the 90s. It was written because Goethe experienced a love drama and was shocked. In addition, a story turned up when an acquaintance of Goethe, who got into a love binder, committed suicide. Read More ......
- ... What does it mean to know? That's where all the trouble lies! Who will name the baby by the right name? Where are those few who knew their age, They did not hide their feelings or thoughts, With insane courage they went towards the crowd? They were crucified, beaten, burned… Goethe Read More ......
Page 1
Goethe's Faust is a profoundly national drama. The most spiritual conflict of her hero, the obstinate Faust, who rebelled against vegetating in vile German reality in the name of freedom of action and thought, is already national. Such were the aspirations not only of the people of the rebellious sixteenth century; the same dreams dominated the consciousness of the entire generation of Sturm und Drang, with whom Goethe entered the literary field. But precisely because the popular masses in modern Goethe Germany were powerless to break the feudal fetters, to “remove” the personal tragedy of the German man along with the general tragedy of the German people, the poet had to look more sharply at the deeds and thoughts of foreign, more active, more advanced peoples. In this sense and for this reason, Faust is not only about Germany, but ultimately about all of humanity, called to transform the world through joint free and rational labor. Belinsky was equally right both when he asserted that Faust "is a complete reflection of the whole life of contemporary German society", and when he said that this tragedy "contains all the moral questions that can arise in the chest of our inner man." time." Goethe began to work on Faust with the audacity of a genius. The very theme of "Faust" - a drama about the history of mankind, about the goal of human history - was still unclear to him, in its entirety; and yet he undertook it in the expectation that halfway through history would catch up with his plan. Goethe relied here on direct collaboration with the "genius of the century". Just as the inhabitants of a sandy, siliceous country cleverly and zealously direct every seeping stream, all the avaricious subsoil moisture into their reservoirs, so Goethe, over a long journey of life, with unremitting perseverance collected in his Faust every prophetic hint of history, all the subsoil historical meaning of the era.
The entire creative path of Goethe in the XIX century. accompanies the work on his main creation - "Faust". The first part of the tragedy was mostly completed in the last years of the 18th century, but published in full in 1808. In 1800, Goethe worked on the Helena fragment, which was the basis for Act III of the second part, which was created mainly in 1825-1826. But the most intensive work on the second part and its completion fall on 1827-1831. It was published in 1833, after the death of the poet.
The content of the second part, like the first, is unusually rich, but three main ideological and thematic complexes can be distinguished in it. The first is connected with the depiction of the dilapidated regime of the feudal Empire (acts I and IV). Here the role of Mephistopheles is especially significant. By his actions, he, as it were, provokes the imperial court, its big and small figures, pushes them to self-disclosure. He offers the semblance of a reform (issuance of paper money) and, entertaining the emperor, stuns him with a phantasmagoria of a masquerade, behind which the clownish character of all court life clearly shines through. The picture of the collapse of the Empire in Faust reflects Goethe's perception of the French Revolution.
The second main theme of the second part is connected with the poet's reflections on the role and meaning of the aesthetic assimilation of reality. Goethe boldly shifts times: Homeric Greece, medieval chivalrous Europe, in which Faust finds Helen, and the 19th century, conditionally embodied in the son of Faust and Helen - Euphorion, an image inspired by the life and poetic fate of Byron. This displacement of times and countries emphasizes the universal nature of the problem of "aesthetic education", to use Schiller's term. The image of Elena symbolizes beauty and art itself, and at the same time the death of Euphorion and the disappearance of Elena mean a kind of "farewell to the past" - the rejection of all illusions associated with the concept of Weimar classicism, as it, in fact, has already been reflected in the artistic world of his "Divan". The third - and main - theme is revealed in the fifth act. The feudal Empire is collapsing, innumerable disasters mark the advent of a new, capitalist era. “Robbery, trade and war,” formulates the morality of the new masters of life Mephistopheles and he himself acts in the spirit of this morality, cynically exposing the wrong side of bourgeois progress. Faust, at the end of his journey, formulates the “final conclusion of earthly wisdom”: “Only he is worthy of life and freedom who every day goes to battle for them.” The words uttered by him at one time, in the scene of the translation of the Bible: “In the beginning there was a deed,” acquire a socio-practical meaning: Faust dreams of providing the land reclaimed from the sea to “many millions” of people who will work on it. The abstract ideal of the act, expressed in the first part of the tragedy, the search for ways of individual self-improvement is replaced by a new program: “millions” are proclaimed the subject of the act, who, having become “free and active”, in a tireless struggle against the formidable forces of nature, are called to create “paradise on earth”.
Useful articles:
Antique motifs in the poetry of Valery Bryusov. Valery Bryusov - the founder of Russian symbolism
The famous poet, prose writer, translator, editor, journalist, prominent public figure of the Silver Age and the first post-October years, Valery Yakovlevich Bryusov (1873-1924) at the turn of the outgoing and coming centuries, carried away by fashionable French...
Pre-revolutionary schools were innovations
Usually epic studies of the 19th - early 20th centuries are divided into a number of schools, namely: mythological, comparative and historical schools. The mythological school arose in the first half of the 19th century. in Germany under the influence of romanticism and disappointment in and ...
Comparison of the plots of "Shadow" by Schwartz and Andersen
The play "Shadow" by E.L. Schwartz wrote in 1940. The text of the play is preceded by an epigraph - a quote from Andersen's fairy tale and a quote from his autobiography. Thus, Schwartz openly refers to the Danish storyteller, emphasizes the closeness of his pro...
