Intro to Faust: Humanity vs. Society

In the winter quarter, we shift towards another pairing of humanity and one of its "others": society.

The first text we focus on is Goethe's Faust.  The structure of this work is somewhat complex.  Not only is there a dedication, but there is also a prelude (in the theater) and a prologue (in heaven).  Only after these three introductory bits do we get the actual story.  After a bit about Faust, we get the long story of Gretchen, which is interrupted by the Walpurgis Night.  This is all Faust I.  Faust II includes a continuation of the Gretchen story and the wrap-up of the Faust story.  Then we have a sort of epilogue in Act 5.

The dedication is a poem.  The narrator of the poem laments the passing of echoes and shadows of his past.  However, in the course of the poem, it becomes evident that for the narrator, what is shadowy and long gone now appears to be more immediate and real than what is actually real.  Overall, it is told from the perspective of an old man looking back on the personal stories of his life.  Similarly, Faust was written over the course of 60 years, so Goethe was an old man when Faust II was finished.  In fact, Goethe died a year after finishing the story.

In the prelude, which takes place in the theater, the manager character says that he wants the play to be successful so that they can make money and continue on with show business.  He is speaking with a clown and a poet.  It is important that the original versions of the Faust tale were meant to be warning tales to prevent people from being too conceited, cunning and godless.  Goethe is thus distinguishing himself from these earlier versions of the Faust tale (which was originally based on a real person).  One interpretation is that the early Faust tale was meant to oppress people by discouraging education.  In short, the story is supposed to discourage learning and education because they are associated with being in league with the devil.  While the manager says he wants to create a spectacle to make money, the poet character claims that he wants to write in order to preserve fleeting moments of personal truth that can be elucidated in poetic form.  Whereas the manager wants a spectacle to appeal to large crowds, the poet wants to immortalize personal feelings and experience.  The comedian tries to bring the two notions together.  The clown tries to appeal to ideas about life, error, being satiated, spectacle and variety, but he also talks about knowledge, truth, edification, revelation and depth.  The clown wants to synthesize the two positions.  Thus we see that the play is supposed to be a fiction, yet a fiction with truth with it.  The comedian ends one of his speecges by noting that the finished man is difficult to please, but a growing man will always show gratitude.