Essays on literary works - 2024

“Faust”: Legend or Life?

Goethe's "Faust" is one of those outstanding works of art that, while providing the highest aesthetic pleasure, simultaneously reveal much that is important about life. Such works surpass in their significance books that are read out of curiosity, for relaxation, and for entertainment. In works of this kind, one is struck by a particular depth of understanding of life and an incomparable beauty with which the world is embodied in living images. Every page of theirs holds for us extraordinary beauty, insights into the meaning of certain life phenomena, and we transform from readers into participants in the great process of the spiritual development of humanity.

Works distinguished by such a power of generalization become the highest embodiment of the spirit of a people and an era. Moreover, the power of artistic thought overcomes geographical and state borders, and other peoples also find in the poet's creation thoughts and feelings that are close to them. The book acquires universal significance.

A work that arose in specific conditions and at a specific time, bearing the indelible imprint of its era, remains of interest to subsequent generations, because human problems: love and hate, fear and hope, despair and joy, success and failure, growth and decline—all this and much more is not tied to one time. In the grief and joy of others, people of different generations recognize their own. The book acquires a universal human value.

The creator of "Faust", Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832), lived eighty-two years, filled with tireless and diverse activities. A poet, playwright, novelist, Goethe was also a good artist and a very serious natural scientist. The breadth of Goethe's intellectual horizons was extraordinary. There was no life phenomenon that did not attract his attention.

Goethe worked on "Faust" for almost his entire creative life. The first idea came to him when he was a little over twenty years old. He finished the work a few months before his death. Thus, from the beginning of work to its completion, about sixty years passed.

More than thirty years were spent working on the first part of "Faust", which was first published in its entirety in 1808. Goethe did not immediately begin to create the second part, taking it up seriously in the very last years of his life. It was published after his death, in 1833.

"Faust" is a poetic work of a special, extremely rare stylistic structure. In "Faust" there are realistic scenes, such as the students' feast in Auerbach's cellar, lyrical ones, such as the hero's dates with Margaret, and tragic ones, such as the finale of the first part - Gretchen in prison.

"Faust" has widely used legendary and fairy-tale motifs, myths, and legends, and alongside them, intricately intertwined with fantasy, we see real human images and quite lifelike situations.

Goethe is, first and foremost, a poet. In German poetry, there is no work equal to "Faust" in the comprehensive nature of its poetic structure. Intimate lyrics, civic pathos, philosophical reflections, sharp satire, descriptions of nature, folk humor - all this fills the poetic lines of Goethe's universal creation.

The basis of the plot is the legend of the medieval magician and sorcerer Johann Faust. He was a real person, but already during his lifetime, legends began to be composed about him. In 1587, a book "The History of Doctor Faustus, the famous magician and sorcerer" was published in Germany, whose author is unknown. He wrote his work in condemnation of Faust as an atheist. However, with all the hostility of the author, the true image of a remarkable person shines through in his work, a person who broke with medieval scholastic science and theology in order to comprehend the laws of nature and subjugate it to man. The churchmen accused him of selling his soul to the devil.

Faust's striving for knowledge reflects the intellectual movement of an entire era of the spiritual development of European society, called the Enlightenment or the Age of Reason. In the eighteenth century, in the struggle against church prejudices and obscurantism, a broad movement developed for the study of nature, the understanding of its laws, and the use of scientific discoveries for the benefit of humanity. It was on the soil of this liberation movement that a work like Goethe's "Faust" could arise. These ideas were of a pan-European character, but were especially characteristic of Germany. While England had experienced its bourgeois revolution in the seventeenth century, and France had gone through a revolutionary storm at the end of the eighteenth century, the historical conditions in Germany developed in such a way that, due to the fragmentation of the country, the advanced social forces could not unite to fight against outdated social institutions. The striving of the best people for a new life was therefore manifested not in a real political struggle, not even in practical activity, but in mental activity.

In "Faust", Goethe expressed in an imaginative poetic form his understanding of life. Faust is undoubtedly a living person with passions and feelings inherent in other people. But being a bright and outstanding individual, Faust is by no means the embodiment of perfection. Faust's path is complex. At first, he throws down a proud challenge to cosmic forces, summoning the spirit of the earth and hoping to measure strength with him. The life of Faust, which Goethe unfolds before the reader, is a path of tireless searches.

Faust's father was a doctor, he instilled in him a love of science and nurtured in him a desire to serve people. But the father's healing proved powerless against the diseases that afflicted people. During the plague epidemic, young Faust, seeing that his father's means could not stop the flow of deaths, turned with a fervent prayer to heaven. But help did not come from there either. Then Faust decided once and for all that it was useless to turn to God for help. After that, Faust devoted himself to science.

We learn about this prehistory of Faust as the action unfolds. We will meet the hero already when he has traveled a long life path and come to the conclusion about the futility of his efforts. Faust's despair is so deep that he wants to commit suicide. But at that moment, he hears the pleas of people and decides to stay alive.

At a critical moment in Faust's path, Mephistopheles appears. Here we need to return to one of the scenes preceding the beginning of the action - to the Prologue in Heaven. In it, the Lord, surrounded by angels, meets Mephistopheles. The inhabitant of hell, Mephistopheles, embodies evil. The entire scene symbolizes the struggle between good and evil that takes place in the world.

Mephistopheles completely denies any virtues in man. The Lord admits that man is far from perfect, but nevertheless, in the end, he is able to "emerge from darkness". As such a person, the Lord names Faust. Mephistopheles asks permission to prove that Faust can also be easily led astray from the true path. The dispute between Mephistopheles and God is a dispute about the nature and value of man.

Mephistopheles' appearance before Faust is no accident. Mephistopheles is not at all like the devil from naive folk tales. The image created by Goethe is full of deep philosophical meaning. Goethe, however, does not depict Mephistopheles exclusively as the embodiment of evil. He is indeed "devilishly" clever.

Mephistopheles does not allow Faust to rest. Pushing Faust towards evil, he, without expecting it himself, awakens the best sides of the hero's nature.

Faust, demanding that Mephistopheles fulfill all his desires, sets a condition:

"If ever I should say, 'Oh, stay, Thou art so fair!', then bind me fast, And in that hour I'll be thy prey; My doom is cast."

The first thing he offers him is to visit a tavern where students are feasting. He hopes that Faust will, simply put, indulge in drunkenness and forget about his searches. But Faust is disgusted by the company of drunkards, and Mephistopheles suffers his first defeat. Then he prepares a second test for him. With the help of witchcraft, he returns his youth.

Mephistopheles expects that young Faust will indulge in feelings.

Indeed, the first beautiful girl Faust sees arouses his desire, and he demands that the devil immediately provide him with a beauty. Mephistopheles helps him get acquainted with Margaret, hoping that Faust will find in her embrace the wonderful moment that he will want to prolong indefinitely. But here, too, the devil is defeated.

If at first Faust's attitude towards Margaret was only crudely sensual, very soon it is replaced by a more and more true love.

Margaret is a beautiful, pure young creature. Before meeting Faust, her life flowed peacefully and evenly. Love for Faust turned her whole life upside down. She was overcome by a feeling as powerful as the one that gripped Faust. Their love is mutual, but, as people, they are completely different, and this is partly the reason for the tragic outcome of their love.

A simple girl from the people, Margaret possesses all the qualities of a loving female soul. Unlike Faust, Margaret accepts life as it is. Raised in strict religious rules, she considers the natural inclinations of her nature sinful. Later, she deeply experiences her "fall". In portraying the heroine in this way, Goethe endowed her with traits typical of a woman of his time. To understand Margaret's fate, one must have a fairly clear idea of the era when such tragedies actually took place.

Margaret turns out to be a sinner both in her own eyes and in the eyes of the surrounding environment, with its bourgeois and hypocritical prejudices. Margaret turns out to be a victim, doomed to perish. Her surroundings could not accept the consequences of her love, considering the birth of an illegitimate child a disgrace. Finally, at a critical moment, Faust was not around Margaret, who could have prevented the murder of the child committed by Margaret.

For the sake of love for Faust, she goes to "sin", to a crime. But this broke her spiritual strength, and she lost her mind.

Goethe expresses his attitude towards the heroine in the finale. When Mephistopheles urges Faust to flee the dungeon, he says that Margaret is doomed anyway. But at that moment a voice from above says: "Saved!". If Margaret is condemned by society, then from the point of view of heaven, she is justified. Until the last moment, even in the darkening of her mind, she is full of love for Faust, although this love led her to her death.

Margaret's death is the tragedy of a pure and beautiful woman who, because of her great love, was drawn into a circle of terrible events.

Margaret's death is a tragedy not only for her but also for Faust. He loved her with all his soul; there was no woman more beautiful than her for him. Faust himself was partly to blame for Margaret's death.

Goethe chose a tragic plot because he wanted to confront his readers with the most difficult facts of life. He saw his task as arousing attention to the unresolved and difficult questions of life.

The second part of "Faust" is one of the examples of literary ideas. In symbolic form, Goethe depicts here the crisis of feudal monarchy, the inhumanity of wars, the search for spiritual beauty, labor for the benefit of society.

In the second part, Goethe is more interested in the task of illuminating some world problems.

Such is the question of the fundamental law of the development of life.

Deeply convinced of the materiality of the world, Goethe nevertheless believed that the movement of life is determined by spiritual forces.

Having deeply suffered from Gretchen's death, Faust is reborn to a new life and continues his search for truth. At first, we see him in a state position.

Disappointed in state activity, Faust seeks new paths. The image of Helen of Troy, evoked by magic, arouses in him a desire to see her in person.

Helen of Troy serves Goethe as a symbol of his artistic ideal. But the ideal did not arise immediately, and the poet creates an entire act of tragedy to show how the concept of the beautiful was born in the myths and legends of Ancient Greece.

In parallel, the theme arises. The bookish scholar Wagner creates an artificial man, the Homunculus, in the laboratory. He accompanies Faust in his search for the path to the beautiful, but is shattered and dies, while Faust achieves his goal.

Faust and Helen embody two principles: she is a symbol of ideal ancient beauty, he is the embodiment of the restless "romantic" spirit. From the symbolic marriage of Faust and Helen, a beautiful young man, Euphorion, is born, combining the features of his parents. But such a being is not destined to live in our world. He is too ideal for it and is dashed to death.

It is important for Faust to believe that he has found what he was looking for.

"This is the thought to which I am wholly given, The outcome of all that my mind has gathered: Only he who has fought for life and won it, Has earned life and freedom."

Tragically, Faust only acquires the highest wisdom at the end of his life. He hears the sound of shovels and thinks that work is being done that he has planned. In fact, lemurs, subject to Mephistopheles, are digging a grave for Faust.

After Faust's death, Mephistopheles wants to drag his soul to hell, but divine forces intervene and carry it to heaven, where it is destined to meet the soul of Gretchen.

If the whole path of the hero is tragic, this does not mean that his life was empty and fruitless. He suffered, he suffered, but his life was full, because it demanded of him the tension of all his spiritual forces.

It is impossible to exhaust all the richness of ideas in Goethe's "Faust".

The general meaning of "Faust" as a beautiful dramatic poem can hardly be doubted.