The story
Faust is a dramatic poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, in two parts. Part One was published in 1808 and Part Two appeared in 1832, soon after Goethe's death. A restless scholar, Dr. Faust, despairs at the limits of human learning, and he makes a wager with the devil Mephistopheles: if the devil can give him a moment so beautiful that he wants it to last, Faust will lose his soul. Part One includes the tragic love affair with a young woman, Gretchen. Part Two is a wide, symbolic work that carries Faust through the imperial court, classical Greece and a great land reclamation scheme.
The old story of Faust, a magician who sold his soul, came from a German chapbook of 1587 and from Marlowe's English play, and Goethe knew it from puppet shows in his childhood. He started work in the early 1770s, producing a first draft, the Urfaust, and kept returning to the work for about sixty years, finishing in 1831. The text has about 12,000 lines in a range of verse forms. Unlike Marlowe's Faustus, Goethe's hero is saved at the end, because striving, however flawed, counts for something.
Faust was seen in Germany as the national work, and it expressed the modern restless, ambitious spirit so well that 'Faustian' became a common term. Gounod's opera Faust (1859), Berlioz, Liszt and Mahler were among the many composers who took it up, and Thomas Mann's novel Doctor Faustus (1947) retold the legend for the twentieth century.
Why it mattered
- The poem made Faust the symbol of modern striving and knowledge-seeking, and the word 'Faustian' entered many languages.
- It inspired major musical works by Berlioz, Gounod, Liszt and Mahler, among others.
- As the major German literary work, it shaped ideas of Germany's cultural identity in the nineteenth century.
Sources
- Faust Britannica
- Recent Acquisition: Making a Pact with the Devil - Goethe's Faust University of Notre Dame Rare Books and Special Collections
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