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Goethe's Prince of Darkness: Why Faust Today?
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14944 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
9 / 1988 |
2,817 Words |
| Author
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Herb Greer
Herb Greer is an American writer and playwright who lives in
Britain and on the Continent. |
Why should anyone want to stage the story of Goethe's Faust today? It seems to have so little connection with our world. The idea of an after life is, to say the least, quaint in our time. Even the Latin American Catholics--I mean the Pelagian heretics who are hawking Liberation Theology--have little use for it, and even less for that paleospiritual fossil called the soul. The Devil is now a convenient image that Third World politicians paste over American presidents, or that fatuous liberal playwrights use as shorthand for the United States itself, coded into expressions like "imperialist," Or, as in a story circulating around Hollywood today about a top agent, Mike Ovitz of the CAA, the devil comes to Ovitz and tells him he can have any deal he wants in Hollywood--any deal at all if he sells him his immortal soul. Ovitz asks, "What's the downside?"
On the other hand Faust may have a certain relevance. He too shrugs off an afterlife, and the Devil offers him a deal in these terms:
Mephistopheles: Ich will mich heir zu deinem Dienst verbinden, Auf deinen Wink nicht rasten und nicht ruhn; Wenn wir uns druben wiederfinden, So sollst du mir das Gleiche tun. (In this world I'll be bound to work for you, you nod and I'll jump to it, never rest; when we meet over there, then you will do the same at my behest.)
Thus the bargain between Faust and Mephistopheles in Goethe's play. If you look closely, there is something odd about it. In the Faust legend, the Devil's payment was to be one soul, presumably in damnable condition. There is nothing like that here. The irony in Goethe is that, once Mephistopheles has coaxed a witch into renewing Faust's youth, his stupid earthly protégé proceeds to do the Devil’s work in this world. In particular, with some rather irrelevant help from the Devil (a few baubles), he attracts and then seduces a decent innocent girl, who--as it turns out--loves him for himself anyhow. He gets her pregnant, she panics and murders the baby, and is condemned to death. Mephistopheles then drags Faust away, to the sound of the poor girl's despairing cries. The point may be that the Devil had Faust's soul all the time.
Goethe made three versions of Faust over roughly sixty years. There is a double prologue to his final draft. First a Director, a "Jolly Person" (at the Lyric Hammersmith Theater this is altered to "an Actor") and a Poet (also altered, to "the Author") engage in some footling discussion about the purpose of theater, deciding finally that they should just get on with it. Then the scene
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