home > Repairs and operations > Faust and Mephistopheles comparative characteristics. TA Comparative analysis of the images of Faust, Mephistopheles and the personality of Carl Gustav Jung. For a young man pondering his life - an excerpt from I. Goethe, "Faust"

Faust and Mephistopheles comparative characteristics. TA Comparative analysis of the images of Faust, Mephistopheles and the personality of Carl Gustav Jung. For a young man pondering his life - an excerpt from I. Goethe, "Faust"

Faust is a symbol of the titanism of the human spirit. And in this he shares the fate of all the heroes of Goethe's Sturm und Drang. The feeling of the creator connects him with Prometheus, and the rejection of the world makes him related to Goetz and Werther. And yet Faustian titanism is broader, it has deeper, stronger motives. This is insatiability with life, the desire to embrace the fullness of life, being. striving to assert yourself and the strength of your life. The forms and sign of this experience, this lack of powerful vitality, is the feeling of dissatisfaction arising from the struggle between our life forms, which are limited by time3. The world of space and time is narrow for Faust; it is the breakthrough beyond this world that is important for him. And the tragedy of Faust is primarily in his desire to expand himself into the universe. This is already a new side in the titanic expansion of the Goethean generation. "Prafaust" was not completed for the reason that the Stürmer heroes lacked the scale and all-embracing passions, the world of Stürmer heroes was narrow for such a hero as Faust. Therefore, Goethe postponed "Faust", and its continuation followed only during the Italian journey.

Some parts of "Faust" were written already in 1800, Goethe quite calmly stepped into the XIX century, accepting his problematics.

The tragedy of Faust is a specific tragedy of man, it is the tragedy of the creator of the form. Goethe expresses it with an exclamation that escaped the lips of his hero when he speaks to the Spirit of the Earth: "Ich Ebenbild der Gottheit und nicht einmal dir" - "I am the image of God, and I am not like you," and the Spirit of the Earth ironically calls him the word , which came into use in the 19th and 20th centuries much later, is Übermensch, the superman. At the time of the Reformation, Catholics called Lutherans that way, and in the era of Goethe, the word meant heroism, heroic.

The spirit of the Earth leaves Faust, and Wagner enters his room. He is a pedantic scientist, a man who diligently collects treasures of knowledge in his head, painstakingly summarizing and registering the data of human experience. Goethe does not create here a satirical image of a mediocre and wingless scientist. The Wagner systematizer is the embodiment of rigorous scientific knowledge. He longs for authentic knowledge as much as Faust does. For Wagner, analysis and synthesis, classifications and systems are the path to true knowledge. He is primarily a theorist, and moreover, a science enthusiast.

But there is joy for people

To plunge into the spirit of the past;

And how nice it is to finally get there.

As the ancient wise man thought

And how our century has risen above him!

Wagner treats Faust with great reverence, he appreciates the spiritual wealth of Faust. But the Faustian student is already independent and always uncompromisingly defends his position in disputes with the teacher. It was not by chance that Wagner entered Faust's office at an inopportune hour; it seemed to him that his teacher was reciting a Greek tragedy. This small detail testifies to the great culture of Wagner, to his admiration for antiquity. Goethe's Wagner is a man with a refined taste, here we see the direction of the scholarship of the Faustian disciple and adept. The remarkable German Germanist Erich Trunz defines Wagner as a humanist. Wagner is a Renaissance humanist in the narrow sense of the word, that is, a scientist focused on the study of ancient monuments. And, of course, rhetoric and grammar are of the greatest interest to him5. Of course, he is to some extent a caricature of Faust, who once believed in the omnipotence of science, in the superiority of scientific reason over nature. The dispute between Faust and Wagner is of a fundamental nature. Faust turns to the direct study of nature. We know that Faust has gone through all university faculties, and of course, he knows antiquity and rhetoric very well. From the conversation between Faust and Wagner, one can understand that it seems important for Wagner to master all the formal laws of rhetoric, he is an encyclopedic scientist. Faust does not recognize rhetoric, he does not recognize the artificial design of speech, language:


Is parchment really a holy key,

Quenches your thirst forever?

Seeking comfort is an empty work,

When it doesn't expire

From the spring of your soul.

Here, on the dispute between two directions, which originate from two vectors of Renaissance thought, the contradictions inherent in the era of Goethe are superimposed. On the one hand, culturally, it can be understood as a polemic between philologically oriented humanists AND natural philosophers of the Renaissance; on the other, it is a reflection of the struggle of the Storm and Onslaught figures with intellectual enlightenment, with the classical tenets of the Gottshed school.

Faust and Wagner also diverge in their attitude to the heritage of the past. Wagner is attracted by the past most of all, and Faust considers the study of the past to be absolutely fruitless. Faust calls to distinguish between the true labor of the past, living and immortal labor - and the picture of the past, which is created in the minds of learned men:

The past is a secret scroll for us

With seven seals, but what the spirit of the century

You call - that is, an accidental spirit.

That is the spirit of that other person.

And in this spirit - a century of reflection.

It is a raven - a terrible vision.

You will run away as soon as you throw your eyes.

Sometimes - a vessel where all rubbish is collected.

Sometimes - a cell full of rags.

The spirit of the scientist, directed only to the past, is devoid of striving for the future. Wagner is convinced that human development is at a stage when a person can answer all questions, his knowledge becomes the public domain. Faust argues with Wagner in a Cartesian spirit, adhering to the opinion of Descartes that one person rather than a whole people will come across the truth. And this knowledge and insight will never be greeted with joy, every great scientist is destined for the role of a martyr of knowledge.

After a conversation with Wagner, Faust begins a deep mental depression. In despair from the thought that the son of the earth is limited by the finiteness of his existence, Faust makes a last attempt to escape from the life form imposed on him, he needs to break the forms of space and time at all costs. In other words, to go beyond the limits of a priori, subjective forms of sensuality, space and time, to use the language of Kant. For this, Faust must throw off the limitation of his own corporeality, he needs free death, he must soar to new spheres of pure activity, escape from the world of space and time, with which he is bodily connected. Only freed from the body shell, his spirit will acquire spontaneity, will be irrepressible. In anticipation of such pure activity, Faust wants to leave the existence of a worm swarming in one of the furrows of the universe. He wants to be free from the fear of death, from the fear of life. He wants to prove that a person is worthy to ascend to divine heights. Faust decides to take the poison, but when he brings the bowl of poison to his lips, he hears temple singing. He leaves the cup, the suicide did not take place. It is not the fear of divine punishment for ignoring Christian commandments, not the fear of a religion that prohibits suicide, but the very spirit of life prevents him from throwing off his earthly shell. Temple chant is heard, and the world holds Faust back, does not allow him to be transported to another dimension, inhibits his impulse to the sphere of pure spirituality. Here begins the line in the tragedy that determines the appearance of Mephistopheles.

Mephistopheles is the second most important hero of the tragedy, the shadow of Faust. Under this name the devil appears for the first time in a medieval book about Faust. The name probably goes back to two Hebrew words: "mephis" (destroyer) and "tofol- (liar). There is a rather dubious version of the origin of this word from the Greek words "me fodo files" (ONE WHO does not like light) or "me Fauslto files" (ONE WHO does not like Faust). If the first etymology could be accepted, then the second looks too artificial.

In the Prologue in Heaven, the Lord acknowledged that of all the spirits of denial, he most of all favors Mephistopheles. The merits of Mephistopheles are that he does not allow people to calm down. In general, Mephistopheles initially recognizes his complete dependence on God, for the negative principle, paradoxically, always turns into good. Mephistopheles gives himself the following characteristic:

I am the spirit that eternally denies.

And the truth requires:

All creation, without a doubt,

Quite worthy of destruction.

And it's better if it

It did not appear at all.

Everything that you have called

Or destruction, OR evil,

Here are all the phenomena -

My natural element.

Thus, in tragedy, the spirit of denial appears, the spirit of that consciousness that Carl Gustav Jung defined as negative consciousness. And it is not surprising that criticism prevails in Mephistopheles over demonic power. The mind of a person with a negative consciousness is directed towards the destruction of what is of value to another; he does not question the merits of the case, but the circumstances6.

Why does Goethe introduce the spirit of negation into tragedy? The fact is that the spirit of denial, the spirit of criticism is a characteristic feature of the 18th century, starting from the 70s. The spirit of criticism was directed against rational dogmatism, against everything dilapidated, regimented, retrograde; against that which was deprived of inner freedom, which fettered the freedom of the individual. He sometimes took nihilistic forms of complete denial of the meaning of life.

There are two representatives of this century in the tragedy. Faust is inspiration and enthusiasm. The enthusiasm of Faust is the enthusiasm of an already developed consciousness. Consciousness that calmly turns both to the outside world and to itself is what can be called reflection or reflexive consciousness. This consciousness has a critical attitude. But the most important thing is precisely the reflective side of Faustian consciousness, capable of making oneself an object of thought, seeing oneself from the outside, being able to think about one's feelings, giving thought about thought. And the critical spirit is an instrument of reflection, primarily self-reflection. Naturally, this spirit also appears as an ironic spirit.

Mephistopheles is the spirit of irony that runs through the whole tragedy. The most important feature of this irony: it is fruitful, productive in the sense that it awakens dissatisfaction in Faust, makes Faust's reflexive consciousness be in constant tension. Both the heroes, Faust and Mephistopheles, have both demonic and diabolical. And Goethe himself was no stranger to demonia. But the divine still prevails in Faust. Mephistopheles takes the diabolical in its purest form. It is rather an ironic devilry. Need to say. Thomas Mann remarked perfectly well that the diabolical in Mephistopheles is not in such a bad relationship with the divine. The Lord says about Mephistopheles:

I don't despise people like you:

Of the spirits of all who live in denial,

The rogue is not at all a burden for me.

Goethe very subtly brings Mephistopheles into action in the second scene. Prior to this, Faust tried to get out of his "I" with the help of the sign of the macrocosm and then with the help of suicide. We can perceive the scene beyond the city gates as a further realization of Faust's aspirations. Faust leaves the city, joins the townspeople who celebrate Easter, his conversation with the people at the city gates takes place against the backdrop of a multicolored crowd. People celebrate the Resurrection of the Lord, spiritual rebirth, renewal of the world. The main thing, however, in this scene is the appearance of a black poodle, which relentlessly follows Faust and Wagner to the very dwelling, and in Faust's office already appears before him in the form of the devil himself. Mephistopheles appears before him at the moment when the striving that gripped Faust reaches its apogee, when he again seeks to step over the narrow boundaries of his world.

The fact that the meeting between Faust and Mephistopheles takes place on Easter, obviously, should give a sacred, sacred character to the whole event. This means that the adventure that began on a sacred day carries a positive meaning. The meeting place of Faust and the devil is at the city gates, which here symbolize a person's exit into a wider space of being. And although all the adventures of Faust will consist in following Mephistopheles, the chain of wandering through the stages of existence will still pass under the sign of the Resurrection of the Lord. Consequently, Mephistopheles is not a completely infernal image and is not a bearer of absolute evil.

According to Goethe's plan, the true Satan was supposed to appear in Faust as the bearer of all dark forces. The Walpurgis Night scene was supposed to end with a terrifying, grotesque sabbath, and the culmination of this sabbath was to be the appearance of Satan, surrounded by witches, harlots, goats - all the characters inherent in devilish attributes. Two principles should have triumphed here - spiritless human lust and gold. Mephistopheles was supposed to be present in this scene as if as a deputy chief director - Satan. For the 18th century, this scene was written at the limit of decency, but surprisingly strong and powerful. But Goethe does not include it in the final version of "Faust" for the reason that the scene would have a grotesque character and to some extent it would be funny, in this case the depth of philosophical demonia would be reduced by the grotesque images. Mephistopheles appeared before Faust in the form of a poodle, and Goethe puts words about the poodle into Wagner's lips:

Is it not clear what is here about the ghost

Out of the question?

You see yourself -

He lay down on his belly, wagging his tail.

Wagner speaks of its harmlessness and harmlessness. The poodle is known to be the most human-dependent breed of dog, it is surprisingly sociable and kind. It is believed that of the entire canine world, this breed has the least aggressiveness; this is a dog that has completely lost its hunting INSTINCT. The appearance of the poodle in Faust is a hint at the seductiveness of the spirit of denial - Mephistopheles. Mephistopheles in his first appearance is not a symbol of evil, but a symbol of sociability. Faust draws attention to the strange behavior of the poodle, he feels that this is not an ordinary dog. Mephistopheles subsequently leads conversations with Faust, which he would not dare to have with God. The meaning of Mephistopheles' speeches is that the world and order created by God are not perfect, moreover, it is worthless, everything that exists in it deserves destruction. But all the misfortunes that Mephistopheles sends to earth can in no way destroy the world. The cosmic order remains unshakable, despite all the stupidity and imperfection of this world.

Who is Mephistopheles? This is either Satan himself, or one of the devils subject to Satan. In "Faust" by Goethe, he appears as the main representative of Hell, the messenger of Hell. And at the same time, he is the devil of the second rank. Here Goethe is not interested in absolute accuracy, something else is important for him. Goethe creates his own model of the universe, his picture of the world, and in her demonic forces, the spirit of denial are given an important place.Mephistopheles believes that the original element of the world was darkness, it is hidden in the basis of all things. And light is just a product of darkness, it is not connected with the essence of things, it is only able to illuminate the surface. And when the end of this world comes and everything is destroyed, then darkness will reign everywhere again.

Through the mouth of Mephistopheles, Goethe expounds to us his myth about the creation of the world. What is this myth? Goethe created his own cosmogonic model, which differs sharply from the Christian one. According to Goethe, the creation of the divine Trinity - God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit - led to the fact that the circle closed, and the deities could no longer create their own kind. But the divine principle can only be a creative beginning. The Trinity has lost the need to reproduce, it is in a state of complacency8. And that is why a fourth deity was also created. Goethe here rather freely treats the Holy Trinity, he does what St. Augustine forbade to do - he translates the Trinity into the rank of pagan gods. There is already some contradiction in the fourth deity. This deity is Lucifer, and he is endowed with creative power in Goethe. Having received creative powers, Lucifer created being, but it so happened that after that pride took possession of him, he rebelled, some of the angels followed him, while others went after God and ascended to heaven. Lucifer creates matter. But Lucifer's one-sidedness was the cause of all the evil that happens in the world. Luciferian being lacked a better half, the Trinity was separated from the world created by Lucifer. Lucifer's world looked rather strange. There was concentration, solidarity in him, it was a path to the center, a path to the depths, but nothing had the character of spreading, expanding. It is a universe that is receding into itself. Such concentrated matter, according to Goethe, would destroy the existence of Lucifer himself, if not for divine intervention. The Trinity observed the concentration of matter and, having waited for a certain moment, began its creation, as if correcting the creation of Lucifer, eliminating the flaw in the universe. And by volitional tension, as Goethe writes, the Trinity instantly destroys evil and with it the success of Lucifer. The Trinity endowed infinite being with the ability to expand and ascend to the original source. According to Goethe, the necessary pulse of life was restored.

The image of Mephistopheles in "Faust" is rather complex - along with the fact that it is a spirit of negation, a negative spirit, at the same time it is a spirit that is a persistent creator. And in this era, as Goethe says, there appeared what we call light and are used to considering Creation. The universe is not some kind of closed unity, where the parts are well applied to each other, the universe is initially imbued with the principle of development, the principle of creation, creativity. The one-sided world of Lucifer was corrected by the introduction of a luminiferous principle into it, the presence of light corrected the world of matter and the world of nature, created by Lucifer. The case of Lucifer would have ended in fiasco if the Trinity had not illuminated his activities, did not give them meaning. This activity within matter, within life, is, as it were, illuminated by the light of three hypostases and, thus, Lucifer and his beginning, his messenger on earth Mephistopheles, all the time give the action movement. At the same time, they want to create, create a kind of destruction, going into matter, going into darkness - and at the same time create for the deity the opportunity to illuminate human activity and give it meaning. 9 This is the very philosophical construction, the mythological concept that Goethe puts into Faust. He breaks creative activity into two principles - on the one hand, there is Faust, on the other, Mephistopheles, who actually moves the action, he becomes the driving principle of Goethe's tragedy.

Let's turn to the text again. Returning from a walk, Faust is going to resume his studies. Entering his office, he says that he left the fields and mountains shrouded in the darkness of the night - he says that he has overcome the darkness, and enters a kind of state of light, spiritual glow:

There are high impulses in my soul

They will be born secretly at this moment.

The noise of the external world gradually subsides in Faust's soul, and under the influence of love, the best feelings awaken:

And in the depths of my soul again

The fire of awe is burning

And love for humanity!

Communication with other people during a walk gives rise to this love for humanity. It must be said that the peculiarity of the history of Faust is that the process of spiritual creativity in him is inseparable from demonia. In other words, the impulse of the soul to the light is united here with demonia, with the Mephistophelean principle. On Easter evening, Faust returns from the holiday, feeling his higher self in himself, he is in a state of contact with God, but not alone returns, followed by a harmless and intelligent-looking poodle. The black color of the poodle shows us its true essence. Its appearance means that some dark force begins to operate in Faust's psyche, and this force deprives him of his mood in a high mood: "With the strength of all desire, calmness does not flow from the heart."

Faust is trying to maintain his spiritual height with the help of a book. But now he is looking for inspiration not in the book of Nostradamus, but in the New Testament. Faust is even going to translate the beginning of the New Testament, ponders the first line and comes to the conclusion that in the Gospel of John it would be more correct to translate "In the beginning there was a Thought" than "In the beginning was the Word." Here we are talking about the translation of the Greek word "logos". However, the meaning of the German "das Wort" is much narrower than the meaning of the Greek "logos". The word is just a sign, and it can be an erased concept. The word is something ready-made, given in advance. When translated in this way, creation loses its meaning, turns into semiosis, takes on a sign form. Ultimately, the substitution of words for things is a distortion of the world, and if you replace “logos” with “word”, then the world loses energy, loses productivity. Goethe said: "Any knowledge that does not awaken me to action, to creativity" is disgusting to me. The translation "In the beginning was the Word", according to Faust, will limit the world to the schemes of lifeless science.

This is followed by another translation, "Im Anfang war der Sinn". Now we are talking about a broader concept, we are talking about meaning, about thinking. This translation is more consistent with the biblical divine wisdom. Actually, the myth of divine wisdom, of the wisdom of God is the only myth in the Bible. This is the wisdom of the Lord, and it is the wisdom (der Sinn) that the Lord had before the creation of the world. Wisdom accompanies the entire process of the creation of the world. But Faustus is inclined to a different conclusion: Ist es der Sinn, der alles wirkt und schafft? Es sollte stehen: "Im Anfang war die Kraft". "Der Sinn" is rejected by Faust: "Think ahead: well, does the thought give rise to everything and created everything so powerfully?" He claims that there should be another word here: "There was Power in the beginning." But Faust also rejects the word "die Kraft" and comes to a final decision: -Im Anfang war die Tat "-" There was an Action from the very beginning. "

This raises a problem that preoccupied many translators in the 18th century. Herder translated the word "logos" in several words at once: Gedanke, Wort, Wille. Tat, Liebe. When translating this word, several concepts were used at once. This scene has a double meaning. Goethe speaks here of the productive nature of the creation of the world, that the world is eternal creativity. And at the same time he expresses his ironic attitude towards the new school of Bible translation. The desire to translate the Bible in a new way arose repeatedly after Luther, and in the 18th century there were also numerous such attempts. The whole scene has a double plan, here Goethe sneers at his friend Herder. who attempted to translate the Bible; The word play amuses Goethe to some extent. And at the same time, the most important problem of peace for the 18th and 19th centuries is posed here. We see: rejecting the translation “In the beginning was the Word,” Faust rejects Christ. He prefers the word "Action", he affirms a cosmogony, which was close to the pagan faith.

While Faust is translating the Gospel, the poodle gradually turns into Mephistopheles. Faust is in a state of spiritual exaltation, spiritual delight, and at this moment the dark principle enters his soul. His soul receives a shadow, and this shadow is Mephistopheles. So the Goethean mythologeme is complemented by the presence of Lucifer. The appearance of Mephistopheles just gives rise to these words "Im Anfang war die Tat". Goethe in this case brings us to the idea that the psyche and the mind did not invent themselves, and the mind found its present state only through development. The process of development of the mind does not stop to this day, which means that we are driven by both internal and external stimuli. Internal impulses to action, as Goethe shows us, grow from depths that have nothing to do with consciousness. Mephistopheles appears just at the moment when Faust cannot understand the meaning of the action. With a spirit of denial, Faust behaves imperiously and even arrogantly, he is not at all afraid of the messenger of darkness. And the sight of Mephistopheles does not dispose to fear.

Here we find one of the main features of the Faustian man in Goethe - ruthlessness. Faust seeks truth outside of morality and religion, he is ready to enter into dialogue with the devil and is not afraid of it. Mephistopheles who appeared to Faust immediately determined his metaphysical essence: "I am part of the power that, desiring evil, creates, however, only good." From the very beginning, he says that destruction is his element. At the same time, destruction becomes a creation, and in the process of activity, the luminous beginning of being always appears.

The first thing that the tempter - Mephistopheles - does - he awakens in his ward an interest in the sphere of the body and power. This is an area where temptation is especially powerful. To use psychoanalytic interpretation, Mephistopheles acts as a skilled psychoanalyst who helps the patient to find repressed desires10. Faust, engaged in science, renounced everything, he forgot about love, about power, about pleasures. Mephistopheles gives Faust the opportunity to admit that he has human desires: the thirst for love and power. But Faustus insists on his rejection of the world, anxiety and anxiety reigns in his soul all the time, in the scene with Mephistopheles, Faust again falls into the mood of religious asceticism and misanthropy11. The root of this misanthropy is the desires and hopes displaced from his soul. But Faust renounces everything. He curses dreams of glory, curses everything human - limited human happiness, family, power, work; he curses gold, That is, we see a complete rejection of the world. The world of previous values \u200b\u200bis broken, and this means the absolute spiritual death of the hero.

Faust wants a different world, a different existence, and Mephistopheles understands it quite prosaically, he invites Faust to go out into the world of earthly joys and desires. Mephistopheles wants to prove to him that the world in which a person lives is not worth a penny, that he is worthy of destruction. Mephistopheles in this case is both the devil, and the guardian angel, and the tempter, and the liberator. Moreover, he understands that the constant longing for the unattainable will lead Faust to disaster. Mephistopheles says to the hero: "Noer auf mit deinem Gram zu spielen" - "Yes, stop playing with your melancholy! She, like a kite, will swallow, eat you. " Here we see the Promethean image of a kite gnawing at the liver. Man cannot exist in isolation from the world. Mephistopheles calls on Faust to leave the cell in which he locked himself, and enter into communion with people12. But the Goethe hero does not want to do this, he refuses desires.

The motive of the devil, fulfilling any whim of a person, is very common in folklore, but in this case you need to switch roles. When worldly life is over, Faust must become the servant of the devil. But Faust is not at all interested in what will happen to him in the afterlife, he is completely disappointed and cannot imagine how Mephistopheles can reward him, what pleasure in earthly life he is not yet familiar with. Mephistopheles demands a receipt from Faust in blood, to which Faust replies:

Werd "ich zum Augenblicke sage: Verweile doch.

Du bist so schoen.

Dann magst du mich in Fesseln schlagen,

Dann will ich gern zugrunde gehn!

Dann mag die Totengloeke schallcn,

Dann bisl du deines Dienstes frei,

Die Uhr mag slehn, der Zeigcr fallen

Es sei die Zeil fuer mich vorbei!

When I stop a moment at least once:

"Stop the wondrous and don't fly away!"

You put chains on me,

I am ready to become yours without delay!

In that hour, let the funeral bell sing;

Then the end of your bondage.

Let be hour hand will fall:

I won't need more time!

Mephistopheles has achieved his goal, Faust's selfish desire turns into a desire to experience everything. In the process of transformation, his original desire ultimately turns into a lust for a life that knows no boundaries. From this moment, the joint journey of Faust and Mephistopheles begins in life.

The second stage of Faust's emergence into life is a wonderful scene in Auerbach's cellar. It shows how low Mephistopheles values \u200b\u200bthe human race. Therefore, the first thing he wants to do is to accustom Faust to drunkenness. And he leads him to the place where the fruits of Bacchus are, hoping that the intoxicated Faust will quickly want to stop the moment and declare it beautiful. In Auerbach's cellar, convinced of the impossibility of winning a lightning victory over Faust, the devil performs various tricks with wine in front of the amusing students. In the folk book, as well as in Prafaust, this is done by Faust. In the final version, Goethe makes Mephistopheles the magician.

In addition, Mephistopheles appears here as a denouncer of social order, and the whole scene is of a pronounced satirical character. The objects of satire are the church and the government, especially in the famous Song of the Flea. This is indeed one of the most powerful satirical works that the history of world literature knows.

The fact that this song is put into the mouth of Mephistopheles is not accidental. With some exaggeration, one could say that the critical spirit of Mephistopheles, the spirit of pure negativity, is directed against those phenomena of human existence that people tend to transcend, make sacred, inviolable. Apparently, the negative spirit of history was associated with the demonic Goethe. Historicity is brought into the course of the tragedy, of course, understood in Mephistopheles' way.

The next scene introduces the reader to the demonic world. This is the famous "Witch's Kitchen". Mephistopheles leads Faust to the world where he is the sovereign ruler. The witch must brew a drink for Faust, which the hero will drink to rejuvenate. After drinking this potion, Faust acquires the ability to love, carnal love, not clarified by the light of spirituality, Mephistopheles sneers:

Soon, soon the type is alive

All women will appear before you.

This is the drink: certainly

Every woman will dream of Elena.

After this scene, the tragedy of Gretchen begins in Faust. The love line in the drama is connected with a terrible story that took place in Frankfurt, which shocked the poet. A young maid, Suzanne Margareta Brandt, having given birth to a child out of wedlock, drowned him and confessed that she had committed this crime. She was sentenced to death and beheaded. The girl was seduced by a young man who abandoned her. The fate of the seduced and abandoned girl interested the stormmen. Goethe's friend Heinrich Leopold Wagner wrote the philistine drama "The Child-Slayer", to which Goethe had a negative attitude, apparently leaving behind only the truly artistic development of this theme. In a sense, Goethe was right, because none of his contemporaries raised this topic to the height of such a great art as he. Gretchen's tragedy can even be viewed as a play within a play, because it retains the features of an independent action that has nothing to do with the previous narrative. Gretchen's line contains a little over a thousand lines of poetry. And at the same time it is a concentrated and internally single work. Moreover, it has a classic dramatic structure, clearly divided into five parts according to the principle of the five-act division of the drama. There is a plot, development of action, delay and catastrophe. Goethe, of course, was guided by the type of Shakespearean drama and did not follow the rule of three unities.

Faust first sees Gretchen leaving the cathedral. The girl has just confessed, and we immediately understand that the most important feature of the Goethe heroine is her piety. She believes in God sincerely and with all her heart. Moral and religious for her are one, but at the same time it is impossible to find anything in Gretchen's character that at least in some way would resemble bigotry. And at the same time, it is absolutely worldly nature. Goethe's heroine is well aware of her social status, evidence of this is her first brief conversation with Faust. Morality and worship of God go hand in hand with the order of things established in the world. It is inconceivable for a girl to go beyond her class. Although Faust is not a nobleman, Gretchen takes him for such, instantly realizing the difference between them13. This detail serves not only to faithfully convey the historical flavor, it is the essence of the character of Gretchen herself.

Faust admires the beauty of the girl, the physical attractiveness of the heroine is enough for him, and the first thing that captures him is simple lust. The educated hero does not think that Gretchen is a person and that her attention must be earned. Faust wants to possess Gretchen, and Mephistopheles is infinitely glad that lust has finally awakened in Faust, that area of \u200b\u200bthe human psyche, which, in his opinion, is completely controlled by Mephistopheles himself. But in this situation, the devil finds himself in an unenviable position, because Faust wants to use him as a banal pimp, to force him to engage in one of the most despicable professions in the Middle Ages. Faust is relentless, pimping, he tells Mephistopheles, is a diabolical occupation. The devil, of course, is humiliated, although he perfectly captures the nature of Faust's request. Everything goes according to his scenario, but it turns out that Mephistopheles has no power over the girl, because Margaret, who has just left the temple, is under the shadow of divine blessing. There. where the legislation of God is fully implemented, where creation is under the complete control of the divine mind, there is no room for the activity of demonic forces. And Mephistopheles indignantly states that Gretchen is an absolutely pure and innocent creature.

Note once again that Faust's first impulse to Gretchen is grossly sensual. And Mephistopheles, fending off Faustian attacks, rightly calls him a libertine who imagines that female beauty exists only to satisfy his voluptuousness. But Faust is adamant in his desires, he wants the girl to be with him that night, and this demand is categorical. The second method of bewitching a girl also fails. Mephistopheles' idea is simple: you need to get a box of jewelry, and the girl, seeing them, will go crazy. Here, Faust already begins to doubt whether this is an honest path to the heart of Margaret. But the peculiarity of Mephistopheles is that at first he chooses the most elementary path to achieve the goal, and then, when the first attempts fail, he complicates his actions.

The next scene shows us Gretchen in her room, and here she plays the wonderful Ballad of the King of Fula (translated by Ivanov as “the king of a foreign land”), a ballad about loyalty in love until death. It becomes a prospective moment in Gretchen's tragedy, as well as all of Margarita's songs. Fidelity in love is the main quality of the Goethe heroine, which she retains until her death. The jewel box venture will fail. Gretchen tells her mother about her find, and she, being a pious Christian, takes the box to the priest. Thus, the box falls into the hands of the church; along the way, we will say that this plot point enables Goethe to develop criticism of the church and the state. Mephistopheles makes a new attempt: he comes to the neighbor Gretchen Martha with the message that her husband died in Naples from a serious illness.

Martha is a complete contrast to Gretchen, she does not grieve in the least about the death of her unlucky husband and, having learned that he left nothing to her, quickly forgets him. In addition, Mephistopheles, with his rather gallant behavior, attracts her attention to himself. In order to confirm the death of her husband, according to customs and legal norms, a second witness is needed, and he appears - this is Faust. The whole scene is a kind of quartet, it is played by two couples - Gretchen and Faust, Mephistopheles and Martha. Mephistopheles pretends to be a red tape trying to hit on Martha, and she is ready to marry him. The whole situation looks like a mixing of scenes - then Martha appears with Mephistopheles, then Gretchen with Faust. Gretchen falls in love with a handsome young gentleman. In the scene of the date, Faust does not yet have complete love, while this is only an erotic feeling, but already in the next scene - in the forest cave - Faust's passion merges with the feeling of nature. Nature has an impact that elevates his senses. Love for Gretchen is combined with openness to nature, and a wonderful monologue follows - a song of thanks to the spirit of the Earth:

High spirit! You gave me everything, you gave me everything

What did I pray to you. And on fire

You did not turn your image in vain

To me. You gave me a wonderful nature

Like a kingdom; gave me the strength to feel

Enjoy her and her.

Here, as in the lyrics of the young Goethe, and in his "Werther", the feeling of love is captured by the feeling of nature, openness to it and as a result of this combination receives a powerful impulse of natural forces. From the initial erotic attraction in the soul of Faust, love is born, acquiring cosmic horizons. And the scale of this feeling seems to the hero truly universal. Naturally, Mephistopheles answers all of Faust's tirades with his inherent irony, since he does not believe in man and does not believe in the power of love.

The scene in Gretchen's room is the heroine's great lyrical confession, the feeling of love is shown through the prism of Gretchen's consciousness. It combines two principles - joy and suffering. Margarita is delighted with her beloved. Her love for him is so powerful that she cannot comprehend it. This feeling is incomprehensible to her.

Where are you, where is my peace?

Heart is so hard ...

Never never

I can't find him.

Where he is not with me.

Blowing death alone.

And all the light because

I feel bad without him.

In this song, the image of Faust is given in the refraction of Gretchen's feelings. Margarita realizes that her love can bring her not only joy, but also suffering and even death:

My chest is languishing,

So it strives to him;

Why am I

Can't hold it?

The development and stages of Gretchen's love for Faust from the beginning to the catastrophe are traced by the poet with a unique accuracy of understanding the very phenomenon of love. We see how this feeling arises in Gretchen, how it pulled her out of the burgher world, led to a conflict with society and with herself. Gretchen's catastrophe is caused by the fact that everything in the burgher world opposes her love. This love became the cause of the death of the mother, the death of a brother, the murder of a child, and the cause of the heroine's entire tragedy is primarily the social contradictions and social conditions in which she finds herself. At the same time, these conflicts and the inertia of the burgher world highlight the purity and strength of her selfless love. A simple girl becomes the heroine of a great tragedy for Goethe. In the history of world literature, it can only be compared with Antigone and Ophelia. The whole line of Gretchen is an assertion of the right to free love, one of the most elementary human rights, And the estate society denies the heroine the right to this love, becoming the cause of her death. In this respect, Gretchen's tragedy acquires universal significance.

Burgher society with perfect calm looks at the practically legalized debauchery and cannot forgive Gretchen for her break with the foundations, which are based on hypocrisy and hypocritical piety. The heroine becomes a victim of deception, and the events in the drama are complicated by that. that Gretchen, thinking she was giving her mother a sleepy drink, was giving her poison. From that moment on, all the horror of her act, all the horror of her love is revealed to her. She begins to realize how low she has fallen. The burgher society, to which her brother also belongs, condemns and despises her. Faust enjoyed and was fed up with love and, it seems, he needs nothing more.

In the 19th century, a concept was formed according to which Faust's departure from Gretchen was explained by the fact that her world was too narrow for Faust, that there was too much difference in the intellectual world of Goethe's heroes, that Faust's irrepressible striving could not be restrained by the love of a simple girl. Researchers tried to pass off this point of view as Goethe's. In reality, this is not the case. Nothing in the Goethean text can confirm it. This is the departure of a person fed up with love, this is a real crime and betrayal. The girl is left without any support in her selfless love. Gretchen's dialogue with Lieschen demonstrates to us, so to speak, "public opinion." Lizchen tells Margarita about the fate of a girl she knows, who has walked so far as to “eat and drink for two,” that is, for herself and her unborn child. When Gretchen begins to feel sorry for the woman who stumbled, Lieschen gleefully objected to her:

And do you feel sorry for her?

How did we live? It used to be, always during the day

You sit behind yarn, but at night you go nowhere

You dare not leave the house.

What is she? All with his dear

Now outside the gate, now in a dark nook;

The clock seemed like a minute to them.

And very short, long walks ...

Now let her go to the temple

In a sinner's shirt for repentance

And there among all the gathering

He lays down heavy bows!

In these words the Goethe heroine sees her destiny. Deceived, betrayed by Faust, condemned by society, the heroine seeks protection from the Mother of God, turning to her with prayer, and asks to save her from the torment of shame.

The Gretchen Prayer is a true masterpiece of Goethe's lyrics. With bold, never seen before Goethe's rhymes that delighted the outstanding Russian poet A. K. Tolstoy.

Hilf! Rette mich von Schmach und Tod!

Du Schmerzenreiche.

Dein Antlitz gnaedig meiner NOT!

Even the most prominent Russian translators have failed to keep this bold rhyme.

Save from death, shame, All-good!

In my trouble

I pray, Holy Martyr!

Further events follow with increasing speed. Faust and Mephistopheles at Gretchen's house. Her brother Valentine appears. From his monologue, we learn that there is a bad rumor about the girl, he hears hints of her sin, and when Mephistopheles sings a grotesque serenade, Valentine becomes furious. The scene ends with Valentine's death. The heroine's suffering is further aggravated by the fact that her dying brother curses her. The behavior of Mephistopheles in this whole situation can be seen as an analogue of the attitude of society towards Gretchen. Naturally, love cannot disappear without a trace from the soul of Faust. And the more love for Gretchen breaks out of the darkness of sensual lust, becoming purer and more spiritual, the stronger Faust begins to feel guilty before the girl, the more he is tormented by the pangs of his conscience (Mephistopheles could not have foreseen this), the stronger the devil's attempts to make Faust forget become about Gretchen. For he sees that he cannot get the soul of Faust in any way14.

In this situation, Mephistopheles makes one last attempt to throw Faust into the element of debauchery. He wants to make him a participant in a demonic orgy, in which he himself is the main manager. This is the famous Walpurgis Night scene at Blocksburg (Brocken). According to popular belief, on the day of the holy abbess Walpurgia, witches usually gather for a sabbath, and on this night nature takes on a demonic character; it seems that all beneficial forces disappear from it, it is filled with the deceptive cold light of wandering lights that illuminate the road, and the night side of nature manifests itself with special force. It is here that Faust must forget about Gretchen forever. But just as the wine in Auerbach's cellar is not capable of overshadowing Faust's mind, so the erotic intoxication of Walpurgis night cannot erase Gretchen from Faust's mind, he continues to love her. And then the whole meaning of what happened is revealed to the hero. For the murder of a newborn child, which Gretchen committed in complete madness, she is imprisoned and awaits her deathbed. Now Faust understands both his own guilt and the guilt of the whole society. Naturally, all his gays are turned against Mephistopheles. This is the only prose scene in the final version of the first movement, and in it Goethe achieves an immense power of social exposure.

The first part of the tragedy ends with a scene in a prison cell. In "Prafaust" it was written in prose and became, perhaps, the most outstanding achievement of prose "Storm and Onslaught." In the 1807 edition, this is already a rhymed text. Faust is trying to save his beloved, whom he finds in a state of half-madness. Two realities collide in Gretchen's mind - her crimes and love for Faust. Her consciousness wanders between these realities. The pangs of conscience demand that the heroine give herself up to the judgment of God and seek salvation from God. The appearance of her beloved returns in her soul hope for the continuation of life. But when she sees Mephistopheles, she refuses to go with Faust and surrenders himself into the hands of God. To the categorical words of Mephistopheles “Condemned," the voice from above replies “Saved." The final version of the first movement and the voice from above in its last scene indicated that the tragedy would continue.

The second part differs from the first, first of all, structurally. The five actions of the second part represent a grandiose continuation of the development of the Faustian idea, which was supposed to end with the salvation of the soul of Faust. The voice from above in the finale of the first part, as it were, hints at this salvation.

At the beginning of the first act of the second part, after the shock that Gretchen suffered in his prison cell, Faust was transferred to a flowering meadow. He is crushed by the severity of the crimes he committed, exhausted and striving for oblivion. He, according to Goethe, is completely paralyzed, even destroyed. it seems that his last vitality has left him. Oblivion is the hero's only lot. However, the state close to death is nevertheless temporary, and in order to bring Faust out of lethargy, so that new life, the help of powerful good spirits is needed. The criminal hero must evoke compassion, experience the highest form of mercy. Elves plunge him into a healing sleep and make him forget what happened.

Oblivion is, of course, not just a lapse in memory, but a connection with the good forces of nature, the isolation of Faust from the forces of evil. Indeed, oblivion is indispensable here. This moment of the Faustian drama by G. Adorno defines this moment very accurately: “The power of life, in the form of power for further life, is likened to oblivion. Anyone who has awakened to life and meets a world where “the weight breathes with inspired life” and returns “to the earth” is only capable of this, because he no longer remembers the horror of what was done earlier ”15. Forgetfulness here is identical to the purification of the soul, it is not a simple forgiveness of Faust for the prescription of his crimes. Goethe needed to return to his hero the ability to act, to revive this ability, and his return to life can be explained by the words of Paul Ricoeur: “you are worth more than your actions” 16. The monologue of the awakened Faust is evidence of this. Macrocosm and microcosm are united in a single feeling, and nature reveals itself to him in all its diverse beauty, power and greatness, and this play of the universe captures Faust, he feels the breath of life. The sun becomes the central image of the monologue.

Researchers of Goethe's work have long established that the poet's philosophical views are largely associated with the reception of the neoplatonic tradition, although the latter is transformed in the Goethean spirit. In the philosophy of Plato, there is a metaphysical division of worlds into the true world, the world of ideas, pyramidal aspiring to the higher idea of \u200b\u200bgood, good and beauty - and the visible world, grasped by our senses: it is directed upward, to the sun, the highest creation of the natural cosmos, which is a sensible analogue of the idea good. However, the pure light pouring out of the sun is unbearable. If a person looks at the sun with open eyes, then a powerful light will blind him, the light will turn into impenetrable darkness.

A person can see the sun only in reflected, refracted light, see it in all things of nature.

No, sun, you stay behind!

I will look at the waterfall, admiring,

How noisy he falls from a cliff to another,

Breaking into thousands of particles before us.

Creating as many new streams.

The foam sparkles there, rustling over the foam,

And above, constantly changing,

The air semicircle sparkles rainbows -

That is quite bright, then it looks hazy.

Carrying coolness and fear with you around.

Yes! The waterfall is a reflection of human aspirations.

Look at him, then you will understand the comparison:

Here, in a bright rainbow, life suddenly appeared to us.

This dynamic image of the constantly changing world shows the nature of reality, and it dominates the whole tragedy. All things in the world are in the power of time, and in their essence they are transitory, perishable. They fall into the stream of time and disappear into it like the streaming spray of a waterfall. But there is something constant in this incessant fall: a colorful rainbow stands in its place over all this movement of things. She is evidence of the presence of an infinitely distant light, which, of course, will blind us. Light in a rainbow is refracted, and refracted many times; consequently, it is a weakened light, but in a paradoxical way it makes a stronger impression on us, primarily with its diversity. Things in the world exist like the colors of a rainbow in the disappearing splashes of water. They are reflections, reflections, comparisons, symbols. As symbols, they tell us about the presence of an absolute principle, and something from the absolute is manifested in them.

Reality for Goethe is always represented in nature, but it is measured by the scale of the absolute, it never turns into pure nothing. Nature is not God, but the being of nature is divine, and the spirit, the creative principle, is rooted in nature, its supersensible essence is not independent of it. Therefore, the spirit cannot rise to supersensible heights without embracing nature. And, if we talk about human activity, then in the face of the eternal, the absolute, it is not eternal in vain. Man acts, strives, suffers not in vain. Therefore, also in the inaccessible, unattainable, a person can receive something, conquer; and if, in what is accessible to him, a person turns his spirit, his efforts in all directions, and here, in the world, asserts himself, then he participates in the eternal, imperishable. The world is not a place of torment and suffering, but a field of self-affirmation. Of course, there are different stages in it; higher and lower. All this has an unambiguous consequence for the character of reality in Goethe's Faust.

But then the question inevitably arises: in what relation to this world is man, what place does he occupy in it? After all, everything that a person has, everything in which his abilities are embodied can disappear: strength, knowledge, happiness, virtue ... Can a person in this world of eternal impermanence, the world of eternal becoming, in the impermanence of all transitory have something stable, permanent, permanent? The answer is clear. Only the form of change, change as such, will be permanent. Dauer im Wechsel. The inner essence of a person is the eternal transition from one to another.

The constancy of movement is expressed in Goethe by a word that the poet loved from a young age: streben. Man is an aspiration, and it is subordinated to what reigns in all nature: impulses. But the path of an aspiring man, as he reveals himself in the world of transient things, is again impermanence, and if we look at human striving through the prism of the absolute, then we will understand that in all cases this is a mistake: "Man falls into mistakes, strives for truth, always "-" Es irrt der Mensch, solang er strebt. "

On February 4, 1829, Goethe said to Eckermann: “Let a person believe in immortality, he has the right to this belief, it is inherent in his nature, and religion supports him in it. But if a philosopher wants to glean proof of the immortality of the soul from religious traditions, his work is bad. For me, the conviction of eternal life stems from the concept of reality. Since I act tirelessly to the very end, nature is obliged to provide me with a different form of existence, if the current one does not keep my spirit further. "

The noble part was saved.

Rejecting the evil power:

All my life it was torn forward:

How not to save this one?

So say the angels, taking away the immortal essence of Faust. And only at the end of the tragedy do the outlines of an idea appear, which cannot be reduced to one thought, for what is said here only speaks of its active character; the idea itself is just the production by our consciousness of the life of the world whole, which is the meaning of human existence.

“The Germans are a wonderful people!” Goethe said to Eckermann. “They overburden themselves with thoughtfulness and ideas that are everywhere. But, having plucked up the courage, we should rely more on impressions; leave life to delight us, touch us to the depths of our souls, lift us up. .. But they approach me with questions about what idea I was trying to embody in my "Faust". How do I know? And how can I express it in words? ”19. The name of this idea is life, the life of nature and spirit, and in art it should be presented in the stages of its ascent, just as nature acts in its incessant elevation, in which man is included. Therefore, the most complex interconnections existing in the world require special artistic thinking, as we would say today, a special discourse. The latter must fix what is being fixed with great difficulty. Hence the irreducibility of the life of nature to a precisely defined and a priori given idea. An attempt to use such as an artistic discourse seemed to Goethe a simplification of world relations. “Nature,” wrote Goethe, “has no system; it is life itself from an unknown center to an unknowable limit. Consideration of nature is therefore endless, whether within the framework of dividing into particulars, or as a whole upward and outward. " If so, then fictional discourse becomes incredibly complex. He must go in different directions at the same time; as Joseph Brodsky would say, be centrifugal and centripetal, strive forward, upward, expand towards an unknowable limit, that is, be an expansion of horizons and at the same time strengthen its connection with a center that is difficult to determine. This circumstance explains all the complexity of Goethe's thinking, which we constantly encounter when reading the second part of “Faust.” Indeed, to many who think in Hegelian categories, primarily in the categories of dialectical development of ideas, the structure of the second part seems to be blurred, loose, in contrast to the structure of the first part. An epic poem, consisting of five independent plays - this was how it seemed to Theodore Adorno and not only to him, moreover, traits of the senile style were found in it, meaning amorphousness, lack of concentration, constant distractions from the main theme. Criticism came from prominent figures. XIX and XX centuries: from RW Emerson and TS Eliot On the other hand, the second part was presented as a work intended to solve any mysteries.

Unlike the first part of "Faust", the meaningful moments here are not determined by cause-and-effect relationships that imitate the mechanistic nature of thinking. The persistent habit of considering these relations in art to be universal does not allow a researcher of even the highest rank to understand the compositional principles of the second part. From this point of view, it seems loose, there is a lot of the most diverse, disparate, little connected motives in it. But it should be said right away that for the later Goethe, cause-and-effect relationships are not universal, capable of embracing the whole variety of material. The poet embarks on an extremely difficult path. The challenge here is to constantly embrace the integrity of time while maintaining the temporal orientation of the plot to the future; eternity must be present in every moment, the steadfastness of the narrative must be combined with centrifugality. But the center, paradoxically, remains unknown, and the limit of motion is unknowable. This cosmic nature of the second part, its unity is created in an unusual way: by the creation of symbolic points, symbolic motives and images that are in a state of mutual reflection and create mirror optics. Goethe already at the very beginning of the second part uses a series of prospective images-symbols, thereby determining the direction of the text, which causes the appearance of a similar image, but at a higher level. This is possible only when poetry uses games, more precisely, game models, and this imitation of game structures begins already in the first act.

A wonderful masquerade, at first glance, completely independent and redundant for the general plot, it would seem, delays this action. In fact, it is "Faust" in "Faust". The conventionality of the masquerade action allows Goethe to concentrate in it almost all the problems that the second part of the tragedy will solve. The images of the masquerade play here the role of symbolic projections. This running ahead in the development of the plot creates a system of mirrors. A prospective symbolic image corresponds to another image, and the mirroring of relations enhances the influence of the images that appeared as a result of the development of the Faustian plot. The masquerade action leads us first to two of its central images: the driver-boy and Plutus, behind whose mask Faust is hidden. With the advent of the charioteer boy, the game opens the world of poetry to us. This character is her symbol, and the whole scene with him is an allegory of poetry, the essence of which, in the words of Nietzsche, is the bestowing virtue, "in the context of greed, avarice and greed. Poetry gives the world a variety of forms, the poet's wasteful imagination creates countless pictures and images, creating a wonderful world of visibility, from whose spell it is impossible to get rid of. This is the aesthetic principle of the second part of "Faust",

Indeed, it is here that Goethe's poetic generosity seems to know no bounds. But this wealth of images is permeated with a symbolic connection, which gradually weaves the picture in the sequence provided by the poet. So the driver-boy is a prototype of Euphorion, the son of Faust and Helena. Explaining the meaning of the masquerade to Eckermann, Goethe said: “You, of course, guessed that Faust is hiding under the guise of Plutus, and Mephistopheles under the guise of a miser. But who do you think is the charioteer boy? I didn't know what to say. This is Euphorion, ”said Goethe. When the surprised Eckermann asked the poet how the son of Faust and Helena could be among the participants in the masquerade when he was born only in the third act, Goethe answered with utmost clarity: “Euphorion is not a man, but only an allegorical creature. He is the personification of poetry, and poetry has nothing to do with time, place, or any person. The very spirit that will choose the guise of Euphorion is now a boy-driver for us, because he is similar to the omnipresent ghosts that can appear before us at any moment ”20.

It seems that the entire second part, unlike the first, has a ghostly character, but these ghosts have such a powerful symbolic power that we perceive them as the most real reality. The masquerade itself is nothing more than "Faust" in "Faust", a kind of prospective intertext defining further development dramas. And it develops as a sequence of situations in which the images acquire more and more convexity and, consequently, more and more symbolic power. The adventure with the magical summoning of Helena and Paris at the request of the emperor almost cost Faust his life, but at the same time caused the need to turn to the world of prototypes of all creatures, to the Dionysian sphere of becoming. Therefore, the hero needs to see all the stages of this formation in order to meet the imperishable image of earthly beauty embodied in Elena.

The return of Elena from the underworld means the resurrection of beauty, the return of antiquity in all its splendor, we are talking about the search for the lost historical time, the historical past. This, as Jochen Schmidt points out, is a Renaissance in the full sense of the word21. We add on our own that there is also a demonstration of the return itself, which in Goethe looks like a movement towards ancient beauty, a meeting with ancient art and culture; at the same time it is the path to the forces that organize life and culture. The latter are embodied in symbolic images Mothers.

We can also consider the grandiose "Classic Walpurgis Night" as a kind of universal masquerade, the scenario of which is the world becoming. However, everything here is subordinated to the main poetic intention - to show everything that happens as a threefold search, in which there are three figures of the drama - Faust, Mephistopheles and Homunculus. Homunculus is Wagner's creation, pure intellect hidden in a flask by its creator. This is a new image in the drama. In the retort, Wagner creates a person through alchemical manipulations. The pedantic scientist strives to surpass nature in this matter. But before Mephistopheles enters Wagner's laboratory, it seems that the creation of an artificial creature is completed without outside interference.

Oh what a ringing and how it penetrates

Black through the walls with their soot!

The languor of waiting overcomes me,

But the end is nearing her.

There was darkness in the flask, but there, at the bottom, dawn,

Like a flaming coal or a fiery garnet,

He cuts through the darkness with rays,

Like black clouds - a row of brilliant lightning.

Here comes the pure white light;

Oh, if only he shone not in vain for me!

The outburst of Wagnerian enthusiasm is reminiscent of Faust's incantation of the spirit of the Earth; but, of course, such a comparison can only be viewed as an analogy with Faustian quests and thirst for living activity. The sublime vision of Faust, which ended in tears for him, was interrupted by the unexpected appearance of Wagner. Now Wagner is ripped out of his hopeless experiment by the arrival of Mephistopheles.

But these episodes differ significantly from each other. Mephistopheles becomes assistant to the unsuspecting Wagner22.

What, in fact, does Wagner achieve with his alchemical experiments? Creating an artificial man, Wagner seeks to remove the natural principle, because he, who has never experienced the powers of Eros, a learned pedant and a naive ascetic, considers love to be an animal relic in man. He sees his task in tearing his creation away from nature forever. For him, this means raising the spirit. Wagner's beginning is initially absurd, but the alchemical process looks like the action of the fire element:

It rises, sparkles and thickens.

Another moment, and everything will ripen!

Here the dear force appeared in this ringing;

The glass is dimmer - and again it is lighter:

So it should be, and there began to stir.

The figurine is cute, I've been waiting for a long time.

But this is the element of hell, the element of Mephistopheles, and it is no coincidence that the devil comes at the most important moment of Wagner's experiment. The natural element used by demonic forces, however, brings not only destruction and death, it also creates heat, without which life is impossible. Wagner synthesized a person - more precisely, a spirit, an analogue of reason - from inorganic substances and convinced of the triumph of scientific reason over nature. This artificial man, created with the help of Msphistophilus, is a complex image. Without any doubt, he inherits the demonic and ironic beginning from Mephistopheles, whom he calls a relative. But at the same time he is a free intellect, a personified pure spirit, which needs to be human, which needs nature for this. And here, in his pursuit of beauty and activity, he is close to Faust. As a pure spirit, he predicts the desires and actions of Faust and Mephistopheles. He is their companion in Classic Walpurgis Night, which is the opposite of the witches' Sabbath at Blocksburg. It is he who will show three layers in the structure of "Classic Walpurgis Night": archaic

As you know, the Age of Enlightenment was also called the “Age of the Mind”; it is Goethe's work that is the so-called culmination of that century. The tragedy of "Faust", in lyrical terms, is nothing more than a "beloved child" of the thinker, into which he seems to have invested his whole soul. It is believed that this work is a kind of testament to us, readers of future centuries.

An ancient legend about how a scientist succumbed to temptation and entered into a conspiracy with the "unclean" is at the heart of the plot lines of the tragedy. But Goethe develops events, moving away from the original plan, asking the eternal questions: what is a man, why do we live in the world, why were we created? .. Faust has a mission to resolve the dispute between the Lord and Mephistopheles.

What is the main thing for a person: material or spiritual, moral principles or spiritual uncleanliness? In this confrontation, the author reinforced the idea that a person is potentially capable of a lot, that he is endowed with intelligence from the beginning, and this opens up many opportunities for him.

Faust is facing temptation - he was promised a lot by Mephistopheles: from small joys to the most secret in this world. But there is a condition - if even for a split second Faust concludes the thought that what is happening is true, then his soul will go to Mephistopheles. We see that the heroes have different opinions about the person as a whole, so there are many differences of opinion between them, and despite these disputes, Faust is constantly in a spiritual search, and this becomes the meaning of his being.

The very first temptation for Faust was love, because it is she who gives a person such a feeling as "euphoria". But the devil's plans did not come true, everything is not going according to his script. Margarita and Faust truly fell in love with each other. But despair overcomes their hearts. After all, the life of Faust is at stake, the situation is too tragic and difficult.

The fate of his beloved Margarita, abandoned by Faust, is very sad: she commits the murder of her child, thereby trying to avoid human slander, but retribution found her.

The last meeting of Margaret and Faust cannot leave the reader indifferent. The girl was simply distraught from what was happening, seeing the cruel condemnation of people.

She is sentenced to death, and when she sees Faust in prison, she does not recognize him and sings simple tunes, she is horrified by any rustle. She is not aware of her happiness, that she can avoid death, tells Faust that the most painful punishment is to “measure strength” with her own conscience. Margarita completely refuses to indulge, then Faust expresses a desire to stay with her, but she rejects him. Mephistopheles, observing what is happening, announces that in the other world, the soul of Margarita will bear terrible torment to the end of time. But suddenly there is a voice from above: "Saved."

Goethe brings us to the main idea - an atrocity cannot remain unpunished, a tragedy inevitably happens when a person is "in collusion with his conscience."

And yet the most sparkling of all the temptations is the common page from the life of Faust and Margarita. Despite the fact that Mephistopheles gave Faust the opportunity to enjoy the most beautiful: the society of the most famous women in the entire existence of the world, the incredible beauty of the surrounding nature ...

Emaciated and aged Faust harbors the hope that the people will nevertheless become free. And here comes the denouement - Faust is unable to give up the idea that people will gain freedom. And this picture is so realistic that he could say: "Stop, moment!" Faust dies, and Mephistopheles "rubs his hands with joy," because from now on the soul of Faust passes into his possession. But the jubilation is in vain, the angels do not allow the sinister plan to come true and catch the soul of the protagonist.

The path to truth is thorny and not easy, but every person, in the name of saving his soul, regardless of temptations, must pass it.

Goethe worked on Faust for over sixty years. The image of the great seeker of truth excited him 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 possibilities that the stage has. Rather, it is a dialogized epic poem, the deepest in its philosophical content, comprehensive in the breadth of the display of life.

In Goethe's philosophy, the idea of \u200b\u200bthe dialectical unity of opposites is perhaps one of the main ideas. In the struggle of contradictions, the harmony of the world is created, in the clash of ideas - the truth. The poet constantly reminds us of this. (In the time of Goethe, as is known, Hegel's dialectic was created). Two heroes of the work of the German poet - Faust and Mephistopheles - clearly demonstrate this dialectical relationship between positive and negative principles.

Born by a superstitious folk fantasy, the image of Mephistopheles in Goethe's work embodies the spirit of denial and destruction,

Mephistopheles destroys and destroys a lot, but he cannot destroy the main thing - life.

Sometimes I don't have enough strength to fight, -

After all, how many have I already ruined

And life flows like a wide river ...

In essence, he also creates, but through negation:

... I am a particle of strength,

Wishing for ever evil, who did only good.

NG Chernyshevsky left profound judgments about this character: "Denial, skepticism is necessary for a Man as the excitement of activity that would otherwise fall asleep, And it is skepticism that confirms true beliefs." Therefore, in the dispute between Faust and Mephistopheles, and they are constantly arguing, one must always see some kind of mutual replenishment of a single idea. Goethe is not always for Faust and against Mephistopheles. More often than not, he wisely admits that both are right.

Inserting lofty philosophical allegories into his images, Goethe by no means forgets about the artistic concreteness of the image. Faust and Mephistopheles are endowed with certain human traits, the poet outlined the originality of their characters. Faust is a dissatisfied, restless, "stormy genius", passionate, ready to love and hate deeply, he is capable of deluding himself and making tragic mistakes. His nature is hot and energetic, he is very sensitive, his heart is easily hurt, sometimes he is carelessly selfish out of ignorance and is always disinterested, sympathetic, human. Faust Goethe is not bored. He's looking for. His mind is in constant doubt and anxiety. Faust is the thirst for comprehension, the volcanic energy of knowledge. Faust and Mephistopheles are antipodes, the first is thirsty, the second is full, the first is greedy, the second is fed up, the first is torn "beyond", the second knows that there is nothing, there is emptiness, and Mephistopheles plays with Faust, as with an unreasonable boy, watching to all his impulses as to whims, and cheerfully indulges them - after all, he, Mephistopheles, has a contract with God himself.

Mephistopheles is balanced, passions and doubts do not excite his chest. He looks at the world without hatred and love, he despises it, There is a lot of sad truth in his caustic remarks. This is by no means the type of villain. He mocks the humane Faust, destroying Margarita, the truth sounds not in his mockery, bitter even for him - the spirit of darkness and destruction. This is the type of person who is tired of long contemplation of evil and has lost faith in the good principles of the world. He is not like Satan Milton. He suffers. There is a flame in his chest. He regrets the lost Eden and hates God. He thirsts for revenge and is adamant, proud and freedom-loving. Freedom is dearer to him than Eden. Mephistopheles is not like Lermontov's Demon, He is tired of eternity. He is cold in the vastness of the universe. He wants simple, human love. He is ready to put at the feet of a mortal girl both eternity and all his might. But it is powerless over the unassuming heart of a mortal girl. Eternity and infinity are insignificant in comparison with the brief, like a moment, the happiness of a mortal. And he, Lermontov's demon, is sad.

Goethe's Mephistopheles is sometimes a good fellow. He does not suffer, for he does not believe in good, evil, or happiness. He sees the imperfection of the world and knows that it is eternal, that no attempts can be made to remake it. He is ridiculous about a man who, with all his insignificance, is trying to fix something in the world. He is amused by these attempts of a man, he laughs. This laughter is condescending. So we laugh when a child gets angry at a storm. Mephistopheles even pity a person, believing that the source of all his suffering is the very spark of God that attracts him, a person, to the ideal and perfection, unattainable, as it is clear to him, Mephistopheles. Mephistopheles is smart. How much irony and mockery of false learning and human vanity in his conversation with a student who mistook him for Faust!

The theory, my friend, is dry

But the tree of life turns green.

He exposes false doctrines ("they are in a hurry to de-strangle the phenomena"), ironically teaches the young man: "Hold on to words", "It is always easy to clothe meaningless speech in words", "Saving unsubstantiation will save you from all adversity", "Everyone who is most of all arrogant ", etc. Along the way, Goethe, through the mouth of Mephistopheles, condemns the conservatism of the legal foundations of society, when laws are" like the burden of a hereditary disease. "

These are the main characters of Goethe. The poet chose and revised the centuries-old legend of Doctor Faust and reworked it in his own way, in his own philosophical and artistic manner. The entire work reveals Goethe's aesthetic views, which are confirmed with the help of the dialectic images of Faust and Mephistopheles. Already "Prologue in Heaven" revealed the author's philosophy, his views on man, society, nature.

Goethe's poem resembles a gigantic symphony through which it passes, varying, then subsiding, then. gaining strength, picking up new motives along the way, merging with them, fading and flaring up again and again, a single theme - Man, Society, Nature. In "Prologue in Heaven" it is about the moral stamina of man, about his ability to resist base instincts. All these problems are solved by Goethe with the help of the dialectical unity of opposites - Faust and Mephistopheles.

In the image of the protagonist of the tragedy "Faust", Goethe sees not only a reflection of himself, but also a person of his time, the period of the Enlightenment, the flourishing of German culture and philosophy.

Goethe and the Enlightenment

Johann Wolfgang Goethe certainly combined all the signs of genius. He was a poet, prose writer, an outstanding thinker, an ardent adherent of romanticism. It is on it that one of the greatest eras in Germany - the Enlightenment - ends. A man of his country, Goethe was instantly accepted into the ranks of the most prominent German philosophers. His sharp style was immediately compared to Voltaire's.

Biography

Goethe was born in 1749 into a wealthy patrician family. The basics of all sciences were taught to him at home. Later, the poet entered the university, but that was not enough for him. He also graduated from the University of Strasbourg. After the treatise "The Sorrows of Young Werther" was published, world fame came to him.

Goethe held an administrative position for a long time under the Duke of Saxe-Weimar. There he tried to self-actualize, convey the advanced ideas of that century to everyone else and serve for the good of society. After becoming prime minister of Weimar, he became disillusioned with politics. His active position did not allow him to engage in creativity.

Italian period

The writer fell into a depression and left to recuperate in Italy, the country of the Renaissance, masterpieces of da Vinci, Raphael, and the philosophical search for truth. It was there that his writing style developed. He begins to write stories and philosophical narratives again. Upon his return, Goethe retains the post of Minister of Culture and the job of head of the local theater. The Duke is in his friend Schiller and often consults with him on important matters of the country's politics.

Goethe and Schiller

One of the turning points in the life and work of Johann Wolfgang was his acquaintance with Schiller. The two first-class authors not only begin to develop Goethe's Weimar classicism together, but also constantly push each other to new masterpieces. Under the influence of Schiller, Goethe writes several novels and continues to work on Faust, which Frederick so wanted to see. Nevertheless, "Faust" was released only in 1806, when Schiller was no longer alive. The first part was created under the tireless surveillance of Eckermann, Goethe's personal secretary, who insisted that the tragedy be published. The second part, at the behest of the author himself, was released posthumously.

Tragedy "Faust"

Without unnecessary exaggeration, one can say that "Faust" is the main work of the poet. The tragedy in two parts was written over sixty years. According to "Faust", one can also judge how the evolution of the writer's work took place. By creating passages at certain periods of his life, Goethe captured the whole meaning of life in this tragedy.

Doctor Faust

The poet did not invent the main plot line, he took it from folk legends. Later, thanks to the thinker himself, many writers will retell the story of Faust, weaving this plot into the basis of their books. And Goethe learned about this legend when he was only five years old. As a boy, he saw a puppet theater. A terrible tale was told in it.

The legend is partly based on true events. Once there lived Johann Georg Faust, a doctor by profession. He was engaged in traveling from city to city and offering his services. If traditional medicine did not help, he took up magic, astrology and even alchemy. The more successful and well-known doctors in their midst said that Faust was a simple charlatan who could deceive any naive person. Students of the healer at the university, where he taught for a short time, spoke of the doctor with great warmth, considering him a seeker of truth. The Lutherans called him the devil's servant. The image of Faust seemed to them in all dark corners.

The real Faust died under very mysterious circumstances, quite suddenly, in 1540. At the same time, they began to compose legends and speculate about him.

The image of Faust in the tragedy of Goethe

Faust is a long life path a person who is endowed with a special view of the world, the ability to feel, experience, disappointment and hope. Main character makes a deal with the devil only because he wants to comprehend all the secrets of the world. He wants to find the elusive truth of being, to find the truth, constantly seeking with despair more and more new knowledge. Soon he realizes that he himself will not be able to find answers to questions, will not be able to reveal all the secrets.

For the sake of knowledge, the hero is ready to pay any price. After all, everything that is in the life of Faust, everything that moves him, is a search. Goethe endows the hero with the full range of all existing emotions. In the work, he is now in ecstasy from the fact that he discovered a grain of new information, then on the verge of suicide.

The main task of the hero is not just to know the world, but to understand himself. The image of Faust in the tragedy "Faust" is somewhat reminiscent of His life does not revolve in a circle, does not return to its origins. He constantly goes only forward, making new discoveries, exploring the unknown. He pays for the acquisition of knowledge with his soul. Faust is well aware of what he wants, and for this he is ready to call the devil.

The main positive traits that the image of Faust has incorporated in the tragedy "Faust" are persistence, curiosity, and benevolence. The main character not only seeks to master new knowledge, he wants to help others with the help of it.

The image of Faust in Goethe's tragedy also has negative qualities: a desire to gain knowledge immediately, vanity, doubts, and carelessness.

The protagonist of this work teaches that one cannot look back and regret something, one must live in the present, look for what makes a person happy. Despite the terrible deal, Faust lived an absolutely happy life, never regretting it until the last moment.

The image of Margarita

Margarita - a modest girl, naive in many issues, became the main temptation for the already middle-aged hero. She turned the whole world of the scientist and made him regret that he had no control over time. The poet himself was very fond of the image of Margaret in the tragedy "Faust", probably identifying him with the biblical Eve, who gave the forbidden fruit to Adam.

If all the years of his life Faust relied on his mind, then, having met this seemingly ordinary girl on the street, he begins to rely on his heart and feelings. Margarita after meeting with Faust begins to change. She puts her mother to sleep in order to get on a date. The girl is not as careless as it might seem in the first description of her. She is direct evidence that appearances can be deceiving. Having met with Mephistopheles, the girl subconsciously understands that it is better to bypass him.

Goethe took the image of Margaret from the street of her time. The writer often saw sweet and kind girls, whom fate throws to extremes. They cannot get out of their environment and are doomed to live their lives the way the women of their families did. Striving for more, these girls fall more and more down.

Having found her happiness in Faust, Margarita believes in a better outcome. However, a series of tragic events does not allow her to enjoy love. Faust himself kills her brother, unwillingly. He curses his sister before dying. The misfortunes do not end there, and, having suffered more than she should, having gone mad, Margarita ends up in prison. In a moment of complete despair, she is saved by higher powers.

The image of Mephistopheles in the tragedy "Faust"

Mephistopheles is a fallen angel who leads an eternal argument with God about good and evil. He believes that a person is so spoiled that, succumbing to even a slight temptation, he can easily give him his soul. The angel is convinced that humanity is not worth saving. Faust, according to Mephistopheles, will always be on the side of evil.

In one of the lines of the work, Mephistopheles is described as a devil who previously had sharp claws, horns and a tail. He does not like scholasticism, preferring to move away from boring sciences. Being evil, it helps the hero to find the truth without knowing it. The image of Mephistopheles in Faust is made up of contradictions.

Often in conversations and disputes with Faust, Mephistopheles manifests himself as a true philosopher who observes with interest the deeds of man, the progress. Nevertheless, when he communicates with other people or evil spirits, he chooses other images for himself. He does not lag behind the interlocutor and supports conversations on any topic. Mephistopheles himself says several times that he does not have absolute strength. The main decision always depends on the person, and he can only use the wrong choice.

Many thoughts of Goethe himself were embedded in the image of Mephistopheles in the tragedy "Faust". They expressed themselves in a sharp criticism of feudalism. At the same time, the devil profits from the naive realities of the capitalist foundations.

Despite the superficial similarity between the demon and the protagonist, the image of Mephistopheles in the tragedy "Faust" is absolutely opposite to him in the main. Faust strives for wisdom. And Mephistopheles believes that no wisdom exists. He believes that the search for truth is an empty exercise, because it does not exist.

Researchers believe that the image of Mephistopheles in "Faust" is the subconsciousness of the doctor himself, his fears of the unknown. At that moment, when good begins to fight with evil, the demon talks to the main character. At the end of the work, Mephistopheles is left with nothing. Faust voluntarily admits that he has reached the ideal, learned the truth. After that, his soul goes to the angels.

Hero of all time

The eternal image of Faust became the prototype for many heroes of the new literature. Nevertheless, he seems to be completing a whole string of literary "loners" who are used to fighting life's problems on their own. Undoubtedly, the image of Faust has notes of the sad thinker Hamlet or the expressive defender of humanity, the desperate Don Quixote, and even Don Juan. Faust resembles a womanizer most of all with his desire to come to the truth in the mysteries of the universe. However, at a time when Faust knows no boundaries in his quest, Don Juan dwells on the needs of the flesh.

Each of the listed heroes has their own antipodes, which make their images more complete and partially reveal the inner monologue of each. Don Quixote has Sancho Panza, Don Juan has Sganarelle's assistant, and Faust fights in philosophical battles with Mephistopheles.

Influence of the work

After the publication of the tragedy about a desperate lover of knowledge, many philosophers, culturologists, researchers found the image of Goethe's Faust so fascinating that they even identified a similar type of person, which Spengler called "Faustian." These are people who are aware of infinity and freedom and strive for it. Even at school, children are asked to write an essay in which the image of Faust must be fully revealed.

This tragedy had a significant impact on literature. Inspired by the novel, poets and prose writers began to reveal the image of Faust in their creations. There are hints of it in the works of Byron, Grabbe, Lenau, Pushkin, Heine, Mann, Turgenev, Dostoevsky and Bulgakov.

Goethe worked on Faust for over sixty years. The image of the great seeker of truth excited him 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 possibilities that the stage has. Rather, it is a dialogized epic poem, the deepest in its philosophical content, comprehensive in the breadth of the display of life.

In Goethe's philosophy, the idea of \u200b\u200bthe dialectical unity of opposites is perhaps one of the main ideas. In the struggle of contradictions the harmony of the world is created, in the clash of ideas - the truth. The poet constantly reminds us of this. (In the time of Goethe, as is known, Hegel's dialectic was created). Two heroes of the work of the German poet - Faust and Mephistopheles - clearly demonstrate this dialectical relationship of positive and negative principles.

Born by a superstitious folk fantasy, the image of Mephistopheles in Goethe's work embodies the spirit of denial and destruction,

Mephistopheles destroys and destroys a lot, but he cannot destroy the main thing - life.

Sometimes I don't have enough strength to fight, -

After all, how many have I already ruined

And life flows like a wide river ...

In essence, he also creates, but through negation:

... I am a particle of strength,

Ever wishing for evil, doing only good.

NG Chernyshevsky left profound judgments about this character: "Denial, skepticism is necessary for a Man as the excitement of activity that would otherwise fall asleep, And it is skepticism that confirms true beliefs." Therefore, in the dispute between Faust and Mephistopheles, and they are constantly arguing, one must always see some kind of mutual replenishment of a single idea. Goethe is not always for Faust and against Mephistopheles. More often than not, he wisely admits that both are right.

Inserting lofty philosophical allegories into his images, Goethe by no means forgets about the artistic concreteness of the image. Faust and Mephistopheles are endowed with certain human traits, the poet outlined the originality of their characters. Faust is a dissatisfied, restless, "stormy genius", passionate, ready to love and hate deeply, he is capable of deluding himself and making tragic mistakes. His nature is hot and energetic, he is very sensitive, his heart is easily hurt, sometimes he is carelessly selfish out of ignorance and is always disinterested, sympathetic, human. Faust Goethe is not bored. He's looking for. His mind is in constant doubt and anxiety. Faust is the thirst for comprehension, the volcanic energy of knowledge. Faust and Mephistopheles are antipodes, the first is thirsty, the second is full, the first is greedy, the second is fed up, the first is torn "beyond", the second knows that there is nothing, there is emptiness, and Mephistopheles plays with Faust, as with an unreasonable boy, watching to all his impulses as to whims, and cheerfully indulges them - after all, he, Mephistopheles, has a contract with God himself.

Mephistopheles is balanced, passions and doubts do not excite his chest. He looks at the world without hatred and love, he despises it, There is a lot of sad truth in his caustic remarks. This is by no means the type of villain. He mocks the humane Faust, destroying Margarita, the truth sounds not in his mockery, bitter even for him - the spirit of darkness and destruction. This is the type of person who is tired of long contemplation of evil and has lost faith in the good principles of the world. He is not like Satan Milton. He suffers. There is a flame in his chest. He regrets the lost Eden and hates God. He thirsts for revenge and is adamant, proud and freedom-loving. Freedom is dearer to him than Eden. Mephistopheles is not like Lermontov's Demon, He is tired of eternity. He is cold in the vastness of the universe. He wants simple, human love. He is ready to put at the feet of a mortal girl both eternity and all his might. But it is powerless over the unassuming heart of a mortal girl. Eternity and infinity are insignificant in comparison with the brief, like a moment, the happiness of a mortal. And he, Lermontov's demon, is sad.

Goethe's Mephistopheles is sometimes a good fellow. He does not suffer, for he does not believe in good, evil, or happiness. He sees the imperfection of the world and knows that it is eternal, that no attempts can be made to remake it. He is ridiculous about a man who, with all his insignificance, is trying to fix something in the world. He is amused by these attempts of a man, he laughs. This laughter is condescending. So we laugh when a child gets angry at a storm. Mephistopheles even pity a person, believing that the source of all his suffering is the very spark of God that attracts him, a person, to the ideal and perfection, unattainable, as it is clear to him, Mephistopheles. Mephistopheles is smart. How much irony and mockery of false learning and human vanity in his conversation with a student who mistook him for Faust!

The theory, my friend, is dry

But the tree of life turns green.

He exposes false doctrines ("they are in a hurry to de-strangle the phenomena"), ironically teaches the young man: "Hold on to words", "It is always easy to clothe meaningless speech in words", "Saving unsubstantiation will save you from all adversity", "Everyone who is most of all arrogant ", etc. Along the way, Goethe, through the mouth of Mephistopheles, condemns the conservatism of the legal foundations of society, when laws are" like the burden of a hereditary disease. "

These are the main characters of Goethe. The poet chose and revised the centuries-old legend of Doctor Faust and reworked it in his own way, in his own philosophical and artistic manner. The entire work reveals Goethe's aesthetic views, which are confirmed with the help of the dialectic images of Faust and Mephistopheles. Already "Prologue in Heaven" revealed the author's philosophy, his views on man, society, nature.

Goethe's poem resembles a gigantic symphony through which it passes, varying, then subsiding, then. gaining strength, picking up new motives along the way, merging with them, fading and flaring up again and again, a single theme - Man, Society, Nature. In "Prologue in Heaven" it is about the moral stamina of man, about his ability to resist base instincts. All these problems are solved by Goethe with the help of the dialectical unity of opposites - Faust and Mephistopheles.


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