JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE: THE AUTHOR AND HIS TIMES
Faust and its author, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, developed side by
side. The work is not an autobiography, but it reflects Goethe's
intellectual development. (Goethe did write an autobiography, called
Poetry and Truth, about his early life.) He began Faust when he was
in his twenties, continued it at intervals--sometimes neglecting it
for years at a time--until his seventies--and then worked
intensively on it until just before his death, at eighty-two.
When you hear the name "Faust," you probably think of the story of a
man who sells his soul to the Devil in return for supernatural
powers. It's a story that depends on the Christian tradition for its
plot, for Faust is a learned man who wants to know more than God
allows man to know, and to gain superior knowledge, Faust makes a
bargain with the Devil. Faust enjoys magical powers for many years,
is entertained by an emperor, and lives with the most beautiful
woman in the world, Helen of Troy. In the end, however, he has to go
down to Hell with the Devil, who comes to claim Faust's soul, in
accordance with their bargain. This traditional Faust story is a
Christian cautionary tale--it warns that you will lose your eternal
soul if you try to outsmart God. It's also a German story. There was
a real Dr. Faustus, who lived in Wittenberg in the fifteenth century,
but the truth about his life is impossible to disentangle from the
legend. The Faust legend has been used by many writers, including
Christopher Marlowe, whose Doctor Faustus was published in the early
seventeenth century.
Goethe's Faust is very different from other Faust stories. His Faust
is sometimes seen as opening up a whole new era of Western thought.
Modern people, say some writers, have been cut adrift and are
wandering aimlessly in a technological world, searching for meaning
in life and striving for fulfillment. In previous eras people could
find meaning and achieve salvation through religion. In the West it
was through Christianity. But Faust, these writers assert, achieved
his own salvation through action.
Goethe was born into a well-to-do family in Frankfurt am Main,
Germany in 1749, in the middle of a century known as the Age of
Reason, or the Enlightenment. Classical values dominated thought and
taste in Goethe's youth. This means that the influence of Greek and
Roman thought was strongly felt in education and culture. Goethe's
early education, therefore, stressed Greek and Roman literature and
the predominance of reason over feeling. There was no emphasis in
Goethe's family on Christian value--Goethe's father did not consider
himself a Christian--although the culture was steeped in religious
tradition, and Goethe knew the Bible very well. Goethe's father sent
him to the University of Leipzig at sixteen, to study law and absorb
the values of the time.
