Faust Week 6 - Part 2 Act 3

[Everyman]

Topic for discussion of Faust Part 2 Act 3.


A personal note: The wedding is over, just got back from a long weekend away for it. The health situation is not resolved, but will soon be demanding less time. I hope to get back to having time for active participation in the discussions here soon. I regret being inactive for so long, but life happens.

A second personal note -- my mind is so fried by life that I posted this originally in the wrong folder. My bad.

[Wendel]

Faust II seems to wanders in directions not always easy to connect to the main theme (self-fulfillment and its moral consequences, imho). This time the subject is art, more specific, Goethe’s quest for a new synthesis of the Classic and the Romantic. In a metaphor, the union of classic Helen with barbarian Faust. While he sends his men to battle Menelaos, the hero retires with Helen to Arcadia where a boy is born. Euphorion, or modern art - modeled on another hero of Goethe, Lord Byron.

Byron as the future of art in 1830? Many critics have equipped Goethe with prophetic gifts, but I'm not impressed. With hindsight we know the answer to runaway Romanticism (not only in the German lands - Goethe thought Hugo’s Notre-Dame 'the most abominable book ever written’) was not Byron, but Realism. In fact Byron’s Romantic stance worried Goethe a lot, but as a authentic genius he was, in Goethe's view, beyond judgement.

True, Euphorion falls mightily, and from the Underworld cries for his mom. But, though still a child, his death is probably not meant to be tragic. Art is about self-fulfillment and somehow Euphorion seems to have made his mark. And here at last we find a connection with the Faust theme. From his death way may also infer that art isn’t everything (as the diehard romantics thought), and the last two acts will indeed be concerned with human ambition in other fields.

I am told that the writing of act III is on a very high technical level, expressing for instance the interaction between northern and southern poetic styles. Schoene comments that (for a German) it feels as if the act was translated, to stress its artificiality. This is apparently also the reason why Kaufmann decided not to translate it. But the lack of reality in this act also means that Faust can be happy without losing his bet with Meph. That is what art can do.

[Ashley]

The following is a comment I posted in the incorrect folder. Apologies, I had to read Acts 3-5 completely before they made any kind of sense to me.

The re-post:
Let's talk about Euphorion for a minute. But first, I'd like to look back to what Mephisto (disguised as Faust) wrote in the student's yearbook earlier. Written in Latin and translated by the Norton critical edition as: "You will be like God, knowing good and evil" (Gen. 3.5), the words the serpent spoke to Eve in the garden of Eden are certainly appropriate for Mephisto to inscribe, but he might not be far from the point. If part of Faust's journey is to be like god, he must know both good and evil. Hey, just look at Gretchen.

Euphirion's problem is that he tried to be godlike without experiencing both good AND evil. There are two theories of evolution in Faust. (And please remember, I am struggling along here)One involves water, the other involves fire, rocks and chaos. Euphirion tries to leap into the clouds (aqueous) without setting foot on rocky terrain, resulting in his Icaran downfall. I think.

[Clarissa]

Wendel wrote: "Faust II seems to wanders in directions not always easy to connect to the main theme (self-fulfillment and its moral consequences, imho). This time the subject is art, more specific, Goethe’s quest..."

I appreciate all the detail you go into, Wendel, this definitely seems a work that needs to be studied and restudied to get anything worthwhile from it.