Johannes Faust riding out of Auerbach’s Cellar (clip of an illustration)
http://www.bildarchivaustria.at/Pages/ImageDetail.aspx?p_iBildID=7348435
Johannes Faust riding out of Auerbach’s Cellar (clip of an
Georg Faust….Johann Fust
NOT Georg Faust. Although this has been identified as a portrait of the living Faust (www.bildarchivaustria.at), it is actually a portrait of the business partner of Gutenberg, Johann Fust, by Johann Leonhard Blanck.
There are similarities between the two men: They are from roughly the same area, and the same time period, and of course; their names are similar, as was their fame or notoriety.
Johann Fust was in France selling books off of the Gutenberg press for high prices and making lots of money while keeping the secret of their great invention (cheap books for the masses). No one could believe so many books could be produced, and he was arrested for witchcraft. In order to get the charges dropped, he had to reveal how it was done, and this is how the secret came out – and the price dropped.
Still, even if you had bought one of his new Bibles at the old manuscript prices, and kept it in good condition over the last 500 years, you could re-sell it for tens of millions of dollars. You can buy a single page today for only $100,000.
Faust — Part 1 by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Faust — Part 1 by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe…MEPHISTOPHELESI to the upper ranks do not belong;Yet if, by me companion’d, thouThy steps through life forthwith wilt take;Upon the spot myself I’ll makeThy comrade;— Should it suit thy need,I am thy servant, am thy slave indeed!FAUSTAnd how must I thy services repay?MEPHISTOPHELESThereto thou lengthen’d respite hast!FAUSTNo! No!The devil is an egoist I know:And, for Heaven’s sake, ’tis not his wayKindness to any one to show.Let the condition plainly be exprest!Such a domestic is a dangerous guest.MEPHISTOPHELESI’ll pledge myself to be thy servant here,Still at thy back alert and prompt to be;But when together yonder we appear,Then shalt thou do the same for me.FAUSTBut small concern I feel for yonder world;Hast thou this system into ruin hurl’d,Another may arise the void to fill.This earth the fountain whence my pleasures flow,This sun doth daily shine upon my woe,And if this world I must forego,Let happen then,—what can and will.I to this theme will close mine ears,If men hereafter hate and love,And if there be in yonder spheresA depth below or height above.MEPHISTOPHELESIn this mood thou mayst venture it. But makeThe compact! I at once will undertakeTo charm thee with mine arts. I’ll give thee moreThan mortal eye hath e’er beheld before.Pasted from <http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/3023/pg3023.html>
Goethe’s Faust – Walpurgis Night – One Scene Which Will
Goethe’s Faust – Walpurgis Night – One Scene Which Will Seem Out of Tune.Faust goes to a party while his love, Margaret, suffers in prison. Why?The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume I. Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English. In Twenty Volumes. (1913). Francke, KunoINTRODUCTION TO FAUSTBY CALVIN THOMAS, LL.D.Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures, Columbia University‘The atmosphere of the love-tragedy is entirely different from that of the Faust-legend. Mephistopheles as the abettor of Faust’s amorous passion has no need of magic. The role of Faust—that of a man pulled irresistibly by sexual passion, yet constantly tormented by his conscience—is repulsive, but very human. As he stands before the prison gate he says that “the whole sorrow of mankind” holds him in its grip. But this is a part of what he wished for. He wished for universal experience—to feel in his own soul all the weal and all the woe of humankind. At the end of the First Part he has drained the cup of sin and suffering.Imbedded in the love-tragedy is one scene which will seem out of tune with what has just been said—the Walpurgis Night. Here we are back again in the atmosphere of the legend, with its magic, its witchcraft, its gross sensuality. We hardly recognize our friend Faust when we find him dancing with naked witches and singing lewd songs on the Brocken. The scene was written in 1800 when Goethe had become a little cynical with respect to the artistic coherence of Faust and looked on it as a “monstrosity.” It was a part of the early plan that Faust should add to the burden of his soul by frivolously deserting Margaret in the shame of her approaching motherhood and spending some time in gross pleasures. The visit to the Witches’ Sabbath on the Brocken was afterward invented to carry out this idea. In itself the idea was a good one; for if Faust was to drain the cup of sorrow, the ingredient of self-contempt could not be left out of the bitter chalice. A sorrow’s crown of sorrow is not so much remembering happier things as remembering that the happy state came to an end by one’s own wrongdoing. Still, most modern readers will think that Goethe, in elaborating the Brocken scene as an interesting study of the uncanny and the vile, let his hero sink needlessly far into the mire.At the beginning of the Second Part Goethe does not reopen the book of crime and remorse with which the First Part closes. He needs a new Faust for whom that is all past—past, not in the sense of being lightly forgotten, but built into his character and remembered, say, as one remembers the ecstasy and the pain of twenty years ago. So he ushers him directly into the new life over a bridge of symbolism. The restoring process which in real life takes many years he concentrates into a single night and represents it as the work of kindly nocturnal fairies and the glorious Alpine sunrise. Faust awakens healed and reinvigorated, and the majesty of Nature inspires in him a resolve to “strive ever onward toward the highest existence.”‘Pasted from <http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/11123/pg11123.html>
Goethe’s Mephistopheles’ Conception….
Goethe’s Mephistopheles’ Conception.“It is a moot question whether Goethe at first conceived Mephistopheles as the Earth-spirit’s envoy, sent for the express purpose of showing Faust about the world, or whether the Devil was thought of as coming of his own accord. Be that as it may, Faust is an experience-drama, and the Devil’s function is to provide the experience. And he is a devil, not the Devil, conceived as the bitter and malignant enemy of God, but a subordinate spirit whose business it is, in the world-economy, to spur man to activity. This he does partly by cynical criticism and opposition, but more especially by holding out the lures of the sensual life. At first Mephistopheles was not thought of as working solely for a reward in the shape of souls captured for eternity, but as playing his part for the diabolical pleasure of so doing. In the course of time, however, Goethe invested him more and more with the costume and traits of the traditionary Devil.”The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume I. Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English. In Twenty Volumes. (1913).INTRODUCTION TO FAUSTBY CALVIN THOMAS, LL.D.Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures, Columbia UniversityPasted from <http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/11123/pg11123.html>
Continental Reformation Attitudes to Witchcraft
Continental Reformation Attitudes to Witchcraft(Protestantism has fewer defences against sorcery than Catholicism so the Protestant Reformation increased fear of witchcraft)“In Germany, even more largely than in other continental Germany, countries, the popular belief in the infernal origin of practices of sorcery in this age found expression in wild scandals and uncontrollable fictions. It attached itself to a wide variety of personages from the scholastici vagantes, of whom Hans Sachs had already brought an example on the stage, to an Elector of the Empire such as Joachim II of Brandenburg (1535-1571). In France charges of this kind were even brought against a king (Henry III) and his royal mother (Catharine de’ Medici). But if princes were the patrons of necromancy (as they were more especially of alchemy), they likewise persecuted its practice with the utmost severity ; thus we find an edict of the Elector Augustus of Saxony (of the year 1572), proclaiming the penalty of death by fire against whosoever ‘in forgetfulness of his Christian faith shall have entered into a compact, or hold converse or intercourse, with the Devil, albeit such person by magic may do no harm to any one‘ The clause I have italicised strikes me as particularly significant. In vain did a writer such as Johannes Wierus (Wier, Weiher or Weyer) seek, in the spirit of Reginald Scot, to stem the tide of popular prejudice, and to vindicate the memory of those whose fame, like that of Cornelius Agrippa, had by that prejudice been converted into infamy. Wierus’ noble effort (I583 2 ) in the cause of reason, and the partial protest of his contemporary Augustine Lercheimer 3 (1585), were outclamoured by eager witnesses to the truth of the popular superstitions and of the narratives by which they were supported, such as above all Bodin (l59i 4 ), whom Fischart translated into German, and Hondorff (i572 5 ). Thus fostered, these beliefs flourished in Germany through the sixteenth and part of the seventeenth century, the troubles of which furnished them with new new materials. But of these all notice must be left aside. The neighbouring countries were not in advance of Germany ; the last personage widely believed to have entered into a compact with the Evil One was the French Marshal Luxembourg (1628-1695), whose Dialogues in the Kingdom of the Dead with Doctor Faustus were a catchpenny of the year 1733; and if Germany had its Faustus in the sixteenth century, Bohemia had had its Zytho in the fifteenth (in the age of Charles IV), and Poland had its Twardowski, said to have been a contemporary of the German magician, of whose legend his is a reflexion or a singularly close parallel . How the story of Faustus found a ready welcome in the Netherlands and in France, as it did in England, will be immediately shown.”Old English Drama. Select Plays. By A.W. Wardia700402.us.archive.org/18/items/oldenglishdramas00warduoft/oldenglishdramas00warduoft.pdf
The contract-stories differ from one another as to the objects
[Why doesn’t Faust repent? Is it impossible? Contrary to faith? Where is God?]
“The contract-stories differ from one another as to the objects which in the several instances the human party to the bargain designed to secure by it ; but they all adhere to the fundamental idea, that the obligation is invalid against the interposition of the Divine Mercy on behalf of the repentant sinner. Such is the significance of one of the earliest, which also became one of the most widely-spread of these legends and which no commentator on the Faust-legend has failed to notice.”Old English Drama. Select Plays. By A.W. Wardarchive.org/18/items/oldenglishdramas00warduoft/oldenglishdramas00warduoft.pdf
Seven Vices and Seven Virtues (Wrath)
Seven Vices and Seven Virtues (Wrath)Frescoes by GIOTTO
The Seven Vices: WrathFresco, 120 x 55 cmCappella Scrovegni (Arena Chapel), PaduaPasted from <http://www.wga.hu/html/g/giotto/padova/7vicevir/index.html>
The road to hell is paved with good aphorisms
Faust always starts with good intentions – but where will he end up?
From Wikipedia:
‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions is a proverb or aphorism. An alternative form is “hell is full of good meanings, but heaven is full of good works”.
During negotiation, groups that are encouraged to understand the point of view of the other parties do worse than those whose perspective is not enlightened. The threat of punishment may worsen ethical behaviour rather than improve it. Studies of business ethics indicate that most wrongdoing is not due directly to wickedness but is performed by people who did not plan to err.’
Pasted from <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_road_to_hell_is_paved_with_good_intentions>
“Most modern technologies have negative consequences that are both unavoidable and unpredictable. For example, almost all environmental problems, from chemical pollution to global warming, are the unexpected consequences of the application of modern technologies. Traffic congestion, deaths and injuries from car accidents, air pollution, and even global warming are unintended consequences of the invention and large scale adoption of the automobile. Hospital infections are the unexpected side-effect of antibiotic resistance, and even human overpopulation is the side-effect of various technological (i.e., agricultural and industrial) revolutions.”
Pasted from <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintended_consequences>
[You can see how the Faust legend is applied to Western Civilization and the modern idea and dependency on “progress”—in the hopes of something better, sooner, through the 14th-16th centuries of Faust, Europe decided that instead of focusing on the afterlife they should try to make life on Earth more endurable. To do that they put their faith into a God-less path of materialism & reason—science and technology. With that humanitarian resolve, they were forsaking God like Faust did. To be fair, they didn’t necessarily intend it that way (the same could be said about Faust). They also thought they might get closer to God by learning how things worked. There are many justifications for wanting God’s secret knowledge.
Like Goethe’s naive sorcerer’s apprentice, they stand a chance of screwing up badly. The more you progress, the more you have to progress to stay ahead of your mistakes. It becomes a race to progress faster so you can fix your mistakes before they catch up with you. Repentance is difficult.
By traditional Euro-Christian measure the material world is the home of the Devil, so from that perspective of the arc of European history, by turning away from God and putting faith into materialism, they have put their faith into the Devil, and there’s a Faustian chance that all progress will turn out be illusory and the path to failure and damnation.]
“The origins of the Faust legend are of very great
“The origins of the Faust legend are of very great antiquity. The essentials underlying the story are the pact with Satan, and the supposed vicious character of purely human learning. The idea of the pact with Satan belongs to both Jewish and Christian magico-religious belief, but is probably more truly Kabalistic than anything else, and can scarcely be traced further back; unless it resides in the savage idea that a sacrificed person takes the place of the deity, to which he is immolated during the period of life remaining to him before his execution, and afterwards becomes one with the god. The wickedness of believing in the al-sufficiency of human knowledge is a favourite theme with the early Lutherans, whose beliefs strongly coloured the Faust legend; but vivid hues and wondrously carven outlines are also afforded its edifice by the thought of the age in which it finally took shape; and in the ancient Faust- books we find tortuous passages of thought and quaintnesses of conception which recall to our minds the artistry of the Renaissance.”“The Encyclopedia of the Occult” (Faust) by Lewis SpenceThe Encyclopedia of the Occult: A Compendium of Information on the Occult Sciences, Occult Personalities, Psychic Science, Magic, Spiritism and Mysticism. Lewis Spence. Bracken Books, 1988Pasted from <http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Encyclopedia_of_the_Occult.html?id=jRJ7QgAACAAJ&redir_esc=y>