Expanding Eyes: A Visionary Education

Goethe invented the idea of a Classical Walpurgis Night? Why? Four quests: Faust for Helen (again), Mephistopheles for sex, the Homulculus for a body, and a fourth quest, symbolized by the enigmatic Cabiri. Symbolism of 3 and 4; of fire and water; of life as evolutionary metamorphosis.

The Homunculus, artificial disembodied intelligence created by Wagner, tells the group that Faust is dreaming of Helen’s engendering through the rape of Leda, and that Faust must be revived at the Classical Walpurgis Night, where he will search for a body. The site in Thessaly is the Pharsalian fields, where Julius Caesar defeated Pompey and Cato, victory of future imperialism over freedom, the ir...

Faust descends to the uncanny realm of the Mothers while the Court watches. He attempts to seize Helen of Troy, but an explosion knocks him unconscious. As Act 2 opens, he has been removed to his old study, still in a coma. Wagner has become an alchemist. Serious alchemy as a ritual meditation whose goal was the spiritualization of matter.

To celebrate the solving of the Emperor’s financial crisis, a carnival-masque, dramatizing society’s ultimate value: wealth. Faust as Plutus, god of wealth, on a chariot. The mysterious Boy Charioteer who leads the chariot. Hijinks involving illusions of wealth. The Emperor commands Faust to summon up Helen of Troy. Mephistopheles tells Faust he must descend to the Nothing that is the ground of be...

The Holy Roman Empire is broke, but Faust and Mephistopheles “solve” the Emperor’s problem by inventing wealth that only exists on paper—in short, by inventing modern finance, based not on material wealth like gold but symbolic wealth like money. It is fake alchemy, a con job. It is also the world of modern finance.

Goethe does judge Faust morally, but not in the Aristotelian framework of the tragic hero, which is how he’d like to see himself. He is instead an antihero, redeemed, but not by the sacrifice of Christ: instead, perhaps unfortunately, through that of an innocent female figure, saving an unworthy man. The metaphor of the waterfall, the rainbow created by the sun within its spray: spirit immanent in...

For stark power, the end of Part 1 is almost unequalled in modern literature. Gretchen, mad, will not leave the dungeon, and Faust leaves her. Why is there a Part 2? In it, Faust moves in new directions: into the larger sociopolitical realm, and into transpersonal psychological depths. The difficulty of making a moral judgment of Faust.

Walpurgis Night, April 30, the day before May Day, an old fertility festival demonized by northern Christianity into a witches’ Sabbath. Goethe backs away from initial plans to show an orgy, substituting a strange “Intermezzo,” but there is a catalogue of demonic female spirits, from Lilith to a figure who looks like Gretchen, with a red line across her neck.

Gretchen distrusts Faust’s lack of religion. What does he think about God? “Feeling is all,” he says. Faust, with Mephistopheles’ help, kills Gretchen’s brother Valentine in a sword fight. Then Faust and Mephistopheles begin ascending a mountain to attend the witches’ sabbath on Walpurgis Night.

The “Gretchen tragedy” is not a tragedy at all but Aristotelian or Shakespearean standards, not to fall of a great and elite figure but of a common and unknown one. Perhaps more accurately called “melodrama,” an important genre in the 19th century. Faust seduces Gretchen, who falls in love with him. Her friend Martha, a much more down-to-earth figure.

The Witch’s Kitchen episode is satiric—the Witch’s servants are marmosets, and the spell by which she makes a youth potion for Faust parodies the symbolism of alchemy. Faust sees an ideal Feminine image in a mirror. On the street, he sees and is infatuated with Margarete, or Gretchen. He and Mephistopheles snoop in her bedroom and leave jewels.

The black poodle turns into Mephistopheles, who escapes by having a rat gnaw a hole in the pentagram that traps him.  But he returns.  The famous pact—with the twist that what Faust demands is unsatisfied desire.  The minute in which he is fulfilled enough to wish the moment to linger—then he loses.  Mephistopheles disguised as Faust demoralizes an idealistic student.  In Auerbach’s tavern, drinki...

Distracted from suicide, Faust walks with Wagner among the townspeople celebrating Easter and spring. Faust’s famous speech about having “two souls,” one aspiring upward, the other holding fast to earth. A black poodle follows him back to his study, where, in another famous speech, he changes “In the beginning was the Word” to “In the beginning was the act.” The black poodle turns into Mephistophe...

Faust has mastered all conventional knowledge and finds it worthless, so he turns to “forbidden knowledge,” a book of magic. He sees a vision of celestial harmony, the Macrocosm, but it is transcendent and beyond him. So he conjures the Earth Spirit, but is terrified. The Earth Spirit dismisses him with contempt. Faust is about to drink poison in despair, but is distracted by Easter celebrations o...

Three preliminary poems deepen the meaning and experience of the poem to follow. The third, the “Prologue in Heaven,” is a revisionist version of the Book of Job. God and Mephistopheles make a bet—but about Faust, not Job. God says that humanity is lazy and needs to be pricked out of its passivity by the likes of such a “rogue” or Trickster.

The greatest work of German literature by German’s greatest writer, by reputation. Goethe as Renaissance man with accomplishments in many fields. The Romantic style of Faust: the Contraries of visionary idealism and down-to-earth satire. The Faust legend. Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus and other works about Faust. The development of Faust over 60 years.

Prospero’s melancholy speech about life as a vanishing illusion seems to subvert the paradisal vision of the wedding masque. But the illusions of art provide the model of a greater reality and the power to work towards it by changing people. In three hours, true love has transpired, people have been rehabilitated and changed for the better, and the dead have come back to life. Life is “strange,” l...

Prospero summons up a masque, a spectacle in honor of the newly betrothed Ferdinand and Miranda. Using characters from Classical mythology, it dramatizes the four levels of the Chain of Being, especially the paradisal imagery of the Golden Age. Then, suddenly, Prospero dismisses the vision, and gives his famous speech. All things pass away leaving “not a rack behind.” How to reconcile this with th...

In the central act, Prospero puts three sets of characters through ordeals that are at once punitive, when appropriate, and transformative. Ferdinand humbles himself to draw logs to win Miranda—and does. Stephano, Trinculo, and Caliban’s attempt at a Jan.6-style insurrection is turned into farce by Ariel. The Court Party is offered an illusory banquet, which vanishes and a harpy accuses all but Go...

Gonzalo indicates that he does not mean literally his speech about ruling the island to excel the Golden Age. But in what sense, then, does he mean it? While the Court Party sleeps, Antonio and Sebastian plot murder. Caliban meets the two lower-class, satiric characters: Trinculo, the jester, and Stephano, a “drunken butler,” and begins to worship them as gods.

Ferdinand and Miranda see each other and fall in love. Prospero pretends to be the irate senex or possessive father of New Comedy. The Court Party: Alonso is in deep depression; Gonzalo tries to get him to change his negative, hopeless attitude, but is countered by the nihilistic cynicism of Antonio and Sebastian.

The long but necessary back story of Propero and Miranda’s exile. Prospero’s servants, the elemental spirits Ariel and Caliban. Shakespeare’s prophetic foreshadowing of later imperialism and colonialism in the treatment of the native Caliban. Shakespeare’s most famous song. Ferdinand and Miranda meet.

Prospero, in Act 1, Scene 2, gives a long speech to his daughter Miranda telling how, 12 years ago, he was deposed as Duke of Milan to this island by his evil brother Antonio. Prospero and the theme of the wielding of power, in four roles: as ruler, as magician, as artist (creator of theatrical illusions), and as educator.

The four romances at the end of Shakespeare’s career, belonging to an age-old genre, the tale of wonders and marvels, from the Wanderings of the Odyssey to fantasy and science fiction in our time. Act 1, scene one. Why try to stage a storm at sea? A touchstone: how various people face imminent death.

The Duke returns and passes judgment. Mariana pleads for Angelo, wanting him despite his faults. Remarkably, Isabella pleads for Angelo. Four possible weddings: Angelo and Mariana, Isabella and the Duke, Claudio and Julietta, Lucio and the prostitute he got pregnant. A happy ending? The double meaning of “measure for measure,” according to justice or to mercy.