Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
ates archetypal desires and knowledge hubris within the context of a rec-
ognizably modern world.
4.1 Faust
Probably derived originally from the real-life Georg Faust of Knittlin-
gen,
2
Faust in all his literary manifestations was depicted as displaying
intellectual arrogance and an obsession with transcending the boundaries
of human knowledge. Circulated orally, the Faust legends became in-
creasingly exaggerated, involving magic and familiars. The first written
account, the anonymous Spieß edition of
Historia von D. Johann
Fausten
of 1587 had an unmistakable religious moral, focusing on the
pact with the devil and Faust's gruesome end, accompanied by suitable
passages from Scripture. However,
The Tragical History of Doctor
Faustus
(1604), written only seventeen years later by English playwright
Christopher Marlowe, presented the story in a quite different light.
Although the incidents of Marlowe's play were based on those in the
English translation of the Spieß text, the assessment of the protagonist is
totally divergent.
Marlowe's Faust is a man of his time. His Renaissance-humanist
longing to transcend the limitations of the human intellect is still tem-
pered by the medieval awareness that such an aspiration, like Lucifer's
revolt against God, is doomed to destroy him. Yet Marlowe contrives to
imply that his ultimate destruction is the tragic waste of a gifted man.
The kind of Faust figure that predominates at any point in history is an
index of the status accorded by a society (or an author) to the individual
and to the intellect, as opposed to the value placed on obedience to the
prevailing hegemony, whether Church or State. At one end of the evalua-
tion spectrum, Faust is condemned for his
hubris
and arrogant denial of
God-given limits, and thoroughly deserves his terrible end. At the other
extreme, Faust represents a noble Prometheus figure, asserting the right
to freedom of knowledge and the full development of the individual's
2
Georg Faust was born around 1480 and appears to have had the reputation of a travel-
ing conjuror, hypnotist, and quack doctor on the one hand and of an alchemist and se-
rious student of natural science on the other (Smeed 1975, p. 13).
