GOETHE VERSUS SHAKESPEARE
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Faust into responsibility for the death of Desdemona-Gretchen. But
while it is true that lago and Othello never understand each other,
lago is evil in a sense in which Mephisto is not. We do not sympa–
thize with lago, and his wickedness is essentially unaccountable.
Mephistopheles, on the other hand, is rather engaging, and while his
wickedness is not explicable psychologically, it is nevertheless fully
accounted for- first by the Lord and then, with characteristic frank–
ness, once more by Mephisto himself, who takes great pains to keep
Faust and the audience well posted as soon as he has made his first
entrance. Decidedly, he is not mysterious but, on the contrary, an
embodiment of ruthless intellectual analysis--though fortunately for
the drama, not only of that. By a stroke of genius, Goethe also asso–
ciates him closely with sex and gives him the sense of humor which
Faust so sorely lacks.
In sum, Faust, unlike Hamlet and Macbeth, is not a titan but
human as we are, and a would-be superman as some of us are; and
Goethe goes further and creates an essentially human devil. The plot
is no longer centered in a man raised above his fellows by inscrutable
fate, one made to perform a hideous deed to which his own will
stands in a questionable and mysterious relation (the crux of
Oedipus,
H arniet
and
Macbeth)
;
instead the hero
wishes
to raise himself above
other men, is eager to experience agony as well as joy, but suffers
like the rest of us when confronted with grief- and for
all
the osten–
tatious interference of spirits, his grief no less than the occasion for
it is as natural as can be. And the central relation, that between
Faust and Mephistopheles, is largely reducible to a formulation used
by Faust in a different context: "Two souls, alas, are dwelling in my
breast." Goethe found both in himself, and so do many of us.
I have said that Faust is etched against the background of his
society, and called attention to the scenes "Before the City Gate" and
"Auerbach's Cellar" as well as the many scenes in which Gretchen's
world comes to life. There is also the Walpurgis Night and, in Part
Two, the Imperial Court, civil war, a Classical Walpurgis Night, and
classical antiquity as it appears in the Helena act. On the whole, it
is therefore not
one
society in which Faust finds himself, as Hamlet
does, or Macbeth, or Othello; rather he transcends his own society
and understands himself, and forces us to understand him, in rela–
tion to the past as well as his own time. We must experience his
