THE FAUST LEGEND

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21326, 29 October 1932, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE FAUST LEGEND

ITS GROWTH

BY KOTARE

The recent performance of Gounod's " Faust " confirmed an impression formed years ago that in the opera the name character is completely overshadowed in dramatic value by at least three other characters. When Faust and Mephistopheles are on the stage, the dramatic interest always centres in the mocking fiend. In the Faust-Marguerite scenes, Faust's chief function is to throw into higher relief the tragedy of her love. Even a minor character like Valentine puts Faust into the shade when they occupy the stage together. There is little human value in Faust as Gounod has chosen to regard him. He does things that are necessary to the action of the plot, but lie remains nebulous and unconvincing. Yet Faust has appealed more to the imagination of the world, over a period that now extends to four centuries, than any other figure of history or legend, with the exception of King Arthur, and possibly Joan of Arc. There are four distinct strata in the evolution of his story. There is the man as he was in fifteenth-century Germany. There was the man as legend came to regard him even during his lifetime. There was the gigantic figure of Marlowe's glowing Renaissance imagination, and there was the figure in which Goethe enshrined all humanity as he saw it and particularly the spirit of his own eager age. The Original The man himself is not easy to come at. For long the original of the Faust legend was believed to be that Joharin Fust who was one of the inventors _of printing. His inestimable gift to mankind was not regarded with enthusiasm by the largo body of craftsmen who painfully by band wrought the manuscript volumes of the pre-printing days. Here was one man who could flood the market with books of a perfection of finish, and in numbers, that the hundreds of skilled workers cooperating could not hope to emulate. He did a hundred times the in a hundredth part of the time. Besides, he was putting hundreds of honest men out of a job. It was plain that no man could achieve such results unless he had enlisted help from .superhuman agencies. Angelic assistance could not be considered in the circumstances. He must have struck a bargain with the devil. So one of the greatest benefactors of mankind became through professional jealousy an instrument of the satanic powers, and as the devil did not confer boons without a quid pro quo, Fust must have sold his soul. But Fust the printer is usually ruled out by modern investigators, though one abandon him with regret. There were many wizards in the fifteenth century, alchemists and workers of magic, and among them a Johann Faust, who, like others of his kidney, wandered over Europe, living on bis wits and the abysmal credulity of mankind. It is. easy to be superior from our lofty eminence of culture and scientific knowledge; but modern man gapes after magic with as eager and capacious a mouth as his fellows of the Middle Ages, or the clients of an African witch doctor or a Maori tobunga. Credulity still seems the badge of all our tribe. Magic As late as 1589 Venice entertained, at huge expense and over a long period, an alchemist named Bragadini, who claimed that he could transmute base metal into gold. The Fugger News Letters give details that show how completely greed and credulity held the hearts of men even in Renaissance Italy. Probably tile original Faust was of the same type. He was a student of magic, something of a ventriloquist, probably a skilful conjurer, almost certainly a magnetic, compelling personality. He carefully fostered the public faith in his miraculous powers and could produce phenomena sufficiently surprising to delude the simple. At his death the legend-making instincts of man had full scope. Why did he die like another man if bo had powers no other man possessed ? The story circulated that in spite of all efforts to keep him on bis back upon his bier he turned over on his face. Obviously he was the devil's property, and even in death had to turn his face to his master and his eternal dwelling place. He became the hero of popular song, not only in Germany, but in France and England as well. He pointed a useful moral. The chief point in his eventful history was that in the end the devil demanded full payment. Everything else worked up to that climax. The more wonderful the powers the devil conferred on him the more impressive the picture when the devil relentlessly came to claim his own. Mephostophilis

Christopher Marlowe lifted Faust into literature. He saw the dramatic possibilities of his life and death. The Elizabethan world wanted strong emotions and unusual situations in its drama. Marlowe had to humanise the figure of legend. He had to show why Faust sold himself to the devil. It was not sufficient to paint him as a monster of evil who naturally and inevitably engaged himself to the devil. He shows him as a man who has ceased to find any satisfaction in all that human knowledge can give him. He has tried everything the Schools can teach. And life is running on to its destined end. What is the use of it all ? He wants power. Ho wants it at once, here and now. " A sound magician is a mighty god." He will try what magic can do. So he conjures up the devil and gains Mcphostophihs for his servant. He is to be spirit in form and substance, is to get whatever he desires, and is to be invisible at will. After _ twentyfour years Lucifer is to have him body and soul. We see him indulging his fantastic sense of power. Helen of Troy is reincarnated for him. And so to the end. In the stupendous climax the twenty-four years run out. There half-an-hour left, ten minutes, one minute. Faust tries to repent. In bitter agony 110 prays and promises. The hour strikes, and he is carried off to his eternal doom. Goethe and Gounod Goethe is not concerned to make a vivid drama. He has poured into 1' aust all die broodings of one of the profoundest minds the world has known. He faces the problem of evil and of life's ultimate values. Faust wants to know. But lie is tired of mere book-knowledge. What 0 f ]jf o —for what avails to have learned all the world's wisdom by books when there is life calling him, the life ho has viewed from outside as a spectator and critic ? He sells himself that he may crowd into a few years all that life can possibly give to man. He will have nothing iu himself unexpressed. Ho feels the daemonic urge to self-realisation, an instinctive drive that recks not of good or ill, but demands only experience. Ihe only way he can crowd it all into Ins short venrs is to summon powers that will place all the past and all the present into his hands now. . He finds among much else that in lus vehement self-assertion ho brings shame and death to others. Ho finds he cannot ignore certain fundamental aspects of things All experience is not equally good. There nre values and values. Ihe second part shows his redemption. 110 has been shaken by Gretchen s miserable end. Gradually his sense of value clarifies. In the end ho sees that self-culture under the spell of beauty and service that makes life easier and richer for others are the supremo values of living. And in these he saves his soul. _ Gounod's opera is simply a sentimentalised melodramatic version of some aspects of the Gretchen episode of the long pilgrimage to the heights.