How far can we liberate ourselves from the human condition according to the myth of Faust?

The English Faust Book: A Critical Edition Based on the Text of 1592, Cambridge University Press, 1994

This article is based on a literature class from Champollion High school in Grenoble, on a German history class in Paris IV University dedicated to the Historia von D. Johann Fausten and to Goethe’s adaptation, and on a « Schnellkurs » book on German literature.

The full title explains Faust’s whole story: a scholar summons the devil and sells his soul against immeasurable powers.

The story was anonymously published as folk book or “Volksbuch” at the end of the 16^th century in German Thuringia. It became a bestseller and was widely translated. It further inspired numerous adaptations even illegal ones. Faust was read as entertainment even if it was not its primary function.

Faust was written as a myth, meaning a fabulous tale with which everyone could identify.

However, the story takes place during the protestant reform of Martin Luther at the beginning of the 16th century. The book would support this religious ideal as enlightening example  “Beispielgeschicht” or as the opposite of a “vita”, i.e. a medieval story of a saint to instil a sense of morality. It would denounce the clergy’s financial decay in the context of the people’s poverty. It would preach the motto “sola scriptura, sola fide, sola gratia “, meaning only the bible is authoritative, only faith frees, only God gives salvation.

Besides the decay of the clergy, Faust is written during the age of Discovery (America, printing, heliocentrism…) where curiosity and travel motivated men like Faust. The author links the impulses of the main character to the “curiositas” or “Fürwitz”, to the pride in transcending the limits of human knowledge, while he describes the demise of Faust like the one of Orpheus.

[Orpheus: his wife dies on their wedding day. He persuades the Ruler of the underworld to bring her back on one condition. Orpheus should not turn around to see his wife before their return on earth. He breaks the rule out of fear and loses his wife.]

The vanity of Faust would stand for his opposition to God, for his will of equality with God, for the breach of God’s authority. Faust seems to retrace the steps of Prometheus and Icarus.

[Prometheus refuses the sacrifice and punishment of mankind by Zeus, who deprives them of fire. He steals a spark of fire and gives them back. Zeus punishes him dreadfully.

[Icarus: escapes from a labyrinth thanks to wings made of feathers glued with wax but he forgets the paternal warning and flies closest to the sun, exhilarated by his flight, causing his fatal fall].

Faust faces a contradiction between mortality and limits of human conditions on the one hand, and on the other the contemporary desire for the absolute, freedom, limitless knowledge “Wissendrang”.

Mephistopheles fools Faust leading him to believe in their horizontal relationships. His pact teaches him at its end the hazards of passion and satisfaction of his desires.

In fine, the conservative moral of the book refers to the Lutheran ideal: human salvation requires faith.

What adaptation could we write in a time of dreams of space exploration, artificial intelligence and robotics? Which contradictions will face Faust at the beginning of the 21^st century?

For instance, the adaptation of Thomas Mann would associate the pact with the devil to the support of the bourgeoisie to Nazism.

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