FAUST

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FAUST
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Before the Gretchen tragedy there are two
scenes that have great show value Auerbachs
Tavern in Leipzig and The Witchs Kitchen.

• Auerbachs Tavern is a student drinking
  establishment
• The original Faust is said to have visited the
  tavern in 1526
• Over a century later, two crude frescoes in the
  tavern were painted depicting Faust drinking with
  the students and then flying off on a wine barrel
• Those paintings were still there when Goethe
  studied in Leipzig and visited the tavern
• But Goethes Faust remains withdrawn, and only
  has two short lines in the entire scene
• The theater tradition uses this scene for its
  satirical and slapstick comedic value
• This is the only scene in Faust I that names a
  real location and time
• This is Mephistopheles world Faust disdains the
  carousing

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Witchs Kitchen

• Here we see Faust is about 50, and shaves off
  around 30 years by drinking the witches potion
• Interpreters have spent a couple hundred years
  trying to derive deep meaning from the witchs
  incantations, but the latest consensus is that
  most of it is nonsense
• Faust is appalled and disgusted by the witch and
  the baboons
• The contrast with the enchanting female image in
  the mirror sets the path toward the great power
  of the play the female principle
• Some critics see connections between the beastly
  behavior of the students in Auerbachs Tavern and
  the Marmosets crudeness.
• The ritual of the book, music, torches and brew
  also represents a grotesque parody of Christian
  religious rites.

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The Gretchen Tragedy

• At a superficial level, the scenes involving
  Gretchen are high melodrama
• No matter how innocent, Gretchen feels complicity
  for a number of wrongful deaths her little
  sister, her mother, her brother, and her own
  child.
• In the larger context, Gretchen assumes far
  greater significance, and is instrumental in
  Fausts ultimate salvation
• Through her authentic love, Gretchen becomes the
  embodiment of the Feminine, that principle which
  defines the highest object of Faustian desire and
  redeems Faust in the end

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• A street
• A neat little room
• A promenade
• The neighbor's house
• A street
• A garden - A garden house
• Forest and cavern
• Gretchen's room - Martha's garden
• At the well -The ramparts -The street before
  Gretchen's door.
• Cathedral

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Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Faust. A Tragedy. Part
II (11559-11586)
A chain of marshes lines the hills, Befouling all
the land retrievement To drain this stagnant
pool of ills Would be the crowning last
achievement. Id open room to live for
millions Not safely, but in free resilience. Lush
fallow then to man and cattle yields Swift crops
and comforts from the maiden fields, New
homesteads near the trusty buttress-face Walled
by a bold and horny-handed race. A land of Eden
sheltered here within, Let tempest rage outside
unto the rim,
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And as it laps a breach in greedy riot, Communal
spirit hastens to defy it. Yesthis I hold to
with devout insistence, Wisdoms last verdict
goes to say He only earns both freedom and
existence Who must reconquer them each day. And
so, ringed all about by perils, here Youth,
manhood, age will spend their strenuous
year. Such teeming would I see upon this land, On
acres free among free people stand. I might
entreat the fleeting minute Oh tarry yet, thou
art so fair! My path on earth, the trace I leave
within it Eons untold cannot impair. Foretasting
such high happiness to come, I savor now my
strivings crown and sum.
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All that is changeable Is but refraction The
unattainable Here becomes action. Human
discernment Here is passed by Woman Eternal Draw
us on high.