Today was my “German” day: I was re-discovering Faust by J.W.Goethe. The last time I read it was several decades ago. It’s interesting how literary works change with the change of our experience. After some 30-40 years you look at the same thing with quite different eyes.
It appears I have become more naïve with time. The first question that I asked myself was: Why should it have been namely Mephistopheles who Faust addressed about transcendent knowledge? God could give the scholar much richer knowledge beyond the ordinary range of perception. And there would have been no need to conclude a contract with the devil. Of course, besides knowledge, Faust was also after earthly pleasures, which was a clause of the contract too. Well, if Faust was a real seeker of truth (as the author portrays him to be), the pleasures could come on their own – in the wake of Faust’s spiritual and intellectual quest. The second clause could then be simply left out from the contract.
But the idea to “stop the moment” is really great! That’s what any kind of art (literature, painting, music) is about: “Zum Augenblicke würde ich sagen: // Verweile doch, du bist so schön!“
In a philological commentary that prefaces Goethe’s volume, the author speaks of Faust as a “Wahrheitssucher, der die Welt ergründen wollte.” The word “ergründen” may be quite the right one in Faust’s case – covering such English words as fathom, sound, comprehend, feel out, get to the bottom of, penetrate into the secret of, grasp, perceive, conceive, make out, discern, get the picture of, take in, interpret, and many others.
Goethe wrote Faust all his life – for the reader to penetrate into its secrets as long as one lives.
BLOGGING IS LIVING 