Translated from MSZ 1987-7

Goethe’s Faust

Report on a cultural inheritance

One could easily be indifferent to the fact that a writer named Goethe died 155 years ago. Neither his subject matter nor the artistry of his writing would provide an occasion for more than historical amusement were it not for the fact that the ethos he promoted is as topical for the intelligentsia of the year 1987 as ever. Faith in the rule of goodness in the world – which, despite everything, must at the end of the day come out on top – spurs on not just the doggedness of the little people who sacrifice a lot. In the intellectual elite’s hunger for meaning, it actually becomes pretentious: the trustees of the ideological superstructure gladly let go of their hopeful, abstract interpretations of the purposes and the subjects that actually rule the world and give these activities the self-confidence of a special righteousness. In their appreciation of “great works” of art and literature, they enjoy and problematize the basic meaningfulness of reality as the final court of appeal for the moral idealism they apply to everything.

Goethe satisfies this need for intellectual self-righteousness that comes from a “classic” – in fact, it was the driving motif and the main theme of his poetic imagination. His “Faust” is a veritable storybook of techniques to help moral thinking understand freedom as a problem, responsible restraint as a reward, and this reward as a good reason for loyalty.

A glimpse into the poet’s workshop

A drama usually begins with an exposition scene that present the dramatis personae, their circumstances and motives, etc., to help understand its storyline. “Faust,” this masterpiece of German drama, does not begin this way. Instead, Goethe brings the actual plot to a standstill with three methodological exposition scenes which introduce not the dramatic events, but rather their meaning – which at the same time refutes his artistic aim and offers some clues about it. Anyone who finds it necessary to announce himself by means of a “Dedication,” his poetic tools through a “Prelude on the Stage,” and finally his objective as a prerequisite for comprehending the work that follows through a “Prologue in Heaven” reveals that the literary portrayal of his theme is inadequate for conveying its “true” message. What’s more, anyone who reveals in advance everything that matters to them and why has already finished their message and can spare themselves the trouble of using their imagination to elaborately repeat what they obviously already know how to say without an elaborate plot. The achievement of free subjectivity in shaping a subject into a whole special conception is thus characterized from the outset by mediocrity: the mere determination to present “authenticity” is supposed to convince the reader or listener of the exquisite quality of the poetic perspective.

What standards of artistic statement is Goethe now committed to?

1. The inscrutable life of a poet

In the “Dedication,” Goethe presents his work, first of all, as part of his life story. He would be free to do so were it not for the fact that he underhandedly twists this life story into part of the work. But because he already wrote and performed a fragment of “Faust” and other works twenty years earlier, this is how he stages a memory of his youthful works –

“You come back, wavering shapes, out of the past,
In which you first appeared to clouded eyes”

as an allusion to a process of intellectual maturation (what does “clouded eyes” mean here?), just as he mourns past tea times as a vanished community of souls –

“They will not hear me as I sing these songs,
The parted souls to whom I sang the first” –

suggesting that people today may not be able to empathize with the many relationships that ultimately contributed to the present result. A terrible premonition comes over him:

“My grief resounds to strangers, unknown throngs
Applaud it, and my anxious heart would burst.”

Good grief, what will these strangers make of this opus, which is really only accessible to like-minded people?! This jeremiad certainly doesn‘t testify to any significant development in his poetic soul, since Johann Wolfgang’s “youthful heart” already “trembled“ from similar reflections in the form of his “Werther”:

“And yet to be misunderstood is the fate of the like of us.” (Werther, Book 1)

The warning to exercise caution when dealing with the work, presented as a rhyming theory of art in a tone of personal concern, is, however, characteristic of the poetic self-image. The idea that a proper understanding of the work essentially requires listening intently to the author’s turbulent inner feelings and empathizing with the ups and downs of his struggle to truly express what he means – a condition that can’t be meet – really has nothing to do with Goethe’s “painful” insight in the wisdom of old age. It’s the almost repertoire-like manner (familiar even to science as a hermeneutic demand since time immemorial) with which poets flaunt their unique individual sensitivity as much as they deny it: No sooner do they strike the pose of someone who has to communicate their most subtle secrets to a dim-witted world than they are handing out admission tickets like Faust to his Wagner – “If you do not feel it, you will not get it by hunting for it” – and demanding that their audience, as a basis for understanding everything they have to say, unconditionally accept that their messages are of an extraordinary nature. Boasting is one side of this groundless ploy; the other is that the pushy celebration of one’s own sensibility is merely a method of subservience (not even limited to the literati): a way of thinking that, in everything it burps up, always returns to itself, its abilities and modes of perception, obey commands, and sets up such things for its own acclaim. This is not drawn from biographical considerations, but rather from the fact that a kind of well-being is simply not possible –

“A shudder grips me, tear on tear falls burning,
Soft grows my heart, once so severe and brave” –

when freely contemplating an unpleasant reality.

2. Idealistic irony

There is a certain contradiction in withholding the “actual” message of the poem from the audience by referring to their questionable ability to sensitively grasp it.

However, Goethe, whose ego is really bothered by the now truly totally exclusive significance of his message and moves from one methodological reflection to another, devotes Exposition Scene No. 2, the “Prelude on Stage,” to this “problem.” The poet appearing here echoes the sentiments of the “Dedication” down to even the individual formulations, once again invoking “Love and Friendship,” the lifeblood of poetic creation; he expresses his horror of the audience, the “crowd” to whom he does not want to sacrifice the “deepest sense“ of his work for the sake of momentary success; a form which appears only “when the first years are done”; finally, he invokes the poetic “right of humanity” to bring the specifically artistic element – namely, rhythm and harmony – to the “tuneless mass of elements”; in short, he is a true dreamer of the poetic ideal. He is answered by a theater director, a realist of the terms of performance, which also includes the lowly entertainment needs of the audience.

“They rush here mindlessly, as to a Masque,
And curiosity inspires their hurry” –

such as its fatal tendency to understand only that which it currently understands –

“What use to bring them your complete intent?
The Public will soon pick at what you’ve dressed.”

Here too the characters clearly act as mouthpieces for Goethe’s literary theory and together contribute to a new idealization of the “real,” which is supposed to touch the heart of humanity yet isn’t so easy to touch. Ok, if various incidents only become “a whole” through “the power of Man, revealed by the bard” – then how can it be comprehended by the ordinary intelligence which, lacking a poetic gift, can only perceive “a whole” that is one? If it isn’t about comprehension anyway, but rather about immersing oneself in sweet visions of “pure joy,” “grace [in] our hearts,” “deepest being,” and “lovely springtime blossoms,” then there is no problem whatsoever if the audience’s powers of comprehension are not sufficient to grasp the content of this intention. The desire for harmony as a moral ideal that transcends all the conflicts that make life so difficult already resides in the supposedly inferior need for entertainment and distraction, and there is an ability to form ideas of harmony from childhood onwards – so what’s so unique about the poet? The distinction between a poetic and childlike imagination, namely that a poet continues to dedicate sustained efforts to believing in the reality of the world’s moral order while children have already come to realize the hypocrisy of this belief (which does not mean they abandon it: they simply stop regarding it as their main interest in the world) is something we are happy to concede to Goethe; he argues against it himself.

With the third character in the prelude, a “Clown,” the reflections on art’s ability to make itself understandable and humanity’s capability of “grasping meaning” are then capped off – the prince of poets affirms the ironic mediation of his fictional opponents:

“Give us a play with such emotions!
Reach into life, it is a teeming ocean!
All live in it, not many know it well,
And where you seize it, it exerts a spell.”

This humorous advice is a poetic pauper’s oath in two respects. Firstly, it documents the true “authenticity” of the literary message: someone who lets himself truly “reach into” a few of the poets’ riches and spells he was previously unaware of and to “seize” life’s “teeming ocean” is already an idealist searching for perspectives that give his everyday life a higher meaning. He wants to be able to interpret everything that happens to him as information about himself (“what is in his heart”), for which he only needs the idea of some kind of order that can be filled in with “now this, now that,” i.e. anything he wants. And for this heartfelt need of the moral subject who absolutely refuses to conceive of his life as simply the sum of the duties demanded of him – no, exciting knots must be untied and tied up again, interesting scenarios entered into and then freely left behind for new horizons! – for this, art is as suitable as it is superfluous. Any sports match provides the same service!

Secondly, however, Goethe’s purpose also very aptly characterizes the sham of poetic “authenticity”: Anyone who gets caught up in the ironically hidden meanings, the fact that the “thrill” of the audience from one moment to the next is not the message that the poet is pushing out of a more basic and “whole”-ish thrill, is certainly just as much of a meaning-needy schmuck – but one who worries about the uniqueness of his conformity with the pre-established harmony of the world; in other words: an ambitious moralist. He longs to position himself within an exclusive sphere of ideas where he can imagine every reach into “life” that he permits himself is the fulfillment of a higher mission entrusted specifically to him. Who wouldn’t admit that making things interesting requires a certain amount of artistry?! But, unfortunately, it requires nothing more than a certain belief in one’s own excellence, which, God knows, does not draw its sustenance from the “intimacy of the heart.”

3. Methodological art religion

It is inherent in the nature of idealistic irony that it is the inversion of the real, so not real at all; the figurative, merely underlying meaning of the “teeming ocean of life,” which poetry should only playfully allude to (the real) –

“In motley pictures little clarity,
Much error and a spark of verity” –

is meant bitterly seriously by Goethe. The reference to the distance between the mode of representation and the depicted content which is supposed to be something other than what it is perceived to be does not assert any specific shortcoming in this content, but rather methodologically declares it a mystery, a semblance of itself. This approach, which has provided steady impetus to modern poetry up to Thomas Mann, is the means to keep alive blind faith in the moral character of every occurrence, precisely in view of a bourgeois “life” that has long since come to treat its ideals in a quite functional way. A mystery play like “Faust” only resonates because its educated audience, while practicing the idea of the striving for meaning itself, does not want to think of its religious content as such, but rather wants to see a particularly profound intellectual activity at work.

The “Prologue in Heaven,” which concludes the trio of introductory pieces to “Faust,” occurred to Goethe precisely for this reason, and is considered particularly original for the same reason. For, practically speaking, it’s a joke to preface a dramatic creation with the kind of signal from above that the “Mystic Choir” performs with deliberately unintentional comedy as the resolution of the entire play towards the end of Faust II:

"All that is transitory / Is but a parable;
The inadequate, / Here it becomes an event...”

With this conclusion and its anticipation in the heavenly scenario, which wants to be the truth of the Faust parable and is itself, of course, only a parable, Goethe affirms for the third time that the idea of a higher hidden reason, a significance to all earthly things, first requires a purely intentional feat, so that one can then correctly understand the artfully presented events as a foreground and appreciate the interpretation of Faust’s striving as an expression of the profound humanity of efforts driven by a yearning for meaning, i.e., “referring” to a universal human deeper meaning of existence, as a theoretical act.

There is thus a curious relationship between the “Prologue in Heaven” and “Faust,” its epilogue on earth: without its function for the play that follows it, the prologue would be simply ridiculous. What enlightened person seriously believes that a lively back-and-forth between an angel, the devil, and God the Lord is the starting point of his earthly fate? Although this is only an image of his customary supposition that the world is governed by moral principles, it is precisely in this imagery that irrationalism is all too clearly recognizable. No one would admit to believing in mere fantasy, of course – idealism should be objective. And this appearance of objectivity is created by the contrived circumstance that the heavenly drama is “only” the backdrop for a plot that is itself motivated by earthly concerns. Deciphering religious symbolism – an intellectually demanding task, given that the heavenly dramatis personae simply hurl abstract concepts at each other – thus replaces belief in its content, which is, of course, merely a somewhat convoluted form of belief. And vice versa: without the prologue, “Faust” would suffer the drawback that, although a human search for meaning takes shape, its meaning would not be discernible except through the protagonist’s assertions. And who would want to recognize their moral ideal in the mere eccentricities of an intellectual oddball? In order to convey the deeply humanistic character of such idiocy, which must not be perceived as such, a scenario that goes beyond the main plot is indeed necessary to create the illusion of universality and depth. Modern performance practice only proves that the interpreters who give meaning to the heavenly hocus-pocus can also be replaced by other behind-the-scenes operations; a fine example of how much effort free spirits waste in to secure the reward for their longing to contribute to the moral cosmos – the “sweat” that faith in the meaningfulness of the world costs its congregation and its prophets is still the best argument for it.

How easy it is to have both the illusion and the depth of meaning can be gleaned by a look at the content of the “Prologue in Heaven.” Maybe that’s where it’s going!

– First, three archangels, who must have sprung from a nature religion, trumpet the sun, earth, moon, and stars (not to mention the weather) as “unfathomably splendid” works of the Lord, to whom they must admit they gladly perform their jubilant service:

“His sight, that none can comprehend it,
Gives strength to angels...”

One would have to be an angel! – This envy is expressed by a devil named Mephisto, who at least takes satisfaction in the fact that he is a more conscientious moralist than the hollow flatterers:

“I cannot speak as nobly ...
...My pathos would be sure to make you laugh.”

But why then? The Jesuitical son of hell even masters the double hypocrisy of, first, only caring about others (thereby shaming the lord of the archangels, who elevates himself for his own “strength”) –

Of sons and worlds I know nothing to say,
I only see [!] how men live in dismay.

if, secondly, he subsequently squints, with a kick in the shins to the Lord to emphasize his own integrity as a superior representative of heavenly harmony:

“His [Man’s] life might be a bit more fun,
Had you not given him that spark of heaven’s sun;
He calls it reason and employs it, resolute,
To be more brutish than is any brute”

Does this mean that one is to see “only” human “dismay” when one condemns the objects of moral worries for their sinfulness? This choice reason for every scourge on earth of course goes back to the abuse of a gift from God, “reason,” which the trusting Lord foolishly bestowed on his flock without the necessary addition of the milk of a pious way of thinking – one sees that the devil is indeed a fallen angel, a frustrated claqueur, and, like every like-minded grandmother, dissatisfied with the world order as long as custom and decency do not reign supreme.

– The Lord, as the third member of the trio, is not immune to human weakness either when his “great works” are being so harshly disparaged, and he misses the constructive aspect in the devilish criticism:

“Do you come only to accuse?
Does nothing on the earth seem to you right?”

But in the end, he is so sure of the success of his creation, even in moral terms, that he himself enjoys the moral function of the “mischief-maker”:

“For man’s activity can easily abate,
He soon prefers uninterrupted rest;
To give him this companion hence seems best,
Who roils and must as Devil create.”

In any literary exchange of such moral considerations, the dialogue would now be exhausted; one person sees everything arranged in the most meaningful way, another complains about the decline of morals, and a third believes that even a rainy day has its good points and that immorality is the sting of the righteous anyway. Thus, each confirms to the other that the whole world is, must be, and inevitably remains a single act of divine worship.

– Here, however, the author appears as a secret fourth character who, although he has already presented the alternatives in his scenario – showing how quickly one can achieve a state of self-satisfaction with the order of the world (= meaning) – he insists on adding to this goal the effort of a confusing search. Following this need for separate confirmation of the moral ideal, he lets his characters break character. Although Mephisto and the Lord are well aware of the significance of their respective viewpoints, they make a wager about it and choose Doctor Faust as an example. One of them already considers him his “servant” anyway and is quite familiar with him –

“The gardener knows, however small the tree,
That bloom and fruit adorn its later years”

and reiterates the terms of the wager (under what circumstances he will give up on Faust) that original sin is itself, first, attributable to the existence of morality –

“Man errs as long as he will strive” –

and secondly, that it inevitably leads to its glorious restoration:

“A good man in his darkling aspiration
Remembers the right road throughout his quest.”

And the other agrees to tempt human folly with, of all things, a model idealist of whom it is impossible to foresee from the outset by what he might be tempted – since his heart is attached to nothing at all:

“Not earthly are the poor fool’s meat and drink!
His spirit’s ferment drives him far ...
And all that;s near and all that’s far
Cannot soothe the upheaval in his heart.”

This bet, as far as can be predicted, is either impossible to decide, since it boils down to a matter of definition – what each of the two wish to regard as proof of the “right road” or its opposite – or the man in charge decides the matter with a surprise attack – which is indeed what happens. End of drama:

“Who ever strives with all his power,
We are allowed to save.”

Remember: just a short while ago “striving” was the only permissible means of entering into “temptation”!

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

With these methodological preliminaries, which comprise 353 verses of the drama, the subject matter of “Faust” is essentially dealt with. However, as their content shows, this principle is insufficient for the poet, so that a further 11,758 verses expand upon the established ideas. After all, a plot had been promised! If we summarize our view of the poet’s workshop, captured so completely by Goethe

– the poet’s struggle with and satisfaction in his work
– the appearance of responsibility he takes on in his choice of means and knows to be untrue,
– and finally the moral ideal of a ethical endeavor that brings its own reward, namely that it is part of a good divine plan,

then that action stands as mere material, indifferent imagery for these poetic interests that repeatedly lead back to this tenuous principle. True to his own rules, Goethe depicts his ideal view of himself in the actual drama; he doesn’t tell a story, but presents events in such a way that they correspond to his worldview. Achieving this is an art: the instrumentalization not of reason (as in science), but of the imagination for the visualization of a satisfying meaning of the world. That this barren endeavor should be a “free wandering of blessed geniuses” is his ideal, or rather, his message.

The Faustian quest

Faust is a drama of a unique kind, fully intended to be exemplary for its aesthetic morality, even in its execution. Apart from the fact that the aging Goethe gave its actual plot (that of Part I) a whole new direction in Part II after various introductions which break up the plot into its intended meaning and actually lead it back to the higher spheres of the “Prologue,” the first part of the tragedy is already a rather theoretical spectacle. As if his characters were not simply meant to convey the poetic message through their actions, but still had to argue for their right to exist in the realm of the spirit, they constantly run around, with few exceptions, as mouthpieces for their own concepts, revealing that their creator had to force his imagination into serving his ideal.

1. Knowledge and interest

It begins with the hero of the play delivering endless monologues about every aspect of his existence. The famous first one:

“I have, alas, studied philosophy, [etc.]...
With keen endeavor, through and through.
And here I am, for all my lore,
The wretched fool I was before!”

How come? Wasn’t he paying attention? No, the problem goes deeper. Precisely because he knows so much, he sees

“We can know nothing! It burns my heart.”

But since one certainly does know something when one has figured something out, and conversely, since a fundamental doubt about the possibility of knowledge cannot itself be a result of knowledge, Doctor Faustus seems to be acquainted with two kinds of knowledge. The kind he has studied does not satisfy him; he is seeking a different kind:

“That I might see what secret force
Hides in the world and rules its course
Envisage the creative blazes
Instead of rummaging its phrases.”

This interest cannot in fact be pursued scientifically. It aims at a kind of knowledge that relieves the scholar of the effort at explanation by delivering the truth directly to his doorstep without the detour of reflection. Its reason therefore lies not in a specific criticism of the theories that Faust encounters, but in his intellectual psychology: because Faust demands that his thinking should satisfy him, bring him into harmony with the world, and thus give meaning to his existence as an intellectual giant – and because it doesn’t do that, he turns to magic to find the philosopher’s stone. Morality is the starting point of his search for meaning, the longing to justify his mind before standards that can never be comprehensive enough to grant the doctor a worthy place in the world order: an ideal as elitist as it is humble. Faust, who in practice does a lot of thinking, can only imagine thinking as a burden, and sighs at the moonlight:

“Oh, that up on a mountain height,
I could...
Weave in your twilight through the eaves,
Cast dusty knowledge overboard,
And bathe in dew until restored.”

The same idea of healing, now presented again as the aim of his transition to magic:

“Stars’ orbits you will know, and bold,
You learn what nature has to teach,
Your soul is freed, and you behold
The spirits’ words, the spirits’ speech.”

Apparently, Faust would prefer to be called Johann Wolfgang, as he imagines himself to be the embodiment of the ideal of knowledge that art purports to provide – the harmony that hovers above all earthly things and gives its disciples one blissful experience after another. The idea of spiritual power in the meadow is certainly ambitious; those whose greatest problem lies in the “torment of knowledge” that does not also bestow on them an idealistic sense of well-being are, after all, extremely satisfied with all other objects of the world and would like to imagine that, precisely in comparison with ever more conceivable degrees of supreme pleasure, they have reason to be profoundly dissatisfied. To his intern Wagner, who interrupts him while he is reciting incantations, he remarks:

“Hope never seems to leave those who affirm,
The shallow minds that stick to must and mold –
They dig with greedy hands for gold
And yet are happy if they find a worm.
Dare such a human voice be sounded
By spirits’ might?”

Wagner incurs this wrath because he is constantly seeking to “profit,” to “question,” and to learn! This earns him the contempt of the moralist Faust, who values nothing more than the uniqueness of his cognitive activity, refuses to begin thinking unless his efforts are aimed at a veritable treasure – and very consistently indulges in a childish irrationalism.

This ideal problem-solving intellect (which all those whose concern is the deep humanity, i.e., the problematic of their science itself, may happily identify with) stages the canon of the exceptional nature of its endeavors in the following – in an attempt at suicide as a meaning-giving activity:

“Uncharted orbits call me, new dominions
Of sheer creation, active without end,
This higher life[?], joys that no mortal won!”

– from which he is torn away by Easter hymns whose meaning-giving quality, although he apparently feels it, is nevertheless completely inaccessible to him:

“Although I hear the message, I lack all faith or trust,
For those far spheres I should not dare to strive
From which these tidings come to me.”

(daring to do the most unusual thing, but shying away from the most ordinary: such a need for meaning doesn’t make things easy!)

– finally, on an Easter walk, where he once again demonstrates that he has succeeded in very unproblematically mastering the art of moral edification, as the following lesson immediately comes to mind when he sees the other walkers:

“Here is the people’s paradise,
And great and small shout joyously:
Here I am human, may enjoy humanity.”

That he “may,” i.e. is allowed, is surely not something anybody would shout joyously! Secondly, Faust must immediately be given the opportunity to present his edifying nature as a problem again, so that he does not lose the impetus to search for the meaning he has already found. Which is why he relies on bourgeois applause for his medical work –

“Health to the man so often tried!
May he yet help for many a year!”

He laments his foolish intention to conquer the plague “with prayer and fasting,” and even though he realizes that he has administered many poisons to the sick, he does not conclude that he should be a better doctor in the future, but instead returns to his initial problem that all knowledge is “worthless” and that a “magic cloak” is necessary.

2. Temptation and guilt

Fortunately for Faust – and so that something resembling a plot finally gets going – Mephisto then appears to him in the form of a poodle, sheds his disguise, offers a pact, and seals it with drops of blood. The content of the pact corresponds to the heavenly wager: Mephisto guarantees the fulfillment of Faust’s every desire, and Faust asserts that he is extremely difficult to satisfy –

“But have you food that is not satisfying?
Red gold that rolls off without rust,
Quicksilver-like, over your skin –
A game in which no one can win –
A girl who, lying at my breast,
Ogles already to entice my neighbor...?”

And so on and so forth.

It’s not by chance that it’s hard to characterize “man’s spirit in its noble striving” the way it’s meant. Of course, the examples are curious, because fulfilling desires such as these does not require the devil at all; on the contrary, all of that is pretty easy to obtain. But one must – like Faust and Goethe – not think of them in their right conception, but of their principle. And the principle is the idea of a satisfaction that “man’s striving” wants to derive from all objects and activities separately from their usefulness – that is, purely from the method of his relationship to them. To Faust, this ideal interest seems unattainable and worth striving for only because, quite obviously, the desire for satisfaction and the satisfaction itself are here one and the same – which, of course, the striver’s moral attitude does not allow him to understand: Like every “lofty spirit,” he wants to think that the circumstance that his affairs are services is justified by his virtue, thus an ideal achievement.

The prankster Mephisto is in no way inferior to his counterpart. In his judgment of Faust, he turns Faust’s own criterion of meaning against him:

“Have but contempt for reason and for science,
Man’s noblest force spurn with defiance
...And, pact or no, I hold you tight”

The devil therefore believes that reason itself, with its “power” (which is even supposed to be the “highest of all”), exists to create the meaning that Faust is seeking elsewhere; admiration for theory is nothing more than the fitting moral reversal of contempt for it. In both cases, it’s not about the content of knowledge, but the “value” it has for the imagined higher necessity and task of intellectual freedom. (Where Mephisto is not himself positive – which for a “spirit that negates” is the unholy result of his nature’s investment in the idea of negation – but rather explicates his criticism of the Faustian idealization of theory in a dialogue with a “student,” he incidentally refutes both sides quite nicely!) In this abstract realm, the Mephistophelean temptations, like the Faustian desires, also fall flat: Neither Auerbach’s cellar nor Walpurgis Night, as examples of earthly and hellish revelry, give the impression that they could provide the striving for meaning with the fatal anchorage of the “moment” that is “so beautiful” that Faust must be taken away by the devil.

The only real temptation appears in the form of Gretchen; after it initially seems as if the philosophical hero is gaining some human traits, at least in this case –

“By heaven, this young girl is fair!
Her like I don’t know anywhere
...The glow of her cheeks and her lips so red
I shall not forget until I am dead” –

because his idealism seems credible here, he soon begins to fit his romantic adventure into his Christian worldview and to appreciate in particular the deeper meaning of the fairer sex’s more foolish sides:

“Oh, that the innocent and simple never
Appreciate themselves and their own worth!
That meekness and humility, supreme
Among the gifts of loving, lavish nature – ”

It is precisely because of this morality that Gretchen dies at the end, out of shame for her violated innocence, blaming herself for the death of her mother and brother, etc. What does Faust think about this?

“A long unwonted shudder grips,
Mankind’s entire grief grips me.”

How compassionate! The humanistic pathos of “meaning” could not be reduced to absurdity in a more beautiful way. Not because Faust is partly to blame for Gretchen’s misfortune; after all, Goethe only staged this moral judgment through the devil’s deceit. But because it becomes very clear here that knowing, wanting, and feeling something is not the same as inquiring into the “value,” “scope,” or “depth” of knowing, wanting, and feeling. In the latter case, the whole world consists of only one meaning: whatever happens, it enriches the inner life of her lover immensely. Should one take credit for this kind of submissive thinking?

Quotes from: Goethe’s Faust. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York : Anchor Books, 1961.