poem satirised the corrupt decadent Holy Roman Empire and the courts of Goethe’s day. Demonic arts temporarily rescued the Emperor but destroyed imperial claims to holiness (Constantine 2009: xci). As Goethe outlined:
In the emperor … I have endeavoured to represent a prince who has all the necessary qualities for losing his land, and at last succeeds in so doing. He does not concern himself about the welfare of his kingdom and his subjects; he only thinks of himself and how he can amuse himself with something new. The land is without law and justice; the judge is on the side of the criminals; atrocious crimes are committed with impunity. The army is without pay, without discipline, and roams about plundering to help itself as it can. The state treasury is empty, and without hope of replenishment. In the emperor’s own household, there is scarcity in both kitchen and cellar. (Eckermann 1930 [1 October 1827]: 230)
Into this corrupt state, Mephistopheles entered to counsel and fool the emperor. Previously Mephistopheles had joined drinkers mockingly toasting the Holy Roman Empire, only to trick them with fake alcohol (Goethe, Faust I, 1808, ‘Auerbach Cellar’ in Wayne 1949: 100–110). Their plebeian license was cramped and fickle. Mephistopheles’ alcoholic democracy and paper empire were both illusory and belonged to the trickery of the magicians. Faust pushed for authentic freedom and self-realisation beyond a false demonic vision of liberty. Short-lived happiness was found in ancient Arcadian liberty, with Helen of Troy as his companion temporarily fusing together individuals from across the continent: ‘You, the northern youthful flower, / You, the bright eastern energy’ (Goethe 1832 Act III ‘The Inner Courtyard’ in Constantine 2009: 165). This Arcadian interlude—‘branch of a limb of Europe’s mountain tree’—was precarious and sandwiched between bloody conflicts (Goethe 1832 Act III ‘The Inner Courtyard’ in Constantine 2009: 167).
The first part, Lukacs analysed, addressed the decline of the feudal world, and the second, the rise of the modern world (Lukacs 1968 [1947]: 182). Goethe directly witnessed European war in the 1790s and later Napoleonic occupation of German cities. Mephistopheles contemptuously dismissed human struggles for freedom as violent cycles of revenge between ‘Two lots of lackeys’ (Goethe 1832 Act II ‘In a Laboratory’ in Constantine 2009: 81). The poem mourns: ‘Youth torn off like blossom, fast’ by entering ‘into violent quarrel/With Law and Morality’ (Goethe 1832 Act III ‘The Inner Court’ in Constantine 2009: 182). Helen and Faust’s child Euphorion was like Icarus, soaring too high. Euphorion represents the tragic romantic Byronic hero killed in the Greek Struggle for Independence: ‘One who made a large and brave / Beauty of black days and bright’ (Goethe 1832 Act III ‘The Inner Courtyard’ in Constantine 2009: 181). Goethe admired Byron as poetic genius and ranked him with the historical giants of the day Napoleon or Frederick the Great (Eckermann 1930 [24 February 1825]: 87–90). He was aesthetically attracted to sublime superhuman autocratic figures, although dangerous for civil rule (Butler [1956] 1949).
However, Goethe wanted ordered social change (Constantine 2009: xxxv). The keen geologist Goethe contested the vulcanists and the seismic violence of the French Revolution. He sided with the ancient philosopher Thales and the Neptunists, who eulogised life engendering and unifying waters (Goethe 1832 Act II ‘On the Upper Peneus’ in Constantine 2009: 110–1; Feldman 1945: 5). Thales is one of the heroic figures of reason ushering in a new humanity, observing the world and itself, and thinking how human relations might be rationally improved (Husserl 1965 [1935]: 173). Thales proposed a political federation of sea-bound city states under the protection of the sea-god Poseidon against the imperial Persia (Feldman 1945: 5). The ideals of individual and political self-determination where ‘Each is immortal on his patch of earth’ are shown to be precious and precarious (Goethe 1832 Act III ‘The Inner Courtyard’ in Constantine 2009: 168). His Thales endorsed humans as flawed creatures, trying to create their place in the world (Goethe 1832 Act II ‘Rocky Coves’ in Constantine 2009: 127).
George Steiner’s The Death of Tragedy characterised Goethe’s Faust as melodrama for supplanting a tragic ending and saving Faust’s soul (Steiner 1961: 133–5). Its narrative presented an ‘enlightening’ struggle less concerned about individual morality and more interested in constituting better institutions and conditions that might accommodate human failings (Eckermann 1930 [8 May 1827]: 205). The poem mythologised modern engineering projects where his Faust discarded feudal martial glory for redemptive heroic industrial deeds, thereby sacralising industrialisation (Lukacs 1968 [1947]: 215–7; Piper 2010: 98–101). Goethe eagerly anticipated the industrial developments of canals and railways expanding human communication:
Let people serve Him who gives to the best his fodder, and to man meat and drink as much as he can enjoy. But I worship Him who has infused into the world such a power of production, that, when only the millionth part of it comes out into life, the world swarms with creatures to such a degree that war, pestilence, fire and water cannot prevail against them. That is my God! (Eckermann 1930 [20 February 1831]: 389)
People would gain more individual freedom and independence through ensuring each had a ‘wealth of land’, and collectively protecting each other and engineering the future (Goethe 1832 Act III ‘The Inner Courtyard’ in Constantine 2009: 167). Too often independence was only partially won or won through the exploitation or dispossession of others. But humanising the world and securing more fertile land free from natural disaster through collective human endeavour established more favourable conditions conducive to greater human flourishing. New human endeavours inevitably made errors: ‘For man must strive, and striving he must err’ (Goethe 1808 ‘Prologue’ in Wayne 1949: 41). To eradicate the possibility of error would deny us the possibility of acting freely. Negation was part of human advancement, as Goethe’s contemporary Hegel elaborated in his dialectical philosophy of history (Lukacs 1968 [1947]: 13). Harnessing our active creative powers involved destructive demonic elements. Napoleonic power was a demonic invading force yet drove through social reforms and emancipated the serfs. Human advancement was contradictory and marked by evils. The contradictions and flawed life of Goethe’s Faust were resolved through heavenly intervention (Eckermann 1930 [6 June 1831]: 413; Lukacs 1968 [1947]: 228–33). Nevertheless the principle of free human agency runs through the work, whereby we redeem ourselves through activity. Conversely Mephistopheles’ negative cynicism and the inner despair represented by the figure Care were sinful. In summary, there is salvation in striving, damnation in nihilism.
Goethe’s theatre and politics
Goethe helped establish German national culture, and his times became known as the ‘Age of Goethe’ (Lukacs 1968 [1947]). He cared about material progress and developing a country, where people’s homes and land were protected from disaster. As Carlyle’s essay on Goethe outlined, he believed in ‘the progress of the species’ (Carlyle 1893 [1832]: 243). He sympathised with the suffering of ordinary people and deplored oppressive rule:
To this stithy I liken the land, the hammer its ruler,
And the people that plate, beaten between them that writhes:
Woe to the plate, when nothing but wilful bruises
Hit it at random; and made, cometh no Kettle to view!
(Goethe in Carlyle 1893 [1832]: 243)
Art should reflect life and represent people’s immiseration. His earlier 1774 novel Werther or 1787 drama Egmont about the Dutch national struggle seemed to put him on the side of liberty. However, his subsequent politics put him on the side of the existing order and reaction (Goethe 1974 Vol. II Book 17: 352–3; Goethe 1989 [1774]). He was ‘No Apostle-of-Liberty’ rousing the masses when confronting the question of ‘what is to be done?’ (Carlyle 1893 [1832]: 243). His idea of government was removed from the people. He mistrusted democracy and people’s capacity to make or elect good leaders (Carlyle 1893 [1832]: 219). There should be enlightened administration over the people. A ruler’s progressive
