Mitchellnolte on DeviantArthttps://www.deviantart.com/mitchellnolte/art/Urfaust-605665401Mitchellnolte

Deviation Actions

Mitchellnolte's avatar

Urfaust

Published:
5.2K Views

Description

Meister Eckhart: God protect me from God

Goethe's early version of what would later be his Magnum Opus 'Faust' was a much darker, less lyrical version of the tale. In later version the alchemical and gnostic themes are much clearer, with Mephistopheles himself more or less being sent by God not to damn Faust but to bring him to a greater understanding of what his existence is, what it is that he wants actually.
Urfaust rather instead has Faust initially seek the devil in order to kill himself; it is a tale of depression and madness, though again however is striking in comparison with the older versions such as Marlowe's Faust, is that it is not some dogmatic christian damnation that Faust risks, rather Mephistopheles saves him from his suicide, which typically would be a way of damnation in the christian sense, and does not take him to hell or anything as such at the end rather just onwards to further existence with him, though that is where the fragment ends. As Goethe wrote Urfaust at the same time as the Sufferings of Young Werther perhaps it could be seen that living without being able to be with one's beloved would be a self created hell; there is no heaven, no hell, but worlds of spirit within Mephistopheles in not the devil but just a daimon who only facilitates Faust obtaining the things he wants, but only to learn what chimaeras such wants are. Even desire for death is such a chimaera - this message may not be so much in Urfaust but just something of the existential thoughts that circle around it.

My other impetus for this has also been the band Urfaust, whose music really reflects something from the depths of one's being, that same existential horror and torment of Goethe's fragment.
Image size
2000x1346px 1.21 MB
© 2016 - 2024 Mitchellnolte
Comments11
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In