Reclaiming the Self: Chapter 4

Transcendence as dunkler Drang: Striving Towards the Union of Masculine with Feminine in Goethe's Faust

Everything that lives
Lives not alone nor for itself--William Blake

The fragmentation, isolation, and lack which gives rise to the urge to transcendence has often been expressed in terms of gender. The paradoxical simultaneity of the connection and chasm between the genders has given rise to some of the fundamental images of human thought. The Yin/Yang of Taoism expresses the interdependence of two principles which complement, rather than oppose, one another:

The Chinese diagram symbolic of the tao represents geometrically an interplay of two principles: the yang, the light, masculine or active, hot, dry, beneficent, positive principle; and its opposite, the yin, dark, feminine, passive, cold, moist, malignant, and negative. They are enclosed in a circle of which each occupies half, representing the moment (which is forever) when they generate the ten thousand things. (Campbell 24)

The Samkhya Yoga conceptions of prakrti and purusa express a similar relationship. Heinrich Zimmer, in his Philosophies of India defines prakrti as "matter" and says that it "is characterized by the three qualitites (gunas)" (230). Prakrti is "Feminine" in much the same way that yin is "Feminine"; however, unlike yin, which is "passive," prakrti is "active." Purusa, referred to by Eliade as spirit, soul, or self (Yoga, 15-19), is "Masculine" in a way which roughly corresponds to the "Masculine" yang, although purusa is "passive" where yang is "active." These two principles, the Masculine and the Feminine, the passive and the active, comprise between them all that is.

The union of bíoV (bios)--the Greek term for the "Masculine" principle of that individual life which begins and ends--with zwh' (zoe)--the Greek term for the "Feminine" principle of regeneration and the life principle which has no death--is told in numerous Bronze Age Mesopotamian myths of the union of Goddess and God/Son-Lover. A similar complementarity is seen in the relationship between the Upanishadic concept of atman--that divine Self which resides in each individual life--with the concept of Brahman [from Sanskrit brh--to grow or expand, that which expands, bursts into growth]--the ultimate expression of divinity which produces all forms, is found in all forms, yet is beyond all forms. Like the Greek zoe, Brahman represents the life principle in a universe in which all lives--Greek bios and Sanskrit atman--are seen as sharing in that life principle. The individual life which separates (to the limited extent which any carrier of bios/atman can be separate from zoe/Brahman) from its source seeks to transcend that state of separation.(see note #1)

This union of Masculine and Feminine, transcending gender in a redemptive return to a primal unity, is described in salvific terms in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas:

Jesus saw infants being suckled. He said to his disciples, "These infants being suckled are like those who enter the kingdom." They said to him, "Shall we then, as children, enter the kingdom?" Jesus said to them, "When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male and the female one and the same, so that the male not be male nor the female female . . . then will you enter the kingdom." (Saying 22--Robinson 129)

The complementarity and interdependence of the Masculine and Feminine is a major element in the legend of Faust. Simon Magus (referred to at Acts 8:10), the earliest shadow figure that looms behind our modern figure of Faust, referred to himself as God, the Masculine principle:
 

I am God . . . And I have come. Already the world is being destroyed. And you, O men, are to perish because of your iniquities. But I wish to save you. And you see me returning again with heavenly power. Blessed is he who has worshipped me now! (Jonas 104)

Simon, known in Latin countries by the name Faustus ("the favored one"), traveled about with a woman called Helena. According to Simon, Helena was "the latest and lowliest incarnation of the fallen 'Thought' of God [Simon Magus--at least according to Simon], redeemed by him and a means of redemption for all who believed in them both" (Jonas 104). The joining of the Masculine and Feminine principles in this scenario is made clear by a closer look at "God" and "Thought." God--qeòV--is that which thinks, noûV--nous or mind. Thought is the product of thinking, that which is thought (e`pínoia--epinoia). qeòV and noûV are masculine nouns. Epinoia is, in the Greek, feminine. The reunion of that which thinks with that which is thought is presented as redemptive for "all who believed in them both." The (re)joining of the masculine with the feminine thus transcends the "fallen" state of fragmentation.(see note #2)

The character we know as Faust--or Faustus--apparently also has roots in an historical figure who lived from approximately 1480 to 1540. A letter written by Johannes Tritheim (a physicist and writer who lived 1462-1516) refers to a "Master George Sabellicus, the younger Faust, the chief of necromancers, astrologer, the second magus, palmist, diviner with earth and fire, second in the art of divination with water"(Bockstael 37). Faust is mentioned twice in the Tischreden, the records of the conversations of Martin Luther with his friends, family, and acquaintances:

When one evening at the table a sorcerer named Faust was mentioned, Doctor Martin said in a serious tone: "The devil does not make use of the services of sorcerers against me . . . . Mention was made of magicians and the magic art, and how Satan blinded men. Much was said about Faust, who called the devil his brother-in-law, and the remark was made: "If I, Martin Luther, had given him even a hand, he would have destroyed me; but I would not have been afraid of him--with God as my protector, I would have given him my hand in the name of the Lord" (Bockstael 40,41).

In the English Faustbook of 1592, The Historie of the Damnable Life, and Deserued Death of Doctor Iohn Faustus, itself a translation of the German Spiess Faustbuch of 1587, Faust's story is presented as a warning to European Christians who might feel the temptation to transgress--or transcend--metaphysical boundaries of experience and knowledge "proper" to servants of Christ. The "Master George Sabellicus, the younger Faust" has become Doctor John Faustus, a legendary figure consumed by an hubristic desire to know more than he is permitted to know by his limited human perceptions, who "taking to him the wings of an Eagle, thought to fly over the whole world, and to know the secrets of heaven and earth" (Bockstael 65,66). Faustus sells his soul to the Devil, writing, and signing the contract in his own blood: "Now have I Doctor John Faustus, unto the hellish prince of Orient and his messenger Mephostophiles, given both body and soul" (Bockstael 74). After twenty-four years of having demonic power at his command--during which time he is given a tour of Hell, lives off the riches of kings, emperors, and the Pope, and raises the famous Helen to be his lover--he meets his end: "the Devil had beaten him from one wall against another, in one corner lay his eyes, in another his teeth . . . his body [was] lying on the horse dung, most monstrously torn, and fearful to behold, for his head and all his joints were dashed in pieces" (Bockstael 205).

Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, first published in 1604--ten years after the author's death in a knife-fight--also presents the story of Faustus as a warning against transcending the metaphysical boundaries of the Christian belief system. In Act One, as Faustus reads "necromantic books," he is confronted by a Good and an Evil angel:

The end to which Faustus comes again serves as a warning:

Goethe takes a different approach to Faust. The difference is found immediately in the Prologue in Heaven, in which Mephistopheles and the Lord have a conversation which resembles that had by Satan and Yahweh in the book of Job. After speaking of Man as "Der kleine Gott der Welt," who uses the capacity for reason "Nur tierischer als jedes Tier zu sein," Mephistopheles is asked by the Lord about Faust:

After this exchange, The Lord and Mephistopheles make a bet in which Mephistopheles says that he will lead Faust astray if the Lord will give permission:

The Lord's reply to Mephistopheles' offered wager is an important key for understanding Goethe's treatment of Faust's transcendence:

Here, striving is not portrayed as that which will necessarily damn Faust to Hell. The sociofunctional aspect of the Faust myth has been changed in those few lines. Goethe has taken the legend out of the realm of moral warnings about the dangers of transcending Christian metaphysical limits, setting it in opposition to the Völkisch and Marlovian visions by portraying striving, the attempt at transcendence, as necessary. He has removed his version of the Faust myth from its previous sociofunctional role in which it served to reinforce "in the minds of [European Christian society's]. . .members. . .a certain system of sentiments by which the conduct of the individual is regulated in conformity with the needs of the society" (Radcliffe-Brown 233) But in so doing, he does not finally set up Faust--the Romantic Individual--against society; rather, he shows, through the outcomes of Faust's lifelong striving, the need for the individual to remain connected to, and at least partially in service of, the rest of humanity. Faust's quest for transcendence ultimately does not remain an attempt at domination through knowledge and supernatural power, but it finally takes the form of an attempted return to immanence by the Masculine through a connection with the Feminine.

Faust's attempted transcendence does begin, however, with the desire for domination through knowledge and supernatural power. In the First Act, wearied by the pursuit of knowledge down traditional paths, Faust turns to arcane, occult books:

While reading, Faust comes to the realization common to the so-called Perennial Philosophy--there is something beyond, in a transcendent relationship to, our ordinarily perceived Reality:

Despite this realization of the essential unity of micro-, meso-, and macrocosms, Faust is still thinking in terms of control:

Faust then summons the Earth Spirit, only to be humiliatingly treated and summarily dismissed. Faust's repudiation by the Earth Spirit proves to him that he cannot--on his own--hope to achieve such control over Nature. The Spirit rejects Faust's claim to be its peer, leading to Faust's despondent cry: Den Göttern gleich ich nicht! (652)--I am not like the Gods! His failure to achieve control over Nature, coupled with his failure to attain to the proverbial esse sicut deus (you shall be like God), leads him briefly to consider suicide: from which thoughts--in an interesting foreshadowing of the ending of Part Two--he is called back by the ringing of the church bells announcing the dawning of Easter morning.

Still, Faust is dissatisfied. In a conversation with his assistant,Wagner, Faust expresses his fragmented duality of nature and desire:

Here the duality of transcendence and immanence is illustrated as a desire to clasp firmly to the joy of life-in-the-world, joined to a desire--a compulsion--to know, and join with, what is beyond the world. This is not the moral failing of the earlier Faustus figures which enables Satan to drag their souls to Hell; rather, it is the essential human quality of striving--of active becoming as opposed to static being--which Mephistopheles attempts to pervert. Mephistopheles' gamble with both the Lord and Faust is that he will be able to put an end to Faust's striving, so saturating Faust with knowledge, experience, and pleasure of the world that he will finally cease to strive, saying to the moment: Verweile doch! Du bist so schön! (1700)--Stay indeed! You are so fair!. When Faust lays this challenge before Mephistopheles:

the famous deal is struck, and the struggle begins.

Faust's attempt at a transcendent return to immanence, in the form of union with the archetypal Feminine, begins with his relationship with Margaret (Gretchen) in Part One. Faust is still at this point seeking ownership of, and control over, all to which he is attracted. The language in which he expresses his desire for Margaret is that of possession: "Und soll sie sehn? Sie haben?" (2667)--And shall I see her? Have her? The seduction is based on deceit; Faust does not--at this point--love Margaret, but he is more than willing to tell her so in order to get what he wants:

This is in sharp contrast to the attitude of Margaret towards Faust. She gives herself completely, unselfishly, perhaps unwisely--declaring to Faust in all honesty: "Bester Mann! Von Herzen lieb ich dich!" (3206)--Best of men! I love you from my heart! Faust views his relationship with Margaret--much as he earlier viewed his attempt to understand nature--as a process of conquest, penetration, and domination:

This attitude directly leads to the tragedies of the rest of Margaret's life: Faust deceives Margaret into killing her mother--with poison he tells her is merely a sleeping potion--in order that he might have sex with her without inconvenient interruptions (3505-3516). He then abandons her: the reader finds out, in lines 3576-3586, that Margaret is pregnant--in an age when unwed pregnancy was the next best thing to a death sentence. Faust later feels desire for her once more, and returns to her home with Mephistopheles in tow. The Devil then reveals heretofore unsuspected talents as he stations himself beneath Margaret's window to sing a grossly mocking song about the inadvisability of pre-marital sex. Margaret's brother, Valentine, confronts the pair, is mortally wounded by Mephistopheles, and calls Margaret eine Hur (a whore) before he dies.

Faust appears to change when he discovers that Margaret is awaiting execution for having drowned the baby she had by him. However, the final scene of Part One, in the Dungeon, culminates in Faust's declaration:

Margaret's response, like that of the Earth Spirit, is a refusal to be controlled and dominated:

Margaret is, at the last moment, saved by Heaven: Faust continues with Mephistopheles.

In Part Two, Faust continues his--perhaps unwitting--attempt at transcendence through return to the Feminine. Goethe's version of the famous Helen episode--in which Faust raises the famous Greek beauty to be his paramour--involves an interesting example of what Eric Neumann refers to as the "Terrible Devouring Mother" archetype, "whose psychic attraction is so great because of its energetic charge that the charge of the ego complex, unable to withstand it, 'sinks' and is 'swallowed up'" (The Great Mother, 27). Mephistopheles--being a Christian Devil--is unable to provide Faust with the power to call up the shade of the Classical Helen. What Faust must do is descend to The Mothers:

Mephistopheles gives Faust a phallic key--which grows in Faust's hand--and tells him that it will lead him to the Mothers. It is significant that Faust's suggested, but not dramatized, meeting with the Mothers--representing the lethally powerful side of the Feminine archetype--is his first independent action since his bargain with Mephistopheles. Here is his most significant opportunity to date to achieve that transcendent contact with that which is other, that which is beyond normally perceivable Reality. Predictably, Faust fails to bring anything back with him other than the ability to call up a sort of Classical hologram show in which the shades of Helen and Paris are variously admired and criticized by onlookers. When he attempts to take possession--again, his concern is with ownership and control--of the shade of Helen, his attempt explodes in his face:

As Faust attempts to seize Helen, there is an explosion: Faust is rendered unconscious, and the shades of Helen and Paris disappear.

The next section of Part Two bring us Classical Walpurgisnacht, and the figure of Homunculus. Homunculus is a tiny man, made up completely of flame, who was created by Wagner in his laboratory. The creation of Homunculus is one which entirely bypasses the joining of Masculine and Feminine principles. His ultimate end comes through a self-immolating attempt at union with the water nymph Galatea, an ill-fated joining of opposite archetypal principles. He expresses his impatience with his incomplete existence:

Homunculus then listens to a philosophical conversation between the shades of Anaxagoras and Thales on the subject of whether fire or water played a more important role in the creation of the universe. The conversation essentially comes down to these two contrasting statements:

After this exchange, Homunculus meets Proteus--the shape-changer--who tells him:

Thales then promises him that he will be--upon joining with the Ocean--on his way to attaining to a human life and form:

Homunculus' ultimate life-fulfilling/life-ending immolation at the feet of the water nymph, helps to illustrate the relative positions of the Masculine and Feminine archetypes in Faust. The Masculine seeks the Feminine--not the other way around. The union of Homunculus--fire--with Galatea--water--is symbolic of the return of individual life to the source of all life (in this case, the ocean).

Faust continues his striving towards the Feminine, finally achieving--with the help of Mephistopheles, who has contrived with the aid of the Phorkyads (another manifestation of the "Terrible Devouring Mother" archetype) to transport Helen and her attendants to Faust--his desired union with Helen. This union produces a son, Euphorion, who is himself possessed by an urge to transcendence. Euphorion's idea of transcendence is rather like that of Icarus:

But there are moments when he sounds remarkably like a younger Faust:

When Euphorion does the predictable, and jumps to his death in an hubristic attempt at wingless flight, Faust's connection with the Feminine in the form of Helen is at an end. She follows her son to the underworld, returning to her existence as a shade.

Faust soon returns to his earlier obsession with obtaining and wielding power over nature, this time by attempting to drain the Ocean away from an area of land which he has won from an emperor as a reward for magical service in battle. The final Act opens with the land already drained, cleared, and inhabited. An old couple, Philemon and Baucis--named after the old couple who gave hospitality to Jupiter and Mercury and were therefore granted the right to metamorphose just before death into trees growing side-by-side--lives on the land, and Faust is furious. He wants them to move off the land so that he can claim it all for his own. It would seem that he has, if anything, changed for the worse over the years of his endless striving:

Faust has Mephistopheles move the couple off the land. Mephistopheles, of course, kills them instead of merely relocating them. This is the final injury which Faust inflicts in his so-far self-centered striving. Death has followed him wherever he has gone: Margaret killed her mother, then her child, then was herself killed; Euphorion killed himself in an attempt to fly; now Philemon and Baucis are killed so Faust may enjoy an unimpeded view of the land he has wrested from the Sea. There is, at this point, no reason for a first-time reader to believe that Goethe's Faust will meet an end any different from that of Marlowe's Faustus: The Lord, in making his bet with Mephistopheles, did say Es irrt der Mensch, solang er strebt, but Faust has spread death like a personal plague. There is no reason to believe of him, as the Lord believes of Ein guter Mensch, that in seinem dunklen Drange, Ist sich des rechten Weges wohl bewußt (315-317, 328,329).

It is at this point that all bets are off.

Faust is visited by Vier graue Weiber--four gray women called, in turn, Want, Guilt, Care, and Need. Here is where the previous relationship pattern of Masculine to Feminine archetypal principles--Masculine seeking Feminine--is reversed. Because Faust is wealthy, three of the women--Want, Guilt, and Need--cannot enter his room. Only Care is able to sneak in through a key hole. Death, their brother, follows closely behind. After a conversation in which Faust (oddly enough for a man whose wealth has been built on commerce with the spirit realm) takes a materialist position--Was braucht er in die Ewigkeit zu schweifen! / Was er erkennt, läßt sich ergriefen (11,447,11,448) [What does man need to roam in eternity? What he can perceive, lets itself be grasped.]--Care blinds him for what little remains of his life.

Moments before he dies, Faust experiences what seems to be a conversion. He started professional life as a doctor, putting his skills and knowledge in the service of humanity, in the service of life itself. Now, after a lifetime of self-service, of striving to reach individual ambitions, Faust returns--at least in the abstract--to a concern with other human beings, other lives:

He imagines a humanity free enough and strong enough to stay free despite dangers, and to live actively up to the moment of death. Among such people he could say: Verweile doch, du bist so schön! As he imagines this, he dies. Mephistopheles, having heard Faust utter the magic words, naturally thinks he has won the bet with the Lord. However, Faust's end-of-life return to his origin, his care and concern for others--no matter how brief, and how little it may appear to weigh legalistically next to the pain and death Faust has spread in his wake--is enough to secure his salvation. Boy-angels steal Faust's soul away from Mephistopheles, who is nearly paralyzed with homosexual lust at the sight of so many naked angelic derrieres. Finally, Faust is taken to Heaven, where in a muted version of the hieros gamos, he is reunited with Margaret. She reacts, not with recriminations, but with joy:

If this were looked at as a Christian story, the way that the Faustus story of the 1592 English Faustbook and the 1604 Marlowe play can be seen as Christian stories, then this ending makes no sense. From a sociofunctionalist perspective, it would seem to be trying to tear down notions of charity, piety, and humility central to the Christian vision, while glorifying destructive self-centeredness, casually rapacious self-indulgence, and the avowal of convenient deathbed conversions. If this poem were looked at from a Marxist or a Feminist perspective, it could not but appear as a testament to the sort of bourgeois patriarchal attitudes which have contributed to the historical oppression of women and the poor while reserving to rich males the rewards of the--all-too-real--life now and the--perniciously mythical--life to come. However, this is perhaps not the most helpful way to look at Goethe's dramatic poem. He has specifically removed the Faust myth from its previous sociofunctional context: his work is neither a simple Christian allegory about good, evil, and the punishments for overweening pride, nor is it merely poetic propaganda for the patriarchy. Faust is a work, a myth, about transcendence, about the attempt to reconcile the zwei Seelen of human nature, which relies strongly on conceptions of the archetypal Masculine and the archetypal Feminine. This theme can be traced through Faust's attempts to penetrate the secrets of Nature (Masculine archetype attempting to control Feminine archetype); it can also be seen in his relationships with Margaret--whom he seeks only to dominate and use at his convenience, even to the moment of her death--and with Helen, whom he brings back from the Classical underworld in order to satisfy his gloriously literary version of the standard-issue Centerfold fantasy. These archetypal conceptions run through the story of Homunculus--the Masculine fire--and his immolation/joining with Galatea--the Feminine water principle. It can be seen in the entire metaphor of Streben--striving--which holds the poem together. Faust begins his restless striving when he loses his original purpose as a doctor. His transcendence leads him, by ugly, violent roads, back to an immanent relationship with humanity and life.

Faust initially attempts to transcend his limited, mortal condition through his own pursuit of knowledge (which he derides as a failure early in part One), then through an excess of sensual experience (which he seems to weary of after the Walpurgisnacht of part One), then through union with the woman--Helen--of his fantasy (a union which ends when the son, Euphorion, derived from that union immolates himself in an act strongly reminiscent of Icarus’ ill-fated flight and the hubris of the Faust of part One), then finally through an exercise of power over nature (the reclaiming of land from the sea) which he envisions, at the last moment, as ultimately beneficial to others. This seems to bring him full-circle back to his origins as a physician/scholar, when he was putting his knowledge into the service of those afflicted with the plague. The mythic themes running through this poem are the return to the origin just mentioned, and a desire for the (archetypally Masculine) individual manifestation of life (Faust) to at first dominate, then later join with, the (archetypally Feminine) source of that life: this theme pops up in Faust’s encounter with the Earth Spirit, is an undercurrent in his relationships with Gretchen (in part One) and Helen (in part Two)--each woman is impregnated with new, ultimately short-lived, life by Faust--and is brought to its resolution by Faust’s redemption at the end of part Two, after which Goethe writes that Das Ewig-Weibliche / Zieht uns hinan (The Eternal-Feminine / draws us upwards).

By bringing Faust to a redemptive union with the Eternal-Feminine, Goethe removes the Faust legend--or at least his famous version of that legend--from the Christian sociofunctional context within which it was operating in its previous versions. Instead of being a warning about what happens to the hubristic soul who steps outside of permissible metaphysical boundaries by engaging in behavior displeasing to God (a moral which takes us back to the stories of Tantalus, Icarus, and Sisyphus from the Greeks through Judas, Paolo & Francesca, and the Faust of Marlowe in the Christian world), Goethe’s version becomes a parable of striving for transcendence: specifically an attempt to transcend a state of fragmentation, of hyper-individuation, by means of a thorough exhausting of the possibilities of self-service, followed by Faust’s ultimate return to his origins, both in his resolution of service to others and in his return to the Eternal-Feminine.

Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Works Cited List
 

Notes

1) It is important to note that this is a limited comparison. The comparison between the relationship of bíoV(bios) and zwh'(zoe) to that of atman and brahman works only on the basis of analogy: in each case the relationship is between the individual manifestation of life and the life-principle. Atman (variously derived from an, to breathe; at, to move; and tman, the breath--the modern German atmen, to breathe; and Atmen, breath, are cognates) is defined by Sir Monier Monier-Williams, in his A Sanskrit-English Dictionary, as "the individual soul, self, abstract individual." Brahman is defined as "the one divine essence and source from which all created things emanate or with which they are identified and to which they return, the Self-existent, the Absolute, the Eternal." The comparison seems helpful at this level. The grammatical gender relationship between atman and brahman, however, is not analogous to that between bios and zoe. Where bios and zoe is a pairing of masculine and feminine nouns, atman and brahman is a pairing of masculine and neuter nouns.Back to main text

2) Note that the generative principle can be conceived of as either "Masculine" or "Feminine." In the case of the relationship between bíoV and zwh' the generative principle is Feminine, while that which is generated is--at least grammatically--Masculine. In the relationship between qeòV/noûV and e`pínoia, the generative principle is Masculine while that which is generated is Feminine. In each case, the generative principle is associated with divinity: qeòV and zwh' are, respectively, the Masculine and Feminine divine principles. qeòV, and the Dorian form qeùV, are related to the Indo-European root dhes- (from which is derived Latin festus--festive, and fanum--temple) as well as the IE noun deiwos, "sky"; this noun is reflected in the Latin deus, the Sanskrit deva, the Iranian div, the Lithuanian diewas, and the Old German tivar; it is personified as the Indian Dyaus Pitar, the Greek Zeus Pater, and the Roman Jupiter. The feminine zwh' is described by Baring and Cashford as the "totality of the cycle of the moon's phases," while bíoV represents "the individual phases. Zoe is then both transcendent and immanent, and bios is the immanent form of zoe . . . . The Great Mother Goddess [of the Paleolithic era] can be recognized as the totality of the lunar cycle--as zoe--and her . . . son-lover, who emerge[s] from and return[s] to her, can be seen as the moon's phases--as bios" (148).Back to main text

3) The translations--clumsy and unrhymed--are my own.Back to main text

Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Works Cited List