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Today seems to be the perfect day to discuss this play with you, because not only did we recently celebrate May Day and Wolpurgisnacht, but right now, despite the fact that the days are getting lighter the further we march away from the winter months, and despite the fact that the weather has been growing more fair and mild, we've actually here in England, been beset by wind and rain the last few days. And there is now a ferocious violent storm kicking up outside. You may be able to hear it. You may be able to hear the tempestuous winds blowing through the trees outside. And I think that that is the perfect soundtrack to this play. We are of course, talking about the masterpiece that is Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust. We're talking about Faust parts and two. And indeed, Faust is not only a masterpiece, but it may just be the greatest work in all of German literature. And Goethe spent more than 60 years of his life composing this masterpiece. If one needed confirmation of the thesis that lies at the heart of this two part closet drama, then one would only need to look to the himself. One would only need to look to the composition of the work. The thesis that I discern at the heart of Faust is that salvation lies in the ceaseless striving towards worthy goals and in the acceptance of responsibility for our actions, good and bad. At least that's the message that comes through most prominently by the time I reach the end of Part two. But of course we also read the work, particularly if we treat part one as a singular. We also read the work as a dire, nightmarish moral warning. To be wary of deals with the devil, to be wary of what we trade in to sate our lust for power and knowledge and experience. Now, as for the theme of salvation being within the action towards, or the striving towards one's goals rather than the completion of them. Whether we take that to be true or not, I think Goethe himself certainly must have, for him to have dedicated so much of his life to this work's composition. To say nothing of everything else he penned and everything else this titan contributed to world literature. And I emphasize the word world, I want to say world literature, not Western literature, because Goethe is one of those unique writers who sought to be of all the world, knitting all the world together, drawing from disparate influences and them united in a mythology that would be universal, that would speak to us all. And Faust really does speak to us all. It speaks right to the heart of the human condition. And Faust himself is a universal figure. He's an everyman figure Much like the central protagonists of the old medieval allegorical morality plays. What we get in Faust is the myth of European man and also the myth of the development of the poet, the artist himself. Now, Goethe conceived of his faust in the 1770s, when he was in his mid-20s, and he continued writing into the 18th century, right into his 80s. He wrote the first part of Faust at the turning point, the transitional age between the Enlightenment and the age of Romanticism, the period of his aesthetic development we refer to as Sturm und Drang, or storm and stress, that would be a precursor and influence upon the Romantic movement of the late 18th century. And indeed, we can see markers of Romanticism there in Faust, what with the elevation of the natural world, the sublime descriptions, and, of course, the heightened introspection of the individual. When he began writing Faust, Goethe had already written his tragic first novel, the Sorrows of Young Werther, which made him an international celebration and led to his reputation as a man of genius. By the time we get to part two of the story, we can see that Goethe was pioneering a new classicism, romanticism hybrid of literature, one that would take the form of closet drama to astonishing breaking point. And the composition of Part two would see the great writer all the way up to his death at the age of 82. Now, understanding what the closet drama is is key to getting the most of Faust. And the closet drama is also one of my personal favourite areas of study. As you may well know at this point, many have lamented the difficult, or perhaps one should say impossible, task of producing Faust on stage. At least when it comes to Part two, the first part can be adequately and traditionally produced on stage. It's Part two where we run into some difficulty in that regard. Where directors have been successful, they have taken a musical approach, and it certainly says something about the greatness of a work of literature. And indeed, we've spoken about this with Shakespeare, when the only way you can get close to approximating its sublimity is through music. But the reason why it's so difficult to produce the second part of Faust on stage is because it was never designed for that. Goethe wrote Faust to be performed in the theatre of the mind of the solitary reader, and especially with Part two of Faust. This is a lifelong production. Again, Part one, I think, is readily and rather easily adaptable. But Part two is a sprawling, rich, vivid, varied, dreamy, experimental masterwork that one perhaps shouldn't even attempt to read in a single sitting. Very often we say that with plays we should read them in a single sitting. That was Mortimer Adler's advice with plays and short stories, and most of the time it's true. But Faust, Part two or Part two and Part one is a lifelong enterprise. Try to assimilate Goethe's Faust in a single night and you will drown. The poem will swallow you up and defeat you. You need to build a sturdy boat to sail the SEAS of Part 2, and you need to take your time. You need to navigate the raging storms with care. And it's for that reason that I won't be foolish enough to try to present anything like an exhaustive analysis of this work to you today. In my opinion, it isn't possible, any more than it would be possible to do the same for Finnegan's Wake or Gravity's Rainbow. And so today I come at this work with the aim to give you some illuminating background, context, and encouragement to make this a work that you stay with and return to across the course of your life. Now, Closet Dramas For a great description of what a closet drama is, we can look to Brander Matthews essay, the Legitimacy of the Closet Drama. Matthews defines the closet drama as a poem in dialogue, a piece of literature, pure and simple, not contaminated by any subservience to the playhouse, the players, or the playgoers. It is wrought solely for the reader in the library, without any regard for the demands of possible spectators in the auditorium. Its essence is to be sought in the obvious fact that the poet who essays it is firm in the conviction that the playhouse has no monopoly of the dramatic form. So when you read Faust, you, the reader, cast and dress the characters, you design the set, you choose the music and sound effects. Now, not only is Part two, in particular a closet drama, but it's also a drama that pushes up against the bounds of the dramatic and poetic form and pushes what literature can do to breaking point. It's extraordinary. If you look to part two, you'll see that Goethe mixes genres and generic conventions and metrical conventions endlessly. The second part of Faust has more than 12,000 lines of poetry, and we can see Goethe utilizing all major and minor poetic forms. We see him rhyming ceaselessly, and that's quite a feat in the German language, which, unlike, say, Italian, isn't the easiest one to rhyme in. And we see that style is constantly subservient to and reflective of substance. The content. In Faust, for example, Goethe will utilize Greek metrical forms or approximations of them when the topic turns Greek, he will utilize tragic poetic forms when the work veers into tragedy, and so on. And what we can See, with Faust is truly one of the most extraordinary accomplishments in all of literature. We might even discern Goethe vying with Shakespeare, though we must say vying in the friendliest form of the word, the friendliest form of agon, of poetic and aesthetic engagement, because Goethe simply admits adored Shakespeare. And he was also not one of the great writers for whom the influence of Shakespeare caused indigestion. I'm thinking of the great Tolstoy. There we might discern Goethe vying with Shakespeare and essaying to produce a masterwork that competes with Hamlet for expansiveness, cognitive challenge and aesthetic glory. So we're talking about closet dramas, but we're talking about a closet drama unlike anything one has seen before or since. And although this work was designed to be performed in the theatre of one's mind, Faust was of course influenced by plays that absolutely were designed to be performed on stage and were performed on stage. We can see that the story of Faust flourished in the 16th century, the transitional age of the Renaissance. This was a world that was moving from the mediev towards the modern. And we can see that the story of a man of intellect who sells his soul to the devil, we can see that this was very appealing back then, and it continued to be appealing in the age of Goethe. And I believe it should continue to appeal to us or inform us today. And yet, for some strange reason, despite the profusion of Faustian illusions, sometimes conscious, sometimes unwittingly lurking in pop culture and literature and art, despite that, for some reason, this work is not read as much as it should be. And it absolutely should be read today, perhaps now more than ever, at every age, of course, mankind is threatened with its own self chosen destruction as we make Faustian bargains, deals with the devil as we sell our souls at every age. This is true, but I think it is thoroughly true, emphatically true today. And we ignore the messages at the heart of Faust to our peril. But why was the story so appealing back in the 16th century? Well, this was the era of knowledge, of exploration, expansion. This was the era of searching for or questing for illicit, taboo or forbidden knowledge. And indeed we see that religion would need to enter a fighting match with science, which by the end of the 19th century had quite firmly cemented itself as the new religion for many people who now thought themselves irreligious. The story of Faust comes, like most legends do, from the real life story of a man called Georg Faust, who lived between 1480 and 1540. He was a wandering academic and charlatan, healer, and after his death, he would be referred to as Dr. Johannes Faustus. And he would be depicted as a man who kept company with a black dog in Wittenberg and a man who conjured apparitions or illusions of the ancient world, apparitions like Homer. He was a man who would play tricks on the Pope and the Emperor until, at the time of his death, he was said to have been torn apart by demons and carted off to hell. And this story spawned tons of folk narratives in a profusion of moralising chapbooks. And we can see that in these early chapbooks, the figure of Faust is associated with the libertine figure of Don Juan. Indeed, they are both exquisite antiheroes. One quests for sexual conquest, the other quests for knowledge. And then we see the English writer Christopher Marlowe, and we could nick a description that would be applied to Lord Byron. And we could say that Marlowe was mad, bad and dangerous to know. William Shakespeare very sensibly kept his distance from this wild and volatile writer. A writer who would end up run through with his own sword, seemingly bumped off by the Elizabethan secret service. Christopher Mahler composed his play on the Faust story, the tragical history of Dr. Faustus. And this was inspired by those folk stories. And he put it on stage in 1592, with Will Shakespeare undoubtedly in the audience. This play then sparked a profusion of puppet plays across the European continent. And as a young boy, Goethe knew of Marlowe's play. He saw the puppet theatre productions and he also read the chapbooks. And quite clearly the tale resonated with him on a very deep level. And surely it continues to resonate with us too, doesn't it? Now? It most likely resonated with Goethe, and of course we can see that it did, because one doesn't spend a lifetime working on a work if it doesn't mean something to you. We might contemplate, we might think, what one story or one idea could we work upon over the course of our lives? What would satisfy us? What would speak to us consistently? I think we most likely could all boil it down to one story, and Goethe's was Faust. I think it most likely resonated with Goethe because he was an extraordinary individual. He was a true Renaissance man, the kind of person who is a rarity nowadays, always has been, but most certainly since Goethe. We might wonder, who can we name who has applied themselves to so many disparate fields with utmost excellence in. In all of them? In addition to being a great writer, Goethe also had a very long and successful political career. Around the same time he started writing Faust. He was also appointed as Privy Councillor to the court of Duke Karl August in Weimar. And he worked on so many things for the benefit of society. He was intensely interested in social welfare in Weimar. He helped to establish the abolition of serfdom and also the establishment of a modern civil service system. He helped extensively with city infrastructure, especially with buildings set up for education and the arts. Over the course of his life he worked valiantly to improve the social conditions for the peasants and also for artists. In Weimar he was an accomplished diplomat, excellent when it came to foreign affairs. He even met with Napoleon Bonaparte. In addition to being a great writer, he was also an incredible artist and he was an accomplished scientist. He made significant contributions to the fields of botany, geography, anatomy and many more. He also developed his influential and insightful theory of colour. He made significant contributions to the study of morphology and was very much interested in improving natural habitats, looking after the natural world. He's an extraordinary individual. Over the course of his life he battled bleak, depression and anxiety. But he was easily one of the most extraordinary men the world has ever seen. But not only that, but ultimately we could say that Goethe invented his nation's literature. And that sounds hyperbolic, but bear in mind that the Germany of Goethe's day was not the Germany of today. It was still divided into hundreds of self governing states as part of the Holy Roman Empire. And many had a desire to unite and tie such disparate states together. And many would look to literature for their identity. Create the nation's literature and you discover the national identity. With all of Goethe's achievements, he must have surely before each new period of rebirth and reapplication, each new accomplishment, he surely must have wondered, what's it all for? And then the inevitable question comes, what's next? And then you apply yourself to what's next. You accomplish, you achieve. And you start to wonder, must something always be next? Do we ever reach a state where our mission is accomplished and our vision has come to fruition? Do we ever reach a point where we can finally rest? Fact of the matter is, the accomplishment of goals can actually be quite a depressing thing. It's the striving towards goals, it's the progress, it's the journey that emboldens us, that fills us with life. Nobody wants to reach the end of a great journey. Nobody wants to feel like their work is done. Same with literature. If you're loving the book, you delay the ending. You don't want it to end now. At the opening of Part one of Faust we see that Faust feels as though he has exhausted all the realms of study that he has applied himself to. And he's wondering what's it all for? He says, well, that's philosophy I've read, and law and medicine, and I fear theology too. From A to Z. Hard studies, all that have cost me dear. And so I sit, poor silly man, no wiser now than when I began. They call Me professor and Dr. Forsooth for misleading many an innocent youth these last 10 years now, I suppose, Pulling them to and fro by the nose and I see all our search for knowledge is vain and this burns my heart with bitter pain. I've more sense, to be sure than the learned fools, the masters and pastors, the scribes from the schools no scruples to plague me, no irksome doubt, no hellfire or devil to worry about. Yet I take no pleasure in anything now, for I know I know nothing. I wonder how I can still keep up the pretence of teaching or bettering mankind with my empty preaching. Can I even boast any worldly success? What fame or riches do I possess? My goodness, that sounds familiar. I'm sure anybody who has come out of final exams at university has probably thought much the same thing. You're building up to those exams. You're spending years studying for them. You're riding on adrenaline in the finals. And then you come out and you know graduation is now around the corner. You're going to leave the university. What were your studies for? And we see that Faust wants something more than this worldly knowledge, knowledge of the sciences and humanities. He considers how innocently his assistant and student Wagner, can apply himself to his studies. And he contemplates how he Faust, is far beyond such innocent application. He wonders why does he not despair? A mind so void and blinkered, so benighted and earthbound, greedy for gold, he scratches in the ground. And when he finds some worms, he's overjoyed. He goes on to say about 650 or so lines in the first scene, right near the beginning, actually, scene four, the scene called Night. He says, I am not like a God. Too deeply now I feel this truth. I am a worm stuck in the dust, burrowing and feeding, where at last I must be crushed and buried by some rambler's heel. Is this not dust filling a hundred shelves on these high walls that hem me in these thousand useless toys that thrust themselves at me in this moth mumbled rubbish bin? How shall I find fulfill in this jail Reading the thousand times reprinted Tale of man's perpetual strife and stress and rare occasional happiness. So he sought endlessly for knowledge. And now he comes to the end and he thinks, what's it all for? All I know now is how little I know. All I know is that I know nothing and I am not a God. And we see that Faust is primed to turn Neoplatonic and he wants to access the mystical. He wants supernatural power now. And we see in the figure of Faust that man has not learned the lesson given us by Adam and Eve's example we have not learned from Prometheus. We continue to vie for supremacy with the Almighty in our desire to become like gods. We see Faust, tired of this world, now wants something not of this world. And so, lucky or unlucky for him, a figure not of this world comes down and gives it to him. We are, of course, talking about Mephistopheles. This is a devil. But Mephistopheles is a character quite at odds with, say, Milton's Satan, because Milton's Satan is conflicted and vengeful, carrying hell with him wherever he goes, whereas Mephistopheles is more trickster. Trickster figure, yeah. Satanic court jester, if you like. Though indeed, at places we do see Miltons and hero lurking behind him, we might find with Mephistopheles that we can grab hold of some sympathy for the devil. This devil, thanks to his wit, his humour and irony. And as an aside, one lesson that I've learned from my reading, something that's really been profoundly impressed upon me of late, is that great literature is essentially a history of compelling devilish personages, from Milton to Goethe to Dostoevsky and Bulgakov. If you find a truly great writer, there is a chance that they have captured the spirit of evil in their work. And this is something that unites great writers of the Western tradition, because the backbone of the Western tradition is the Bible. And the very strongest and most vitalistic writers are daringly trying to add themselves as secular gospels to the Bible, to the vision and scope, the intensity, the wisdom and aesthetic strength of scripture. And nowhere where can one's vision and message be made more profoundly than when it comes to representing the devil. Now, Mephistopheles, at the start of the play, in the prologue, in heaven, has made a bet with God, a bet that he can lure Faust away from righteous pursuits and corrupt him. We love this story. We keep telling this story over and over again. This is a bit of a spin on the Book of Job. And we get what would become the hallmark of many Gothic and horror stories to come. In Faust, it's the be careful what you wish for motif. Such is Faust's despair at the opening of the book that much like Hamlet contemplating returning to the common dust from which we sprang, we see Faust contemplates suicide. And there most certainly can be danger in putting too much stock or putting one's identity and worth into intellectual pursuit. Tolstoy certainly knew that. In his confession, he said that when he was most invested in intellectual pursuits, he had to hide ropes and guns from himself for fear of killing himself. It's when he lost himself or his sense of self in action, in nature, among the common people. That's where he found salvation. Now, indeed, Faust is the scholar's shadowy alter ego. We can see the anxiety and nihilism of the post Enlightenment scholar comes through in Faust, and he's contemplating ending it all. Like many an individual who has applied themselves to something and then wondered what the reward of it all is. Very often, when one's at their highest moment, when one's at their peak, one can find themselves feeling incredibly low, incredibly depressed and filled with despair. What's it all been for? That's the question. We can see that Faust's mind turns to putting an end to the farce that is life. Unless, of course, he can access something beyond. And of course, we might say that a desire to die or a longing for death is actually a longing for life. It is a longing for transcendence, for salvation to be better than we are. But we see, as Faust and Wagner take a walk together with the Easter bells ringing out in celebration for Christ's sacrifice, his death and rebirth, they come across a black dog, a poodle. And Faust can see a streak of fire trailing behind the dog, whilst Wagner cannot. And they decide to bring the dog home with them. And this dog is of course, Mephistopheles. And before he transforms in front of Faust, we see that Faust is busying himself in his study with a translation of the Bible, the New Testament, the Gospel of John. And he even changes that iconic first line in a significant way. And we might say that the Faust story itself is a kind of secular scripture or revision of scripture, and Faust is writing it from the inside out. And Goethe amends where one is to find salvation in his study. In scene six of part one, Faust opens a volume and prepares to write. And he reads from the Bible. In the beginning was the word, why now? I'm stuck already. I must change that. How is then the word so great and high A thing. There is some other rendering which with the Spirit's guidance I must find. We read, in the beginning was the mind. Before you write this first phrase, think again. Good sense eludes the over hasty pen. Does mind set worlds on their creative course? It means in the beginning was the force. So it should be. But as I write this too, some instinct warns me that it will not do. The Spirit speaks. I see how it must read boldly write, in the beginning was the deed. So we see Faust pedestalling the deed, not the Word. The Word that is divine reason and incomprehensibly majestic thought of God. The Word that is catalyst for all creation. And the Word of course, would become flesh in Christ. And we might think the Word to be co eternal with the Creator. And the act of creation is concurrent with the Word. Let there be light. And instantaneously simultaneously there was light. Or we might get a sense that there is an imperceptible and impossible to discern imperceptible sliver of time in which the Word was before creation. And Faust is saying that in that imperceptible pre creation sliver of time was not the Word, but the deed. Now the concept of the Word is a concept that I wrote ironically, is quite beyond words. It's a stand in for that which cannot be expressed, the inexpressible. There is a long history of theological thought that in seeking to understand the Word, is actually seeking to get closer to God's greatness. But Faust, like Hamlet, indeed like Nietzsche, sees the folly of words, words, words, though the word is not the same as words. Though we could understand why Faustin Faust, who's dedicated his life to such endless study, we can understand why at a certain point he thinks words themselves do not signify. Because, as Nietzsche would say, that which we can find words for is something already long dead in our hearts. Now we see in Faust's study, Mephistopheles transforms right before him, and he echoes back Faust's scorn for mere words. When Faust asks him his name. What is your name? Faust asks. Mephistopheles says the question is absurd, surely, in one who seeks to know the inmost essence, not the outward show, and has such deep contempt for the mere word. And then he goes on and Faust says, well then, who are you? And Mephistopheles says, it's about 1300 lines into scene six. Part of that power which would do evil consequences constantly and constantly does good. I am the spirit of perpetual negation, and rightly so for all things that exist deserve to perish and would not be missed. Much better it would be if nothing were brought into being. Thus what you men call destruction, sin, evil, in short, is all my sphere, the element I most prefer. Let foolish little human souls delude themselves that they are wholes. I am part of that part which once, when all began, was all there was, part of the darkness before man, whence light was born, proud light which now makes futile war to wrest from night its mother. What before was hers, her ancient place and space. Now, Mephistopheles description of what he is is fascinating. He is the grand negation. He is no personified. And if we remind ourselves that he is the devil, then we can see that evil is in negation, inertia, inact activity. We can see that absence and nihilism and nothingness are personified in this figure, this figure who is an externalization of the internal. He is an externalization of the evil recesses of the part of the human, the part of us that gazes into the endless abyss, rather than the part that strides boldly across it, which means good is in the deed, in the action, in striving, movement, progress, in the doing. And we see that Faust, ultimately, over the course of his journey, comes to be a stand in for affirmation, representing the every man's yes to the devil's no. And it's important that we consider what Mephistopheles says about being part of that which creates all, that which was before the light and the dark. Like the Hasatan figure in the Book of Job, Mephistopheles is not really an antithesis to God, but part of God and does God's bidding. And God wills the devil to test mankind, to test our mortal freedom, our freedom to choose, to embrace ceaseless action and to refute the negation that is evil. William Blake would take this to the ultimate, to the extreme, with the assertion that the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. So Faust makes a deal with the Devil. And we continue to talk of Faustian bargains today, to refer to those moments or those decisions in which we feel like we've sold our soul or morality, we've sold out our personal values for some earthly or material benefit, for riches or power or knowledge. Faust makes his deal with the devil, and he says, if ever I lie down in sloth and base inaction, then let that moment be my end. Faust's deal with Mephistopheles, which he signs in blood, is that Mephistopheles will do his bidding all his life. The devil will serve him for life, giving him access to knowledge and power. But he will have his soul after death for eternity in hell. And we might think, well, that's not much of a deal. That's not a good deal for us. But Faust, clearly not valuing his own soul or the implications for his soul are after death, agrees readily. And he says, and this is one of the most famous lines in German literature, he says, if ever to the moment I shall say beautiful moment, do not pass away. Ver weiler doch dubist so schoen. Then you may forge your chains to bind me. Then I will put my life behind me. Then let them hear my death knell toll. Then from your labours you'll be free. The clock may stop, the clock hands full and time come to an end for me. Essentially, if he ever becomes so satisfied with what Mephistopheles has done for him, if he finds himself so transcendentally happy that he wishes to stay in the moment forever, foregoing the continuation of ceaseless action, then he will die at that very moment. We see in Part Part one, after a few adventures, Faust meets a young woman who is the stand in for or emblem of innocent femininity, the eternal feminine. Das ewig weiblice. The object of Faust's desire in part one is Gretchen or Margaret or Margarita. And Gretchen is Faust's Ophelia. In much the same way that Ophelia's relationship to Hamlet is her undoubtedly doing, we see that Gretchen comes undone thanks to her tryst with Faust. With the aid of Mephistopheles, Faust seduces her. And whilst her mother sleeps, thanks to a potion put into her drink, the couple sleep together. And not only does her mother die of this potion, but Gretchen also finds herself pregnant out of wedlock. Gretchen's soldier brother Valentine challenges Faust to fight, and Faust, with the devil help, kills him. Gretchen gives birth, but she drowns the baby. She is found guilty of murder and she is sent to prison. Faust tries to save her by getting her out of prison, but Gretchen refuses. She would rather stay and be punished for her crime. She would rather face execution. And at the end of part one, she cries out to the Almighty to save her. And Mephistopheles says she is condemned, but a voice from above booms out she is redeemed. Now, many have seen Gretchen as symbolic of German culture. Yeah, Faust has seduced, sullied and abandoned German culture. But in part two, we see a strong symbolic return to the Greek culture, the classical world. And in so doing, we Essentially have Faust going back to the past in order to re energize the present and understand how his culture can go forward into the future. He's abandoned his culture, but if he goes back to the past, maybe he can learn something that he can bring back to his culture. And this is a return, a cyclical return that we see in the world of modern literature too. For example, with James Joyce's Ulysses, who found that he needed to go back in order to go forward too. A return to the age of heroism and an attempt to bring the most vitalistic aspects of the classical world into the modern world. The return to the classical world that we get in part two can be seen as German Romanticism, learning from Greek classical culture to create an identity and forge a new culture. If Gretchen is symbolic of German culture in part one, then Helen of Troy, another manifestation of the eternal feminine, and we get this idea in Faust that the eternal feminine leads us aloft. Then Helen of Troy is of course, the stand in for Greek culture in part two. But at the beginning of the second part, Faust cannot simply continue his life, what with the death of Gretchen on his consciousness. He needs a clean break and he needs to have the execution wiped from his memory if he is to have a shot at absolution. And so we see at the start of part two, Faust awakes and he is lying among grass and flowers in a field of fairies, with no recall of the events of the previous part. And in this second part, we see that Faust is in the service of the emperor with the aid of Mephistopheles. And where the first part of the story centres around Faust's quest for love after a life spent seeking knowledge, the second part focuses on his quest for power and earthly control. And the comment that comes through is that whatever the external quest or conquest, it's ultimately just significant for what it leads to internally, eternally, the internal conquest. Now I'm going to eclipse thousands of lines and a kaleidoscope of scenes. In discussing part two of Faust, I run over scenes in which we see conjurings of extraordinary apparitions from the classical world for the Emperor's court. I pass over Faust and Helen of Troy's spirited son Euphorion, who is poetry incarnate today. I glide over Wagner's creation of the Humunculus, in which we might see a satirical comment on enlightened Man. Yeah, the pinnacle of learned man's achievements is this lab experiment, this little man who lives in a glass vial. I glide over the frenzy of classical Wolpergisnacht. And we also glide over Faust's project to create new lands by driving the sea back. All of this has to be lived across a a very long time frame and comes alive in the mind's eye if one applies their imagination to it. So I urge you to spend an extraordinarily long time with Faust Part 2. Go very, very slowly. Be in no rush to finish it, or indeed, if you do finish it, return to it. Reading a page here and there over the course of your life, thinking about it, trying to summon it in your mind's eye. But ultimately, Part two resists easy or rewarding summation and synopsis. You can't get the story. So to spe need to experience it, you need the effect. It is not desirable at all to go after a summary of a work that is written for sentiment, because truly, Dr. Samuel Johnson's assertion that one reads Samuel Richardson's Clarissa, extraordinary novel, for the sentiment, not the story. Surely that applies to the mad and genius experimentation of Faust, Part 2. And so I want to fly over the many scenes of Part two and fly straight to what I believe leave is the beating heart and the most profound wisdom. At the center of the work, Mephistopheles summons the dead to rise and begin digging Faust's grave. Because the end is near. And Faust comes to this wisdom, wisdom that Goethe himself crafted into these lines near the very end of his life. As we've said, he lived to the admirable age of 82, and one of the most astonishing parts of Faust was penned right near end for him. And so, seeing what one can achieve right before their death, I think one cannot help but lament the fact that Shakespeare died at 52. What would we have if the Bard had lived another three decades to the same age as Goethe? In Act 5 of Faust Part 2, Faust says, and this is about 11,000 lines into the work. This as wisdom's final word. I teach only that man earns freedom, merits life, who must reconquer both in constant daily strife. In such a place by danger still surrounded youth, manhood, age, their brave new world have founded. I long to see that multitude and stand with a free people on free land. Then to the moment I might say, beautiful moment, do not pass away till many ages shall have passed. This record of my earthly life shall last. And in anticipation of such bliss, what moment could give me greater joy than this? That's extraordinary. We get this sense that salvation is in the anticipation of the moment in which you find your freedom, your ultimate Achievement, not in the achieving itself. It's the looking forward. It's always the looking forward. Having a vision. And as the Bible tells us, where there is no vision, the people perish. And the day will come when we reach a transcendent state where we say, beautiful moment, do not pass away. But Faust's final word of wisdom is that man earns freedom, merits life, who must reconquer both. In constant daily strife, we earn our freedom. We apply ourselves over and over and over again in constant daily strife. And freedom is on the horizon. And at the moment of death, we will finally reach that transcendent state of presence after the ceaseless striving, after the valiant activity, we would have earned it. And we see at the end of part two, before Faust's soul can be dragged down to hell, because of course, he's made that deal with the devil. We see a heavenly intervention and we see that Faust is redeemed. The devil loses Faust's soul and angels carry Faust's soul up to heaven. And a mystical chorus at the end of the work tells us that eternal womanhood draws us on high. So Faust is redeemed and the eternal feminine raises us up, draws us on high, and salvation is within. Transcendence is possible in the now, but only after we we've earned it through ceaseless pursuit after worthy goals. Salvation is in the ceaseless pursuit of noble goals. And of course, we are the ones who ascribe meaning. We define what is worthy. Evil is dark inertia, whilst good is in relentless pursuit. And we might say that the pursuit after noble, worthy goals is the noble, worthy goal. Again, it's all about the journey, not the destination. Art is long, but life is short. We have no time for inactivity. Ask longa vita brevis, so momento mori. Remember you will die. We find our meaning in the moment when we are striving ceaselessly after our noble goals. And Goethe, as we've said, laboured all his life on Faust. He returned to it time and again. He deliberately delayed finishing it, always tweaking it, always adding, always sculpting. And I think we can see why. And we can see when we bring ourselves to Faust, Part one and part two, constantly, ceaselessly, we can see the end result of such lifelong labour. The work is inexhaustible, like Hamlet, like Paradise Lost. It's a poem unlimited, we think masterpiece. Though Faust is, the lifelong composition wasn't just due to the difficulty of the work, the ambition of the work, because indeed, this must have been a very Difficult project. It was incredibly ambitious. Vision and scope is incredible. The reason why Goethe spent his entire life working upon Faust is because that was a practical application of what Goethe knew to be true. He didn't want to finish the project. He didn't want to finish the work that was his ceaseless striving and his noble, worthy goal. And maybe when he reached the end of his life, he said, stay, moment, stay. I have earned my freedom. So when I reread Faust, yes, I get an imploration of being careful what I wish for. I get an imploration to be wary about Faustian bargains, be wary and mindful of what you're giving away and what you're trading in. We get all of that, and I absolutely adore the sublimity and the resonance of the poetry. I love it. But ultimately, when I reread Faust, I'm reminded that my own salvation is in choosing a project, a noble goal, a worthy goal that is meaningful. And salvation lies in working upon it and not letting up until the moment in which I am so overcome by beauty and transcendence that I can die. If I'm not ready to die, then I must keep striving. We all need a lifelong labour of love that we can lose ourselves in, and Faust, more than anything, is a reminder of that for me. Now, we have of course just scratched the surface of Faust, but of course it is an inexhaustible work and I hope you feel energized to bring yourself to this work time and again. And if you would like to see what fellow lovers of literature have to say about Goethe's Faust, then we have an exhilarating discussion thread for this work along with curated recommended resources to help deepen your appreciation at the Hardcore Literature Book Club. And if you would like to get more out of your reading, then we have a very exciting syllabus of read throughs, lectures and bookish discussions@patreon.com hardcore literature we've got the year off to a really great start. We read John Steinbeck's east of Eden earlier this year. We read and appreciated the poetry of Walt Whitman. We've been working through Shakespeare's tragic procession as part of a wider project to read all the works of the Bard chronologically. We also recently read Bulgakov's the Master and Margarita. And we brought Goethe's Faust insignificant significantly for that read through. And we have a very exciting spring season of reading lined up at time of recording. We're appreciating the French comic drama of the master of 17th century theatre, Moliere. This week at Time of Recording, we will very soon have a brand new lecture on Shakespeare's dark tragic masterpiece, Macbeth. And we will also be appreciating Moliere's the Misanthrope. And we'll be talking about the history of misanthropy and what it means to be misanthropic. We're also enjoying the irony of Jane Austen. And we are spending time with Austen's vitalistic characters, with one of the novels that makes me laugh the most, and that's Pride and Prejudice. The two novels that make me laugh more than any other work are Pride and Prejudice and Serve Don Quixote. We will also very soon be kicking off a real literary climb. We have a mountain up ahead, and this will be a work that readers will be really proud of having read. This will be a real reading accomplishment. We're going to be reading the Tale of Genji together. We will also soon be talking about the essays of Montaigne. For summer this year, we will be journeying through David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. And there's been so much excitement for that work. We will also be appreciating Kafka, Nietzsche, Dante, Freud, Toni Morrison, Thomas Hardy, Charles Dickens. And we also have an extensive back catalogue of lectures that you can stream on demand, completely at your own pace. So what a lot of book club members like like to do is mix and match. Many readers will follow along with the live read, but they will also dive into the back catalogue and they'll pick up a work that interests them or calls out to them, and they take that at their own pace. I've heard from readers recently who are loving works like A Tale of Two Cities. I've heard from readers who are making their way through George Eliot's Middlemarch, following the original serialized publication schedule and enjoying the experience of the accompanying lectures. The Moby Dick lecture series, that's another popular one. That's one that gets a lot of love, as is the Jane Eyre lecture series. Indeed, Charlotte Bronte's great novel was one of the most popular book club reads of all time, as was Milton's Paradise Lost, Tolstoy's War and Peace. That was another really popular one. Dostoevsky's the Brothers Karamazov, that was a challenging one, as was James Joyce's Ulysses and Thomas, Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow. We have lectures for all of these books and I love all of these works. All of them give you something different. All of them challenge you intellectually and emotionally. Those are just a few examples of the many books we have lectures for at the Hardcore Literature Book Club. There's so much to dive into and if you're looking to share your love of literature with fellow readers, then you'll be right at home and you'll be very warmly welcomed once again, that's at Patreon Hardcore Literature. Thank you so much for listening today. Thank you for being here. Thank you for reading along. I appreciate you and I hope you have a lovely day. Happy reading everybody, and bye bye for now.