Man's development forseen in Goethe's Faust

stands apart. For him, it is only the conclusion of the pact. Faust, looking inwardly at his visions for the future, does not grasp the fact of death as the end of everything. It is another step onwards. But it also brings him an unimaginable change. He who has learnt to depend on his own striving is now dependent on Grace. In life he strove forward. In death he is drawn upwards by all those who come to meet him. Here again it would seem that Goethe, by his poetic insight, has shown a reality of existence.

The first of those who come to meet Faust at his death are the angels who take his eternal soul away from Mephistopheles. He is represented as having never realised that the pact had not been fulfilled. The angels encounter him with the saying which is one of those most often quoted from the text of the drama: “Whoever continually strives onwards, him we can redeem.’ Mephistopheles has had his eye on achievement but Faust is drawn to the angels by his inspired dissatisfaction. After the angels, there comes to fetch the soul of Faust a figure, who is Gretchen as she has become in the Life after death. She whose life was ruined by him on earth can draw him on by her power to forgive in the world beyond death. She draws him towards the heights in which is revealed the figure of the Madonna. How it is that the woman-goddess, Helen, whom Faust has sought before, is now transformed into the Madonna, is a matter for the imagination of the reader. The world of Helen was peopled with the gods and figures of Greek mythology. The Madonna of the Heavens is introduced by figures representing early Church Fathers. Goethe has, one might say, let them talk about Heaven rather than try to represent it directly on the stage. The last scene could be called a kind of theological romance, yet who could say that he knows a better way to put Heaven before an audience? Mephistopheles is seen active in earthly surroundings. Angels, the souls of the dead boys, the soul of Gretchen and the Madonna herself, all belong to the surroundings of Heaven. They draw the soul of Faust away from the earth into their company.

It is a feature of this last scene that the descriptions of the heavenly world are given by masculine theologians and the soul of Faust is led into Heaven by feminine figures. Gretchen takes him to meet the Madonna. That Goethe intended this contrast is

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