Man's development forseen in Goethe's Faust

the sense in which this expression was used in medieval drama. Mansoul as he becomes through the distressful history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is portrayed in the character and fate of Faust. Marlowe in his drama produced a picture of the medieval experience of good and evil. Goethe entered into the soul-drama of modern man as he struggles with himself to develop into that at which he rightly aims. He transcended his own personal development to enter into the pattern of that which belongs to Mansoul in the modern sense.

Goethe achieved the portrait of modern man, which Faust truly is, by using the language of mythology. He had himself a strong personal interest in natural science but his most skilful work was done as a poet. He was not able to achieve the scientific representation of the pattern of man but he faced this undertaking as a poet. He created a myth, the myth of Faust. He called again and again in the scenes of the drama on the myths of the Middle Ages and of Ancient Greece, but his central character was his own modern creation. There are certain figures in the history of literature which have taken on a life of their own, have become the heroes of myths in their own right. Such a one is Hamlet, who lives in modern thought independently of Shakespeare. A more modern example would be Sherlock Holmes, who is far more real to most readers today than his author Conan Doyle. Goethe’s Faust is of this company. As the long drama proceeds from scene to scene, Faust seems to be conducting his own destiny and one could imagine that Goethe as he grew older tended more and more to become his scribe. If one would ask how the figure of Faust has come to be so powerful in his own right, one could say that it is because, hero of a myth as he is, he is making in himself the history of modern man. In this sense his author, Goethe, became a seer in his own time. Very recently in an American publication, Rudolf Steiner has been entitled ‘the scientific seer’. This is because he was able to create the spiritual scientific pattern of man in the modern sense. Goethe was not able to do this but he could be called by contrast ‘the mythological seer’ in relation to the drama of Faust.

Throughout the first and second parts of the play, the experiences of the remarkable individual called Faust are described.

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