Faust Part One

Faust Analysis Order Number A

Central Themes of Faust

Central Themes of Faust, Part One

Discuss this passage and relate it to the central themes of Faust, Part One.

From the Original German:

Zwei seelen wohnen, ach! In meiner Brust Die Eine will sich von der ander trennen: Die eine halt, in derber Liebeslust, Sich an die Welt mit klammernden Organen; Die andre hebt gewaltsam sich vom Dust Zu den Gefilden hoher Ahnen. -- Goethe's Faust

English Translation:

Two souls alas! are dwelling in my breast; And each is fain to leave its brother.

The one, fast clinging, to the world adheres With clutching organs, in love's sturdy lust;

The other strongly lifts itself from dust. To yonder high, ancestral spheres.

Abstract

20th Century Science Fiction novelist Philip K. Dick in his semi-autobiographical work, A Scanner Darkly, quotes extensively from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's 1808 masterpiece, Faust, a work that is also alluded to in at least four of Dick's other works. The key excerpt, though, is clearly the fourth which, in English translation, finds Faust saying to Wagner, his assistant:

Two souls alas! are dwelling in my breast; And each is fain to leave its brother.

The one, fast clinging, to the world adheres With clutching organs, in love's sturdy lust;

The other strongly lifts itself from dust. To yonder high, ancestral spheres.

Hugo Award winning novelist Robert Silverberg praised the Dick's "demonic intensity" and deemed A Scanner Darkly, "a masterpiece of sorts."

Dick's novel is about an undercover narcotics agent living in a hippie commune who becomes addicted to illegal drugs. Thus, two souls dwell in his breast.

Thus, the theme romantically articulated by Goethe more than 200 years ago prove relevant in modern days as well. Human beings are conflicted -- two souls seemingly dwell in each individual's breast. And therein one sees the essence of the human condition.

Main Body

The theme romantically articulated by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe more than 200 years ago prove relevant in modern days as well. Human beings are conflicted -- two souls seemingly dwell in each individual's breast. And therein one sees the essence of the human condition.

20th Century Science Fiction novelist Philip K. Dick in his semi-autobiographical work, A Scanner Darkly, quotes extensively from Goethe's 1808 masterpiece, Faust, a work that is also alluded to in at least four of Dick's other works. The key excerpt, though, is clearly the fourth which, in English translation, finds Faust saying to Wagner, his assistant:

Two souls alas! are dwelling in my breast; And each is fain to leave its brother.

The one, fast clinging, to the world adheres With clutching organs, in love's sturdy lust;

The other strongly lifts itself from dust. To yonder high, ancestral spheres.

Hugo Award winning novelist Robert Silverberg praised the Dick's "demonic intensity" and deemed A Scanner Darkly, "a masterpiece of sorts."

Dick's novel is about an undercover narcotics agent living in a hippie commune who becomes addicted to illegal drugs. Thus, two souls dwell in his breast.

Goethe's Faust -- as referred to by Philip K. Dick in the 1970s, and in the original German of 1808 -- is man. He is everyman. Faust pursues life, but finds himself constantly conflicted. No matter what he does, he is never truly happy. Faust is like you and me. The quote cited above, "two souls, alas, are dwelling in my breast," can be seen as a bit of shorthand for the human condition, how we deal life, death, and tragedy, and our conflicting emotions over the whole experience.

Goethe's Faust is a scholar, but unsatisfied with his life. He possesses knowledge, but he doesn't really understand life. Faust laments: "I drag my students by the nose-/And see that for all our science and art/We can know nothing. It burns my heart"

Faust is troubled by this reality in which he finds himself. "Contentment flows no longer through my breast,"

Enter from stage left, the devil, or Mephistopheles, as he is styled here, who swears that he will give Faust "satisfaction" in this life as long as he signs, in blood, a contract with the him, assuring that Faust will be his slave when the two meet in the fires of hell.

This, of course, raises the matter of life vs. death. Faust laments that he no longer thinks life is worth living, declaring "I'm like the worm that burrows in the dust,/Who, as he makes of dust his meager meal, / Is crushed and buried by a wanderer's heel,"

Faust rambles on with this agonizing monologue before being interrupted by a choir of angels, singing "Christ is arisen." Faust finds himself on Easter morning, the day Christians celebrate Jesus's resurrection. Life as renewal.