00:00:03.660 - 00:00:21.420

Unknown: The play reading for Dr. Faustus that will be Tuesday at 730 in the fireside lounge and it's being produced by the Stevenson Theatre Guild. And I think Bill Shipley is directing. So if you have a chance, it'll be well worth your time. It's

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impossible for me really to introduce the lecture this morning. For those of you who know his work, he'll need no introduction. And if you don't know his work, any introduction is impossible. And with that, I turn you over to Professor

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Norman Oh, brown. You heard it, it's impossible. It's impossible for me to introduce Curtis Faust better than Ben, you have already introduced it to yourself by

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coming at it from Shakespeare. And specifically, perhaps Hamlet, specifically Hamlet. But also, you might you can easily think of Midsummer Night's Dream. There's a reference to it in the net strange scene with a golden wedding of Oberon on

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titanium. And also, of course, Macbeth with the witches and Curtis Faust. At the end of his life, good wrote a wonderful tribute little poem tribute to the one

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woman and the one man in his life. The woman was lotter wasn't his wife, and the man was William, William Shakespeare. And he says, to you, too, I owe what I am. What a tribute to make to Shakespeare from another genius. What did what did he owe

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to Shakespeare? And why is Shakespeare the best introduction to get us first? Shakespeare liberated good, from something I can call French classicism, that is to say a notion of drama and tragedy that you see find in classical French

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tragedy of the 18th century 17th 18th century a very formal imitation of Greek tragedy, full of respect for the so called Unity's of Greek of tragedy and the mood and all very lofty,

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even monotonous in tone, Gerda had written in that way himself earlier, but the deepening influence of, of Shakespeare, liberated goods from that kind of tight formality, and brought in into romanticism brought him into romanticism and into the

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free form in which girdles Faust is written and specifically, of what he what he picked up from in, in Shakespeare and what you find in Shakespeare's Hamlet, and what is is that, that extraordinary mixture of different kinds of materials,

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and different kinds of point of view, which is so confusing and Hamlet, and is in a certain sense repeated in in goodness, Faust, got his own description of his method here, his own words, to

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place images opposite and as it were mirroring each other, in order to reveal the deeper meaning, to see something from many different perspectives. This is one of the ways in which good is Faust is an anticipation of some of modernist even 20th

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century techniques in our think of Cubism, for example, in in painting, of where you fracture the surface, to reveal hidden planes of force and different levels of reality. Well, that's the way good has constructed

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his Faust. The hidden materials in this case include self reflection, that's to say, he includes reflection on his own dramatic and poetic perspective as part of the subject matter. So you

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have a play within the play about the play the prologue in the theater. But that same kind of self reflectiveness goes on throughout the whole thing. And it transcends any kind of naive realism in theater. It anticipates, again, the 20th

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century, the theater of Brecht, where they were who insists, that the audience must never be in a mood to take illusion, representation on the stage is reality, but must always be aware of that it is representation and illusion. And

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that there again, is anticipated to some extent in the, in the or in a different way, in the several reflections about the nature of drama that you get from Shakespeare's Hamlet, not only the extraordinary play within the play that catches the

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conscience of the king, but also that apparent would you would think, is it irrelevant long discourse when Hamlet receives the players so that this way with this heterogeneous Shakespearean mixture of materials go to develops a

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counterpoint, counter pointing scenes against each other? Or to use a metaphor that's taken more from philosophic apprehension of truth? He presents a what you might call a dialectic, dialectic of different points of view, a dialectic of opposites

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points of view. In this in goddess Faust, you have these shot from heaven to Hell, I mean, the shifts have seen highlife low life the macrocosm, the macrocosm, tragedy and farce, miracle play religious miracle play and what we call

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from models in Greek theatre satre play animal animal masks and animal farce. And this this is not just a mixture, this this this mixture is very much reflects the central subject matter of the whole thing. What is man, that marvelous

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description that Mephistopheles gives to the Lord in heaven, in the prologue in heaven. How's man doing these days? Well, he's doing just as badly as he always did. He calls it reason this is line 295. I give the references to lines you can find it in your

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addition but a little line 285 he calls it reason and uses it only to be more beastly than any beast that that dialectical. contrast between bestiality, humanity and super humanity

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takes you to the very heart of this play. And perhaps Above all, the the opposites, the dialectical combination of opposites, fantasy and reality, the life of fantasy and dreams and the life of daily awake, so cold reality. Again, there's a

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a, an incredible anticipation of the 20th century, an anticipation in this dimension of of the insights we can associate with the name of Freud. That's to say that we all have the unconscious life as well as a conscious life and the

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two are acting all the time and interacting. This in this dimension joy. Good anticipates the psycho analytical insights of Freud, which are also artists. Typically represented above or

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in my mind by James Joyce, especially perhaps James Joyce's Ulysses, I would say that James Joyce's Ulysses is good as Faust, brought up to date, in the 20th century, as a formal as a work of art,

00:10:21.510 - 00:10:48.270

all this, this technique of using heterogeneous materials to counter pointed to bring out a kind of dialectic of opposites comes together, I think, or something for you to think about as a new way of thinking about history and new way of thinking

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about history, which is especially the focus of your attention when looking for this in Curtis Faust should be the whole sequence of wild vowed poor guests, not about poor guests night, if you'll allow me to pronounce that w at the

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beginning of the German word in a semi German way vowed to kiss Night, night, that scene that Wild Wild witches Sabbath at towards two thirds of the way through the play. what's what's what's involved there, if I can throw out some, some ideas in

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the forms of paradoxes, which I think that good is is offering their invisible reality reality that we cannot see which are commonplace and ordinary eyes is more real than what we think is reality. This, this, this becomes the, the the, is almost

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the light motif of the whole play both part one and part two, which you're not reading in the in the at the very end of Part Two, there's a famous There's a famous untranslatable little thing he says, at the very end, it's translated here, on the

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last page, everything transitory is butter, similarly, everything transitory is butter, a simile, a transitory every, every event, everything that happens, everything that goes across the stage of history of reality, is only a simile is only a metaphor

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is only a comparison. It's a reflection of some other deeper reality. And in this way, what what is what, what is going on here, as I say, it's a deeper reflection about the nature of history. And it's going from a, from a literal from seeing the

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pageant of history in a literal fashion, what really happened to seeing the symbolic meaning of history, from from, from realism to symbolism in in, in history, this is this is the the achievement that is first breaks

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into the greatest Faust in this particular scene of part one, and then is expanded in the whole of part two, which is, part two is really an elaboration of the insights first obtained in the vault Lucas night scene of part one,

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from realism, to symbolism and a new conception of time, or at least a different conception of time. I think as you go from realism to symbolism, in some sense, again, this is paradoxical and you can discuss with each other or with your

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instructor, whether it means anything, from time to eternity from this is history seen, under a certain or in aspect of eternity, or in the light of eternity. And this this means what what does it mean to see history in the light of

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eternity? It is to see something that we do not orden narrowly recognize in history and that is a factor of repetition, repeat in history, a factory, a factor of what the philosopher Nietzsche called eternal recurrence. That certain

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patterns if you if you see everything transitory as only a likeness, it's that the the suggestion there is, is that there are certain eternal patterns which recur are re enacted on the stage of history. And to recognize the reality of

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what's happening, you have to recognize the repetitions, the era occurrences, and the pattern behind them, for which some people use some philosophers have used the word archetype, the archetype or the, the, the the patterns, which underlie the

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invisible reality. Part Two go to spend a whole lot his whole life on Faust. That's an amazing thing. He did lots of other things, but he kept working at Faust, for at at intervals to his extreme old

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age. And as I say, part two is working out an insight that occurs to him first are begins to appear in the material that he's working with in the vowel korgis night scene of part one, I think it is to be specific, it is an elaboration on a world in

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part two, you get an elaboration on a world historical scale, of a, a repeat in history, of which good is becoming aware of in part one, and that is the repeat between the Renaissance and

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romanticism between the Renaissance and his own times. That some that get that there is acid word that romanticism and by romanticism I include the French Revolution, the great upheaval at the end of reaching the American Revolution, the

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French Revolution, the romantic revolution, of in terms of insight, sensibility, in art and philosophy. Good is becoming aware that that is, as it were another surge of the same tie that brought about the Renaissance. So that the

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underlying insight is of this factor of repetition between Renaissance and romanticism. And that's why in a very weird way, and as I say, it comes in in a broken fashion gets elaborated in part two.

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In the wild valproic is not seen. Faust, who is a renaissance figure, false to the Renaissance figure and the Reformation figure who also is busily and

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like Luther engaged in translating the Bible, but suddenly they're in the valpak is not seen. Here. He is surrounded by flotsam and jetsam figures from the French Revolution.

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And even the masses are coming there the mass movement that brings about the fall of the Bastille and things like that. And also, not only that, but in a manner that the critics have sternly

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disapproved of. The good introduces elements from the literary contentions of the romantic movement in which he himself had participated, a violent violation of history in order to bring about to bring to light the deeper meaning of

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history, a violation of chronology and what happened when, in order to bring forcibly to his own mind and to yours, the repeat in history. What Freud called what Freud called the repeat in history, eternal recurrence, what Freud referred

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to as the return of the repressed, a tendency of the repressed to return. Look at the 18th century I think you've been doing some readings in the 18th century. Or think of it

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in the 18th century, the Age of Enlightenment. Well, this is an oversimplification, but still it will open up the topic for reflection, the Enlightenment age Cold itself or enlightenment, or we call it the Enlightenment because they

00:20:05.460 - 00:20:27.270

thought it thought it had exposed, expelled the forces of darkness. It was the New Age of Enlightenment that had expelled the forces of darkness. That is to say the forces of witches and valpro gets knocked the forces of the irrational. But, as

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Shakespeare said, We are thought stuff those dreams are made on. And the dream of reason produces monsters. And there is a return of the demonic in the romantic awareness. And the return of the demonic is dramatized and made forever. Something that you can

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think about in dramatic theatrical terms, through Curtis achievement. in in in, in his house, and especially this scene, I'm talking about that scene while tortoise Knight is a dramatic representation of something

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of an insight that James Joyce and Ulysses formulates in a manner that is absolutely unforgettable to me. Young Stephen James Joyce young Stephen is teaching in the university. It's not the

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university. It's a prep school. He's teaching in a prep school and and he was interviewed by the headmaster and they have a discussion of history. What is history? And young Stephen says, history is a nightmare from which I am trying to awaken. to

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awake I always get that wrong. History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake, that nightmare dimension of history, that nightmare dimension of modern life, that surrealist dimension of modern life. Is it real? Is it unreal, what mixture

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of reality or unreality do we live in? That is what goodness Faust is about, or to give it another name to psychopathology of modern man, the psychopathology of modern man. Indeed, that's what I would say. That's one definition of what

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Hamlet is also about. The relation to Shakespeare is not only in the form, it's also in the content. The time is out of joint Oh, curses, spite, in Hamlet,

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tragedy. Hamlet Faust. It's not about a tragic flaw. It's not about morality, and some tragic flaw. tragedy. Hamlet Faust is about madness.

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It's about madness or psychopathology. Look at Faust as a case of psychopathology. See the schizo Oh, see the schizophrenia ik and this Faust at line 1112. He says he has two souls in his breast, two souls. That's this is just Freud's

00:23:39.390 - 00:23:59.280

Freud has a famous essay on on two principles of mental conflict. I mean, mental conflict, having two souls is the essence of our understanding of what psychopathology is all about. I think it's all right to use terminology like

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schizophrenia, to talk about Faust. It's alright to use clinical terminology provided you recognize that he's talking about us. Not about some abnormal person who is not you, Faust is us, and the word schizophrenia applies. That's

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what the play is inviting you to think about. And not only not only schizophrenia, but manic depressive, wildly while contradictory. swings. cyclos few make some of the more erudite pathologist call it but look at the scene in frost study

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where he where the earth spirit finally appears at one moment, the Faustian spirit is heaven high in jubilation, and the next moment, despair on to death, see him as the psychopathology, psychopathology of modern men and a depiction of the

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psychopathology of modern man. Anticipating in that marvelous way in which poets can as Ezra Pound said, poets are the antennae of the race. They get those messages that you can get if you have antennae.

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Let us pursue the diagnosis a little bit more pursue the diagnosis. What is eating? Faust? What is eating Faust? Or what is the sickness of modern man, as we see it here? Well, the sickness

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of modern man I suggest to you is growth and development, to sickness of modern man is growth and development, line 1855. Look at this passage and study the context a little bit more 1855. Talking about frost, fate has given him a mind which always

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pushes forward without restraint. And who's over hasty striving over leaps the joys of Earth pushing forward without restraint, growth and development.

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Unlimited growth and development is the is the crucial line 302 to seven. his inner ferment drives him far afield, from heaven, He demands the most beautiful stars and from Earth, all the highest pleasures, yet nothing weather near or far

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satisfies his deeply emotional heart. Do you see anything of yourselves there? page 28. PAGE 28 What's that? Oh, yeah. In born? No. First of all, yeah,

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in born in every men. Line 1093 a ceiling, pushing upward and forward. There's a very modern speech on page 28. Faust yearns to take off into outer space. This is written 150 years ago,

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180 years ago. He Faust to seize the sun sees the sunset, page 28 Alas, that

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no wing will ever lift me from the earth to took a company just to keep company with the sun. what it would be like to behold the silent world at my feet, like a space traveler. To see the world at my feet, in eternal rays of the evening all the

00:28:45.360 - 00:29:05.790

heights of flame the valleys quiet, then my God, like course would not be checked by wild mountain ocean and the ocean would would open hours before my astonished i a lovely dream, but as the sun sets. And then the final remark, alas, not so

00:29:05.790 - 00:29:22.650

readily will a bodily be wing added will a bodily wing be added to the wings of the Spirit. That's to say he has contemplated he's a take off it taking off into outer space. He's contemplated that in his imagination.

00:29:24.690 - 00:29:47.130

You can see it on TV. You don't need imagination if you make the mistake of drawing that conclusion. Growth and Development take off. Now that's not just a material economic, physical scientific project. The

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space to be conquered by the Faustian spirit of modern man is not just physical space. It's also a spiritual project. It's also a sexual project. And that's what this play is about. It's also a spiritual project.

00:30:09.360 - 00:30:30.930

Faust is not only the tycoon I look the word up in the etymology it comes from the Japanese Shogun. But it's, it's a tome in America. Feist is not only a tycoon of free enterprise and economic development, again, this is development in part this

00:30:30.930 - 00:30:56.790

is made explicit in part two. His climactic project is to drain the siders z decider See that? That black bit of ocean that threatens the lowlands of Holland. He's going to you know, ask one dawn or whatever eldo ways of remaking the universal

00:30:57.300 - 00:31:11.760

Have you can think of as modern analogies. Faust is not only the tycoon of free enterprise and economic nomic development, he is also the hippy dropout,

00:31:12.060 - 00:31:29.430

intent on developing his human potential. A hippie dropout intent on developing his human potential, the first scene night line 392 to seven. He's some he's fed up with

00:31:29.430 - 00:31:44.040

academia. He's and and wants to drop out and take to the zeros are, could I but walk on mountain heights float with spirits, round mountain caves and meadows and liberated

00:31:44.040 - 00:32:06.810

from all this fog of academic learning, find health bathing in the do. And Faust is not only the tycoon of enterprise and the hippie dropout, growth and development, he's also the super intellectual, hell bent for the father's frontiers of knowledge.

00:32:08.130 - 00:32:34.410

Also, also a revolutionary artist. This this is developed in part two. He's also Napoleon, a revolutionary political activist going to change the world. He is also Don Juan, of whatever you call a compulsive womanizer What do you call a

00:32:34.920 - 00:32:57.150

compulsive womanizer exploring the unlimited possibilities of sexual experience pursuing some fantasy of the perfect woman, Helen, Helen of Troy. And of course that leads to the to the Gretchen. tragedy, which is the climax of the play.

00:32:59.370 - 00:33:20.640

Don Juan, no accident, as we say, Don Juan like Faust. Two Renaissance inventions. Those figures of Don Juan and se were both invented in the Renaissance to Renaissance inventions with a

00:33:20.640 - 00:33:49.710

great romantic future ahead of them. So, I mean, just see this Faustian character, the psychopathology of modern man in round all dimensions of a tycoon hippie, far out philosopher Napoleon, Don Juan. It is good to his deepest insight, that all

00:33:49.710 - 00:34:12.570

these are the same one Faustian spirit, the same, they're all the hippie and the end up tycoon. Your father and the son are not always recognized their affinity with each other. They are in terms of this myth and this symbol of the hinting at

00:34:12.570 - 00:34:32.430

the invisible reality underneath. They are the same Faustian spirit. So that Faust is not an individual character. In the ordinary sense of an individual character. He is more

00:34:32.430 - 00:34:57.870

like the spirit of the age, the soul spirit of the age. It is like that mystery every man in medieval miracle plays who every man but, but more historicize That's to say it's the it's I think it applies it

00:34:57.930 - 00:35:19.830

to the It's a special cific psychopathology of modern man and not conceived in Universal, it not conceived in historical terms. That Faustian Spirit

00:35:21.210 - 00:35:44.250

then there is something satanic about it. As you will learn from goddess files there is something satanic that you can pursue. There is some sympathy with the devil in Faust or Mick Jagger,

00:35:44.610 - 00:36:01.260

Rolling Stone or poke our toe in the town chemical something satanic something Titanic get that metaphor

00:36:04.410 - 00:36:23.190

you know Titan ism Faust in America, I mean, bringing Faust to America, Theodore dreiser. The beginning

00:36:23.190 - 00:36:48.120

of the 20th century tried to depict the tycoon as Faustian spirit in a trilogy. The first volume was called not the tycoon, but the financier. And the second volume was called the the Titan, the Titan in the Marlowe play,

00:36:48.900 - 00:37:11.040

that Dr. Foster's that I great, nice to hear you're going to have a chance to work with with they refer to the aspiring mind of Dr. Foster's. Titans are those giants of classical mythology those giants who

00:37:11.040 - 00:37:35.250

aspire to reach to heaven. That is to say they correspond to the builders of the Tower of Babel in the Bible. Titan ism is the Superman project in the in the dialogue between Faust and the earth spirit, which is there for the manic depressive sides of

00:37:35.700 - 00:37:57.210

the manic depressive cycle in the Faustian soul is so, so extreme the out of the earth spirit well, Faust is overwhelmed by the, the Epiphany, the manifestation of

00:37:57.210 - 00:38:17.460

the earth spirit and then the earth Spirit says, oh, how Superman feeling now. I mean, there's that Superman is, is is the ambition. The the Faustian project is is is the place shows that the

00:38:17.460 - 00:38:38.880

Faustian project is fundamentally a religious or metaphysical sickness. These Titans, are trying to get to heaven or to build a tower of Babel on earth that reaches unto heaven. And and this made abundantly clear in enacting

00:38:38.910 - 00:39:03.090

encounter with the with the earth spirit, where Faust says I image of the Deity, and yet I'm unable to why can't I? Why can't I expand to receive the earth spirit? The whole question of

00:39:03.090 - 00:39:18.090

what does it mean for man to be in the image of the deity? What is the likeness of man between what and God? Is he God like how to be godlike? Can you be godlike what happens?

00:39:18.810 - 00:39:40.680

It is it is a good ironic comment on the on thau speech when he says i image of the deity Why can't I feel so crushed? It's a good ironic comment that Mephistopheles sake Mephistopheles when he has this marvelous parody interview with

00:39:40.680 - 00:40:08.550

a student and leaves the student round by the nose. This false, good graduate student the climax, the student asks Mephistopheles, could I have your autograph? You can have my autograph and, and for the autograph that Mephistopheles

00:40:08.550 - 00:40:31.590

Satan writes in the students album is an it's very strangely not translated in your text. This is line 2048 you might write in. I mean, for God's sake, I hope you've discovered what it is 2048 Mephistopheles, right in the students album

00:40:31.650 - 00:40:49.290

editas secret Dale's skin taste Barnum at Milan, which is the Latin for the text, you will be like God, knowing both good and evil.

00:40:50.400 - 00:41:12.840

This is of course, what the serpent offered in Genesis three, what the serpent offered to Eve to persuade her to eat the apple tree of knowledge, you will be like Gods knowing good and evil.

00:41:14.220 - 00:41:41.460

It's so characteristic of, of the dialectical paradoxical way in which gutter explores the human, divine bestial interaction in human in human nature, that he puts this, this quotation into the mouth of Satan.

00:41:43.380 - 00:41:59.400

As if the temptation to be godlike comes from Satan, who Satan, good question. And that's why we have a prologue in heaven. It is as if

00:42:00.480 - 00:42:36.390

the lure of have the highest in human nature, our science the highest, activates the lowest or maybe is activated by the lowest the the, the great dark theologian, writer, Pascal, who was not like Descartes.

00:42:38.400 - 00:43:01.290

has, has has who and who wrote aphorisms or epic grams that put things very briefly and neatly. He has expressed something of this paradox that we're talking about when he said he who wants to play the angel ends up playing the beast, he who plays

00:43:01.320 - 00:43:30.030

Angel plays beast, he who wants to play Angel tries to act out the angel ends up acting the beast growth and development unlimited. Either tycoon array, or

00:43:31.680 - 00:43:51.840

human potential and Big Sur i mean is destructive and self destructive. And that's in this play to first of all, think of it in terms of economic just economic

00:43:51.840 - 00:44:12.720

tycoon re growth and development in the in a crude sense. A great economist, defined the spirit of modern capitalism, the spirit of modern capitalism now one of the forces I mean the American Revolution, the French

00:44:12.720 - 00:44:26.400

Revolution, the Industrial Revolution, what is this surge of energy that that garota is trying to project into into the Faustian spirit. Part of it is just capitalism. And what is capitalism

00:44:26.400 - 00:44:45.990

capitalism can be seen as, quote, creative destruction, creative destruction. This is a two word summary of an insight that you'll be finding in Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto next quarter, I believe you you'll be reading this. Let me just

00:44:46.020 - 00:45:06.060

juxtapose with Curtis Faust a passage from the Communist Manifesto, about the nature of capitalism and and modern growth and development constant revolutionized production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social relations, everlasting

00:45:06.060 - 00:45:25.170

uncertainty, agitation, distinguish the bourgeois the capitalist epoch from all earlier times, all fixed fast frozen relationships with their train of venerable ideas and opinions are swept away, new form ones become obsolete before

00:45:25.290 - 00:45:44.820

they can ossify all that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned. That that, that is, that is the Faustian spirit. Going

00:45:46.950 - 00:46:11.370

the Faustian spirit, self expansion or expansion to destruction and self destruction, self expansion carried to the point of self destruction, please note lines 1772 51770 very central passage

00:46:12.420 - 00:46:39.720

1770 I wish to experience the highest and the deepest, in other translation for that is lowest I wish to experience the highest and the lowest that are is to pile on myself the totality of human bliss and sorrow and thus expand my

00:46:39.720 - 00:46:59.310

individual self till it becomes humanity to become humanity self, and in the end, like it, that's humanity, to smash in shipwreck. That's what he wants to do.

00:47:00.570 - 00:47:26.790

A project of self expansion that ends in shipwreck totality, as his aspiring mind wants to comprehend the totality and totality leads to infinity and infinity is a sea on which we get shipwrecked. There's a poem by the romantic Italian Labour

00:47:26.790 - 00:47:49.560

party called the infinite the infinite as a see. And he says, in that sea ship breakfast sweet. The new the mysterious new power of self destruction in the sea

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of infinity. It's also that See, I haven't got the passages that are is referred to Faust refers to in this text, the sea of illusions the sea of errors, not knowing what is real or unreal, on which the whole play rides. It is suicidal, it is suicidal.

00:48:18.000 - 00:48:41.190

Gets the young girder when he was not much older than you are hit the big time with a novel about suicide vector, the sufferings the passion of the young vector. The effect of girdles novel about the suicide of young verter was to cause a

00:48:41.190 - 00:48:59.040

wave of actual suicides amongst other young men in Europe. This this is this. This is a very definite and palpable and historically

00:48:59.070 - 00:49:21.600

provable dimension of the psychopathology of modern man suicide. A sardonic French wit proposed that the French government should establish self service guillotines charging 100 francs as and as a way to balance the budget it might have

00:49:23.100 - 00:49:44.070

that might have some service today. Compare the stage look at littered with corpses at the end of Hamlet. Look at that stage littered with corpses at the end of Hamlet. Is there not a secret Jonestown project in the heart

00:49:44.100 - 00:50:07.950

of the mystery of Hamlet in both the Renaissance and romantic vows Jainism in modern times. Suicide has to be taken seriously now Faust in the play is a middle aged laughter now growing middle aged and weary with reading books as a

00:50:07.950 - 00:50:30.240

substitute for suicide. So he makes another suicide attempt at line 690 I wonder whether you'll find he has good enough reasons for not going through with it and and then at the crucial moment

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leading to the pack with Mephistopheles, the devil is what he he gets into one of his depressive phases, and there's a long curse on life. It's in the duplicates the book of Job these things are maybe specially in the modern world

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but they're not new. The curse on life. In the book of Job cursor be the day on which I was born and curse would be the night on which they said a man child is born into the house. While there's that

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duplicated and even surpassed and enforced curse on life at lines 1587 to 1606. And it links straight to the pack with the devil. shipwreck is sweet.

00:51:26.550 - 00:52:01.200

In America, Captain Ahab and dry sores, financiers and take Titans. But not only American tycoon Ray also American consumerism is fast yen consumerism lines 3249 to 50 I mean, the way you live.

00:52:02.940 - 00:52:30.090

So I stagger from desire to enjoyment and then the midst of enjoyment first for more desire. I hope you can recognize that line 3249 to 50. And, and the especially in part two, Faust goes on a binge of tourism, and going on a pinch of tourism

00:52:30.090 - 00:52:47.520

myself in the month of May. Anyway, it's truly American. And forced the play teaches us that American consumerism which is so much, maybe it's all it's our life is, is a metaphysical

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and religious disorder a metaphysical and religious disorder. St. Augustine, St. Augustine, in his confessions,

00:53:01.020 - 00:53:23.550

says, The heart is restless till it resting the, the restless heart that finds no, no peace is at the is the invisible reality behind the disorder of our of our private and public life.

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creative destruction is also the pattern of the fosston love life or sex life. Gretchen at the towards the end of the play.

00:53:40.260 - 00:54:11.940

Please note specially the scene called forest and cavern. 3219 to 3373. That scene is is is specially added to connect false the lofty visionary human potential. So for character with Faust, the quiet vulgar seducer

00:54:13.980 - 00:54:34.920

they're the same guy that quite vulgar seducer who's what what what is his desire? What What is false ask yourself analyze what? Why does this lofty soul behave this way in the Gretchen, sexual episode?

00:54:36.000 - 00:54:47.100

The desire is to corrupt innocence. The desire is to corrupt Marx in the Communist Manifesto notes

00:54:49.470 - 00:55:07.290

capital capitalism's demonic drive to destroy off what he calls feudal patriarchal it demonic relations it delic What attracts us to Gretchen is precisely her idyllic old fashioned innocence and piety.

00:55:08.670 - 00:55:34.590

There's a great scene 2686 to 2724 Faust, sniffing around in her small neat bedroom. She's not there, but sniffing around the bedroom and and finding it so different from his littered study. savoring the

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contentment of her modest, humble life. There's some perverse attraction in profanation their line 303,360 what he recognizes himself, what's he been doing what they've been wanting to do to undermine her and her peace of

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mind to undermine her and her peace of mind. There's a significant class difference here. Faust is the sophisticated gentleman or aristocrat and Gretchen is the simple poor. Are we poor? Gretchen adline 2804. And he uses jewelry to

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corruptor. diamonds are a girl's best friend. And at the end, the end of this kind of business can only be orgasmic death in love in Jonestown. That's a staff Elise

00:56:56.850 - 00:57:25.320

Mephistopheles is quite vulgar about it. top of page 83. You might miss the vulgarity or I don't know whether you miss the vulgarity. Mephistopheles ironic. So, cynical comments on Faust are just marvelous. But he's commenting on Faust

00:57:25.350 - 00:57:46.080

overflowing the into the universe in loving rapture. And then he has to concluded with an obscene gesture. Shame on you says, fast Well, he departed fast himself recognizes

00:57:47.340 - 00:58:15.960

the the the love death, the love death of Wagner's Tristan and a soda line 3364 let her fate let her sake collapse upon my head, and let her meet ruin let her beat ruin along with me. Let her meet ruin along with me. That would be a perfectly

00:58:15.960 - 00:58:32.040

satisfactory ending. See a see his fantasy of how glorious it would be to die with a girl in his arms at line 1576 and with the tragic wisdom of madness

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like Ophelia Gretchen, line, toward at the very end for 1581 identifies the day of her death with her wedding day identifies the day of her death with her wedding day. It is for

00:58:49.860 - 00:59:10.740

me golden Wendy, that is for me golden Wendy. Another image of love death in the golden wedding of Oberon and titanium in the vowed progress, not dream. It's called the Golden wedding of Oberon and titanium. The very

00:59:10.770 - 00:59:30.300

image of a happy ending, but it turns into the terror of the French Revolution. The mystery of Jonestown of Faust is in the witch's kitchen. It's in the witch's kitchen that Faust first gets a vision of Helen of Troy,

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and a drink, or drug or drink, which makes him see a Helen of Troy and every woman, line 2604. And Faust part two, which I hope you will read someday is to explore that vision. That mystery.

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We are Faustian men, man. Suffering from history, the entirety of human history. That's what's in part two. We are Faustian men suffering from history. And that's why

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Americans don't know what ails them. The psychiatrist is not enough. You need a wedding of psychoanalysis and history. As psychoanalysis and history can be combined, can only be combined, I think, by the spirit of poetry. And that's what this

01:00:41.190 - 01:00:45.750

this is all about. Thank you.