"The general meaning of the tragedy" Faust. "Faust" the greatest creation of Goethe

Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832)

FAUST

"Faust" by Goethe is one of the outstanding works of art, which, while delivering high aesthetic pleasure, at the same time reveal a lot of important things about life.

Such works are superior in value to books that are read out of curiosity, for recreation and entertainment.

In works of this kind, the special depth of comprehension of life and the incomparable beauty with which the world is embodied in living images are striking. Each of their pages conceals for us extraordinary beauties, insights into the meaning of certain life phenomena, and we turn from readers into accomplices in the great process of the spiritual development of mankind.

Works that are distinguished by such a force of generalization become the highest embodiment of the spirit of the people and the times. Moreover, the power of artistic thought overcomes geographical and state boundaries, and other peoples also find thoughts and feelings close to them in the poet's creation. The book is gaining worldwide significance.

A work that arose under certain conditions and in certain time, bearing the indelible stamp of its era, retains interest for subsequent generations, because human problems: love and hate, fear and hope, despair and joy, success and failure, growth and decline - all this and much more is not tied to one time. In someone else's grief and in someone else's joy, people of other generations recognize their own. The book acquires universal human value.

The creator of "Faust" Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749 - 1832) lived eighty-two years, filled with tireless and varied activities Poet, playwright, novelist, Goethe was also a good artist and a very serious natural scientist. The breadth of Goethe's mental outlook was extraordinary. There was no such life phenomenon that would not have attracted his attention.

Goethe worked on Faust for almost his entire creative life. The first idea came to him when he was not much more than twenty years old. He finished the work a few months before his death. Thus, it took about sixty years from the beginning of the work to its completion.

It took more than thirty years to work on the first part of Faust, which was first published in its entirety in 1808. Goethe did not begin to create the second part for a long time, having taken up it closely in the very last years of his life. It appeared in print after his death, in 1833.

"Faust" is a poetic work of a special, extremely rare stylistic system. In "Faust" there are real scenes - everyday scenes, such as the revelry of students in Auerbach's cellar, lyrical, like the hero's meetings with Margarita, tragic, like the finale of the first movement - Gretchen in the dungeon.

In "Faust" legendary motives, myths and legends are widely used, and next to them, fancifully intertwining with fantasy, we see real human images and quite life situations.

Goethe is above all a poet. In German poetry, there is no work equal to "Faust" in the all-encompassing nature of its poetic structure. Intimate lyrics, civic pathos, philosophical reflections, sharp satire, description of nature, folk humor - all this fills the poetic lines of Goethe's universal creation.

The plot is based on the legend of the medieval magician and warlock John Faust. He was a real person, but already during his lifetime, legends began to be formed about him. In 1587, the book "The Story of Doctor Faust, the Famous Wizard and Warlock" was published in Germany, the author of which is unknown. He wrote his essay condemning Faust as an atheist. However, with all the hostility of the author, his work reveals the true appearance of a remarkable man who broke with medieval scholastic science and theology in order to comprehend the laws of nature and subordinate it to man. The churchmen accused him of selling his soul to the devil.

Faust's impulse to knowledge reflects the mental movement of an entire era of spiritual development of European society, called the Age of Enlightenment or the Age of Reason. In the eighteenth century, in the struggle against church prejudices and obscurantism, a broad movement developed to study nature, comprehend its laws and use scientific discoveries for the benefit of humanity. It was on the basis of this liberation movement that a work like Goethe's "Faust" could have arisen. These ideas were of a general European character, but were especially characteristic of Germany. While England experienced its bourgeois revolution as early as the seventeenth century, and France went through a revolutionary storm at the end of the eighteenth century, and in Germany, historical conditions developed in such a way that, due to the fragmentation of the country, the advanced social forces could not unite to fight against obsolete social establishments. The striving of the best people for a new life was therefore manifested not in real political struggle, not even in practical activity, but in mental activity.

In Faust, Goethe expressed his understanding of life in a figurative poetic form. Faust is undoubtedly a living person with passions and feelings inherent in other people. But being a bright and outstanding personality, Faust is by no means the embodiment of perfection. Faust's path is difficult. At first, he throws a proud challenge to the cosmic forces, summoning the spirit of the earth and hoping to measure his strength with him. The life of Faust, which Goethe unfolds before the reader, is the path of unremitting quest.

Faust's father was a doctor, he instilled in him a love of science and brought up in him the desire to serve people. But his father's healing turned out to be powerless against diseases that afflicted people. During the plague epidemic, young Faust, seeing that his father's means could not stop the flow of deaths, turned with a fervent prayer to heaven. But help did not come from there either. Then Faust decided once and for all that it was useless to seek help from God. After that Faust devoted himself to science.

We learn this prehistory of Faust in the course of the action. We will meet with the hero already when he has come a long way in life and came to the conclusion that his efforts were in vain. Faust's despair is so deep that he wants to commit suicide. But at this moment he hears the pleas of people and decides to stay alive.

At a critical moment on the path of Faust, Mephistopheles meets. Here it is necessary to return to one of the scenes preceding the beginning of the action - to the Prologue in the sky. In it, the Lord, surrounded by angels, meets with Mephistopheles. The dweller of hell, Mephistopheles, is evil. The whole scene symbolizes the struggle between good and evil taking place in the world.

Mephistopheles completely denies any dignity for a person. The Lord admits that a person is far from perfect, but still, in the final analysis, there is a way to get out of the darkness. The Lord calls Faust as such a person. Mephistopheles asks permission to prove that Faust can be easily led astray. The dispute between Mephistopheles and God is a dispute about the nature and value of man.

The appearance of Mephistopheles before Faust is not accidental. Mephistopheles does not at all look like the devil from naive folk legends. The image created by Goethe is full of deep philosophical meaning. Goethe, however, does not portray Mephistopheles solely as the embodiment of evil. He really is "devilishly" smart.

Mephistopheles does not let Faust calm down. Pushing Faust to the wrong, he, without expecting it, awakens the best sides of the hero's nature.

Faust, demanding from Mephistopheles the fulfillment of all his desires, sets the condition:

As soon as I exalt a single moment,

Shouting: "A moment, wait a little!" -

It's over and I'm your prey

And I have no escape from the trap.

The first thing he offers him is to visit a tavern where students are feasting. He hopes that Faust, simply speaking, will indulge in drunkenness and forget about his searches. But Faust is disgusted with the company of bums, and Mephistopheles suffers his first defeat. Then he prepares a second test for him. With the help of witchcraft, he returns his youth.

Mephistopheles expects that young Faustus will indulge in feelings.

Indeed, the first beautiful girl, seen by Faust, excites his desire, and he demands from the devil that he immediately provide him with a beauty. Mephistopheles helps him get to know Margarita, hoping that Faust will find in her arms that wonderful moment that he wants to extend indefinitely. But even here the devil is beaten.

If at first Faust's attitude to Margarita was only roughly sensual, then very soon it is replaced by more and more true love.

Gretchen is a beautiful, pure young creature. Before meeting with Faust, her life flowed peacefully and smoothly. Love for Faust turned her whole life upside down. She was seized by a feeling as powerful as that which seized Faust. Their love is mutual, but, as people, they are completely different, and this is partly the reason for the tragic outcome of their love.

A simple girl from the people, Gretchen has all the qualities of a loving female soul. Unlike Faust, Gretchen accepts life as it is. Raised in strict religious rules, she considers the natural tendencies of her nature to be sinful. Later, she deeply experiences her "fall". Depicting the heroine in this way, Goethe endowed her with the features typical of a woman in his time. To understand the fate of Gretchen, one must clearly enough imagine the era when such tragedies actually took place.

Gretchen turns out to be a sinner both in her own eyes and in her own eyes the environment with her bourgeois and sanctimonious prejudices. Gretchen turns out to be a victim doomed to death.

The surrounding people, who considered the birth of an illegitimate child to be a shame, could not take for granted the consequences of her love. Finally, at a critical moment, there was no Faust near Gretchen who could prevent Gretchen's murder of the child.

For the sake of love for Faust, she goes to "sin", to a crime. But this overwhelmed her mental strength, and she lost her mind.

Goethe expresses his attitude towards the heroine in the finale. When in the dungeon Mephistopheles urges Faust to flee, he says that Gretchen is condemned anyway. But at this time a voice from above is heard: "Saved!" If Gretchen is condemned by society, then from the point of view of heaven, she is justified. Until the last moment, even in a clouded mind, she is full of love for Faust, although this love led her to death.

The death of Gretchen is the tragedy of a pure and beautiful woman, because of her great love, she was involved in a circle of terrible events.

The death of Gretchen is a tragedy not only for her, but also for Faust. He loved her with all the strength of his soul; a woman was not more beautiful than she for him. Faust himself was partly to blame for Gretchen's death.

Goethe chose a tragic plot because he wanted to put his readers in the face of the most difficult facts of life. He saw his task in arousing attention to the unresolved and difficult issues of life.

The second part of "Faust" is one of the samples of the literature of ideas. In symbolic form, Goethe depicts here the crisis of the feudal monarchy, the inhumanity of wars, the search for spiritual beauty, work for the good of society.

In the second part, Goethe is more interested in the task of illuminating some of the world's problems.

This is the question of the main law of the development of life.

Deeply convinced of the materiality of the world, Goethe at the same time believed that the movement of life is determined by spiritual forces.

After deeply suffering the death of Gretchen, Faust is reborn to a new life and continues to search for the truth. First, we see him in the public arena.

Frustrated with government activities, Faust is looking for new ways. The image of Elena the Beautiful, summoned by means of magic, arouses in him the desire to see her with his own eyes.

Elena the beautiful serves as Goethe's symbol of his artistic ideal. But the ideal did not arise immediately, and the poet creates a whole act of tragedy to show how the concept of beauty was born in the myths and legends of Ancient Greece.

In parallel, a topic arises. Book scientist Wagner creates Homunculus in the laboratory of an artificial human. He accompanies Faust in his search for the path to beauty, but breaks and perishes, while Faust reaches his goal.

Faust and Helena embody two principles: she is a symbol of ideal antique beauty, he is the embodiment of a restless "romantic" spirit. From the symbolic marriage of Faust and Helena, a beautiful young man Euphorion is born, combining the features of his parents. But such a creature is not given to live in our world. He is too perfect for him and is shattered to death.

Faust is interested in the conviction that he found what he was looking for.

This is the thought that I am all devoted to,

The sum of everything that the mind has accumulated.

Only the one with whom the battle for life is known,

Deserved life and freedom.

It is tragic that Faust gains the highest wisdom only at the end of his life. He hears the clatter of shovels and thinks that the work he has planned is being done. In fact, lemurs, subject to Mephistopheles, are digging a grave for Faust.

After the death of Faust, Mephistopheles wants to drag his soul to hell, but divine forces intervene and take her to heaven, where she will meet with the soul of Gretchen.

If the hero's entire path is tragic, this does not mean that his life was empty and fruitless.

He suffered, suffered, but his life was full, for it required the exertion of all mental strength.

It is impossible to exhaust all the richness of Goethe's "Faust" ideas.

The general meaning of "Faust" as a beautiful dramatic poem can hardly raise doubts.

A. Anikst.

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The grandiose figure of Goethe (1749-1832), whose creations belong not only to German, but also to world literature, in many ways characterizes the ideological and artistic content of the art of the second half of XVIII- the first third of XIX v. Goethe was born on August 28, 1749 in Frankfurt am Main into a wealthy bourgeois family, received a good education at home, and then studied at the Leiitzig and Strasbourg universities. The young man was greatly influenced by the materialistic philosophy of Baruch Spinoza, which opened to him "a great and free view of the mental and moral world."
Goethe begins his literary journey with lyric poems, imbued with pantheistic motives, filled with fun and cheerfulness.
In the drama Getz von Berlichingen (1772), Goethe refers to the events of the Great peasant war XVI century The drama is in the spirit of Shakespeare's chronicles, highly regarded by Goethe, and tells the story of one of the most powerful revolutionary movements in Germany.
The author's position is controversial. He accepts without a doubt the people's right to a dignified, free and comfortable existence, but at the same time condemns his struggle as an encroachment on a good, rational beginning of life: the element of bloody indignation of the masses scares Goethe away.
Nevertheless, the assertion of the ideals of humanity, admiration for the rationality of social relations built on the principles of good and justice, the popular character of ideas about good and evil lead to the idea of ​​the right of the masses to defend their freedom and the desire for happiness. Bearing in mind the figure of the knight Getz, the leader of the rebellious peasants, Engels defined the play as "a tribute to the memory of the rebel."
Worldwide fame came to Goethe with the appearance of the novel in letters "The Sorrows of Young Werther" (1774). Sensitive, freely and fully surrendering to impressions and affections, a young man from a bourgeois family acutely feels the imperfections of the world, which deeply hurt him, denies sober, dry rationalism, identifying it with heartlessness, and does not find the strength even to fight for personal happiness. Fidelity to feeling, love for nature, depth and subtlety of feelings elevate it above the rough, calculating reality of those who rule the destinies of society and suppress every manifestation of freedom of spirit, artistry of nature, frank sensitivity. However, Werther's disagreement with the world is the reaction of a “rebellious martyr” (Pushkin), it is passive in nature and suicidal in form of expression. Indeed, the unrequited unrequited (but deep and colorful in its manifestations, heart-enriching) love prompts the hero to commit suicide.
Goethe's socio-psychological novel is a sentimental novel. The destiny of the personality in it becomes in the main, as it were, a derivative of the social characteristics of society. And the reactions of the suffering, restless personality are directed primarily to her, the contradictory perception and reflection of the disharmony of the world is not transformed into its active transformation. The specificity of German reality was reflected with tremendous force in the novel, more than anywhere else in Europe, which retained the features of age-old stagnation, conservatism of the way of life and thinking. However, even against such a gloomy background, Goethe shows how the lights of new thoughts and especially new feelings flare up.
In 1775, Goethe entered the service of Duke Augustus of Saxe-Weimar and until the end of his days settled in quiet provincial Weimar, where Herder, Wieland, Schiller also lived. With the thought of "correcting society", Goethe takes on the numerous duties of the head of various departments, and then the head of government of the dwarf state. In the spirit of the ideas of the "storm and onslaught" movement, he is trying to carry out quite serious transformations of the liberal wing in the economic and cultural life of the duchy. However, little could be done: any attempt on the foundations of feudal institutions met with sharp resistance from the nobility. But if Goethe's state activities could not radically change the structure of society, undermine the foundations of the dense, inveterate feudal order, nevertheless, thanks to him, Weimar became the center of the cultural life of Germany, a place where the best creations inspired by the ideas of humanism were born for a long and active life. German literature era.
After a ten-year activity of a state dignitary, absorbing most of the time and energy, Goethe secretly leaves Weimar in 1786 and embarks on a two-year journey across Italy. There he gets acquainted with the monuments of antiquity, is engaged in the exact sciences, works on new works. The craving for a stable, harmonious, proportionate art displaces the temperamental sensuality, the unrestrained instability of the external manifestations of creativity of the era of "storm and onslaught".
Transparency, depth, completeness are increasingly attracting Goethe as the ideals of artistic creativity.
In the drama "Egmont", the completion of which refers to the years of his stay in Italy, Goethe deals with an episode of the struggle of the Netherlands against Spanish rule in the 16th century. Count Egmont, cheerful, benevolent to people, enjoying the love of the common people, is ready to serve his native country in the difficult years of its history. An open character, innocence, honesty with friends and opponents, the desire to fully enjoy the joys of life do not allow him to claim the role of the political leader of the masses, but his humanistic ideas, naturalness of life aspirations, dedication to thoughts about the right of the people to national independence and free spiritual development, the willingness to die without bowing to the enemies of the homeland - all this largely makes the image of Egmont in the eyes of Goethe an example of a worthy human personality.
Echo French revolution responded in Germany with rebellious outbursts of the oppressed plebs, peasant unrest, suppressed, however, very quickly. The attitude of Goethe, who had entered the period of reconciliation with reality, to the revolutionary outburst could not be approving. At the same time, he was one of the first in Europe to understand that the world was entering a new era in its history, that feudal institutions were finally doomed.
The end of the 90s and the beginning of the new century mark the strengthening of the creative community of Goethe and Schiller, who spoke on the platform of the so-called "Weimar classicism". The great German writers were united by a negative attitude towards the ideology of the nobility, admiration for the republics of Ancient Greece, which seemed to be a model of social structure, and Ancient Rome... At the same time, the spirit of antiquity was opposed not only to the cruelties of the feudal legal order, but also to violence against the individual, which was attributed to the frightened German philistines of the French Revolution. The main positive factor of Weimar classicism, born of the revolution, was the conviction of the need to achieve progress on the path, albeit a slow, gradual, "organic", but unconditional affirmation of the principles of social justice.
"Educational novel" "Wilhelm Meister" (the first part - 1777-1796, the second - 1807-1829), which remained unfinished, carries an idea that is extremely close to "Faust". In the first volume of the novel, the "student years" of the young burgher reveal the mores of a cruel, contradictory world. Illusions are dispelled, the consciousness of the objective laws of life comes, sometimes cruel and difficult, to which only reason can apply, fill life with worthy content. Tireless activity, work alone only gives a person a sense of meaningful life. In the second part, Goethe tried to depict an illusory utopian society in which creative self-disclosure of the personality and general prosperity are combined. The pictures painted by the writer are unreal, but his call for joint work, active self-expression of a person for the good of the people, for constant everyday work was an expression of humane educational ideas.
The last decades of Goethe's life were filled with studies of science, the creation of new prose works ("Kindred natures", 1809), the birth of new lyric poems. Clarity of judgment, deepest insight into human heart, the amazing accuracy of the word, the richness of philosophical thought and the power of poetic expressiveness do not leave Goethe even at the very end of his life.
The last months of his life include the completion (1831) of Goethe's greatest feat of his poetic genius - the tragedy "Faust".
The beginning of the work of the lad zragedy refers to the first half of the 70s and coincides, however, with the completion of "Getz von Berlichingen", the spiritual relationship of which with "Faust" is quite obvious. The writing of the tragedy intensified sharply in the 90s, when, apparently, work on the main elements of the first part was completed. For Goethe, the strongest social stimulus for this was the events of the French Revolution and the subsequent changes in France and Europe. In 1808 the first part of Faust was published. The second part demanded another quarter of a century of tireless work and tension of thought and appeared in 1831: completing the tragedy, it also summed up the majestic result of the poet's entire creative life.
The real Faust lived in Germany during the first half of the 16th century. He traveled to various cities and earned himself a noisy fame: some saw in him a scientist who had comprehended the secrets of the universe, just not a magician, others considered him a charlatan and a crook, but his name was always accompanied by the rumor of a deal with the devil, the support that the unclean force.
The 16th century in Germany was a century of powerful, social movements (this is the era of "Getz von Berlichingen), a victorious march of the ideas of humanism, which possessed the best minds German Renaissance. Geographical discoveries, the intensive development of science, the breakdown of many medieval moral and religious concepts contributed to the spiritual emancipation of man. Against this background, the historical Faust was a fairly noticeable figure: we find mention of him even in the documents of Martin Luther. The legends that surrounded the name of Faust during his lifetime entered folk legends, became a source of literary processing. Already within the 16th century, books about Faust were published by Johannes Spies (1587), George Rudolf Wiedemann (1599), the outstanding English playwright Christopher Marlowe wrote in 1588 "The Tragic History of Doctor Faust".
If Faust's compatriots described his life as a chain of sinful acts of a heretic and a renegade, then Marlowe used a German plot to promote tyrannical, freedom-loving ideas. The folk tradition, recognizing the connection of Faust with the hellish forces, nevertheless noted his energy, curiosity, striving for happiness within the earthly limits. The hero of puppet shows, Faust was extremely popular as folklore image, and this was one of the important reasons for Goethe's appeal to him. It must be said that the poet's contemporaries also used the famous can, saturating him with ideas of enlightenment, images characteristic of the "storm and onslaught" movement.
The ideological charge of "Faust" is completely predetermined by grandiose historical events, a decisive stage in the struggle between feudal reaction and the forces of social progress, striving to democratize all state and everyday standards of mankind. The dark age-old traditions of feudalism, invested with power, religion with its powerful apparatus of clergy, scholastic science and narrow-minded inertia of thinking with all their might resisted the pressure of the democratic forces of society, armed with the motto "Freedom, equality, brotherhood", faith in reason and a good beginning in man, confidence in the possibility, necessity and, most importantly, the timeliness of the establishment of the kingdom of justice on earth.
The dispute has long gone beyond the scope of scholarly discussions, the Bastille has already fallen, guns thundered at Valmy, breaking through the dams of national borders, a victorious revolution threatened the bastions of feudalism throughout Europe. Few people understood the limited bourgeois character of the revolution, but even less doubts were that it would mark the end of feudalism.
Under these conditions, the artistic genius of Goethe embodied in Faust both the stormy polemics about the place of man in a world full of contradictions, and the philosophically progressive position of the author. A hymn to the all-conquering reason, admiration for love, the meaning of life in serving humanity, the irreversibility of the dynamics of being combined with faith in progress, criticism of reactionary social relations, denial of religious dogmas, mockery of the abstractness and sterility of book science - this is the circle of the decisive ideas of the great tragedy.
Already "Prologue in the Theater" reveals to us the whole breadth of the poet's intentions, his greedy desire to unfold his tragedy as a cosmic narration about the fate of man in the universe:

Put the whole world on the stage,
A lush row of people and creatures -
And through the earth from heaven to hell
You walk with a measured tread!

Theater director, poet, actor - everyone wants to see in theatrical action something of their own: the completeness of life and general accessibility, the creation of enduring values ​​of art, the correct image of existence. And in "Faust" all these aesthetic premises merge together, create an integral and polyphonic picture of reality and human searches in it. What is a man? A toy of the elements, a slave to his own passions, a worthless and weak creature, meekly wandering behind the lures of the outer spheres of his ephemeral and thoughtless existence? An unhappy sufferer, broken by unrealizable and absurd dreams? Or is it the god of the earth, a passionate seeker, creator of the harmony of beauty, a tireless admirer and creator of truth?
This, in essence, boils down to the dispute between God and Mephistopheles, this constitutes the main question of the tragedy. When it is decided in the name and glory of man, one more, no less important, is added: what is truth? What is the purpose of man?
Goethe's materialism manifested itself in the writer's conviction that man and the environment, nature and socio-historical conditions are in complex system interconnection and mutual influence. The world was in his eyes an objective reality full of contradictions. Not formulated conceptually, Goethe's spontaneous materialism received artistic expression in his work, primarily in Faust. "... Goethe was one of the few who firmly adhered to the" realistic ", as he said, that is, at the heart of his materialistic worldview, while enriching it with the conquests of dialectics."
Rejecting the revolutionary way of transforming society, Goethe took the position of gradual progress, but the results of social development, which he could observe with his own eyes, did not satisfy the writer.
We find Faust in the period of the final approval of his worldview, in the period of elaboration of fundamental fundamental judgments about the world and man: he

Too old to play the game
And too young to be without desires.

Already in childhood, Faust is an impressionable boy prone to melancholy, a sensitive dreamer, pensive and lonely:

I ran to the meadow slope
Such sadness overwhelmed me!
I cried, drinking in the happiness of tears.
And an unprecedented world was born in me.
In the world where Faust lives, there is no harmony of relations:
Often we have over the beautiful and honest
People laugh with an evil mock,
Duma not being able to understand high.
They only grumble viciously, not controlling themselves.

"Vulgar patience" and moderation are unbearable to Faust, and meanwhile the habit of a motionless, stagnant existence has infected many, it is not for nothing that one of the townspeople, who is not averse to gossip about the events of the big world, concludes with conviction:

Turn all the light upside down -
Only here in the old way let everything remain!

This is also an echo of the "anti-Faustian" theme in the tragedy, one of the forces opposing his searches, his struggle and dissatisfaction with existence.
Faust is old. Life tends to decline, and it was given all without a trace to the sciences: "I comprehended philosophy, I became a lawyer, I became a doctor ... Master and doctor I ..." What did the hero get in return?

Moreover, I am a beggar: I do not know, poor man,
No human honors, no different benefits ...

But that is not what is oppressive. Among all the reasons for dissatisfaction with the life lived, the main one: "and I became no smarter in the end", "I am looking for the truth in vain." The "idle child" of dry science did not open the doors of the prison of ignorance for the scientist. Living life and scholastic attempts to interpret it enter into an insoluble contradiction, and, yearning for the living "nipples of nature," Faust strives away from the brain-drained desert of tortured book knowledge. And again, and again, he returns to the idea of ​​the highest truth as a reward for many years, incessant, hard labor:

So that the mysteries of nature are revealed to me,
So as not to talk, working on trifles,
About what I do not know myself,
So that I comprehend all actions, all secrets,
The whole world is an internal connection;
From my lips so that the truth flows ...

And the more bitter it is, the more it hurts that the path by which he tried to get closer to the truth turned out to be fruitless: "Years have died!"
Faust wants to commit suicide. There are external reasons for this: he could not cope with the Spirit of the earth and the weakness of human nature seemed to him unbearably humiliating. But there are deeper reasons: in vain, it seems to Faust, he "sought a living day, suffered walking into darkness, and painfully strove for the truth." Man's knowledge is insignificant, his life is unsettled, his prospects are dark, his lot is pitiful.
However, misanthropy, hopelessness, pessimism are deeply alien to Goethe's world outlook, he cannot end the hero's life on such a gloomy, dismal note. Nor can he leave him locked in disbelief, indifferent to the world. Faust, enriched with experience and disappointments, doubt and knowledge, decides to live and fight in the name of truth, not yet knowing about Mephistopheles, about the opportunities presented to him and the upcoming trials. This is fundamentally important: the temptation of Faust is predetermined in heaven, but the hero plans his life without having the slightest idea about it. Therefore, the meeting with Mephistopheles only grandiosely expands the scope of Faust's invasion of reality, but does not constitute for him a fundamentally new attitude towards himself and the world.
If we compare Faust's doubts and the path he chose with the dominant sentiments in society during the French Revolution and the period following it, we will see that Goethe does not share the dominant sentiments of the privileged classes: he is not characterized by either fear of reality or Olympic indifference to it. Goethe's humanism is optimistic, love for a person is coupled with faith in his unlimited possibilities, in the realization of these possibilities. Faust is not a traveler for the truth. He is a fighter, ready to put everything on the line; when we meet with him, he is driven not only by a constant all-consuming passion, but also by courage, the energy of despair:

I will boldly rush into the vast light of God;
I want to fight, I'm ready to fight the storm -
And in the hour of the downfall, should I be afraid?

The discord in Faust's soul is well understood by him, but the hero is not able to cope with mutually exclusive aspirations.
What is it? The dream of the common good and the thirst for personal happiness, the desire to assert, as the dominant hypostasis of reality, one's own ideas about justice and the understanding of the need for free expression of the will of the masses in their natural thirst for a dignified existence, "craving upward" and the need for earthly bliss - all this lives, fights in Faust, gives birth to an extravaganza of greatness and a chain of rashness. The approval of single, eternal canons of morality is combined with a thirst for change, admiration for greatness human spirit is replaced by despair generated by the lowland of human nature.

Ah, two souls live in big breasts my,
Aliens to each other - and crave separation!
Of these, the earth is one sweet -
She desires everything in this world,
The other is heavenly fields
Where the shadows of the ancestors are there, on the air.

Faust is well aware of the fact that true service to science requires struggle, selflessness, and a willingness to pay with his life. Science is not a refuge for a quiet office, isolated from the storms of our time, it is a powder charge laid under everything that is painful in life, under a twisted consciousness, a trampled will, under inertia and humility. And science is always with the people, on guard of their interests, on the banner of their struggle. Faust is aware of the danger of striving for himself personally, but envies those who carried the torch of truth even to the flame of the fire:

Where are the few who have known their age,
They did not hide their feelings or thoughts,
Did you go to meet the crowd with insane courage?
They were crucified, beaten, burned ...

Undoubted sympathy for the martyrs of reason possessed Goethe himself, who knew about the essence and history of science by no means by hearsay. “Crazy,” fanatical courage drives the search for Goethe's favorite hero, Faust. Shading it, the "fat neighbor" Wagner enters the tragedy - the sciences have not dried up this scholastic scholar, have not sown tragic discontent with themselves and the state of human knowledge into the soul.
Wagner is a man who perceived only external forms, superficial ideas of the Renaissance, brushing aside the humanistic essence of this powerful social and cultural movement.
A powerful, poetic desire, "an innate aspiration - an aspiration upward", the dream of soaring bodily and mental into such heavenly depths, from which one can gaze at the whole world, the hope of not parting with the sun reveal for us the emotional mood of Faust's attitude. In comparison with him, Wagner is prosaic, dry, weak with desires:

Moaning and I often, without a doubt,
But I did not feel such a desire.
No, what are my wings and why should I be a bird!
Ah, it’s not a matter of swallowing up
Volume by volume, page by page!

Faust, overwhelmed by a thirst for meaningful creativity (“Can we find the source alive in parchment?”), Cannot look without condescending contempt at the devourer-classifier of old books, a dry rhetorician in whom “a terrible ... zeal for science”, who “ I would like to know everything. " Faust understands that it is not the number of pages he has read that reveals the secrets of the world to us, although he does not at all neglect book learning: this is only a stage, a step on the path to truth. His dream

To merge into the composition of nature with a powerful spirit,
Creating, to become a part of the divine life ...

Faust is tormented by the thought that, in the name of science, he acted as a killer of the sick, aggravating their ailments. The result, the goal, the result of the activity is the main thing for him. Wagner, on the other hand, is epically calm, it is only important for him that everything is in accordance with the rules:

Well, is it worth it for you to grieve!
Pretty if right and honest
You managed to apply everything to the case,
What you know from others.

The wingless, fatally bureaucratic approach to science, complete indifference to its life-affirming essence are deeply hostile to Faust and Goethe. A thought, a word addressed to people must be sincere, truthful, born of a living feeling. Then only one can count on the fact that speech will be effective, necessary:

No, speech should strive from the soul,
So that the charm is true, genuine
To touch and captivate human hearts!
But speech will not attract heart to heart,
If your speech does not flow from the heart.

To be a mentor of people, a guide to them is a difficult and noble task, which is far beyond everyone's shoulder. Wagner, Faust's assistant, solves it much easier, rebelling even against the authority of the teacher, because he relies on the generally accepted opinion: "No, in eloquence - true success!"
Faust is acutely experiencing self-doubt, a bitter and deep sense of the doom of hopes. Doubts, dissatisfaction, the pitiful fruits of the meaningless, as he begins to think, life almost compel him to take his own life. Goethe thus shows that on the well-trodden paths of traditional, scholastic, "Wagnerian" science, even a genius will only be disappointed and aware of the futility of the past years. Separation from the practice of mankind, fear of new ideas, closed corporatism of science - its troubles at all times, and great thinker proves this with the sarcastic image of Wagner and the tragic story of Faust's previous life. It is through the problem of the practical significance, the "truth" of science that the theme of Faust and the people arises in the tragedy.
In the scene of folk festivities at the city gates, people from different layers of the medieval city pass in front of the reader: maids who changed their aprons to Sunday dresses, apprentices who escaped for a day from the guild captivity, prim city women dreaming of admirers, cheerful students, catching a moment of pleasure, wealthy townspeople, leading a leisurely conversation about the affairs of the magistrate, reckless daring soldiers. They are joined by the peasants of the surrounding villages. The spring air is filled with cheerful singing, a playful joke, a cheerful dance unite people celebrating the end of the working week and the beginning of spring.
Faust comes here, accompanied by Wagner, but how differently they perceive what is happening.

“... rejoice
Both old and small, in a merry circle.
Here again I am a man, here I can be! - "
exclaims Faust.
Wagner does not echo him at all.
... and I would not have dared
Alone here to stay with the men.
Their pins, violins, shouting and round dance
I watch with intense disgust:
As a demon possessed, the people grimace, -
And this he calls fun, dancing, singing!
Faust perceives the festive celebration as the resurrection of the people:
Gone are the endless winter days
From a stuffy room, from hard work,
From the shops, from his cramped workshop,
From the darkness of attics, from under the roof carved
The people rushed in a merry crowd ...

The people bless Faust, who “happened to come even in the days of trouble, working for us”: young Faust helped his father-healer during an epidemic of pestilence. Let the treatment be a fiction (“A terrible destructive plague,” the “great man” admits with bitterness), but selflessness, a sincere desire to help, coupled with a danger to life (“everywhere I walked among the sick, courageous, clean and unharmed between »), Remained in the grateful memory of people for a long time. Faust's benevolent attitude towards the people is mutual, but the hero cannot be satisfied with the recognition of merits, since he sees in him only the innocence of people whom he has not been able to help much.
Constant dissatisfaction is a guarantee of a person's spiritual greatness. To assert this greatness, one must overcome temptation, overcome temptations, in short, make the inner wealth of a person a common property, maintain it in a state of active manifestation. And then Mephistopheles enters the scene.
Why is Mephistopheles so convinced that the treaty concluded with Faust is beneficial to him? One reason is clear: the belief in the baseness of human nature, which can always be corrupted by something. The other is more difficult. She accentuates the highest meaning, the divine essence of human quests: Mephistopheles, who spent thousands of years searching, having unlimited possibilities, does not feel that he has cognized the meaning of being. Above we saw that the archangels were reconciled with the secret nature. And Mephistopheles believes that Faust has started a hopeless, unrealizable undertaking - so why not help him flounder in the net of doubts, not aggravate the disappointments of a self-confident impudent man? And the sweeter the victory, the more inventive in the search for Faust.
The great enlightener Goethe opposes Faust's humane, all-embracing understanding of reason to the base characteristic of the rationality of behavior, which he puts into the mouth of Mephistopheles. The whole question is what it should serve, this mind, what to comprehend, in what to find the peak of its manifestation. Of course, not without a trick and not without irony, Mephistopheles instills in Faust "how to live without worries", scoffs at the abstraction of aspirations, at attempts to look at the world more broadly than from the platform of his own fate:

He who philosophizes has chosen the bad path,
Like hungry cattle that dry in the steppe
Spins around, bypassed by an evil spirit,
And a magnificent green meadow blooms around ...

Faust speaks of his spirit, which contains all the sorrows of the world:

What is given to humanity in its destiny,
To experience everything, he must experience
I will embrace in my spirit gaze
All its height, all its depth;
I will gather everything in my chest alone,
I will expand my horizons to its breadth,
And with him, in the end, I will crash and perish!

For the egoist, the world perishes with him; for Faust, his personal end comes only with the death of the world for which he thinks and lives. To understand the whole world, so that, completely dissolving in it, forever become its particle - this is a titanic task!
The spiritual, humane, truly humanistic orientation of the mind is the main component of this concept, which is so sacred for Goethe.
The agreement with the devil is in many ways a gesture of despair after the Spirit of the Earth refused to help Faust. “And it is not given to me to know the secrets of nature,” Faust says with deep bitterness, but his thirst to act does not leave him: filled with disgust for science, where he does not need half-heartedness, uncertainty, lifelessness of knowledge, Faustus rushes from the education of the mind to the education of feelings; through merging with the life of mankind, with its struggle, its torments, Faust wants to come to the knowledge of the meaning of earthly life. This can, apparently, be regarded as a movement from abstract truth, abstractly universal to concrete, practically significant for humanity. In place of the expected revelation, the supernatural comprehension of truth, is the search for it in experience, in comparison, in struggle. Thus, the entire history of Faust, in fact, despite the abundance of fabulous, fantastic, outwardly religious elements, becomes the history of earthly existence, a solution to the problems of human society.
Faust cannot come to terms with the limited ideas about tasks, the meaning of human existence, an ineradicable spirit of search, irrepressible energy lives in him. And he entered into an agreement with Mephistopheles, only to intensify, to make his searches more promising. For

What do I mean if I don't reach my goal
The crown to which the human race aspires,
To which I myself strive with all my heart.

This is extremely important: Faust fights for the truth of all mankind, from which he does not even think of separating himself.
It has already become commonplace to talk about Faust's striving for truth. This is, indeed, the core idea, sometimes almost synonymous with his personality. But in order to understand the measure and meaning of Faust's aspiration, let us turn to some lines spoken in the "Prologue in Heaven" by none other than the archangels in the presence of the Lord himself:

Incomprehensibility of the universe
It gives us faith and stronghold ...
And with an incomprehensible speed,
Whirling, the globe of the earth rushes ...
And a formidable chain of forces of nature
The whole world is mysteriously embraced.

Mystery, incomprehensibility, incomprehensibility of the universe turn out to be an axiom for the archangels, and man, a pitiful worm, a lump of clay, is eager to comprehend the meaning of life. This is how the scale of Faust's aspirations becomes clear.
Faust's irrepressible anxiety, constant dissatisfaction - this is a "reflection of divine light", reason!

Always immersed in my dreams
He desires the best stars from the sky,
Then on earth - all the highest pleasures,
And there is nothing in him - neither near nor far -
Cannot quench gnawing sadness.

God (the author) predicts Faust's comprehension of the truth, and, perhaps even more important, this is not a small truth of a learned doctor, but an axiom of humanity, the discovery of which is predetermined by the very course of things. Therefore, it is difficult to say which pair of lines from the following is more essential for understanding the general meaning of the tragedy:

While his mind still wanders in darkness,
But he will be illuminated by a ray of truth;
When planting a tree, the gardener already knows
What flower and fruit he will receive from it.

At the same time, "truth" is not the final point of the path; the energy of movement must be hidden in it itself:
"A man wanders as long as he has aspirations."
Minutes of doubt are inevitable even for the best of people who devoted themselves to the study of the secrets of nature and human vocation, moments of weakness and reconciliation are inevitable: we see this well in the example of Faust after his meeting with the Spirit. Nature gives an antidote, investing in the human soul anxiety that prompts action - allegorically, God gives Faust Mephistopheles as companions:

A weak person, submitting to his lot,
He is glad to seek peace, because
I will give a restless companion to him:
Like a demon teasing him, let him excite him to the point!

A person is like a deity, if not by his physical abilities or knowledge of the world, then by the boldness of thought and the power of imagination, but by his readiness to risk, courage, labor to find the truth, exceeds the deity. No wonder Faust in the most difficult minutes life says:

To dust in front of you, I will not bow my brow
Know: I am equal to you, fiery spirit, in everything!
I, the image of a deity ...
Am I not a god? Light and blessed
Everyone is around me!

A person is great, he is enterprising and selfless, tireless, active and just, in himself is the guarantee of satisfaction and happiness. However, all this needs to be revealed, the ideal is not adequate to the everyday manifestation of the personality, the harmony of human relations is still only a goal, a beacon, a peak, everything must be comprehended and conquered. As a matter of fact, in the imperfection of the world and manifestations of the weaknesses of human nature lies the seed of the quest, the struggle for the best. So far, there is no reason for beautiful-hearted idealism, both the author and the hero are perfectly aware of this:

To strive for high, beautiful
Everyday affairs hinder us,
And if we managed to achieve the blessings of the earth,
Then we attribute the highest blessings to dreams.
Alas, we are losing amid the excitement of life
And the feelings are the best, and the color of their aspirations.
Secret care with heavy anguish
Our heart weighs down on us, and torments us with a twist,
And it crushes us both happiness and peace,
Appearing every day under a new guise.
We are afraid for the family, we feel sorry for the children, the wife;
We fear fire, poison to the highest degree.
Before that that does not threaten, doomed to tremble,
Having not yet lost, we are crying for the loss.

In the scene "Study of Faust," the doctor is busy translating the Bible into German... Before us is Faust the philosopher. "In the beginning was the Word" - thus it is revealed New Testament, but the hero is not a day laborer, not a slave of someone else's thought, he is a creator - will the idealistic concept of the universe suit him? Faust's reasoning follows:

I cannot value the word so highly.
Yes, in translation I have to change the text,
When the feeling prompted me correctly.
I will write that Thought is the beginning of everything.
Wait, don't rush to the first line
It was not far from the truth!
After all, thought cannot create and act!
Is not Power the beginning of all beginnings?
I write - and again I began to hesitate,
And again doubt disturbs my soul.
But the light flashed - and I boldly see the way out,
I can write: "In the beginning was the Deed!"

In the times to which the action of the tragedy is attributed, it was possible, within moderate limits, to interpret and comment on the Bible in different ways, in moderates, in order to avoid being accused of heresy. But to give a new, directly opposite meaning to the very essence of religious sanctity, to leadership in the life of the entire Christian world - only a free, genius mind, going to everything in the name of truth, could afford this. This "editorial revision" of the foundations of the religious and moral consciousness of believers (were there many others?) Is, among other things, evidence of Faust's peculiar spontaneous materialist approach to the phenomena of the external world. In principle, already at this stage, he comprehends one of the foundations of a meaningful and happy existence of mankind: life in activity, in work, in constant movement.
Faust is not just a generalized, typified image of the progressive scientist; in a dispute in heaven, he represents all of humanity, although he belongs to the best part of it. Thus, he acts as a symbolic sign of the entire human population, his fate, his path not only allegorically personify humanity - they seem to formulate the only healthy recipe for the existence of each of the people: live by common interests, create, create for the human good - and this is happiness.
Mephistopheles is a spirit of destruction, but he is also an enemy of stagnation, stupid, inactive decay, an opponent of thoughtless immobility. He is a skeptic, despises human nature, convinced that he knows the ultimate truth about it: the human race is pitiful, weak, full of vices and bad passions, selfish and helpless.
Its role is thus twofold. As a person, Mephistopheles opposes Faust (and the author) with dispassion, disbelief in good, in a humane, active principle as a means of comprehending the truth. As a reason, he exposes human weaknesses, confusion and injustice in relationships in human society, all kinds of vices. Of course, this is a demon, and, as such, he perceives everything bad and pernicious on earth as the norm of being.
Both the author and Mephistopheles himself understand and declare the dialectically creative role of negation - the guarantee of movement:

I am a particle of strength
Wishing for ever evil, who did only good.

It is impossible not to say about the purely human nature of many perceptions of Mephistopheles: not always and not in everything he remains stoically indifferent. As a matter of fact, his very negative struggle for Faust, all sorts of tricks, ingenuity, etc., the thirst for luck and at the same time some kind of latent, vague fear for its reality are quite human. The embodiment of the allegory of the ever-present human anxiety - Mephistopheles practically cannot stand outside the framework of the relationship, created largely thanks to his own efforts. Mephistopheles seeks to undermine not only Faust's faith in the omnipotence of reason, but also his conviction in the meaningfulness of serving humanity, in the humanistic essence of his quest. He demonstrates to his "ward" senseless gulba, bestial instincts, greed, parasitism, anger, hypocrisy, lust, gluttony, stupidity, etc. The pictures of the seamy side of personal and social life are in themselves very convincing, but Mephistopheles fails to persuade Faust to think that it is they that are the root cause of the disharmony of human existence. Mephistopheles is an astute connoisseur of the vices of humanity, the negative aspects of his life. The author cannot accept his vision of the world as an integral, generalized picture of humanity, stagnant in evil thoughts and dirty instincts, but Mephistopheles' criticism of the negative, shadow sides of life is a mark, frank, in its own way "recipe". "Denial, skepticism is necessary for a person as an excitement to activity that would otherwise fall asleep" - this remark of N. G. Chernyshevsky is especially true because Faust stands next to Mephistopheles. The history of literature knows many examples of paired heroes, complementing, setting off each other. In this sense, Faust and Mephistopheles, of course, do not constitute just parts in harmony of the whole, but the creative pathos of one would be historically wrong without mistrust, doubt and denial of the other. Of course, this goes beyond the plot-role significance of the scientist and the demon, pursuing completely different goals in accordance with the given conflict.
Mephistopheles is a "materialist" in his own way; already at the first meeting with Faust, he notices, not hiding his contempt for the land and people:

After all, it's only you, your own ridiculous world
Consider everything, the center of all creation.

True, then he opposes the eternal immense night to the earthly light, from which the planet arose, but according to this "cosmogonic theory" the World, the Universe are infinite. According to Mephistopheles, the material world of the earth, doomed to destruction, is opposed by an unchangeable and unimaginable spirituality. But in the light of the main idea, all this looks like an inevitable camouflage, to which the author resorts not at all for reasons of reliability.
One cannot but admit that Engels's remark was super accurate: “Goethe was reluctant to deal with 'God'; this word made him uneasy; only the human was his element, and this humanity, this liberation of art from the shackles of religion, is precisely the greatness of Goethe. " It is enough to re-read the "Prologue in Heaven" to see to what extent the writer freely, "humanely" treats God and the archangels around him. The situation of a dispute between the Lord and Mephistopheles looks completely earthly, a dispute, the outcome of which depends on human behavior. And God himself in no way reminds us of the Christian Almighty; this is a wise, benevolent old man, in fact, he does not in the least appear in front of his creations and even becomes the object of Mephistopheles' joke:

I see the old man willingly sometimes,
Even though I hold my tongue; nice to see
That even such important gentlemen
They know how to deal politely and with the devil!

Goethe is also mocking in relation to the mysticism associated with religiosity, to the belief in miracles and supernatural interference in human destinies. This criticism is contained, in particular, in a slightly veiled form in "The Witch's Kitchen". The impure, evil principle opposes the power of thought, knowledge with mystical revelation, intuitive knowledge. The incoherence, logical helplessness, the absurdity of comprehending the secrets of being in the spells of witches amaze Faust - it turns out, however, that all this gibberish is in direct relationship with the Holy Scriptures.
In the frank hints of Mephistopheles, the Christian religion is qualified as worthless nonsense and outrageous stupidity - the author does not find any reasons or arguments to refute this point of view, he simply does not seek them
... In the remarks of Mephistopheles, there is a sharp mockery of the church and its servants:

The stomach, they say, is good at the church of God,
She has already devoured many countries
And still not sick with indigestion.
Only the church can, without a doubt,
Digest the wrong names.

Faust, who proclaimed: “The time has come to prove by deed that the power of the gods of greatness is worth man,” you cannot reproach him with excessive religiosity. It is not for nothing that the pious Margarita displays an uncharacteristic insight and depth of judgment when, after listening to Faust's pantheistic explanations about the essence of the divine, she notes with sadness and fear: "You are not a Christian in your soul."
Margarita is a simple girl who is not distinguished by any sharpness of mind, or extensive knowledge, or even dreams - albeit vague, vague, but enticing somewhere. It is all - frankness, clarity, purity, all understandable and earthly. Her gentle, all-forgiving character, her readiness to give in and give up, modesty, the desire to be in the shadows attract, in contrast, the sophisticated mind and the restless soul of Faust.
The girl is, as it were, woven out of love, all-embracing, sacrificial, faithful. Skepticism, any ill will scare her away, make her withdraw into herself, they also reveal powerlessness, helplessness to resist someone else's pressure. She cannot do injustice, but the few dogmas of religious morality, which constituted the catechism of all her responses to the outside world, shift the fight against evil onto someone's, most often divine, shoulders. The sad ending of her love and her life is logically inevitable, for the act is organically alien to her nature, and love, devotion, faith, being passive, always make themselves dependent on life's accidents, on external circumstances, on other people's whims. Toothless humanism is hopeless and doomed, Goethe rightly believes. We sympathize with Gretchen, we suffer with her, but from the first scenes of her appearance we clearly feel her doom.
Margarita is kind, gentle and feminine. Her thoughts are wholly owned by love, beloved; they constitute for a time the whole, the only real world. Faust, however, although he loves sincerely, is not able to imagine this feeling as the end of his quest; he is selfish in his passion, both because he cannot resist its temptations, and because he could never be satisfied with such an ersatz of genuine happiness. We must not forget that Mephistopheles is nearby, for whom the complete satisfaction of Faust means victory over the highest aspirations of mankind. Happiness in love is not enough for a person - and Faust continues his path to truth.
Already in prison, on the eve of the execution, refusing to be saved, Margarita utters words prophetic for her fate:

No, I will not tolerate compulsion,
Don't squeeze me so badly!
I was always too dumb.

It would be difficult to see in this a turning point in consciousness: Margarita accuses herself of breaking the commandments, succumbing to the power and charm of Heinrich-Faust, silently following him. This is not an epiphany, but an even stronger statement on moral positions her, Margarita, the world. At the same time, the heroine's despair, the awakened thirst for redemption, a keen sense of personal responsibility for what she had done, the refusal of any concessions to her own conscience, elevate Margarita to the heights of suffering mental purification.
The tiny world of Margarita is the only sphere of existence conceivable for her, and therefore the laws of her immediate environment, violated by her, become the source of the death of a girl who recklessly fell in love. The death of loved ones, perceived by her as an inescapable guilt, fear, shame, the impossibility of transcending the age-old norms of being instilled from childhood tragically and relentlessly drag her to the end. Her simplicity, naturalness, sincerity, truthfulness, which brought love, turned into an inability to transgress traditions, to question old moral dogmas, turned out to be the cause of her death. And yet, preserving the best in her soul, she triumphs over Mephistopheles in death. In the finale of the first part, Mephistopheles, desperate to get Margarita out of prison, exclaims: "She is condemned to torture!", But the Voice from above objects: "Saved!"
The definition given by Goethe to "Faust" - a tragedy, more expresses the ideological and ethical essence of a thing, its emotional intensity, rather than a genre characteristic. In this sense, Faust is perhaps closest to a philosophical drama, although the diversity of the author's approaches, often lyrical mood, Faust's monologues, very similar to elements of a dramatic poem, folk scenes and much more in Faust, of course, do not fit into the scope of the given designation. "Faust" is the greatest creation of the poetic spirit ", - said Pushkin, connecting this definition primarily with the reflection in the tragedy of the ideological and aesthetic essence of" modern poetry ". And indeed, "Faust" has absorbed Goethe's basic judgments about human society, about the ineradicable art of knowledge, about the relationship between the state and the individual, about good and evil, about love and creativity, expressing all this by various means of poetry.
The world is real and fabulous, direct artistic analysis and allegory, the objectivity and fantasticness of "Faust" are fused together, welded together by Goethe's attitude, the author's complex, multifaceted position. The contradictory nature of life, the contradictory beliefs of the writer resulted in "Faust" as a multicolored, dialectical picture of collisions, characters, and actions.
"... It can be safely said that the Germans have their Iliad ... in Goethe's Faust."
The final part of "Faust" is the brainchild of the 19th century. Life has changed, great historical events shook Europe, the strengthening of capitalism in fact caused new shocks, raised new unresolved questions for thinkers and artists, illuminated the path of humanity with tragic reflections of the contradictions generated by class clashes.
The fundamental difference in the pathos of the two parts of the tragedy was noted by Goethe himself, who wrote down in the plan of "Faust" the idea that the first of them displayed a craving for "personal pleasures of life that are drawn from the outside", while the second depicts "pleasure from activities directed outside" ... For the final part, this task turns out to be the core of the whole action.
We have before us an extensive picture of economic processes and state measures that ultimately reveal the inhumanity of both feudal and bourgeois society. The author finds a reason and opportunity to devote himself to the analysis of the most diverse problems of science, art, social practice of mankind, to express his view of nature, attitude to history and the future of people, his mockery of various shades of idealistic thought in German philosophy.
In the second part, the poet in sharply negative colors recreates the history of the church in Germany, the dominance and predatory policy of the clergy, their soullessness and moral depravity.
Faust, who grieved the end of his love and the death of Margarita, is still restless and active. He seeks happiness in state activity, in search of perfect antique beauty and in the possession of it, again and again he seeks the personification of truth and the feeling of it. Neither the glory of the ruler, nor the laurels of the commander, nor the possession of the most beautiful woman in human history give him satisfaction.
Faust has finally matured spiritually, the power of his thought is inexhaustible, the highest happiness, he understands this, here, next to him. Love, knowledge of the other world, the search for beauty no longer attract him. Aging and weakened, having lost his sight, he is. with the power of spirit, he already foresees the bright path of mankind in its cradle and abode - on the home planet:

I have grasped this light enough.
Fool who will compose the otherworldly.
Believe that there is his double,
And set off in pursuit of the ghost.
Stand on your feet, be the gift
Throw eternity to assert behind the clouds!
The world here tells us so much
What you need to know, you can take it with your hands.
So live, so to the goal and walk.
Without looking back, back to the ghosts,
In motion, finding his hell and paradise,
Not satisfied for a single moment!

And only labor in the name of people, the struggle for the material and spiritual happiness of peoples, the awareness of their involvement in the noble feat of the struggle for the common good, open before Faust the infinite finiteness of the great truth: always, tirelessly, from the first to the last moment of consciousness, to create for the people. There comes a minute, summing up the long journey:

Life years
They were not in vain; clear to me
The final conclusion of earthly wisdom:
Only he is worthy of life and freedom,
Who goes to fight for them every day!
All my life in a harsh, continuous struggle
Let the child, and the husband, and the elder lead,
So that I can see in the brilliance of wondrous power
Free land, free my people! Then I would say: a moment!
Fine you, last, wait!
And the flow would not dare for centuries
The trail left by me!
In anticipation of a moment of wondrous that
I now taste my highest moment.

Faust is happy. But one cannot fail to notice that this highest moment is not generated by the fulfillment of desires, but by the confidence gained by the hero (and the author) in the attainability and inevitability of universal happiness, attributed by him to the future. By contributing to this future, Faust acquires the wholeness and fullness of existence and makes his recognition with proud joy.
The plot development of the tragedy is predetermined in advance, the evolution of characters, clashes of interests, the system of images also in many ways have a source of legend, tradition, literary processing of the plot in former times. But the power of artistic embodiment, the passion of ideas, the interest of the poet-philosopher in the contradictions of human life and thought, searches and dreams associated with the ideals and the meaning of human existence - all this comes entirely from the powerful genius of Goethe, who melted in his famous tragedy into an invaluable intellectual and an aesthetic treasure and symbols of the artistic consciousness of their people, and social manifestations of the struggle between progress and reaction, and their own, final ideas about the purpose of a person.
"Faust" is a huge world inhabited by the ideas and images of the era, which has absorbed the thoughts and impressions of Goethe's long life. This world is complex, sometimes contradictory, sometimes unusual. The author himself did not even try to unambiguously define the essence of the tragedy precisely because of the versatility, vastness, epochal and all-human importance of the material contained in it. Generations change, the maps of the planet are redrawn, in the fight against violence and evil, a life built on the principles of good and social justice is born and grows stronger - and always, at all times, "Faust" is on the side of the forces of progress, kindness, on the side of the future, in which so believed Goethe.
Goethe once said that "only he who can apply the inheritance to life is worthy of inheritance." "Marxism-Leninism, having become a force that has captured the minds of millions, practically transforming the world on our planet, acts as a worthy successor and heir of Goethe and the entire culture created by mankind."

Faust and the Tragedy of Margaret

Faust embodies the belief in the limitless possibilities of man. Faust embodies the ardent desire to know the meaning of life, the desire for the absolute, the desire to go beyond the limits that limit man.

In the process of searching for Faust, overcoming the contemplation of German social thought, puts forward action as the basis of being. In the work of Goethe, brilliant works are reflected - dialectics (the monologue of the Spirit of the earth, the contradictory aspirations of Faust himself).

Gretchen's story becomes an important link in the search for Faust. A tragic situation arises as a result of an insoluble contradiction between the ideal of a natural person, as Margarita seems to Faust, and the real appearance of a limited girl from a philistine environment. At the same time, Margarita is a victim of social prejudices and dogmatism of church morality. In an effort to affirm the humanistic ideal, Faust turns to antiquity. The marriage of Faust and Helena is a symbol of the unity of the two eras. The result of Faust's quest is the conviction that the ideal must be realized on real earth.

"Only he is worthy of life and freedom, who every day goes to fight for them!" - this is the final conclusion following from the optimistic tragedy of Goethe.

Gretchen's story occupies an important place in the first part of the tragedy.

Mephistopheles seeks to distract Faust from his lofty thoughts and kindles in him a passion for the girl who accidentally met them on the street. For a moment, Mephistopheles succeeds in his plan. Faust demands that he help him seduce the girl. But the maiden room of Margarita, in which he appears, awakens the best feelings in him. He is fascinated by the patriarchal simplicity, cleanliness and modesty of this home.

Margarita herself, as it were, embodies the world of simple feelings, natural, healthy existence.

Faust, who with contempt cast aside dead knowledge, escaped from the twilight of his medieval office, reaches out to her in order to find all the fullness of life's happiness, earthly, human joy without immediately seeing that small world Margaritas are part of that narrow, stuffy world from which he tried to escape.

The atmosphere around her is getting heavier and darker.

The light, joyful intonations in Margarita's voice have already disappeared. In confusion, she prays in front of the wordless statue. Immediately lie in wait for her new blows: reproaches of her brother and his death, the death of her mother, poisoned by Mephistopheles. Margarita feels tragically alone.

Goethe expressively draws the forces that fall on the unfortunate victim and destroy her.

Gretchen turns out to be a sinner both in her own eyes and in the opinion of the environment with its philistine and sanctimonious prejudices. In a society where natural instincts are condemned by harsh morality, Gretchen becomes a victim doomed to death.

The tragic end of her life is thus due to the internal contradiction and hostility of the bourgeois environment. Gretchen's sincere religiosity made her a sinner in her own eyes. She could not understand why love, which gave her such spiritual joy, came into conflict with morality, in the truth of which she always believed. The people around, who considered the birth of an illegitimate child to be a shame, could not be taken for granted as a consequence of her love. Finally, at a critical moment, there was no Faust near Gretchen, who could have prevented Gretchen's murder of the child.

In vain in the finale Mephistopheles gloats. Margarita may be guilty, but she appears before us as a person, and above all because her feeling for Faust was sincere, deep, and selfless.

Faust's path is difficult. First, he throws a proud challenge to the cosmic forces, summoning the spirit of the earth and hoping to make peace with their forces. But he loses his feelings from the spectacle of the immensity that appears before him, and then the feeling of his complete insignificance is born in him. A bold impulse gives way to despair, but then a thirst to achieve the goal is reborn in Faust, even with the consciousness of the limitations of his powers.

The life of Faust, which Goethe unfolds before the reader, is the path of unremitting quest.

At a critical moment on the path of Faust, Mephistopheles meets.

The appearance of Mephistopheles before Faust, therefore, is not accidental. As in the old legend, the devil appeared to "seduce" a person. But Mephistopheles does not at all look like the devil from the naive folk legends. The image created by Goethe is full of deep philosophical meaning. He is the perfect embodiment of the spirit of denial. Mephistopheles cannot be defined as the bearer of only bad principles. He himself says about himself that "he does good, desiring evil for everything."

The death of Gretchen is the tragedy of a pure and beautiful woman because of her great love, who was involved in a cycle of terrible events that led to the fact that she became the murderer of her own child, went crazy and was sentenced to death.

Faust found the meaning of life in seeking, in struggle, in work. This was his life. She brought him short periods of happiness and long years of overcoming difficulties. To his achievements and victories, tormented by doubts and constant dissatisfaction. He sees now that all this was not in vain. Even though his plan is still unfinished, he believes in its ultimate realization. It is tragic that Faust gains the highest wisdom only at the end of his life. He hears the clatter of shovels and thinks that the work he has planned is being done. In fact, fantastic creatures lemurs, subject to Mephistopheles, dig

1.17. Reflection of Faust on the meaning of life

Goethe's Faust is one of those greatest creations in which some of the fundamental contradictions of life are embodied with tremendous artistic force.

In Faust, Goethe expressed his understanding of life in a figurative poetic form. The hero of the work is not just a separate person, but a symbolic figure that embodies all of humanity. Faust is undoubtedly a living person with passions and feelings inherent in other people. But first of all, he is an extraordinary person, titanic, and this already raises him above all others. Such a defiant personality is worthy to represent all of humanity. But being a bright and unusual personality, Faust is by no means the embodiment of perfection. That is the truthfulness of this image, its true reality, that nothing human is alien to it - neither weakness, nor the ability to be mistaken, nor mistakes. Faust himself is clearly aware of his imperfection, and least of all self-gratification is characteristic of him. On the contrary, its most beautiful feature is the eternal dissatisfaction with oneself and the world around it, the desire to become better and make the world a more perfect place for the life and development of people.

Faust's path is difficult. First, he throws a proud challenge to the cosmic forces, summoning the spirit of the earth and hoping to make peace with their forces. But he loses his feelings from the spectacle of the immensity that appears before him, and then the feeling of his complete insignificance is born in him. A bold impulse gives way to despair, but then a thirst to achieve the goal is reborn in Faust, even with the consciousness of the limitations of his powers.

One more feature of the great work of Goethe must be said right away. Faust presents the reader with significant life questions. But Goethe does not pretend to give simple and easy answers to them. The one who searches in the product for formulas that fit the thought of Goethe will be mistaken. Such attempts took place during the life of the great writer, and he pointed out the futility of striving to shine and the meaning of “Faust” to simple and convenient conclusions. Once, talking with his secretary I.-P. Eckermann, Goethe said: “The Germans are wonderful people! They overburden their lives with profundity and ideas that are looking for everywhere and pop everywhere. And it would be necessary, having plucked up the courage, to rely more on impressions: let life delight you, touch you to the depths of your soul, lift you up; and may, teaching you greatness and igniting you for deeds, she will give you strength and courage; just do not think that vanity is vanishing everything that does not contain an abstract thought or idea!

But they approach me with questions about what idea I was trying to implement in my Faust. How do I know? And how can I express it in words? “Descend from heaven through earth to hell” is how, at worst, I could answer, but this is not an idea, but a sequence of actions. The fact that the devil loses the bet and that a person who is constantly striving for good gets out of his tormenting delusions and must be saved is, of course, a real thought that explains something, but this is not an idea underlying both the whole and each a separate scene. And what would it be, try to string the whole rich, colorful and varied life that I have embodied in Faust on a thin string of a see-through idea!

In general, - continued Goethe, - it is not in my habits to strive for the embodiment of an abstract concept in poetry. I have always perceived sensual, sweet, variegated and varied impressions of life, and my vivid imagination eagerly absorbed them. As a poet, all I had to do was to form and complete them artistically, trying with the liveliness of recreation to ensure that they would have the same effect on others ”.

It would be wrong to understand Goethe in the sense that he denies the presence of ideas in his work. He is only opposed to shining a rich and varied content to dry abstract thought, which not only would not exhaust, but generally remained far from the vital content of "Faust".

Nor should Goethe be understood in the sense that there is no center or organizing principle in his work. The core is the personality of the hero. The whole action is built around him, his fate is the main thread of the entire dramatic poem. But the content of the work is not concentrated in Faust alone. He himself thinks a lot about life, events confront him with people and circumstances, he finds himself in different life situations. Through everything, the poet reveals the wealth of life, which is not exhausted by the personality of the hero, although associated with him.

To surrender to the will of the author, to follow him is the best way to understand the work, without limiting your perception to an abstract idea developed in advance or borrowed from somewhere. The question of the meaning and purpose of human life is the main theme of the work, but the disclosure of the topic is not applicable to every person and not to every individual destiny. Faust was chosen by Goethe for this purpose because, due to his extraordinary character, he gives the poet the opportunity to say a lot about life.

The life of Faust, which Goethe unfolds before the reader, is the path of unremitting quest.

The first feature of the hero, with which we get acquainted, is complete dissatisfaction with all existing knowledge, because they do not give the main thing - an understanding of the essence of life. And Faust is a man who cannot live satisfied with what religion and speculative bookish knowledge offer him.

Faust's father was a doctor, he instilled in him a love of science and instilled in him the desire to serve people. But his father's healing turned out to be powerless against diseases that afflicted people. During the plague epidemic, young Faust, seeing that his father's means could not stop the flow of deaths, turned with a fervent prayer to heaven. But help did not come from there either. Then Faust decided once and for all that it was useless to seek help from God. Disillusioned with religion, Faust devoted himself to science, hoping to find answers to questions of concern in it.

Faust spent many years in the world of science, having studied all the wisdom of that time, but this did not give him the knowledge of the truth. Science, which did not satisfy his needs, was speculative, metaphysical, divorced from life and nature.

We learn this prehistory of Faust in the course of the action. We meet the hero already when he has come a long way in life and came to the sad conclusion about the futility of his efforts. Faust's despair is so deep that he wants to commit suicide. But at this moment, the chant of the worshipers reaches him from the temple, and the goblet with poison falls out of Faust's hands.

It is not a reminder of God and not a consciousness of the sinfulness of suicide that prompts Faust to abandon the intention to commit suicide. In the prayer of believers, he hears the call of humanity for help, recalls that people who do not know how to find a way out of difficulties turn to religion, looking for support in it, as it was in their youth with Faust himself. He remains to live in order to seek solutions to the fundamental questions of life. His resolve grows stronger from the consciousness that the people love him, trust him and expect good from him.

Revealing Faust's attitude to science, Goethe contrasts him with another scientist Wagner, for whom there is only book knowledge. He is convinced that after reading everything written by smart people, he will comprehend the essence of life and the hidden secrets of nature. Wagner is an armchair scientist. He is devoted to science, but book knowledge leaves the stamp of limitation on him.

In contrast, Faust seeks to comprehend the meaning of life through active participation in it:

I put an end to knowledge

I remember a little books - anger eats.

From now on I will dive headlong

In the seething passions of the crucible,

With all the unrestrained ardor

Into their depths, into their depths!

Headlong into the heat of time!

In the midst of accidents with a running start!

Into living pain, into living bliss.

Into a whirlwind of grief and forgetting!

Let the whole century alternate

Happy rock and unhappy rock.

In the tirelessness of the hour

Man finds himself.

And as we know from psychology, while a person lives, he constantly acts, does something, is busy with something. In a word, he is active - external and internal. Activity is the activity of a person aimed at achieving consciously set goals related to meeting his needs and interests, to meeting the requirements for him from society and the state. In the process of activity, a person learns the world around him.

Faust's rejection of science does not mean that he wants to renounce the task of knowledge. The meaning of Faust's ardent speech is not in denying knowledge in general, but in the rejection of non-vital knowledge, immersing a person in abstractions that are far from reality in the frame of mind of Faust, who rebelled against science. The knowledge that Faust seeks is inseparable from the immediate being of man. He wants to comprehend life not from the outside, but in the very thick of it.

At a critical moment on the path of Faust, Mephistopheles meets. Here it is necessary to return to one of the scenes preceding the beginning of the action - to the Prologue in the sky. In it, the Lord, surrounded by angels, meets Mephistopheles. If the idea of ​​good is symbolically expressed in the heavenly forces, then the inhabitant of hell Mephistopheles embodies evil. The whole scene as a whole symbolizes the struggle between good and evil taking place in the world.

What is the place of a person in the clash of positive and negative sides of life? Mephistopheles completely denies any dignity for a person. The Lord admits that a person is far from perfect, but still, in the final analysis, having gone through delusions and mistakes, he is able to get out of the darkness. And the Lord considers Faust to be such a person. Mephistopheles asks permission to prove that Faust can be easily led astray from the search for truth. The dispute between the Lord and Mephistopheles thus turns out to be a dispute about the nature and value of man.

The appearance of Mephistopheles before Faust, therefore, is not accidental. As in the old legend, the devil appeared to "seduce" a person. But Mephistopheles does not at all look like the devil from the naive folk legends. The image created by Goethe is full of deep philosophical meaning. He is the perfect embodiment of the spirit of denial. A critical attitude to the world is also characteristic of Faust, but this is only one side of his nature, and, moreover, not the main one. Mephistopheles is a living expression of the complete denial of all values ​​in life. Goethe, however, does not portray Mephistopheles solely as the embodiment of evil. First, he is indeed "devilishly" smart and perceptive. His criticism is not unfounded. Take, for example, Mephistopheles' conversation with a student. The criticism of false science, which sounds in his mouth, is fair and, as it were, continues what Faust said about it. Mephistopheles is a master at noticing human weaknesses and vices, and one cannot deny the validity of many of his stinging remarks. Bitter truths often sound in his mouth. He challenges Faust to actions and deeds that should prove the insignificance of a person, but Mephistopheles' evil speeches and bad intentions ultimately turn out to be beaten. The truly human, embodied in Faust, is superior and significant of the mephistophic negation.

Mephistopheles cannot be defined as the bearer of only bad principles. He himself says about himself that "he does good, desiring evil for everything." We will understand the meaning of these words better by remembering what the Lord says about Mephistopheles, allowing him to try to lead Faust off the path of seeking the meaning of life:

I am never an enemy like you.

From the spirits of denial, you are all me

Been a burden to me, a cheat and a merry fellow.

And laziness man hibernates.

Go, stir up his stagnation,

Come back before him, tom, and worry,

And annoy him with your fever.

Mephistopheles does not allow Faust to calm down. Causing irritation, the desire to resist it. Mephistopheles turns out to be one of the reasons for Faust's activity. Pushing Faust to the wrong, he himself, without expecting it, awakens the best sides of the hero's nature. That is why Mephistopheles is a necessary companion for Faust. Completely opposite in their aspirations, they are inseparable from each other in Goethe's work. If Mephistopheles would have remained himself without Faust, then Faust would have been different without Mephistopheles.

In the anonymous book about Faust and in the tragedy, Marlo Faust and Mephistopheles conclude a contract for a certain period: the devil obliges him to serve for twenty-four years and fulfill all his desires. Goethe's pact with the devil has a different character. The former, pre-Gothic Faustas strove mainly to experience all the pleasures of life; wealth and power especially attracted them. With Goethe, Faust is driven by other aspirations; the task of cognition cannot be solved at one time or another. Therefore, Faust, demanding from Mephistopheles the unconditional fulfillment of his desires, sets a condition: the devil will receive the soul of Faust only when Faust calms down and finds that higher state of life that will give him complete satisfaction. Faust says to Mephistopheles:

As soon as I raise a separate moment,

Having shouted: "A moment, wait a little!" -

It's over and I'm your prey

And I have no escape from the trap.

The translation faithfully reproduces the meaning of Faust's speech. It can, however, be supplemented with a verbatim text, which in the original sounds like this: "Stop, moment, you are wonderful!" Faust cannot predict how long it will take him to comprehend this beautiful moment; he doesn't even know if it is possible at all. It is important for him to provide himself with the opportunity to seek, and he is not looking for pleasure at all.

Mephistopheles, however, does not believe in the lofty aspirations of Faust and is convinced that he can easily prove his insignificance. The first thing he offers him is to visit a tavern where students are feasting. He hopes that Faust, simply put, together with these revelers, will indulge in drunkenness and forget about his searches. But Faust is disgusted with the company of bogies and Mephistopheles suffers the first, albeit relatively small, defeat. Then he prepares a second test for Faust. Having brought Faust to the witch's kitchen, he, with the help of witchcraft means, helps Faust regain his youth. Mephistopheles expects that the rejuvenated scientist will indulge in sensual pleasures and forget about lofty thoughts.

In this episode, Goethe uses his fantasy. “… Fantasy has its own laws, which the mind cannot and should not be guided by. If fantasy did not create something incomprehensible to the mind, it would be worthless ... "

Eckerman I.P. "Conversations with Goethe in the last years of his life." M. "artist. liter ", 1981, 30s

Indeed, the first beautiful girl Faust sees, excites his desire, and he demands from the devil that he immediately provide him with a beauty. Faust's first impulse is to satisfy sensual desire.

We know from psychology that pleasure, joy, love ... are all forms of a person's experience of his relationship to various objects; they are called feelings or emotions. At one time V.I. Lenin said that "without human emotions there has never been and cannot be a human search for truth."

Mephistopheles helps him get to know Margarita, hoping that in her arms Faust will feel that wonderful moment that he wants to extend indefinitely. But even here the devil is defeated.

If at first Faust's attitude to Margarita was only roughly sensual, then soon it is replaced by ever growing true love. And once in the girl's room, Faust begins to understand that she is not only outwardly beautiful, but beautiful in soul, and he is more and more convinced of this. His feeling for her becomes all-encompassing - not only physical, but also spiritual.

The second half of the first part of "Faust" is mainly devoted to the love story of Faust and Gretchen. This topic was not developed in the legends of Faust! She grew out of the life experience of Goethe himself, who was carried away more than once in his youth, but then did not meet a woman with whom he would like to unite forever in marriage. Personal experiences served as the basis for Goethe's serious reflections on the relationship between a man and a woman in the conditions of that time.

As an artist of the bourgeois era, Goethe could not apply the personal and the public in the soul of his hero. It is on this basis that the tragedy of Gretchen arises, the image of which occupies such a significant place in the first part of Faust.

If Faust is the embodiment of the male half of the human race, then Gretchen is the embodiment of its female half. It goes without saying that not all men are Faust and not all women are like Gretchen. Goethe chose for his work a case that was not special, but especially striking, which allowed him to pose with great acuity the problem that worried him, and not only his problem.

Gretchen is a lovely, pure, young creature. Before meeting Faust, her life flowed peacefully and smoothly. Love for Faust turned her whole life upside down. She was seized by a feeling as powerful and unrestrained as that of Faust. Their love is mutual, but as people, they are completely different, and this is partly the reason for the tragic outcome of their love. Faust is an extraordinarily developed mentally, who has come a long way of spiritual growth, very knowledgeable and very free-thinking. He is characterized by a critical attitude towards generally accepted concepts. His thought is independent, he does not take anything for granted, subjects everything to critical analysis and only after that makes certain conclusions.

A simple girl from the Gretchen people has all the treasures of a loving female soul. Outer beauty it combines with spiritual beauty, and the ability for boundless love and self-sacrifice - with modesty and a deep sense of duty.

Unlike Faust, with his critical spirit, Gretchen accepts life as it is. Raised in strict religious rules, she considers the natural tendencies of her nature to be sinful.

In general, there are seven virtues sanctified by the authority of the church. Plato, an ancient Greek philosopher who lived in the 5th-4th centuries BC, considered four virtues as such - wisdom, moderation, courage and justice. Christian ethics adds three more to them - faith, hope, love (meaning faith in God, hope for him and love for him). To them should be added also humility, humility, meekness, which have always been appreciated not only by Christianity, but also by other religions. For example, even the very name of such a world religion as Islam means “obedience” in translation. In Christian ethics, the doctrine of the "seven deadly sins" is also formed, about the most dangerous and unacceptable vices. This is pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony, anger, laziness. Without hesitation, first giving in to passion, then she deeply experiences her "fall". Depicting his heroine in this way, Goethe endowed her with features typical for women of his time. At that time, the socio-economic prerequisites for the equality of women had not yet emerged. To understand the fate of Gretchen, one must clearly imagine the era when such tragedies actually took place.

Gretchen's life concepts are limited by personal and family interests. Outside these limits, life is inaccessible and incomprehensible to her. The difference in the mental concepts of her and Faust is most clearly manifested in relation to religion. Faust, as we know, long ago abandoned faith in church teaching. In contrast, Gretchen is deeply religious. Her religiosity is expressively shown by Goethe: Faust meets her when she leaves the temple; in the critical days of her life, when she learned that she will have a child, Gretchen turns to heaven for help.

Gretchen turns out to be a sinner both in her own eyes and in the opinion of the environment with its philistine and sanctimonious prejudices. In a society where natural instincts are condemned by harsh morality, Gretchen becomes a victim doomed to death.

The tragic end of her life is thus due to the internal contradiction and hostility of the bourgeois environment. Gretchen's sincere religiosity made her a sinner in her own eyes. She could not understand why love, which gave her such spiritual joy, came into conflict with morality, in the truth of which she always believed. The people around, who considered the birth of an illegitimate child to be a shame, could not be taken for granted as a consequence of her love. Finally, at a critical moment, there was no Faust near Gretchen, who could have prevented Gretchen's murder of the child.

For all that Gretchen absorbed the future religiosity and prejudices of her bourgeois milieu, one cannot see in her a limited being unworthy of Faust. She has a deep nature and she is able, following the feeling, to rise above the narrow circle of concepts brought up in her since childhood. Love helps Gretchen to rise above her environment for a while and find the strength to become Faust's friend. For the sake of love for Faust, she goes to "sin", to a crime. But this overwhelmed her mental strength, and she lost her mind.

Just as Faust, in order to satisfy his spiritual aspirations, concludes an agreement with the devil, in other words, falls from a social point of view into “sin” and commits a crime, so Gretchen, in the name of love, turns out to be a violator of the moral principles accepted in society. Gretchen's tragedy is not that she violated the laws, the holiness of which she was taught to respect, but that she was unable to break with the world of those ideas that are imposed by the philistine environment with its unnatural morality. Goethe expresses his attitude towards the heroine in the finale. When in the dungeon Mephistopheles urges Faust to flee, he says that Gretchen is condemned anyway. But at this time a voice is heard from above: "Saved!" If Gretchen is condemned by society and its harsh formal laws, then from the point of view of the highest morality embodied here in the decision of heaven, she is justified. In everything that Gretchen did, she was moved by great love. Her last words we hear: “Heinrich! Henry!". Until the last moment, even in the darkening of her mind, she is full of love for Faust, although this love led her to death.

Yes, Faust is undoubtedly guilty. He truly loved Gretchen, but his love for her was as undivided as her love for him. Besides her, he had other interests. But more specifically and directly fatal for Gretchen was the fact that at the moment when she especially needed his help and support, he was not with her. Faust's absence was due to the fact that after the murder of Margarita's brother, he had to flee, fearing persecution, and Mephistopheles took advantage of this in order to try to drag Faust into a maelstrom of gross sensual pleasures. This is symbolically depicted in the fantastic scene of the witches' Sabbath - the vampurgis night. Faust, however, did not allow himself to be carried away to the end and escaped from there to return to Gretchen, but it was too late: the most terrible thing had happened.

As with many great tragedies, the reasons for what happened are varied and complex. It is no coincidence that the tragic denouement of the love of Faust and Margarita was partly natural both because of the difference in their natures, and because of the external conditions surrounding their secret love.

But to the tragic laws, the accidental circumstances of Margarita's brother, Lashenin, are often added. A brave warrior, he seemed to have the least to do with morality. Drunken revelry was the most innocent in the life of this man, whose profession was murder. And it was he, who, probably, who more than once violated the girl's honor, considered it necessary to stand up for his sister, and this ultimately entailed Gretchen's fatal loneliness at the most critical moment for her.

The death of Gretchen is the tragedy of a pure and beautiful woman because of her great love, who was involved in a cycle of terrible events that led to the fact that she became the murderer of her own child, went crazy and was sentenced to death.

Her only fault is love, but can this be considered a fault?

The death of Gretchen is a tragedy not only for her, but also for Faust. He loved her with all the strength of his soul; a woman is more beautiful than she was for him. The death of Gretchen for Faust is also tragic because he himself was partly to blame for it. It is also tragic for him that having lost his beloved, he will never experience such wonderful feelings that this seemingly simple girl evoked in him.

The question may be asked: why did Goethe choose such a sad plot? Was it not in his will to please the readers with the image of happy love? Why should the heroes, having experienced certain difficulties, not overcome the obstacles that have lodged in their path and, in the end, achieve well-being? After all, not all great love is unhappy.

Goethe chose a tragic plot because he wanted to put his readers in the face of difficult life collisions. He saw his task in arousing attention to the unresolved and difficult issues of life. There is a belief that writers should provide a comforting and satisfying solution. life conflicts... This is how the great English figure Dickens acted in many cases in his novels. And Goethe had a poem "Hermann and Dorothea", ending ideally. But this work was an exception in the work of Goethe, who always sought to reveal tragically the contradictions of being, not in order to confuse readers, but in order to teach them to face the most bitter truth.

But doesn't tragedy give rise to pessimism and disbelief in life? Goethe absolutely did not believe in this. He was convinced of the opposite, and this was taught by the entire experience of world tragic art from the great Greek tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides to English playwright Shakespeare, surrendering to the most beautiful tragedy.

An important feature of tragedy is that while portraying sad events that evoke feelings of grief, they at the same time reveal how beautiful people can be even in adversity. After all, Gretchen arouses in readers not only sympathy, pity - feelings in themselves are good, but also admiration. This unfortunate girl turns out to be so beautiful in our eyes that we do not see any guilt behind her, although we know that she has committed grave crimes, because the best ones are more important for the readers. mental qualities, which manifested themselves in the heroine during the tragic circumstances that led to her death.

Tragic heroes reveal their high humanity, despite mistakes and weaknesses, and sometimes criminal actions. We can say the same about Faust. He is by no means a flawless hero. We know fateful role, which he played in the fate of Margarita. But how much greatness, strength of mind, passion is in him, although he could not build his own happiness and his beloved woman.

The tragedy of Goethe excites precisely because it shows us the life of people who have not achieved happiness. It excites the thoughts of readers: how to avoid the sad consequences of passions? What is necessary to ensure that troubles like those that happened to the heroes do not happen in life? Art, undoubtedly, has the right to offer its solutions to life's problems, but the task of tragedy, first of all, is to reveal the contradictions of reality that interfere with human happiness. The artist seeks to excite the thought of readers, push them to a real solution to what interferes with human well-being in the real world. It is precisely this noble role that the tragic plays in Goethe.

The first part of Faust is an artistically completed work. This is the tragedy of a scientist disillusioned with the science of his day, and the tragedy of a man who did not find happiness in love, in a sad end, which he himself unwittingly turned out to be to blame. But the fate of the hero does not end there, Goethe continued to portray her in the second part of Faust.

There is a significant difference in artistic form between the two parts. The first part, despite the presence of fiction in it, is generally quite believable. And the spiritual throwing of Faust, and his tragic love deeply hurt the feelings of readers. The second part is written in a different manner. There are almost no psychological motives, there is no depiction of passions. Its content is more general. There is no romantic element here that is so exciting in the tragic love story of Faust and Gretchen. Characters are not here so much life characters how many generalized figures (Emperor, Chancellor, Philemon and Baucis and others). The images of the second part do not pretend to be completely life-like, they are poetic symbols of certain ideas and concepts.

The second part of Faust is one of the examples of the literature of ideas. In symbolic form, Goethe depicts here the crisis of the feudal monarchy, the inhumanity of wars, the search for spiritual beauty, and work for the good of society.

Having touched on the main forms of life in the second part, Goethe at the same time goes beyond the immediate life experience of people and, continuing in this respect the line of the first part, raises more philosophical problems.

Goethe considers the attitude of the individual to society as an artist reflecting the bourgeois stage of social development. The world outlined by him consists of individuals-atoms. Everyone lives on their own in a circle of personal relationships. Goethe's hero seeks to overcome this isolation, devoting himself to work for the benefit of others. The spirit of sociality awakens in him, but even Faust realizes his humane idea as a feat of a separate outstanding personality, acting, in essence, alone.

In the second part, Faust is less active than in the first. At times, he completely disappears from the reader's field of vision, and Mephistopheles and other characters are in the first place. Goethe deliberately shifts attention from the personality of the hero to the world around him. Faust's nature is no longer a mystery to the reader.

In the second part, Goethe is more interested in the task of illuminating some of the world's problems.

This is the question of the main law of the development of life. In the second act, among other things, the dispute between the philosophers Thales and Anaxagoras is presented. The first asserts that the source of life is water, the second protects the idea of ​​"volcanism", development through leaps and disasters. In this part of the dispute, which concerned the natural science problem of the structure and development of the earth's surface. Goethe agreed to admit that the "volcanists" were partly right. But as a law of world development, he rejected the principle of catastrophes and abrupt upheavals.

The idea of ​​development runs through the entire work. In the second part, Goethe puts forward the idea of ​​a gradual evolution of pictorial views, the peak of which is man. The principle of development is introduced by the poet-thinker into the characterization of spiritual life. Goethe believes in the idea of ​​progress, the development of human history does not seem to them as an even and calm path. Struggle and complex contradictions are inevitable in the process of human development.

Deeply convinced of the materiality of the world, Goethe at the same time believed that the movement of life is determined by spiritual forces. It is impossible, he believed, to explain life, including nature, by physical reasons alone. Different incarnations of spirituality are abundantly represented in the symbolic images of the second part.

Touching upon the most diverse issues, Goethe, however, did not strive for unity in the development of the plot. If in the first part there are two main themes: Faust and science, the love of Faust, then in the second part there are much more, and accordingly the action is more diverse. Goethe divided it into five acts, but they have little to do with each other. Each is a closed part with its own theme.

After deeply suffering the tragic death of Gretchen, Faust is reborn to a new life and continues to search for the truth. First, we see him in the public arena. Goethe depicts a feudal empire in a state of complete collapse. The country's chancellor paints a grim picture of this state in his report. All people are possessed by selfish aspirations: "In the fever of selfishness, the sick kingdom rushes about in delirium." He draws the attention of the emperor to the fact that the whole system of life is perverted.

The emperor, however, does not care what is happening with the country and how the people live. He only cares about one thing - how to fill the empty treasury in order to embark on new spending, without burdening himself with anxiety about trouble in the state. With the help of Mephistopheles, the problem is solved - the devil offers to issue paper money (then this was an innovation). The image of the top of the feudal monarchy was given by Goethe sharply satirically.

Frustrated with government activities, Faust is looking for new ways. The image of Elena the Beautiful, summoned by means of magic, arouses in him the desire to see her with his own eyes. This is not, however, a repetition of the hero's love story. The ancient beauty died long ago, and the desire to call her back to life has by no means a real, but a symbolic meaning, and this is what it is.

Faust's attitude to the feudal monarchy reflected the personal experience of Goethe, who, becoming an associate of the Duke of Weimar, tried to carry out reforms in this small state, but was convinced that private improvements did not change anything. The trouble, however, was that the German people, due to their disunity and oppression, were not able to do anything in defense of their human rights.

Then Goethe and the great poet Friedrich Schiller came to the conclusion that it is necessary to spiritually educate the people, and they will ripen to fight for a better life. The aesthetic ideal for Goethe and Schiller was the art and poetry of Ancient Greece. According to the 18th century thinkers Winckelmann and Lessing, the ancient Greeks were able to create human and beautiful art because the creators were in freedom. Goethe and Schiller hoped that they would be able to do the opposite: to cultivate a sense of beauty, and it will excite in people the desire for freedom.

Helena the Beautiful serves as Goethe's symbol of his artistic ideal. But the ideal did not arise immediately, and the poet creates a whole act of tragedies to show how the concept of beauty was gradually born in the myths and legends of Ancient Greece. In Goethe's conception, this part, the classic Walpurgis Night, has an important ideological significance. The dark fantasy of Walpurgisnacht in the first part, imbued with the spirit of the Middle Ages with its monsters and freaks, is contrasted here with the birth of the light and cheerful beauty of antiquity.

In parallel, a new topic arises. The book pupil Wagner, familiar to readers from the first part, creates a Homunculus in the laboratory of an artificial man. He accompanies Faust in his search for the path to beauty, but breaks and perishes, then, as Faust reaches his goal - he finds Helen the Beautiful revived to life.

The third act of the second part depicts their union, which should not be understood as a new "novel" of the hero. Faust and Helena embody two principles: she is a symbol of ideal antique beauty, he is the embodiment of a restless "romantic" spirit. From the symbolic image of Faust and Helena, a beautiful young man Euphorion is born, combining the features of his parents: harmonious beauty and a restless spirit. But such a being is not given to live in this world. He is too perfect for him and is shattered to death in his rush. With his death, Elena also disappears. Faust is left with only clothes. The meaning of this is that ancient ideal beauty cannot be revived, because the spirit of the past cannot be restored, and mankind is left with only the outer forms of ancient beauty.

In other words, this entire experience of Faust ends in new disappointment, and the hero's experiences reflect the real symbolic experience of Goethe and those who, together with him, hoped that by creating a work that followed the best examples of beauty, a solution to the contradictions of reality could be found. Goethe by no means denies the importance of art, but it is not in it, but in life that the ideal must be achieved, and the hero returns to the real world. Realistic passions are raging in the world, there is a life-and-death struggle for power. Faust helps the emperor against his enemies and as a reward receives a vast, but uninhabitable territory, for it is constantly threatened by the raids of warriors. Faust is eager to turn this piece of land into a beautiful and safe area where the people would work peacefully.

Mephistopheles, pretending to help Faust, is actually trying to distort his order. In this sense, the episode of the death of the old men Philemon and Baucis is very important. They are the victims of Mephistopheles, who perverts the plan of Faust, making him guilty of their unfortunate fate. Faust, who wishes good to people, becomes, as it were, the culprit in the death of these harmless people. The sum of the tragic experiences of Faust includes this misfortune.

The implementation of Faust's plan drags on for a long time, he grows old, fades, and the end of the work is not in sight. But it is not this that is important to Faust, but the conviction that has arisen in him that he has finally found what he was looking for and is close to his goal, and then he utters the long-awaited words:

This is the thought that I am all devoted to,

The sum of everything that the mind has accumulated.

Only the one who knows the battle for life,

Deserved life and freedom.

So it is, every day, every year,

Working, fighting, joking with danger,

Let the husband, the old man and the child live.

A free people in a free land

I would like to see on such days.

Then I could exclaim:

“An instant!

Oh, how wonderful you are, wait a little!

The traces of my struggles are embodied,

And they will never be erased "

And, anticipating this triumph,

I am now experiencing the highest moment.

Faust found the meaning of life in seeking, in struggle, in work. This was his life. She brought him short periods of happiness and long years of overcoming difficulties. To his achievements and victories, tormented by doubts and constant dissatisfaction. He sees now that all this was not in vain. Even though his plan is still unfinished, he believes in its ultimate realization. It is tragic that Faust gains the highest wisdom only at the end of his life. He hears the clatter of shovels and thinks that the work he has planned is being done. In fact, fantastic creatures lemurs, subject to Mephistopheles, dig Faust's grave.

After the death of Faust, Mephistopheles wants to take his soul to hell, but divine forces intervene and take her to heaven, where she will meet with the soul of Gretchen.

Thus, if at the end of the first part there is a symbolic justification of Faust, and it is significant not only that his soul is overshadowed by "divine grace", which in Goethe has not religious, but moral significance, but also that the final reconciliation of Faust and Gretchen takes place. Her love remains Faust's supreme justification.

To what extent is the concept of "tragedy" applicable to the second part of "Faust"? after all, the ending is optimistic, if only because the hero has found the meaning of life for himself. But let us not forget that each of the steps along which Faustus ascended to his goal, not only did not bring him satisfaction, but caused him disappointment, and if he had happy moments, then they did not bring him complete happiness. ... Faust found his purpose in life only when he lost the strength to continue his activity, and only consciousness still lived in his decrepit body.

If the hero's entire path is tragic, this does not mean that his life was empty or barren. Goethe was deeply alien to the philistine idea of ​​happiness as personal well-being, material goods and comfort, bought at the price of abandoning noble ideals. Faust did not wish himself such happiness. He suffered, suffered, but his life was full, for it required the exertion of all mental strength from him, and he generously gave them to science, love, service to beauty, work for the good of others.

In everyday life, the tragic is understood as a terrible and irreparable disaster. In art, it means something else. The tragedy depicts significant events containing deep meaning for all people, it displays real and at the same time sublime characters, depicts the difficulties and contradictions of life.

With Mephistopheles - and invariably the first one wins. The connection of Helena and Faust in the second part is a combination of two different ideals - the classical classical and the medieval romantic. Connecting Helena and Faust, Goethe connects classics with romance, establishes, to some extent, a connection between times, a direct connection between the first and the second. Elena - one more step, one more rung of the ladder ...

He disdained the dogmatic pedantry of the sort of scientists who at all times, clinging to authority and "axioms", hindered the development of sciences. He contrasts two types of scientists - Faust and Wagner. Restless creative dissatisfaction with what has been achieved - distinctive feature first. Scholarship, knowing no doubt, vulgar, stupid complacency, isolation from the people and real life - ...

...; the same dreams dominated the minds of the entire generation of Storm and Onslaught, with which Goethe appeared in the literary field. An analysis of Goethe's tragedy "Faust" as a reflection of enlightenment artistic thought and the pinnacle of world literature showed that, of course, it is hardly possible to place "Faust" within the framework of any one literary movement or trend. The tragedy is immeasurably wider, more voluminous, ...

In the world there is a plastic material in which glitter plays - straight from the sky, to which a hand reaches - right from land. The love of Goethe and Pushkin for the sea is sharp-sighted, demanding, architectural, even engineering at its core. Perhaps the creative work on the seashore, the construction of an artificial barrier - this is the most classic of all themes, the quintessence of the classicism of the New Age. Greek classics - ...

Composition "The role of the evil principle in the fate of man (Based on the tragedy" Faust "by I. V. Goethe)"

Johann Wolfgang Goethe is the founder of German literature of the new era. This multifaceted, gifted person left behind a noticeable mark both in literature and in science. Goethe's work is an accurate reflection of the most important trends and contradictions of modernity of that era. The tragedy "Faust" became a work of Goethe, in which the author shares his thoughts on universal human values, on the meaning of life, which are based on tireless activity for the sake of man, even if this activity carries tragic mistakes.

The tragedy "Faust" begins with the "Prologue in Heaven", where a conversation between God and Mephistopheles took place, more reminiscent of a philosophical discussion. In a conversation, for the first time, the name Faust sounds, whom God cites as an example as his faithful slave. Mephistopheles manages to convince God to conduct an experiment, promising to make Faust crawl and "eat ... dust from a shoe." In this dispute, God is the bearer of an optimistic view of man, and Mephistopheles behaves like an inveterate skeptic who does not believe in human decency and sanity. Mephistopheles goes to earth. And the struggle between good and evil, great and insignificant, begins on a grand scale.

Doctor Faust is an encyclopedic scientist, revered among the people, but he became disillusioned with science and the opportunity to discover the truth. Mental emptiness pushes Faust to turn to magic, but the spirit he summoned terribly frightened him. Soon Mephistopheles appears in Faust's room. The guest caustically laughs at the weaknesses of man, the worthlessness of existence, as if he penetrates into the depths of Faust's torments. Mephistopheles promises to reveal to Faust all the joys of life, but with one condition: if Faust asks the beautiful moment to stop, then his soul will become the property of Mephistopheles. And they go to wander.

Mephistopheles is the embodiment of evil wisdom. He thoroughly knows human nature, and like no one else, he knows how to take advantage of its weaknesses. Faust is concerned about the search for the meaning of human life, his own experience and experiences, but he cannot resist the spell of love. But love could not give Faust a feeling of cloudless happiness, and the wanderings continue.

At the end of his life, Faust comes close to understanding the meaning of life. It seems to him that he is in selfless service to people. Blind Faust dies, and his immortal soul is taken to heaven. Mephistopheles realizes that he has once again lost in the eternal dispute between the divine and the earthly.

The tragedy "Faust" should be viewed not as a daily drama, but as a philosophical and moral-ethical work, it can also be attributed to our time and to the future of humanity with its hopes and sorrows. The conflict between Faust and Mephistopheles exists forever, because

that it is a struggle between good and evil that live in everyone. And to this day, the call of Doctor Faustus remains relevant not to stop, not to fall asleep, it is necessary to act, change and enrich oneself together with the world around him:

Only he is worthy of life and freedom,

Who goes to battle for them every day!

Through eternal search and eternal work on himself, Goethe saw the further development of mankind, the victory of the spirit not only over physical, but also over spiritual death.

The composition "The philosophical meaning of the image of Faust"

Goethe's "Faust"

And I will be pleased with myself,

Then it's over!

Composition "The theme of love in Goethe's tragedy" Faust ""

Love endures for a long time, is merciful, love does not envy, love is not exalted, not proud. She does not rage, does not seek her own, does not get irritated, does not think evil. He does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices in the truth. Covers everything, believes everything, hopes everything, endures everything. Faust, the protagonist of Goethe's tragedy, comes to the knowledge of such love, true love. Having concluded an agreement with the devil, Faust demands from him the unquestioning fulfillment of all his desires.

And the first desire of a man was associated with a woman, the immaculate and pure Margarita. Mephistopheles, without much enthusiasm, fulfills this desire of his victim. The devil himself admits: the girl is so pure and pure that evil has no power over her. Mephistopheles is sure that no force can be used against Margarita, "here you have to contrive and dissemble." In the end, Mephistopheles helps Faust get to know Margarita, hoping that in her arms he will be able to find that wonderful moment that he has been looking for all his life and which he wanted to extend indefinitely. Faust is at first lured into the embrace of sensual desires:

Oh heaven, that's the beauty

I've never seen anything like it in my life.

How unspoiled is pure

And how mockingly good-natured!

Having already got into the girl's room, Faust begins to understand that she is not only outwardly beautiful, but also beautiful in soul, and he is more and more convinced of this. His feeling becomes all-encompassing - not only physical, but also spiritual. The second half of the first part of "Faust" is devoted to the love story of Faust and Gretchen. There is a huge chasm between lovers. Faust is an extraordinarily developed mentally, who has come a long way of spiritual growth, who knows a lot and is very free-thinking. He is characterized by a critical attitude towards generally accepted concepts. His thought is independent, he does not take anything for granted, subjects everything to critical analysis and only after that makes certain conclusions. He long ago abandoned faith in church teaching:

Which of us dares

Answer without hesitation: "I believe in God"?

And the rebuke of the scholastic and the priest

On this score, so sincerely stupid.

Which seems like a wretched mockery.

Gretchen is a lovely, pure young creature. She possesses all the treasures of the female soul. The girl is capable of unlimited love and self-sacrifice. She is a deeply religious person, because her mother has been accompanying her all her life - an example of religious virtue. Finding a jewelry box in her room, Gretchen immediately reports on the discovery of her beloved mother, who attributes the appearance of jewelry in her poor little room to the wiles of the devil. The box was given to the church. At the same time, Gretchen is tormented by thoughts of an unknown donor. Faust in love does not stop, preparing a new test for his beloved with the help of Mephistopheles. The next box, full of untold treasures, seduces Gretchen. This time she turned from the path of virtue, deciding to accept the box with untold treasures. But can we blame the poor girl for liking beautiful things? In her life, she saw nothing but daily exhausting work, and could not even dream that one day her life would change just like Cinderella's. And then there is also Marta's friend assures that everything is fine, that you can keep the little chest and secretly try on precious trinkets. There is no benefit from this, but once again admire your beauty, framed by beautiful stones and gold, is a holiday for any girl.

The result of this act was fatal for Gretchen. Unwittingly succumbing to temptation, she lost her chastity. Evil breeds evil, one dishonest act leads to the next. Mephistopheles triumphs: the acquaintance of Faust and Gretchen brings him bad dividends. For the sake of meeting with Gretchen, Faust is ready for forgery and signs forged documents. Gretchen realizes that she loves, and for the sake of love is ready to sacrifice. In a fit of passion, she even forgets about the ubiquitous neighbors who will certainly pass their sanctimonious verdict on someone else's love and someone else's happiness.

At the moment when Faust overcomes his sensual attraction to the girl and moves to another, spiritual, level of love, Gretchen begins to feel anxiety about the correctness of his actions. Mephistopheles in her view of the "dashing" who "is so mocking and cunning and does not put people in anything." Just as Faust makes a pact with the devil to satisfy his spiritual aspirations, in other words, falls from the generally accepted point of view into “sin” and commits a crime, so Gretchen, in the name of love, becomes a violator of socially accepted moral principles. She cannot free herself from the rules imposed on her since childhood, although she involuntarily wonders why love, which gave her such spiritual joy, is in conflict with morality, in the truth of which she always believed.

The tragedy of love between Faust and Gretchen can be explained both by the differences in their natures and by the aggressiveness of the external environment. After all, the trial over Gretchen is taken not by a stranger, but by her brother Valentin. The judgment of relatives is sometimes more unfair and cruel than the judgment of outsiders. For example, in countries professing Islam, it is not uncommon for angry fathers and brothers to kill their daughters and sisters, who, in their opinion, have embarked on the path of depravity and vice.

The brave warrior Valentin, it would seem, had less to do with morality. Drunken revelry was the most innocent sin in the life of this man, whose profession was murder. And it was he, who himself, probably, who more than once violated the girl's honor, considered it necessary to stand up for his sister, and this, ultimately, entailed Gretchen's fatal loneliness at the most critical moment for her. Faust killed Valentine and is forced to go into hiding. At this time, Gretchen goes mad and kills her child. The verdict of society to infanticide is always cruel, despite the fact that sometimes society itself pushes women to this madness. Gretchen is imprisoned, she does not even understand that she has killed her own child. She takes the talk that she is the murderer of her innocent child as a cruel joke. The appearance of her beloved at first seems to her like salvation, but why is she so full of distrust of the one who filled her thoughts and heart with a fluttering fire of love?

Although everything looks the same,

I'm not lucky with you

And your cold is frightening ...

In him, Gretchen feels the forces of evil, with him she does not see the future. And what kind of future is this: to be expelled and tormented, tormented, unable to forget his crime? Gretchen hopes only for a just judgment of God, her last words are addressed to the Lord:

Save me, my Father above!

You angels around me, forgotten,

Protect me as a holy wall!

You, Heinrich, inspire fear in me.

Condemned by people, she resists evil until the last moment of her life. A voice from above sounds like a hymn to a pure, immaculate soul: "Saved!" Such a seemingly tragic ending, however, does not inspire pessimism and disbelief in life. After all, Gretchen arouses in readers not only sympathy and pity, but also admiration. She was not aware of the search for truth inherent in Faust, but she did not have to look for that beautiful moment: she was happy in love. Yes, she committed serious crimes, but the best spiritual qualities that manifested in the heroine during tragic circumstances cause only sincere admiration. Love endures for a long time, is merciful, love does not envy, love is not exalted, not proud. She does not rage, does not seek her own, does not get irritated, does not think evil. He does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices in the truth. Covers everything, believes everything, hopes everything, endures everything.

Composition "Images of the main characters of the tragedy" Faust ""

Who is the main character of Goethe's tragedy, whose name is the famous tragedy named after? What is he like? Goethe himself spoke about him as follows: the main thing in him is "tireless activity until the end of his life, which is becoming higher and cleaner."

Faust is a man with high aspirations. He devoted his whole life to science. He studied philosophy, law, medicine, theology, and achieved academic degrees. Years passed, and he realized with despair that he had not come a step closer to the truth, that all these years he was only moving away from the knowledge of real life, that he had exchanged "lush color of living nature" for "decay and rubbish."

Faust's reflections contained the feelings of Goethe himself and his generation about the meaning of life. Goethe created his Faust as a person who hears the call of life, the call of a new era, but still cannot escape the clutches of the past. After all, this was what worried the poet's contemporaries - the German enlighteners. In accordance with the ideas of the enlighteners, Faust is a man of action. Even translating the Bible into German, he, disagreeing with the famous phrase: "In the beginning was the Word," clarifies: "In the beginning was the Work."

Mephistopheles is not just the tempter and antipode of Faust. He is a skeptic philosopher with a brilliant critical mind. Mephistopheles is witty and sarcastic and compares favorably with the schematic religious character. Goethe put a lot of his thoughts into the mouth of Mephistopheles, and he, like Faust, became the spokesman for the ideas of the Enlightenment. So, dressed in the clothes of a university professor, Mephistopheles makes fun of the admiration that reigned in scholarly circles for the verbal formula, crazy cramming, behind which there is no place for living thought: "You must trust words: you cannot change an iota in words ..."

Faust makes an agreement with Mephistopheles not for empty entertainment, but for the sake of higher knowledge. He would like to experience everything, find out | both happiness and sorrow, to know the highest meaning of life. And Mephistopheles gives Faust the opportunity to taste all earthly blessings, so that he can forget about his high impulses to knowledge. Mephistopheles is confident that he will make Faust "crawl in the litter." He confronts him with the most important temptation - love for a woman.

The temptation that the lame devil invented for Faust has a name - Margarita, Gretchen. She is fifteen years old, she is a simple, pure and innocent girl. Seeing her on the street, Faust flares up for her with an insane passion. He is attracted by this young commoner, perhaps because with her he gains a sense of beauty and goodness, which he previously strove for. Love gives them bliss, but it also becomes the cause of misery. The poor girl became a criminal: fearing word of mouth, she drowned her child.

Learning about what happened, Faust tries to help Margaret and, together with Mephistopheles, enters the prison. But Margarita refuses to follow him. “I submit God's judgment", - says the girl. Leaving, Mephistopheles says that Margarita is condemned to torment. But a voice from above says: "Saved!" Choosing death to run away with the devil, Gretchen saved her soul.

Goethe's hero lives to be one hundred years old. He goes blind and finds himself in complete darkness. But even blind and weak, he is trying to fulfill his dream: to build a dam for people.

Composition

The philosophical meaning of the image of Faust

... Not like everyone else; he serves in a different way;

He does not want to drink or eat in an earthly way;

Like a madman, his mind is weak,

What he feels himself in the midst of doubts;

Always immersed in my dreams

He desires the best stars from the sky,

Then on earth - all the highest pleasures,

And there is nothing in him - neither near nor far -

Cannot quench gnawing sadness.

Goethe's "Faust"

The turbulent era of the Enlightenment gave birth to its rebel heroes who challenged ignorance, passivity, medieval barbarism and prejudice. These heroes are the leading writers and their images. They fought for the freedom and independence of the human person, unleashing their just wrath on the old order. Among these writers was the German poet J.W. Goethe. He sincerely and firmly believed in the triumph of reason on earth and put this faith in the image of the hero of his greatest work - the tragedy "Faust".

The legend of Faust attracted Goethe's attention in the early years. It reflected faith in a person, in the strength and greatness of his thoughts. The poet was close to the image of a person overcoming any difficulties and temptations and confidently moving forward to achieve his high goal. Faust was a type of thinker striving at all costs to comprehend the secrets of nature and life. The writer took all these features as a basis when creating the image of his hero.

Faust's character is very complex and contradictory, his soul is constantly tormented by doubts, inspiration is replaced in his heart by sadness and dissatisfaction. Even peering into the atmosphere of his office, which he himself compares to a "deaf stone hole", we see a reflection of that close, stifling circle from which the hero seeks to break free "into the wide world." He dreams of knowing the truth, studying the laws of nature, but instead is forced to be surrounded by "decay and rubbish." The sciences of that time were dead, they did not give answers to the questions that disturbed Faust's inquisitive mind. He does not find a solution to his problems in magic either.

Faust realizes that the path to the knowledge of the truth will not be easy, but nevertheless he sets out on this path, driven by the thirst for knowledge.

We see with what fullness of life, joy, a lively perception of nature, the scene of the hero's appearance at the spring holiday is filled. He feels the resurrection of the people themselves, who are striving to escape "from the stuffy city into the field, into the light." Such moods and atmosphere are very close to the state of mind of Faust himself. After all, he wants not only to know the world, but also to convey a ray of knowledge to other people. This is precisely what caused his desire to translate into native language The gospel is one of the most popular and important books... But here doubts take over. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God,” says the great book. But the hero objects: "I cannot value the word so highly." He confidently replaces the text: "Deed is the beginning of being." And this phrase contains the main meaning of his image. Goethe affirms the idea of ​​continuous movement forward, constant action, creative labor. Since only in this case can a person know himself and the world around him. Faust, according to N. G. Chernyshevsky, "... needs a deeper truth, a more complete life, that's why he must enter into an alliance with Mephistopheles, that is, denial." It is in the collision with Mephistopheles, in a dispute with him, in attempts to prove him wrong, that the character of the hero develops. He understands that he cannot stand still, will not find peace and will not want to stop the moment. Faust, seized with a thirst for search and knowledge, will forever strive forward.

What will you give, you miserable devil, what delights?

Human spirit and proud aspirations

Is it possible for someone like you to understand?

The hero answers his tempter, who wants to drown his aspirations in a pool of base pleasures. Faust swears never to succumb to the temptation of peace and contentment:

When on the bed of sleep, in contentment and peace,

I will fall, then my time has come!

When you flatter me deceitfully

And I will be pleased with myself,

Sensual delight when you deceive me,

Then it's over!

Yes, the path of Faust is difficult, he is constantly possessed by new illusions, which then collapse; he is plagued by setbacks and disappointments. But, having gone through all the trials, resisting all temptations, the hero does not lose faith in a bright future, in the power of the human mind, in the strength of the human spirit. He understands that high aspirations and dreams are not enough to achieve progress. You have to fight for the golden age, because

... only he is worthy of life and freedom,

Who goes to battle for them every day.

People should believe in themselves and rely only on their own strength, on their "free labor" - this is the conclusion of Faust.

The image created by Goethe entered world culture as one of the "eternal images". With his work, the author hoped to awaken in people the desire for perfection, to help shape a generation full of courage, dignity, fortitude and a thirst for activity. Until the end of his days he did not lose faith in man, in his high destiny.

Composition

I am a spirit, always accustomed to deny (based on Goethe's tragedy "Faust")

I deny everything - and this is my essence ...

In short, everything that your brother calls evil -

The desire to destroy, deeds and thoughts are evil,

That's all - my element.

Goethe's "Faust"

The path to creation goes through destruction - this is how NG Chernyshevsky understood the outcome of Goethe's drama Faust. Indeed, the hero of the work goes through doubts, disappointments, contradictions in his struggle for a person, on the way to knowledge of the truth. But strangely enough, Mephistopheles helps him to achieve this truth - a villain, a seducer who pushes Faust to evil deeds.

However, the image of Mephistopheles is a complex and ambiguous image. On the one hand, he is the embodiment of evil forces, doubt, destruction. He affirms the insignificance, helplessness and uselessness of any person; says that man uses his mind only to "be cattle out of cattle." Mephistopheles seeks by any means to prove the moral weakness of people, their inability to resist temptations. Becoming a companion of Faust, he tries in every possible way to deceive him, to lead him “in a perverse way,” to instill doubt in his soul. Trying to mislead the hero from his path, to distract him from high aspirations, he intoxicates him with a potion, arranges meetings with Margarita, hoping that, succumbing to passion, Faust will forget about his duty to the truth. The task of Mephistopheles is to seduce the hero, make him plunge into the sea of ​​base pleasures, and abandon his ideals. If he succeeded, he would have won the main dispute - about the greatness or insignificance of man. Taking Faust into the world of low passions, he would prove that people are not much different from animals. However, here he fails - "The human spirit and proud aspirations" are above any pleasures.

Goethe puts a very deep meaning into the image of Mephistopheles, assigning him almost the main role in the development of the plot, in the hero's knowledge of the world and the achievement of the great truth. Along with Faust, he is the driving force behind the tragedy.

I am part of the eternal strength

Always wishing for evil, doing only good.

... I deny everything, and this is my essence ...

This characteristic most accurately reflects the essence of the process of cognition itself, with its contradictions and the struggle of opposites. The same idea is supported by another phrase:

All that exists is worthy of destruction.

In the course of the further development of the plot, we are even more convinced of what an important and complex role Mephistopheles plays in the development of the main theme of the work - the struggle for truth. With his doubts and ridicule, he evokes in the hero a desire to fight, argue, defend his views. Trying to knock Faust off the right path, in reality, Mephistopheles, on the contrary, encourages him to move forward. After all, as N. G. Chernyshevsky wrote: "With denial, skepticism, reason is not hostile: on the contrary, skepticism serves its purposes, leading a person through hesitation to pure and clear convictions."

We see that Mephistopheles, like Faust, is endowed with a rather progressive way of thinking. He criticizes the science of those times, in which Live nature was viewed as unchanging, not evolving. He scoffs at people's adherence to dead dogmas and empty phrases:

With words, disputes are conducted,

From the words of the system are created ...

He, denying everything, questioning the development and movement of a person forward, at the same time, affirms the joy and triumph of life:

Suha my friend, theory is everywhere

And the tree of life turns magnificently green!

Mephistopheles constantly appears before us as a direct participant in life's struggle.

While drawing the image of the devil, the tempter, Goethe, meanwhile, endows him with the features of a progressive, witty thinker. And the fact that he ends up losing the argument, the best way emphasizes and strengthens the author's idea that human life has a higher meaning. A person is great, he is able to defend his position, overcome any obstacles, resist any temptations in the name of achieving his goal, in the name of affirming his high destiny.

Composition

"Faust" - The Tragedy of Knowledge

... What does it mean to know? This is where the difficulty lies!

Who will call the baby the correct name?

Where are the few who have known their age,

They did not hide their feelings or thoughts,

Did you go to meet the crowd with insane courage?

They were crucified, beaten, burned ...

Goethe's "Faust"

F. Engels called "the greatest German" outstanding writer the Age of Enlightenment I. V. Goethe. His work not only opened a new page in the history of national literature, but also became a reflection of the views and aspirations of a whole generation. “I willingly delve into the life and culture of foreign peoples,” wrote Goethe, realizing that in order to influence the world around him, it is necessary to know how it works, to see and distinguish all its facets.

Goethe's works became the embodiment of an advanced way of thinking, a rebellion against medieval backwardness, prejudice, and ignorance. The poet has boldly challenged the world of violence and injustice. I. Franko wrote that "Faust" became a manifestation of the revolution, the one that broke out in Paris with a terrible fire, destroyed the autocratic kingdom of nobles and priests and proclaimed the "Declaration of Human Rights." And this is not accidental, because the idea of ​​the tragedy was formed immediately after the famous events in France.

"Faust" - philosophical drama, where the basis of the conflict is determined not simply by the collision of various human characters and opinions, but a clash of ideas, a struggle of principles. And the main thing in the work is not even the plot, but the development of the author's thought. The well-known images of the Christian legend in Goethe's exposition acquire a completely different meaning. Everything in nature is in constant motion, in a struggle. But what place, what role is assigned to a person here? What is the meaning of its existence? Is it great or insignificant? These are the questions the poet poses before us, although he himself is firmly convinced that

... a pure soul in its vague pursuit

Consciousness is full of truth!

Therefore, he believes in the high purpose of human life.

conflict - between genuine science and dead knowledge, the bearer of which is Wagner, who

... Without bleak boredom

Digs into the most boring and empty things ...

Faust, on the other hand, seeks to break free from the shackles of medieval science and learn about life in all its beauty and diversity. And this knowledge is impossible without moving forward. "Action is the beginning of being" - the poet develops this idea throughout the entire action of the tragedy, because only by his activity, his labor, a person can pave his way into the future and prove the greatness of the human race.

Another essential fact, in which the author is firmly convinced, is that any knowledge is impossible without a doubt. From this follows the main motive of the drama - the struggle of opposites, the emergence of constant contradictions. That is why a clash of faith and doubt, a spiritual impulse and a cold mind occurs in the hero's soul, that all these are integral parts of the complex, sometimes tragic process of comprehending the truth. This motive is most clearly expressed in the words of Faust:

Ah two souls live in my sick chest

Aliens to each other - and crave separation!

Indeed, it is doubt that often serves as one of the elements of cognition - when, by closely studying facts and phenomena, checking and rechecking them, not taking anything on faith, a person gradually reaches the truth.

Thus, in "Faust" the poet reflected the difficult and contradictory path of the hero to the truth, to living knowledge. For the sake of mastering this knowledge, Faust is ready to overcome any obstacles, temptations: and doubts. Because he has a lofty goal in front of him - to prove the high destiny of man, to refute the assertion of Mephistopheles that his mind is a man

... for only one thing I could use -

To be cattle from cattle!

With his work, Goethe calls us to continuous feat in the name of the future, to a continuous striving forward, to a constant struggle against passivity, humility, indifference and tranquility.

Composition

Only those who have known the battle for life have earned life and freedom. (based on the tragedy "Faust" by Goethe)

Goethe's work has become one of the most complex phenomena in the history of German and world literature. The contradictions that fill his works are not just Goethe's individual contradictions, but also the contradictions of the entire era, the contradictions of the entire German bourgeoisie. The tragedy "Fust" became the most significant work of the poet and was the highest philosophical and artistic achievement of all German literature. late XVIII - early XIX century.

The great epic, created by Goethe based on materials folk legend, in a figurative and poetic form, asserted the omnipotence of the human mind. Writers of different eras and peoples have repeatedly turned to the image of Faust, but it was Goethe who managed to create an image of such great poetic power and depth. Having reinterpreted the old legend in a new way, the author filled it with deep content, gave it a humanistic sound. His hero is a fearless seeker of truth, never stopping at anything and not satisfied with anything, a real humanist, a contemporary of Goethe himself in spirit and a like-minded person.

In the tragedy "Faust" we see the whole world history, the great history of scientific, philosophical and historical thought of the past and present. The work begins with "Dedication" - a heartfelt lyrical poem, in which grief about the past youth and departed friends, and thoughts about the fate of the future creation, and anxious alertness towards its new readers are heard. Here the past and the present are closely intertwined, personally experienced by the author and the artistic world created by him. Dedication is followed by Theatrical Introduction and Prologue in Heaven, which have even more essential to reveal the ideological meaning of the work. The Prologue reflects the dispute between Mephistopheles and God about human dignity, the calling of man and the meaning of his existence. Mephistopheles - a cynic and skeptic - refuses to see any meaning in human activities, he confirms his opinion, citing as an example miserable people mired in insignificance and ignorance. God opposes him, putting forward a zealous seeker of truth, Doctor Faustus. But Mephistopheles sees only a guarantee of his future death in Faust's painful searches and doubts. He considers him to be as insignificant and helpless as all people in general. Mephistopheles undertakes to "repulse" this "madman" from God. God accepts the challenge, but his consent to the test of Faust is conditioned by a firm belief in man, in the power of his mind, in his unlimited possibilities of knowing the secrets of nature.

The fantastic element that Goethe introduces into his work is already present in the first part ("The Witch's Kitchen", "Walpurgis Night"), and in the second part it sharply intensifies and becomes dominant. The “small world” of earthly human relations is being replaced by the “big world”: history and cosmic coverage of nature. There are science fiction with satirical overtones (the image of Homunculus), and the problem of connecting different eras (the marriage of Helen, symbolizing ancient art, and Faust, embodying modern times). Goethe's hatred for stupid self-righteous learning, for an imaginary science far from the interests of the people (the image of an assistant and disciple of Faust Wagner), and sincere respect for an inquiring mind, an incessant search for truth, an irrepressible thirst for practical activity (the image of Faust) are immediately manifested.

Having concluded an agreement with Mephistopheles, Faust receives all the benefits: returned youth, the love of an innocent and pure Margarita, communication with the shadows of ancient heroes, a brilliant career at the court of the emperor, power and wealth, the love of the beautiful Elena. However, none of this satisfies the hero.

The path traveled by Faust symbolizes the path of all mankind. In the dying monologue of a hero who survived and overcame all temptations, Goethe reveals the highest meaning of life, which for Faust lies in serving people, an eternal thirst for knowledge, in a constant struggle for happiness. On the verge of death, he is ready to exalt every moment of this meaningful great goal labor. However, this rapture is not instantly bought at the cost of giving up endless improvement. Faust knew the highest goal of human development and was satisfied with what he had achieved:

This is the thought that I am all devoted to,

The sum of everything that the mind has accumulated.

Only the one who knows the battle for life,

Deserved life and freedom.

Faust's true victory over Mephistopheles, the guarantee of his final "salvation" - in the infinity of this "stopped" moment, in fact - a moving, conceived by him business, which goes beyond the framework of a single human life, continues in the work and struggle of future generations.

Goethe worked on his famous tragedy for over 60 years, and it became the pinnacle of his artistic creativity. "Faust", according to A.S. Pushkin, "is the greatest creation of the poetic spirit, he serves as a representative of the latest poetry, just as the Iliad is a monument of classical antiquity."