Johann Goethe "Faust": description, characters, analysis of the work. Images of the main characters of the tragedy "Faust" by Goethe

The main theme of the tragedy "Faust" by Goethe is the spiritual quest of the protagonist - the freethinker and warlock Dr. Faust, who sold his soul to the devil for gaining eternal life in human form. The purpose of this terrible treaty is to soar above reality not only with the help of spiritual exploits, but also with worldly good deeds and valuable discoveries for mankind.

History of creation

The philosophical drama for reading "Faust" was written by the author throughout his entire creative life. It is based on the most known version the legend of Doctor Faust. The idea of ​​writing - the embodiment in the image of a doctor of higher spiritual impulses human soul. The first part was completed in 1806, the author wrote it for about 20 years, the first edition took place in 1808, after which it underwent several author's revisions during reprints. The second part was written by Goethe in old age, and published about a year after his death.

Description of the artwork

The work opens with three introductions:

• dedication. Lyric text dedicated to the friends of youth who made up the author's social circle during his work on the poem.
• Prologue in the theater. A lively debate between the Theater Director, the Comic Actor and the Poet on the topic of the meaning of art in society.
• Prologue in Heaven. After a discussion about the mind given by the Lord to people, Mephistopheles makes a bet with God about whether Dr. Faust can overcome all the difficulties of using his mind solely for the benefit of knowledge.

Part one

Doctor Faust, understanding the limitations of the human mind in knowing the secrets of the universe, tries to commit suicide, and only the sudden blows of the Easter Annunciation prevent him from carrying out this plan. Further, Faust and his student Wagner bring a black poodle to the house, which turns into Mephistopheles in the form of a wandering student. Evil spirit strikes the doctor with his strength and sharpness of mind and tempts the pious hermit to taste the joys of life again. Thanks to the concluded agreement with the devil, Faust regains youth, strength and health. Faust's first temptation is his love for Marguerite, an innocent girl who later paid with her life for her love. In this tragic story, Margarita is not the only victim - her mother also accidentally dies from an overdose of sleeping pills, and her brother Valentine, who stood up for her sister's honor, will be killed by Faust in a duel.

Part two

The action of the second part takes the reader to the imperial palace of one of the ancient states. In five acts, permeated with a mass of mystical and symbolic associations, the worlds of Antiquity and the Middle Ages are intertwined in a complex pattern. The red thread runs love line Faust and the beautiful Helen, the heroine of the ancient Greek epic. Faust and Mephistopheles, through various tricks, quickly become close to the emperor's court and offer him a rather non-standard way out of the current financial crisis. At the end of his earthly life, the almost blind Faust undertakes the construction of a dam. He perceives the sound of shovels of evil spirits digging his grave on the orders of Mephistopheles as active construction work, while experiencing moments of the greatest happiness associated with a great deed realized for the benefit of his people. It is in this place that he asks to stop the moment of his life, having the right to do so under the terms of the contract with the devil. Now he's predestined hellish torment, but the Lord, having appreciated the doctor's merits to mankind, makes a different decision and Faust's soul goes to heaven.

main characters

Faust

It's not just typical collective image progressive scientist - he symbolically represents the entire human race. His difficult fate and life path are not just allegorically reflected in all of humanity, they point to the moral aspect of the existence of each individual - life, work and creativity for the benefit of their people.

(On the image F. Chaliapin in the role of Mephistopheles)

At the same time, the spirit of destruction and the power to resist stagnation. A skeptic who despises human nature, confident in the worthlessness and weakness of people who are unable to cope with their sinful passions. As a person, Mephistopheles opposes Faust with disbelief in the goodness and humanistic essence of man. He appears in several guises - sometimes a joker and joker, sometimes a servant, sometimes an intellectual philosopher.

margarita

A simple girl, the embodiment of innocence and kindness. Modesty, openness and spiritual warmth attract to her a lively mind and the restless soul of Faust. Margarita is the image of a woman capable of all-encompassing and sacrificial love. It is thanks to these qualities that she receives forgiveness from the Lord, despite the crimes she has committed.

Analysis of the work

Tragedy has a complex compositional construction- it consists of two voluminous parts, the first has 25 scenes, and the second - 5 actions. The work connects the cross-cutting motif of the wanderings of Faust and Mephistopheles into a single whole. bright and interesting feature is a three-part introduction, which is the plot of the future plot of the play.

(Images of Johann Goethe in the work on "Faust")

Goethe thoroughly revised folk legend underlying the tragedy. He filled the play with spiritual and philosophical problems, in which the ideas of the Enlightenment close to Goethe find a response. Main character transforms from a sorcerer and alchemist into a progressive experimental scientist who rebels against scholastic thinking, which was very characteristic of the Middle Ages. The circle of problems raised in the tragedy is very extensive. It includes reflections on the secrets of the universe, the categories of good and evil, life and death, knowledge and morality.

Final conclusion

"Faust" is a unique work that touches on eternal philosophical questions along with the scientific and social problems of its time. Criticizing a narrow-minded society that lives in carnal pleasures, Goethe, with the help of Mephistopheles, simultaneously ridicules the German education system, replete with a mass of useless formalities. The unsurpassed play of poetic rhythms and melody makes Faust one of the greatest masterpieces of German poetry.

Faust. The name comes from the Latin word faustus - happy, lucky. The image of F. accompanied Goethe all his life; the tragedy as a whole was completed in 1831 (the last amendments were made by Goethe shortly before his death, in 1882). As work progressed on the tragedy, the image of F. acquired an increasingly grandiose philosophical dimension. In the final version of the tragedy, F. acts as a representative of all mankind, its indomitable thirst for life, the will to knowledge, creation and creativity. The extraordinary scale of the upcoming drama is revealed already in the Prologue in Heaven, where heaven and hell begin to argue over F.'s soul. Lord God and Mephistopheles. Goethe himself noted the similarity of this prologue with the biblical "Book of Job", where God and Satan argue about the soul of Job. Throughout the tragedy, F. goes through a series of metamorphoses. In the first part, F. appears, a highly experienced scientist and sage of the Reformation era, who mastered all the sciences of his time, but was deeply disappointed in book knowledge. He wants to comprehend "the universe's inner connection." But this is precisely what abstract science cannot give. F. is cramped in his working room, he passionately yearns for people, for wildlife. We see him on a walk, among the common people, and in communion with nature (the scene "At the Gate"): on these walks, F. is accompanied by Wagner, his pedantic, limited student. Theme "F. and nature” is one of the key themes of the entire work. F. is a man of strong, titanic impulses (it is no accident that Goethe was so fascinated by his image in his youth when he worked on the tragedies Prometheus and Mohammed). It is F.'s boundless passion for mastering the secrets of nature, for knowledge, for comprehending the world and people that makes F. agree to an agreement with Mephistopheles. Main feature F. is eternal anxiety, so he puts forward a special condition of the contract: the devil will win only if F. wishes to "stop the moment." But F. is sure that this will never happen. From now on, F. will have to go through a series of temptations and sensual temptations. In the beginning - it's a rough drinking bout in the cellar of Airbach. Then a magical drink, made in the witch's kitchen, restores his youth and unbridled youthful ardor. One of major events the first part is F.'s meeting with Margarita. Love for this young girl transforms and immeasurably enriches F., for the first time after fruitless solitary speculation, simple humanity awakens in him. However, the world of Margarita is too narrow for F., and a tragic split arises in his soul. Passion for Margarita and the intrigues of Mephistopheles lead F. to grave crimes: he is guilty of the death of Margarita's mother and the murder of her brother Valentine. After that, F. is forced to flee the city with his companion; Mephistopheles draws him into an unbridled coven of satanic forces ("Walpurgis Night"). However, even at this critical moment, when F., it would seem, was entangled in grave sins, his will to good is stronger. Repentance for what he had done, boundless compassion for Margarita to some extent purify his soul, he makes a desperate, albeit hopeless, attempt to rescue Margarita from prison. The second part of Faust differs markedly from the first; the image of F. acquires here fundamentally new meaning. Goethe repeatedly emphasized that F. is not only the hero of the work in the usual sense of the word, his image is necessary for understanding the unity of tragedy. More and more expanding - in comparison with the first part - the spheres of activity of F.: this and state activity, and philosophical disputes, and immersion in the world of the original Hellenic legends and myths, Greek beauty, and, finally, tireless creative work, conquering new lands from the sea. Goethe's desire to cover in the second part a huge span of history - from antiquity to the first quarter XIX in. - makes him constantly resort to allegories. Working on the second part, Goethe in October 1826 informed W. Humboldt that it covers "three thousand years, from the fall of Troy to the capture of Missolunga" (the city where Byron died).

Faust is the main hero of the great tragedy in two parts, as written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Tvіr opposing readers and writers in our country, but to put it another way Mikola Lukash. This tragedy is hostile to the skin, who tries to comprehend and recognize this depth.

The main hero is a highly intelligent person, like a pragmatic mind, like the power of the All-world. Faust is the character that separates all mankind. All the exercises of the hero are in one person. By stretching the whole creation, the author creates simple situations, if Faust is guilty of choosing between good and evil. Such a trick can be corrected for readers, because it gives them the opportunity to indulge the hero's behavior in different situations.

Kim really bov Faust? We can definitely say that you are a professional. The hero of that yoga father rejoiced at people, rebuked them for the sickness. The locals respected yoga for its price. On the cob of creation, if Faust and yoga assistant Wagner went to the place, then people showed respect for the main character: the stench bowed to him and made the way.

Faust is an intellectual and a person who can not only speak, but also children. The head hero translates the New Testament into German language.

Faust of dissatisfaction with life. Vіn want to see if you can do it right on the basis of the malt. Mephistopheles helps you in tsoma: to rob yoga to the young. The main hero of the creation becomes beautiful, his blood boils, and he is ready for various feats. The first important crotchet for the new tіlі - tse vіdkrittya yourself to new pochutty. Faust dies into a young girl, as she grew up in a small place and was more than practical. Your name was Margarita or Gretchen. Vіn zustrіv krasunya, if she turned around from the church. The very same hero is sensible, what is the right thing to do. For the help of Mephistopheles, Faust was able to bewitch the heart of the maiden and see the spiritual beauty.

Faust will rise in price at the same time with Mephistopheles. You listen to your thoughts and easily succumb to the infusion. With the butt of which you can serve vipadok with Valentine, Margaret's brother. Stop, after seeing Faust, throw yourself into the fight. The head hero, having obeyed Mephistopheles, receives a call and kills his brother Kokhanoi. If Faust was far-sighted, then death could be lost.

No matter what, Faust tries to turn Margaret around. Vіn z’avlyaєtsya at the vyaznitsa and want to vryatuvat the girl in the early hours. Vaughn told you about the stingy river, she blamed Yaku: the murder of a child. Vіn bliss її leave this greedy place and flow away from it at once. Gretchen was even more rіshuchoy and sang, scho to submit to God's judgment.

In the end of creation, Faust is becoming old again, but there is still a great meta. Yogo mriya - tse encourage rowing. Win to believe Mephistopheles, who called us to prepare the grave. Faust wants to resurrect the earth, so that sea winds will be flooded. The head hero forgets that he called the demon. Vіn spodіvaєtsya, scho Mephistopheles zdіysnyuє yogo mriyu, і Faust to speak zapovitnі words about those, schob zupinilas mіt.

The author depicts the problem of good and evil. Faust himself is at the center of the conflict. The thoughts of the protagonist are high, they won't help people, but at the same time they will do evil and put people to sin. Faust goes on to preserve the purity of the soul and heal the evil spirits. In my opinion, this author reiterates that sooner or later good overcomes evil.

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Throughout the work, Faust traveled an amazing path, full of frustration, pain, as well as joy and unexpected discoveries. This man sold his soul to the devil in order to know the foundations of the universe. It is not enough for him to have ordinary, everyday knowledge, which almost everyone has. He longs for more, seeks to reveal secrets, to receive new revelations. Faust learned to value knowledge. How similar it is to many representatives of humanity who want to know secrets, reveal them and are ready to give even what is dear for it. The image of Faust is contradictory at the very beginning - he is inspired, then he is tormented by doubts and later decides to commit suicide, thinking that life has been wasted. Faust is overcome by completely different, even opposite feelings and emotions. Such a period passes by someone who understands that the surrounding reality is not the limit, it has no boundaries, which means that you need to go flying, diving into the depths of the unknown. Faust personifies constant movement, constant work, through all this one can know not only the world but also himself. Faust was obsessed with the knowledge of truth. Many are looking for it, sometimes subconsciously, but still looking. It doesn't matter what times are now - Faustian or modern, inner essence strives to get rid of lies, to get the truth, knowledge. He devoted his life to research, but realized that this would not give anything, would not lead to the truth, since it does not consist of facts, calculations and evidence. That is why Faust decided on such a risky act - to sell his soul to the devil. Goethe's hero is ready to pay any price, he suffers, experiences ups and downs - this is strong and strong-willed person who in spite of everything goes to what his soul desires. But to achieve something, just inspiration and dreams are not enough, because you have to go through a desperate path of trials and difficulties. The positive quality of this character is the desire to be free and happy, and also to help other people achieve this. The image of Faust is inextricably linked with the theme of the meaning of life, so watching the hero, you begin to think about own life, about its meaning and meaning, is there something valuable in it that Faust saw in his own? Is it also possible to surrender to dreams, the pursuit of something new and unrevealed? Faust lived carelessly, satisfying his desires, but when he had the opportunity to build a dam, he realized that he was born for this business, this is his real purpose and meaning of life. So in every person there is a gift that needs to be unearthed in oneself, revealed so that it becomes a stepping stone, and then the basis for a new life. You can also learn from this hero to appreciate everything that was in life, not to regret it, but to accept everything , as a matter of course, to find true happiness in this. It is especially noteworthy that the name Faust in Latin means happy and lucky. The life lived by Faust was bright, it was not in vain for the hero himself. Of course, after all the searches, there is a possibility of being left without the desired answers, but such a life is better than a world of illusions. But one thing distinguishes Faust from other people. He found what he was looking for, managed to achieve unity with nature, realized that he was an integral part of it. At the end of his life, the hero is completely satisfied - "Stop a moment, you are fine!". Who can boast of such an achievement now? Such awareness, inner fullness and self-sufficiency? Alas, few. He showed that behind the ordinary, gray life, earthly goals and dreams, there is something that can be achieved and it is achievable, the main thing is to meet this.

The greatest German poet, scientist, thinker Johann Wolfgang Goethe(1749-1832) completes the European Enlightenment. In terms of the versatility of his talents, Goethe stands next to the titans of the Renaissance. Already the contemporaries of the young Goethe spoke in chorus about the genius of any manifestation of his personality, and in relation to the old Goethe, the definition of "Olympian" was established.

Coming from a patrician-burgher family in Frankfurt am Main, Goethe received an excellent liberal arts education at home, studied at the Universities of Leipzig and Strasbourg. Start it literary activity had to form in German literature the Sturm und Drang movement, at the head of which he stood. His fame went beyond Germany with the publication of the novel The Suffering young Werther"(1774). The first drafts of the tragedy" Faust" also belong to the period of the sturmerism.

In 1775, Goethe moved to Weimar at the invitation of the young Duke of Saxe-Weimar, who admired him, and devoted himself to the affairs of this small state, wanting to realize his creative thirst in practical activity for the benefit of society. His ten-year administrative activity, including as first minister, left no room for literary creativity and brought him disappointment. The writer H. Wieland, who was more closely acquainted with the inertia of German reality, said from the very beginning of Goethe's ministerial career: "Goethe will not be able to do even a hundredth of what he would be glad to do." In 1786, Goethe was overtaken by a severe mental crisis, which forced him to leave for Italy for two years, where, in his words, he "resurrected."

In Italy, the addition of his mature method, called "Weimar classicism" begins; in Italy, he returns to literary creativity, from his pen come the dramas Iphigenia in Tauris, Egmont, Torquato Tasso. Upon his return from Italy to Weimar, Goethe retains only the post of Minister of Culture and Director of the Weimar Theatre. He, of course, remains a personal friend of the duke and advises on the most important political issues. In the 1790s, Goethe's friendship with Friedrich Schiller began, a friendship unique in the history of culture and creative collaboration between two equally great poets. Together they developed the principles of Weimar classicism and encouraged each other to create new works. In the 1790s, Goethe wrote "Reinecke Lis", "Roman Elegies", the novel "The Years of the Teaching of Wilhelm Meister", the burgher idyll in hexameters "Hermann and Dorothea", ballads. Schiller insisted that Goethe continue to work on Faust, but Faust, the first part of the tragedy, was completed after Schiller's death and published in 1806. Goethe did not intend to return to this plan, but the writer I. P. Eckerman, who settled in his house as secretary, the author of Conversations with Goethe, urged Goethe to complete the tragedy. Work on the second part of Faust went on mainly in the twenties, and it was published, according to Goethe's wishes, after his death. Thus, work on "Faust" took over sixty years, it covered the entire creative life Goethe and absorbed all the eras of his development.

Just like in philosophical stories Voltaire, in "Faust" the leading side is philosophical idea, only in comparison with Voltaire, she found embodiment in the full-blooded, living images of the first part of the tragedy. Genre "Faust" philosophical tragedy, and the general philosophical problems to which Goethe addresses here acquire a special enlightenment coloring.

The plot of Faust was repeatedly used in contemporary German literature by Goethe, and he himself first met him as a five-year-old boy at a performance of a folk puppet theater that played out an old German legend. However, this legend has historical roots. Dr. Johann-Georg Faust was an itinerant healer, warlock, soothsayer, astrologer and alchemist. Contemporary scholars such as Paracelsus spoke of him as a charlatan impostor; from the point of view of his students (Faust at one time held a professorship at the university), he was a fearless seeker of knowledge and forbidden paths. The followers of Martin Luther (1583-1546) saw in him a wicked man who, with the help of the devil, performed imaginary and dangerous miracles. After his sudden and mysterious death in 1540, the life of Faust was overgrown with many legends.

The bookseller Johann Spies collected the oral tradition for the first time in folk book about Faust (1587, Frankfurt am Main). It was an edifying book, "an awesome example of the devil's temptation to ruin the body and soul." Spies also has an agreement with the devil for a period of 24 years, and the devil himself in the form of a dog that turns into a servant of Faust, marriage to Elena (the same devil), the famulous Wagner, the terrible death of Faust.

The plot was quickly picked up by the author's literature. The brilliant contemporary of Shakespeare, the Englishman K. Marlo (1564-1593), gave his first theatrical adaptation in " tragic history life and death of Dr. Faust" (premiered in 1594). puppet theaters. Many German writers second half of XVIII century used this plot. G. E. Lessing's drama "Faust" (1775) remained unfinished, J. Lenz in the dramatic passage "Faust" (1777) portrayed Faust in hell, F. Klinger wrote the novel "The Life, Deeds and Death of Faust" ( 1791). Goethe took the legend to a whole new level.

For sixty years of work on Faust, Goethe created a work comparable in volume to the Homeric epic (12,111 lines of Faust versus 12,200 verses of the Odyssey). Having absorbed the experience of a lifetime, the experience of a brilliant comprehension of all epochs in the history of mankind, Goethe's work rests on ways of thinking and artistic techniques that are far from those accepted in contemporary literature, that's why The best way approaching him is a leisurely commented reading. Here we will only outline the plot of the tragedy from the point of view of the evolution of the protagonist.

In the Prologue in Heaven, the Lord makes a wager with the devil Mephistopheles about human nature; The Lord chooses his "slave", Dr. Faust, as the object of the experiment.

In the opening scenes of the tragedy, Faust is deeply disappointed in the life he devoted to science. He despaired of knowing the truth and now stands on the verge of suicide, from which he is kept by the ringing of Easter bells. Mephistopheles enters Faust in the form of a black poodle, takes his true form and makes a deal with Faust - the fulfillment of any of his desires in exchange for his immortal soul. The first temptation - wine in Auerbach's cellar in Leipzig - Faust rejects; after a magical rejuvenation in the witch's kitchen, Faust falls in love with the young townswoman Marguerite and, with the help of Mephistopheles, seduces her. From the poison given by Mephistopheles, Gretchen's mother dies, Faust kills her brother and flees the city. In the scene of Walpurgis Night, at the height of the witches' sabbath, the ghost of Marguerite appears to Faust, his conscience awakens in him, and he demands from Mephistopheles to save Gretchen, who has been thrown into prison for killing the baby she gave birth to. But Margarita refuses to run away with Faust, preferring death, and the first part of the tragedy ends with the words of a voice from above: "Saved!" Thus, in the first part, which unfolds in the conditional German Middle Ages, Faust, who in his first life was a hermit scientist, acquires life experience private person.

In the second part, the action is transferred to the wide outside world: to the court of the emperor, to the mysterious cave of the Mothers, where Faust plunges into the past, into the pre-Christian era, and from where he brings Elena the Beautiful. A short marriage with her ends with the death of their son Euphorion, symbolizing the impossibility of a synthesis of ancient and Christian ideals. Having received seaside lands from the emperor, the old Faust finally finds the meaning of life: on the lands reclaimed from the sea, he sees a utopia of universal happiness, the harmony of free labor on a free land. To the sound of shovels, the blind old man pronounces his last monologue: “I am now experiencing the highest moment,” and, according to the terms of the deal, falls dead. The irony of the scene is that Faust takes Mephistopheles' henchmen as builders, digging his grave, and all Faust's works on arranging the region are destroyed by a flood. However, Mephistopheles does not get the soul of Faust: the soul of Gretchen stands up for him before the Mother of God, and Faust escapes hell.

Faust is a philosophical tragedy; in the center of it are the main questions of being, they determine both the plot and the system of images, and art system generally. As a rule, the presence of a philosophical element in the content of a literary work implies an increased degree of conventionality in its art form, as has already been shown in Voltaire's philosophical story.

The fantastic plot of "Faust" leads the hero through different countries and eras of civilization. Since Faust is the universal representative of mankind, the whole space of the world and the whole depth of history becomes the arena of his action. Therefore, the image of the conditions public life is present in tragedy only to the extent that it relies on historical legend. There are still genre sketches in the first part folk life(scene festivities, to which Faust and Wagner go); in the second part, which is philosophically more complex, the reader is given a generalized-abstract review of the main epochs in the history of mankind.

The central image of the tragedy - Faust - the last of the great " eternal images"Individualists born in the transition from the Renaissance to the New Age. He should be placed next to Don Quixote, Hamlet, Don Juan, each of which embodies one extreme of development human spirit. Faust reveals the most points of similarity with Don Juan: both strive into the forbidden realms of occult knowledge and sexual secrets, both do not stop before the murder, the irrepressibility of desires brings both into contact with the infernal forces. But unlike Don Juan, whose search lies in a purely earthly plane, Faust embodies the search for the fullness of life. Faust's realm is boundless knowledge. Just as Don Juan is complemented by his servant Sganarelle, and Don Quixote is Sancho Panza, Faust is completed in his eternal companion - Mephistopheles. The devil in Goethe loses the majesty of Satan, a titan and a God-fighter - this is the devil of more democratic times, and he is connected with Faust not so much by the hope of getting his soul, as by friendly affection.

The story of Faust allows Goethe to take a fresh, critical approach to the key issues of Enlightenment philosophy. Let us recall that the critique of religion and the idea of ​​God was the nerve of the Enlightenment ideology. In Goethe, God stands above the action of tragedy. The Lord of the "Prologue in Heaven" is a symbol of the positive beginnings of life, true humanity. Unlike the previous Christian tradition, Goethe's God is not harsh and does not even fight evil, but, on the contrary, communicates with the devil and undertakes to prove to him the futility of the position of complete denial of the meaning of human life. When Mephistopheles likens a man to a wild beast or a fussy insect, God asks him:

Do you know Faust?

- He is a doctor?

- He is my slave.

Mephistopheles knows Faust as a doctor of sciences, that is, he perceives him only by his professional affiliation with scientists, for the Lord Faust is his slave, that is, the bearer of the divine spark, and, offering Mephistopheles a bet, the Lord is sure in advance of his outcome:

When a gardener plants a tree
The fruit is known in advance to the gardener.

God believes in man, that's why he allows Mephistopheles to tempt Faust throughout his earthly life. For Goethe, the Lord has no need to intervene in a further experiment, because he knows that a person is good by nature, and his earthly searches only ultimately contribute to his improvement, exaltation.

Faust, by the beginning of the action in the tragedy, had lost faith not only in God, but also in science, to which he gave his life. The first monologues of Faust speak of his deep disappointment in the life he lived, which was given to science. Neither the scholastic science of the Middle Ages, nor magic give him satisfactory answers about the meaning of life. But Faust's monologues were created at the end of the Enlightenment, and if the historical Faust could only know medieval science, in the speeches of Goethe's Faust there is a criticism of enlightenment optimism regarding the possibilities of scientific knowledge and technological progress, a criticism of the thesis about the omnipotence of science and knowledge. Goethe himself did not trust the extremes of rationalism and mechanistic rationalism, in his youth he was much interested in alchemy and magic, and with the help of magical signs, Faust at the beginning of the play hopes to comprehend the secrets of earthly nature. The meeting with the Spirit of the Earth reveals to Faust for the first time that man is not omnipotent, but negligible compared to the world around him. This is Faust's first step on the path of knowing his own essence and its self-limitation - in artistic development this idea is the plot of the tragedy.

Goethe published "Faust", starting from 1790, in parts, which made it difficult for his contemporaries to evaluate the work. Of the early statements, two draw attention to themselves, which left their mark on all subsequent judgments about the tragedy. The first belongs to the founder of romanticism F. Schlegel: "When the work is completed, it will embody the spirit of world history, it will become a true reflection of the life of mankind, its past, present and future. Faust ideally depicts all of humanity, he will become the embodiment of humanity."

The creator of romantic philosophy, F. Schelling, wrote in his "Philosophy of Art": "... due to the peculiar struggle that arises today in knowledge, this work has received a scientific coloring, so that if any poem can be called philosophical, then this is applicable only to "Faust" by Goethe. A brilliant mind, combining the profundity of a philosopher with the strength of an outstanding poet, gave us in this poem an eternally fresh source of knowledge ... "Interesting interpretations of the tragedy were left by I. S. Turgenev (the article" "Faust", tragedy, " 1855), American philosopher R. W. Emerson ("Goethe as a Writer", 1850).

The largest Russian Germanist V. M. Zhirmunsky emphasized the strength, optimism, rebellious individualism of Faust, disputed the interpretation of his path in the spirit of romantic pessimism: "In the general plan of the tragedy, Faust's disappointment [of the first scenes] is only a necessary stage in his doubts and search for truth" (" creative history"Faust" by Goethe, 1940).

It is significant that the same concept is formed from the name of Faust, as from the names of others literary heroes the same row. There are whole studies of Don Quixotism, Hamletism, Don Juanism. The concept of "Faustian man" entered cultural studies with the publication of O. Spengler's book "The Decline of Europe" (1923). Faust for Spengler is one of two eternal human types, along with the Apollo type. The last one matches ancient culture, and for the Faustian soul "the pra-symbol is pure boundless space, and the "body" is Western culture, which flourished in the northern lowlands between the Elbe and Tajo simultaneously with the birth of the Romanesque style in the 10th century ... Faustian - the dynamics of Galileo, Catholic Protestant dogma, the fate of Lear and the ideal of the Madonna, from Dante's Beatrice to the closing scene of the second part of Faust.

In recent decades, the attention of researchers has focused on the second part of Faust, where, according to the German professor K. O. Konradi, “the hero, as it were, performs various roles that are not united by the personality of the performer. allegorical".

"Faust" had a huge impact on the whole world literature. Goethe's grandiose work had not yet been completed, when, under his impression, "Manfred" (1817) by J. Byron, "A Scene from Faust" (1825) by A. S. Pushkin, a drama by H. D. Grabbe " Faust and Don Juan" (1828) and many continuations of the first part of "Faust". The Austrian poet N. Lenau created his "Faust" in 1836, G. Heine - in 1851. Goethe's successor in German literature of the 20th century T. Mann created his masterpiece "Doctor Faustus" in 1949.

Passion for "Faust" in Russia was expressed in the story of I. S. Turgenev "Faust" (1855), in Ivan's conversations with the devil in the novel by F. M. Dostoevsky "The Brothers Karamazov" (1880), in the image of Woland in the novel M. A. Bulgakov "The Master and Margarita" (1940). Goethe's "Faust" is a work that sums up the Enlightenment thought and goes beyond the literature of the Enlightenment, paving the way for the future development of literature in the 19th century.