"Two souls dwell, alas! in my breast" – who doesn't know this phrase, even if they've never read the entire play? Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust. The first part of the tragedy is as much a part of the German DNA as a bratwurst is to a folk festival. And yet it is rarely truly read, let alone understood. Yet it could hardly be more relevant today.

For what drives this Dr. Faust, this learned gentleman with a sword and depression, who can no longer enjoy anything, even though he knows everything? It is the emptiness in abundance, the longing for meaning in a world that overwhelms him with knowledge but explains nothing. When Faust says in the Easter Walk that he wants to go "into the open field," you almost want to take him by the hand, take a walk in the woods with him, record a podcast – or simply take his smartphone from him.

A life's work in the literal sense

Goethe's Faust is not a work like any other. It is a life's work – in the literal sense. Goethe wrote the first sketches between 1772 and 1775, when he was in his early twenties. The so-called Urfaust – a fragment, raw, unpolished, yet full of dramatic power – remained in a drawer for decades. Only after his return from Italy in 1788 did Goethe take up the material again, reworking the scenes, adding new ones, deleting, polishing, and composing. It took more than thirty years before he published the first part of the tragedy in 1808. He was almost sixty at the time. And he would work on Faust II for another twenty years, completing this part as well in 1832, just a few months before his death.

This unprecedented genesis makes Faust a unique document of literary creation. Here, a work evolves through all phases of its creator's life – from the Sturm und Drang period through the Classical period to the Romantic period. One can literally see how the young Goethe, still full of rebellious energy, writes down the raw scenes of Urfaust, how the mature classicist shapes the verses in Italy, and how the old master finally explores the metaphysical dimensions of the second part.

The Sources of Discontent

But why this material? Why, of all things, the story of the scholar who makes a pact with the devil? Goethe draws on several sources here – from the 16th-century folk tale of "Doctor Faustus," from Christopher Marlowe's version of Faust, from theological, mystical, and natural philosophical movements of his time. But even more: from himself.

Goethe – like Faust – had studied everything: law, philosophy, natural science, poetry. And he – like Faust – knew the restlessness of the spirit, the dissatisfaction with mere knowledge, the longing for experience, for life. Faust is not just poetry, it is a monologue. Perhaps that is the reason why I could never completely escape the work. It touches not only thought, but existence itself.

The Gretchen tragedy, in particular, draws on real experiences: The historical prototype was the child murderer Susanna Margaretha Brandt, who was executed in Frankfurt in 1772. The interrogation files were in Goethe's possession, and Goethe himself took a deep interest in the events. Thus, Faust becomes a poetic confession of life, a confrontation with guilt, responsibility, and the question of the right way to live.

The Devil of Today

In a world where more and more people are burned out and searching for self-realization, where coaches promise happiness and algorithms guide our desires, Faust has lost none of his relevance. Today, we all make small contracts with acceleration every day – often all that's missing is a blood-red quill pen.

And then there's Mephisto, the most complex devil in literary history. Not a prince of hell with horns, but an ironic intellectual, one who sees through things and therefore despises them. "I am the spirit that always denies," he says – thus striking a nerve in our times, in which criticism often exhausts itself in cynicism. Perhaps Mephisto is now an editor at a satirical platform or a co-host of a podcast. Someone who knows he's not changing anything – and yet enjoys it.

Mephisto embodies the dialectic of the Enlightenment avant la lettre: Where everything is questioned, where every truth can be deconstructed, the sense of what is genuine, true, and beautiful is lost. His negation is not revolutionary, but ultimately sterile. He is the perfect companion for a society that revels in endless irony but has forgotten what it truly stands for.

Gretchen: The Moral Center

And Gretchen? She is no mere supporting character, no naive seduced woman. She is the moral center of the play. While Faust strives for greatness, she remains human – despite all the tragedy. She loses everything and yet is saved. He, however, gains everything – and remains empty inside. It is this double meaning, so masterfully laid out by Goethe, that makes the work a lasting enigma.

Gretchen's fate also demonstrates how much Faust is a work of its time: the question of women's emancipation, of social norms and their transgression, of the double standards of a society that forgives men everything but condemns women for the same misstep. Gretchen becomes a child murderer not out of malice, but out of desperation – a socially critical motif that has lost none of its poignancy to this day.

The Question of the Right Life

I recently reread Faust I. Not just across, not just the quotes, but the whole thing—with pen and marginal notes. And I realized something I had overlooked before: It's not about the devil. It's about us. About the question of how we want to live—and whether we even know what that means.

Faust's tragedy isn't that he makes a pact with the devil. His tragedy is that he doesn't know what he really wants. He longs for the moment when he could say, "Stay, you are so beautiful!" But when such moments come—with Gretchen, in nature, in the intoxication of Walpurgis Night—he can't grasp them. He is trapped by his insatiability, his incapacity for gratitude.

This is modern man par excellence: always searching, always dissatisfied, always believing that true life takes place elsewhere. Faust is the prototype of FOMO—Fear of Missing Out—long before the term even existed.

A Work for Crisis

Faust is a work of borderline experience. It was created in a time of upheaval, when the old order was crumbling and the new one had not yet been established. Goethe wrote it through all the crises of his life – the Sturm und Drang period, the trip to Italy, his friendship with Schiller, old age. Each phase left its mark on the text.

Therefore, Faust is not a unified work, but a palimpsest, a text that allows all the layers of its creation to shine through. This makes it unwieldy, but also inexhaustible. Each generation can discover something different in it, each phase of life revealing new meanings.

Goethe himself once said: "My whole life was nothing but what Faust lived through." Perhaps he said it all. Faust is not a book for school. It is a book for midlife. For crisis. For those late nights when you feel that a life is not yet a life.

"Enough words have been exchanged," the play says. But one thing remains: Faust is not finished. It is present. Perhaps even future. In a time when social media offers us endless opportunities for self-expression while simultaneously creating new forms of loneliness, when we search for fulfillment between Netflix series and meditation apps and yet find it increasingly rare, Faust's question remains relevant: How do we live right?

The work doesn't provide the answer. But it poses the question with an intensity that won't let us go. And perhaps that is enough.

Sapere aude!

S. Noir

The link to the original German text: https://www.ganjingworld.com/s/7OjYMbXBag

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