Goethe's "Faust" is a profoundly national drama. The most spiritual conflict of its hero, the obstinate Faust, who rebelled against vegetating in vile German reality in the name of freedom of action and thought, is already national. Such were the aspirations not only of the people of the rebellious sixteenth century; the same dreams dominated the minds of the entire generation of Sturm und Drang, with whom Goethe entered the literary field. But precisely because the popular masses in modern Goethe Germany were powerless to break the feudal fetters, to "remove" the personal tragedy of the German man along with the general tragedy of the German people, the poet had to look more sharply at the deeds and thoughts of foreign, more active, more advanced peoples. In this sense and for this reason, Faust is not only about Germany, but ultimately about all of humanity, called to transform the world through joint free and rational labor. Belinsky was equally right when he asserted that Faust "is a complete reflection of the entire life of contemporary German society," and when he said that this tragedy "embeds all the moral questions that can arise in the breast of our inner man." time" Goethe began to work on "Faust" with the audacity of a genius. The very theme of "Faust" - a drama about the history of mankind, about the goal of human history - was still unclear to him, in its entirety; and yet he undertook it in the expectation that halfway through history would catch up with his plan. Goethe relied here on direct collaboration with the "genius of the century." Just as the inhabitants of a sandy, siliceous country cleverly and zealously direct every seeping stream, all the mean subsoil moisture into their reservoirs, so Goethe, over a long journey of life, with relentless persistence collected in his Faust every prophetic hint of history, all the subsoil historical meaning of the era.

The entire creative path of Goethe in the XIX century. accompanies the work on his main creation - "Faust". The first part of the tragedy was mostly completed in the last years of the 18th century, but published in full in 1808. In 1800, Goethe worked on the fragment "Helen", which was the basis of Act III of the second part, created mainly in 1825-1826. . But the most intensive work on the second part and its completion fell on 1827-1831. It was published in 1833, after the death of the poet.

The content of the second part, like the first, is unusually rich, but three main ideological and thematic complexes can be distinguished in it. The first is connected with the depiction of the dilapidated regime of the feudal Empire (acts I and IV). Here the role of Mephistopheles is especially significant. By his actions, he, as it were, provokes the imperial court, its big and small figures, pushes them to self-disclosure. He offers the semblance of a reform (issuance of paper money) and, entertaining the emperor, stuns him with a phantasmagoria of a masquerade, behind which the clownish character of all court life clearly shines through. The picture of the collapse of the Empire in Faust reflects Goethe's perception of the French Revolution.

The second main theme of the second part is connected with the poet's reflections on the role and meaning of the aesthetic assimilation of reality. Goethe boldly shifts times: Homeric Greece, medieval chivalrous Europe, in which Faust finds Helen, and the 19th century, conditionally embodied in the son of Faust and Helen - Euphorion, an image inspired by the life and poetic fate of Byron. This displacement of times and countries emphasizes the universal nature of the problem of "aesthetic education", to use Schiller's term. The image of Elena symbolizes beauty and art itself, and at the same time the death of Euphorion and the disappearance of Elena mean a kind of "farewell to the past" - the rejection of all illusions associated with the concept of Weimar classicism, as it, in fact, has already been reflected in the artistic world of his "Sofa" . The third - and main - theme is revealed in the fifth act. The feudal Empire is collapsing, innumerable disasters mark the advent of a new, capitalist era. "Robbery, trade and war," Mephistopheles formulates the morality of the new masters of life, and he himself acts in the spirit of this morality, cynically exposing the wrong side of bourgeois progress. Faust, at the end of his journey, formulates "the final conclusion of earthly wisdom": "Only he is worthy of life and freedom, who every day goes to battle for them." The words uttered by him at one time, in the scene of the translation of the Bible: “In the beginning there was a deed,” acquire a socio-practical meaning: Faust dreams of giving the land reclaimed from the sea to “many millions” of people who will work on it. The abstract ideal of the act, expressed in the first part of the tragedy, the search for ways of individual self-improvement is replaced by a new program: the subject of the act is proclaimed "millions", who, having become "free and active", in a tireless struggle against the formidable forces of nature, are called to create "paradise on earth".

"Faust" occupies a very special place in the work of the great poet. In it we have the right to see the ideological result of his (more than sixty years) vigorous creative activity. With unheard of courage and with confident, wise caution, Goethe throughout his life ("Faust" began in 1772 and completed a year before the death of the poet, in 1831) put his most cherished dreams and bright guesses into this creation of his. "Faust" is the pinnacle of thoughts and feelings of the great German. All the best, truly alive in Goethe's poetry and universal thinking found its fullest expression here. "There is the highest courage: the courage of invention, creation, where a vast plan is embraced by creative thought - such is courage ... Goethe in Faust"

The boldness of this idea lay in the fact that the subject of "Faust" was not a single life conflict, but a consistent, inevitable chain of deep conflicts throughout a single life path, or, in the words of Goethe, "a series of ever higher and purer activities hero."

Such a plan of tragedy, contrary to all the accepted rules of dramatic art, allowed Goethe to invest in Faust all his worldly wisdom and most of the historical experience of his time.

The two great antagonists of the mystery tragedy are God and the devil, and the soul of Faust is only the field of their battle, which will certainly end in the defeat of the devil. This concept explains the contradictions in Faust's character, his passive contemplation and active will, selflessness and selfishness, humility and audacity - the author skillfully reveals the dualism of his nature at all stages of the hero's life.

The tragedy can be divided into five acts of unequal size, in accordance with the five periods of the life of Dr. Faust. In act I, which ends with an agreement with the devil, Faust the metaphysician tries to resolve the conflict between two souls - the contemplative and the active, which symbolize the Macrocosm and the Spirit of the Earth, respectively. Act II, the tragedy of Gretchen, which concludes the first part, reveals Faust as a sensualist in conflict with spirituality. Part two, which takes Faust into the free world, to higher and purer spheres of activity, is allegorical through and through, it is like a dream play, where time and space do not matter, and the characters become signs of eternal ideas. The first three acts of the second part form a single whole and together form act III. In them, Faust appears as an artist, first at the court of the Emperor, then in classical Greece, where he unites with Helen of Troy, a symbol of harmonious classical form. The conflict in this aesthetic realm is between the pure artist, who makes art for art's sake, and the eudemonist, who seeks personal pleasure and glory in art. The culmination of Helena's tragedy is her marriage to Faust, in which the synthesis of classics and romanticism finds expression, which both Goethe himself and his beloved student J. G. Byron were looking for. Goethe paid poetic tribute to Byron, endowing him with the features of Euphorion, the offspring of this symbolic marriage. In Act IV, which ends with Faust's death, he is presented as a military leader, engineer, colonist, business man, and empire builder. He is at the pinnacle of his earthly accomplishments, but internal discord still torments him, because he is unable to achieve human happiness without destroying human life, nor is he able to create a paradise on earth with abundance and work for all without resorting to bad means. The devil, always present, is in fact necessary. This act ends with one of the most impressive episodes created by Goethe's poetic fantasy - Faust's meeting with Care. She announces his near death, but he arrogantly ignores her, remaining a masterful and imprudent titan until his last breath. The last act, the ascension and transfiguration of Faust, where Goethe freely used the symbolism of Catholic heaven, completes the mystery with a majestic finale, with the prayer of saints and angels for the salvation of Faust's soul by the grace of a good God.

The tragedy that began with the "Prologue in Heaven" ends with an epilogue in the heavenly realms. It should be noted that Goethe did not escape here a certain baroque-romantic pomposity in order to express the idea of ​​the final victory of Faust over Mephistopheles.

Thus was completed the 60-year-old work, which reflected the entire complex creative evolution of the poet.

Goethe himself was always interested in the ideological unity of Faust. In a conversation with Professor Luden (1806), he directly says that the interest of "Faust" lies in his idea, "which unites the particulars of the poem into a whole, dictates these particulars and gives them a true meaning."

True, Goethe sometimes lost hope of subordinating to a single idea the wealth of thoughts and aspirations that he wanted to invest in his Faust. So it was in the eighties, on the eve of Goethe's flight to Italy. So it was later, at the end of the century, despite the fact that Goethe had already worked out the general scheme of both parts of the tragedy. However, it must be remembered that by that time Goethe was not yet the author of the two-part "Wilhelm Meister", was not yet, as Pushkin said, "on a par with the century" in socio-economic questions, and therefore could not put a more clear socio-economic content into the concept of "free land", the construction of which his hero had to start.

But Goethe never ceased to seek "the final conclusion of all earthly wisdom" in order to subordinate to him that vast ideological and, at the same time, artistic world that contained his Faust. As the ideological content of the tragedy was clarified, the poet again and again returned to the already written scenes, changed their sequence, inserted into them the philosophical maxims necessary for a better understanding of the idea. It is in this "embracing by creative thought" of vast ideological and worldly experience that Goethe's "highest courage" in Faust, about which the great Pushkin spoke, lies.

Being a drama about the ultimate goal of the historical, social existence of mankind, "Faust" - already by virtue of this - is not a historical drama in the usual sense of the word. This did not prevent Goethe from resurrecting in his Faust, as he once did in Goetz von Berlichingen, the flavor of the late German Middle Ages.

Let's start with the tragedy itself. Before us is an improved verse by Hans Sachs, the Nuremberg shoemaker of the sixteenth century; Goethe imparted to him a remarkable flexibility of intonation, which perfectly conveys both the salty folk joke, and the highest upsurges of the mind, and the subtlest movements of feeling. The verse of "Faust" is so simple and so popular that, really, it is not worth much effort to memorize almost the entire first part of the tragedy. Even the most "non-literary" Germans speak in Faustian lines, just as our compatriots speak in verses from Woe from Wit. Many of Faust's verses have become proverbs, national winged words. Thomas Mann says in his study of Goethe's "Faust" that he himself heard how in the theater one of the spectators innocently exclaimed to the author of the tragedy: "Well, he made his task easier! He writes with quotations alone." Heartfelt imitations of an old German folk song are generously interspersed in the text of the tragedy. The remarks to "Faust" themselves are extraordinarily expressive, recreating the plastic image of an old German city.

And yet, in his drama, Goethe does not so much reproduce the historical situation of rebellious Germany of the 16th century, but awakens to a new life the stalled creative forces of the people, which were active in that glorious time of German history. The legend of Faust is the fruit of the hard work of popular thought. It remains like this even under Goethe's pen: without breaking the skeleton of the legend, the poet continues to saturate it with the latest folk thoughts and aspirations of his time.

Thus, even in "Prafaust", combining in it his own creativity, the motives of Marlowe, Lessing and folk legends, Goethe lays the foundations of his artistic method - synthesis. The highest achievement of this method will be the second part of Faust, in which antiquity and the Middle Ages, Greece and Germany, spirit and matter are intertwined.

Faust's influence on German and world literature is enormous. Nothing compares with Faust in poetic beauty, and in terms of the integrity of the composition, only Milton's Paradise Lost and Dante's Divine Comedy.

The 18th century, which ended with the French Revolution, developed under the sign of doubt, destruction, denial and passionate faith in the victory of reason over superstition and prejudice, civilization over barbarism, humanism over tyranny and injustice. Therefore, historians call it the Age of Enlightenment. The ideology of the enlighteners triumphed in an era when the old medieval way of life was collapsing and a new, bourgeois order, progressive for that time, was emerging. Enlightenment figures ardently defended the ideas of cultural development, self-government, freedom, defended the interests of the masses, branded the yoke of feudalism, the inertia and conservatism of the church.

The turbulent era gave birth to its titans - Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau in France, Lomonosov in Russia, Schiller and Goethe in Germany. And their heroes - at the end of the century, Danton, Marat, Robespierre rose to the stands of the revolutionary Convention in Paris.

Artistic tastes of the era were diverse. The artsy baroque still dominated the architecture, the Alexandrian verses of the tragedies of Racine and Corneille sounded from the theatrical stage. But the works, the heroes of which were people of the "third estate", were becoming more and more popular. In the middle of the century, a genre of sentimental novel appeared in letters - readers anxiously followed the correspondence of lovers, experiencing their sorrows and misadventures. And in Strasbourg, a group of young poets and playwrights appeared, which entered the literature under the name "Storm and Drang". The heroes of their works were brave loners, challenging the world of violence and injustice.

Goethe's work was a kind of result of the Age of Enlightenment, the result of his searches and struggles. And the tragedy "Faust", which the poet created for more than thirty years, reflected the movement of not only scientific and philosophical ideas, but also literary trends. Although the time of action in Faust is not defined, its scope is infinitely extended, the whole complex of ideas clearly correlates with Goethe's era. After all, the first part of it was written in 1797-1800 under the influence of the ideas and accomplishments of the Great French Revolution, and the last scenes were written in 1831, when Europe experienced the rise and fall of Napoleon, the Restoration.

Goethe's tragedy is based on the folk legend about Faust, which arose in the 16th century. Her hero is a rebel, seeking to penetrate the secrets of nature, opposing the church's idea of ​​slavish obedience and humility. In a semi-fantastic form, the image of Faust embodied the forces of progress that could not be strangled among the people, just as it was impossible to stop the course of history. This seeker of truth, who was not satisfied with German reality, was close to Goethe. material from the site

Enlighteners, including Goethe, did not reject the idea of ​​God, they only questioned the doctrines of the church. And in "Faust" God appears as the highest mind, standing above the world, above good and evil. Faust in Goethe's interpretation is, first of all, a scientist who questions everything - from the structure of the world to moral norms and rules of behavior. Mephistopheles for him is an instrument of knowledge. The means of scientific research in Goethe's time were so imperfect that many scientists would agree to sell their souls to the devil in order to understand how the Sun and the planets or the human eye work, why there are plague epidemics and what was on Earth before the appearance of man.

As noted earlier, Goethe's travels in Germany led him to the concept of Faust. Goethe translated this legend into contemporary soil. In Faust, a variety of elements turned out to be organically merged - the beginning of drama, lyrics and epic. That is why many researchers call this work a dramatic poem. "Faust" includes elements that are different in their artistic nature. It contains real-life scenes, for example, a description of a spring festivities on a day off; lyrical dates of Faust and Marguerite; tragic - Gretchen in prison or the moment when Faust almost ended his life by suicide; fantastic. But Goethe's fantasy is ultimately always connected with reality, and real images often have a symbolic character.

The idea of ​​a tragedy about Faust came to Goethe quite early. Initially, he got two tragedies - "the tragedy of knowledge" and "the tragedy of love." However, both of them remained unresolved. The general tone of this "great-Faust" is gloomy, which is actually not surprising, since Goethe managed to completely preserve the flavor of the medieval legend, at least in the first part. In "great-Faust" scenes written in verse are interspersed with prose. Here, in the personality of Faust, titanism, the spirit of protest, the impulse to the infinite were combined.

On April 13, 1806, Goethe wrote in his diary: "I have finished the first part of Faust." It is in the first part that Goethe outlines the characters of his two main characters - Faust and Mephistopheles; in the second part, Goethe pays more attention to the surrounding world and social structure, as well as the relationship between the ideal and reality.

We met Mephistopheles already in the Prologue in Heaven. And here it is already clear that Mephistopheles - the devil will not be a completely negative character, since he is sympathetic even to God:

Of the spirits of denial, you are the least

He used to be a burden to me, a rogue and a merry fellow.

And it is the Lord who gives the order to Mephistopheles:

Out of laziness, a person falls into hibernation.

Go, stir up his stagnation...

Goethe reflects in Mephistopheles a special type of man of his time. Mephistopheles becomes the embodiment of negation. And the 18th century was especially full of skeptics. The flowering of rationalism contributed to the development of a critical spirit. Everything that did not meet the requirements of reason was questioned, and mockery reeked stronger than angry denunciations. For some, denial has become an all-encompassing life principle, and this is reflected in Mephistopheles. His remarks cause a smile even over what, in principle, it is not necessary to laugh at: How calm and easy speech is!

We get along without spoiling the relationship with him.

Nice feature of an old man

It's so human to think about the devil

But, as already noted, Goethe does not paint Mephistopheles exclusively as the embodiment of evil. He is smart and insightful, he criticizes very justifiably and criticizes everything: debauchery and love, craving for knowledge and stupidity:

The nice thing is that it moves the target away:

Smiles, sighs, meetings at the fountain,

The sadness of languor in a word, rigmarole,

Which is always full of novels.

Mephistopheles is a master of noticing human weaknesses and vices, and the validity of many of his caustic remarks cannot be denied:

Oh, faith is an important article

For power-hungry girls:

Of pious suitors

It turns out humble husbands ...

Mephistopheles is also a pessimistic skeptic. It is he who says that human life is a light, the man himself considers himself "the god of the universe." It is precisely these words of the devil that seem to me to be indicators of the fact that Goethe is already abandoning rationalistic concepts. Mephistopheles says that the Lord endowed man with a spark of reason, but there is no benefit from this, for he, a man, behaves worse than cattle. Mephistopheles' speech contains a sharp denial of humanistic philosophy - the philosophy of the Renaissance. People themselves are so corrupted that there is no need for the devil to do evil on earth. People get along just fine without it:

Yes, Lord, there is shameless darkness

And the poor man is so bad.

That even I spare him for the time being.

Nevertheless, Mephistopheles deceives Faust. After all, in fact, Faust does not say: “A moment, wait!”. Faust, drifting away in his dreams into the distant future, uses the conditional mood:

A free people in a free land

I would love to see you on days like this.

Then I could exclaim: “A moment!

Oh, how beautiful you are, wait a bit!”

Faust in the eyes of Mephistopheles is a crazy dreamer who wants the impossible. But Faust is given the divine spark of search. Throughout the poem, he is looking for himself. And if at first he despairs that he cannot become godlike, then at the very end of the work he says: Oh, if only, on a par with nature,

To be a man, a man to me ...

In my opinion, each of us is given this spark of search, the spark of the path. And each of us dies, spiritually dies, at the moment when he no longer needs anything, when time as a stream ceases to matter. The dispute between God and Mephistopheles is the decision of each of us where to go. And, oddly enough, they are both right. And God is well aware of this. Search atones for mistakes, and that is why both Faust and Margarita find themselves in paradise.

• 1.XVII century as an independent stage in the development of European literatures. main literary trends. Aesthetics of French Classicism. "Poetic Art" n. bualo
• 2. Italian and Spanish Baroque Literature. Lyrics of Marino and Gongora. baroque theorists.
• 3. Genre features of the picaresque novel. "The Life Story of a Rogue named Don Pablos" by Quevedo.
• 4. Calderon in the history of the Spanish national drama. Religious-philosophical play "Life is a dream"
• 5. German literature of the 17th century. Martin Opitz and Andreas Gryphius. Grimmelshausen's novel Simplicius Simplicissimus.
• 6. English literature of the 17th century. John Donn. Milton's work. Milton's "Paradise Lost" as a religious and philosophical epic. Image of Satan.
• 7. Theater of French classicism. Two stages in the development of classic tragedy. Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine.
• 8. Classical type of conflict and its resolution in the tragedy “Sid” by Corneille.
• 9. The situation of internal discord in the tragedy of Corneille "Horace".
• 10. Arguments of reason and egoism of passions in Racine's tragedy "Andromache".
• 11. Religious and philosophical idea of ​​human sinfulness in Racine's tragedy "Phaedra".
• 12. Creativity of Molière.
• 13. Molière's comedy "Tartuffe". Principles of character creation.
• 14. The image of Don Juan in world literature and in Molière's comedy.
• 15. Misanthrope" by Moliere as an example of the "high comedy" of classicism.
• 16. The Age of Enlightenment in the history of European literatures. The dispute about man in the English enlightenment novel.
• 17. "The Life and Amazing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe" by D. Defoe as a philosophical parable about a person
• 18. Genre travel in the literature of the XVIII century. "Gulliver's Travels" by J. Swift and "Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy" by Lawrence Stern.
• 19. Creativity p. Richardson and Mr. Fielding. "The Story of Tom Jones, the Foundling" by Henry Fielding as a "comic epic".
• 20. Artistic discoveries and literary innovation by Lawrence Stern. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman" by L. Stern as an "anti-novel".
• 21. Roman in Western European literatures of the XVII-XVIII centuries. Traditions of the picaresque and psychological novel in Prevost's "The History of the Cavalier de Grillaud and Manon Lescaut".
• 22. Montesquieu and Voltaire in the history of French literature.
• 23. Aesthetic views and creativity of Denis Diderot. "Meschanskaya drama". The story "The Nun" as a work of educational realism.
• 24. Genre of a philosophical story in French literature of the 18th century. "Candide" and "Innocent" Voltaire. Rameau's Nephew by Denis Diderot.
• 26. "The era of sensitivity" in the history of European literature and a new hero in the novels of l. Stern, f.-f. Rousseau and Goethe. New forms of perception of nature in the literature of sentimentalism.
• 27. German literature of the XVIII century. Aesthetics and dramaturgy of Lessing. "Emilia Galotti".
• 28. Drama by Schiller. "Robbers" and "Deceit and Love".
• 29. Literary movement "Sturm and Drang". Goethe's novel The Sorrows of Young Werther. Social and psychological origins of Werther's tragedy.
• 30. Goethe's tragedy "Faust". Philosophical problems.
• 22. Montesquieu and Voltaire in French literature.
• 26. "The era of sensitivity" in the history of European literature and a new hero in the novels of Stern, Rousseau, Goethe. New methods of perception of nature in sentimentalism.
• Lawrence Sterne (1713 - 1768).
• 20. Artistic discoveries and literary innovation by Lawrence Sterne. The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman" by L. Stern as an "anti-novel".

30. Goethe's tragedy "Faust". Philosophical problems.

Shortly before his death in 1831, Goethe completed the tragedy Faust, which took almost sixty years to complete. The plot source of the tragedy was the medieval legend of Dr. Johann Faust, who entered into an agreement with the devil in order to gain knowledge with which it would be possible to turn base metals into gold. Goethe imbues this legend with deep philosophical and symbolic meaning, creating one of the most significant works of world literature. The title character of the drama Goethe overcomes the sensual temptations prepared by Mephistopheles, his desire for knowledge is the desire for the absolute, and Faust becomes an allegory of humanity, with his indomitable will to knowledge, creation and creativity. In this drama, Goethe's artistic ideas are closely intertwined with his natural science ideas. Thus, the unity of the two parts of the tragedy is not due to the principles of classical dramaturgy, but is built on the concepts of "polarity" (a term for the unity of two opposite elements in one whole), "primal phenomenon" and "metamorphosis" - a process of constant development, the cat is the key to all phenomena of nature. If 1 part of the tragedy resembles a burgher drama; then in the second part, gravitating toward the baroque mystery; the plot loses its external logic, the hero is transferred to the infinite world of the Universe, world relations come to the fore. The epilogue of Faust shows that the action of the drama will never end, for it is the history of mankind.

Tragedy has 2 parts : in the 1st - 25 scenes, in the 2nd - 5 acts. The mixing of the real with the fantastic is the two-dimensional nature of the story. It is built on the model of Shakespeare's chronicles with many episodic characters and laconic scenes. Tragedy begins with "prologue in the theater '-aesthetic views of Goethe. There are no contradictions in the conversation between the director, the poet and the comic actor, they complement each other and express the aesthetic principles of the creator F. The poet defends the high purpose of art. Philosophical problems are solved in a jester's scene, in an everyday picture. "Prologue in Heaven "is the key to the whole work. Before us is God, the archangels and Mephistopheles. Archangels glorify the harmony of the world. A hymn to nature, from Goethe's universe passes to Man, a reproach to all mankind, many wars, violence. God looks at man with optimism. Mephistopheles does not believe in his correction. Between God and Mephistopheles comes the conversation about Faust, the seeker of truth. For God (persons of nature), he is a slave, that is, a slave of nature. M-l deeply reveals the theme of Man. (historian, socialist, psychologist plans) a pessimistic look. A single theme is Man, Society, Nature. The views of the author are revealed. The prologue is reminiscent of the book of Job from the Old Testament, but the theme is different - to resist base instincts. God offers a test: Mephistopheles, in the role of a demon, seduces Faust.

Faust. First part . Faust devoted many years to science. He is wise, there is fame about his knowledge, but Faust yearns. His knowledge is insignificant in comparison with all the unsolved mysteries of nature. He opens the book and sees the sign of the macrocosm - everything lights up in him. He wants to know nature - this is his power over it. (Interlacing with the theme of nature). Faust-nature is strong, hot. In a state of despair, he is ready to lay hands on himself (drink a goblet of poison), but the memories of childhood and the beauty of life stop him. It happened on Easter days. The jubilant people, chants to the glory of Christ, the spring sky are symbols of the rebirth of Faust's vitality. He is full of sarcasm, curses vices and illusions about love that seduce a person. Faust lost faith in the power of knowledge, Meph. rejoices, the contract is concluded Faust thinks that people's desires are limitless, Meph. claims the opposite.

Scene in Auerbach's cellar. Philosopher allegory of vices and delusions of people. Meph. shows Faust the human world, a real picture of the feast of tipsy revelers (rude jokes, laughter, songs). Mephistopheles' song about a flea (watered meaning). Witch's Kitchen Scene -criticism of idealism and religion. Meph. brought F to the sorceress's cave to restore his youth. The sorceress and the servant monkeys are one of the forces hostile to the mind. Pointless spell, reflection on the trinity of Christians of God (criticism), Episode with the Bible. An attempt to translate the text of the Bible (In the beginning there was a word (for idealists-thought)). Faust's conversation with Margarita about religion (pantheistic philosophy). Love for a girl, The last pages of part 1 are gloomy (Walpurgis Night), Margarita is waiting for execution in prison, her last words are addressed to Faust.

Faust. The second part of. Written already in the 19th century. (French Revolution, Napoleonic Wars, Restoration in Spain and Italy) The domination of the bourgeoisie brought new views, this was reflected in production. Faust experienced a deep moral crisis, having lost Gretchen, he knew the internal struggle. In a restless dream, he lies in a meadow - above him are elves, symbols of eternal joy. They awaken him to life and to accomplish great things. Then the scene changes - F at the court of the emperor. Problems are watered in allegories. F and Meth arrange a masquerade (allegories of the miser with a piece of gold, the god Pluto, the goddess of fate, weaving the thread of people of life, Furies). The fire during the masquerade symbolizes the revolution. (Goethe considers it inevitable). Revol opened the realm of money. Meth creates a ghost of wealth - it awakens low instincts, and even the symbolic figure of wisdom cannot overcome this. In the person of Paris and Elena, the revival of ancient art. The ardent heart of F is struck by the beauty of Elena, he is ready to serve her beauty (new goal). F is back in his dark office (meeting with Wagner). The fruit of Wagner's fantasy is the Homunculus (the man in the flask), Thales dissolves him in water to bring him back to life and give true life. Walpurgis Night among the ghosts of anti-mythology, the desire to get closer to perfect beauty (Elena). He wanders in search of truth. He thought she was in beauty. (Refuted). with the elements, he creates. (This is the purpose of life). He found the truth, he is happy and dies with this thought. The method of reasoning about death is ironic, the arguments of a pessimist. The final answer is given by a chorus of incomprehensible truths - the goal of being-I am in the pursuit of the goal

Faust. Images. F he devoted many years to science. He is wise, there is fame for his knowledge, but F yearns. His knowledge is insignificant in comparison with all the unsolved mysteries of nature.). F-nature is strong, hot, sensitive, energetic, sometimes selfish, always responsive, humane .. In a state of despair, he is ready to lay hands on himself (drink a goblet of poison), but memories of childhood and the beauty of life stop him. In Goethe, opposites are important, in the clash of ideas, truth!

The image of Mephistopheles.

The image of Mephistopheles must be considered in inseparable unity with Faust. If Faust is the embodiment of the creative forces of mankind, then Mephistopheles is a symbol of that destructive force, that destructive criticism that makes you go forward, learn and create. The Lord defines the function of Mephistopheles in the “Prologue in Heaven” in this way: Weak man: submissive to his lot, He is glad to seek rest, - therefore I will give him a restless traveler: Like a demon, teasing him, let him excite him to work. Thus, denial is only one of the turns of progressive development. Denial, "evil", of which Mephistopheles is the embodiment, becomes the impetus for a movement directed against evil. I am part of that force that eternally wants evil and eternally does good. Goethe reflects in Mephistopheles a special type of man of his time. Mephistopheles becomes the embodiment of negation. And the 18th century was especially full of skeptics. The flowering of rationalism contributed to the development of a critical spirit. Everything that did not meet the requirements of reason was questioned, and mockery reeked stronger than angry denunciations. For some, denial has become an all-encompassing life principle, and this is reflected in Mephistopheles. Goethe does not paint Mephistopheles exclusively as the embodiment of evil. He is smart and insightful, he criticizes very reasonably and criticizes everything: debauchery and love, craving for knowledge and stupidity: Mephistopheles is a master of noticing human weaknesses and vices, and the validity of many of his caustic remarks cannot be denied: Mephistopheles and also pessimistic skeptic. Exactly

he says that human life is a light, the man himself considers himself "the god of the universe." It is these words trait yavl. indications that Goethe was already abandoning rationalistic concepts. Mephistopheles says that the Lord endowed people with a spark of reason, but there is no benefit from this, for he, a man, behaves worse than cattle. Mephistopheles' speech contains a sharp denial of humanistic philosophy - the philosophy of the Renaissance. People themselves are so corrupted that there is no need for the devil to do evil on earth. Nevertheless, Mephistopheles deceives Faust. After all, in fact, Faust does not say: “A moment, wait!”. Faust, carried away in his dreams into the distant future, uses the conditional mood.

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Goethe's Faust is a profoundly national drama. The most spiritual conflict of its hero, the obstinate Faust, who rebelled against vegetating in vile German reality in the name of freedom of action and thought, is already national. Such were the aspirations not only of the people of the rebellious sixteenth century; the same dreams dominated the consciousness of the entire generation of Sturm und Drang, with whom Goethe entered the literary field. But precisely because the popular masses in modern Goethe Germany were powerless to break the feudal fetters, to “remove” the personal tragedy of the German man along with the general tragedy of the German people, the poet had to look more sharply at the deeds and thoughts of foreign, more active, more advanced peoples. In this sense and for this reason, Faust is not only about Germany, but ultimately about all of humanity, called to transform the world through joint free and rational labor. Belinsky was equally right both when he asserted that Faust "is a complete reflection of the whole life of contemporary German society", and when he said that this tragedy "embeds all the moral questions that can arise in the breast of our inner man". time." Goethe began to work on Faust with the audacity of a genius. The very theme of "Faust" - a drama about the history of mankind, about the goal of human history - was still unclear to him, in its entirety; and yet he undertook it in the expectation that halfway through history would catch up with his plan. Goethe relied here on direct collaboration with the "genius of the century". Just as the inhabitants of a sandy, siliceous country cleverly and zealously direct every seeping stream, all the avaricious subsoil moisture into their reservoirs, so Goethe, over a long journey of life, with unremitting perseverance collected in his Faust every prophetic hint of history, all the subsoil historical meaning of the era.

The entire creative path of Goethe in the XIX century. accompanies the work on his main creation - "Faust". The first part of the tragedy was mostly completed in the last years of the 18th century, but published in full in 1808. In 1800, Goethe worked on the Helena fragment, which was the basis for Act III of the second part, which was created mainly in 1825-1826. But the most intensive work on the second part and its completion fall on 1827-1831. It was published in 1833, after the death of the poet.

The content of the second part, like the first, is unusually rich, but three main ideological and thematic complexes can be distinguished in it. The first is connected with the depiction of the dilapidated regime of the feudal Empire (acts I and IV). Here the role of Mephistopheles is especially significant. By his actions, he, as it were, provokes the imperial court, its big and small figures, pushes them to self-disclosure. He offers the semblance of a reform (issuance of paper money) and, entertaining the emperor, stuns him with a phantasmagoria of a masquerade, behind which the clownish character of all court life clearly shines through. The picture of the collapse of the Empire in Faust reflects Goethe's perception of the French Revolution.

The second main theme of the second part is connected with the poet's reflections on the role and meaning of the aesthetic assimilation of reality. Goethe boldly shifts times: Homeric Greece, medieval chivalrous Europe, in which Faust finds Helen, and the 19th century, conditionally embodied in the son of Faust and Helen - Euphorion, an image inspired by the life and poetic fate of Byron. This displacement of times and countries emphasizes the universal nature of the problem of "aesthetic education", to use Schiller's term. The image of Elena symbolizes beauty and art itself, and at the same time the death of Euphorion and the disappearance of Elena mean a kind of "farewell to the past" - the rejection of all illusions associated with the concept of Weimar classicism, as it, in fact, has already been reflected in the artistic world of his "Divan". The third - and main - theme is revealed in the fifth act. The feudal Empire is collapsing, innumerable disasters mark the advent of a new, capitalist era. “Robbery, trade and war,” formulates the morality of the new masters of life Mephistopheles and he himself acts in the spirit of this morality, cynically exposing the wrong side of bourgeois progress. Faust, at the end of his journey, formulates the “final conclusion of earthly wisdom”: “Only he is worthy of life and freedom who every day goes to battle for them.” The words uttered by him at one time, in the scene of the translation of the Bible: “In the beginning there was a deed,” acquire a socio-practical meaning: Faust dreams of providing the land reclaimed from the sea to “many millions” of people who will work on it. The abstract ideal of the act, expressed in the first part of the tragedy, the search for ways of individual self-improvement is replaced by a new program: “millions” are proclaimed the subject of the act, who, having become “free and active”, in a tireless struggle against the formidable forces of nature, are called to create “paradise on earth”.

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