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Part I: Medieval and Renaissance Faust
 Most people’s ideas about the man who sold his soul to the devil come from the story of the fictional Faust in either Goethe’s play or Gounod’s or Boito’s opera, but there really was a Faust. (The devil is something else again.) There had been tales of people who sold their souls from Biblical times but, as years passed, many of the stories crystallized around a real Dr. Faustus who lived from the late 15th century until some time around 1540. There are over 500 references in historical records and stories, and the accompanying sketch is reputed to be of him.
On January 9, 1483, a Georg Helmstetter registered at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. There are records of him studying and teaching there for over six years. Although there is no mention of him obtaining a doctorate, he later advertised himself as a Doctor Faustus, a philosopher who led the life of a wandering astrologer and magician. (At that time, alchemy and astrology were respected subjects of study.) Faustus was probably an assumed Latin name.
A letter of August 20, 1507 by a certain Johannes Trithemius rejected Faust’s claim to genuine knowledge. (The writer was an abbot at a Benedictine monastery who dabbled in magic and may have been jealous.)
…That man,…Georgious Sabellicus, who dared to call himself the foremost of necromancers, is an unstable character, a babbler, and a vagabond.…He composed a calling card to suit his taste: Magister Georgius Sabellicus, Faustus junior, the inspiration of necromancers, astrologer, the second Magnus, palmist, practitioner of divination with the use of high places and fire, and second in the art of divination with the use of water.…He claimed to have acquired such comprehensive wisdom and memory that, if all the works of Plato and Aristotle with the whole body of their philosophical thought completely disappeared from the memory of man, he himself, through his genius...could restore all things with a greater degree of elegance.…He bragged that he could do all the things Christ did.
A few of the many official records which mention Faust:
1513: Conrad Mutianus Rufus, a monk, spoke of Georgius Faustus Helmitheus Hedelbergensis and labeled him a braggart and a fool. In the same year he was reported to be lecturing at the University of Erfurt, proclaiming himself “the half-god of Heidelberg”, and teaching Homer by conjuring up the various classical heroes before his students’ eyes. (In later stories about Faust, Helen of Troy plays a prominent role.)
1525: An old Leipzig chronicle gives this as the year he rode out of Auerbach’s cellar on a barrel, an event included in Goethe’s Faust.
1528: In the minutes of the city of Ingolstadt concerning Doctor Jörg Faustus von Haidlberg: The Soothsayer shall be ordered to leave the city and to spend his penny elsewhere.
1536: Nüremberg records show that a Doctor Faustus had requested a grant of safe conduct through the city. It was refused on the grounds of sodomy and black magic.
Faust was taken seriously by Martin Luther (1483-1586) and his friend, the humanist, Melanchthon, both of whom mention him. In Luther we find the first mention of Faust’s association with the devil. (Luther was particularly interested in the devil and told a number of stories about him, stories which were later associated with Faust. Goethe later complained that Luther populated the entire visible world with the devil.) In one story, Faust came to the house of Melanchthon, who lectured him on his life-style. Faust threatened to make trouble but was unable to act against the saintly philosopher. Melanchthon also told a story of Faust’s attempt to fly.
The real Dr. Faustus supposedly died about 1540, but accounts of his death varied; most of them appeared long after the event. For example:
At an inn he was annoyed by noisy peasants, so he bewitched them to sit in silence with their mouths wide open. Now he could eat in peace. The next morning he was found dead in bed, his face contorted in pain.
There was a great storm with thunder and lightning on the night of his death. It was caused by the devils carrying him off to hell.
He was found dead on the floor face down and the room was in disarray as though there had been a terrible battle, probably with the devil.
He was strangled by the devil and kept turning face downward on his bier.
 After his death, reports became more and more bizarre. In 1548 Johannes Gast, a Protestant pastor, wrote several stories. In one, while eating at a monastery, Faust asked for better wine. He was refused and, as a result, a devil who accompanied him made a great mess in the monastery, moving things all about in the church. In another story, he had a dog and a horse which were demons in disguise. In 1562, a certain Manlius wrote a “biography” of Faust, supposedly based on lectures by Melanchthon. He is the one who gave the philosopher the name Johann rather than Georg, and his book was the basis of all later versions of the Faust story.
The year 1587 saw the appearance of a book which spread the legends of Faust throughout the world and formed the basis for all later works. By Johann Spies, the Historia von D. Johann Faustus, usually referred to as the “Faustbuch” (Faust Book), became a best seller when it appeared in Germany. It was translated into many languages and produced periodically in new and revised editions. In 1592, it was translated into English by one P.F., Gentleman as The Historie of the Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Doctor John Faustus. In it many of the tales about ancient magicians, such as Merlin and Roger Bacon, were collected and attributed to Faust. Faust is portrayed as frustrated because academic eminence has brought him no reward; he has exhausted orthodox knowledge without achieving true insight and wisdom. He bargains his soul for 24 years of the devil’s service, and is carried off at the end as a warning to good Christian readers. It is in this book that a new name for a devil, Mephisto, is used for the first time. The following excerpts and summary are from this Faustbuch.
“Then began Doctor Faustus to call for Mephisto the spirit, and to charge him in the name of Beelzebub to appear there personally without any long stay”. He finally appears as a Gray Friar and Faust makes several demands. Mephisto should serve him and be obedient until the hour of his death; he should bring him anything he desired; and should always answer his questions truthfully. Mephisto replies: “Faustus, thou shalt understand, that with us it is even as well a kingdom, as with you on earth: yea, we have our rulers and servants, as I myself am one, and we name our whole number the Legion: for although that Lucifer is thrust and fallen out of heaven through his pride and high mind, yet he hath, notwithstanding, a Legion of Devils at his commandment.…We give ourselves unto men to serve them at their pleasure”.
Faust sends Mephisto to ask permission to meet his demands and vows to himself to succeed without losing his soul. Mephisto returns with a message from Lucifer. He can accede to Faust’s wishes provided he: give himself to Lucifer, body and soul; he must agree to this in writing in blood; he must be an enemy to all Christians; and he must deny his own Christian belief. Faust will be given a certain number of years to live in health and pleasure, at the end of which, he “shall be fetched away”. Faust is so inflamed by the idea of such a potentate serving him, that he forgets his soul and signs the comtract. They set out on their travels, Mephisto dressed as a Friar who can be seen by no one except Faust. He gives him sumptuous apparel and the best food and wine (all stolen). However, when Faust wants to marry, he is refused. He can have any woman he desires out of wedlock, but marriage is an institution ordained by God.
Faust puts a number of questions to Mephisto about the devils and hell (see the article on Méphistophélès) and is told that as soon as Lucifer fell from Heaven, he became a mortal enemy, both to God and man, and tried to destroy men. He describes hell with eternal flame, no light, horrible noises and no escape. There is a ladder reaching to heaven, but those who try to climb it and nearly reach the top, fall down once more into the flames. There are Devils, Dragons, Serpents, Adders, Toads, Crocodiles and all manner of Venomous Creatures in hell. Devils toss men from one to another with pitchforks. There is no hope to escape, only perpetual pain. Faust asks to visit hell, and Beelzebub takes him below where he sees many Emperors, Kings, Dukes and Lords in torment.
The rest of the books tells of Faust’s journeys through the world and of his adventures. In his twenty-third year, he meets and lives with Helen of Troy and they have a son, Justus Faustus. At the end of the twenty-fourth year, “He began to live a swinish and Epicurish Life” and, near the end, begins to complain about dying so young and going to hell. A lying Mephisto tells him he will not be in pain like the other lost souls. As a warning to them to be good Christians, Faust tells his students what has happened to him. At the very end he does repent, but it is too late. As he lies dying, the students keep a vigil outside his room. At midnight, they hear horrible noises and screams and, in the morning, find only blood and body parts lying scattered about. The Devil has beaten him from one wall to the other. The students gather the remains and bury them.
 With Christopher Marlowe’s The Tragical Historie of Doctor Faustus, Faust moved from legend to literature. Marlowe (1564-93) was a well-known playwright, Shakespeare’s contemporary, and this play was his masterpiece. It is based on the Faustbuch and was first staged in 1594 at the Rose Theatre by the Admiral’s men. After its publication, Faust became a household name and allusions to him appeared in contemporary writings, including Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor. Marlowe’s portrayal of Faust is more sympathetic than that of Spies. His Faust is self-deceiving, thinking he has control of the spirit world and of Méphistophélès*, who appears at his command and obeys his every wish. A new feature of Marlowe’s play is that Faust continues to use his powers for mankind’s advancement. The story is as follows:
Faust had studied divinity and received a doctorate, but he soon turned to necromancy and the black arts. He is visited by a Good Angel and a Bad Angel. The former tries to get him to stop studying the black arts while the Bad Angel eggs him on. Faust contracts with Lucifer for the services of Méphistophélès. When Méphistophélès appears as a dragon, Faust urges him to return as a friar, a shape that “becomes a devil best”. Méphistophélès says he is a servant of Lucifer, but Faust claims to be dedicated to Beelzebub.
The pact is signed as in Faustbook, but Faust thinks hell is a fable; Lucifer has assured him there is all manner of delight there. When he sees Helen of Troy, Faust utters the most famous line from the play: “Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships, and burnt the topless towers of Ilium?” At one point, Faust despairs of his oath and tries to kill himself with a dagger. An old man stops him and tries to get him to repent. However, the philosopher decides to renew his vow to Lucifer. At the end of his time, Lucifer, Beelzebub and Méphistophélès all come for Faust. One hour before midnight, Faust repents and begs for a shortened sentence of 1000 years, but the devils take him off. His students arrive and find his scattered limbs.
* The spelling of this devil’s name varies from story to story. For consistency, Méphistophélès, the spelling in Gounod’s opera is used from here on.
Part II: The Enlightenment and Later
 Marlowe’s play was a product of the Reformation era, shaped by sixteenth century religious thought, but its popularity survived the Puritan revolution. It was revived many times, often in bowdlerized form. However, by the eighteenth century educated classes turned away from the legend. It became the subject of puppet plays and farces. Magic manuals were published bearing Faust’s name which included such things as how to avoid a pact with the devil or, if too late, how to break it.
The man credited with rescuing the Faust legend from the state into which it had fallen was the German poet Gotthold Lessing (1729-81). By now, the intellectual climate had changed completely. Rational men no longer believed in magic; the Enlightenment taught that the search for knowledge was a good thing, not a bad. Lessing worked on his Faust for twenty years but never finished it. It remained for his countryman, Goethe, to complete Faust’s redemption.
 Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832) worked on his Faust for most of his life. He knew one of the magic manuals, and had seen some of the Faust puppet plays. (He did not read the Faustbuch or Marlowe until much later.) He began working on his play in 1773, at the age of 24, and finished it just before his death. Whereas the bargain made by Marlowe’s Faust was absolute, Goethe’s is conditional. Faust wants more than the fulfillment of transitory desires; he wants a moment of supreme satisfaction and, if Méphistophélès cannot give him that, his soul will remain his own. Since he never achieves the blissful moment contacted for, he wins the wager and is saved.
In 1790 Goethe decided to abandon the project and published what he had as a fragment, the Urfaust. The hero of the Urfaust is the hero of the Faustbuch. Discontented with traditional learning, he longs to experience life. With the aid of the devil, he leaves his studies, experiences love for Margarete (or Gretchen), seduces her, and despairs when he cannot rescue her from execution. Several authors tried to finish the fragment without success and, finally, Goethe was drawn back to it. Part I , the source for most of Gounod’s Faust, was completed in 1808, and Part II in 1832.
In the final version, Faust gives his soul to the devil, not in hope of earthly satisfactions as in earlier stories, but for experiences leading to true knowledge. God is confident Faust will find the right path; no matter how much he sins, he will keep his sense of right and wrong. In Part II, a mature Faust ventures into a larger, symbolic world. He marries Helen of Troy and becomes the sole ruler of his own tract of land. He is very happy with Helen and comes close to declaring the complete satisfaction he thought he would never attain.
The play starts with a Prologue in Heaven: Méphistophélès visits God and tells him he hates tormenting men. God asks if he knows his servant, Faust. Méphistophélès does and bets God that he will win the philosopher for himself. God says he is welcome to try but, if he loses, he must stand up and admit defeat. Méphistophélès thinks it is very decent of God to gossip with the Devil like a man.
Faust bemoans the fact that, in spite of all his studies, he knows nothing. He invokes the Spirit of Earth who appears as a red flame. His student, Wagner, comes in and says the famous line: “Art is long, life is short.” When he leaves, Faust takes up a vial of poison and is about to drink it when he hears a chorus of angels hailing Easter. Later he and Wagner go for a walk. They see a black poodle which seems to be following them. Faust thinks the dog is drawing a magic circle about their feet. In the next scene, Faust comes into his study carrying the dog which turns into a monster. He tries to get rid of it with incantations but, when they do not work, displays the crucifix. The monster swells up, and a mist fills the room. Méphistophélès appears and the mist vanishes. Spirits lull Faust to sleep and, when he wakes up, thinks it was all a dream. Méphistophélès reappears. He has come to serve Faust on earth if Faust will serve him afterward. Faust signs the pact with blood, and they leave on their travels aided by a magic cloak.
Faust and Méphistophélès join a group of students in Auerbach’s Cellar in Leipzig. One of the students is Siébel, Marguerite’s admirer in the opera, but a very minor figure here. Another student sings the Song of the Rat, which is quite different from the one in the opera, and Méphistophélès sings another about a flea. (The latter has been set to music by several composers but is not used in the opera. Instead, Méphistophélès sings about the Golden Calf.) The devil puts the students under a spell and performs several tricks. He bores holes in the edge of the table, and each hole produces a different wine. The students think they are in a vineyard and start to cut grapes. When Faust and Méphistophélès leave, the students come to their senses, and realize that, not only are they about to cut off each others’ noses, but there is no wine in the holes. One student thinks he saw Faust ride away on a barrel.
In a witch’s kitchen, Faust sees Margarete in a mirror and is immediately attracted to her. Méphistophélès assures him he will soon meet her. (Goethe was the first to create the girl, Margarete, also called Gretchen.) As in the opera, she finds the jewels and shows them to Marthe, a neighbor, who warns her not to tell her mother. Faust gives her a potion to put her mother to sleep so they can be alone. Some months later, as she and a friend talk about another girl who is pregnant, Gretchen realizes she is in the same situation. Her brother, Valentin, vows to catch the man who did this to her. He fights the duel, loses and, with his dying breath, curses his sister. In the cathedral, an evil spirit taunts Gretchen about her sin. At the end, Faust and Méphistophélès attempt to rescue Margarete from prison, but she prefers death to life as a murderess. (She has killed her mother with the potion Faust had given her, and drowned her child.) Angels carry her to heaven.
In PART II Faust travels the world, having many adventures. In this part, Goethe used almost everything in his vast store of knowledge: Greek and German myths, geology, astrology, botany, history, etc.…When Helen appears, her husband, Menelaus, orders her surrendered to a barbarian horde led by a medieval knight, Faust. Helen and Faust have a son, Euphorion, who rushes off to war, falls from a precipice and dying, summons his mother to join him in the nether world. Faust goes below to bring Helen back. She returns to Sparta; he goes back to the medieval world. When Faust dies, devils prepare to take Faust’s soul to hell, but angels intervene and bear him aloft. In heaven he is greeted by Gretchen who is now a lady-in-waiting to the Virgin Mary. She will become his instructor in ways to lead a good “life”.
The Faust legend lives on in many guises. The most famous twentieth century version is Doctor Faustus by Thomas Mann (1875-1955) which reflects events of his time. It is about an alienated German intellectual and artist, Leverkühn. The devil with whom he makes a bargain is Adolf Hitler. When he tells friends about his pact, they conclude he is mentally ill and put him into care of experts.
There have been many other plays and novels and even a ballet, Doctor Faust, ein Tanz-poem, by Heinrich Heine, in which the devil is Mephistophela, a pretty girl who, among other things, gives Faust dancing lessons. Other literature based on the story includes the following:
Pushkin (1799-1837): Faust
C.D. Grabbe (1801-36): Don Juan und Faust
Ivan Turgenev (1818-83): a short novel on the Faust-Marguerite theme
Estanislao Campo (1834-1880): Fausto, one the major examples of Argentinian Gaucho poetry
Paul Valéry (1871-1945): Mon Faust
Anatoli Lunacharski (1873-1933): A Marxist version, Faust and the City, which emphasizes concern for social improvement
Philip James Bailey (1889): Festus in which Lucifer is saved along with Faust
There has even been an episode of The Simpsons, in which Homer sells his soul for a doughnut.
There have been at least twenty-one musical treatments other than Gounod’s.
Louis Spohr (1816): Faust, which was based on Marlowe rather than Goethe
Hector Berlioz (1846): La damnation de Faust, a “dramatic legend”, later expanded to an opera
Franz Liszt (1857): Eine Faust Symphonie
Arrigo Boito (1868): Mefistofele an opera which is part of the standard répertoire. The main character here is the witty, irritable, and acerbic Mefistofele. Boito includes the prelude in heaven and Faust’s liaison with Helen of Troy.
Ferruccio Busoni (1866-1924): Doktor Faust, in which the events with Marguerite happen before the curtain opens. At the end, Faust dies and a naked youth springs from the ground near his body. Méphistophélès carries Faust’s body off. Thus Faust is not saved himself but is redeemed through a younger generation.
This opera has just been produced by the New York’s Metropolitan Opera.
In addition, at least thirty-two composers have written incidental music or have set various extracts to music. These include, Schumann, Liszt, Mahler, Beethoven, Mussorgsky, Wagner and Mendelssohn.
There are also modern versions.
Randy Newman’s Faust, a pop opera, was given at the La Jolla Playhouse with Linda Ronstadt, Bonnie Raitt and Elton John as an angel named Rick.
Films and stage plays include Damn Yankees, based on The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant by Douglas Wallop, and Alias Nick Beal in which Ray Milland played the devil.
Stephen Vincent Benet’s short story, The Devil and Daniel Webster, was also turned into a film.
Finally, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, of Beyond the Fringe fame, wrote Bedazzled. It was made into a film in 1967 with Raquel Welch. It has recently been remade with Elizabeth Hurley as the female Devil.EAO
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