Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Margarete’s Innocence and the Guilt of Faust

  • Published:
Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The deeper logic of the so-called “Gretchen tragedy” only becomes visible when the events are investigated in the context of the European epic system. Margarete’s guilt, as well as the guilt of her typological precursors (Medea, Dido, Eve) cannot be solved without considering the role of the man in what happens, including the killing of the child.

Zusammenfassung

Die tiefere Logik der sogenannten „Gretchen Tragödie” wird erst dann sichtbar, wenn die Ereignisse im Rahmen des europäischen Epos-Systems untersucht werden. Margaretes Schuld, so wie die Schuld ihrer typologischen Vorbilder — Medea / Dido / Eva -, läßt sich nicht ohne die Frage nach dem Anteil des Mannes am Geschehen, auch am Töten des Kindes, lösen.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. All quotations from Faust will be cited with parenthetical line numbers from: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Texte, ed. Albrecht Schöne, Darmstadt 1999. This printing is identical with the fourth revised edition of VII/1 in the Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1999.

  2. See for example Allen Mandelbaum, Anthony Oldcorn, Charles Ross (eds.), Lectura Dantis, Berkeley, Los Angeles 1998, and the list of “Lecturae Dantis” there, as well as the comment that the canto-by-canto reading format “conforms to a well-established exegetical tradition that goes back to Boccaccio and is still the most common hermeneutical approach to Dante’s masterwork” (445).

  3. For overviews of the epic system, see especially C. M. Bowra, From Virgil to Milton, London, New York 1967

    Google Scholar 

  4. Robert M. Durling, The Figure of the Poet in Renaissance Epic, Cambridge (MA) 1965

    Book  Google Scholar 

  5. Thomas Greene, The Descent from Heaven: A Study in Epic Continuity, New Haven, London 1963; Barbara Kiefer Lewalski, Milton’s Brief Epic: The Genre, Meaning, and Art of Paradise Regained, Providence, London 1996; David Maskell, The Historical Epic in France 1500–1700, Oxford 1973; Michael Murrin, History and Warfare in Renaissance Epic, Chicago, London 1994; David Quint, Epic and Empire: Politics and Generic Form from Virgil to Milton, Princeton 1992; and Mihoko Suzuki, Metamorphoses of Helen: Authority, Difference, and the Epic, Ithaca (NY), London 1989.

    Google Scholar 

  6. Useful surveys are A.C. Charity, Events and their Afterlife: The Dialectics of Christian Typology in The Bible and Dante, Cambridge 1966

    Google Scholar 

  7. Paul J. Korshin, Typologies in England 1650–1820, Princeton 1982. On the intricacies of the distinction between typology and allegory, see Mindele Anne Treip, Allegorical Poetics & the Epic: The Renaissance Tradition to Paradise Lost, Lexington (KY) 1994. With the exception of medievalists, German literary critics, even of eighteenth-century texts, have largely lost the awareness of how important typology was in a culture steeped in theological discourse. A good overview is provided by Jörn Dräger, Typologie und Emhlematik in Klopstocks „Messias”, Ph.D. Diss., Göttingen 1971.

    Google Scholar 

  8. See also the suggestive essay by Wilfried Maisch, „Zur möglichen Bedeutung von Hamanns Bibeltypologie für die Ge schichtssicht Herders und der Goethezeit”, in: Bernhard Gajek (ed.), Johann Georg Hamann: Acta des Internationalen Hamann-Colloquiums in Lüneburg 1976, Frankfurt a.M. 1979, 93–116.

    Google Scholar 

  9. See Barbara Pavlock, Eros, Imitation, and the Epic Tradition, Ithaca (NY), London 1990, 187–218

    Google Scholar 

  10. William M. Porter, Reading the Classics and Paradise Lost, Lincoln, London 1993, 110–114.

    Google Scholar 

  11. “After Milton, traditional epic is dead, with the exception of mock epic, which sings its demise. In the Romantic period, new experiences of selfhood and new kinds of awareness of the concrete social realities of history will require new forms for the effort to relate the individual to totality.” (Robert M. Durling, “The Epic Ideal”, in: David Daiches, Anthony Thorlby [eds.], Literature and Western Civilization. III: The Old World: Discovery and Rebirth, London 1974, 105–146, here: 140).

    Google Scholar 

  12. Torquato Tasso, Discourses on the Heroic Poem, trans, and ed. Marielle Cavalchini and Irene Samuel, Oxford 1973, 77–78. On the growing awareness of the gap between the poetic aspiration and what could be practically accomplished, see Eberhard Müller-Bochat, „Die Einheit des Wissens und das Epos: Zur Geschichte eines utopischen Gattungsbegriffs”, Romanistisches Jahrbuch 17 (1966), 58–81.

  13. The issues were acute, as the intensive discussions between Goethe and Schiller in the mid 1790s indicate. See Richard Littlejohns, “The Discussion between Goethe and Schiller on the Epic and Dramatic and its Relevance to Faust, Neophilologus” 71 (1987), 388–401; E.L. Stahl, “Schiller and the Composition of Goethe’s Faust”, Germanic Review 34 (1959), 185–199

    Google Scholar 

  14. Joachim Wohlleben, “Goethe and the Homeric Question”, Germanic Review 42 (1967), 251–275.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Sämtliche Werke, Jubiläumsausgabe in zwanzig Bänden, ed. Hermann Glockner, XIV: Vorlesungen über die Aesthetik, ed. Heinrich Gustav Hotho, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt 1964, 416–417.

  16. For the English discussions, which led the way, see Ernest Lee Tuveson, The Imagination as a Means of Grace: Locke and the Aesthetics of Romanticism, Berkeley, Los Angeles 1960.

    Google Scholar 

  17. On the continued efforts to produce a German epic, see Dieter Martin, Das deutsche Versepos im 18. Jahrhundert. Studien und kommentierte Gattungsbibliogra phie, Berlin, New York 1993, who deals with Goethe passim. On Goethe’s epic projects

    Book  Google Scholar 

  18. see also David Constantine, “Achilleis and Nausikaa: Goethe in Homer’s World”, Oxford German Studies 15 (1984), 95–111; Elke Dreisbach, Goethes „Achilleis”, Hei delberg 1994; Melitta Gerhard, „Götter-Kosmos und Gesetzes-Suche: Zu Goethes Versuch seines Achilleis-Epos”, Monatshefte 56.4 (1964), 145–159; Rüdiger Görner, “Goe the’s Ulysses: On the Meaning of a Project”, Publications of the English Goethe Society NS 44–45 (1993–95), 21–37; Wolfgang Schadewaldt, „Fausts Ende und die Achilleis”, in: Benno Reifenberg, Emil Staiger (eds.), Weltbewohner und Weimaraner: Ernst Beutler zugedacht 1960, Zürich, Stuttgart 1960, 243–260; Friedrich Sengle, Neues zu Goethe. Essays und Vorträge, Stuttgart 1989, 49–85.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. For example, Stuart Atkins, “A Reconsideration of Some Misunderstood Passages in the ‚Gretchen Tragedy’ of Goethe’s Taust’”, Modern Language Review 48 (1953), 420–434, here: 433.

    Google Scholar 

  20. Thus: Jane K. Brown, Goethe’s Faust: The German Tragedy, Ithaca (NY), London 1986, 101

    Google Scholar 

  21. Christoph E. Schweitzer, “Gretchen and the Feminine in Goethe’s Faust”, in: Jane K. Brown, Meredith Lee, Thomas P. Saine (eds.), Interpreting Goethe’s ‚Faust’ Today, Columbia (SC) 1994, 133–141, here: 134; Barbara Becker-Cantarino, “Witch and Infanticide: Imaging the Female in Faust I”, Goethe Yearbook 7 (1994), 1–22, here 14; and Albrecht Schöne, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Faust. Kommentare, Darmstadt 1999, 379. Cited as Schöne, Kommentare. This version is identical with the fourth revised edition, VII/2, published by the Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, Frankfurt a. M. 1999. Peter Heller gives an overview of the reception of Gretchen in his „Gretchen: Figur, Klischee, Symbol”, in: Wolfgang Paulsen (ed.), Die Frau als Heldin und Autorin: Neue kritische Ansätze zur deutschen Literatur, Bern, München 1979, 175–189.

    Google Scholar 

  22. Although today the catchphrase for Faust’s oscillation might be his “bi-polar condition”, it is in fact a reflection of his struggle with melancholy. Out of the growing literature on this topic, see especially Ferdinand van Ingen, “Faust — homo melancho-licusli, in: Alexander von Bormann (ed.), Wissen aus Erfahrungen: Werkbegriff und Interpretation heute. Festschrift für Herman Meyer zum 65. Geburtstag, Tübingen 1976, 256–281; Bernhard Buschendorf, Goethes mythische Denkform: Zur Ikonographie der ‚Wahlverwandtschaften’, Frankfurt a.M. 1986, 127–167; and Jochen Schmidt, „Faust als Melancholiker und Melancholie als strukturbildendes Element bis zum Teufelspakt”, Jahrbuch der Deutschen Schillergesellschaft 41 (1997), 125–139.

    Google Scholar 

  23. The choice of terms, ‚wrongdoer’ rather than ‚criminal’ hints at possible reser vations on his part about her degree of culpability. Cf. Johann Christoph Adelung, Grammatisches-kritisches Wörterbuch der Hochdeutschen Mundart, mit beständiger Vergleichung der übrigen Mundarten, besonders aber der Oberdeutschen, rpt. Hildes heim, New York 1970, I, 222: „Eine That oder Handlung, welche aus einem Versehen geschiehet, ein Versehen, Fehler; eine veraltet Bedeutung, in welcher dieses Wort noch in dem Straßburgischen Stadtrechte bey dem Schilter vorkommt.”

    Google Scholar 

  24. See for example David Sabean, Property, Production, and Family in Neckarhausen, 1700–1870, Cambridge 1990, 333–334. He observes: “It is clear from the earliest cases of illegitimacy in the records — from the 1730s and 1740s — that women of marriageable age had their own sleeping quarters and that they received male visitors. This practice suggests that at least some degree of freedom was accorded to peasant daughters” (333). Prohibiting illegitimate births was first and foremost a bourgeois ideal and became integral to the policing of society in the nineteenth century.

    Google Scholar 

  25. See Regina Schulte, “In fanticide in Rural Bavaria in the Nineteenth Century”, in: Hans Medick, David Sabean (eds.), Interest and Emotion: Essays on the Study of Family and Kinship, Cambridge 1984, 77–102, and the literature she cites under note 33.

    Google Scholar 

  26. On the function of literary depictions of infanticide for social regulation, see Helga Stipa Madland, “Infanticide as Fiction: Goethe’s Urfaust and Schiller’s ‚Kindsmörderin’ as Models”, The German Quarterly 62.1 (1989), 27–38. A classic essay concentrating on Goethe is Ernst Beutler, „Die Kindsmörderin”, in his: Essays urn Goethe, Bremen 1957, 87–101. Discussions of the larger context, with references to the older literature, include those of Wilhelm Wächtershäuser, Das Verbrechen des Kindesmordes im Zeitalter der Aufklärung, Berlin 1973; Heinz-Dieter Weber, „Kindesmord als tragische Handlung”, Der Deutschunterricht 28.2 (1976), 75–97; Michael Schmidt, Genossin der Hexe. Inter pretation der Gretchentragödie in Goethes Faust aus der Perspektive der Kindesmord-problematik, Göttingen 1986

    Google Scholar 

  27. Klaus Kastner, „Der Kindsmord: historische, recht liche und literarische Aspekte”, Neue Juristische Wochenschrift 44 (1991), 1443–1455.

    Google Scholar 

  28. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Gedichte 1756–1799, ed. Karl Eibl, Darmstadt 1998, 219. Cited as Goethe, Gedichte 1756–1799.

  29. Hansjürgen Blinn, „‚… Bin doch ein ehrlich Weib?’ Das Frauenbild in Goethes Ballade VOR GERICHT”, in: Gerhard Sauder (ed.), Goethe-Gedichte: Zweiunddreißig Interpretationen, München 1996, 68–76, here: 74. On implications of the poem for the figure of Gretchen

    Google Scholar 

  30. see Harold Jantz, The Form of Faust: The Work of Art and Its Intrinsic Structures, Baltimore, London 1978, 32–33.

    Google Scholar 

  31. Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg, “The Heroics of Virginity: Brides of Christ and Sacrificial Mutilation”, in: Mary Beth Rose (ed.), Women in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Literary and Historical Perspectives, Syracuse 1986, 29–72, here: 31.

    Google Scholar 

  32. In addition to Schulenburg, see Rosemary Radford Ruether, “Misogynism and Virginal Feminism in the Fathers of the Church”, in: Rosemary Radford Ruether (ed.), Religion and Sexism: Images of Woman in the Jewish and Christian Traditions, New York 1974, 150–183.

    Google Scholar 

  33. See Craig D. Atwood, “Sleeping in the Arms of Christ: Sanctifying Sexuality in the Eighteenth-Century Moravian Church”, Journal of the History of Sexuality 8.1 (1987), 25–51.

    Google Scholar 

  34. The case is notorious. See Lothar Frede, „Kindesmord und Kirchenbuße bei Goethe”, Zeitschrift für die Gesamte Strafrechtswissenschaft 78 (1966), 420–431.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. See the acerbic but insightful comments by Christoph Müller, „‚Gretchen als Hexe?’ Eine Anmerkung zu Albrecht Schönes Rekonstruktion der Walpurgisnacht”, Euphorion 87 (1993), 347–364, here: note 18.

    Google Scholar 

  36. See the „Rechtliches Gutachten der Hochloeblichen Juristen-Facultaet zu Wuertz-burg wegen einer minderjaehrigen zu Versuchung eines Kinder-Mords von ihrer Mutter Verfuehrten Tochter. (1741)”, reproduced in: Wilhelm Wächtershäuser, Das Verbrechen des Kindesmordes im Zeitalter der Aufklärung: Eine rechtsgeschichtliche Untersuchung der dogmatischen, prozessualen und rechtssoziologischen Aspekte, Berlin 1973, 170–177. The lawyers observed: „Die Tochter in der Angst und heftigsten Schmertzen, dergeleichen sie als eine primapara noch niemalls empfunden, so daß sie gantz ausser sich war, folgt, wozu sie die Mutter verleitet…” (170). There are interesting parallels to Margarete’s description of her child in the water (4560–61); it might be that Goethe had read this decision. Also valuable on the overall context and legal issues is Tony Ward, “The Sad Subject of Infanticide: Law, Medicine and Child Murder, 1860–1938”, Social & Legal Studies 8.2 (1999), 163–180, with a good bibliography.

    Google Scholar 

  37. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, ed. R.-M. S. Heffner, Helmut Render, and W.F. Twaddell, Madison 1955, ad line 4443.

  38. See for example Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Goethes Faust, ed. Georg Witkowski, Leiden 1936, II, 285; and Goethe, Werke (Hamburger Ausgabe), ed. Erich Trunz, München 1982, III, 536. For the widespread variants, see Johannes Bolte and Georg Polîvka, Anmerkungen zu den Kinder- und Hausmärchen der Brüder Grimm, rpt. Hildesheim 1963, I, 412–423. Just which version Goethe knew and how he came to know it requires further investigation.

  39. „Was aus ihr singt, ist die Stimme des getöteten Kindes. Es erklärt die Mutter zur Hure und Mörderin, den Vater zum Schelm, der das Kind gegessen hat — in der Tat: Fausts um sich fressende Vergeßlichkeit will noch den kleinen Leichnam als inneres Hindernis der Flucht aus Margaretes Sinn verschwinden lassen” (Gerhard Kaiser, „Faust und Margarete: Hierarchie oder Polarität der Geschlechter?”, in: Wolfram Groddeck, Ulrich Stadler [eds.], Physiognomie und Pathognomie. Zur literarischen Darstellung von Individualität. Festschrift für Karl Pestalozzi zum 65. Geburtstag, Berlin, New York 1994, 169–185, here: 181).

    Google Scholar 

  40. See David Atkinson, “Magical Corpses: Ballads, Intertextuality, and the Discovery Murder” Journal of Folklore Research 36.1 (1999), 1–29.

    Google Scholar 

  41. Heinz Rölleke (ed.), Kinder- und Hausmärchen gesammelt durch die Brüder Grimm. Vollständige Ausgabe auf der Grundlage der dritten Auflage (1837), Darmstadt 1999, 212. Cited as „Van den Machandelboom”.

    Google Scholar 

  42. Marsilio Ficino, The Book of Life, trans. Charles Boer, Irving (TX) 1980, 57.

  43. A quick overview is provided by Joseph Frank Payne, “Arnold de Villa Nova on the Therapeutic Use of Human Blood”, Janus 8 (1903), 477–83, with comments on Ficino (479).

    Google Scholar 

  44. On the “quintessence” and its distillation, see F. Sherwood Taylor, “The Idea of the Quintessence”, in: E. Ashworth Underwood (ed.), Science Medicine and History: Essays on the Evolution of Scientific Thought and Medical Practice Written in Honour of Charles Singer, London 1953, 1, 247–265

    Google Scholar 

  45. Charles H. Talbot, “The Elixir of Youth”, in: Beryl Rowland (ed.), Chaucer and Middle English Studies in Honour of Rossell Hope Robbins, London 1974, 31–42. From a history of science perspective, see Michela Pereira, “Un tesoro inestimabile: elixire ‚prolongatio vitae’ nell’alchimia del’,300”, Micrologus 1 (1993), 161–187; and M. Pereira, “Teorie dell’elixir nell’alchimia latina médiévale”, Micrologus 3 (1995), 103–148, both with extensive bibliographic information.

    Google Scholar 

  46. On the witches’ kitchen, see Linda C. Hults, “Baldung and the Witches of Freiburg: The Evidence of Images”, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18.2 (1987), 249–276, here 252–254; and Becker-Cantarino (note 13), 3–5.

    Google Scholar 

  47. On the mingling of the accusing discourses, see R. Po-Chia Hisa, The Myth of Ritual Murder. Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany, New Haven, London 1998, 144–146. Payne (note 47), reports without sufficient critical distance what must be considered a variant of the blood libel. Supposedly a Jewish doctor attempted to save the life of Pope Innocent VIII by transfusing, or as Payne would have it, distilling the blood of young children (479–481). Given that the story was widespread and since it was localized at the end of the fifteenth century (the Pope died 1492), it may well deserve further scrutiny as part of the historical background to Faust, researched so carefully by Goethe.

    Google Scholar 

  48. Albrecht Schöne, Götterzeichen, Liebeszauber, Satanskult. Neue Einblicke in alte Goethetexte, München 1982, 184.

    Google Scholar 

  49. William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Macbeth, ed. Sylvan Barnet, New York 1987, IV, i, 26–31.

  50. Donald W. Foster, “Macbeth’s War on Time”, English Literary Renaissance 16 (1986), 319–342.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  51. Extremely suggestive for the symbolism of the flame in connection with the ritual of rejuvenation is C. Anne Wilson, “Wine Rituals, Maenads and Dionysian Fire”, Papers of the Leeds International Latin Seminar 10 (1998), 157–168.

    Google Scholar 

  52. See for example Helga M. Novak, “Brief an Medea”, in her: Grünheide, Grünheide: Gedichte 1955–1980, Darmstadt, Neuwied 1983, 96

    Google Scholar 

  53. Christa Wolf’s Medea: Stimmen. Roman, Hamburg 1996. In his analysis of Wolf’s text, Herbert Lehnert alludes in passing to the „Machandelboom” song and Margarete. See Herbert Lehnert, „Stimmen von Macht und Freiheit. Christa Wolf, Medeali, in: Karl Menges (ed.), Literatur und Geschichte: Festschrift für Wulf Koepke zum 70. Geburtstag, Amsterdam, Atlanta 1998, 299–312, here: 304.

    Google Scholar 

  54. For the following, I have drawn upon James J. Clauss, Sarah Iles Johnston (eds.), Medea: Essays on Medea in Myth, Literature, Philosophy, and Art, Princeton 1997, especially Fritz Graf, “Medea, the Enchantress from Afar: Remarks on a Well-Known Myth”, 21–43; Deborah Boedeker, “Becoming Medea: Assimilation in Euripides”, 127–148; James J. Clauss, “Conquest of the Mephistophelian Nausicaa: Medea’s Role in Apollonius’ Redefinition of the Epic Hero”, 149–177; and Carole E. Newlands, “The Metamorphosis of Ovid’s Medea”, 178–208. The volume has an excellent bibliography.

    Google Scholar 

  55. The parallel between Ovid’s account and the Hexenküche was briefly discussed by Rudolph Eppelsheimer, Goethes Faust: Das Drama im Doppelreich. Versuch einer Deutung im Geiste des Dichters, Stuttgart 1982, 120–121.

    Google Scholar 

  56. Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica, trans. R. C. Seaton, Cambridge (MA) 1961, IV, 410–481.

    Google Scholar 

  57. Opinions still divide sharply on how to judge Euripides’ Medea. For most critics, the infanticide remains totally unacceptable. So R.E. Easterling, “The Infanticide in Euripides’ Medea”, Yale Classical Studies 25 (1977), 177–191, here: 177, declares: “This horrific act is something from which we naturally recoil.” But Anne Burnett, ”Medea and the Tragedy of Revenge”, Classical Philology 68.1 (1973), 1–24, shifts a good portion of blame to Jason: “Petty and flawed and corrupt as he is, he is properly destroyed by a secular female enemy who represents in herself not so much the religion of the proud Olympians as the very magic of the older gods that Jason thought to use and cast away” (17). Mutatis mutandis, this could be said of Faust and Margarete.

    Google Scholar 

  58. A point stressed by Jennifer March, “Euripides the Misogynist”, in: Anton Powell (ed.), Euripides, Women, and Sexuality, London, New York 1990, 32–75, here 38: “In legend she was a barbarian witch. But here Euripides has been at pains to omit any hint of magical powers in his Medea.”

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  59. Christopher Collard, “Medea and Dido”, Prometheus 1 (1975), 131–151.

    Google Scholar 

  60. Theodore Ziolkowski, Virgil and the Moderns, Princeton 1993, states “Most writers of the age shared Goethe’s disdain for Virgil” (78). For initial corrections, see Brown (note 13), 194–196. Of signal importance is Jürgen Paul Schwindt, „Dido, Klopstock und Charlotte Buff: Vergilreminiszenz(en) in Goethe’s ‚Werther’,?”, Antike und Abendland AI (1996), 103–118.

    Google Scholar 

  61. See Marilynn Desmond, Reading Dido: Gender, Textuality, and the Medieval Aeneid, Minneapolis, London 1994, 1–98

    Google Scholar 

  62. N. Horsfall, “Dido in the Light of History”, Proceedings of the Virgil Society 13 (1974–74), 1–13

    Google Scholar 

  63. John Moles, “The Tragedy and Guilt of Dido”, in: Michael Whitby, Philip Hardie, Mary Whitby (eds.), Homo Viator. Classical Essays for John Bramble, Bristol, Oak Park (IL) 1987, 154–161

    Google Scholar 

  64. Marie Louise Lord, “Dido as an Example of Chastity: The Influence of Example Literature”, Harvard Library Bulletin 17 (1969), 22–44; 216–232

    Google Scholar 

  65. Peter Dronke, “Dido’s Lament: From Medieval Latin Lyric to Chaucer”, in: Ulrich Justus Stäche, Wolfgang Maaz, Fritz Wagner (eds.), Kontinuität und Wandel. Lateinische Poesie von Naevius bis Baudelaire. Franco Munari zum 65. Geburtstag, Hildesheim 1986, 364–390. The German literature is surveyed by Eberhard Semrau, Dido in der deutschen Dichtung, Berlin, Leipzig 1930.

    Google Scholar 

  66. Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy. Inferno, trans. Charles S. Singleton, Princeton 1989, Canto V, 61–3.

  67. Goethe and his contemporaries were well aware of the theological as well as poetological issues raised by dramatizations of Biblical material, such as Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock’s Der Tod Adams (1757), of which there was a spate in the middle of the eighteenth century. For an overview, see Heinz Schlaffer, „Das Schäfertrauerspiel: Klopstocks Drama ‚Der Tod Adams’ und die Probleme einer Mischform im 18. Jahr hundert”, Jahrbuch der Jean-Paul-Gesellschaft 1 (1966), 117–149. Kleist’s Der zerbrochne Krug sets the capstone to the genre, with the lusty Richter Adam and the coquettish Eve; cf. Dirk Grathoff, „Der Fall des Krugs: Zum geschichtlichen Gehalt von Kleists Lustspiel”, Kleist-Jahrbuch (1981–82), 290–313.

    Google Scholar 

  68. See Ernst Guldan’s enormously informative Eva und Maria. Eine Antithese als Bildmotiv, Graz, Köln 1966, with extensive bibliograpy.

    Google Scholar 

  69. Heinz Politzer, „Vom Baum der Erkenntnis und der Sünde der Wissenschaft: über Goethes Faust”, in: Politzer, Das Schweigen der Sirenen. Studien zur deutschen und österreichischen Literatur, Stuttgart 1968, 254–284, here 269.

    Google Scholar 

  70. See for example an illustration dating from 1481, reproduced in Robert L. Füglister, Das lebende Kreuz. Ikonographisch-ikonologische Untersuchung der Herkunft und Entwicklung einer spätmittelalterlichen Bildidee und ihrer Verwurzelung im Wort, Einsiedeln 1964, Abb. 6; and the emblem from Francis Quarles (1643), reproduced in Karl Josef Höltgen, „Arber, Scala und Föns vitae: Vorformen devotionaler Embleme in einer mittelenglischen Handschrift”, in: Sibylle Penkert (ed.), Emblem und Emblematikrezep-tion. Vergleichende Studien zur Wirkungsgeschichte vom 16. bis 20. Jahrhundert, Darmstadt 1978, 72–109, here: 84.

    Google Scholar 

  71. Out of the very extensive literature on the Cross and the Tree, see especially Eleanor Simmons Greenhill, “The Child in the Tree: A Study of the Cosmological Tree in Christian Tradition”, Traditio 10 (1954), 323–371

    Article  Google Scholar 

  72. Stanley Stewart, The Enclosed Garden. The Tradition and the Image in Seventeenth-Century Poetry, Madison, London 1966, especially 75–86

    Google Scholar 

  73. Ursula Brumm, “The ‚Tree of Life’ in Edward Taylor’s Meditations”, Early American Literature 3 (1968), 72–87

    Google Scholar 

  74. Rab Hatfield, “The Tree of Life and the Holy Cross: Franciscan Spirituality in the Trecento and the Quattrocento”, in: Timothy Verdon, John Henderson (eds.), Christianity and the Renaissance. Image and Religious Imagination in the Quattrocento, Syracuse (NY) 1990, 132–160.

    Google Scholar 

  75. On the healing and anti-demonic properties of the juniper, see the entry “Wacholder”, in: Hanns Bächtold-Stäubli, Eduard Hoffmann-Krayer (eds.), Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens, Berlin, New York 1987, IX, cols. 2–14. See also the discussion in the context of Celan and “Mandelbaum”: Larissa Naiditsch, „Paul Celans Gedicht ‚Eine Gauner- und Ganovenweise’ im Blick auf die Frage ‚Celan-Mandelstam’”, Etudes Germaniques 53.4 (1998), 687–700, here: 696–699.

    Google Scholar 

  76. For a reading of the theme of the resurrection of the child through its bones, see Hellmut Ammerlahn, „Goethe und Gretchens Lied vom Machandelboom: Zur Symbolik des dichterischen Schaffensprozesses”, in: Heinz Rupp, Hans Gert Roloff (eds.), Akten des 6. Internationalen Germanistik-Kongresses, Bern 1981, IV, 338–344.

    Google Scholar 

  77. The allusions to the Song of Songs have long been recognized, but only recently brought into focus by James Simpson, Goethe and Patriarchy. Faust and the Fates of Desire, Oxford 1998, 14–24, and passim.

    Google Scholar 

  78. The implications of the difference between the witch making Faust’s lust possible and the secondary moment of his arousal by Margarete need considerably more investigation, within the sort of framework invoked by A. Kent Hiatt, “Eve as Reason in a Tradition of Allegorical Interpretation of the Fall”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute 43 (1980), 221–226.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Carleton, CA, USA

    Arnd Böhm

Authors
  1. Arnd Böhm
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Böhm, A. Margarete’s Innocence and the Guilt of Faust. Dtsch Vierteljahrsschr Literaturwiss Geistesgesch 75, 216–250 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03374647

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03374647

Search

Navigation