Zusammenfassung
Augustins Konfessionen führen den Ketzer Faustus dort in die Weltliteratur ein, wo der junge Augustin der Vernunft den Glauben vorzieht. In demselben Rahmen, demjenigen der paulinischen Rechtfertigungslehre, erscheint Faustus in dem Faustbuch des 16. Jahrhunderts. Das Verhältnis bezeugt die Augustin-Rezeption im deutschen Renaissancezeitalter, wie auch die Einheit der literarischen Welt.
Abstract
The heretic Faustus enters the universe of letters with Augustine’s Confessions at the juncture where the youth learns to place faith above reason. In the same context, that of the Pauline doctrine of justification, Faustus appears in the 16th-century Faust Book. The relationship probably attests to Augustine reception in the German Renaissance, and to the cohesiveness of the universe of letters.
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References
The priority of consciousness, urged by classical thinkers, seems to have been made acute again in this century by modern physics, e.g., Niels Bohr with his principle of complementarity, Werner Heisenberg insisting on Unschärfe as characteristic of the outer world, but perhaps most trenchantly by Erwin Schrödinger calling wave mechanics investigation into one’s own states of consciousness (see Karl R. Popper, Quantum Theory and the Schism in Physics [1982], esp. pages 35ff. for a summary of opposing views).
Schrödinger reminds us that to proceed from the assumption of an “objective” world would be to violate the rule of parsimony (Occam’s razor), or simply faulty logic. The implications for history writing are drawn by historiographers who recognize narrative as determining its own subject matter, hence are unwilling, in principle, to draw any bright line between history and other fiction. This view is often associated with Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (1973)
in Germany perhaps with Reinhard Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft: Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten (1979).
For further bibliography see Robert H. Canary and Henry Kozicki, eds., The Writing of History: Literary Form and Historical Understanding (1978).
A somewhat similar approach was taken by a much persecuted German historian earlier in the century, Theodor Lessing, Geschichte als Sinngebung des Sinnlosen (1918, 1921).
Frank Baron, Faustus: Geschichte, Sage, Dichtung (1980), examines the major poetic Faust works, testing them against biographical data presumed for the historical Faustus.
Lokalpatriotismus leads even to rivalry for the home town of Faustus, e.g., Faust: Der Mann aus Knittlingen. Dokumente, Erläuterungen, Informationen, hrsg. Günther Mahal (1980)
and Der historische Faust: Ein wissenschaftliches Symposium, hrsg. Günther Mahal, Publikationen des Faust-Archivs, 1 (1982).
For bibliography on this remarkable figment of history, see Hans Henning, Faust-Bibliographie, Teil I (1966), items 703–938.
But “historical” Fausts are not limited to this one from the sixteenth century, for quest after real-life prototypes is almost always rewarded: Rolf Engelsing, “Die Entstehung von Goethes Faust in sozialgeschichtlichem Zusammenhang,” Colloquia Germanica, 6 (1971–72), 126–164, demonstrates that Goethe modeled both his Faust and Mephistopheles on a certain Erasmus Senkenberg (1717–1795).
Historia und Geschieht Doctor Johannis Fausti des Zauberers nach der Wolfenbütteler handschrift nebst dem nachweis eines teils ihrer quellen, hrsg. Gustav Milchsack (1892–97), pp. cccxxv–cccxciv.
Barbara Könneker, “Faust-Konzeption und Teufelspakt im Volksbuch von 1587,” Festschrift Gottfried Kleber, hrsg. Heinz Otto Burger and Klaus von See, Frankfurter Beiträge zur Germanistik, 1 (1967), S. 199.
The theological interpretation of the Faust Book is today quite general. See, for example, Christine Lubkoll, “Und wär’s ein Augenblick”: Der Sündenfall des Wissens und der Liebeslust in Faustdichtungen von der “Historia” bis zu Thomas Manns “Doktor Faustus,” Deutsche und Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft, 9 (1986).
Perhaps the best direct evidence for Goethe’s mastery of the works/grace issue occurs in his letters to Zelter of 14 November and 7 December 1816, in which he persists in his attempt to inveigle his friend into musical enterprise more ambitious than Zelter’s customary lieder, on this occasion an oratorio in celebration of the Luther-Augustine festival planned for the following year. Goethe’s interpretation of the theological concepts reflects a lifetime’s grappling with their implications. Augustine reception had experienced a nadir in the eighteenth century: Henry Chadwick, Augustine (1986), pp. 117–119.
It is generally assumed that Goethe also rejected Augustine, especially Augustine’s asceticism: see Zastrau’s article in the Goethe-Handbuch, and the essay by Walther von Loewenich, “Augustin und Goethe,” Von Augustin zu Luther: Beiträge zur Kirchengeschichte (1956), pp. 88–102. Goethe criticism has suffered from a peculiar blind spot on any topic touching religion, however, and I think there is much yet to be discovered in the relationship between these two classic authors. I suggest elsewhere, “Christianity and Goetheanity: The Message of ‘Das Göttliche,’” Vistas and Vectors: Essays Honoring the Memory of Helmut Rehder (1979), pp. 54–62, that the elevation of Goethe’s work to a kind of wisdom literature occluded its relationship to older religious writings.
Goethes Altersdenken im problemgeschichtlichen Zusammenhang (1959) is usually credited with opening scholarly minds to the possiblity of irony in Goethe. Specifically for Faust the implications were drawn independently both by Herman Meyer, Diese sehr ernsten Scherze: Eine Studie zu Faust II, Poesie und Wissenschaft, 19 (1970)
and Erhard Bahr, Die Ironie im Spätwerk Goethes, “… diese sehr ernsten Scherze …”: Studien zum ‘West-östlichen Divan,’ zu den ‘Wanderjahren’ und zu ‘Faust II’ (1972).
Dietrich Assmann, Thomas Manns Roman “Doktor Faustus” und seine Beziehungen zur Faust-Tradition, Annales Academiae Scientiarum Fennicae: Dissertationes Humanarum Litterarum, 3 (1975)
and David J.T. Ball, Thomas Mann’s Recantation of Faust: Doctor Faustus in the Context of Mann’s Relationship to Goethe, Stuttgarter Arbeiten zur Germanistik, 173 (1986), make this argument in some detail.
I quote Augustine from The Confessions of Augustine, ed. by John Gibb and William Montgomery, Arno Press Collection: Latin Texts and Commentaries (1979). Since this edition numbers the paragraphs, I can cite not only by Book and chapter number, but (in brackets) also by paragraph within the Book.
Many argue the unity of the work from its confessional quality; others find it primarily didactic. For a survey, John J. O’Meara, The Young Augustine: An Introduction to the Confessions of St. Augustine, rev. paperback ed. (1980), pp. 14ff.
Augustine long remained our principal source for information about the followers of Mani. Discoveries early in the present century have greatly expanded our knowledge of this widespread Persian religion, whose Christian followers accepted the gnostic faith alluded to above. See Blumenberg, pp. 141ff. More recently, Samuel N.C. Lieu, Manichaeism in the Later Roman Empire and Medieval China: A Historical Survey (1985). Lieu devotes a chapter (pp. 117–152) to Augustine’s encounter with Manichaeism, and concludes, “His own solution ultimately became the majority report of the Catholic church on this very important problem for much of the Middle Ages” (p. 153).
Many regard it also as a decisive step in the intellectual development of Western man. See, e.g., Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (1967), p. 86 and n. 4.
Not these strong parallels in language, but rather parallel experiences seem to have caused Adolf Harnack to compare the young Augustine with (Goethe’s) Faust (Adolf von Harnack, “Augustins Konfessionen,” Reden und Aufsätze, Bd. I, 1 [1904], S. 50–79). The experience with the old man, of course, finds its parallel in Chapter 54 of the Faust Book (Wolfenbüttel Manuscript).
H.G. Haile, Luther: An Experiment in Biography, 2nd, corrected ed. (1983) devotes a chapter to this problem (pp. 185ff.).
See for example T. van Bavel, Répertoire bibliographique de Saint Augustin 1950–1960 (1963), items 876–882.
Frank Baron, “Der erste Druck einer Schrift Augustins: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des Buchdrucks und des Humanismus,” Historisches Jahrbuch, 91 (1971), 108–118.
Peter Iver Kaufman, Augustinian Piety and Catholic Reform: Augustine, Colet, and Erasmus (1982), p. 120.
See also Charles Béné, Érasme et Augustin ou l’influence de saint augustin sur l’humanisme d’Érasme (1969). Oddly, none of these authors seems to note that Erasmus was principal editor for Froben during the 1520’s of a version of the works still used. Thus in the Patrologia Latina, where the 20th-century scholar is likely to read his Augustine, one will also find Erasmus’s Animadversiones ad Contra Faustum (47, 555ff.).
This is a consensus among the contributors to Der historische Faust: Ein wissenschaftliches Symposium, hrsg. Günther Mahal (1982), e.g. Frank Baron, pp. 43ff., Kurt Adel, p. 67, Andrè Dabezies, p. 80. Baron wonders, how it came about, “daß Faustus, Trithemius, Agrippa und Paracelsus … sich den Ruf als Zauberer und als Verbündete des Teufels zuzogen? Ein Problem für alle Biographen ist es, daß die ursprüngliche Kritik … in eine Teufelspolemik verwandelt wurde.” He finds the answer in Luther’s Table Talks.
D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Tischreden, Vol. I (1912), pp. 534–5 (Nr. 1059).
For bibliography on this widespread metaphor, see James W. Marchand, “Leviathan and the Mousetrap in the Nirstigningarsaga,” Scandinavian Studies, 47 (summer 1975), 328–338, to whom I want to express special thanks for explaining the figure to me, and also for calling my attention to Werner von Koppenfels, Esca et Hamus: Beitrag zu einer historischen Liebesmetaphorik, Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse, Jahrgang 73, 3 (1973), another wide-ranging study of the same topos.
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Haile, H.G. The Numidian and the German Faustus. Dtsch Vierteljahrsschr Literaturwiss Geistesgesch 63, 253–266 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03396337
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03396337