Faust, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832), is one of the greatest works in Western literature. In Faust, Goethe has presented many views of life. It also explores a wide variety of polar opposites without resolving them. Faust's yearning for knowledge and experience has created a type for the romantic age known as the Faustian hero: a person who is prepared to defy morality, society and religion and to enter a pact with the devil to achieve his desires.
Faust is the theme of this contest. For the references of Faust made in the problems, the translation by George Madison Priest was used. Below is the synopsis of Faust, taken from Faust at the University of Calgary.
Goethe's drama Faust I is not divided into acts, but structured as a sequence of scenes in a variety of settings. After a dedicatory poem and a prelude in the theater, the actual plot begins with a prologue in heaven, where Mephistopheles, the devil, challenges the Lord that he can lead astray the Lord's favourite striving scholar, Dr. Faust. We then see Faust in his study, attempting and failing to gain knowledge of nature and the universe by magic means. The dejected Faust contemplates suicide, but is held back by the sounds of the beginning Easter celebrations. He joins his assistant Wagner for an Easter walk in the countryside, among the celebrating people, and is followed home by a poodle. Back in the study, the poodle transforms itself into Mephistopheles, who offers Faust a contract: he will do Faust's bidding on earth, and Faust will do the same for him in hell (if, as Faust adds in an important side clause, Mephisto can get him to be satisfied and to want a moment to last forever). Faust signs in blood, and Mephisto first takes him to Auerbach's tavern in Leipzig, where the devil plays tricks on some drunken revellers. Having then been transformed into a young man by a witch, Faust encounters Margarete (Gretchen) and she excites his desires. Through a scheme involving jewellery and Gretchen's neighbour Martha, Mephisto brings about Faust's and Gretchen's liaison. After a period of separation, Faust seduces Gretchen, who accidentally kills her mother with a sleeping potion Faust had given her. Gretchen is pregnant, and her torment is further increased when Faust and Mephisto kill her enraged brother in a sword fight. Mephisto seeks to distract Faust by taking him to the witches' sabbath of Walpurgisnight, but Faust insists on rescuing Gretchen from the death sentence she has been given after going insane and drowning her newborn child. In the dungeon, Faust in vain tries to persuade Gretchen to follow him to freedom. At the end of the drama, as Faust and Mephisto flee the dungeon, a voice from heaven announces Gretchen's salvation.
The second part of Goethe's Faust drama is divided into 5 acts, which blend the basic plot of Faust's quest with allegorical scenes and playful spectacles featuring symbolic, historical, and mythological characters.
In Act I, Faust is revived from a long sleep, purged of feelings of guilt, and given new hope by benevolent spirits. He and Mephisto then go to the German emperor's court, where they "solve" the emperor's fiscal problems by introducing paper money and further mock the greed of the courtiers in a great carnival celebration. After descending to the realm of the Mothers, all-powerful but unknown goddesses, Faust returns with the ability to conjure Helen of Troy and Paris for the emperor. Faust falls prey to his own desire for Helen, who vanishes as Faust tries to grasp her, whereupon he falls unconscious.
Act II begins with Mephisto bringing the unconscious Faust to the old study. He comes upon Wagner, now a famous professor himself, who is creating life in the laboratory. Homunculus, the small human figure resulting from this experiment, takes Mephisto and the still unconscious Faust with him to the Classical Walpurgisnight in Greece, where gods, demigods, and other figures from ancient mythology are gathered. Here, Faust awakes and goes on a search for Helen, which leads him to the underworld. Mephisto wanders and resists seduction among the mythic creatures and acquires a suitably ugly shape for himself from the hideous Phorcyads. Homunculus seeks and finds a way to escape the glass phial he is still locked into and enters a higher state of existence in a union with the sea.
In Act III, Helen emerges from the underworld and returns to Sparta, only to have to fear that her husband Menelaus intends to kill her. Mephisto, in the frightening shape of Phorcyas, convinces her to seek refuge in a medieval castle in the north, where Faust in the role of a knight awaits her. He courts and wins Helen, and they relocate to Arcadia and have a son, Euphorion, the beautiful and graceful embodiment of poetry. But when Euphorion attempts to fly and fails, first he and then Helen in her grief vanish from Faust's life.
Act IV sees Faust turning his energies towards a plan to reclaim land from the sea. Mephisto convinces him to support the emperor in a war against a rival, which is won with the help of three figures at Mephisto's service who represent primeval forces of violence. As a reward, the emperor grants Faust coastal lands where he can proceed with his reclamation plans.
In Act V, these plans have progressed very well, but the now old and powerful Faust sees an old couple, Philemon and Baucis, who dwell on the reclaimed land, as an obstacle. He asks Mephisto and his three helpers to relocate them to a new dwelling. They, however, kill the couple and burn down their house and chapel. Faust is visited by the allegorical figures of Want, Debt, Need, and Care, and Care strikes him blind. Still, Faust continues to plan the improvement of the land and of the lot of its inhabitants. Having a beautiful vision of the future, he anticipates a fleeting moment of happiness he would ask to remain. As he voices this anticipation, he dies. Mephisto, convinced he has won the wager, is about to take Faust's soul to hell, but a group of beautiful angels distract him and carry the soul heavenwards. The final scene shows a variety of characters from Christian mythology and symbolical figures, Gretchen's soul among them, guiding Faust's soul ever upwards.
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The translation was initiated by Thomas Shu Yin Tang on Thu Jan 29 16:02:29 EST 2004