Goethe's Faust: pp. 1-12, 17-19                             Name ______________________________________

 

1. (pp. 1-2): The three archangels (Raphael, Gabriel, and Michael) each celebrate different aspects of the unfathomable beauty of the creation in poetic words. How does Mephistopheles (a devil, whose name translates "no lover of light" or "enemy of fight") address God, i.e., how does his language differ from theirs? How does Mephistopheles describe man?

 

 

 

 

 

2. (2-4): How does Mephistopheles's pessimistic view of Faust differ from God's optimistic one? What is the wager that Mephisto makes with God? (Goethe's text plays off of the Old Testament book of Job in which God  says to Satan, "Have you considered my servant Jobs?" But the bet [verse 1. 111 is that Job will curse God when he loses all that he has. Mephisto's wager with God is different. How?)

 

 

 

 

3. (p. 5): How does Mephisto feel about God?

 

 

 

 

4. (7-9): How does Dr. Faust (a professor!) regard the knowledge he has gained? To what does he turn, in place of scholarship, in order to learn the secrets of the world? How does he feel about his dusty study, crammed with scientific equipment and about the. limits of science?

 

 

 

5. (9-12): Opening a book by the astrologer Nostradamus, Faust thinks he has found the key to understanding nature and conjures up the Earth Spirit What does the Spirit say to Faust's claim to be his equal?

 

                                                                                               

 

6. Skip to pg. 17 (17-19): Despairing of ever finding out what he wants to know with all his scientific apparatuses, Faust contemplates suicide. He takes up a phial of brown poison and is about to drink it, but stops. Why? What day is it?