Abstract
The following article rereads Goethe’s Faust as it seriously considers the text’s interplay with and the implications of the parentheses formed by Faust’s encounters with Sorge: Faust mentions Sorge during his suicide contemplations in the first scene of the play, and he denies his acquaintance with the phenomenon at the very end of his stage life. This denial, the article maintains, is facilitated by the distractions and contortions that Mephistopheles’ grand monde and its representational politics devise. The indeterminacy and flamboyance of signs marking the play’s contestation of capitalist logics reappear amplified in Karl Marx’s work and Marxist theories of the 20th century. In the surveyed texts, commodity production’s tampering with processes of signification arises as one of the root causes for modern societies’ proclivity for willful ignorance. Conceiving a literary criticism of denial, the article highlights the Faust-tragedy’s dramatic strategies for the depiction of the elusive phenomenon. (SF)
Sorge, commonly translated as “Care,” is mentioned by Faust at the beginning of Faust I and manifests as a voice in the final act of Faust II: in the scene “Mitternacht” (‘Midnight’), age-old Faust stands alone on a completely dark stage. He does not see, but he hears Sorge–personified and gendered feminine by the German noun gender, die Sorge. The scene consists of the two characters’ alternating soliloquies, which span over 90 lines. During this time, only a single question is posed. Sorge puts Faust on the spot: “Hast du die Sorge nie gekannt?” (‘Have you not ever, then, known Care?’ V. 11432). Faust avoids a direct answer: “Ich bin nur durch die Welt gerannt” (‘I’ve never tarried anywhere’ V. 11433). The careful composition of these two lines and the remaining scene posits Faust’s hectic activity and worldly involvement as what saves him from being possessed by Sorge and keeps him from plunging into the bleakness she has in store for her victims (V. 11453–11458). And yet, moments before Faust’s death, Sorge takes center stage. There, Sorge’s interference exposes the depression underlying the perpetual activity and desire for progress—”Weiterschreiten” (‘keeping on’ V. 11451)— that Mephistopheles incited almost ten thousand verses earlier.
Since Faust asserts his acquaintance with Sorge in an early part of the tragedy, Sorge’s question merely assesses his self-awareness. Her probing illuminates the state of denial that Faust sustains at very end of his life. Prompted by Faust’s repudiation of Sorge in the last act, this article surveys the appearance, disappearance, and reemergence of Sorge. By linking Sorge’s lengthy absence to the play’s treatment of subjectivity and economic development, I claim that Sorge has an operative function in the play: her encounters with Faust expose (self-)denial as a constitutive feature of the new “economic human” emerging from within the socio-economic conditions of early capitalism.
Given the continuing relevance of dual dynamics involving forms of denial and economic logics based on gain and advancement, it is surprising that the details of Faust’s evasiveness have received little attention in Goethe scholarship. Though often alluded to, studies of subjectivity and/or economics in the Faust-tragedy have not specifically focused on Faust’s disavowal of Sorge. To fill this gap, my reading highlights the artful depiction of denial in “Mitternacht,” notes states of denial throughout Faust I and II, and analyzes denial’s possible causes and consequences as laid out in the play. Building on Jane Brown’s and Heinz Schlaffer’s work on the allegorical in Faust as well as Joseph Vogl’s study Kalkül und Leidenschaft: Poetik des ökonomi- schen Menschen, I understand Sorge and Faust’s encounter as an early theatrical experiment capturing the paradoxes at the heart of a new form of selfhood. Accordingly, the scene “Mitternacht” appears as the site of a dramatic negotiation between economic thought, literary form, and the phenomenon of denial.
The first section of this article introduces the relationship between Sorge and Faust and explores Faust’s disavowal of the parts of the economic human that Sorge represents. As denial is by definition elusive, Goethe deploys subtle poetic tools for its depiction: rhythm and rhyme, fictions of erasure, paradoxes, and narrative gaps account for denial’s complex mechanisms of compartmentalization. The second part of the article continues to explore the fissure traced between Faust’s and Sorge’s articulations of “Streben” (‘striving’) in Section One and locates that fissure within its wider contexts, namely, the play’s mirroring of the distractions and distortions that Karl Marx (several decades later) identifies as effects of capitalist markets.
The first part of the tragedy introduces Sorge and establishes her unexpected connection to property. The answer to the question posed in Act Five of Part Two—”Hast du die Sorge nie gekannt?”—can be found in the first scene of the first part, entitled “Nacht” (‘Night’). Toward the beginning of the scene, Faust fails to withstand the presence of the Earth Spirit he summons. As he finds himself unable to stand on an equal footing with ghosts and gods, he descends into a deep depression, lamenting the limits of human enterprise on earth and the detrimental effects they have on any ambitious applications of mind, feeling, and fantasy (V. 634–43). Here, he mentions Sorge. Faust speaks of her as another agent deepening the pain of human existence: “Die Sorge nistet gleich im tiefen Herzen, / Dort wirket sie geheime Schmerzen” (‘Deep in our heart Care quickly makes her nest, / there she engenders secret sorrows’ V. 644–45).
Notably, the pains or sorrows Sorge inflicts are marked as secret from the very beginning—and, soon enough, Faust will have forgotten about them and their hidden origin altogether. His description continues:
Unruhig wiegt sie sich und störet Lust und Ruh;
Sie deckt sich stets mit neuen Masken zu,
Sie mag als Haus und Hof, als Weib und Kind erscheinen,
Als Feuer, Wasser, Dolch und Gift;
Du bebst vor allem was nicht trifft,
Und was du nie verlierst das musst du stets beweinen. (V. 646–51)
and, in that cradle restless, destroys all quiet joy;
the masks she wears are always new–
she may appear as house and home, as wife and child, as fire, water, dagger, poison;
we live in dread of things that do not happen
and keep bemoaning losses that never will occur. (V. 646–51)
Admittedly, it is hard to grasp what or who exactly “care” (the concept) or Care/Sorge (the character appearing at the end of the play) is from these lines. Sorge changes her appearance—she wears masks. The first list of examples of what may constitute such a mask, “Haus und Hof, Weib und Kind,” is a quotation from Martin Luther’s Kleinem Katechismus (Schöne 224). A later passage in the play places Luther’s divine gifts within the category of private property: “Verflucht was als Besitz uns schmeichelt, / Als Weib und Kind, als Knecht und Pflug!” (‘Cursed be what flatters us as things we own, / as wife and child, as fields our workmen plow!’ V. 1597–98). The relationship to the cited articles is ambivalent at the least: Faust evokes God’s gifts listed by Luther under the heading “Von der Schöpfung” (‘Of creation’)—only to curse them as flattery. Despite their ambivalences, the two passages clearly link Sorge to possessions and dynamics of accumulation, which inform much of the dramatic movement in Faust II.
The desperation Sorge instills in humans is partly responsible for Faust’s early suicide attempt. To end the humiliation suffered as a mortal and to prove himself, at least once, a match for divine powers, Faust decides to take his life. Just in time, however, he gets distracted—he is interrupted by religious drama, a choir of angels celebrating the resurrection of Christ. During his second visit in Faust’s study, Mephistopheles mocks this suicide attempt, still seeking to win control over Faust’s soul (V. 1579–80). Faust, ill-tempered and convinced of the worthlessness of human endeavor, curses the distraction. Moreover, he does not stop at the unwelcome deflection of his suicidal intentions. Instead, he expands his curse over twenty lines to encompass any seduction, semblance, bedazzlement, and flattery:
So fluch’ ich allem was die Seele
Mit Lock- und Gaukelwerk umspannt,
Und sie in diese Trauerhöhle
Mit Blend- und Schmeichelkräften bannt! (V. 1587–90)
now I can only curse all the enticements that delude my soul with cheating visions,
all powers of persuasion and deception
that hold it here within its dreary cave! (V. 1587–90)
The impressive list of curse-worthy phenomena includes, furthermore, the delusion of appearance intruding on the senses (V. 1593–94), oblivion (V. 1603), ownership (V. 1597), wealth, and all endeavors incited by its name: “Verflucht sei Mammon, wenn mit Schätzen / Er uns zu kühnen Taten regt,” (‘Cursed be Mammon too, […] when he, with his treasures, / incites us to bold enterprise’ V. 1599–600). The end of the passage repeats the noun “Fluch” (‘curse’) four times in close succession:
Fluch sei dem Balsamsaft der Trauben!
Fluch jener höchsten Liebeshuld!
Fluch sei der Hoffnung! Fluch dem Glauben, Und Fluch vor allen der Geduld! (V. 1603–06)
A curse upon the nectar of the vine!
A curse upon love’s highest favors!
A curse on hope! a curse on faith!
but cursed be patience most of all! (V. 1603–06)
This passage has not received enough critical attention: looking at this list, the second part of the tragedy appears in a new light, as the revenge of the cursed. In Faust II, we find Faust bathed in the river of forgetfulness; chasing the apparition of Helena, the epitome of beauty; we see him disguised as the God of wealth, handing out chimeric gifts that turn into flames. In the final act, he appears as an imperialist ruler accumulating property—instead of cursing it, he now demands it: “Herrschaft gewinn ich, Eigentum!” (‘I wish to rule and have possessions!’ V. 10187). Ultimately, in the fourth and fifth acts, Faust’s ambitions take on a God-like scope: cursing the divine gifts of creation in Faust I, he now imagines himself the creator of land and people (V. 10220–10233,V. 11559–115580).
As the play comes to an end, Faust’s relationship to the markers of accumulation that originally troubled him has been reversed. During the 8600 lines of this transformation, disquieting thoughts of care (or “concern”—an- other plausible translation of “Sorge”) are completely absent. Sorge, as a voice, only returns once her kinsman Death enters Faust’s life again (V. 11397). This prolonged absence is deliberately composed and determines, among other factors, what does and does not take place in the many lines between Faust’s fierce rejection and his equally vehement demand of property and power.
While the scene “Nacht” (Faust I) introduces Sorge, the scene “Mitter- nacht” (Faust II) uncovers the denial following this early introduction. In the final act of the second part, Sorge reemerges as a character, detached from Faust, as a voice he decides to dismiss. Faust’s palace is pitch-dark and the character Sorge remains invisible. Following Faust’s question, “Ist jemand hier?” (‘Is someone here?’ V. 11420), Sorge spends forty-six lines naming and describing herself, that is, her effect on the person she owns: “Wen ich einmal mir besitze” (‘Once I make a man my own’ V. 11453). Faust’s monologue following Sorge’s first lines is dedicated to human striving as an end in and of itself, while Sorge’s second and third soliloquies propose a torturous loss of the ability to consciously comprehend the present moment. Their alternating monologues establish two different delineations of the contradictory, patchy conglomerate constituting the dramatic life of the character Faust.
While Sorge posits herself as a phenomenon that befalls humans universally (she uses the impersonal pronoun “wen”), Faust’s words reject the despair she imposes on his individual consciousness (“mir,” “ich”)—a consciousness that he simultaneously marks as generic and enlightened (“den klügsten Mann”):
Hör auf! so kommst du mir nicht bei!
Ich mag nicht solchen Unsinn hören.
Fahrhin! die schlechte Litanei
Sie könnte selbst den klügsten Mann betören. (V. 11467–70)
Stop! In this way you won’t get at me!
I will not listen to this madness.
Begone! Your wretched litany
might well seduce a man of wisdom. (V. 11467–70)
In his next speech, Faust refuses to acknowledge the power of the phenomenon: “Doch deine Macht, o Sorge, schleichend groß, / Ich werde sie nicht anerkennen.” (‘but I shall not acknowledge, Care, not ever, / your vast, insidious power.’ V. 11491–94)
Both his rejection and refusal are preceded by an even more powerful negation: denial. The poetic design of the scene conjures its elusiveness. Sorge’s verses are four-footed trochees, creating an effect that Albrecht Schöne describes as a monotonous droning with lulling cadences (739). Only the final verse of her first monologue is iambic. This abrupt change of rhythm at the end of Sorge’s monologue emphasizes her shift into the meter in which Faust speaks. When Sorge’s voice addresses him directly (“Hast du die Sorge nie gekannt?”), Faust’s non-reply uses the same meter and rhyming words: “Ich bin nur durch die Welt gerannt.” Faust neither acknowledges his acquaintance with Sorge explicitly, nor does he acknowledge the question: only the accordance of rhythm and rhyme pairing the two lines establishes their cohesion. Using poetic tools, the text depicts the double bind of knowing and not-knowing that is at the center of numerous definitions of “denial”—or of “disavowal,” “self-deception,” “false beliefs,” “willful ignorance,” “oblivion,” and other terms used by different disciplines to describe related phe- nomena.1 In the frequently quoted book States of Denial (2001), sociologist Stanley Cohen cites psychoanalytical approaches and theories from cognitive psychology, but also offers his own description of “denial:”
A statement about the world or the self (or about your knowledge of the world or the self) which is neither literally true nor a lie intended to deceive others but allows for the strange possibility of simultaneously knowing and not- knowing. The existence of what is denied must be “somehow” known, and statements expressing this denial must be “somehow” believed in. (24; italics in original)
Another passage says it more succinctly: “We know, but at the same time we don’t know.” (Cohen 5) This brief note captures the effect of rhythm and rhyme in Faust’s reply to Sorge: Faust knows and doesn’t know. Completing Sorge’s line with a rhyme and adding a suggestive “nur,” Faust’s “Ich bin nur durch die Welt gerannt” (italics SF) offers a poetic expression of Cohen’s definition. The evocative poetic effect speaks to the alternative access to denial that literature and the arts afford, as they use aesthetic innovation to move beyond what is empirically known and affirmed.
In addition to this pivotal pair of lines, Faust II utilizes several other tools to approximate the occurrence of denial. The second and most conspicuous one is placed in “Anmutige Gegend” (‘Pleasant Landscape’): in the first scene of the second part, Faust is bathed in the dew of the river Lethe (the river of forgetfulness) which erases his memory (V. 4629). This erasure performs denial on the level of plot and helps to reproduce the slippery relationship to temporality that denial exhibits. For this reproduction to succeed, Goethe draws on one of the literary forms’ particular advantages to instantiate the self-annulling present tense of denial (for the subject in denial, denial only comes into existence once it is overcome, undone). First performed in 1876 and rarely staged since, Faust II is generally considered a closet drama which benefits from the linearity of the written form. The linear form stabilizes the narrative fabric and allows the text to point both forward and backward in time. It is this structure that enables the dramatic ploy of the erasure of Faust’s memory to translate denial into the temporalities of drama, as it secures the audience’s knowledge of the part of Faust’s consciousness to which the character himself is blinded. This privileged access to what is sidelined allows for an affirmation of the denied: it remains present to the audience because the audience is not affected by the dislocation that Faust experiences.
The monologues by Faust and Sorge at the end of the play reintroduce the disconnect of consciousness enacted in the scene “Anmutige Gegend” and sustain it throughout “Mitternacht.” This structural split and its resulting dissonances form the third literary element that facilitates the depiction of denial in the play, this time at the level of dialogue. Faust’s and Sorge’s lines invite a reading of the fissure between them that focuses on psychological and ideological components, which appear intertwined. They describe ways of being in the world that share certain ideological configurations and yet they arrive at very different psychic constitutions. Faust uses his first interpolation into Sorge’s speech to give his own account of his life experiences:
Ein jed’ Gelüst ergriff ich bei den Haaren,
Was nicht genügte ließ ich fahren,
Was mir entwischte ließ ich ziehn.
Ich habe nur begehrt und nur vollbracht,
Und abermals gewünscht, und so mit Macht
Mein Leben durchgestürmt (V. 11434–39)
I snatched from fortune what I wanted,
what did not please me I let go,
and disregard what eluded me.
I’ve only had desires to fulfill them,
Then wished anew, and so I’ve stormed amain
My way through life. (V. 11434–39)
Here, Faust produces the most explicit formulation of his trajectory: a succession of cravings, wishes, actions, and activities, each of them replaceable as long as their consecutive succession does not cease.
Whereas Faust seems untroubled by unrelenting, interchangeable movement, Sorge exposes the loss of presence and conscious life as the main consequences born of these notions. Sorge stresses the futility of Faust’s pursuit and names herself as the cause of a deep, related depression (Schöne 739). Her first monologue describes a human whose command over material wealth and physical wellbeing does not save them from despair: “alle Welt” (‘this world’ V. 11454), “Schätze” (‘treasures’ V. 11459), “Fülle” (‘plenty’ V. 11462), and functional outward senses (V. 11457) are accompanied by starvation (V. 11462), inner darkness (V. 11458), and the inability to recognize presence or arrive at a sense of accomplishment (V. 11465–66). Appearing in the form of possessions (V. 648), Sorge renders their accumulation useless to the owner (V. 11459–62).2
In her second monologue, Sorge exposes Faust’s “Weiterschreiten” (‘keeping on’ V. 11451) as the opposite of what Faust presents it to be. Her lines echo a movement pushing forward. Caught in oxymora, however, the subject is neither present nor mobile: breathing and yet suffocating, not suffocating but without life, neither desperate nor surrendering, advancing yet stalling in one place (V. 11471–86). Sorge characterizes Faust’s forward motion as a stuck-ness or, more specifically, a self-destructive spiral leading nowhere.
Rather at ease with paradoxes, literature is not threatened by the incongruities within Sorge’s assertions nor the blatant contradictions between her and Faust’s propositions. The frequent oxymoronic structures in the scene point to the central position this trope might hold within the more comprehensive literary symptomatology of denial that my analysis wishes to encourage. The centrality of the oxymoron recurs in sociological and psychoanalytical expositions of the phenomenon. Cohen’s definition of denial quoted above relies on the oxymoron of knowing and not-knowing. Dissonances and paradoxes are also at the core of Sigmund Freud’s 1927 treatise on sexual fetishism, a well-known, early account of denial (Freud uses the noun “Ver- leugnung,” commonly translated as “disavowal”). In this short piece, Freud documents the incompatible accounts of patients he considers to be “in denial.” In particular, he focuses on a young man who acknowledges his father’s death (“realitätsgerechte Einstellung”) and yet does not acknowledge it (“wunschgerechte Einstellung”): “die wunschgerechte wie die realitätsge- rechte Einstellung bestanden nebeneinander” (‘the one [mental current] which was consistent with reality stood alongside the one which accorded with a wish.’ Freud, Werke 316; Freud, Sexuality 218). The discursive structure of what Freud identifies as a psychological disorder is evidenced in Faust’s final scene. According to Freud, denial is present in systems of texts within which signifying units contradict and yet exist next to each other (“nebeneinander”). As long as the contradictory narratives do not come into conflict, denial may go unnoticed and persist. Anna Freud’s early oeuvre Das Ich und die Ab- wehrmechanismen explains this ability of the human psyche to ignore irreconcilable differences, defining denial as a defense mechanism shielding the ego from unpleasant or threating external impressions (85).
The structural and plot-defined significance of Sorge’s appearance forces the following questions: what is Faust’s denial shielding him from and what purpose does it serve? Given the considerations above, an answer to this might also be found by asking: who is Sorge? Sorge’s own response to this query posed by Faust (“Und du wer bist denn du?” ‘And who are you?’ V. 11421) seems not particularly informative: “Bin einmal da” (‘I am here— that’s all that matters.’ V. 11421). Ellis Dye’s article “Sorge in Heidegger and Goethe’s Faust,” however, draws an intriguing connection between Sorge’s “da” and Heidegger’s concept of Sorge as “the being of Dasein” (Dye 210).3 According to Dye, Sorge’s “da” stresses her inseparability from being and defies any attempts to locate the allegory either “inside” or “outside” the world (212). Exploring the character against the backdrop of Heidegger’s existential philosophy, Dye is not particularly concerned with the specifics of “world”—in our case the historical and fictional realms of the Faust-tragedy. Schlaffer’s Faust Zweiter Teil: Die Allegorie des 19. Jahrhunderts accounts for the historical situatedness of both Faust the literary work and Faust the character, caught up in a plot discussing, among many other things, the economic developments of the play’s past and present. According to Schlaffer, the allegories of Faust II are “new” allegories whose meaning is dependent on their specific contexts. Analyzing the relationship between the economic, technological, and cultural transformations taking place around 1800, Schlaffer understands the allegories in Faust II to take on the challenge of depicting modernity’s new socio-economic order (Schlaffer 150–53).4 Brown similarly reads the allegories in the second part of the tragedy as updated tropes (9). Her book Goethe’s Allegories of Identity focuses less on the historical process depicted in Faust than on the conceptions of selfhood developing within it. Writing about the evolution of Goethe’s oeuvre over time, Brown concludes:
[…] Goethe transformed allegory from a tool of moral analysis to one of psychological analysis and thus enabled himself to lay out otherwise hidden, too interiorized, parts of the psyche to achieve a fuller representation of inte- riority not mediated by the thoughts of the characters. (17)
My own understanding of Sorge’s function within Faust combines parts of all three readings. As Dye suggests, Sorge is as much part of Faust as she is part of his dramatic world: she is a theatrical tool depicting yet unverbalized parts of selfhood (Brown) that account for the altered social and economic conditions (Schlaffer) from which a new and partly unconscious selfhood emerges.
Elaborating further, Faust and Sorge’s soliloquies intertwine the discussion of subjectivity with historical developments. Their verses in “Mitter- nacht” allude to economic logics of open-ended productivity (Strasser 124; Vogl 336–46) and project those logics onto the literary fabric of Faust’s subjectivity. Accounting for interiority as much as exteriority, the two characters’ monologues produce the idea of a human composed of contradictory and partially unacknowledged experiences, split along their enunciators’ lines. The ultimate product is what Vogl discusses as the late 18th/early 19th century’s “economic human.”5
Considering economic thought, Sorge, and the play’s treatment of subjectivity, Vogl’s reading excavates a human type at the heart of the Faust tragedy that encompasses both traits, those related by Faust and by Sorge:
Dieser Typ ist ein Mensch, der in der Fülle das Fehlen verspürt, im Mangel die Bedingung seines Wünschens erfährt und die Kunst des Verfehlens beherrscht: nämlich im unendlichen Streben endliche Güter zu wollen. Und er ist ein Mensch, der sein Leben verbringt, verbraucht und verzehrt, indem er sich selbst, seine Reichtümer, sein Leben und Fortleben produziert. In diesem Horizont steht also ein neuer Mensch, der menschlichste Mensch, der ökonomische Mensch. (345)
This type of human, who feels need within plentitude, who experiences privation as the condition of their desire, and masters the art of falling short: this is what indefinitely striving for finite goods amounts to. And this type is a human who spends, wastes, and consumes their life by producing themselves, their riches, their life and continued existence. Within this horizon one finds this new human, the most ‘human’ human, the economic human. (Transl. SF)
Vogl insists that Faust’s and Sorge’s paragraphs are complementary, that, instead of being in negotiation, they produce one argument (332–33). My reading of the scene affirms this interpretation and adds to it: the type of human Vogl derives from the scene—the economic human—is split in two, divided by the fissure between Faust and Sorge’s voices. Their monologues do not fit together as neatly as the description quoted above would suggest: though related, their narratives miss each other entirely, creating in effect a scene-long dissonance. As an early example of the economic human, Faust possesses less self-awareness than Vogl’s description of his “type” implies: only at the beginning of his tragedy does Faust ponder the “need” or “deficiency” central in Vogl (“ein Mensch, der in der Fülle das Fehlen verspürt”); in Faust II he has ceased to experience the “privation” or “scarcity” at the root of his desires and wishes (“[der] im Mangel die Bedingung seines Wünschens erfährt”).
Vogl sees “Fehlen” and “Mangel” as crucial drivers within capitalist markets emerging in the eighteenth century, producing effects of insufficiency and inducing limitless, insatiable desire (Vogl 328)—a circumstance that Faust encounters and contends with throughout Faust II.6 According to Vogl, the “Bedingungen” (‘conditions’), “Sorge” (‘concern’), and “Arbeit” (‘labor’) of modern production are as much determined by endless activity and drifting dissatisfaction as Faust’s dramatic life (346). It is important to stress, however, that Faust never identifies the alleged futility of his movements himself: it is only Sorge’s voice that articulates it.
Until his death, Faust denies, rejects, and refuses to acknowledge the part Sorge plays in his own and his world’s constitution. Nonetheless, his lines mark the unacknowledged ex negativo. His repeated use of “nur” hints at something missing: “Ich bin nur durch die Welt gerannt” (‘I only ran around the world’), “Ich habe nur begehrt und nur vollbracht” (‘I only desired and only achieved’ V. 11437, italics and transl. SF). These seemingly unintentionally highlighted gaps in his account of his life add a fourth literary performance of denial, complementing rhythm and rhyme, erasure, and dissonance. The repetitions of “nur” in his second to last scene allude to the limits of Faust’s self-narration and the possible presence of alternative interpretations and experiences that remain outside of his recognition. Offering a reckoning of his life, Faust erases the gaps in his own story and naively claims full authorship. He does not see that the world through which he storms and the opportunities therein were all put on stage by someone else: a ceaseless succession of activities and sensations was and remains Mephistopheles’s primary strategy to distract Faust from his conviction of the worthlessness of such earthly pursuits (“Studierzimmer II” ‘Faust’s Study’).
In All That Is Solid Melts Into Air, Marshall Berman describes the project of modernity as the “open-ended development of self and society, incessant transformation of the whole inner and outer world” (85). For Berman, Faust II reveals what he calls the “tragedy [of modernity] nobody wants to confront” (86): the ambiguities and uncertain outcomes of development, the psychological, human, and planetary cost of capitalist endeavor.
Sorge is one of the main drivers of this revelation in the play. Her descriptions of depression, futility, and self-destructive spirals demonstrate the impact of endless progress and development on the individual. Nonetheless, Sorge does not have a moral function but rather a primarily operative function within the play: the character uncovers dramatic layers that might otherwise be missed. Firstly, her voice provokes Faust to produce an explicit self-assessment. As he accounts for his life, he aligns the motions of his desire alongside a compliance with ideas of endless striving; it is the most overtly that Faust engages these concepts in any part of the play. Secondly, Sorge not only exposes Faust’s consciously observed beliefs but also, in her own lines, reveals the willful denial of the faulty logics underlying these beliefs; in doing so, she takes on an additional, representative function for the rupture created by this specific denial.
Though Sorge’s revelations can be read as principally addressing Faust’s consciousness, her words remain general, inviting pathways toward more systemic considerations of denial and its relationship to the historical developments incorporated into the Faust-tragedy. The following deliberations on systemic facilitations of denial are guided by several questions: Which distractions, devices, and distortions in focus and meaning strengthen denial? What enables the adoption of certain kinds of information or a body of thought? What enables its dismissal?
Adrian Bardon’s comprehensive, interdisciplinary study Truth about Denial: Bias and Self-Deception in Science, Politics, and Religion highlights mechanisms determining the availability of discourses as well as the potential manipulation of discourses within which denial is fabricated. Bardon repeatedly underlines the connections and tensions between personal beliefs and intentional politics. His concern is the dysfunction of the inextricably linked political and economic systems of the twenty-first century: “Beliefs […] are not purely self-generated. Powerful political or economic elites, through their paid agents or media surrogates, may be motivated to deliberately misinform the public on various issues” (3).
Though Faust II was composed two centuries before Bardon’s survey, it is worth examining the interests of powerful elites (if we may call the devil by his name) in Faust’s tragedy. In his second meeting with Mephistopheles, Faust seems aware of—and strongly rejects—the pleasures and lies that he assumes will be utilized against his own strong convictions. Confident to be immune to the deceit of superficial indulgences, he proposes:
Kannst du mich schmeichelnd je belügen,
Daß ich mir selbst gefallen mag,
Kannst du mich mit Genuß betrügen:
Das sei für mich der letzte Tag! (V. 1694–97)
If ever you, with lies and flattery,
can lull me into self-complacency
or dupe me with a life of pleasure,
may that day be the last for me! (V. 1694–97)
Interestingly, Mephistopheles, in response to the challenge, does not even attempt to “lie” or “dupe” Faust. Rather, he promises novelty (“Ich gebe dir was noch kein Mensch gesehn.” ‘I’ll give you things no mortal’s ever seen.’ V. 1674) and outlines his plan to take Faust on a journey through “die große Welt” (‘the grand monde’ V. 2052). Mephistopheles knows he has no need for intentional deception: the world they enter will itself expedite the workings of orchestrated oblivion.
“Orchestrated oblivion,” as I use it in accordance with Rocío Pichon- Rivière’s work on the social reproduction of injustice, designates discursive mechanisms that enable, support, and strengthen denial: ways of organizing representations and discourses that make it easier to forget than to remember, to ignore than to see, and that are (actively or passively, consciously and unconsciously) generated and/or sustained by interested parties (Pichon- Rivière; see also Mills). Acute attention to subtleties within the usage of language obviously matter a great deal in uncovering such orchestrations— within our present social and political life as much as within the Faust-text.
In Faust, denial is not produced through misinformation but is cultivated by the play’s plotlines, dramatic dialogues, and other theatrical arrangements. Most of the dramatic moments serving such function utilize one or both of two effects: they create a distraction from or a distortion of the presently present. The next two subsections offer brief overviews of key uses of these effects in the Faust-tragedy.
II.1 Distraction
While performing denial, the couplet, “Hast du die Sorge nie gekannt? / Ich bin nur durch die Welt gerannt,” also establishes the crucial link between aged Faust’s willful ignorance and the world he was running through, which enables this ignorance. Generated by Mephistopheles to deflect Faust’s reckoning with futility, the ground covered during their journey into the “große Welt” and its distractions is extensive, the attractions lined up at the wayside are countless. The tragedy spawns characters, units of text, props, sets, symbols, allegories, and everything in between, all at a massive scale: the second part alone moves through more than twenty locations, with numerous vast and fantastic landscapes, and comprises over 150 characters, among them birds, elephants, dolphins, gnomes, dwarfs, and giant ants.
Incessant movement (embraced by Faust early on, V. 1692–93) and speed (promised by Mephistopheles soon after, V. 1824–1829) intensify the distracting effect of the presented spectacle.7 Although Faust describes himself as “running” (V. 11433) and “storming” (V. 11439), Mephistopheles and Faust mostly fly—to and from Leipzig, through the night and over fields, into antiquity and back again. Their flight schedule shows that the epic diversion Mephistopheles orchestrates traverses not only numerous localities but several historical epochs as well. In the first part of the play, Mephistopheles and Faust ascend the Blocksberg during the medieval event of Walpurgis night, while, in the second, we find Faust at a feudal court, in Greek antiquity, raising a child in mythical Arcadia, fighting feudal armies on a battlefield flanked by high mountains, and, finally, creating his own empire on a fiefdom located on a precarious coastline, governing according to 19th-century imperialist logics.8
All the creatures, identity changes, localities, and epochs conjured in the play’s 12,111 lines easily drown out any disquiet of individual consciousness. Faust’s repeated “nurs” in the final act may operate as red flags; such subtle discursive indications, however, dissipate among the overwhelming number of characters, sets, and historical periods that float across the stage. Overstimulation both necessitates and impedes a selective approach to information, and within this contradictory dynamic Faust simply ignores his own patterns of speech as much as Mephistopheles’s carefully placed allusions to his unsoundness of mind (V. 6195–98, V. 6564–69, V. 10177–97). The drama proposes the systemic’s dominance over the individual psyche: the initially cursed “Lock- und Gaukelwerk” (‘cheating visions’), “Blend- und Schmeichel- krafte” (‘powers of persuasion and deception’), and “Erscheinung[en]” (‘ap- pearance[s]’ V. 1588, V. 1590, V. 1593) decisively prevail in Faust’s life.
In Faust II, Faust only pauses and reflects during one brief moment. Shortly after the murders of Philemon and Baucis, Faust not only condemns speedy action (“Geboten schnell, zu schnell getan! – ”‘An order quickly given, too quickly executed! –’ V. 11382), but also remembers his earlier cursing self and wonders at his own responsibility for the trouble with supernatural forces and the “Spuk” (‘spectral shapes’ V. 11407–10) they generate. This detour onto a path to self-awareness is brief and its quick end underlines denial’s function as a defense mechanism. Sorge appears and explicitly threatens to render “alle Welt” and “Schätze” into despair and nothingness; Faust’s worldview now at risk, he quickly regresses into a defensive, denying stance. Though ultimately ineffective, this fleeting repose illustrates the positive effect rest and calm have for self-awareness and contemplation (Bell 108–17), and in turn implies the negative influence of haste and overstimulation.
II.2 Distortion
The distractions of Faust’s breathtaking journey might itself be sufficient to allow for the manifestation of denial, yet the play conjures distortion as a further effect to redirect attention and disguise meaning. The glittering, seducing mirages of power (monetary power, military power) render the relationships between means and ends, causes and effects, motivations and actions even more obscure. At numerous moments in the play, signifiers of wealth generate unreliable, misleading, or deceiving phantoms, which affect political institutions as much as concepts of identity.9
Whereas property and money are lacking at the beginning of the play (“Auch hab’ ich weder Gut noch Geld” ‘Then, too, I don’t have land or money’ V. 374), they soon materialize in abundance, conspicuously accompanied by ghostliness, semblance, and a lack of intrinsic value (Mammon glows within a mountain located at the center of the eerie, spectral half-world of ‘Walpurgis Night,’Faust I; gold is also being hunted in the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night,’Faust II; and illusory gifts are handed out by the God of wealth in the scene “Mummenschanz” ‘Masquerade’). At the same time, money is said to skew interpretations of selfhood: already in Faust I, Margarete remarks on the effect of prosperity on personhood and status (V. 2796–804) and Mephistopheles famously extols money for its capacity to buy (horse-)power (which in return augments its owner’s virility and social standing in the world; V. 1824–1829). Recognizing the significance of the structure they expose, young Karl Marx includes Mephistopheles’s horse-lines in his “Ökonomisch-philosophische Manuskripte” (‘Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts’), composed in 1844.10 Quoting Goethe and Shakespeare at length, Marx describes money as a “wahrhaft schöpferische Kraft” (italics in original; ‘truly creative power’ transl. SF) and exemplifies how it turns “Wesenskräfte” (‘essential powers’) into something that they previously were not—possibly even into their opposite. What one is and is able to do is not determined by individual dispositions but by the amount of money one owns (Marx “Manuskripte” 565).
Once more, seeds sown in Part One unfold fully in the second part of the tragedy: the shift from “being” to “possessing” as the essence of an object or character is completed in the “Mummenschanz”-scene. At this carnival, which mimics the rules of the marketplace, it does not matter what one is, but what one has (Schlaffer 83). Within this logic, money—the “general equivalence,” according to Marx—is elevated to an external force determining perceptions of selfhood. Mephistopheles’s magic interventions, so often delivering forms of (unreliable) wealth, have a similar effect on Faust. Eventually, Faust simply “forgets” (and later denies) his earlier desperately questioning and troubled state of mind. Less and less agitated by the contradictions emerging from his experiences, Faust increasingly regards what the devil bestows as his own achievement (note the subject in “Herrschaft gewinn ich, Eigentum!”). This transformation is fully exposed in Act Five: by the end of his tragedy, Faust is an old man, frail, blind, and dying, mistaking for his own unlimited powers the strength of his workers digging his grave. The illusion of omnipotence created by a power of questionable origin supports the denial of the most fundamental aspect of the human condition, mortality.
The character Faust, however, is more than just the object of a theatrical “experimentation” with identity (Brown 81)—he also serves as an active agent in advancing the distortions of his surroundings. In the scene “Mum- menschanz,” Faust appears disguised as Plutus and himself fabricates mechanisms of misrepresentation which reverberate in Marx’s descriptions of capitalist markets. This scene, involving multiple layers of disguise and trickery, begins as a triumphal procession of commodities, groups of workers, and allegories of abstract concepts such as wisdom, fear, and victory. Faust enters towards the middle of the scene and delivers delusive gifts to the characters present. The herald orchestrating the event scolds the participants, “Glaubt ihr man gab euch Gold und Wert?” (‘Do you believe it’s gold you’re getting?’ V. 5730), and warns the greedy crowd trying to catch Faust’s shiny gifts which quickly dissolve into nothing:
Ihr Täppischen! ein artiger Schein
Soll gleich die plumpe Wahrheit sein.
Was soll euch Wahrheit?—Dumpfen Wahn
Packt ihr an allen Zipfeln an. (V. 5733–36)
You louts who right off want a pretty show
to be the truth of coarse reality!
What’s truth to you who try to grab
hollow illusions randomly? (V. 5733–36)
While the whole procession disintegrates into chaos and flames, Mephistoph- eles utilizes the tumult to deliver wealth in the form of paper money, which Act Four will reveal to have fatal consequences for the empire supposedly saved by it (V. 10244–71).11
Discussing Plutus/Faust’s deceptive offerings in the “Mummenschanz,” Schlaffer refers to Marx’s analyses in Das Kapital, which stress the opacity of the marketplace and the confusing, if not oblivion-producing, effects its concealments have on its participants.12 According to Marx, the obscure complexity of value ascriptions within capitalist production and trade leads its players to act like Faust: “In ihrer Verlegenheit denken unsre Warenbesitzer wie Faust. Im Anfang war die Tat. Sie haben schon gehandelt, bevor sie gedacht haben.” (‘In their difficulties our commodity-owners think like Faust: “Im Anfang war die That.” They therefore acted and transacted before they thought’ Kapital 101; Capital 58) Under the headline “Der Fetischcharakter der Ware und sein Geheimnis” (‘The Fetishism of Commodities and the Secret Thereof’), Marx describes the system of equivalences, relationalities, and exchanges within which market players operate. The fact that they are unable to see through and understand the structural foundations of their operations is not least due to the constitution of the final solidified shape of this structure, “die Warenwelt” (‘world of commodities’): eventually perceived as “Natur- formen des gesellschaftlichen Lebens” (‘natural, self-understood forms of social life’), the shapes of this world’s social manifestations are anything but natural. However, because the actual structure of capitalist markets and their resulting societies remain concealed, the arbitrariness of its organization of values is not exposed (Marx Kapital 90; Marx Capital 47).
Both Faust’s self-deceit at the end of his life and his deceitful gifts in the “Mummenschanz” point to the slantwise perception that Sorge identifies in her victims: “Er verliert sich immer tiefer, / Siehet alle Dinge schiefer”‘more and more he’s bogged down, / everything seems more distorted’ (V. 11475–11476). Her words link systemically produced distortions and the skewed consciousness of the individual. Like the effects of distraction, this link between the systemic and individual is more implied than explicit; nonetheless, it is obvious that clarity of consciousness is increasingly elusive when social and economic structures are veiled and incomprehensible.
A somewhat equivocal passage in Anna Freud’s Das Ich und die Ab- wehrmechanismen may allude to the historicity of human psychology:13 writing in the 1930s, she identifies denial as one of the foremost defense mechanisms of her time. Far from linking her findings to the economic organization of capitalist societies as Marx might have, she nevertheless takes the important step of uncoupling psychological processes and notions of a human mind per se. Marx interjects the workings of economic powers in between these two psychological moments and is the first to link ideology, which is almost always inextricably tied to denial, to intentionally produced misconceptions serving the ruling economic class (Bardon 10–11). I suggest that its depiction of unremitting, ill-considered activity is not the only reason why Marx frequently returns to Faust (Shell 106)—though Sorge is not explicitly named, she might very well be one of the ghosts haunting Das Kapital of whom Jacques Derrida writes in Specters of Marx.
* * *
The fact that distracting and distorting representations support orchestrated oblivion is once more stressed by the carefully composed end of Faust’s life and the improbable reemergence of Sorge. Sorge is only able to reappear and affirm herself because the drama’s visual spectacle eventually abates.14 In the fifth act, the play’s circus shuts down fairly abruptly. The darkening of the scene is deliberately crafted: “Mitternacht” is preceded by the scene “Tiefe Nacht” (‘The Darkness becomes complete’), which starts out with a seer’s ode to light and visibility and ends in his curse of his ability to see (V. 11300, 11329). Toward the end of “Tiefe Nacht,” Faust comments on the disappearance of the stars and the emergence of smoke and haze (V. 11378–83). The four “Grauen Weiber” (‘grey women’) entering shortly after announce the arrival of clouds (V. 11395). Totally alone on a completely dark stage, Faust is unable to see Sorge: “Und so verschüchtert stehen wir allein. / Die Pforte knarrt und niemand kommt herein.” (‘And so we stand alone and frightened.— / There the door creaks, and yet no one appears.’ V. 11412–419).
The need for the visual, transitory, turbulent spectacle to end before the voice of Sorge is heard illuminates what has enabled her disappearance: the cursed “Lock- und Gaukelwerk” with which Mephistopheles fills much of Faust’s long life. For the reemergence of the unwelcome voice announcing the futility of incessant motion and desires, “Mitternacht” carves out an exceptional setting of sensatory deprivation. It suggests a space cleared of (mis)representations as a site where orchestrated oblivion ends and the fissures within the world and its subject, as well as the unseen beyond these fissures, may reveal themselves. How to translate the proposed space into a lived experience is left for the audience to decide.
Footnotes
This article benefited tremendously from Hannah Eldridge’s editorial work; my special thanks go to her. I also thank the anonymous reviewers of this article for their attentive reading and insightful recommendations. Furthermore, I am grateful to Daphne Jung and Giulia Pelli- zatto for our fruitful and instructive conversations on this topic which taught me so much.
↵1 The disciplinary home of the term denial (disavowal) is psychoanalytical thought. Freud uses “Verleugnung” to explain fetishism and psychosis, describing a subject’s refusal to acknowledge or recognize the reality of a traumatic perception (Laplanche and Pontalis 118). Overarching studies of denial frequently list several terms in their title, e.g. The Truth about Denial: Bias and Self-Deception in Science, Politics, and Religion by Adrian Bardon or Denial: Self-Deception, False Beliefs, and the Origins of the Human Mind by Varki and Brower. Varki and Brower distinguish denial, “ignorance,” and “inattention,” but concede that there is no perfect term for “the ability to deny aspects of reality” (17). Charles Mills, on the other hand, uses the term “ignorance” to analyze phenomena here labeled as orchestrated oblivion with a focus on race (16–17).
↵2 Consider Vogl’s interpretation: “Denn zunächst bezieht sich diese Figur, mit der Fausts Ende beginnt, ganz offenbar auf jene Vergeblichkeit zurück, mit der auch Fausts unruhiger Weltlauf begonnen und die schon am Anfang des ersten Teils unter dem Name ‘Sorge’ jeden Besitz als Fehl und umgekehrt ausgewiesen hat.” (332; ‘Ultimately, this character with whom Faust’s end begins refers back to the futility that starts Faust’s restless course and which, by the name of ‘Sorge,’ exposes every possession as deficiency (and the other way around) at the very beginning of Part One.’ transl. SF).
↵3 To support his definition of Sorge, Heidegger links Faust’s Sorge to Hygenius’s fable, which Goethe knew from Herder’s “Zerstreute Blätter” (Kommerell 81). In Hyginus’s version, Sorge is the creator and possessor of humans: “Weil aber die ‘Sorge’ dieses Wesen zuerst gebildet, so möge, solange es lebt, die ‘Sorge’ es besitzen.” (quoted in Heidegger 198; §42). Matthew Bell digs deeper in his study of the concept of care throughout Goethe’s work and identifies other classical sources (Bell 87–88). In particular, he underlines the parallels between Horace’s “atra Cura” (dark care) in Odes III.i and Goethe’s Sorge, stressing that Horace’s “atra Cura” explicitly haunts the rich.
↵4 Schlaffer explains the extensive use of allegorical structures in Faust II by uncovering analogies between modernity’s unique temporal constitution (early modern era, progress, development, revolution) and allegoric processes in Faust (emergence, crisis, dissolution; Schlaffer 150–51). On Goethe’s study of economic matters and his relationship to “progress” see Metscher; Carter; Mahl; Segeberg; and Osten.
↵5 Vogl’s focus on striving, desire, and ‘lack,’ as well as his survey’s interest in the intersections of poetic expression and new economic knowledges (15–16) makes Kalkül und Leidenschaft especially fruitful for this article. Texts with a similar focus on the relationship of Goethe’s work to economic development include Berman, Schlaffer 1998.
↵6 Faust II includes several fundamental elements of these new economic realities: Act One (“Kaiserliche Pfalz, Saal des Thrones”) depicts the shift from feudal land ownership to a bourgeois credit system (Schlaffer 1998, 94–96), which is, at its root, a circulation of need/ deficiency (Vogl 328, Schlaffer 80). Act One also includes the “Mummenschanz”-scene that presents the market place as a spectacle producing “Schein” (‘semblance’), promising “Fülle” (‘abundance’), and delivering “Mangel” (‘scarcity’; Vogl 324–26). In addition, the “Mummen- schanz” serves as the starting point for Mephistopheles’s project to create paper money, a means emerging in the 17th and gaining traction in the 19th century. The sovereign’s signature on the notes supposedly guaranteeing their value constitutes an uncertain promise, an unreliable contract (Vogl 322).
↵7 On Goethe’s apprehensions regarding the increased velocity of life in the 19th century see Osten.
↵8 Mephistopheles names the predatory nature of Faust’s politics (V. 11171–V.11188) and colonial settlement practices (V. 11274; see also Deinert 1052). In addition, Berman sees industrialization’s organization of labor and finance at work in the massive endeavors undertaken by Faust’s subjects (64, 74).
↵9 The impact of money (especially paper money) on societies’ understanding of value (Vogl 250), the difference between reality and deception (Vogl 338, 344), human thought (Shell 4, 7, 185), and the relationship between symbols and objects (Shell 7) has been discussed extensively. The general inscrutability of capitalist markets was already analyzed by Marx (see this part of the article and Schlaffer 1998, 49–60). Berman’s work stresses capitalist agents’ inclination to turn a blind eye or willfully ignore the negative effects of their actions (Berman 66–71, 74, 100–01).
↵10 This connection is frequently mentioned, e.g. in Schlaffer 1998, Horisch.
↵11 On the development and effects of paper money (in general and in Faust) see Shell 6, 105–09; Vogl 317–323. On the increasing abstraction (“Entdinglichung”) of money see Schlaffer 1998, 92–94.
↵12 Schlaffer summarizes the function and effect of Plutus’s appearance: “Zur Herrschaft gelangt, organisiert das Geld die sinnliche Welt neu.” (93) (‘Once it secures dominance, money reorganizes the sensuous world.’ transl. SF) Money, Schlaffer further states, creates a“zweite Natur” (‘second nature’ 93–94; transl. SF) that is only “mittelbare” (‘mediated’). Describing a world created by bourgeois capitalist economy, Marx (on whom Schlaffer’s interpretations build) speaks not only of its artificial, but also its “verrückte” (‘absurd’) shape (Marx Kapital 90; Marx Capital 47).
↵13 See A. Freud Abwehrmechanismen 137. It is not entirely clear if her use of “historical” refers to the personal history of individuals or cultural history: “Auch der historische Zusam- menhang zwischen typischen Erlebnissen in der individuellen Entwicklung und der Entstehung bestimmter Abwehrformen ist zum großen Teil noch dunkel.” (A. Freud Abwehrmechanismen 137; ‘There is still considerable obscurity about the historical connection between typical experiences in individual development and the production of particular modes of defense.’ A. Freud Mechanisms of Defense 173)
↵14 Guy Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle is an important intertext for a broader discussion of “spectacle” and oblivion. Debord’s work updates Marx’s theory of commodity fetishism for the twentieth century, focusing on the interweaving of the visual and the ideological: “Spectacle,” in Debord’s sense, is not a collection of images but a logic of representation that informs social relations within a society (12, Th. 4) and quickly becomes a “Weltanschauung” (12, Th. 5). It is the product of an economic order (Debord 15, Th. 11; 16, Th. 16) and so omnipresent that it is hard to step outside, even hard to detect (Debord 14, Th. 10; 15, Th. 12). The “enormous positivity” of spectacle (Debord 15, Th. 12) is also described as a “second Nature” (Debord 19, Th. 24). Attempting to locate that which is “masked” (27, Th. 40), “covert” (28, Th. 41), and “blanketed” (29, Th. 42), Debord turns to Sigmund Freud’s “unconscious” (34, Th. 51; 27, Th. 40). In light of the argument I have made thus far, I suggest moving beyond the idea of the unconscious: Freud’s own text links “Verdrängung,” which would ban psychic materials in the unconscious, to emotions and “Verleugnung” to representations (313).
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