10 - Love and Death in Faust

Summary

GOETHE'S FAUST EXPRESSES Romanticism's agony over the fact of individuation and the individual's distance from its origin and destiny. Its action is propelled by a man's desire to escape from selfhood into love. Faust does not end in a Liebestod, like Romeo and Juliet or Aida. Yet what is at stake is the continuation of Faust's self-identity in time versus his dissolution, his Entgrenzung, in a timeless moment of bliss. The escape from selfhood into union with another, whether a lover, the world, or God, would be a Liebestod, and there are many echoes of the love-death theme in Faust, such as Margarete's longing to expire in the rapture of Faust's kisses (3406–13) and her reproach in the prison scene of the Urfaust (the “early version” of Faust): “Bist mein Heinrich und hast's Küssen verlernt! Wie sonst ein ganzer Himmel mit deiner Umarmung gewaltig über mich eindrang. Wie du küsstest als wolltest du mich in wollüstigem Todt ersticken.” The day of her execution was supposed to be her wedding day (4581). Gray notes that the creation of Homunculus, a stand-in for Faust, also involves a Liebestod, the “death” of spermatozoa in the alembic, a surrogate grave and uterus, and the birth as Homunculus. This paradigm is repeated in the union of Homunculus with the beautiful Galatee — Homunculus as “a living flame, the ‘filius ignis,’” Galatee — female and water.