I feel like my tendency towards parallels might seem extreme sometimes, so let me preface this one with an explanation. In my high school we were offered two electives a year, and one of our options after tenth grade was a crossover type of course called Parallels. My favorite history teacher taught it in conjunction with an English teacher I had never had. It was a challenging class, but thoroughly interesting. We would learn history lessons and then read a book that went with it essentially, but moreover we were taught to find and draw parallels between everything. After that class I find myself identifying similarities between a multitude of things, including works of literature. While reading Faust I immediately thought back to the works of Shakespeare I have read in different classes. My first indication was when I was reading and didn’t understand very much of what was happening on stage. I knew that there must be things that I was missing, but much like Shakespeare, the hidden meanings and subtleties were lost on me. I kept thinking I might better understand it if I were able to see it acted out, because that is how I ended up understanding some of Shakespeare’s plays better. Upon further reading into Part 1, I realized (by looking at the footnotes) there were actually very many references or possible ties to works of Shakespeare. Not to mention, the style of writing is very Shakespeare-esque, if my memory serves me. After finishing Part 1 I realized I needed a bit of help in understanding what I had just read, so I did what every good student does, and I Sparknotesed it. SO helpful. I am posting a link to the website I used to review the summary and analysis of each chapter below. While reading the analysis of “Walpurgis Night’s Dream” (page 120 in my book from the bookstore) online it mentioned that this poem showed the influence that Shakespeare had on Goethe. Personally I thought it was really interesting that Goethe chose to include Puck and Ariel in it, as they are direct connections to A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest and Goethe usually seems to reference Shakespeare more subtly, like on page 130 when Gretchen/Margarete says “My dearest hand! But it feels wet! Oh! Wipe it off! It would seem There’s blood on it.” That is an obvious reference to Macbeth when after Lady Macbeth goes insane she keeps trying to wash of the invisible spot of blood on her hand that she always sees because of her guilt.
Altogether I thought this was a pretty interesting book to read. Admittedly I wouldn’t have understood nearly as much as I do now without Cliffnotes, but even when I didn’t understand it fully I found it interesting enough to read. What did everybody else think of it? Did anybody else notice any parallels within it to anything else? There are definitely more to Shakespeare that I didn’t mention, but I just said what stuck out to me the most. Did other things stick out to the rest of you?
So here is that link I mentioned, I hope it helps you guys like it helped me. (it's specifically set to the page I mentioned also, just fyi)
I can definitely agree with you that it seems as though I'm overlooking some undertones in the writing that would be much simpler to pick up when watching on stage. While I felt like the Mephistopheles/Lord was easy to understand, other portions of the first chapter were completely lost on me (particularly the angels' speeches).
ReplyDeleteWhile I will not pretend not to know that students use spark / cliff notes all the time, I must also say that in terms of "reference" these represent the lowest rung of "scholarly" help. Your Norton edition comes with extensive notes, and I chose this edition for that reason, try to use those to make sense of the text.
ReplyDeleteGoethe's Faust was an ambitious choice for this class. It is a complex and abstract text. People devote a lifetime to reading and figuring it out. In this class, if we can find one cool thing to gain from it that will be good enough for now. Resonances with Shakespeare is certainly a cool observation.
I found myself in the same predicament! I sat down, got all comfortable, ready to read a book. Then I started reading it and I said to myself, "Oh no! This sounds like Shakespeare! I struggle with reading texts like Shakespeare!" But I struggled to stay focussed and try to understand it...and then yes I was the student who went to sparknotes!!! But now that I learned that there are extensive notes I am going to go back, re-read part one, use the notes to help me, and try not to result to using sparknotes for part two!
ReplyDeleteI see similarities between Faust and other works as well. Goethe's tale describes a man's struggle to understand the most basic elements of existence. Questions such as these are seen in countless works of literature and art in general. Most notably, I see abundant similarities between some of Faust's lamentations and the Ghazal. Both of these examples verbally struggle to be one with the natural spirit, whatever that natural spirit may be.
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