Chapter 323 (1/2)

He tried his best to lead Faust astray and make him fail, which is the epitome of the reactionary forces trying to block and destroy the trend of the progressive era. But the devil himself is a nihilist, although he can guide Faust to make mistakes, and use his mistakes to do all kinds of bad things, and Faust, who is opposite to him, is the representative of creative spirit, and he is immortal.

Since Faust achieved the overall victory through numerous local failures, many local victories could not guarantee the overall failure of Mephisto, which became his inevitable destination.

In fact, every destructive action of Mephisto contributed to the development of Faust from the opposite side. This is the logic of dialectics. The idea expressed by Goethe in the book has something in common with Engels's historical role of evil.

But like Faust, the image of Mephisto is not single. In his contradiction, besides the main aspect of ”negative spirit”, there is also a positive secondary aspect. With sharp eyes, he saw many corruption phenomena in the real court and exposed and satirized them.

After all, Faust came out of the medieval study, and there are still obvious traces of the old on his body. His character is full of contradictions, just as he dissected himself: ”there are two kinds of spirit in my mind, one is persistent in the world, indulging in love, the other is to transcend the world, to the lofty spiritual realm.

It is no doubt that he led the way to the lofty realm, but he indulged in lust, that is, he was greedy for immediate enjoyment, so that he did not hesitate to go along with the court to suppress the uprising.

This fully reflects the small and mediocre side of him. It was this side that the kind and pure Gretchen and her family became his victims. These dark sides of Faust reflect the inherent shortcomings of the bourgeoisie, and indicate that this class will inevitably turn to the opposite side, which is sharply opposed to the working people.

Faust wants to experience the feelings of the world, through the study life, love life, political life, the pursuit of classical beauty and achievements in five stages.

These five stages are based on reality. They highly concentrated the spiritual course of German and European bourgeoisie's exploration and struggle from the Renaissance to the early 19th century. Here, Faust can be said to be a symbolic artistic image, and Goethe portrays him as an embodiment of the fate of all mankind.

Of course, the so-called ”all mankind” is actually the expansion of the typical image of an advanced intellectual in the period of rising bourgeoisie. Like other bourgeois thinkers in the age of enlightenment, Goethe also regarded his class as the main representative of all mankind.

Faust walked out of the dark study and went to nature and broad real life, which reflected the anti feudal spirit of awakening bourgeois thought, negating religious theology and criticizing the dark reality from Renaissance, religious reform to the violent advance movement.

The love tragedy of Faust and Magan's tears is the reflection and negation of the narrow pursuit of personal happiness and hedonism.

The failure in politics shows that the political ideal of enlightened monarch is illusory. The unfortunate ending of the combination with Helen declares the disillusionment of the humanitarianism ideal of aestheticizing modern people with classical beauty.

In the end, Faust found the truth of life in the grand cause of mobilizing the masses to transform nature and create a paradise on earth. It is not difficult to see the shadow of the kingdom of reason repeatedly described by the enlightenment in the 18th century, and vaguely hear the voice of utopian socialists calling for the future in the 19th century.