The WORDACT
We see in Faust that one of the major issues or conflicts is that between learning and experience, or, as Faust puts it, between WORD and ACT. Faust has followed a life of learning and contemplation but it has not given him the understanding that he seeks. So he decides that experience or action is the method to achieve whatever understanding he has sought. My question then is whether Faust actually follows this plan once he is given a chance to do so.
From the first Faust seems unable to release the notions that go along with his career of learning, from his life in the word. The first place that Mephisto takes Faust is to Auerbach’s Keller where he meets a group of men who are apparently closer to action than to word and yet Faust cannot enter into the fun that these men enjoy because of Mephisto’s trick. As the play progresses we continually see Mephisto bring Faust into situations where people are enjoying themselves in action, but Faust has a great inability to enter into these situations and enjoy them in the moment. Of course, it is clear that Faust cannot enjoy the moment otherwise he would lose the bet with Mephisto. However, it does not seem clear that he wants to win the bet. That is to say that Faust seems to actually want to find a moment that he could enjoy, one about Faust can say “it doesn’t get any better than this.”
What is Faust actually striving to do then? I believe that the answer lies in Faust’s reworking of the first sentence of the Gospel of John. He takes the central premise inherent in “In the beginning was the WORD,” (John 1:1) and plays it out from WORD to MIND to FORCE to ACT. Faust Has been working all his life solely with the WORD and it has not brought him satisfaction. He therefore determines to follow another path, that of action. He chooses to pursue the other aspect of being, the ACT implicit in the above verse. However, it seems clear to me that the satisfaction that he seeks cannot be found through either WORD or ACT alone, but through their reunification into the meaning already inherent in John’s statement. Faust seeks unification of knowledge and action, thought and expression, WORD and ACT.
Faust comes to realize that this unification is what he seeks, though he is incapable of tranquil acceptance of the moment. When he thinks about the men toiling to improve the world for themselves and others he admits that he “might to the moment say: Abide, you are so fair!” (469). Faust realizes that those men working towards an ideal are a unification of knowledge/thought/idea and action. Though Faust cannot actually join into the work, he does gain the understanding that he sought.
Micah Krabill
Composed for the course "Paradoxes of Romanticism"
November 27, 1999