Johann Spies’s Historia von Doktor Johann Fausten (1587)
3.3 Formalities of the Pact
Topp!
Faust.
Und Schlag auf Schlag! (GF, l. 1698)
“Topp” marks Mephistopheles’s agreement to what Faust just proposed, the wager he offered. “Schlag auf Schlag” is, according to Ulrich Gaier, a ritual in which two parties enter into a wager by first striking the right, then the left hand against each other’s: “Wettritual; bei ‘Schlag auf Schlag’ schlagen die Partner die rechten, dann die linken Hände gegeneinander” (Gaier 1999a, p. 254). This is the moment at which the deal is struck, symbolically,176 marked by expressions of consent from both parties, and, presumably, the interlocking of hands. It is immediately preceded by Faust’s proposal for a wager, and it has been identified by Gaier as a wager ritual specifically. Faust initiates this particular symbolic action after having proposed what is by many considered to be the core of the agreement between Mephistopheles and Faust: The wager with Faust’s eternal servitude as stake and his continued striving as victory condition. However, the spirit’s next line of dialogue indicates that no finalised agreement has been reached yet, or, alternatively, that a more elaborate ritual is required. There is still time for Faust to reconsider after their handshake.
Mephistopheles asks Faust to think carefully before agreeing, stating that they will not forget their agreement:
Mephistopheles.
Bedenk es wohl, wir werden’s nicht vergessen.
Faust.
Dazu hast du ein volles Recht;
Ich habe mich nicht freventlich vermessen.
Wie ich beharre, bin ich Knecht,
Ob dein, was frag’ ich, oder wessen. (GF, l. 1707-1711)
The handshake is one symbolic action which is meant to ensure that agreements are not forgotten; it is one way in which a reciprocal promise can be tied to one particular place at one particular time. The place of this wager is determined: It is Faust’s study,
176 Müller (1912): “Die folgenden Worte Fausts ‘Und schlag auf Schlag! ...’ tun, außer dem in ihnen niedergelegten Gelöbnis, die Überzeugung kund, daß ein Vertrag zustande gekommen ist” (p. 325).
Müller does not relate this form of handshake to wagers, but instead states that the reciprocal action marks the inception of a contract (Vertrag).
which Mephistopheles returns to as he recalls their agreement at the opening of the second act of the second part of the play. The time of this event, however, cannot be determined: The scene only contains one temporal marker that may be returned to at a later time, and it is tied directly to the form that the written agreement is given: It is written in Faust’s blood, which is still a fluid with the same temporal characteristics as Spies’s Faustus’s blood. Furthermore, the memory of the oral promise may be strengthened by the memory of a tactile sensation and a willed act, but neither of these leaves a material trace, and material traces of morally-charged actions are, as will be shown below, given significant weight in Goethe’s play. The handshake demonstrates the sincerity of both parties, but Faust’s sincerity is not in question; his memory is. “Wir werden’s nicht vergessen,” says Mephistopheles, forewarning Faust of a written agreement that will ensure that the promise cannot be forgotten, while at the same time indicating that their current agreement could be forgotten if steps were not taken to aid its survival through time.
Mephistopheles then says that he will assume his role of servant, obviously referring to the core of their formalised agreement, which is the initially proposed exchange of servitude, at the “Doktorschmaus”, an event celebrating the bestowal of a new doctoral degree, on the same day. However, the spirit first requires one seemingly unimportant detail to be fulfilled: “A couple of lines”:
Mephistopheles.
Ich werde heute gleich, beim Doktorschmaus, Als Diener, meine Pflicht erfüllen.
Nur eins! – Um Lebens oder Sterbens willen Bitt’ ich mir ein paar Zeilen aus.
(GF, l. 1712-1715)
The off-handed tone of this request made by Mephistopheles would indicate that the couple of lines are unimportant or inconsequential; indeed, it could sound as if Mephistopheles himself is only dutifully fulfilling a demand that is forced upon him by the unfortunate fact that he himself and his partner both hail from a tradition that is defined by its pact motif. The role given to the materiality of writing in the following lines and, in particular, in the second part of Goethe’s Faust contradict this idea, however. Writing, the material that makes up its letters, and the material on which
these letters are imprinted are not only reflected upon in Faust’s Rednerei in the following lines 1716-1733, but also near the beginning of Faust’s story arc in the second part of the drama, as well as at the very end of it. The material object that is a reminder of the bilateral promise is reintroduced, and its materiality emphasised, at key points in the narrative. Faust’s immediate reaction to the written pact is somewhat surprising, because Faust, as shown above, must have expected a written pact or pledge to be the outcome of his negotiations with Mephistopheles. It was Faust who proposed a pact and who insisted on learning the conditions of his
exchange, and in so doing, he effectively created the pact-offering Mephistopheles by projecting onto the spirit his own expectation of a particular species of devil figure.
Yet now he appears to be taken aback when confronted with Mephistopheles’s demand for a written version of their agreement:
Faust.
Auch was Geschriebnes vorderst du Pedant?
Hast du noch keinen Mann, kein Manneswort gekannt?
Ist’s nicht genug, daß mein gesprochnes Wort Auf ewig soll mit meinen Tagen schalten?
Rast nicht die Welt in allen Strömen fort, Und mich soll ein Versprechen halten?
Doch dieser Wahn ist uns ins Herz gelegt, Wer mag sich gern davon befreien?
Beglückt, wer Treue rein im Busen trägt, Kein Opfer wird ihn je gereuen!
Allein ein Pergament, beschrieben und beprägt, Ist ein Gespenst, vor dem sich alle scheuen.
Das Wort erstirbt schon in der Feder, Die Herrschaft führen Wachs und Leder.
Was willst du böser Geist von mir?
Erz, Marmor, Pergament, Papier?
Soll ich mit Griffel, Meißel, Feder schreiben?
Ich gebe jede Wahl dir frei.
Mephistopheles.
Wie magst du deine Rednerei Nur gleich so hitzig übertreiben?
Ist doch ein jedes Blättchen gut.
Du unterzeichnest dich mit einem Tröpfchen Blut.
Faust.
Wenn dies dir völlig Gnüge tut, So mag es bei der Fratze bleiben.
Mephistopheles.
Blut ist ein ganz besondrer Saft.
Faust.
Nur keine Furcht, daß ich dies Bündnis breche!
Das Streben meiner ganzen Kraft Ist grade das, was ich verspreche.
(GF, l. 1716-1743)
When met with the demand for a written pact, Faust recoils, accusing Mephistopheles of pedantry, and rhetorically inquiring whether or not the spirit ever knew a
(trustworthy) man’s word. Mephistopheles calls the monologue “Rednerei”, and he is right; Faust embraces ritual and magic formulae, and it is this trait of his that by all appearances prompts Mephistopheles to propose a written pact. Albert Daur (1950) argues that Faust’s speech is deemed “Rednerei” because it is without real substance, and is meant to stall for time, since Faust entertains fear for the written promise. Void of semantic value, Faust’s monologue on the difference between writing and speech, and on the material properties of the former, puts off the fateful moment of writing down his promise.177 However, the monologue’s meaning is slightly different when seen in the light of Faust as a self-aware traditional character who himself is
responsible for the pact with the Devil. Mephistopheles’s comment on Faust’s heated exaggeration questions Faust’s feigned surprise at the demand for a written
confirmation of the promise: Faust does not hesitate at all. He is highly prepared to sign his document, and greatly overstates his hesitation. True to his propensity towards grand rituals, he even suggests signing on marble with a chisel – a laborious way of writing pacts without historic precedent within literature concerning the Devil.
Although Faust’s “Rednerei” is heated exaggeration, pretence and perhaps an attempt at stalling for time, it does demonstrate that Faust, more than any of his namesakes, recognises the gravity of the materialisation of promises. His monologue positions the opposed concepts of speech and writing: On the one hand something written, “was Geschriebnes”, and on the other Faust’s spoken word or oral promise,
“mein gesprochnes Wort”. Obvious in these lines is Faust’s expressed disdain even of
177 “Widerlich jedoch ist ihm gerade das, was für Mephisto unerläßlich bleibt: Geschriebenes, das als ein Drohgespenst, die Forderung in Händen, ihm Angst machen will; und hitzig übertreibt er, wie Mephisto tadelt, seine Rednerei und stellt dem Teufel jedes Material und jedes Schreibzeug frei”.
(Daur 1950, p. 66)
the spoken promise, which irreversibly binds his future intention to his present intention: Context and situation may change, but the promise given in one specific set of circumstances will remain equally valid in another, by recourse to the time and place at which the promise was made. Line 1719 indicates that even the oral promise exerts a violent power over Faust’s future being; in “schalten” resonates the
expression “schalten und walten”, or indeed “zuschalten / walten / regieren” (HDF, p.
23), and so on. Spies’s Faustus states in his pact that Mephostophiles shall exert whatever violent power he wishes over Faustus after twenty-four years have passed, but Goethe’s Faust is worried that the promise itself will wield this same power over him. Faust’s spoken promise, as soon as the moment at which it was made has passed, is external to Faust himself, and exerts control over him from outside his own will and intention. This forceful, external influence is precisely what Faust fears of the spoken promise, yet he did not hesitate to make his promise orally, marking it with a handshake; he is currently in the process of apparently resisting a written confirmation of the binding promise that he willingly made.
The signature, and the pact with the Devil in which it is a crucial component, serves to counteract the volatile intentions and poor memory of the living.178
Although this point seems to worry Goethe’s Faust, he acknowledges it when stating that writing marks the death of the spoken word (GF, l. 1717-1729). The spoken word belongs to the world, raging forth “in all its currents”. Spoken words are continuously being born and immediately die, vitally tied to the utterer. It is quite telling that Goethe has his Faust use the metaphor “ghost” or “spectre”. The word ‘Gespenst’
would at the time have had primarily strong negative connotations in the direction of fear, horror, and annoyance.179 A ghost is the imperfect, and horrendous, reflection of something that was once alive, now able only to haunt and be a nuisance. “The
178 Cf. 2.2.1.
179 Adelung: “eine geistige Substanz, wenn sie unter einer angenommenen Gestalt den Menschen erscheinet; doch am häufigsten nur von solchen Substanzen, welche, wie man sich einbildet, den Menschen nur zur Plage, oder zum Schrecken erscheinen. Ein Gespenst sehen. Es lässet sich ein Gespenst sehen. Figürlich oft ein erdichteter Gegenstand des Schreckens oder der Furcht” (vol. II, 631-632, “das Gespenst”).
word”, “das Wort”, in this case encompasses not the written word, but exclusively the spoken word, present only at the time of its utterance, and attended by the presence of the person uttering it. Faust himself has “Herrschaft”, command, over his spoken word, but as he writes it down, he relinquishes control to wax and leather, the material properties of the document. Feather and ink kill the living, spoken word and leave a dreadful object: the parchment which has writing on it. Although Faust during the second Studierzimmer scene explicitly has no intention of breaking his promise to Mephistopheles,180 he still shies away from (“scheut sich vor”) the written word.
Faust does not fear a binding promise – on the contrary, he deems happy the men who possess fidelity to their promises – but he finds the written pact horrid. He has good reason to do so. Signing an agreement is in a sense suicidal, as it creates a dead imprint of the signer’s intention at the time of signing. The only element of written pacts that gives Faust pause and inspires his lengthy “Rednerei” is the consigning of his intention to a material object.
Jacques Derrida states in “La Pharmacie de Platon” from La Dissémination (1972) that putting words on paper is described in Plato’s works as an act which replaces “living voice” with “breathless sign”: “N’oublions pas que, dans le Phédre, on reprochera aussi à l’invention du pharmakon181 de substituer le signe essoufflé à la parole vivante (...)”182 (Derrida 1972, p. 113). This substitution comes about due to the agency inherent in any statement consisting of words. Spoken words are perceived to be closer to the truth of whichever matter is under discussion than written words, because spoken words can be accounted for; the speaker is present, and he is able to modify and explain his statement a priori based on situation, and a
180 See Goethe, 1699–1706, 1741–43 and particularly 1710–11.
181 Derrida discusses the word pharmakon, which means both cure and poison, using it as a figurative replacement for writing throughout his text.
182 Translations by Barbara Johnson have been used in the following. “We should not forget that, in the Phaedrus, another thing held against the invention of the pharmakon is that it substitutes the breathless sign for the living voice (...)” (Derrida 2004, p. 95).
posteriori based on reactions from his listeners. Being alive in this context means being able to change and adapt to circumstances:
Or l’écrit, en tant qu’il se répète et reste identique à soi dans le type, ne se ploie pas en touts les sens, ne se plie pas aux différences entre les présents, aux nécessités variables, fluides, furtives de la psychagogie. Celui qui parle, au contraire, ne se soumet à aucun schème préétabli ; il conduit mieux ses signes ; il est là pour les accentuer, les infléchir, les retenir ou les lâcher selon les exigences du moment, la nature de l’effet cherché, la prise offerte par l’interlocuteur. (Derrida 1972, p. 142)183
Writing, claims Derrida, is self-referential in the sense that the self being referenced is the dead reflection of living speech: it “repeats itself” whenever it is read, rather than repeating the speech or living memory that seemingly produced it. Writing does not change with varying circumstances and intentions, and this is what murders it, according to Derrida’s reading of Plato. He emphasises the double function of the Egyptian god Theuth as described in Plato’s Phaedrus: he is both the god of death and the god of writing, and, says Derrida, this is how it must be: “Car le dieu de l’écriture est aussi, cela va de soi, le dieu de la mort”184 (Derrida 1972, p. 113).
Reading, which means questioning writing, appears in this light to always be an act of necromancy. Conjuring the ghost of the writer, present for instance in the signature, a reader may attempt to divine the meaning of the words.
The living writer is unavailable for questioning, and his ghost is decidedly different from him, present only in writing and as writing. From written words one may glean a living intention frozen in time, but the spoken word is then no longer primary, as it is derived from the written words. Time and mortality reverse the order of speaking and writing. Ultimately, time and mortality are also what threaten Faust’s
183 “But writing, in that it repeats itself and remains identical in the type, cannot flex itself in all senses, cannot bend with all the differences among presents, with all the variable, fluid, furtive necessities of psychagogy. He who speaks, in contrast, is not controlled by any preestablished pattern; he is better able to conduct his signs; he is there to accentuate them, inflect them, retain them, or set them loose according to the demands of the moment, the nature of the desired effect, the hold he has on the listener” (Derrida 2004, p. 116).
184 “It goes without saying that the god of writing must also be the god of death” (Derrida 2004, p.
95).
oral promise; once a sequence of words is uttered, the exact wording, intonation and circumstance cannot be reproduced. The living word immediately dissipates. Some measures can be taken to fix the precise moment in time during which a promise is uttered, thus allowing for the moment to be remembered by the rituals or symbolic actions conducted.
Faust places a great deal of emphasis on the material aspects of his written promise: Wax, leather, brass, marble, parchment, paper, stylus, chisel, and feather are all suggested as writing paraphernalia, but Mephistopheles requires only materiality as such, stating that “ein jedes Blättchen” is good enough. Any material will do, so long as a physical manifestation of their agreement is created. But a “Blättchen” is not an object as inconsequential and innocent as Mephistopheles’s diminutive makes it sound. Paper is called a “ghost” not only by Faust in the second Studierzimmer scene, but also by Mephistopheles in the Finstere Galerie scene in the first act of the second part. In this latter instance, paper with writing on it is a sign which has a non-existent outside reference: Mephistopheles convinces the Kaiser and his court that they should pay their subjects in letters of debt that entitle the holder to a part of the empire’s buried treasure. In other words, the malicious spirit invents paper money.
Mephistopheles himself refers to this paper, which holds value despite its lack of an outside reference, as “das Papiergespenst der Gulden” (GF, l. 6198). When Faust writes and signs his pledge, any little piece of paper will do, because all paper is equally dangerous.
The spirit’s only specific requirement besides this is that Faust signs with a drop of blood. The diminutive form of the word “Tröpfchen” again indicates that this whole charade, “Fratze” according to Faust, is unimportant, and merely a formality that they have to go through for some external reason, perhaps due to the laws contained in their own literary history. However, the act of signing in blood is still a significant one, as gleaned from the often overlooked short sequence of events following Mephistopheles’s demand for a signature in blood. The sequence is this:
Faust agrees, signs, and then reassures the spirit that he will not break their written agreement, “Bündnis”. This sequence of events contains the only referrable temporal
instance in the second Studierzimmer scene, and this moment of signing is recalled at later points in the play.
Although Faust’s signing of the pact is not marked in Goethe’s drama by stage direction or unequivocal dialogue, it is apparent that it takes place as Mephistopheles delivers his line regarding the quality of blood: “Blut ist ein ganz besondrer Saft”.185 This short interjection does not address what Faust says before it, nor does Faust respond to it, indicating that it is an aside, directed at the reader or audience, and not at the other actor in the scene, who presumably is busy signing while the line is uttered. Mephistopheles here indicates that despite his own off-handedness during the process of negotiating a written confirmation of the agreement, and despite his lack of interest in the old Faustian rituals, the signature in blood is still significant. Blood is a
“special juice” because it incorporates the body and intention of the signer, and because it irrevocably points to one singular event, a particular point in time, which is that moment at which it leaves the body of the person who uses it to sign and starts to coagulate. Blood used in pacts embody the dying of a person’s living intention more than any other form of material promise, and this dying of a living intention is the raison d’être of signatures. The signature in blood is an emblematic expression of how written agreements work: Faust leaves a piece of his own body which signifies his intention on a piece of paper, and these drops of blood immediately die and turn into signs that can only point to that exact moment in time when this transformation occurred, and to the wilful act behind their creation, by the person who produced the blood. It was previously indicated that the lack of temporal markers threatened the usefulness of the handshake and Mephistopheles’s “Topp!” as avenue of return or recessus to the moment of agreement: A return to the moment of agreeing would not be possible, because the moment is not unambiguously defined. The moment of signing, however, is, because there is only one moment in time at which the document that Mephistopheles later presents before Faust’s body after the latter has
185 “Den Akt des Unterschreibens kommentiert Mephisto mit den Worten: Blut ist ein ganz besondrer Saft”. (Weigand 1961, p. 328)