Mephistopheles, the Eater of Souls

within time, the span of which is determined by Faust’s conditional addition.¹⁷⁴ When Faust dies, following his momentary appeasement, he will serve Mephistopheles in a vaguely determined “over there”, provided there is an “over there”. At the point of entering into the agreement, Mephistopheles himself is uninterested in this outdated formality, but acquiesces to Faust’s expectation for a hellish, ritualised pact. History of research into the pact motif has shown that the audience has shared Faust’s tradition-influenced understanding: The two-hundred year long quibble over who wins the wager is based on a mode of reading that is adopted from Spies’s present time, and that Faust himself embodies within the work. However, as soon as the pact is formalised, and the agreement turned into writing, it undergoes a transformation:

The material document, while built on subterfuge, takes on a life of its own, and at the end of the second part of the play, even Mephistopheles seems to expect its structure of promises, adopted from a different time, to be honoured.

is an economical exchange of soul for services, and that the spirit meets Faust with a preconceived plan that has as its end point the enslaving of the doctor’s immortal soul. Consequently, Mephistopheles appears as a Renaissance pact-offering Devil not because this is what Faust expects of him, but because this is his stable, unchanging identity. These four lines do however present a significant methodical problem that must be adressed before their relation to the pact or wager that Faust and

Mephistopheles enter into can be determined: Some time before the publication of Faust I in 1808, they were removed from the work by Goethe, and they reach the reader in the form of paralipomena, omitted passages of text that are printed along with the work, but not as part of the work, in some scholarly editions.

The four lines cast a very particular light on the pact motif, because in them, Mephistopheles reveals what Schöne regards as his true intention, which is to entrap, and even consume, Faust’s soul:

Mein Freund wenn je der Teufel dein begehrt Begehrt er dein auf eine Andre Weise

Dein Fleisch und Blut ist wohl und schon etwas werth Allein die Seel ist unsre rechte Speise. (Schöne 2003a, p. 544)

In these lines, Mephistopheles dons the attire of a soul-consuming Devil. While he shows a limited interest in the doctor’s physical body, his primary motivation is to secure the servitude of Faust “over there”. Schöne believes that while these lines are omitted, the message expressed through them still reflect Mephistopheles’s plans:

“So unverhohlen redet er hier nicht mehr, aber so denkt und plant er offensichtlich noch immer” (Schöne 2003b, p. 262). The interpretative consequences of this statement by Schöne are significant: He indicates that Mephistopheles has a clearly-defined plan, and that the spirit envisions an end point to his companionship with Faust that conforms to his proposed pact in lines 1656-1659. Furthermore, the conditional uncertainty in “Wenn wir uns Drüben wiederfinden” is dissolved, from Mephistopheles’s perspective; he is robbed of his ironic self-annihilation, and is eagerly expecting his reunion with Faust “over there”. If there is conditional

uncertainty in “wenn”, it concerns the possibility of the Lord’s mercy despite Faust’s

unholy pact; a possibility that has been identified in other works containing pacts with the Devil.

These four lines present a challenge because they also can serve as indications to the antithesis to Schöne’s thesis. Omitted text can be used as a textual negative, since the reason for their omission is often unidentifiable. In an abstract to his recent article on the conception of the Devil in Goethe’s Faust, Peter-André Alt,

commenting on a different set of omitted lines that make up an unfinished black mass scene, states that “[t]he paralipomena show that Goethe considered making evil into an independent principle, but abandoned the idea” (Alt 2011). In his reading, Alt finds it “telling that Goethe decided to withhold from contemporary audiences a narrative so focused on presenting evil”, and speaks of Goethe’s “self-censoring” (Alt 2011, p. 161). Alt argues that Goethe purposely obscured the evil principle, and regards the removed, or never finished, scene as strongly indicating the willed lack of a clearly defined evil principle in the work. In other words, Alt regards omissions as textual negatives; they express ideas abandoned by the author of the work.

These two approaches to omitted material are obviously incommensurable, unless some tertiary indication can be found that proves that one set of lines was removed because it stated too clearly something that should be hidden, while another contradicted the presentation of evil within the work. Such an indication is unlikely to be discovered. While the Historia can be said to present a dual carrying theme or intention, Goethe’s Faust does not say one thing. In fact, if a reader turns to other statements made by its author concerning a unified idea behind the work, the notion that the work is heterogeneous rather than homogeneous would be strengthened:

Goethe once famously referred to his Faust as “eine Schwammfamilie” (letter from Goethe to Schiller, 1. July 1797), a family of sponges growing from the same soil but with otherwise unrelated individual parts.¹⁷⁵ Furthermore, according to his assistant

175 Few would contest the fact that both Part One and Two of Goethe’s Faust, published in 1808 and 1832 respectively, are heterogeneous in style as well as in content and theme. In contrast, Johann Spies’s Faustbook is designed with the dual purpose of entertainment and moral education, and the latter thematic vein can be conceived as a unidirectional presentation of a specific warning directed

Eckermann, he stated on May 6th 1827 that the more incommensurable and unfathomable a work of poetry is, the better: “je inkommensurabler und für den Verstand unfasslicher eine poetische Produktion, desto besser”. Considering these

“Schwammfamilie”-poetics, Mephistopheles’s four omitted lines can be regarded as sponges that have been picked and put aside for some reason; either to give other sponges better conditions, or because they were worm-eaten and undesirable.

The term most widely applied in German research literature to omissions of this kind, is paralipomena. The Greek ʌĮȡĮȜİȓʌȦ translates into [I] leave unnoticed, pass over, neglect or leave for someone. The omissions of Goethe’s Faust have in no way been neglected, left unnoticed or passed over. They have been objects of scrutiny since they were published alongside the work itself in the Weimar edition of Goethe’s complete works (1887-1919), but this does not mean that they were left for someone.

Three major commented editions of Faust from the twentieth century – Albrecht Schöne’s, Erich Trunz’s and Ulrich Gaier’s – all include a significant number of these omissions, while their respective commentators implement these in their readings to varying degrees. The question that impacts an understanding of the four omitted lines spoken by Mephistopheles is whether or not these lines, or the ideas they convey, have been left for someone to find, or if they are purposely censored.

Meyer’s Enzyklopädisches Lexikon defines the word paralipomena as

descriptive of pieces of text which are either not taken into consideration or actively towards the proud and the curious. Because paratextual elements such as the title page of the work, as well as both of the two prefaces, state this objective, an intention of the work is established, against which every line and chapter can be compared. Each chapter, paragraph or line may then be judged to be in accordance with or contrary to the pervading idea of the work. Goethe’s Faust, however, does not have a discernible single carrying theme or idea to serve as a point of departure for analysis.

No unifying principle may be discovered. The problem is confounded by the vast amount of available material not included in the final printed versions of the two works, but written by the same author on the same theme and motif, such as the publication of Faust. Ein Fragment in 1790, the discovery in 1887 of the early draft later named Urfaust, the vast amount of available omitted passages, and Goethe’s extensive correspondence concerning his plans and ideas for the Faust material, as well as his autobiographical Dichtung und Wahrheit (1808-1831), which covers the years during which Goethe started working on his Faust play. Many have looked for some interpretative key to the finished work in this material; comparative analyses of Urfaust and Faust abound, and omitted passages are used diligently in commentary literature in order to solve a variety of difficulties.

omitted before the publication of a work of literature, but which are still considered

“supplements” to the work, that is, not parts of the work, but external to it:

Paralipomena. [gr.; = Übergangenes, Ausgelassenes],

Bez. Für Textvarianten, Fragmente, Ergänzungen, Nachträge usw., die bei der endgültigen Fassung eines litterar. Werkes nicht berücksichtigt oder für die Veröffentlichung (zunächst) ausgeschieden wurden, z.B. werden als P.

bezeichnet die beiden Bücher der Chronik im A. T. als Ergänzung der Bücher Samuel und der Könige oder die Ergänzungen zu Goethes „Faust“; P. sind wichtig für textkritik oder textgenet. Untersuchungen.

The notion that paralipomena are external to the work must be modified. Gerard Genette’s concept of paratext, which is descriptive of pieces of text in the widest sense which are published alongside the work or in extension of its publication (title, chapter headings, prefaces, journal articles, etc.), and which in various ways influence our reading of the work, does not encompass paralipomena. Genette categorises various types of paratext by their relation to the work temporally (published before, during or after) and spatially (published alongside or apart from the work), by their form, function, and, importantly, by whom it is written and towards whom it is directed. This last category makes the paralipomena a unique phenomenon amongst paratextual elements; at some point the omitted passage was addressed to the reader of the work, but the address was revoked, and it ended up no longer being addressed by the author to anyone. In his aptly titled book Seuils (thresholds), published by Editions de Seuil in 1987, Genette divides addressees into three wide categories:

public, private and intimate, which are descriptive of, for example, a journal article, a private letter and an author’s work note respectively. While an omission by its similarity to sketches, plans and work notes can be categorised as an intimate piece of paratext, meant only for the author’s own eyes, this was not its function at the time of its conception. An omitted passage, before it was omitted, was addressed to the public, and was, furthermore, part of the work. The reader to whom it was

subsequently addressed by the editor in collaboration with the diligent researcher, not by the author, must regard it as a negative, that is, a removed part of the work itself, not as a supplement. Still, it appears to the readers, the addressees of a piece of text which has had its address revoked, as paratext which is published alongside the work and which has some connection to it that may or may not make it a useful tool for

analysis of the work. It is this unique relation between paralipomena and the work which makes the status of Mephistopheles’s four lines highly uncertain.

The difference between the two possible interpretations of the term present both in its Greek counterpart and in its contemporary German use is of great interest when attempting to place this particular omission relative to the work. If a piece of text written by the same author during the same time span on the same subject and in the same style is found apart from the published work, one would assume that it has some connection to the work itself, yet this connection could be one of two: Either the passage was passed over, which means it was not taken into consideration, or it was actively omitted by the author. If the first is the case, the connection to the work would be very weak. “Nicht berücksichtigt” indicates that the piece of text was simply not included, and does not leave an interpreter with any hope of discovering the reason, which could be utterly arbitrary. In the latter case, one would have to assume there is a specific rationale behind its omission. The author actively chose to remove text from his work, presumably for one of the two reasons noted previously:

either because the idea expressed in the removed text was abandoned, or because it expressed too clearly something that should remain hidden. The four lines were removed either because Mephistopheles should not be understood as a soul-eating Devil, or because this shade of his kaleidoscopic character should be more difficult to glean, both for Faust and for the reader or audience, or they were simply overlooked.

The difference which emerges is at its core one between text which was not included and text which was removed.

Turning to the author in order to attempt to discover his specific reason for omitting a piece of text from his work appears to be futile. Goethe could have made omissions because he considered the removed fragment to be too long, not elegantly worded, too dogmatic, too obvious, not in accordance with the overall idea of the work, unnecessary, and so on. Yet there are two broad categories of understanding omissions that must be considered. On the one hand, a fragment may have been omitted because it found no place within the work, for formal reasons, which means it was “overlooked”, “nicht berücksichtigt”. It may even be considered to have been left

for someone, that is, the reader, to find and use at his discretion, although it found no place within the work. In this case, the omission may be considered by the interpreter a supplement to the work. It may explain something which is otherwise left

unexplained, or it may expand on a theme or motif found in the work. On the other hand, it may have been removed because it contained a meaning which was contrary to that of the work. This would mean that it could not be used as a supplement, or, if it was, it would have to be used as a negative supplement.

The only viable methodical approach to this unique type of textual material is to regard them as dual interpretative hypotheses. Mephistopheles’s four lines contain at least two hypotheses that must be tested by recourse to the work, but the contents of these four lines cannot serve as arguments, or evidence, in support of either conclusion. The poet left a note for the reader, or left a note which the reader accidentally found, that contained two contradictory statements regarding the intention behind his work. One can assume that one of these, or both, may lead in the direction of reasonable interpretations of the work, but one cannot use one of the statements, excluding the other, as argument in support of a particular interpretation, like Schöne does when he reads the four lines as indications of Mephistopheles’s hidden intention.

These four lines impact how a reader can understand the nature of the agreement that Faust enters into with Mephistopheles in the second Studierzimmer scene. Either Mephistopheles tries to bargain for Faust’s soul, simply because he is a hungry devil whose proper food is souls, ending up with a wager that has this soul as stake, or the exact nature of their agreement matters much less than somehow gaining Faust as his companion, being united with the doctor. The four omitted lines offer no solution to this challenge: They only state and emphasise the problem. This also means that they are not indices that point away from the argument that this study is in the process of making, although the lines certainly would have done so if they were included in the work. While the current reading by no means should be held to be the only viable reading of the pact scene and related scenes, it remains a defensible interpretation despite these four lines that by themselves contradict it.