Goeths Faust as replacement / alternative / contrast to the Bible

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Goethe : Did God Create Man or Man Create God "The clash between a verbal orientation as opposed to a fact , event , or happening orientation is certainly one of the perennial themes in Goethe 's masterpiece Faust

Semantics educators stress the importance of developing an extensional orientation , in which we look at what happens first , before we focus on the words or language that describe it . General semantics refers to our consciously abstracting in this as following the natural of abstraction

It was Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

(1749-1832 ) who made the legend more reasonable . Goethe 's first attempt at his creation of Faust was in the manuscript discovered in 1886 entitled Urfaust . Faust attempts magic as an escape from the sterile rationalism that surrounds him . Despondent of any ultimate knowledge , Faust indentures himself to Mephistopheles in hopes of forgetting his frustration in a life of sensual pleasure , only to discover with tragic poignancy , through the love of Gretchen , a simple girl whom he had seduced , the full meaning of life

If uniform critical consensus indicates the death of a literary text , we need have no fears for the critical health of Goethe 's Faust . The hundreds of interpretations , which represent the fallout from two brainstorming sessions on Faust in California in 1990 and again in 1992 offer a spectrum of approaches and readings which overlap only occasionally , contradict frequently , and present the reader with a brilliant , at times dazzling play of colors that might lead to doubt , or even despair , that the whole can ever be homogenized back into white light

Goethe challenges his readers to look closely at the obvious and apparent because it hints at what it may hide . Even his choice of offenbarung leads by itself to the same coupling of revelation and concealment because it is the common designation for Scripture , the very text that exemplifies the word that conceals what it conveys . Just as Faust found out in his attempt to translate the Gospel of St . John revelation is itself an act of concealment . And so it is with Faust . It too , meets the limits of linguistic revelation and retains something that must remain unsaid . This is its unfathomable or incommensurable character , which Goethe recognizes with a faint air of surprise once the entire work has effectively been completed . His attitude is strikingly similar to one in which he presents findings in the natural sciences gained by experiment

Faust laments that though he has studied philosophy , medicine , law , and theology he really knows nothing about the inner workings of the universe . Even his magic , powerful as it is , fails to lift the veil of mystery . On the brink of despair , he considers suicide . One Easter morning , Wagner , one of Faust 's students , convinced the professor to travel with him to the city to join in the festivities . As Faust and Wagner walked and talked , Faust expressed his indescribable discontent "Two souls , alas , are dwelling in my breast , and one is striving...