Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus is but one node in the overarching idea of Faust. Indeed the general theme has been replayed in many different cultures, and times during the course of history with differing intentions. I cite this now only to demonstrate that its basic themes and narrative elements may show more than a cursory resemblance to the overall experience of humans in culture, and that it may be, in fact, an integral aspect. In this essay, I am mostly concerned with the impetus for Faust’s archetypical character arc and its ramifications as a function of humanity in my own work.
Marlowe’s Faust may be used as a fair representation for the essential Faust. Faust, a learned man, has been to university, and gleaned a functioning knowledge of all its sciences, Philosophy, Medicine, Law, and Divinity. In the first scene Faust recounts his satisfaction with each hierarchically. On the topic of Aristotle’s “Sweet Analytics,” Faust has the following questions to ask; “Is to dispute well logic's chiefest end? Affords this art no greater miracle?”. “Then read no more” he says, “thou has attained the end”. Sufficiently dismissing philosophy he moves on to Medicine, on which he has to say; “The end of physic is our body's health:” “Could'st thou make men to live eternally, Or being dead, raise them to life again, Then this profession were to be esteemed.” With that he bids “Physic farewell” and turns to “Justinian” and Law. Here he calls it “a pretty case of paltry legacies”. The final realm, Divinity fares no better. “The reward of sin is death? That’s hard. … Ay, we must die, an everlasting death. What doctrine call you this: Che sera, sera, What will be shall be!” and with that bids “Divinity adieu!” Faustus’ nostalgia for the present represents itself insofar as he cannot access the present. Marlowe’s Faustus, as indeed most iterations of Faust, is used as the principle functionary in a morality tale, whose main goal is to teach a lesson. As such the genesis of Faustus’ dissatisfaction with contemporary (and increasingly modern scientific) modes of understanding is (as it so often is in morality tales) hubris, a fact not lost in the text. Indeed Faustus goes on to say; “These metaphysics of magicians, And necromantic books are heavenly”. This is in and of itself a contradiction in terms, and a clear nod to the fact that Faustus’ insatiability, here raised to literary proportions is not to be taken as literal, but instead as an exaggeration of Faustus’ attempts to understand himself, and the world he finds himself in, in real time.
Faust’s dissatisfaction with these contemporary, (and ever evolving) modes of comprehension leads him back, to magic, and the supernatural. This nostalgia for the present often leads to a regression is search of progress.
The Do It Yourself (DIY) movement is a good example of this. Akin to ideas of green design, the DIY movement has propagated itself on ideas of self sufficiency, and sustainability. Harkening back, (in some instances) to a simpler time before machine reproduction, DIY exemplifies a regression to older ideas such as a sensibility of craft, and making what you need. Unfortunately, these ideas are sometimes in conflict with themselves in practice. A good example of this is the recycling bin chair from MAKE magazine. The article gave instructions for the creation of a high-back chair made from a repurposed garbage can sized recycling bin. To make the chair one would need the recycling bin, (a very specific one at that, which barely anyone has) wire snips, used for cutting aluminum flashing, and a rivet gun and rivets. It is easy here to see how any ideological gains in the reuse/recycle category are a wash after acquiring the materials for the project (that almost no one could make from their constituent parts). Recognizing these shortcomings, a PFI movement (Pay For It) has begun. Much like Faust the PFI movement represents an inability to access the present given the progressive mode of DIY. Also, much like Faust PFI represents a regression, in the search for progress, to more base modes of understanding, both as a form of protest, and as an attempt to ground oneself in an experiential understanding of now by any means necessary, to regain the present.
My work in Writing belies a greater connection with Faust, in that it represents dissatisfaction with contemporary modes of understanding fiction, mainly the idea general narrative continuity. It differs however in that it does not achieve a choate moral through the use of literary excess, but instead idealizes a regression into a generalized state of ennui through depictions of banality. This effect is heightened by the use of a very untruthful narrator.
One of my recent projects is a set of four vignettes inspirited by the structure of fabric woven with double cloth blocks. The two “blocks” are two vignettes told by two different characters weaving in and out. Arbitrarily radical changes in time of day, verbally referenced multiple times in each section, weave both “blocks” together. The first block tells the story of a girl encountering her mother’s boyfriend masturbating, told by both the daughter, and boyfriend. The second block is the story of the death/murder of the girl’s father, when she was an infant, as told both by the father, and the girl’s aunt. The untruthful narrator makes a strong appearance in the second ‘block’, by illustrating two drastically differing realities of one ‘actual’ occurrence.
The stories employ a lethargic, and egregious use of ill-got, psychedelic references to magical-realism. This scatological, and isophrenic collection furthers the unknowing ideal in the un-reliable narrator. Eventually both stories regress in upon themselves to a point where the confusion of both the narrative structure, and unreliable narrators confounds their understanding as mediated by contemporary ideas of fictional continuity and does not create an fictive-reality as expected, through those ideals. This lack of traditional narrative continuance forces the reader to take each occurrence at face value without knowing its absolute truth-value, or understanding it as it actually is, an actual fictive zero. (A similar experience to Zen Buddhist Koans.)
Frank was there. She felt some comfort in knowing that someone was home. He wasn’t wearing anything, except for a sheet that was wrapped around him, though his peepee was clearly visible, and he was rubbing it furiously.
* * *
It was colder in the back room, which was the death-knell of an erection, and he had to fist himself furiously to keep from going soft. The sofa was still covered in parts with the sheet, which itself was still grasping at wisps of his body heat from before, but it was mostly cold, and another impediment to maintaining an erection. All in all Frank’s erection suffered many setbacks, and the resultant orgasm was less then exemplary.
Here two short excerpts demonstrate the switching between points of view, and narrative style. Also shown is a creeping dissatisfaction typical of the nostalgia for the present exemplified in the Faustian trope. What may at first seem to be following an avant-gardist tendency, is in fact much different. Avant-Gardism covers old modes of fiction with a façade of regression. This, like Faust, turns in on itself in an effort to re-ingratiate itself with the present.
Avant-Gardism can be seen as analogous to the DIY movement. They both, in attempting to take strides in the direction of progress failed to give culture what they promised. Early modern Avant-Garde movements, as well as a more contemporary recursion of Avant-Gardism in the sixties, seventies and eighties sought to do away with the delineation between high and low art. They sought to bring art out of the salon, and the gallery by espousing a regressive tendency. They turned to supposed universal forms, such as the grid, the unconscious, or base materialism, and base humanity. The idea of Avant-Gardism, eventually co-opted by Greenburgian formalism evolved to become the dominant world-view. Here my work follows Faust playing the PFI, to modernism’s DIY.
Though having evolved previously to modernism, Faust as a scheme for exploring modes of understanding can clearly be seen as an anti-modern drive. Though both Greenburgian Modernism as an evolution of earlier Avant-Gardism (DIY) and the Faustian trope (PFI) both seem to be regressive, there is a specific delineation to be made. Modernism, in its attempt to level the playing field, so to say, was about moving forward by looking back. Here assumed universals, like the mathematics supposedly represented by the modernists favored grid, were appropriated to tell a story of progress. Modernism’s regression is only a thin veneer of universality. In the Faustian trope regression is used, rather than as a theme, as a means to an end. Faust is an advocate of using morally ambiguous means to set limits on understanding, to make experience quantifiable. The progress inherent in the Faustian trope does not exist, or exists secondarily, and is not the methods aim.
