Hell is for Faustus
Jan. 19th, 2005 03:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thedeadlyhookFelt the impulse this week to rent films - in this case, two surreal Czech samples from the city's best video store, Le Video, a.k.a., We Bring You the World in Film Even Via Bootleg Copies If We Have To Stoop To That. Not to get the good folks at Le in trouble - they have plenty of commercial releases too, and will gladly stock the shelves with "official" versions as fast as they become available. It's a fantastic store. I have an anecdote from one of my old coworkers, about how he had to escort a fairly famous Italian horror director around for a San Jose film fest which (embarrassingly enough) turned out to be playing an edited version of his movie, and took him to Le Video, which had all of his films in stock, and uncut. In these days of bittorrent, TV series can swap hemispheres fairly quickly, but world film can still be hard to obtain - thank heaven there are still places like these that push the envelope.
Anyway, we saw the Jan Svankmajer version of Faust, which I'd always meant to get around to seeing, and Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, which I'd never heard of before, but which really turned out to be a weird and dreamlike little fantasy trip, not unlike our viewing of The Black Rider play, or A Company of Wolves in some regards. Strange fairy tale-ish fun, with odd animal imagery to go with its story of a girl with magic earrings who could see vampires in her little town. Neat. Remind me sometime to talk about that Russian movie we saw once, about witches, The Vij, which it made me think of, somewhat.
Faust, though- now that was something. The Faust tale in general is great fun - when Toys and I went to Prague, we were assured by every guidebook that one must see a puppet theater while there, and Faust was what we saw performed, in a black-light performance, which was rollicking good op-art trippy fun. As I recall, though, the puppet show we saw was based on the Goethe version of the story, in which Faust is rescued from hell by love, and Svankmajer decided to go back to the Christopher Marlowe version (although Goethe is also credited), in which Faust, having signed away his soul, is screwed for good - there is no salvation. A surfeit of deadly sin that hath damned both body and soul. The end, with some elaboration.
The film is bits of dialogue from Marlowe (dubbed in English from the Czech - there's not all that much dialogue, so it hardly jars one), live actors fabulously mixed in with classic wooden puppets, a generous use of claymation (!), and weird animal metaphors. It's brilliant, and quite funny. There's a recurring theme of the stage play - life is a stage - and sets will keep appearing out of nowhere, even in the middle of open landscape. Secret passageways lead to backstage dressing rooms. And through it all there's the fabulous dour-faced star actor Petr Cepek as Faust, the guy who wants answers about Life, The Universe, And Everything, even if he has to ask the devil himself, and as a backdrop, magnificent, crumbling, not-yet-fixed-up-for-tourists old Prague.
What made an impression on me most, though, I think, was what a cynical story Faust really is, especially when you omit the early folklorish ending (saved by the intercession of the Virgin Mary) or Goethe's ending (saved by the love of a beautiful woman). Faust asks the devil outright about the meaning of the universe, heaven and hell - he's a seeker for knowledge. Mephisto tells him that lack of heaven is hell to those who have seen paradise. Faust starts to rethink, and then Mephisto throws this stunner at him:
Faustus
When I behold the heavens, then I repent
And curse thee wicked Mephistophilis,
Because thou hast deprived me of those joys.
Mephistophilis
Why, Faustus,
Thinkst thou heaven is such a glorious thing?
I tell thee tis not half so faire as thou,
Or any man that breathes on earth.
Faustus
How provest thou that?
Mephistophilis
It was made for man; therefore is man more excellent.
Faustus
If it were made for man, 'twas made for me.
I will renounce this magic, and repent.
Translation: Marlowe was a sneaky bastard. He's saying that the excellence of man trumps the glories of heaven. Interesting to see these little critiques of canonical church thinking snuck into these sorts of works, noting again that this is a revamp of an earlier story in which the fallen hero is saved by a Saint, and revised later (by Goethe) again to a more secular reading yet, where the fallen hero is saved by love. Interesting, no?
More fun with Faust: the Wikipedia entry.
John Dee, the man who might have been a model for Marlowe's Faust - a real, live alchemist!
Alchemy - gotta love that Wikipedia. If you follow the links for alchemical symbols, note that the classic "male" symbol also means "iron" while "female" is "copper." Put 'em together and I guess you have either bronze or brass.
Alchemical symbology is something else. I could go off on a whole other tangent of mystical symbolism and the Pre-Raphaelites, and what fun you can have loading up art with coded meaning.
Final weird link: for a modern example of a Pre-Raphaelite-style artist who just luuvs that coded meaning, try this guy. He's even done a painting with Buffy in it (top right in "Gallery 2" under "Paintings").
I see symbols everywhere, I swear.
Anyway, we saw the Jan Svankmajer version of Faust, which I'd always meant to get around to seeing, and Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, which I'd never heard of before, but which really turned out to be a weird and dreamlike little fantasy trip, not unlike our viewing of The Black Rider play, or A Company of Wolves in some regards. Strange fairy tale-ish fun, with odd animal imagery to go with its story of a girl with magic earrings who could see vampires in her little town. Neat. Remind me sometime to talk about that Russian movie we saw once, about witches, The Vij, which it made me think of, somewhat.
Faust, though- now that was something. The Faust tale in general is great fun - when Toys and I went to Prague, we were assured by every guidebook that one must see a puppet theater while there, and Faust was what we saw performed, in a black-light performance, which was rollicking good op-art trippy fun. As I recall, though, the puppet show we saw was based on the Goethe version of the story, in which Faust is rescued from hell by love, and Svankmajer decided to go back to the Christopher Marlowe version (although Goethe is also credited), in which Faust, having signed away his soul, is screwed for good - there is no salvation. A surfeit of deadly sin that hath damned both body and soul. The end, with some elaboration.
The film is bits of dialogue from Marlowe (dubbed in English from the Czech - there's not all that much dialogue, so it hardly jars one), live actors fabulously mixed in with classic wooden puppets, a generous use of claymation (!), and weird animal metaphors. It's brilliant, and quite funny. There's a recurring theme of the stage play - life is a stage - and sets will keep appearing out of nowhere, even in the middle of open landscape. Secret passageways lead to backstage dressing rooms. And through it all there's the fabulous dour-faced star actor Petr Cepek as Faust, the guy who wants answers about Life, The Universe, And Everything, even if he has to ask the devil himself, and as a backdrop, magnificent, crumbling, not-yet-fixed-up-for-tourists old Prague.
What made an impression on me most, though, I think, was what a cynical story Faust really is, especially when you omit the early folklorish ending (saved by the intercession of the Virgin Mary) or Goethe's ending (saved by the love of a beautiful woman). Faust asks the devil outright about the meaning of the universe, heaven and hell - he's a seeker for knowledge. Mephisto tells him that lack of heaven is hell to those who have seen paradise. Faust starts to rethink, and then Mephisto throws this stunner at him:
When I behold the heavens, then I repent
And curse thee wicked Mephistophilis,
Because thou hast deprived me of those joys.
Mephistophilis
Why, Faustus,
Thinkst thou heaven is such a glorious thing?
I tell thee tis not half so faire as thou,
Or any man that breathes on earth.
Faustus
How provest thou that?
Mephistophilis
It was made for man; therefore is man more excellent.
Faustus
If it were made for man, 'twas made for me.
I will renounce this magic, and repent.
Translation: Marlowe was a sneaky bastard. He's saying that the excellence of man trumps the glories of heaven. Interesting to see these little critiques of canonical church thinking snuck into these sorts of works, noting again that this is a revamp of an earlier story in which the fallen hero is saved by a Saint, and revised later (by Goethe) again to a more secular reading yet, where the fallen hero is saved by love. Interesting, no?
More fun with Faust: the Wikipedia entry.
John Dee, the man who might have been a model for Marlowe's Faust - a real, live alchemist!
Alchemy - gotta love that Wikipedia. If you follow the links for alchemical symbols, note that the classic "male" symbol also means "iron" while "female" is "copper." Put 'em together and I guess you have either bronze or brass.
Alchemical symbology is something else. I could go off on a whole other tangent of mystical symbolism and the Pre-Raphaelites, and what fun you can have loading up art with coded meaning.
Final weird link: for a modern example of a Pre-Raphaelite-style artist who just luuvs that coded meaning, try this guy. He's even done a painting with Buffy in it (top right in "Gallery 2" under "Paintings").
I see symbols everywhere, I swear.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-19 07:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-20 10:10 am (UTC)Hope you have a good time over in the flatlands!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-20 03:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-20 04:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-20 12:00 pm (UTC)Translation: Marlowe was a sneaky bastard.
Interesting, really. Wonder if he was also trying to get around the idea of heaven - like is there even one? Hmmmm.
John Dee, the man who might have been a model for Marlowe's Faust - a real, live alchemist!
Have you read the Sandman comics, particularly the first one?
Final weird link: for a modern example of a Pre-Raphaelite-style artist
There's a New Zealand artist called Misery who used to do graffiti and now does clothes (I have a few of her T-shirts). It's a very similar style - Misery
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-20 12:17 pm (UTC)Interesting artist! Reminds me of several Japanese pop artists I very much like, like this (http://www.h4.dion.ne.jp/~mjdotcom/home.html) one, Junko Mizuno. (It's a Japanese site, but English-navigable.) There's some great T-shirts and whatnot of her work too.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-20 12:23 pm (UTC)It's just that John Dee makes an appearance in the first book.
Well, it makes me up my coolness points with the student librarians when I'm checking out the books from the university library - ho hum....
like this one, Junko Mizuno.
Oh I like that artist! Misery has been critcised for repeating the same themes over and over again - so Mizuno is a bit more refreshing in that way.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-22 01:45 pm (UTC)For the folks out there in LJ-land, we met up with my parents last night, and my dad - an electronics engineer by trade - mentioned he'd done a paper in college on the changing interpretations of the Faust legend over the centuries. His conclusion was that Faust's ambition was presented more and more favorably over time, and that he was ultimately cast as a kind of Prometheus figure, braving the fury of the gods for the sake of knowledge.
To me, though, what's interesting about the Marlowe version - at least based on the passages that Svankmajer chose to excerpt - is how, under the tutelage of Mephistopheles, Faust's yearning for enlightenment is gradually debased into a hunger for temporal fame and power, and finally into brute lust as his eleventh-hour repentance is derailed by a timely apparition of Helen of Troy.
And as you point out, there's also some pretty entertaining theological disputation about the nature of hell. They keep returning to the paradox of how Mephistopheles, a devil damned to hell, can wander freely around the earth; Faust doesn't seem convinced by the quotable Gnosticism of "Why this is hell, nor am I out of it." After he's already signed away his soul, Faust confidently proclaims that he doesn't believe hell exists at all:
Faustus
Tell me, where is the place that men call hell?
Mephistophilis
Under the heavens.
Faustus
Ay, so are all things else, but whereabouts?
Mephistophilis
Within the bowels of these elements,
Where we are tortured, and remain forever.
Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscribed,
In one self place, but where we are is hell,
And where hell is there must we ever be.
And to be short, when all the world dissolves,
And every creature shall be purified,
All places shall be hell that is not heaven.
Faustus
I think hell's a fable.
Mephistopheles points out that Faust is contractually obligated to go there, but Faust sticks to his guns:
Faustus
Think'st thou that Faustus, is so fond to imagine,
That after this life there is any pain?
No, these are trifles, and mere old wives tales.
Mephistophilis
But I am an instance to prove the contrary,
For I tell thee I am damned, and now in hell.
Faustus
Nay, and this be hell, I'll willingly be damned.
What sleeping, eating, walking and disputing?
As comebacks go, that's a pretty good one. Of course, the devil gets the last laugh in the end...
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-22 01:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-22 02:57 pm (UTC)he's trying to reach for understanding of the universe, what is heaven, what is hell, while every immortal being he asks just prances around insisting that he's too dumb to get it even if they explained
That was certainly how it played in the movie, although as far as I can tell, the passage in the movie where Mephistopheles sneers at the ability of human language to comprehend the ineffable doesn't seem to appear in Marlowe's play. Is it perhaps from Goethe, or might it be Svankmajer's own addition?
Looking at Marlowe's version, the impression I get is that Mephistopheles is perfectly happy to entertain Faust's cosmological questions until they get to the why part:
Faustus
Now tell me, who made the world?
Mephistophilis
I will not.
Faustus
Sweet Mephistophilis, tell me.
Mephistophilis
Move me not, Faustus.
Faustus
Villain, have not I bound thee to tell me anything?
Mephistophilis
Ay, that is not against our kingdom.
This is. Thou art damned; think thou of hell.
In other words, when Faust begins inquiring directly into the nature of God, Mephistopheles digs in his heels and says he's not going to talk about the guys on the other side. It's at this point that Faust has his first spasm of anxiety about what he's done, and he falls to his knees in prayer, whereupon Lucifer and Beelzebub appear in person to divert him with an entertaining parade of the Seven Deady Sins. Lo and behold, Faust is quite happily distracted:
Faustus
O, how this sight doth delight my soul.
Lucifer
But, Faustus, in hell is all manner of delight.
Faustus
O, might I see hell, and return again safe. How
happy were I then.
Of course, even when Mephistopheles is treating Faust to cosmology lecture, one gets the impression that it's a bit of a sham. At one point Faust compares the devil's knowledge to that of his manservant: "These slender questions Wagner can decide. Hath Mephistophilis no greater skill? Who knows not the double motion of the planets?" Mephistopheles eventually blows Faust off with a few Latin slogans, but one's left wondering if, like the apparitions of David and Goliath and the resurrection of Helen of Troy, the devil's philosophical explanations are really just shoddy conjurer's tricks...