Goethe's Other Faust: The Drama, Part 2

Roman S. Struc is a professor in the Department of Germanic and Slavic
Studies, University of Calgary.

Even specialists in German literature approach the “other Faust”
gingerly. If the first part is a challenge to the reader/viewer, the
second appears to be impenetrable in spite of the commentaries and
elucidations.

John Gearey makes a valiant attempt to approach Faust II from a
relatively new angle. It has been acknowledged for some time now that
Goethe’s scientific interests are integral to that part. In his study,
Gearey claims that these interests do find their “objective
correlative,” so to speak, in the puzzling form of this play. He
singles out a number of scientific and ideational tendencies at work in
Faust II, including Darwin’s theory of evolution, great geological
discoveries, Herder’s historicism, and other related ideas and
insights. What they all have in common, Gearey points out, is a view of
reality not as being but as becoming, not as static but as dynamic. In
this respect, Faust II can be said to integrate and utilize insights and
ideas of contemporary science and philosophy.

This study offers Goethe scholars and readers a fine and complex
account of a challenging and mystifying play.