What the myth of Faust can teach us

The legend of a man selling his soul to the devil ‘seems to have particular resonance at times of moral crisis’, writes Benjamin Ramm.

By Benjamin Ramm

“Politicians promise you heaven before an election and give you hell after,” wrote the anarchist Emma Goldman. The experience of the legendary Doctor Faustus, who sells his soul to the demon Mephistopheles in return for worldly knowledge and pleasure, has been treated as a metaphor for unholy political pacts. It may even shed light on our own populist moment, from Brexit to the election of Donald Trump. Why does this 500-year-old folk legend resonate in times of crisis, and why does it continue to haunt the Western imagination?

The legend is loosely based on the life of Johann Georg Faust (c 1480–1540), an alchemist and practitioner of necromancy, a form of ‘black magic’. A chapbook speculating on his infamous exploits circulated in the late 16th Century, inspiring Christopher Marlowe’s play The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, first performed in London around 1592. At approximately the same time, the legend of Pan Twardowski, a sorcerer who sold his soul to the devil, began to take root in Polish folklore.

The most influential interpretation of the Faust legend was written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832). The project dominated his intellectual life: the first part of his dramatic poem, Faust, appeared in 1808; the second part was completed in 1831, the year before his death. With the exception of Frankenstein, published by Mary Shelley in 1818, it is difficult to think of a more enduring modern legend – both stories reflect unease about the dawning of a new world, full of possibility and anxiety.

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