This blog post examines how noble love, through Goethe’s ‘Urfaust’, reveals human frailty and moral limitations, leading to tragedy.
When people think of love, they often imagine a sublime and beautiful, yet simultaneously fiery and passionate emotion. This conception of love seems to be a common image that arises in people’s consciousness across cultures and throughout history. The era in which the German playwright Johann Wolfgang von Goethe lived was likely no different. In fact, one might even speculate that the importance of love was emphasized even more during that period, as the Christian worldview dominated society. Even non-Christians would likely be familiar with the biblical verse, “And now abideth faith, hope, and charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” Viewed in this context, one can understand the historical background where love transcended mere personal emotion to be established as a crucial virtue, even within the relationship with God. Therefore, it is highly likely that love was also regarded as a noble emotion in the Germany where Goethe lived at that time.
However, despite this, the value of love portrayed in Goethe’s play ‘Urfaust’ is somewhat negative and even pessimistic. Contrary to the universal perception of love, Goethe expressed the emotion of love in his work as a dark and simultaneously tragic motif. So what did Goethe seek to convey to readers through his work? And what was the nature of the love he envisioned?
The play ‘Urfaust’ serves as the draft for Goethe’s masterpiece ‘Faust’. This work depicts the young Faust seducing a woman and leading her down a path of ruin. The protagonist ‘Faust’ is a young man who has mastered all the world’s learning yet still feels a profound emptiness and finds this stifling. Of course, in the work ‘Faust’, ‘Faust’ appears as an old scholar who regains his youth through a pact with the devil, but this scene is omitted in ‘Urfaust’. To fill this void, ‘Faust’ makes a pact with the devil ‘Mephistopheles’. This pact itself symbolically reveals ‘Faust’s’ approach to love. To him, love was merely a means to resolve a kind of unfulfilled desire.
Then one day, ‘Faust’ accidentally meets the beautiful and pure maiden ‘Kriemhild Gretchen’ and falls in love with her. He enlists Mephistopheles’ power to win Kriemhild Gretchen’s heart. Ultimately, Kriemhild Gretchen finds herself pregnant while unmarried. Branded like a scarlet letter, she is abandoned by the villagers and her own brother Valentin, ultimately meeting her end in death.
In the play ‘Urfaust’, it was her love for ‘Faust’ that led ‘Kriemhild Gretchen’ to her downfall. The meaning of love revealed here is, from one perspective, quite ironic. For instance, for ‘Faust’, love was the only emotion capable of filling the void of scholarship. Yet, simultaneously, for ‘Kriemhild Gretchen’, it became the decisive factor leading to her ruin. Kriemhild Gretchen unintentionally causes the deaths of her mother and brother for her love, and becomes pregnant before marriage—something unacceptable by the customs of the time. She did not act with malicious intent; she was simply driven by the emotion of love. Yet, it was this very action that unleashed all this tragedy. Moreover, while a child born from ordinary love is a blessed symbol of love’s fruit, for ‘Kriemhild Gretchen’, it is accepted as the sinful fruit symbolizing her downfall. Consequently, this illegitimate child faces the tragedy of being unloved and ultimately killed by her own mother’s hand. Considering these points, we see that while love is universally regarded as something sublime and beautiful, Goethe employed it as a dramatic tool to shatter moral concepts.
Of course, love does not always carry only the meaning of corruption within the work. Throughout the work, love is employed as a tool presenting the possibility of repentance through the concept of conscience. One such instance is the scene where ‘Kriemhild Gretchen’ asks ‘Faust’ if he believes in God. Concerned that her beloved ‘Faust’ might fall into depravity, ‘Kriemhild Gretchen’ asks him if he believes in God and urges him to return to Christ. Another scene comes to mind where ‘Kriemhild Gretchen’ repeatedly asks whether the sleeping potion she receives from ‘Faust’ for her mother is safe. Because she loves her mother, she is concerned for her safety and shows hesitation when accepting the potion. Yet, despite these various scenes, ‘Goethe’ remains pessimistic about love. Even though scenes like these reveal the possibility of repentance through love, repentance does not actually occur. If ‘Faust’ had broken his pact with the devil and returned to God for the sake of his beloved ‘Kriemhild Gretchen’, the work might not have ended in tragedy. Or if ‘Kriemhild Gretchen’ hadn’t administered sleeping potions to her mother to preserve her own conscience, the entire tragedy might never have unfolded. Yet the tragedy did occur, and love proved powerless.
‘Goethe’ did not seem to regard love as an emotion possessing any special power. He projected love into his work as one among the various emotions humans can possess, like joy, anger, or compassion. It holds value precisely because it is an emotion, but it possesses no power beyond that. One might even say he viewed it as a fragile thing, more susceptible to temptation than other emotions. Nevertheless, it is also noteworthy that, ultimately, Goethe chose love as a crucial element in his work among many other emotions. He did not believe love possessed greater power beyond the concept of an emotion, yet he clearly regarded it as more special than other emotions. This suggests that love is an emotion that reveals humanity’s essential vulnerability while simultaneously harboring the potential danger to ultimately corrupt humanity. Through the short play ‘Urfaust’, we are given an opportunity to reconsider what the meaning of love, as conceived by Goethe, truly is.
