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Common Errors in English Usage and More October 2016

Goethe’s Faust

Note: This study guide is based on the translation of Walter Kaufmann titled Goethe’s Faust (Anchor Books) which omits most of Part II.

This work is rich in wonderful contradictions and conflicts. Faust: A Tragedy is the title given his masterpiece by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Yet it might almost as easily be described as a musical comedy, in that it has many comic passages, features many songs, and lacks a tragic ending. Faust himself is not a classic tragic figure either. In fact, his characteristic yearning for experience and knowledge created a type for the romantic age still known as the Faustian hero, though he can easily seem more of a villain than a hero; and the purported villain–Mephistopheles–is one of the most likable characters in the play. His yearnings draw him toward the heavens, yet he is also powerfully attracted to the physical world. The book was designed to be read rather than performed, yet many scenes are wonderfully designed for effective stage presentation.

It is useless to try to figure out what the “real” point of Faust is, or which of the many views of life it presents is the correct one. It is par excellence the Romantic masterwork precisely because it explores a wide variety of polar opposites without resolving them. Goethe has created a microcosm of life, trying to preserve its complexity, its tensions, and its dynamism. Appreciating the work’s complexity and enjoying it should be your goal.

One the most important tensions expressed in this work is between learning and experience. Faust himself rejects scholarship for life, but it would be a mistake to suppose that Goethe unequivocally endorses this view. Mephistopheles, who is usually both truthful and wise, warns him against this enthusiasm for raw experience; and Goethe himself was a scholar and bureaucrat who greatly valued the learning of the past and aimed at joining the pantheon of classic writers. Faust is a part of Goethe, but so is Mephistopheles.

This is a work that can be hugely entertaining, but only if one understands its references and ideas. These notes are meant to help you enjoy the work by pointing you to significant passages that need careful thought and providing crucial information on some difficult references. They are meant not to hand you a simple interpretation, but to stimulate thought about the work that can lead to an interpretation.

There are several passages in the Bible which must be read in connection with specific lines in the play.

None of them will take more than a few minutes to read.

Prologue in Heaven

In this overture to his drama Goethe creates a quaint and slightly comic Heaven in which the encounter between Goethe and Mephistopheles is planned. What signs can you find that Goethe does not intend this scene seriously to portray an orthodox Christian Heaven? To “intone” an “air” is to sing a song. A “tourney” is a tournament or conflict.

Raphael is describing a traditional concept called “the harmony of the spheres” in which each planetary sphere in the solar system emits a tone which blend together into a sort of heavenly music. In what way does the concept of a “tourney” conflict with this concept? What astronomical system is represented by Raphael’s description of the sun and its “brother spheres” moving around the earth? How does this system relate to that described by Gabriel, who describes the earth as revolving and fleeing through space? What references to motion can you find in the speeches of the three archangels? Can you find any pattern in the order in which they describe various kinds of motion? (Hint: look at the scale of things.) What contradiction is contained in the last line of Michael’s speech?

Mephistopheles’ witty, ironic tone in addressing God is quite different from that of the sober debate in the book of Job (be sure to read today’s brief assignment in Job; any translation of the Bible will do). But what are the basic similarities between the story in the Bible and this scene? After the angels have been praising God for his unfathomable splendor, how does Mephistopheles criticize God? Why is the Devil represented as being more interested in humanity than is God? What criticism does he make of humanity’s gift of reason?

How effectively does The Lord answer Mephistopheles? What are the chief characteristics of Faust that Mephistopheles describes? The Lord seems to agree with Mephistopheles’ description of Faust’s greatest fault when he says “Man errs as long as he will strive.” But he seems to value striving when he says “man’s activity can easily abate,/He soon prefers uninterrupted rest;/To give him this companion hence seems best/Who roils and must as Devil help create.” What reasons do you think Goethe might have had for having the Lord express two such opposite views of the roles of striving and activity? In what way does he say the Devil actually helps him to carry out his will?

Faust has studied all of the major subjects in which a Renaissance scholar could receive a degree, so can be understood to have exhausted traditional learning. What is his attitude toward his education? In what way does he feel he is smarter than others? What activity has he turned to after rejecting formal education? At line 386, where is he looking? At line 398? What contrast does he draw between these two sights? Worms and dust traditionally symbolize death; look for this symbolism to reappear. What do the images of imprisonment and escape here convey about Faust’s mood?

Nostradamus was a Renaissance prophet and astrologer; which of his roles is relevant in this context (line 420)?macrocosm is the universe at large, depicted in the Renaissance as a series of concentric circles surrounding the earth marking the orbits of the moon, sun, planets, and stars.

In this context the macrocosm is the universe at large, depicted in the Renaissance as a series of concentric circles surrounding the earth marking the orbits of the moon, sun, planets, and stars. How does viewing it make Faust feel? In lines 446-453 he envisions a dynamic version of the traditional Renaissance image of the “Great Chain of Being,” seemingly influenced by Jacob’s vision in Genesis 28:11-12). What is his reaction to it? Notice how Mephistopheles’ preference for the Earth in the Prologue in Heaven foreshadowed Faust’s preference for the Earth Spirit over the image of the macrocosm. Faust imperiously conjures the Earth Spirit to appear before him: what is his reaction when it actually appears? How does Faust react to its taunts? What does the Spirit mean when it says to him that he is a “Peer of the spirit that you comprehend/Not mine!”? Why does Faust call himself “image of the godhead?” (See Genesis 1:27)

Why is Faust so irritated when Wagner, his student, thinks that he has been reading classical literature and practicing rhetoric? What are the main points of the two sides of the debate between Faust and Wagner? What is Faust’s attitude toward classical study? What does this classical proverb (variously attributed to Seneca, Horace, and Hippocrates), quoted by Wagner, mean: “art is forever,/and our life is brief?” When Wagner claims that study of ancient writings is valuable because it helps us enter into the spirit of the time, how does Faust answer him? Why is Wagner’s final speech probably intensely irritating to Faust? How does it relate to what they have been discussing earlier? Which of the two do you agree more with? Why?

In line 808 Faust expresses his gratitude toward Wagner for having rescued him from the despair into which the Earth Spirit’s taunts had cast him; but he almost immediately plunges back into depression. He speaks to the absent Spirit, expressing his humiliation. The contrast he makes between fantasy and realism starting in line 640 is a typical romantic complaint about the rationalist period from which he was emerging. He is looking back with nostalgia to the Middle Ages, when the imagination was allowed freer rein and is repelled by the narrow rationalism of the eighteenth century. How does Faust again use the imagery of worms and dust in lines 652-659? The skull he sees on his shelf acts as a traditional memento mori: a reminder of death which some devout monks kept by their beside in the Middle Ages to remind them that they were mortal; but why might he realistically have a skull on his shelf? The bottle which is the next object to catch his eye almost certainly contains laudanum: opium dissolved in alcohol. It was an extremely common drug and relatively cheap. Though it could not cure diseases, it made people feel better–unless they took too large a dose, in which case they would pleasantly drop off to sleep and die. This quality made it not only the renaissance equivalent of aspirin but the drug of choice for suicide. How does he propose to prove “that mortals/Have as much dignity as any god”? In lines 712-719 Faust is contrasting himself with Hamlet in Act 3, Scene 1 of the play (ll. 55-88). Note the Choir of Women. A similar group of women are going to appear at the end of the play, linked to the theme of salvation. Why doesn’t he drink? Does the song of the angels bring him to religious faith? What effect does it have on him?

Before the City Gate

What kinds of activities are people engaging in on this Easter morning? Are any of them religious? What is the attitude of “Another Citizen” toward war? Can you compare the attitudes of the young women toward love with those of the soldiers? What does Faust seem to feel is the meaning of the Easter holiday? What is Wagner’s reaction to Faust’s enjoyment of the scene? The song sung by the peasants has the typical folk theme of a young girl seduced and abandoned, and strongly foreshadows the plot of the play. Why does Faust, who is normally completely skeptical about religion, tell the peasants who praise him for his medical services that they should thank God instead? Faust rather hysterically compares the medical efforts of his father and himself to the plague (“pest”), not because they really intended to murder anyone but because–as Goethe knew well– renaissance medicine was more harmful than helpful to patients. In using the image of flight to symbolize his longing for transcendence and escape he imagines himself pursuing the setting sun, personified as a god, as by the ancient Greeks and Romans. As the sun sinks into the west, he pursues it out over the billows (waves) of the Atlantic Ocean. This image of eternal vain pursuit is central to Faust’s ideas about himself, which will be reflected throughout the play in many forms. What is the basic contradiction in human nature that Faust describes in the last part of this speech? What is Wagner’s reaction to it? In what two directions does Faust then say his soul is torn?

When the black dog appears (a large, shaggy animal, not a French toy poodle), what does Faust see that Wagner cannot?

Study

Note that at the beginning of this scene Faust seems to be in a more nearly religious mood than at any other point in the play. Night, which was celebrated by romantic writers (in self-conscious contrast with the enlightenment), inspires in him a “holy dread.” What effect does the poodle have on this mood? When we learn that the poodle is really Mephistopheles, what do we realize he has accomplished in disturbing Faust?

When Faust “translates” the first verse of the Gospel of John, how does his vocabulary choice reflect his character? Based on what you read later, why do the spirits in the corridor say “One has been caught inside” in line 1259? During the Renaissance the salamander was thought to live in fire, the undene in water, and the sylph in air, while the kobold is a Germanic spirit associated with the earth. Thus each represents one of the traditional four elements of the natural world. Having exhausted the natural world, Faust will have to the demonic (“Hell’s progeny”). What is an incubus? (Look it up.)

Mephistopheles sets the tone for their whole relationship by greeting Faust sarcastically, belittling his prowess; but according to the traditions of the conjuring of spirits he is in real danger of being controlled if his intended victim can only identify his name. How does he distract him from that question? When Faust calls Mephistopheles “God of Flies” he is alluding to another traditional Jewish name for the Devil: Beelzebub. This passage is the source of the title of William Golding’s novel, Lord of the Flies. How does Mephistopheles’ definition of himself in lines 1336-1337 relate to what The Lord has to say about his role in the Prologue in Heaven? How does Mephistopheles argue that darkness is superior to light in lines 1348-1368? In what sense did darkness give birth to light? (See Genesis 1:1-5.) Why does Mephistopheles say that his favorite element is fire? Rather than portraying Mephistopheles as a force for evil against good, Faust understands him as sterility against creativity. Which of these two forces do both of them seem to feel is the stronger?

Why could the magic pentagram (the witch’s foot) in the doorway let Mephistopheles in though it now will not let him out? Notice that it is Faust who first raises the possibility of signing a contract with the Devil. Goethe repeatedly emphasizes that Faust is not seduced into evil by Mephistopheles: he is already drawn to it, and tries to make the Devil his tool. Why do you think Mephistopheles is so anxious to leave instead of immediately negotiating the contract? How does Mephistopheles manage to escape?

Study

Faust has to invite Mephistopheles into his study three times to symbolize his willingness to become involved in the evil the spirit represents. Why reasons does Faust give for saying there is nothing Mephistopheles can give him that he wants? How does Mephistopheles humiliate him when he declares that he wants to die in line 1571? Faust is like a patient who approaches a doctor, saying “I want to avoid heart disease, but don’t tell me to change my diet, exercise, or take drugs.” Perhaps because he is a bit nervous about the direction in which he is headed he is effectively ruling out just about everything that Mephistopheles could conceivably give him. When Faust gets into one of these melodramatic moods, Mephistopheles usually combats him with humor. Here it is his companion spirits who mock his words by saying he has “shattered the world” with his curses. Their song means, in essence, “Hey, relax, enjoy life!”

Faust has clearly read stories of other people who have signed contracts with the Devil and experienced disaster, and Mephistopheles tells the doctor that he will be Mephistopheles’ servant in hell, so why does Faust proceed with the negotiation? What examples does Faust give of the deceptive and transitory gifts the Devil has been known to provide? Why does Faust say that he is willing to die if he ever experiences a moment of complete satisfaction? Note these words: “If to the moment I should say:/Abide, you are so fair;” they are important at the end of the play. Mephistopheles insists on the signature being in blood to force Faust into taking a stereotypically self-damning step. He can hardly claim he didn’t know what he was getting into, since signing a contract with the Devil in blood is notoriously a damnable thing to do. Again and again Faust will seek to gloss over the true nature of his relationship to evil, and again and again Mephistopheles will rub his nose in it. Of the two longings Faust has spoken of before, which one does he say he now wants to pursue? Does he seek happiness? What warnings does Mephistopheles make about the probable outcome of their contract? Which of the two longings does Mephistopheles urge Faust to pursue? Notice the last two lines before the entry of the student mean in which Mephistopheles confirms that it is not he who is making Faust evil; Faust is evil already. Mephistopheles may in fact be seen in this play as the embodiment of the evil impulses within Faust. The fact that he is a lively and vivid character with a personality strikingly different from Faust’s own may obscure this symbolism, but Goethe repeatedly underlines it. Encheiresin naturae (l. 1940) is a technical term in alchemy having to do with the supposed way in which the spirit joints the soul to the body. Alchemists hoped to find an analogue to such a force in nature and use it produce to the magical “philosopher’s stone.” Mephistopheles here mocks their pretentious to knowledge. What career does Mephistopheles finally advise the student to take up, and what typically devilish reason does he give for doing so? People often wrote short poems or quotations in each other’s autograph books in Goethe’s time. What is the meaning of Mephistopheles’ inscription (“You shall be like God, knowing good and evil.”)? (See Genesis 3:1-5.)

Witch’s Kitchen

What is Faust’s attitude toward witchcraft? As when he forced him to sign in blood, Mephistopheles is maneuvering Faust into participating in obviously Satanic rituals so that he is forced to confront the evil nature of what he is doing. What alternative to drinking the magic potion does Mephistopheles offer Faust? Lines 2441-2442 sarcastically allude to the fact that in the Biblical account of creation God looks at each day’s work and sees that it is good (see Genesis 1). What does Mephistopheles suggest Faust should do with a beautiful woman should he find one? Compare this with what he actually does. In what ways does Mephistopheles say he has modernized his appearance? Line 2509 reflects the state of European civilization in the wake of the enlightenment, shorn of its religious superstitions, but no closer to virtue. It is important to keep reminding yourself that neither Goethe nor most of his readers believed in the traditional Devil. Mephistopheles is a symbol of evil–a very lively and vivid one–but still ultimately a symbol. In lines 2526-2527 he says that Faust can safely drink the potion because the latter is no novice at evil; he is sufficiently corrupted already to be “inoculated” against its dangerous effects. When Mephistopheles says that “Three in One and One in Three” is “illusion and not truth” he is of course mocking the Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity. The belief that God can be simultaneously one and three persons is one of the most controversial aspects of Christian belief, giving theologians much exercise to explain this paradox in logical terms. Mephistopheles delights in pointing out such sore spots in conventional religion. Besides making him thirty years younger, what other effect does the magic potion have on Faust?

Street

A properly brought up young woman of this time would never allow herself to be picked up on the street. She is correct in saying she is not a “lady” (a term reserved for the nobility at this time): she belongs to the lower middle class. She is, however, naive in thinking that she is not “fair” (beautiful); her difficult life has not exposed her to public admiration before and is genuinely unaware of her beauty until she catches sight of herself bedecked in jewels later, in a mirror. What is Faust’s reaction to her virtuous rejection of him? Why does Mephistopheles say he cannot deliver her to him immediately? What devilish reason does he give to justify the delay?

Evening

How could Gretchen–the nickname for Margaret by which she is known in the play–recognize that Faust belonged to the upper classes (besides the shape of his forehead)? Faust is so moved by Gretchen’s obvious innocence that he wants to abandon the planned seduction. How does Mephistopheles shame him into proceeding with the seduction? Note how cleverly he provides a virtuous motive for doing evil. Gretchen is made both innocent and erotic at the same time as she slowly removes her clothes while singing a romantic song about the king of Thule (a mythical far-northern kingdom)? The audience becomes voyeurs while Gretchen remains an innocent young girl getting ready for bed. What effect does putting on the jewels have on Gretchen?

Promenade

How does Mephistopheles satirize the Church at the beginning of this scene?

The Neighbor’s House

How can you tell that Martha is not genuinely grieving for her missing husband? Why is she so eager for news of him? Mephistopheles’ clever compliments echo Faust’s addresses to her earlier. Whereas she had then denied being either a lady or beautiful, now she can deny only the former. Notice how cleverly Mephistopheles works Martha up into a rage against her missing husband by alternately telling her things that make her eager to be reunited with him and others that make her furious with him. She is angry that he left behind a request to have three hundred masses sung for the repose of his soul because such masses were very expensive. Supposedly he has spent all his wealth on another woman and then tried to impose an enormous debt on his wife.” How does Gretchen respond to Mephistopheles’ suggestion that she should get married? What is improper about the manner of mourning suggested by Mephistopheles in lines 2990-2991? How do you think Mephistopheles’ question on line 3006 affects her? Does her answer reveal blissful innocence or a guilty conscience? Watch for a speech by Gretchen later that implies the latter is the truth. Why is Martha so eager to meet the magistrate Mephistopheles says he will bring to her?

Street

Faust is eager to seduce Gretchen, which will ruin her; but he is reluctant to tell a lie. What argument does Mephistopheles use to demonstrate that this is an absurd distinction? Again we see that he is cleverly maneuvering Faust into doing something obviously evil and distasteful in order to gain his ends. What argument does Faust use to maintain that his promises of eternal love for Gretchen will not be a lie? What is the logical flaw in his argument? What attitude toward his situation does Faust express in his last line in this scene, and is it justified?

Garden

How does Faust kissing Gretchen’s hand remind her of her poverty? What does Martha seem to be aiming at in her conversation with Mephistopheles? Gretchen suffers from an acute case of low self-esteem. In what ways does this make her more vulnerable to Faust’s seduction? What hint is there in Gretchen’s long speech about her family that she is not entirely pleased with her mother? Can you describe how the relationship between them has developed between this passage and line 2163, when Faust and Gretchen reappear together as they stroll around the garden? The technique used here is not unlike a scene change in a film, where matters have progressed much farther than one would have expected in the brief moments they have been out of earshot, but because we could not hear what they were saying, we are not bothered by this fact. What does Gretchen say her reaction was when Faust first spoke to her? Against whom was her anger ultimately directed? Why? Have you ever encountered this sort of emotional reaction in real life? Gretchen’s sound moral instincts make her shudder when Faust first clasps her hands. Watch for that reaction to return later in the play. Notice how Faust’s inelegant but passionate “No, no end! No end! seems to be less directed toward Gretchen than toward the mocking voice of Mephistopheles within him pointing out that by swearing eternal life he is lying. Faust had insisted he would be sincere, and now he is trying to whip himself up into a frenzied passion that will make his declarations sincere; but Mephistopheles’ intervention has prevented this self-delusion from working. The very next words (uttered by Martha) ominously foreshadow the very “end” which Faust is trying to deny.

A Garden Bower

Gretchen says “I love you;” but the closest Faust comes to saying it is during the daisy-petal-plucking scene when he says “he loves you.” What does this difference reveal about each of them? Gretchen is mystified as to what Faust sees in her. She is a classic victim of sexual aggression: too young and naive to realize that the erotic attractions of her body more than compensate for her lack of sophistication. She is still so impressed by Faust’s social superiority that she cannot grasp that he is drawn to her for purely sexual reasons.

Wood and Cave

The “exalted spirit” to whom Faust is addressing his remarks is clearly not Mephistopheles since he alludes to the latter in ll. 3243-3245 as someone distinctly separate, so the spirit addressed has to be the Earth Spirit which Faust conjured up earlier in the play. This may seem inconsistent since we have no reason to think that Faust has maintained any relationship with this spirit, and in fact it is partly a remnant of a plan by Goethe to have the Earth Spirit play a much larger role in the story than he finally did. However, we may also interpret this as a typical piece of self-delusion on Faust’s part: he declines to accept that Gretchen is a gift of the Devil and instead tries to credit a less obviously evil source. What is he trying to achieve out here in the wilderness? Why does he say he has not succeeded? In ll. 3282-3292 Faust’s romantic claims to be “communing with nature” are crudely dismissed by Mephistopheles as a form of masturbation, one of many instances of sexual frankness that would be avoided by writers later in the nineteenth century. How does he tempt Faust to continue his affair with Gretchen? What clues are there in their dialogue that Faust has already made love with her repeatedly? In lines 3334-3335 Faust blasphemously proclaims that he is jealous when Gretchen goes to Mass and consumes the wafer which Catholics believe is transformed into the body of Christ. Mephistopheles answers him with a clever erotic blasphemy of his own, based on Song of Songs (known in some translations as “The Song of Solomon”) 7:3 in which breasts are compared to twin deer. Mephistopheles is saying that he is jealous of Faust when the latter enjoys Gretchen with her blouse off. Readers who don’t know their Bible thoroughly will miss this clear statement that Gretchen and Faust have already been making love. In fact, she is almost certainly pregnant at this point, as we will discover later. Faust is reduced to spluttering protests by this sly remark, which Mephistophles answers with yet another sexually-toned blasphemy, arguing that since God made women to be the partners of men, he was the first pimp. What evidence is there in Faust’s last speech in this scene that he knows perfectly well that he is destroying Gretchen? How does he rationalize completing her destruction?

Gretchen’s Room

What feelings does Gretchen express in her spinning wheel song? This song has been set to music several times, most famously by Franz Schubert, as “Gretchen am Spinnrad.” Compare her feelings to what Mephistopheles said she was feeling in the previous scene.

Martha’s Garden

How does Faust respond to Gretchen’s pointed questions about his religious beliefs? How does he manage to change this troublesome subject back to his love for her? What important error does Gretchen make in this debate which prevents her from understanding that Faust is evil? Why should the audience become alarmed when Faust suggests using a sleeping potion to drug Gretchen’s mother, based what we have seen earlier in the play? Why, although it is made clear a little later that Gretchen is no longer a virgin and is in fact probably pregnant at this point, does Goethe seem to evade that point by using ambiguous language here which could be misread to mean that they have never had sex together when in fact it is only that they have never slept in her bedroom all night before? How would you feel about a real girl who was willing to give her mother a dangerous drug so that she could have sex with her lover in the same bedroom? What is there about the portrait of Gretchen that tends to make us more forgiving of her than of her real-life equivalent? What effect does it have on our feelings about Gretchen that her mother never appears on stage? What cynical reason does Mephistopheles offer for Gretchen’s curiosity about Faust’s religious beliefs? Mephistopheles does not really take pleasure in sexual desire for its own sake–only for the evil it may lead to. He anticipates in his last line the disasters to come.

At the Well

What is your reaction to the character of Lieschen? How does she cause us to side emotionally with Gretchen? What techniques does Goethe use in this scene and elsewhere to avoid presenting Gretchen as a wicked sinner? How does this scene indirectly make us aware that Gretchen is pregnant?

City Wall

The Mater Dolorosa is the image of the Virgin Mary grieving for the sufferings of her son Jesus. Is Gretchen’s prayer to her a prayer of repentance? Explain.

Night. Street in Front of Gretchen’s Door

What is ironic about the name of Gretchen’s brother? What are his feelings about her? Does he really care about her for her own sake? How many days away is Walpurgis Night (April 30)? What is the subject of Mephistopheles’ serenade? Why does Mephistopheles insist on parrying Valentine’s thrusts while Faust thrusts at him? How does Valentine’s dying speech make us more sympathetic with Gretchen? Martha is correct in calling his self-righteous words blasphemous since he is presuming to be more judgmental than God, whereas it can be argued that Jesus taught that humans should be more forgiving than God, who is the only one who can send sinners to eternal damnation without hope of forgiveness (see Matthew 18:22-35).

Cathedral

Gretchen is at the funeral of her mother, killed by the sleeping potion, and of Valentine, killed by Faust. She is crazed with guilt and terror for her role in this catastrophe. When the evil spirit which acts as her guilty conscience refers to a foreboding presence which frightens her (“underneath your heart”), what is he talking about? The choir sings the famous opening lines from theDies Irae, the traditional chant describing the Day of Judgment which is sung during the mass for the dead. How are their words related to Gretchen? [Dies iræ, dies illa,/Solvet sæclum in favila; Day of wrath, on that day when the world shall dissolve in ashes; Judex ergo cum sedebit,/Quidquid latet adparebit,/Nil inultum remanebit; So when the judge takes his seat, whatever has been hidden will appear, nothing shall remain unpunished; Quid sum miser tunc dicturus?/Quem patronum rogaturus?/Cum vix justus sit securus; What shall I, a wretch, say? Who shall I ask to plead for me, when scarcely the righteous shall be safe?]

Walpurgis Night

The eve of May Day is here observed as a kind of Halloween, filled with Devil worship in the Harz mountains, where Goethe had spent a memorable night after hiking up the famous site of this scene. Much of the opening is sung, and Goethe uses a variety of devices to create the illusion of climbing on a static stage. What references to motion of various kinds can you find in this part of the scene? Note how even the trees are brought to life. Will o’ the wisps were spirits (actually phosphorescent swamp gas) that were believed to lead the unwary traveler deeper and deeper into the wilderness until he or she was lost and destroyed. Why is such a guide chosen to lead them up the mountain? How is the theme of striving which pervades the play reflected in the Half-Witch? What is Mephistopheles’ reply to Goethe’s hope that he will finally achieve the answers to many riddles at the Walpurgis Night celebration? In traditional witchcraft, some ceremonies were performed nude. How does Goethe do a satirical variation on this theme? Why does Mephistopheles speak as if he were losing his power in lines 4092-4094? Is he really commenting on the impending Last Judgment or on the decline of religion in the age of Enlightenment? Keeping in mind the latter interpretation, notice how he ridicules the Huckster-Witch (a huckster is a sleazy, dishonest merchant). Lilith is rarely (and unclearly) alluded to in the Bible, but Jewish tradition makes her the first, rebellious wife of Adam, and later a symbol for everything evil about women. The impudently erotic song Faust sings as he dances with the young witch is modelled on the Song of Songs 7:7-8, in which a woman’s breasts are compared to fruit growing on a tree which man may climb up to gather. Note that Mephistopheles and the old witch use much more obviously obscene metaphors in the following exchange. What effect does the enlightenment rationalism of the Proktophantasmist have on the Walpurgis Night celebration? In mythology, Perseus rescued Andromeda by cutting off the head of Medusa, whose gaze could turn a person to stone. Goethe here blends that story with a traditional tale of a young woman who persisted in wearing a velvet band around her neck night and day. When her new husband removed it while she slept, her head fell off. She had earlier been executed, but kept alive by the witchcraft of the band. One theory has it that the story was inspired by the red thread which was tied around the necks of those intended for the guillotine during the French Revolution, to mark the place where the blade should fall. The American author Washington Irving retold a version of this story in “The Adventure of the German Student” (1824). This blending of northern European and Greco-Roman mythology is very typical of Goethe. This imagery also foreshadows the fact that Gretchen has been condemned to the executioner’s ax. How in this scene does Faust make it unequivocally clear that he had made love with Gretchen before this time?

Dismal Day

This is the only scene in the play which Goethe left in the original prose. Perhaps he thought its depressing subject was better suited to prose than poetry. Faust, feeling at last some qualms of conscience, has fled Gretchen again to commune with nature in the countryside. Evidently quite a while has passed since Walpurgis Night, for Gretchen has despaired after the night in which her mother and brother both died, feeling that she is to blame. Abandoned, she has killed the infant fathered by Faust by drowning it in a forest pool; but she has been caught, tried, and condemned to death. Infanticide by guilt-ridden young mothers was quite common at this time, and is hardly unknown today, though it has always been strongly outlawed in Europe since the advent of Christianity. Mephistopheles has just informed Faust of all this as the scene begins, and we must infer what has happened from his reaction and from what follows. Faust again tries to appeal to the Earth Spirit (addressing him as “infinite spirit”) to try to undo his relationship to Mephistopheles. How does Mephistopheles answer his hysterical accusations and turn the blame back around onto Faust? Mephistopheles proposes to stand guard, but Faust must be the one to actually help her escape from prison, just as in the duel with her brother Mephistopheles parried while Faust was forced to strike. The decisions involving moral responsibility must be Faust’s alone, despite his constant efforts to shift responsibility to Mephistopheles.

Dungeon

The character of Gretchen was inspired in the first place by a real-life story Goethe had heard of a young woman who was seduced and abandoned, who killed her illegitimate child, was condemned to death, and whose repentant lover joined her in prison to share her fate. In what important way does this scene differ from the original incident? Having been either directly or indirectly responsible for the death of her mother, brother, and baby, Gretchen has gone insane with guilt. As she sings madly in her prison cell, she blends the classical myth of Tereus and Procne (which involves cannibalism and rape) with a similar Germanic tale in which the victim is turned into a bird. In whose voice is she singing?

Who does she think is coming when she hears Faust and Mephistopheles enter? How does she speak differently than she might have if her madness did not prevent her from recognizing Faust, and how does that create a powerful effect on him? What has she learned that she did not understand earlier that explains why he seduced her? European brides wear wreaths of flowers on their wedding day to symbolize their unbroken virginity, so the torn wreath symbolizes her fall from virtue. Gretchen imagines that someone else has stolen and killed her baby, and complains of the sensational street ballads that are being composed about her crime. What evidence is there that Gretchen, though mad, has recovered much of her sensitivity to evil? In what way does line 4490 say more than Gretchen intends? At what point does she seem to emerge from her madness into relative sanity? When she imagines that she can still see Valentine’s blood on Faust’s hand Goethe is of course alluding to the famous scene in which Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth, guiltily sleepwalking, imagines that Duncan’s blood is still staining her hands (Macbeth, Act V, Scene 1, ll. 39-59). Why does she feel that she has to be buried “a little aside” from her mother and brother? How are you affected by her mad vision of seeing her baby still struggling in the pond? Although Faust never proposed to her, she has obviously been dreaming of wedlock since she fantasizes that the next day is to be her wedding day. The theme of the tragic young woman wed to death is a very old motif, going back at least to the ancient Greeks, with Sophocles’ Antigone being a classic example. Where the translation says “My veil!” (line 4583), she actually says “My [bridal] wreath!” The original has more directly sexual connotations.. As she imagines her own execution, she is finally saved–why? What is her final reaction toward Faust? What is the meaning of her last cry as she ascends into Heaven? How many different interpretations can you give it?

Charming Landscape

This scene’s setting in the Elysian Fields is similar to setting of the Prologue in Heaven, since both are antiquated, unbelievable versions of heaven used for their symbolic rather than their religious value. This part of the play was written under the powerful influence of Goethe’s conversion to classicism at the very time when many romantics were turning away from it. He divided Part II of Faust into five acts like a classical drama (Part I had been modeled on Shakespeare’s looser structure) and introduced into it many figures from Greek and Roman antiquity. What does it mean that both a Christian and a pagan heaven can exist in the same play? Accompanied by the mythical Aeolian harps of antiquity (carved stones which produced music when the wind blew through them), Ariel–a spirit from Shakespeare’s The Tempest–helps to revive Faust after his traumatic experience of Part I. Since he has done nothing to deserve this, such as repenting his evil deeds, why do you suppose it happens? What does it tell us about Goethe’s beliefs? His dramatic intentions? The river Lethe in classical mythology was the boundary between life and Hades, the land of the dead. Here its function is quite different, influenced by Dante Alighieri’s use of it in the opening of the Purgatorio, where saved souls wash away their sins in a sort of post-mortem baptism. The racketing sound of Phoebus Apollo’s chariot, drawing the sun over the horizon, is as old-fashioned, creaky, and implausible as the cosmological opening of the Prologue in Heaven. Rather than repenting, what does Faust vow to do when he reawakens? Compare the passage on the rising sun in lines 4695-4714 with the earlier passage on the setting sun in lines 1074-1099. What are the major differences? What are the similarities?

Open Country

Our translation now skips a vast portion of Part II. Be sure to read the “Synopsis of omitted portions” on pp. 32-44. Much of this part of the play wanders far afield from the central narrative of the old Faust legend; and although it was highly thought of by German romantic scholars, it has seldom caught the imaginations of other readers. Faust has been given a seaside kingdom by the Emperor, which he has enlarged by diking and draining the swampland–a common practice from the Middle Ages onward in Holland and southwestern Germany. The wanderer who appears in this scene is playing the role played by the gods in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, when they test the hospitality of villagers by appearing in the guise of wandering beggars. Only an old couple named Baucis (the woman) and Philemon (the man) are willing to open their houses and cupboards to them, and only they are preserved when the rest of the village is drowned in a flood. Goethe expects his readers to know their Ovid well enough to recognize the names and make the proper associations. The wanderer is amazed to find the former seacoast where he was washed up years ago has become part of Faust’s kingdom. How does Philemon’s attitude toward this fact differ from Baucis? What is Goethe implying about the relative moral sensitivities of men and women?

Palace

How does Faust’s reaction to the ringing of Baucis and Philemon’s chapel bell compare with his reaction to the bells of Easter Morning in Part I? What does the difference tell us about the development of his character? Lynceus, the palace lookout (another classical figure), sees Faust’s merchant fleet returning? What evidence is there that he is using illicit means to conduct this trade? In line 11188 Mephistopheles alludes ironically to the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, discussed above. Why is Faust’s line “One would as soon no more be just” ironic? As you would find it you followed up the reference to I Kings 21, King Ahab envied the vineyard of his subject Naboth. His wicked wife arranged for Naboth to be killed so that Ahab could seize it. Thus Mephistopheles is clearly preparing us to expect the deaths of Baucis and Philemon as Faust plays the role of Ahab.

Deep Night

Faust rages at Mephistopheles for his killing of Baucis and Philemon; but why might one see him as responsible for their deaths anyway?

Midnight

As in a Medieval morality play like Everyman, allegorical figures enter who symbolize the approach of death. They also parallel the four horsemen of the Apocalypse: death, war, famine, and plague (see Revelations 6:1-8). In this context “Want” and “Need” mean “poverty.” Why is Faust not threatened by them? What does it tell us that Guilt cannot reach Faust? “Care” is used here in the sense of “worries, troubles.” Why is she the only one of the sisters to reach Faust? Does Faust’s wish to abandon witchcraft in lines 11404-11407 mark a change from his earlier attitudes? What philosophical conclusions does Faust draw from his life experience in lines 11433-11452? In what ways are these different from his earlier attitudes? In what ways the same? How does Care’s next speech hint that Mephistopheles may not win his end of the bet with The Lord, though in line 11485 he says he will send Faust to Hell? Since it is pitch black and Faust can see nothing anyway (he never realizes he’s been blinded), and since the effect cannot possibly be shown in the play, what is the point of having Faust be blinded at the end of this scene?

Large Outer Court of the Palace

As Mephistopheles has the Lemures (zombies patched together out of dead body parts) dig Faust’s grave, the former meditates on the absurdity of death, which is a frequent theme in his speeches. What does Faust think the digging outside is accomplishing? How does Mephistopheles sarcastically prophesy that all his hopes are in vain, and how does this comment connect with the Baucis and Philemon story in Ovid? Many readers have felt that Faust’s final speeches are meant to show a benign attitude that justifies his salvation; but has he actually changed? He does say, “Abide, you are so fair,” so why aren’t the terms of the contract fulfilled? What in Mephistopheles’ speech following his death hints that he realizes this fact?

Entombment

As Kaufmann points out in the introduction, this was the last scene Goethe wrote, a wildly comic, blasphemous account of how Faust is saved, as if he wanted to underline that the final scene must not be taken seriously as a scene of orthodox redemption. It has utterly failed to achieve that goal with most scholarly readers, partly because they are too embarrassed by its obscenities even to discuss it. The Hell’s Mouth, like the heavens depicted earlier, is an obsolete bit of stage apparatus. During the Middle Ages and Renaissance such a prop was often used in religious dramas depicting Christ delivering the holy patriarchs from Limbo after his Crucifixion (there was such a prop listed in the inventory of Shakespeare’s theater). What in Mephistopheles’ speech indicates that it is not to be taken seriously? Psyche is the Greek mythological name for the human soul. How is the effort to capture the soul made grossly physical in this scene? Why does Mephistopheles call the angels “devils in disguise?” How is the Devil traditionally related to angels? What sight ultimately distracts Mephistopheles so that the angels are able to make off with the soul? Is he attracted by their virtue?

Mountain Gorges; Forest, Rock, and Desert

An “anchorite” is a religious hermit, usually living in the wilderness. They are given Latin names: Pater Ecstaticus, The Ecstatic Father; Pater Profundus, The Father of the Deeps; and Pater Seraphicus, The Seraphic (angelic) Father. How does Faust’s salvation in this Neoplatonic Heaven differ from that preached by conventional Christianity? In what ways is it similar to his rebirth at the opening of Part I? How does his journey through the levels of Heaven relate to the main themes of the play? According to the beliefs of Faust’s time, the souls of unbaptized infants went to Limbo in Hell. Here they are given the more Romantic role of guiding the soul to Heaven. Since The Lord said at the beginning of the play that “Man errs as long as he will strive” why do the angels here seem to quote him as stating that “Who ever strives with all his power,/We are allowed to save”? A “chrysalis” is the cocoon out of which a butterfly hatches. What seems to be the ultimate power that draws Faust into Heaven? The Doctor Marianus is a theologian (not a medical doctor) specializing in the veneration of the Virgin Mary, “heaven’s queen.” Why is he presented as being in the “highest, cleanest cell?” What is the significance of the Magna Peccatrix (woman who has sinned greatly)? See Luke 7: 36-50. She has been traditionally confused with Mary Magdalene, who is discussed elsewhere; and Goethe probably meant her to be identified as such; but which of her characteristics is particularly relevant here? What is relevant in the story of the Mulier Samaritana (Samaritan woman) in John 4:1-30? Maria Aegyptica , whose story of sin and repentance is told in the Medieval Acts of the Saints, is the third of these women. How does Gretchen (Una Poenitentium, A Penitent) fit in with them? Her role her is clearly modeled on that of Dante’s Beatrice in The Divine Comedy, in which the poet’s human beloved is transformed into an agent of salvation. In what way are the defeat of Mephistopheles and the salvation of Faust caused by the same force? The final lines of the play are mistranslated. They actually say, “Eternal womanhood draws us onward.” Considering the themes of the rest of the play, why is this a fitting ending? Since Goethe was clearly not a Christian, why do you suppose he wrote this scene in Heaven? Since Faust never repented his sins and did no notably virtuous deeds and never expressed any religious faith, why do you think he is saved?

18th and 19th Century European Classics (Humanities 303)

 

Related Links

There is also an edition of Christopher Marlowe’s much easier play on the same subject, Doctor Faustus.

The libretto of Gounod’s opera based on Faust, in French and English.
An essay on alchemy in Faust

Notes by Paul Brians, Department of English, Washington State University, Pullman 99164-5020.

First published June 14, 1995.

Last revised April 15, 2015.

Realism and Naturalism

In Music and Art

As intellectual and artistic movements 19th-Century Realism and Naturalism are both responses to Romanticism but are not really comparable to it in scope or influence.

For one thing, “realism” is not a term strictly applicable to music. There are verismo (realistic) operas like Umberto Giordano’s Andrea Chénier created in the last decade of the 19th century in Italy, but it is their plots rather than their music which can be said to participate in the movement toward realism. Since “pure” untexted music is not usually representational (with the controversial exception of “program” music), it cannot be said to be more or less realistic.

In contrast, art may be said to have had many realistic aspects before this time. The still lifes and domestic art of Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin1 (1699-1779) anticipate many of the concerns of the 19th-Century Realists, and he in turn owes a debt to the Netherland school of still-life painting of the century before him, and one can find similar detailed renderings of everyday objects even on the walls of 1st-century Pompeii. Realism is a recurrent theme in art which becomes a coherent movement only after 1850; and even then it struggles against the overwhelming popularity of Romanticism.

In mid-19th century France, Gustave Courbet2 set forth a program of realistic painting as a self-conscious alternative to the dominant Romantic style, building on earlier work by the painters of the Barbizon School (of which the most famous member was Jean-François Millet), which had attempted to reproduce landscapes and village life as directly and accurately as possible. Impressionism can be seen as a development which grew out of Realism, but in its turn still had to battle the more popular Romanticism. Realism has never entirely displaced the popular taste for Romantic art, as any number of hotel-room paintings, paperback book covers and calendars testify. It became just one more style among others.

In Fiction

Realism’s most important influences have been on fiction and the theater. It is perhaps unsurprising that its origins can be traced to France, where the dominant official neoclassicism had put up a long struggle against Romanticism. Since the 18th century the French have traditionally viewed themselves as rationalists, and this prevailing attitude in intellectual circles meant that Romanticism led an uneasy existence in France even when allied with the major revolutionary movements of 1789 and 1830.

Balzac

Novelist Honoré de Balzac3 is generally hailed as the grandfather of literary Realism in the long series of novels and stories he titled La Comédie humaine (The Human Comedy), and which attempted systematically to render a portrait of all aspects of the France of his time from the lowest thief or prostitute to the highest aristocrat or political leader. The title of the series was chosen to contrast with Dante’s Divine Comedy, which had portrayed everything except the earthly human realm.

His attention to detail was obsessive, with long passages of description of settings being a characteristic feature of his work. Today readers resist such descriptive writing, but before films and television were invented, it had a magical effect on people, causing the world depicted to explode from the page in an almost tangible fashion. It is important to remember in reading all 19th-century fiction that those people who had the time and inclination to read novels at all generally had a lot of time to kill, and none of the cinematic and electronic distractions which have largely replaced recreational reading in our time. They welcomed lengthy novels (often published serially, over a series of weeks or even months) in the same way we greet a satisfying television series which becomes a staple of our lives.

Like such a television series, his works also incorporated a device for maintaining his audience: the continual reappearance of certain characters from one work to the next–now as protagonists, now as secondary figures. The idea is an old one, going back to classic bodies of work such as the Homeric epics and the Medieval Arthurian romances; but it had a different effect in Balzac’s work: readers could recognize a slightly altered version of the world they themselves inhabited as they moved from story to story.

What is not realistic about Balzac’s fiction is his plots, filled with sensational conspiracies and crimes and wildly improbable coincidences. Balzac’s works are still essentially Romantic creations with a Realistic veneer.

Gustave Flaubert

It was Gustave Flaubert who in 1857 produced the seminal work from which later literary Realism was to flow: Madame Bovary.4 Flaubert had begun his writing career as most young authors in his time did, as a Romantic, laboring on a tale of Medieval mysticism which was eventually published as La Tentation de Saint Antoine (The Temptation of Saint Anthony). When he read an early draft of this work to some friends, they urged him to attempt something more down to earth. He chose the story of an adulterous woman married to an unimaginative country physician unable to respond to–or even comprehend–her romantic longings. Drawing on the real-life stories of two women–Delphine Delamare and Louise Pradier–whose experiences he was intimately familiar with, Flaubert labored to turn journalism into art while avoiding the romantic clichés he associated with his heroine’s fevered imagination.

Like Balzac, he engaged in systematic research, modeling the village in his novel on an actual country town and even drawing a map of it detailed enough to allow scholars to catch him when he has Emma Bovary turn in the wrong direction on one of her walks. Unlike Balzac, he avoided the sensational sort of plot lines characteristic of Romantic novels. To modern readers a married woman carrying on two adulterous affairs and then committing suicide may seem fairly sensational, but it is important to note that there was a long tradition of tales of female adultery in French literature stretching back as far as the Middle Ages. What Flaubert did with the theme was give adultery the shocking impact of the tabloids by stripping his tale of the high romantic idealism that usually justified adultery; instead he systematically satirized his heroine’s bourgeois taste for exotic art and sensational stories. The novel is almost an anti-romantic tract.

Despite the fact that it is generally agreed to be one of the most finely crafted works to be created in the 19th century, it would probably never have had the impact it did if Madame Bovary had not also been the subject of a sensational obscenity trial. So restrained were the standards of polite fiction in mid-19th-century France that many modern readers go right past the big “sex scenes” which got Flaubert into trouble without noticing them (hints: look for Rodolphe to smoke while working on his harness just after making love with Emma for the first time while she experiences the afterglow, and for Emma to toss torn-up pieces of a note out of her carriage during her lovemaking with Léon). However, they were enough to outrage the defenders of middle-class morality. The prosecution was particularly indignant that Emma did not seem to suffer for her sins. Flaubert’s clever lawyer successfully argued that her grotesquely described death made the novel into a moral tale; but the fact is that she dies not because she is an adultress but because she is a shopaholic.

It is not only the literary style of Madame Bovary that is anti-Romantic, it is its subject as well. The narrative clearly portrays Emma as deluded for trying to model her life after the Romantic fiction she loves. The novel is a sort of anti-Romantic manifesto, and its notoriety spread its message far and wide. It is worth noting, however, that Flaubert returned to Romanticism from time to time in his career, for instance in Salammbo, a colorful historical novel set in ancient Carthage.

Influence of Realism

Realism had profound effects on fiction from places as far-flung as Russia and the Americas. The novel, which had been born out of the romance as a more or less fantastic narrative, settled into a realistic mode which is still dominant today. Aside from genre fiction such as fantasy and horror, we expect the ordinary novel today to be based in our own world, with recognizably familiar types of characters endowed with no supernatural powers, doing the sorts of things that ordinary people do every day. It is easy to forget that this expectation is only a century and a half old, and that the great bulk of the world’s fiction before departed in a wide variety of ways from this standard, which has been applied to film and television as well. Even comic strips now usually reflect daily life. Repeated revolts against this standard by various postmodernist and magical realist varieties of fiction have not dislodged the dominance of realism in fiction.

Naturalism

The emergence of Naturalism does not mark a radical break with Realism, rather the new style is a logical extension of the old. The term was invented by Émile Zola partly because he was seeking for a striking platform from which to convince the reading public that it was getting something new and modern in his fiction. In fact, he inherited a good deal from his predecessors. Like Balzac and Flaubert, he created detailed settings meticulously researched, but tended to integrate them better into his narrative, avoiding the long set-piece descriptions so characteristic of earlier fiction. Again, like Balzac, he created a series of novels with linked characters and settings (“Les Rougon-Macquart: Histoire naturelle et sociale d’une famille sous le second Empire”–“The Rougon-Macquart: Natural and Social History of a Family During the Second Empire”) which stretched to twenty novels. He tried to create a portrait of France in the 1880s to parallel the portrait Balzac had made of his own times in the Comédie humaine. Like Flaubert, he focused on ordinary people with often debased motives.

He argued that his special contribution to the art of fiction was the application to the creation of characters and plot of the scientific method. The new “scientific novel” would be created by placing characters with known inherited characteristics into a carefully defined environment and observing the resulting behavior. No novelist can actually work like this, of course, since both characters and setting are created in the distinctly nonobjective mind of the writer; but Zola’s novels do place special stress on the importance of heredity and environment in determining character. They are anti-Romantic in their rejection of the self-defining hero who transcends his background. History shapes his protagonists rather than being shaped by them. This leads to an overwhelming sense of doom in most of his novels, culminating in a final catastrophe.

Zola further tends to create his principal characters as representative types rather than striking individuals. He also places great emphasis on people acting in groups, and is one of the few great writers of mob scenes. Humanity in the mass is one of his chief subjects, and his individuals are selected to illustrate aspects of society.

Zola can be said to have created in Germinal the disaster narrative exemplified in the 20th century by Arthur Hailey’s novels (Airport) and movies like The Towering Inferno and Titanic. The formula is a classic one: assemble a varied group of representative characters together in some institution or space and subject them to a catastrophe and watch how they individually cope with it.

Zola also took frankness about sexual functions much further than the early Realists had dared; and it is this, combined with a pervasive pessimism about humanity, which chiefly characterizes the Naturalist novel.

Unlike Flaubert, Zola was not a meticulous craftsman of beautiful prose. At times it seems as if he is writing with a meat ax; but he undeniably infused French fiction with a refreshing vigor, giving it a tough, powerful edge far removed from the vaporings of high romanticism.

If Zola often startled the French with his frankness, he shocked readers in other lands, where his works were often banned, regarded as little more than pornography (an assessment which is quite unfair, but unsurprising given the temper of the times).

Zola has had an enormous impact on the American novel. Americans with their preference for action over thought and for gritty realism were strongly drawn to his style of writing. Early 20th-century writers like Theodore Dreiser applied his approaches to American themes successfully, and Frank Norris practically stole large chunks of Zola’s novels in some of his own works. The mainstream American novel is preponderantly naturalistic, and gives rise to another genre which still lives on: the hard-boiled detective story.

For all these reasons, Zola strikes us as far more “modern” than Balzac, or even Flaubert. It can be argued that the “default” style of modern narrative is Realist, with the various forms of fantastic narratives which dominated the writing of earlier ages relegated to the margins; and even fantasy is often judged as to its plausibility. Without altogether banishing Romanticism, Realism and Naturalism have had considerable success.

More Study Guides for 18th and 19th Century European Classics

 

Notes

1 For a brief survey of Chardin’s work with examples, see this exhibition at The MET
2 For more on Courbet’s life and works, look here.
3 For more information about Balzac, see this online literature.
4 For more information about Madame Bovary, see here.

 

Created by Paul Brians March 13, 1998.

Zola’s Germinal

Introduction

Not content merely to follow in the footsteps of such realists as Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary ), Émile Zola decided to create his own literary movement and call it “naturalism.” A variant of realism, it emphasizes even more than realism careful research to prepare settings and other details to be described. Zola’s theories also embody a kind of determinism in which the characters’ heredity and environment essentially determine their actions. Characters are representative types rather than unique individuals. Groups are often important. In addition, Zola’s naturalist novels usually end in some sort of large-scale catastrophe. Modern disaster novels and films can trace their heritage back to Germinal.

Germinalis part of a 20-volume series of novels depicting various aspects of life in France in the second half of the nineteenth century, intended as a kind of sequel to Honoré de Balzac’s Human Comedy, which was a lengthy series of stories and novels depicting the early part of the century. Characters reoccur in various books and are related to characters in other books. Étienne Lantier, for instance, was born to alcoholic parents in L’assommoir (1877) and became a leader of the radical and disastrous uprising of the 1870-1871 Commune in La débâcle (1892) and is the brother of the protagonist of Nana (1880). The series as a whole is called after the two families whose genetic inheritance determines the fates of their members: the Rougon-Macquart.

Labor groups objected that in L’assommoir Zola had depicted the laboring classes in an entirely unflattering light, neglecting the labor movement which was in the process of transforming capitalism; so he set himself the task of researching radical and reformist labor movements for this novel. The result is the only important 19th-century piece of fiction to take seriously the ideas of the labor movement of the time. Not that he entirely endorsed them: although Zola was eventually to become a socialist, at this point he did not ally himself entirely with the workers. Although he clearly sympathizes with their sufferings, he also portrays them as irrational and destructive.

It is vital to keep some facts in mind about the labor movement in France. As in most industrialized countries, workers tended to want more than higher wages and shorter working hours. In many cases, the labor organizations were socialist, aiming at the total transformation of society and the redistribution of property. The bourgeois readers who made up most of Zola’s audience certainly viewed them that way, and made no distinctions between mild reformers and revolutionaries. Essentially all labor organizing activities, including all strikes, were illegal, and were routinely broken up by force.

Most members of Zola’s audience in 1885 could remember the disastrous Commune of 1870, the first communist revolution in world history. When the characters of Germinal, set in 1866-67, predict that the revolution will come they are uttering a prophecy that the audience knew had come true just three years later. This is no empty radical gesturing, but a sober statement of historical fact. And the readers doubtless saw these predictions as a warning of what could happen again in the near future if conditions for workers were not improved.

 

Part One

Chapter 1

Germinal is famous for its use of a carefully controlled palette. Here the color black is prominent, and will remain so throughout the novel. What other colors can you find recurring throughout the novel, and what significance do they seem to have? It is March 1866 when the novel begins. Late March and early April together formed the Revolutionary month called “Germinal,” the month of germination. The calendar used during the French Revolution substituted rational, natural names for those traditionally given the months of the year: the rainy month, the foggy month, the windy month, etc. Germinal is the month in which plants first begin to sprout from the ground; but the image of sprouting plant life is also used throughout the novel (and particularly at its conclusion) to symbolize the rising consciousness of the workers as they realize the sources of their suffering and organize to combat them. Look carefully for mentions of growing things and germination, especially as they are linked to sex and reproduction. Although Zola claims to be a meticulous realist, in fact his descriptions are often deliberately overstated to achieve poetic effects. How realistic is it that a man’s hands would actually be bleeding from the lash of the wind if he could stick them in his pockets?

Le Voreux means “the voracious one.” Note the use of the word “devour” on this page. Look for instances in which the mine is compared to an all-devouring beast. This is one of the central metaphors of the novel, based partly on the legend of Melek or Moloch, a Canaanite god to whom children were sometimes sacrificed, and which came to represent human greed (Amos 5:26, compare “Mammon” in Matthew 6:24). Flaubert had memorably depicted such a child-devouring god in his novel of ancient Carthage, Salammbô. What does the imagery imply about the nature of the mine itself and of the economic system which has produced it? Montsou means “mountain of pennies,” which suggests a large number of very poor people clustered tightly together.

Bonnemort means “good death.” What about Grandfather Maheu has caused him to be given this nickname?

What evidence is there that Bonnemort has black lung disease?

Why is it ironic that his grandfather had discovered the mine? What connection is there between hard work and ownership in this novel?

What earlier image does Bonnemort’s vision of the “crouching god” connect with? What do you think this second god represents?

Chapter 2

Montsou is a “company town,” a relatively new, artificial mass of crowded-together buildings erected to house the miners and workers brought into the area. It has no historic roots, and little sense of itself as a place. How does Zola convey the depersonalized nature of this town as he introduces us to it?

Catherine is going to be the most important young woman in the novel. How is her description strikingly different from the sort of portraits we find of young female protagonists in most nineteenth-century novels? On the next few pages, how many instances can you find of a carelessness about sex that would have shocked Zola’s staid middle-class audience? What is he trying to say about the effects of poverty on these people?

Maheu’s brutality here is not paralleled anywhere else in the novel. Usually he is a model father and husband. Keep an eye on him as a representative of the miners. In this particular area of France (the far northeastern corner, near Belgium), the miners have adopted the custom of calling women by the feminine article La and their husbands’ or fathers’ last names with a feminine ending. Thus the wife of Maheu is La Maheude, the wife of Pierron is La Pierronne, and the daughter of Old Mouque is La Mouquette. A similar effect in English would be to call Mr. Smith’s wife “The Smithess” or “Smithette.” This pattern would have seemed as strange to Parisian readers as it does to modern Americans. La Maheude is perhaps the most interesting character in the novel, and the one whose transformations most fully reflect its themes. Try to note the changes she goes through.

Chapter 3

“Richomme” means “rich man.” Dansaert, as chief foreman, is neither owner nor laborer. Chosen by the mine administration to oversee the other workers, he is identified by both sides as not being truly one of them. How is his exploitative role reflected in his private life as well?

On his tour of a typical coal mine, Zola had taken careful notes about the cage (the elevator in which workers and coal are raised and lowered) which he here incorporates in the novel. What elements of his description go beyond mere documentation to a kind of symbolism? Many readers would have regarded La Mouquette as a “slut.” How does Zola try to convey a more positive image of her?

What does it tell us about Catherine that Étienne can mistake her for a boy? What has caused her immaturity?

Note the mentions of the leaks in the shaft casing which allow subterranean water to leak into the mine. Zola sets up in this scene much of what you need to know to understand the action in the rest of the novel, but without embarking on a dry technical lecture. He is highly skilled at integrating description with action, a technique that many other authors were to imitate.

The Maheu team calls the passageway where it works “hell.” Hellish metaphors are going to occur frequently in the novel. Chaval is pronounced almost the same as cheval– “horse.” What about Chaval is horse-like?

Chapter 4

What is the dilemma that keeps the team from paying proper attention to “timbering” (shoring up the roof with large timbers)?

Pierrot is a traditional Commedia dell’Arte figure you have probably seen in the form of porcelain figurines: a sad-looking clown dressed in white ruffles and a tall peaked cap. In what ways does Zola continue to break with the Romantic stereotypes of depicting the first encounter of two people destined to be lovers in his portrait of this encounter of Étienne and Catherine?

Lydie exemplifies the premature sexuality which pervades the novel. What causes this phenomenon? What effect is it designed to have on the reader? How is sex made animalistic here?

Zola began this novel with the intention of showing how Étienne had inherited his parents’ alcoholism. Try to decide as you follow his story whether he is genuinely an alcoholic.

Firedamp (methane) is an invisible, odorless, but deadly gas which occurs frequently in coal mines. It can cause suffocation or, by being ignited by a random spark, explosions. It is still one of the chief hazards of coal mining.

Chapter 5

Paul Négrel represents the type of the rebellious offspring of the bourgeoisie who rebels against his upbringing, but who does not really identify with the workers. Note his transformation in the crisis which comes later.

Explain Maheu’s analysis of what the change in payment means.

In classic love stories the lovers must overcome external obstacles, often in the form of a tyrannical father who opposes the match. What keeps Catherine and Étienne apart?

How does the protest against the Company begin? What role does Étienne play in it?

Rasseneur is a former activist, leader of an earlier strike, now living off what his wife’s tavern makes in defiance of the Company. Watch how his relationship with Étienne develops. Note that it is taken for granted among the workers that women work both as laborers and as business owners. The 19th-century stereotype of the housewife was reserved for the bourgeoisie.

Pluchart is an organizer for the Communist International Workingmen’s Association, an organization to which Karl Marx and Friederich Engels originally belonged. It tried to organize laborers from many countries into a single movement to overthrow capitalism and establish socialism.

Why does Étienne decide to continue working at Le Voreux?

 

Part Two

Chapter 1

Compare this chapter with Chapter 2 of Part One. In what ways are the settings, characters, and events deliberately contrasted to stress the differences between the workers and the owners? Have the Grégoires become rich through hard labor, or any other virtue? How does their story illustrate Marx’s dictum that those who work acquire nothing, and those who acquire anything, do not work?

Chapter 2

How do the pressures of poverty interfere with education?

Maigrat suggests maigre, “meager,” which alludes to the storekeeper’s stingy, greedy nature. He runs the company store, which is the only store that will advance credit to the miners when they have no ready cash. Perpetually in debt, they can only shop at this store where they are overcharged and abused in a pattern which in agricultural settings is known as debt peonage. They are never able to accumulate enough money to escape from the Company’s demands; and since they live in company-controlled housing, they have no basis for independence whatsoever. Company stores and towns were not built out of a charitable concern for workers: they were a means of shackling them firmly to the company in a state of semi-slavery. Zola here explores a theme much discussed currently: sexual exploitation by men in authority of women in their power.

The Grégoires have conventional ideas about charity. What do we know about the Maheus that makes their ideas unfair?

Why do the poor have more children than the rich?

Note La Maheude’s humble philosophy of life, and how it will change.

Chapter 3

What evidence is there that the workers lack a sense of solidarity with each other?

Why do mothers object to their sons getting married early?

How does Mme Hennebeau try to deny the suffering in front of her?

Chapter 4

Why would it make economic sense to reserve scarce meat for the father of the family?

Jeanlin’s tyranny over Bébert and Lydie is going to parallel that of the owners over the workers. Watch how he becomes transformed into a monster incarnating all the evils of their lot.

102-103: Why do you think sex is so insistently linked with reproduction in this novel? How is it linked to nature, to germination?

 

Part Three

Chapter 1

111-112: Why does Catherine allow herself to be dominated by Chaval when she really loves Étienne? How is the image of germination used here?

113-115: Souvarine (Russian Suvarin) is modeled on the violent anarchist leader Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876), who escaped from exile in Siberia to London. His split with Karl Marx caused the first International Workingmen’s Association eventually to collapse. He advocated terrorist acts of assassination and destruction to disrupt governments and inspire people to rise up against them and create a peaceful egalitarian utopia. Marx rejected secret conspiratorial activities on the grounds that only an open movement could provide the necessary basis for a true socialist revolution. Czar Alexander II was in fact assassinated by a terrorist plot in 1881, just four years before the publication of Germinal. The violent anarchists of Russia called nihilists were the leading image in most people’s mind of radical activists. They were said to act out of an irrational desire for destruction, and their ideals were normally ignored. Zola demonstrates remarkable insight in portraying Souvarine as a sensitive man traumatized by love, who has turned to violence out of compassion. This pattern in fact fits many of history’s most violent nihilists. What signs can you find here and later that Souvarine is in fact a loving, kindly man? It should be noted that although all anarchists were lumped together in the public mind, many of them rejected nihilism, and were in fact pacifists. Much of Poland was dominated by Russia in the nineteenth century. Why do you think the Russian Souvarine calls his pet rabbit “Poland?”

How do the workers view the famous French Revolution of 1789? Why do they feel the need for another revolution? The so-called “iron law of wages” of the English economist Ricardo was adopted by Marx in his own philosophy. It argues that in a capitalist society wages tend always to be depressed to the lowest minimum capable of allowing the workers to reproduce. How is this mechanism used to portray the workers as being treated as a commodity rather than as living people? Étienne is interested the ideas of Ferdinand Lasalle (German, 1825-1864), who believed in achieving socialism by popular elections which would force governments to set up self-governing , worker-owned cooperatives. His ideas lie at the opposite end of the radical political spectrum from those of Souvarine. Note how Zola is careful to distinguish among the many shades of radical opinion, usually lumped together in the popular mind.

The method of having teams of workers bid for mining contracts had in fact been outlawed shortly before this novel is set; but Zola includes it to illustrate how wages are set in a competitive environment in which there is a surplus of labor. What effect does this bidding process have on wages? How does it illustrate Ricardo’s “iron law of wages?”

Chapter 2

The nailmaker’s fair is a classic example of “slice of life realism,” a detailed description based on his observations and notes. Zola was an extremely efficient writer: he used in his novels almost every note he made, which led sometimes to more detail than is strictly relevant to the action being depicted. But in a time without film or television, readers were entranced by detailed depictions of unfamiliar places and customs. Note how in the dance scene he manages to describe the movements of the group as a whole, a technique he specialized in.

How is Étienne being changed by his studies?

How is the image of germination being used here? Keep this passage in mind. It is echoed at the end of the novel. The image of a crop of men growing out of the land comes from the Greco-Roman myth of the dragon’s teeth. Cadmus slew a dragon and planted its teeth, which sprouted into armed men. Zola was not the only writer to use this myth for political purposes. Upton Sinclair, an American radical writer, called his third novel Dragon’s Teeth (1942). Both ignored the part of the myth in which the newly-born men slew each other and had to be replaced by a new generation. Zola may be also drawing on the story of Deucalion and his wife, who plant bones which become a new race of men and women. Despite his radical literary theories, Zola was very fond of using classical mythology in his works.

What does the socialist slogan, “To each according to his worth, and his worth according to his work” mean? What changes would its implementation cause in the society of Montsou? How does La Maheude react to Étienne’s radical talk?

Chapter 4

In 1866 the French coal industry was struck by a crisis. America had stopped importing massive quantities of steel to build its railroads, which had the effect of lessening the demand for coal to manufacture the steel (see p. 306). What great historical event had interrupted the export trade and was eventually to lead to America building its own steel industry and becoming one of the world’s great industrial powers? Why is this a bad time for the workers to go on strike?

How does the Company try to separate the workers from Étienne? This technique is very widely used by oppressive groups: identify leaders as “outside agitators,” and insist that “our people” are contented if not “stirred up.” Is this a fair analysis of the situation in Montsou? Might the workers have struck even without Étienne?

Chapter 5

Note Jeanlin’s prophetic comment early in the chapter.

The cave-in is the first in a series of disasters in which Zola methodically explores all safety hazards of coal mining. Why is it logical that he should begin with a cave-in, given the developments that have preceded this accident?

How is La Maheude’s grief over Jeanlin’s accident warped by her poverty?

 

Part Four

Chapter 1

Madame Hennebeau’s affair is meant to provide the mine company manager with suffering to balance that of the miners. Is Zola successful it making you feel that his sufferings equal theirs? This motif is developed further in a passage below that Zola cited to someone who criticized his novel as being too sympathetic with the miners.

Marx argued that capitalists tend, during periods of economic growth, to over-expand, leading to the creation of excess capacity which is reduced only in times of economic recession. How does Hennebeau’s explanation of the current crisis reflect this theory?

Why is it ironic that Hennebeau thinks Rasseneur is responsible for pushing the miners toward a strike?

Paul Négrel is obviously familiar with the popular socialist slogan, “Property is theft,” which meant that under capitalism wealth was created only by owners expropriating the profits generated by underpaid workers. Socialism was driven not merely by a desire for equality, but by the conviction that the current system of economic exploitation was a form of legal robbery. What three conventional arguments does Grégoire give to defend himself as a capitalist? What weaknesses can you find in his arguments?

Why is Hennebeau not necessarily opposed to a strike? What advantages for him might a strike have over massive lay-offs?

Chapter 2

How well does Maheu serve as a spokesman for the miners?

What is the significance of the unknown god referred to at the bottom of the page?

Chapter 3

How has La Maheude changed?

What keeps Catherine from leaving Chaval?

Chapter 4

How have Étienne’s political ideas changed?

How do Souvarine’s ideas differ from Étienne’s? Note the reference to Bakunin (Pt three, Chapter 1).

What do we learn here about Souvarine that explains his powerful aversion to getting involved with women?

What effect does the attempt of the gendarmes to break up the meeting have on the miners?

Chapter 5

How is La Maheude continuing to develop?

Chapter 6

The wildness of Jeanlin and the other children prepares us for the animalistic behavior of their elders later.

Chapter 7

Note how the rally is punctuated by an ominous silence.

Zola does a fair job of summarizing typical 19th-century socialist ideals here. What are their main features? Note in the rest of the chapter how he depicts the collective emotions of the miners.

How does Étienne make use of Bonnemort?

Note the recurrence of the dragon’s teeth motif. How is it further developed here? What other motif is it connected to?

What effect does Zola create by balancing the shouts of the crowd against the silence of nature?

 

Part Five

Chapter 1

Le Tartaret refers to the Greek hell, Tartarus. What is Zola’s intended symbolism in creating an inferno underground which creates a paradise on the surface? What idea is he trying to convey?

Chapter 2

How does Catherine’s nakedness reinforce the symbolism?

What does Catherine’s fatalism tell us about the lives of most of the mining women?

Before the days of steam-powered lifts, ladders were used to descend into the mines and haul the coal out. Now they serve as emergency exits. Catherine has almost been asphyxiated when this crisis begins. Follow her through the rest of the following episode and see how Zola subjects her to almost unbearable suffering, though in the end she survives remarkably well. Try to list all the things that happen to her.

Chapter 3

Étienne begins drinking. Try to follow the course of his drunkenness. Does Zola convince you that it is the alcohol that causes his actions?

Note that although three thousand had sworn to strike last night, only a tenth as many have shown up for this protest. Watch as the numbers grow throughout the day.

Jeanlin with his horn is meant to suggest the Greek god Pan, who could inspire panic (named after him) by blowing on his pipes. Pan had goat’s legs, suggested here by Jeanlin’s crippled limbs.

How does Zola make the mine seem more human than ever here? Why is it ironic that it is Deneulin’s mine which is the first to be damaged?

Chapter 4

The immediate cause of the French Revolution was a shortage of bread. Both the miners and the owners are keenly aware of this as the former shout “Bread! Bread! We want bread!” They are symbolically calling not only for food, but for revolution. Is Étienne leading this riot? Is his drunkenness causing him to urge them on to excesses?

Old Quandieu (“when God”) faces down the crowd according to the standard 19th-century view of crowd behavior which argued that one bold individual could turn away a riotous mob.

What techniques does Zola use here and elsewhere to depict the mob as a group?

Are you convinced that Étienne’s actions are satisfactorily explained by his alcoholism?

Chapter 5

Why does Zola time Hennebeau’s discovery of his wife’s ether flacon to coincide with the arrival of the workers?

Zola prided himself on his visual sense. He was an important art critic, especially as a friend and defender of the Impressionists. He often spoke of his writing as a kind of painting. If he had lived in our time he would probably have become a film director. Try to visualize the scene that follows, as the women hiding with Paul Négrel peer out the barely-opened stable door and see the mob thundering past. The point of view is clearly established. How does Zola build this scene to a climax? The singing of the Marseillaise, the revolutionary anthem that was written for the 1789 revolution, was strictly forbidden. The miners are committing a revolutionary act by singing it. Which is the last and most violent group to pass? La Mouquette’s ultimate gesture of contempt may be Zola’s one slip in trying to build this awesome scene to a grand climax. Does he convince you that there is nothing comic about it?

Chapter 6

Although it is rather crudely done, Zola’s contrast between the point of view of the miners, which we know so well, and that of the owners is powerful. How do you react to it?

Vol-au-vent (“fly in the wind”) pastry shells are classic lighter-than-air containers for creamy fillings of various sorts, and are highly fragile.

Note how even Hennebeau, more sophisticated than most of the bourgeois, is so poorly informed about the political currents among the miners as to suppose that Rasseneur is some sort of revolutionary leader. See page 300 for Rasseneur’s real attitude.

This incident, in which the mining women and Bonnemort almost kill Cécile, is one of their more repulsive deeds. Why do you think Zola included it? To what extent it is symbolic of the entire class struggle depicted in the novel?

How does Zola contrive to make Maigrat at least partially responsible for his own death?

How does Zola use the scene of Maigrat’s mutilation to underline the theme–which runs throughout the novel–of the contrast in sexual experiences and attitudes between the bourgeoisie and the workers?

 

Part Six

Chapter 1

During the riot, most of the miners’ rage was directed against inappropriate targets in a way that did not further their cause. How is the owners’ revenge similarly inept? How is the Abbé Ranvier different from his predecessor, and what are his motivations?

What does Zola present as Étienne’s main contradictions and failings?

Chapter 2

Zola shows the miners as conducting a fairly successful campaign to continue the strike, and yet as lacking much of a sense of community. Do you find it persuasive?

How has the strike changed La Maheude?

Chapter 3

Note the ominous news of the collapse of the International. Try to note how many other disasters follow during the rest of the book.

What do you think of Souvarine’s critique of Étienne and the others?

Zola here avoids the traditional successful union of the lovers (or postpones it). How realistic do you think this scene is? What does it tell you about the two characters?

What is the significance of Jeanlin’s murder of the little soldier? What points do you think Zola is trying to make in this scene?

Chapter 5

This scene depicts a kind of confrontation repeated many times during labor and political struggles in modern times: angry protesters armed only with stones and bricks facing armed militia. Such confrontations have often had momentous consequences. How does this scene illustrate Étienne’s musings in the last chapter about the way poor people are manipulated into opposing each other? How do the deaths of the miners affect you? Does having lived with these characters through 350 pages make you regret their deaths more?

 

Part Seven

Chapter 1

The opposition newspapers would be those owned by parties opposed to the current government, and therefore seeking to make use of the shootings to discredit the leadership.

How has the strike affected Deneulin?

Probably no other 19th-century writer would have dared to use a girl’s first menstruation in this way. What is Zola trying to symbolize here?

How does the relationship between Étienne and Rasseneur change?

How does the transfer of the abbé Ranvier fit in one the other events in this chapter?

Chapter 2

Are Pluchart and Étienne completely discredited as leaders now? Why does Souvarine object to Étienne’s interpretation of Darwin?

How convincing do you find Souvarine’s explanation of his total opposition to love among revolutionaries? Can you understand his motivations in acting as he does in the rest of the chapter?

Why do you think love inhibits Étienne and Catherine?

Chapter 3

How does Zola’s description of the Torrent here go beyond the strict limits of realism?

The spectacular collapse described in these pages may seem far-fetched, but in fact it follows quite closely newspaper accounts of a similar event (an accident) which had happened at a coal mine in France the year before the novel was published. Does knowing that fact make you regard it as any more realistic? Should it? How does transform Souvarine into a symbol at the end of the chapter?

Chapter 4

Why is the Company anxious to hush up the fact that the disaster was caused by sabotage?

Which of the many forms of possible disaster in coal mining is depicted here?

What do you think of Zola’s attempt here to create an encounter which will encapsulate the conflict between workers and owners? Is it credible? Is it effective?

Chapter 5

Bataille means “battle.” Why is it an appropriate name here?

Does Zola convince you that this episode is caused by alcoholism?

Sensational stories of subterranean starvation or suffocation were very popular in the 19th century. What are the main effects of this one? How does Zola try to de-romanticize the experience? Does he also romanticize it? How? How does tragedy overcome old enmity here?

Chapter 6

This final chapter is a prose poem drawing heavily on the mythical themes that Zola had used earlier. Remember that Étienne is going off to join a revolution in Paris that in fact proved temporarily successful, if ultimately disastrous. Although the miners have seemingly been defeated on every front and the Maheu family has been reduced to a fragment, Zola has taken pains to plant signs of hope for the future throughout this chapter. How many of them can you find? Remember that hope for the miners may mean a successful uprising. What is the final stage in La Maheude’s development? How does Zola use nature imagery to reinforce his revolutionary theme? Note that the novel ends, as it began, in the month of Germinal (early April).

What do you think Zola was trying to accomplish in writing this novel? Revolutionary agitation? Conservative warning against revolution? Something else? What is your reaction to the events in this novel? With whom do you ultimately sympathize? How do you feel about the political views of the various characters?

More Study Guides for 18th and 19th Century European Classics

Notes by Paul Brians, Department of English, Washington State University, Pullman 99164-5020.

First mounted June 15, 1995.

Last revised March 22, 2005.

19th-Century Russian Literature

At the beginning of the 19th century much of Western Europe viewed Russia as hopelessly backward–even Medieval. It was considered more a part of Asia than an outpost of European thought. During the first half of the century, indeed, peasants (called “serfs”) were still treated as the property of their feudal masters and could be bought and sold, though they had a few more rights than slaves. Russian serfs gained their freedom only in 1861, two years before the American Emancipation Proclamation.

However, the nobility of Russia had looked to the West for ideals and fashions since the early 18th Century, when Peter the Great had instituted a series of reforms aimed at modernizing the country. Russian aristocrats traveled extensively in Western Europe and adopted French as the language of polite discourse. They read French and English literature and philosophy, followed Western fashions, and generally considered themselves a part of modern Europe.

St. Petersburg was created the new capital of Russia in 1721, and remained the most Westernized of Russian cities. Indeed, Dostoyevsky was to consider it an alien presence in the land, spiritually vacuous compared to the old Russian capital of Moscow.

The German-born czarina Catherine the Great, who reigned from 1762 to 1796, corresponded with Voltaire and fancied herself an Enlightenment monarch; but her plans for liberal reforms came to nothing, and she became better known as vainglorious autocrat.

Despite the general backwardness of Russian society, its openness to the West (briefly interrupted by Napoleon’s 1812 invasion) had profound influences on its literature throughout the 19th Century. The first great national author of Russia, Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837)–despite his celebration of Russian history and folklore–was profoundly influenced by such English writers as Shakespeare, Byron and Scott. Although he plays a role in Russian literature comparable to that of Goethe in Germany or even Shakespeare in England, his works were little known abroad during his lifetime.

It was Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883)–who lived and wrote for many years in Europe and was profoundly Western in his outlook–that first brought Russian literature to the attention of European readers, but at the cost of often being considered an alien in his own land.

It was the twin giants Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoyevsky whose work exploded out of Russia in the 1870s to overwhelm Europeans with their imaginative and emotional power. To many readers it must have seemed as if this distant, obscure country had suddenly leaped to the forefront of contemporary letters. Both were profoundly influenced both by European Romanticism and Realism, but their fiction offered characters more complex and impassioned than those Europeans were used to.

Tolstoy is known chiefly for his two masterpieces, War and Peace (1865-1869) and Anna Karenina (1875-1877). These works which wrestle with life’s most profound questions earned Tolstoy the reputation of perhaps the world’s greatest novelist. The first is a vast portrait of Russia during the period of the Napoleonic wars, and the second the story of a tormented adulterous woman treated far more seriously than Flaubert’s Emma Bovary. Like the English Victorian novelists, Tolstoy sought to do more than entertain or even move his readers, taking the writing of fiction seriously as a moral enterprise. In the end Tolstoy became a Christian utopian, abandoning fiction altogether.

Dostoyevsky is famous for his complex analyses of the human mind. Unlike Turgenev or Tolstoy, he pays little attention to details of setting or the personal appearance of his characters, instead concentrating on their thoughts and emotions. His work and that of Tolstoy revealed to Europeans that modern fiction could serve ends far more sophisticated than it had in the hands of Zola or even Flaubert.

Dostoyevsky had a sensational life which is variously reflected in his fiction. He believed his father to have been murdered by his own serfs, a belief which led him to be obsessed with murder as a subject in many of his greatest works, such as Crime and Punishment (1866)and The Brothers Karamazov (1881). After being arrested for his involvement in a radical group (the model for The Possessed) he was abruptly notified that he was about to be shot, but was spared at the last minute and sent to Siberia for ten years. He often described the traumatic effect which this mock-execution had on him in his fiction, and devoted another novel (The House of the Dead) to the story of his time in prison.

While there, he developed epilepsy, and later made epileptic seizures one of the chief characteristics of the Christ-figure Prince Myshkin in The Idiot. He also analyzed his addiction to gambling in The Gambler. The fervent Christianity and anti-Western, anti-Enlightenment attitudes of his later years color much of his writing, and underlie the influential long story “Notes from Underground.”

Some Western readers, notably the very restrained American novelist Henry James, found Dostoyevsky’s fiction exaggerated. The combination of traditional Russian effusiveness with Dostoyevsky’s truly sensational life made for sensational writing. But it is important to note that though his characters always seem to be undergoing some sort of torment, he creates the extreme situations and emotions in his novels not out of mere sensationalism, but to plumb the depths of human experience.

Of the other Russian writers of the 19th Century, the only other one to make much of an impression abroad was Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), whose short stories and plays used Realism in a much more understated way. His four great plays written just before and after the turn of the century–The Sea Gull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters, and The Cherry Orchard, along with the Realist masterworks of the Norwegian Henrik Ibsen–helped to rescue the theater from the dismal state into which it had plunged after the time of the German Romantics. The theatrical genius of the 19th century seems to have gone into opera rather than stage plays; few of the plays written between Schiller and Chekhov are remembered or performed today, but his works are seldom absent from the stage for long.

Chekhov’s works are often seen as the last echo of a fading tradition before Stalinism made “socialist realism” into a suffocating orthodoxy. Under Communism, Tolstoy was regarded a great national writer despite his mystical leanings because of his sympathies with the peasants and utopian idealism; but Dostoyevsky was out of favor during much of the Stalinist period because he was an outspoken foe of socialism and fervent Christian. Yet abroad, his reputation continued to grow. He was seen as a prophet of the evils which followed in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution, as a psychologist who anticipated many of the most striking discoveries of Sigmund Freud, and as a welcome challenger to the pervasive celebration of modernity so characteristic of the period 1850-1960. Despite his anti-modernism, Dostoyevsky still speaks directly to many readers in ways that most of his contemporaries do not. In post-Communist Russia he is again celebrated as a national treasure, just as he is revered as a classic abroad.

More Study Guides for 18th and 19th Century European Classics

Created by Paul Brians March 22, 1998.

Dostoyevsky: Notes from Underground

Introduction

Notes from Underground is one of the most influential pieces of fiction in Western European history. It has attracted attention for many reasons. 1) It contains an all-out assault on Enlightenment rationalism and the idea of progress which foreshadows many such assaults in the mid-to-late twentieth century. 2) It is an outstanding example of Dostoyevsky’s psychological skills, depicting a character motivated by many contradictory impulses. Such contradictions were not clearly understood in the nineteenth century, but Freud and modern psychology generally were to explore in depth the irrational bases of much human thought. 3) One of the most salient characteristics of the Underground Man is his profound self-contempt combined with an exquisitely sensitive ego–a combination that is much discussed these days. 4) The story contains one of the first characters whose childhood experiences have led him to fear love and intimacy even though he longs for them: another topic of intense interest currently. 5) It portrays one of the first anti-heroes in fiction, a protagonist utterly lacking every trait of the Romantic hero and living out a futile life on the margins of society. Such figures were to dominate much serious fiction in the mid-twentieth century, notably Albert Camus’ Meursault in The Stranger.

Because the narrator (he has no name) of this story is a thoroughly disagreeable person who seems to go out of the way to offend his readers, some care is needed to read the story well. First, it is important to keep in mind that the Underground Man, as he is traditionally called (“UM” below) is not Fyodor Dostoyevsky, as the notes at the beginning and end of the story make clear. He shares some of Dostoyevsky’s ideas, but he is also the target of Dostoyevsky’s satire. Dostoyevsky enjoyed handicapping himself by placing some of his favorite arguments in the mouth of a character he despised. In this and in other works, he strongly resists the impulse to sweep the reader away by making his views irresistible. He wants you to be aware of both their strengths and weaknesses, and make your mind up independently. Second, although some readers find that they are identifying with the UM to some extent, unlike most popular fiction, this is not a story in which you are expected to identify with the narrator. The danger is, in fact, that the reader will become so exasperated with his tone and manner as to simply refuse to pay attention what he is saying. Consider the UM as a complex portrait, lacking surface appeal, but filled with fascinating detail which reveals itself only upon close examination. Third, it is crucial not simply to let the UM’s self-contradictions cancel each other out and dismiss him as a madman whose ravings are not worth deciphering. It is precisely in the tension between various emotions and ideas that significance of the UM’s narrative lies. Close reading will reveal a careful and consistent psychological portrait.

The page numbers cited below are those of the MacAndrew translation published by New American Library. If you are using a different translation you will have to adjust the page numbers to match it.

Part One is a sustained argument containing scraps of illustrative narrative, introducing the UM and articulating his assault on rationalism and progress and delineating what he thinks is wrong with the modern self-conscious intellectual (himself). Part Two is a much more easily comprehensible narrative of an episode from his life in which he is offered a chance to escape from his web of self-hate and spite. In Part One he is all scorn and contempt for the reader; in Part Two this contempt turns on himself. A sensitive reading will reveal that there is much to pity in him. The numbers preceding each paragraph indicate the page number in the story which the question relates to.

 

Part One

I

84: How many self-contradictions can you find in the first paragraph? Does he really respect medicine? Explain? What does the fact that he refuses medical help out of spite tell us about his attitude toward freedom?

85: What evidence is there that he is acutely self-conscious about how he appears to others? Is he aware of having any need for human affection? Is he able to tolerate such affection?

86: Is he really indifferent to his readers’ reactions? How can you tell? He introduces what he calls a “stupid, useless excuse,” which turns out to be one of his main theses in the rest of Part I. What does this “excuse” mean? Is he more worried about being despised or being laughed at? How can you tell?

II

87: How can you illustrate already his thesis that “unhappy nineteenth century intellectuals” like himself are too “abstract and premeditated?” What does he mean by this?

88: What evidence is there that he is a masochist? (Look the word up if you aren’t familiar with it.)

89: What does it mean to be “guilty in the first place?” Is it possible to feel guilty without being aware of any specific wrongful act that caused the guilty feelings? Look for elements in his story later that might have led him to grow up feeling guilty, or–as people say today–with low self-esteem.

III

90-91: Can you contrast what the UM calls “the spontaneous man” or l’homme de la nature et de la vérité (man of nature and truth) with the “unhappy nineteenth century intellectual” he discussed earlier? What are the differences between them? What are his feelings toward each of them?

92-93: Look closely at the paragraph that begins “Thus you may. . . .” Does he care about our reactions? How can you tell? In the last full paragraph he satirically presents the central ideas of nineteenth century pragmatism, which argues that all morality is an illusion founded on self-interest, that there is no such thing as altruism (much as Voltaire had done earlier). He objects to the way in which such pragmatists (like the social Darwinists) complacently presented self-interest as scientifically proven superior to altruism. What is the point he is making about two plus two making four?

IV

94-95: How does his example of the toothache illustrate this idea of the self-conscious intellectual? What changes when he becomes too self-aware about the pain he is experiencing? Examine the last paragraph in this section. He seems to be having a dialogue with his imaginary reader. How does he try to defend himself against this reader? How does this paragraph illustrate the point he was just making about self-consciousness?

V

95: Is it possible to be sincerely in love and faking it at the same time? Do you believe him when he says he fell in love simply out of boredom?

VI

He is so desperate for some kind of identity that he is willing even to have an absurdly trivial identity. What example does he use? Your notes in the Afterword of this volume explain that this paragraph contains an attack on an artist named Gué (whose name begins with the same letter as the Russian word for “s___” and a writer named Saltykov-Shchedrin, who had written a story called “Something to Everybody’s Liking.” How serious is his last sentence? Do you think he feels ambivalently about it?

VII

99-102: He begins by satirizing the ideals of the Enlightenment thinkers who thought that if people only acted out of enlightened self-interest they would become “kind and noble.” What examples does he use to try to prove this theory wrong? Why does the notion of automatic moral reform make him so angry? Why does he say it makes a human being into a “piano key or an organ stop?” (Today we would say a robot, or a cog in a machine.)

103-104: The first full paragraph is specifically aimed at Chernyshevsky’s What is to Be Done? It was a utopian novel which used the metaphor of the Crystal Palace (the world’s first all steel-and glass building, erected to display modern machinery at a fair celebrating Queen Victoria’s reign in England). What are his major objections to living in a perfect world? Do you agree with him that individual freedom and utopianism necessarily conflict?

VIII

105: The UM says that if we ever completely understand human psychology to the point that we clearly grasp out motivations for our feelings, we will cease to have true, spontaneous feelings. Can you think of any examples where self-awareness of this kind has interfered with spontaneous feelings in your own life or anyone else’s?

106: How does he say desire relates to reason?

109: What is his reaction to the fact that at his time very little was known about what determined human desires? How do you think he would have reacted to today’s psychologists?

IX

109-111: What is his argument against the typically Victorian notion that the essence of the human spirit is to be found in creativity and accomplishment?

112: Why does he keep talking about “twice two?” What is he using it as a metaphor for?

X

112-113: How do you think he would have reacted to Marxism?

XI

114-116: How accurate do you think the self-analysis of the UM is? What does it show about his self-awareness? What evidence is there on this page that he feels he has revealed too much about himself in that paragraph? What does he mean by the sentence that begins “But there are things, too, that a man won’t dare to admit event to himself . . . ?” How does this theory relate to the Freudian concept of the unconscious mind (incorrectly often called the “subconscious”)? Rousseau’s autobiography was famous for revealing some very unpleasant details about his private life. If a person is scrupulously honest, as the UM says he is going to be, does that make him a good person? Why does the UM keep repeating that he intends that this writing will never be read by anyone?

 

Part Two

I

117: Nekrasov was a popular Romantic poet. This poem recurs in the story at p. 152. What situation does Nekrasov seem to be depicting here? The UM seems to break off in embarrassment in the middle of quoting this poem. How does this interruption relate to the major themes of Part One?

120: What does he say is the main difference between German and Russian idealists?

122: What are his vices? Are they really very vicious? What is it about the military officer’s action that offends him so much?

123: What does he mean by saying he longed for something more literary? How does it relate to the themes of Part One?

125: Why do you think he didn’t send the exposé of the officer in under his own name? Do you believe him when he says it was rejected because such exposés weren’t in vogue?

126-129: In the code of gentlemen the proper response to an insult was to challenge the offending party to a duel with swords or pistols. In what ways is the UM’s revenge a ridiculously inadequate substitute for such a duel? Note that in the last paragraph of this section he refuses to tell us how he felt when he finally realized what a fool he’d made out of himself. See if you can find other passages in which he censors what he is willing to reveal to us, despite the fact that he is usually eager to run on and on about his faults.

II

131: What is absurd about the fantasies he describes? What evidence is there that even though he ridicules these fantasies, he is defensive about them?

III

133: In what way does his treatment by his former school companions compare with his treatment by the officer?

139: Do you think these young men were really “incredibly depraved?”

140: What evidence does he present here that he is incapable of tolerating love and affection even though he desperately yearns for it? What do you think causes some people to be like this, powerfully attracting others and then rejecting them once it is clear the victim truly loves and admires the lover? Note that his passage strongly foreshadows his relationship with Liza.

IV

145: Why do you think he doesn’t tell us the amount of his salary?

147-148: Can you analyze his emotions while he is denouncing the others at the party? How do they react to him?

V

153-154: What does it tell you about him that even a prostitute insults him? How do his plans for revenge illustrate his self-portrait in Part One? He seems to feel that by leaving his coat open he is making a boldly suicidal gesture. Winters in St. Petersburg can be brutal, but what evidence is there that it is not all that cold?

156: Why does he hope he is repulsive to the prostitute he chooses?

VI

Nineteenth century authors usually avoided explicitly depicting sexual activity, so much so that modern readers sometimes miss their subtle cues that sex has occurred. You may take it for granted that when this section begins the UM has had sex with Liza and is lying beside her on the bed afterwards. An old stereotypical line used by a man to a prostitute is to ask, “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?” Try to figure out what the UM’s motives are in trying to convince Liza that she should not be a prostitute. Why doesn’t he succeed at first in making her feel ashamed of herself at first?

161: What does Liza’s reaction to his saying that she could still marry suggest about her background? What is it that he especially objects to in the life a prostitute which relates to a central theme of Part One?

164: What does her reaction to his portrait of a loving father reveal about her? Does she accept the argument that poverty is responsible for criminal behavior?

166: What does she mean by saying he’s “just like a book?” How accurate is she in her judgment of him?

VII

During the time this story was published there was an immense amount of discussion about the social problem posed by prostitution, and there were many books and articles propounding exactly the same theme that the UM uses here. His speech to Liza is a chain of journalistic clichés.

167: What are in his motives in telling her all this? See also p. 177 for further evidence.

173: Why does she bring him the letter?

174: What do you think is the “obscene truth” he is realizing at the end of this section?

177-179: How do his fantasies about Liza illustrate his ideas about self-consciousness in Part One? Even rather poor persons could afford a single servant in the nineteenth century. Masses of them subsisted on negligible wages. What is ironic about the UM’s servant’s name?

IX

184-185: What are his reactions when Liza appears?

186: Compare his silence with Liza with the incident at the dinner party earlier.

187-189: Why do you think he pours out this confession to her when she asks him to save her? What is the “very strange thing” that happens? Why do you think she reacts to him the way she does? Why does he react to her reaction the way he does?

X

“Won’t I hate her even more tomorrow, just because I’ve kissed her feet today?”

194-196: What emotions does the UM feel in the aftermath? Has the underground man learned from his experiences? What effect have they had on him? Does understanding one’s motives necessarily make one behave better? Can you see any way for the UM to escape from his trap?

Dostoyevsky was a devout Christian (his The Brothers Karamazov is one of the few great Christian novels). Can you find any evidence for his religious beliefs in this story, direct or indirect?

What do suppose his attitudes toward Voltaire were? In what ways is he like Faust? Have you ever met anyone like the UM? What effect did that person have on you?

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Notes by Paul Brians, Department of English, Washington State University, Pullman 99164-5020.

First mounted June 17, 1995. Last revised March 28, 2006. Updated July 25, 2017.

Foreign Words and Phrases in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov

F=French, G=German, L=Latin,

il faudrait les inventer (F)
They would have to be invented [variation on a phrase by Voltaire: “If God did not exist he would have to be invented.”]

J’ai vu l’ombre d’un cochier, qui avec l’ombre d’une brossefrottait l’ombre d’une carrosse (F)
I’ve seen the shade of a coachman who, with the shade of a brush, rubbed the shade of a coach.

un chevalier parfait (F)
a perfect knight, or gentleman

Mater Dolorosa (L)
sad or sorrowing mother [traditional image of the Virgin Mary grieving for the slain Christ]

plus de noblesse que de sincerité (F)
more nobility than sincerity

noblesse (F)
nobility

il y a du Piron là-dedans (F)
he’s like Piron

den Dank, Dame, begehr’ ich nicht (G)
Thank you, Ma’am, I ask for nothing*

Merci, maman (F)
Thank you, Mother

professions de foi (F)
declarations of faith

s’il n’existait pas Dieu il faudrait l’inventer (F)
if God did not exist he would have to be invented [Voltaire]

Notre Dame de Paris (F)
Our Lady of Paris [title of famous novel by Victor Hugo]

Le bon jugement de la trés sainte et gracieuse Vierge Marie (F)
The good judgment of the very holy and gracious Virgin Mary

bon jugement (F)
good judgment

ad majoram gloriam Dei (F)
to the greater glory of God

quid pro quo (F)
this for that [one thing in return for another

Dixi (L)
I have said it

Ci-gît Piron qui ne fut rien,/Pas même académicien (F)
Here lies Piron, who was nothing,/Not even a member of the [French] Academy

c’est fini (F)
it’s finished

vous comprenez, cette affaire et la mort terrible de votre papa (F)
you understand, this affair and the terrible death of your father

qui frisait le cinquantaine (F)
who’s almost fifty

c’est charmant (F)
it’s charming

c’est noble, c’est charmant (F)
it’s noble, it’s charming

c’est chevaleresque (F)
it’s chevalric, chivalrous

Satan sum et nihil humanum a me alienum puto (L)
I am Satan and nothing human is alien to me

C’est du nouveau, n’est-ce pas (F)
That’s something new, right?

Quelle idée (F)
What an idea

le diable n’existe point (F)
the devil doesn’t exist

je pense, done je suis (F)
I think, therefore I am [Descartes]

Ah, mon pere, ça lui fait tant de plaisir, a moi si peu de peine (F)
Ah. father. it gives him so much pleasure and me so little trouble

Ah, mais c’est bête enfin (F)
Oh. but that’s crazy!

Monsieur sait-il le temps qu’il fait? C’est à ne pas mettre un chien dehors (F)
Does Monsieur know what the weather like? I wouldn’t put a dog out in it.

a ne pas mettre un chien dehors (F)
I wouldn’t put a dog out in it.

le mot de l’enigme (F)
the answer to the riddle

Gott der Vater, Gott der Sohn, Gott der heilige Geist (G)
God the Father. God the Son. God the Holy Spirit

le diable n’existe point (F)
the devil doesn’t exist

vivos voco (L)
I appeal to them as witnesses

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*An excerpt from Schiller’s Der Handschuh, in which a woman drops her glove among lions, forcing the hero to leap among them and retrieve it. He proves his courage, but also his disdain, by flinging the glove in her face and delivering this stinging rebuke. (Source: Essais historiques sur Paris by M. de Saintfois.)

The Influence of Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) was notoriously unread and uninfluential during his own lifetime, and his works suffered considerable distortion in the hands of his sister Elisabeth, who managed his literary estate and twisted his philosophy into a set of ideas supporting Hitler and Nazism (Hitler had Thus Spoke Zarathustra issued to every soldier in the German army). By far his most often quoted utterance–seldom understood–is “God is dead,” which placed his thought beyond the pale for many readers.

But Nietzsche’s influence has been much richer and varied than these simple stereotypes suggest. It is not surprising that an author who embraced such contradictions should have influenced thinkers of an extraordinary variety.

Philosophy

The only philosopher to feel his influence while he could be aware of it was the Danish critic and philosopher Georg Brandes (1842-1927), who in the late 1880s developed a philosophy which he called “aristocratic radicalism” inspired by Nietzsche’s notion of the “overman.” Nietzsche’s insistence that the decay of religion (the “death of God”) requires that humanity take responsibility for setting its own moral standards inspired existentialists from Karl Jaspers (1883-1969) and Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) to Albert Camus (1913-1960).

Nietzsche’s relativism has had a powerful influence on two of the most important modern French Deconstructionist philosophers, Jacques Derrida (b. 1930) and Michel Foucault (1926-1984). (Summary of a 1971 Foucault essay relating to Nietzsche).

Oddly enough, he has also been a powerful influence on certain theologians, notably Paul Tillich (1886-1965), who developed an Existentialist, human-centered theology which tried to salvage elements of traditional faith while drawing on rationalism. Thomas Altizer (b.1927) created a sensation (and found himself on the cover of Time) in the 1960s by helping to create the oxymoronically named “death of God theology” together with a number of other theologians who argued for religion without God. Their constant use of Nietzsche’s catch phrase is a reminder of their indebtedness to him. Although the direct influence of this school hardly lasted out the decade, other theologians used Nietzsche’s thought as well, notably embracing his idea that human values should be based not on denial (“thou shalt not”) but on affirmation (“thou shalt”). The Jewish theologian Martin Buber (1878-1965)–also a great influence on Christian theology–translated part of Thus Spoke Zarathustra into Polish. He read Nietzsche’s works very early, beginning in 1892. His emphasis on process in theology resembles some of Nietzsche’s ideas.

Although he did not draw directly on Nietzsche’s work, the notions of “creative evolution” espoused by Henri Bergson (1859-1941) had a powerful influence on the Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis (1885-1957), who combined his studies under Bergson with his reading of Nietzsche to produce a version of what is known as “process theology” which is most readily studied in the little book The Saviors of God and is also expressed in his most popular novel, Zorba the Greek. According to Kazantzakis, God is the result of whatever the most energetic and heroic people value and create. This is clearly very similar to Nietzsche’s ideas about the sources of religion. Nietzsche’s notion of heroes as creators is at the heart of Kazantzakis’ philosophy.

Psychology

The two grandfathers of modern psychology, Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) and Carl Jung (1875-1961), both had a deep admiration for Nietzsche and credited him with many insights into the human character.

Alfred Adler (1870-1937) developed an “individual psychology” which argues that each individual strives for what he called “superiority,” but is more commonly referred to today as “self-realization” or “self-actualization,” and which was profoundly influenced by Nietzsche’s notions of striving and self-creation. The entire “human potential movement” and humanistic psychology (Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, Rollo May, etc.) owes a great debt to this line of thought. Even pop psychologists of “self-esteem” preach a gospel little different from that of Zarathustra. The ruthless, self-assertive “objectivism” of Ayn Rand (1905-1982) is difficult to imagine without the influence of Nietzsche.

Fiction

Besides Kanzantzakis, many novelists have drawn on Nietzsche. Thomas Mann (1875-1955) wrote repeatedly about him and his characters are often engaged in struggles to define their ideas in a world in which old philosophies are decaying, like Nietzsche, torn between romanticism and rationalism (notably in The Magic Mountain). Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) similarly explored the necessity for the individuals to overcome their social training and traditional ideas to seek their own way (Steppenwolf and The Glass Bead Game).

Many other famous writers influenced by Nietzsche include André Malraux (1901-1976), André Gide (1869-1951), and Knut Hamsun (1859-1952).

Poetry

Given the poetic style in which he wrote, it is not surprising that numerous poets have been drawn to Nietzsche, including Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926). He, like many writers influenced by Nietzsche, rejected the kind of traditional Christian dualism which sorts existence into good and evil with the physical and earthly being regarded as a source of evil and goodness identified with pure spirit and the life after death. His celebration of mortal life as a sort of religion is extremely Nietzschean. He was also became lover of Lou Andreas-Salomé, a woman who ten years earlier Nietzsche loved unrequitedly.

Among many others, one can find strong Nietzschean themes in the works of Beat Generation poets such as Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) and Gary Snyder (b. 1930), who were drawn to the vitalistic, anti-dualistic themes also earlier expressed in the English and American traditions by William Blake and Walt Whitman. Blake, Whitman and Nietzsche form a sort of triumvirate whose influence runs through large swaths of modern literature in their rejection of dualism and embrace of the body as good. Like many other poets, William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) combined an admiration for Blake with interest in Nietzsche.

Drama

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) expressed his version of Nietzsche’s struggle for power in his play Man and Superman, and more than one character in the plays of Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953) is under Nietzsche’s spell.

Influential ideas

If there are few names from the second half of the 20th century cited above it is not because Nietzsche’s influence has dwindled. Rather it so pervades modern culture that many who have never read him are influenced by his thought indirectly. Consider the following ideas circulating in American culture today, all of them traceable at least in part to Nietzsche, although many of them are much simpler than similar ideas held by him:

 

  • The goal of life should be to find yourself. True maturity means discovering or creating an identity for yourself.
  • The highest virtue is to be true to yourself (consider these song titles from a generation ago: “I Gotta Be Me,” “I Did It My Way”).
  • When you fall ill, your body is trying to tell you something; listen to the wisdom of your body.
  • People who hate their bodies or are in tension with them need to learn how to accept and integrate their physical selves with their minds instead of seeing them as in tension with each other. The mind and body make up a single whole.
  • Athletes, musicians, etc. especially need to become so attuned to their bodies that their skills proceed spontaneously from the knowledge stored in their muscles and are not frustrated by an excess of conscious rational thought. (The influence of Zen Buddhism on this sort of thinking is also very strong.)
  • Sexuality is not the opposite of virtue, but a natural gift that needs to be developed and integrated into a healthy, rounded life.
  • Many people suffer from impaired self-esteem; they need to work on being proud of themselves.
  • Knowledge and strength are greater virtues than humility and submission.
  • Overcoming feelings of guilt is an important step to mental health.
  • You can’t love someone else if you don’t love yourself.
  • Life is short; experience it as intensely as you can or it is wasted.
  • People’s values are shaped by the cultures they live in; as society changes we need changed values.
  • Challenge yourself; don’t live passively.It is notable that none of these ideas flows from the traditional Judeo-Christian culture which dominated Europe for a thousand years. Many of them have their roots in Romanticism, with Nietzsche merely articulating impulses that others shared; but he is a major transmitter of them to the modern world.

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The USC Nietzsche Page Warning: this page downloads the opening to Richard Strauss’ Also sprach Zarathustra to your computer, which can take a while; but at least it stops when it’s played through once.

Gallery of Nietzsche images

Created by Paul Brians, April 1, 1998

 

Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Book One

Friedrich Nietzsche is one of the most influential philosophers of the nineteenth century; but he was not influential in the nineteenth century. (See notes on the Influence of Nietzsche.) For various reasons which we will discuss in class, his works have had their major impact in the twentieth century, and that impact has been astonishingly widespread and varied. His choice of poetic prose rather than rigorous dialectic has sometimes caused him to be called no philosopher at all; yet his literary style has attracted readers who would not have been drawn to a Kant or a Hegel. Because he does not use traditional formal logic, there are no simple ways to understand his writings. A grasp of his message can only be achieved by a gradual process of gathering in his major attitudes and themes and inferring the meaning of any single passage in the context of his work as a whole. Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche’s American translator and best explicator, provides on pages 3-22 a set of helpful translator’s notes which you should read; but the following questions and comments are meant to step you through the assigned portions of the work in more detail and to stimulate your thinking about it. Some of the questions are open-ended prompts to think about the issues involved, to prepare you for class discussion.

There are certain central concepts that it is essential to keep in mind about Nietzsche’s philosophy. He takes it for granted that the Enlightenment analysis of religion is correct, and that religion is a comforting but limiting self-delusion. He infers that all values (including religious values) are the creations of human beings and that therefore we are all responsible for creating high values and living up to them. Yet these values need not be shared. He is a thorough relativist, arguing that one person’s virtue is another’s vice. Once these basic principles are understood, most of his writing becomes quite clear. Another obstacle to comprehension, however, consists in his constant cultural references which may be unfamiliar to the untrained reader. Most of these will be explained in the following notes.

A final obstacle to comprehension is the simple aversion that his style arouses in some readers. Nietzsche writes sneeringly, imperiously, in a way that Americans in particular, with their national preference for self-deprecation and humor, find objectionable. It is pointless to waste much energy objecting to his tone; his message has been found appealing to many people who don’t share his emotional attitudes. Your task is to discover what it is in this message that has caused it to be so influential in the modern world.

Everyone finds something to object to in Nietzsche. Obviously conservative Christians find his anti-Christian attitudes objectionable, but even his most enthusiastic followers do not follow him on every point. As you will see at the end of this reading assignment, that is very much as Nietzsche would have wished it. Unlike in most of the works we are studying, the central figure here–Zarathustra–is to be identified with the author. Nietzsche merely uses him for a mouthpiece.

The numbers in the notes below refer to the section numbers in the Penguin edition of Kaufman’s translation.

 

Zarathustra’s Prologue

1: What other famous figure began his mission at the age of thirty by retreating into the wilderness? How long did the other figure stay there? How long does Zarathustra stay there? Much of the imagery here is probably borrowed from “The Allegory of the Cave” in Plato’s Republic. (Nietzsche generally disliked Plato, and disagrees with him on many points; but he was greatly influenced by him nevertheless.) Plato says that an enlightened thinker is like a man who gradually struggles free of the chains of illusion in an underground cave and who learns by ascending to the world above and viewing things in the light of day, finally discovering the essence of truth by gazing at the sun itself. However, it is not enough for the philosopher to grasp truth for himself: he has a responsibility to descend back into the cave of illusion and free the prisoners of falsehood. This is what Nietzsche means by “going under.” What arguments can you make that the discoverer of truth has an obligation to preach that truth to others?

2: The Old Man represents traditional religious hermitism. How is Nietzsche criticizing the tradition of the hermit or cloistered monk? Frequently Nietzsche has his characters say not what they would say in real life, but instead reveal what he thinks are their secret feelings. In other words, he puts his analysis of their motives into their mouths. Would a real monk likely say that he has stopped loving man? Why would Nietzsche feel justified in saying that he has? Nietzsche is fond of self-quotation. Here Zarathustra is amazed that the Old Man has not heard of one of Nietzsche’s most famous pronouncements: God is Dead.” (For the original context, see “The Madman” (Aphorism 125 in The Gay Science). This is probably the most widely-quoted and thoroughly misunderstood of all Nietzsche’s sayings. He does not mean to imply that God was ever alive. A clearer statement (though less dramatic) would be: “That period in history during which the idea of the Christian God expressed the highest ideals of Western Civilization has passed, and it is now clear that belief in him is a dead burden on a society which has outgrown him.” What changes in European culture might have led him to this conclusion? Have you ever heard someone argue against his statement that God is dead? Did their arguments demonstrate knowledge of what Nietzsche was actually saying?

3: Nietzsche did not accept many of Darwin’s findings, but he is clearly dependent on his theories for some of his language in this section. In what ways does his theory of the overman differ from the theory of Darwinian evolution? In what ways is it similar? What does he mean by saying the overman shall be the “meaning of the earth?” We often speak of discovering the meaning of something; why does Nietzsche instead depict meaning as something to be created? What effects does it have on people when they believe that truth is absolute, and must be discovered? What effects does it have on them when they believe that truth is relative, and must be defined by each individual? Which do you agree with? Why? What contrast is he drawing between those who are “faithful to the earth “” and the preachers of “otherworldly hopes?” Given what was stated above about his death of God theory, what does he mean by the paragraph that begins “Once the sin against God was the greatest sin . . . ?” What change in values is he preaching? What has been the traditional Christian view of the body (“flesh”) versus the soul (“spirit”)? (Hint: there are many relevant passages in Paul. See for instance Romans 8:1-13. Please note that such attitudes are distinctly unfashionable today, but have been powerful and widespread in the past.) How does Nietzsche react to these attitudes? “The hour of the great contempt” is for Nietzsche a way of describing the point at which one realizes that one’s earlier ideals were petty and mean, and aims for something higher. What is the effect of his constantly using the possessive pronoun in speaking of “your happiness,” “your reason,” and “your virtue?” Why does he criticize pity? Later Nietzsche will make a distinction between the sort of pity that he thinks is weak and self-destructive and the “gift-giving virtue,” which is compassionate, but proud and strong. Can you find any signs of such compassion even in the small portion of the book you have read so far? “Meanness” here means “stinginess,” “miserliness.” Since he clearly does not believe in the traditional notion of sin, why does he say what he does about it? How does the image of lightning express the virtue that he is preaching in contrast? How does this contrast with Voltaire’s fear of “enthusiasm?” Which do you think is the preferable view? Why?

4: The tightrope walker is a fairly obvious metaphor, spelled out by Zarathustra, of humanity in the process of transformation (going over) from the current stage of human consciousness to a more advanced stage. The speech that Zarathustra gives is clearly modeled on the Beatitudes (see Matthew 5:1-12). In what way does he think being “a great despiser” is a positive act? What is the difference between loving virtue in general and loving one’s own virtue ? What is it about the latter that Nietzsche approves of? Paraphrase into plain English this statement: “I love him who casts golden words before his deeds and always does even more than he promises.” Why does he praise “going under?” In what way do these various people prepare for the development of the overman?

5: What is Zarathustra’s explanation for the fact that the people do not welcome his message? In what ways is “the last man” the opposite of the overman? What are the last man’s main characteristics? Why does he disapprove of quick reconciliation? What virtue might counterbalance it? Why does he scorn the caution about pleasure that aims above all at preserving health? What is the crowd’s reaction to his description of the last man?

6: In what ways is the jester like Zarathustra? Traditionally Christianity has offered as one of its main comforts the belief in life after death. How does Zarathustra offer the denial of life after death as a comfort? What problem in Christian belief is he hinting at here? (Hint: see Matthew 7:13-14.) The dying tightrope walker complains that if there is no life after death, his life has been meaningless. How does Zarathustra answer him? Does meaning have to be permanent to be worthwhile? Can you answer Nietzsche’s critique of the Christian philosophy of death?

7-8: This passage rather ponderously makes the obvious point that Nietzsche’s philosophy is aimed at giving meaning to life, and that death is irrelevant to it. Why doesn’t it matter that Zarathustra breaks his promise to bury the dead man?

9: What contrast is Nietzsche making between “the people” and “companions?” Is Nietzsche a believer in equality? Does he think that everyone can become an overman? In what sense is the lawbreaker a creator? How does the one who rejects old values help to create new ones?

10: One traditional Christian interpretation of the fall of Adam and Eve is that they committed the sin of pride, believing that eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil would give them the wisdom of gods (see Genesis 3). How does Nietzsche use the symbols of the serpent and the eagle to invert what he sees as traditional Christian attitudes? How do modern people feel about pride? Is it more often seen as a vice or a virtue? How about when we call it “self-esteem?” Nietzsche interprets the story of the fall as a parable denouncing the quest for knowledge, and by extension, science itself. Why might he have felt that Christianity was hostile to science? Do science and religion still come into conflict with each other at times?

 

Zarathustra’s Speeches

On the Three Metamorphoses

In one of the most important passages of the book, Nietzsche describes three stages of human development. Each stage has its own virtue, and each contributes to developing the ideal which he calls the overman. What are the main qualities of the camel as he describes them? What criterion does the camel use to choose his tasks? What do all of the questions have in common which begin, “Or is it this?” What attitude toward virtue does the dragon symbolize? What traditional Christian virtues is he here inverting? Based on what you have read earlier, why is it important for the lion to slay the dragon? In what way is this act of destruction creative? What is the difference between the sacred “no” and the sacred “yes?” People influenced by Nietzsche often use the expressions “yea-saying” and “nay-saying.” What attitudes are conveyed by these expressions? What does it mean to utter a sacred “Yes?” What does he mean by saying “he who had been lost to the world now conquers his own world?” Hint: throughout most of this book Nietzsche often says the same things over and over in different ways. You have already encountered these ideas in different forms.

On the Teachers of Virtue

In praising sleep the sage praises the quiet conscience. He preaches the opposite of what Zarathustra preaches. What point do you think Nietzsche is making by letting his opponent express himself? What does Zarathustra’s final blessing of the “sleepy ones” mean?

On the Afterworldly

What by now familiar Nietzschean theme is the subject of this section? What does he say is the source of the human desire to create heavens (“afterworlds”))? How does he answer those who think they have directly experienced spiritual realms “transported from their bodies and this earth”)? Does he view such people as wicked or as sick? How does he say such people should be treated? How do you think he would react to people who say they have had “after death” experiences today?

On the Despisers of the Body

What is the significance of believing that the “soul” is a function of the body rather than a separate entity? One of the more influential themes in Nietzsche’s thought is his notion of the wisdom of the body. Can you think of any contemporary examples in which people seem to share that idea, for instance saying that one should “listen” to one’s body? In what sense can the body be said to have created the spirit?

On Enjoying and Suffering the Passions

Here Nietzsche is using the original meaning of the Latin word passio–suffering, and combining it with the more recent meaning of intense desire. What is his attitude toward passion? How is it similar to Faust’s?

On the Pale Criminal

How do you think Nietzsche would react to contemporary calls for more capital punishment? What arguments might be made to support his position that executions should not be a form of revenge? What arguments might be made against it? Why does he reject terms like “villain,” “scoundrel,” and “sinner?” What is different about the terms he proposes to use instead? The Pale Criminal here is often compared to Dostoyevsky’s Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, who fantasized becoming a Napoleonic hero by rejecting ordinary morality and committing a robbery/murder with total disregard for normal ethics. However, he found he was not capable of such lofty detachment, and was haunted by a guilty conscience. Inter estingly, Nietzsche had not read Crime and Punishment, and arrived at this portrait quite independently. Clearly Zarathustra does not really mean to praise murder or robbery, so why does he criticize the criminal’s inability to admit to himself that what he really wants to do is commit a murder? How does this relate to the sentence, “Much about your good people nauseates me; and verily, it is not their evil?” What familiar Nietzschean theme is he continuing here?

On Reading and Writing

What does it mean to write with your blood? Is this a classical or romantic attitude? Why does Nietzsche think universal literacy is a bad thing? What influence might he think it has had on the quality of writing? Remember, magazines, newspapers and books were the mass media in the nineteenth century. According to Zarathustra, how are madness and reason related? What is his metaphor for the spirit of lightness and joy which he praises? Hint: this passage suggested the great waltz section in Richard Strauss’s tone poem Also Sprach Zarathustra (the opening of the work is well-known as the “theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey” ).

On the Tree on the Mountainside

Why does Zarathustra feel the youth is not yet ready for freedom? Does he feel that freedom is good in and of itself? Do you agree with him? What criticisms does he make of those who pursue skepticism for its own sake in the paragraph that begins “Alas, I knew noble men . . .?”

On the Preachers of Death

This is largely a repetition of ideas already discussed in the sections entitled “On the Afterworldly” and “On the Despisers of the Body,” but he also takes up hostility toward sexuality. What are some of the kinds of people which he calls “Preachers of Death?”

On War and Warriors

Besides “God is dead,” this passage is probably quoted out of context more than any other part of Nietzsche’s writings. What is a warrior of knowledge? Nietzsche was an outspoken critic of German nationalism and militarism. What kind of war is he speaking about? What is the difference between a soldier and a warrior, as he uses the terms? (Hint: the first comes from the name of a Roman coin with which soldiers were paid, and originally designated a hired fighter.) Why does he object to uniforms? Interpret this sentence: “Your enemy you shall seek, your war you shall wage–for your thoughts.” Is he speaking here about traditional warfare, involving masses of soldiers obeying the orders of officers? Why does he say that you should find a cause for triumph even in defeat? Do generals tell their armies, “It isn’t who wins that counts, it’s how you fight the battle?” The next few phrases are frequently cited to show that Nietzsche was a proto-Fascist militarist who would have supported Hitler. Is this a fair interpretation? Explain. What good qualities does he say have been encouraged more by war than by the Christian virtues of neighborly love and pity? Is this an unconventional view? Why does he say you must not despise your enemy? Can you reconcile the seeming contradiction between the paragraph on recalcitrance and obedience with his earlier objection to uniformity and his general insistence on fighting for one’s own individual cause?

The State

German nationalism was on the rise at this time, as the modern country was slowly unified out of a variety of small principalities. How does he make clear in this passage that his praise of war must not be taken to support warfare in support of the modern state?

On the Flies of the Market Place

What qualities does he praise that conflict with a Hitleresque idea of the importance of the state? What does it mean to say “Never yet has truth hung on the arm of the unconditional?” Technically this statement contains a self-contradiction; can you re-word it so that it still conveys his meaning without being self-contradictory?

On Chastity

Why does he feel that chastity can be a vice for some people? Strikingly, he links suppressed sexuality and cruelty in much the same way that Freud was to do later in his theory of masochism. To understand the “parable” he offers, read Mark 5:1-20. Do es he say that everyone should indulge in sex? What does he mean by saying that “dirty” truths are not as bad as shallow ones?

On the Friend

Nietzsche seems to feel that having a friend makes one vulnerable. What qualities does he think a friend should have to prevent these dangers? Why does he argue that women are not yet capable of friendship? Do you think the desire for love can interfere with the ability to make and keep friends? Do you think such interference happens more among men or among women? Why does he think women’s love is inferior to friendship? Note: many readers are particularly offended by Nietzsche’s calling women cats, birds, and cows; but it is important to note that he has much harsher (and clearer) things to say about them that this (see On Little Old and Young Women). What does it imply when he says that woman is “not yet” capable of friendship? How does he use his comments on women to attack men?

On the Thousand and One Goals

Nietzsche strongly rejected the notion that there is one single purpose in life that all of us should discover and pursue. But he felt that peoples create an identity for themselves which is based on their group values. How does he say they choose these values? What did he think was the main value of the Greeks? “Zarathustra” is the name of a Persian prophet. What does he think the main values of the Persians were? What famous people took as central law “To honor father and mother?” How do you think Zarathustra reacts to this kind of virtue, judging by what he has said earlier? The fourth group of people is the Germans. In what way is his summary of them less neutral than the other three? Nietzsche says that the notion of the individual as a creator emerged only in recent times? What evidence is there in history to support this view? To what degree is it an overstatement? What mechanism does he argue has traditionally hindered individualism? How does he think humanity should define itself? Is the emergence of individualism entirely a good thing? Can you think of any disadvantages it has had?

On Love of the Neighbor

As in On the Friend, he argues that the need for close friends is a danger. What does he feel this danger consists in? Of all of Nietzsche’s teachings, this is probably the least followed. Most people who have been profoundly influenced by Nietzsche have also praised friendship highly.

On the Way of the Creator

What in this section repeats Zarathustra’s comments on freedom in “On the Tree on the Mountainside?” What is it that he calls on one to “murder” in the last paragraph on p. 63? Is he advocating literal murder of another human being? To what in history is he referring in his warning against holy simplicity? What does he say is your worst enemy?

On Little Old and Young Women

It is obvious that this passage expresses outrageously sexist attitudes toward women. What is not so obvious is that they are simply a more brutal expression of common nineteenth-century ways of praising women. Can you translate some of his statements into gentler-sounding equivalents that most nineteenth-century men and women might have agreed with? What kind of men does the old woman say that women hate? Why do you think she urges men to use the whip (violence) against women? Why do you suppose this is the only passage in which Nietzsche’s views are expressed through a character other than Zarathustra?

On the Adder’s Bite

What variations does Zarathustra make here on the Sermon on the Mount? (See Matthew 5:38-48.) He is not simply turning Jesus’ teachings upside down. How is he changing them? What are your own reactions to his suggested changes?

On Child and Marriage

This is pretty much just an editorial in favor of the overman, arguing that without the goal of producing a superior child, marriage is pointless, even destructive.

On Free Death

How does his teaching on dying at the right time relate to hotly-debated issues today? He says that Jesus (“that Hebrew”) died too early. What does he think would have happened had he lived longer?

On the Gift-Giving Virtue

1: Nietzsche argues that one should not idealize the poor as morally superior to the rich or idealize giving to them out of pity. What does he suggest should be the motive of charity?

2: Here he summarizes his basic teaching. What is his central point? Why would it be illogical to expect him to have described the overman in detail, with all his important characteristics?

3: How does he try to demonstrate that he wants each person to find his or her own truth?

What elements of Nietzsche’s thinking do you think are agreed with by most Americans these days? What elements do you think would be most widely rejected? Do most Americans believe in absolute values, relative ones, or a mixture of the two?

The only major idea of Nietzsche’s which is not addressed in these sections is “the eternal recurrence.”

Notes by Paul Brians, Department of English, Washington State University, Pullman 99164-5020.

More Study Guides for 18th and 19th Century European Classics

First mounted June 14, 1995.

Revised March 2, 2000.

Introduction to 19th-Century Socialism

Note: this subject more than most does not lend itself to purely “objective, unbiased” discussion. Old Cold Warriors see in 19th-Century socialism the seeds of the Stalinist terror, and Marxists see in it the hope for a better world. My own biases are somewhat more mixed: sympathy with some of the aims of the socialists, admiration for their analyses of capitalism, and general hostility for the forms of socialism which dominated much of the world for the first half of the 20th Century. My goal in this essay is to convey to the reader something of the background which led many intelligent, sensitive people to convert to socialism and advocate its implementation–without disregarding the often deplorable consequences.

One of the features of the Enlightenment was the exaltation of property rights to the status of a bulwark of liberty by philosophers such as John Locke. In older Europe property had always been accompanied by power; but that power was justified by the belief in the inevitability of aristocratic rule–the concept that the wealth of the nobility was their God-given right. To some slight degree it was balanced by a traditional Christian suspicion of wealth which endorsed holy poverty for the clergy and preached to the wealthy that they owed charity to the poor. Further, its power was limited by its basis–agriculture–which could expand only so far.

The Industrial Revolution had many profound effects on European civilization. It rendered much of the old aristocracy irrelevant, boosted the bourgeoisie to economic and political power, and drafted much of the old peasant class into its factories. The result was naturally a shift in attitude toward wealth. Capitalist wealth seemed to have no natural limits. Partly because the new industrial modes of production had no preassigned place in feudal order of things, the industrialists viewed themselves as the creators of their wealth and considered it something to be proud of.

This class also created the various movements for democratic government which swept across Europe; and it was only natural that they should have viewed their economic and political ideals as functioning hand in hand. Democracy was necessary to wrest power from the old nobility, to pass laws enabling business to thrive, and to guarantee their property rights.

Rousseau had argued in his Social Contract that true democracy could not thrive in a society with great extremes of wealth and poverty because power always naturally flows toward the wealthy, whatever the electoral system; but the sort of democracy the bourgeoisie advocated was for a long time reserved for property owners: merchants, manufacturers, landlords and bankers. One of the great struggles of the 19th Century was for the gradual expansion of the vote, first to working men, and–much later–to women.

The notion of liberty promulgated by the “liberals” of the 19th century (who held opinions now called “conservative”) was based on the concept that only on the basis of economic independence and security could freedom be secured; and that liberty was a product of natural law, not of a Christian theology which had sometimes censured excessive wealth. Indeed, greed itself was often celebrated as the engine that drove the economy and provided work and prosperity for all. Dependency was considered self-destructive, so the poor were punished for their poverty by harsh laws designed to drive them to work.

These ideas are very familiar to us today: just consider how the news eagerly reports increases in consumer spending as a sign of a healthy economy, how the current movements for “welfare reform” use much the same concepts that justified the draconian “poor laws” of 19th-Century England. Investment is viewed, now as then, as the engine that drives the economy. Any measure which can encourage investors to buy more stock is viewed as beneficial to society as a whole.

But such a profound revolution was bound to cause negative reactions as well as positive ones. Not everyone agreed that the shift of power into the hands of the new rich was entirely benign.

In the first half of the 19th Century the working classes in the newly industrializing countries of England and Germany suffered under many forms of exploitation. The old feudal restrictions which had fixed peasants in place on the land and limited their income had also guaranteed them a place in the world. They may not have prospered, but they were often able to fend off starvation and homelessness simply because they had been born onto estates from which they could not be removed against their wills.

The dissolution of this old order meant that workers could be hired and fired at will and had to sell their labor for whatever the going rate was–and that rate was determined by their competition with each other to work cheaply enough to gain them an advantage in the job market. Traditional rules and protections went by the board in the new factories, which often ran for twenty-four hours a day (two twelve-hour shifts), seven days a week under the most inhumane conditions. Women and children were absorbed into the work force as well, often preferred because they cost much less than men. Living standards and educational levels actually declined in many areas.

Many of the industries severely polluted their environments, their machinery maimed and killed many workers, and food in the new factory towns was often of poor quality and in short supply. Even many well-to-do people became concerned over the wretched conditions under which the new working class labored, as is reflected in the popular novels of Charles Dickens.

But other side-effects of the industrial revolution had more immediate effects on the middle classes. The older economy had been a regulated one, fairly predictable except for the traditional crises caused by plague, war, and drought. The new economy brought a new kind of crisis that seemed to have no natural or rational basis–the “bust.” What is now called “the business cycle” seemed to be beyond anyone’s control. There would be a more or less prolonged period of economic growth, with plenty of jobs and rising wages during which most people prospered; but then, for no apparent reason, profits and wages would begin to fall and millions would be plunged into unemployment and poverty, and even the wealthy could abruptly find themselves much less well off, if not absolutely impoverished.

Industrialists tried to stabilize these wild cycles of “boom and bust” in the runaway engine of the capitalist economy by passing regulations setting maximum wages and banning labor unions (to conserve profits), regulating imports (to preserve national commercial advantages), and combining into huge monopolistic “trusts” designed to reduce or eliminate competition.

Although competition is the engine of capitalism, it is not to the advantage of individual capitalists that it be entirely unfettered. The ultimate success in competition, indeed, is to absorb or destroy rivals and emerge at the top of the heap, able to dictate wages and prices. Although as the century passed these efforts to stabilize and concentrate wealth grew more successful, they were never able to prevent the recurrence of periodic “crashes.”

Some began to argue that this unstable new system which glorified greed while impoverishing the common people needed radical reform. These were the early socialists.

The notion of socialism can be traced back centuries in various forms, notably among the earliest Christians (see the remarkable story in Acts 4:34-5:11); and the model of monastic communism, with individuals owning nothing except what they collectively shared was constantly before the eyes of Europeans throughout much of the Christian era. But the roots of modern socialism lie in our period, in France, Germany and England during the period of the industrial revolution.

“Socialism” is an exceedingly fuzzy term which has been used to label an extraordinarily wide array of political and economic beliefs. Its definition is further obscured by the tendency of its enemies to label any idea with which they disagree “socialist.” But generally socialists advocate a democratically controlled economy run for the benefit of all. The unfettered competition of capitalists is replaced by cooperation and the business cycle by planned stability. Often they believe–like the early Christians–that property should be shared in common, and private ownership of industry and land abolished.

Many 19th-Century socialists rejected the argument that the wealthy deserve their wealth because they have created it, instead believing that wealth is created by the working classes and wrongfully appropriated by the rich who benefit disproportionately from their underpaid labor. Much ink has been spilled to “prove” the capitalist or labor theories of value; but they are in essence not theories that can be proven, but rather irreconcilable philosophical views. Clearly both capital and labor are vital to industry, and arguing which produces the other is a variation on the old argument over which came first, the chicken or the egg, except that it is far more fraught with political tensions.

Such arguments had little appeal for most ordinary socialists: they simply saw poverty and its attendant misery spreading around them and wanted to do something about it. Their ideals were equality, cooperation, democracy, and shared prosperity.

These ideals were also shared by two other groups: the anarchists and the Communists. We have touched on anarchism in the context of Zola’s Germinal, and it is sufficient to point out that its advocates rejected socialists’ trust in even the most democratic of governments, arguing that only the most decentralized grass-roots sort of organization could prevent tyranny. Their critique of the usual socialist program was an acute one, but they failed to achieve much because the more peaceful anarchists could change little and the violent ones aroused more reaction against themselves than against the state which they dreamed of destroying.

Communism’s relationship to socialism is a more complex matter. Traditionally, “communism” with a small “c” has been taken to stand for a form of social organization in which people live in groups, sharing labor and property collectively, whether this takes the form of a small commune or a large state. Those forms of socialism which merely emphasize publicly financed social programs based on the heavy taxation of private business cannot properly be called “communist.”

However, Marxists also consider themselves socialists. For modern Communists (with a big “C”), socialism is the more comprehensive term: Communism is regarded as an advanced stage of socialism, and this definition is adopted in this essay. Theoretically, the socialist state is an interim measure necessary to carry out the reorganization of society, which will then “wither away” to produce very much the same results as are aimed at in anarchism: a moneyless society in which market forces play no role, in which production is for the use of the producers, in which lands and factories are commonly owned by those who work them, and in which the state–and with it, war–is abolished. Unfortunately for this theory, the modern Communist states have withered only by retreating into capitalism, not by moving forward into anarchism.

It was not so clear in the mid-19th Century that socialism would not succeed. We are so used to capitalism by now that we take it for granted, supposing that investment, marketing and market forces must have been the central driving forces of human society for all time. This is very far from being the case. Property and privilege have always existed in some form, but not necessarily in the forms which they take under capitalism. It is difficult to remember, for instance, that in most early societies, including early Medieval Europe, few people ever handled money: barter was the rule.

Sophisticated thinkers in the 18th and early 19th Centuries were very aware that industrial capitalism had not always existed and indeed was emerging among lingering remnants of feudalism all over Europe. If such a profound revolution in social relations could take place in their own time, surely it was not unthinkable that another could succeed it–a socialist revolution.

The earliest thinkers to be called “socialists” were the Frenchmen Henri de Saint-Simon (1760-1825) and François-Marie-Charles Fourier (1772-1837) and the Welshman Robert Owen ( (1771-1858). All three of them were visionaries with little political sense, hoping to bring about a better society through the voluntary efforts of people of good will. In this they were very much products of the Enlightenment. Among them, Owen was the only one who was able to put any of his ideas into practice, since as an idealistic wealthy industrialist he had the means to do so. Various Owenite communities were founded, especially in America, but none of them lasted long.

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809-1865), though more properly considered an anarchist, articulated a hostility toward capitalists that was echoed in the writings of many socialists. His slogan “property is theft” was a handy, if inflammatory, summation of the labor theory of value, and much influenced popular socialism among the working classes. However, like the majority of socialists and Communists, he was not strictly opposed to all private property: one should be free to own one’s own home and domestic goods, for instance. What he objected to was property used to extract wealth from the labor of others: factories, mines, railroads, etc.; and Marx, whom he met in Paris in the 1840s, generally followed this line of thought. He was also an important influence on Marx’s opponent, Bakunin, the Russian anarchist Zola used as inspiration for the character of Souvarine in Germinal.

When Marx and Engels wrote The Communist Manifesto in 1848, they were far from dominating the socialist movement. Proudhon had wider influence than they, and they often had to struggle to get their ideas taken seriously in socialist circles.

If it had only been idealistic industrialists and middle-class intellectuals who had espoused socialism, it never would have gotten far; but in its simpler forms its ideas found a fairly widespread appeal among working people. It comes as a shock to many modern students to discover that perhaps the majority of labor movements in the 19th Century embraced socialism as their goal. Zola’s miners were not alone in seeing union organizing as only a preliminary stage on the advance toward state power.

Well into the 20th Century, labor unions often had at least nominally socialist programs, even in the notoriously conservative U.S. In Europe they routinely organized labor parties which competed in elections on socialist platforms, and sometimes won, though rarely implementing more than a few of their more modest goals, such as nationalizing railroads, mines, and some other industries.

The link between labor organizing and socialism was reinforced by the efforts of capitalists to suppress all labor movements, viewing any form of unionization, no matter how mild, as posing the threat of revolution. Socialists like Marx welcomed these popular movements as providing the only viable vehicle for radical change.

Clearly, he thought, ever larger masses of workers drafted into the industrial armies of capital, tormented by poverty and the insecurity born of the wild fluctuations of the business cycle, would grow to be the dominant force in society, outnumber everyone else. Their pressure for radical change would inevitably lead to a confrontation in which the capitalist rulers of society would abandon all pretense of democracy and thereby become the targets of an irresistible armed uprising. Marx’s notion of revolution was always one of the vast majority of society seizing power from a tiny minority of capitalists for the common good of all.

That no such revolution ever took place is due in part to the remarkable successes of the labor movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Against incredibly difficult odds, often beaten, imprisoned, and shot, union members successfully waged campaigns to shorten the working day, increase wages, and improve working conditions until most workers no longer felt they had “nothing to lose” by destroying the system which they were substantially reshaping.

Meanwhile it should be said that the competitive forces of capitalism made their own contribution to worker prosperity despite the best efforts of the monopolistic trust-builders by continually producing more cheap, abundant goods which effectively raised the common standard of living. The new goods might lack the quality of the old hand-made products of the feudal age, but they were geneally available to people of even modest means. The twin pressures of maket competition and labor organization meant, on average, that–despite the misery prevalent in many quarters and the chaos created by periodic “busts,” the majority of workers during the second half of the the 19th Century were better off than their parents.

The wave of democratic revolutions in 1848 which established parliamentary government in a number of European nations did not embrace the socialist ideals of the Communist Manifestopublished that same year. It was not until 1864 that the International Working Men’s Association (the “First International”) was formed, powerfully influenced by Marxism, and became a dominant force in continental European socialism.

Meanwhile Marx’s fellow German, Ferdinand Lassalle (1825-1864), was arguing for the formation of voluntary worker cooperatives as the basis of socialism. This reformist approach was worlds removed from Marx’s revolutionary ideas and brought down his scorn; but many, like Étienne Lantier in Germinal, were drawn to them. Lassalle’s cooperatives can be seen as the forerunners of many organizations thriving today even in the midst of capitalism: credit unions, mutual insurance companies, food coops, and the like. Cooperatives never succeeded in transforming society, but they have often offered alternatives to profit-oriented private enterprise.

Marx and Lasalle were the leading–and feuding–influences in the formation of the German Social Democratic Party, which was for some decades the leading Socialist organization in the world. Marx would have been astounded to discover that his theories were to find their most effective implementation in Russia rather than in his native Germany. By 1891 the party had a million and a half members and was experiencing substantial electoral success. However, the very political success of the Social Democrats meant that despite their fiery rhetoric–often more fiery than Marx at this period–their activities were absorbed into conventional political activities rather than into creating revolution.

Paralleling the shift of the successful labor movement, in the early 20th Century, the party became more and more moderate in its views, ultimately abandoning the goal of revolution altogether and aligning itself at the outbreak of World War I with the aggressive militarism of Kaiser Wilhelm in a move which destroyed its credibility with socialists abroad. The first great period of international socialism was destroyed by the war as labor parties all across Europe fell into line in support of their own governments, disproving the Marxist doctrine that enlightened workers would feel more loyalty to each other across international boundaries than they would to the governments dominated by their capitalist ruling classes. Only in the U.S. did the socialists refuse to endorse the war, but the American Socialist Party never gained more than six percent of the vote, and was a marginal factor in both national and international politics.

Social democrats were more successful in Europe, particularly in Scandinavia, following a gradualist approach which involved high taxes to enforce relative economic equality, government regulation of industry, nationalization of large industries, and social welfare. Elements of these ideas are still in place throughout much of Europe, though increasingly under attack and now in the process of being largely dismantled, but not without vigorous resistance from workers who have benefitted by the systems built before the collapse of international Communism.

One brief moment in history, the Paris Commune of March 18 to May 28, 1871, is worth mention because it belies the anti-Communist stereotype that Communism was always a conspiratorial plot imposed from above by would-be tyrants rather than a popular political movement. In the wake of the defeat of France in the Franco-German War and the collapse of the Second Empire (1852-70), the citizens of Paris elected a radical government which included both old-style Republicans bent on recreating the politics of 1789 (the Jacobins) and followers of the socialist Prudhon. Other communes were created in Lyon, Saint-Étienne, Marseille, and Toulouse, but were quickly suppressed. The national government centered in Versailles used the army to suppress the Paris Commune in a wave of bloody retaliation. This story is told in the sequel to Germinal—The Débacle–in which Zola makes Étienne Lantier one of the leaders of the Commune.

The Commune was important not because of its concrete achievements, but because of its symbolism. Karl Marx duly noted and commented on the episode, and it encouraged many socialists as a sign that the working classes were ready for radical measures.

The story of the Russian Revolution of 1917 would take us beyond the scope of this course, but it is necessary to make a few observations about its consequences since without that revolution we would probably not feel the need to study Marx today.

Marx’s tough-minded “scientific” approach to socialism which dismissed the early socialists as idle utopians was hardened in the work of V. I. Lenin, whose pragmatism justified many harsh measures during and after the Russian Revolution which would have appalled Marx. His doctrine of “democratic centralism” which forbade further debate once an issue had been settled within the Communist Party and the role of the Party as the dominating “vanguard of the proletariat” can be argued as having sown the seeds of the homicidal tyranny that emerged under Joseph Stalin. Marxists are prone to argue that Marx would never have accepted Stalin’s excesses and that he should not be blamed for them, yet there is a harshness in his tone and an uncompromising dogmatism in his analyses which may have made figures like Stalin and Mao inevitable once power was gathered in their hands.

It is a tribute to the appeal of the logically dubious concept of “natural law” that both Communists and anti-Communists wound up appealing to it during the long nightmare of the Cold War. The Marxist notion of necessary, scientifically inevitable revolution was only a variation on the attempt of Voltaire to ground his ideas in reason and the laws of nature. Once socialism had been transformed from a mere philosophical ideal to the iron law of history, its inevitability was used to justify any number of repressive measures. And of course anti-Communist democratic forces appealed to the traditional notion of naturally based liberties to denounce Marxism.

Some argue that the reason socialism failed so catastrophically in the Soviet Union and China to attain its Marxist ideals was that these were preindustrial economies far from the stage of economic development which Marx viewed as the necessary platform for building Communism. He envisaged his revolution as redistributing a previously created wealth and seizing hold of a previously developed industrial system to run it more rationally and equitably. But the new socialist rulers of the U.S.S.R. and China had to create the very material base on which Marx assumed socialism would be built. They became the harsh taskmasters of the workers they claimed to represent, super-Capitalists, if you will, reproducing in an abbreviated period and on an unprecedented scale the accomplishments of the Industrial Revolution, reproducing its accompanying misery as well, but without the countervailing pressure of a vital labor movement to moderate their extreme measures.

There is doubtless much truth in this theory. No modern industrialized state ever underwent the sort of revolution Marx envisaged, and the successes of socialism in places like England, Sweden, and Denmark fell far short of his vision. Thus it is often said that Marxism did not fail: it was never tried. However, the failures of such socialism as was built in the former Communist world suggest that even under the best of conditions, Marx’s ideals could not have been carried out on a large scale.

In the end the Communist economies failed to be more rational than capitalist ones partly because their leaders never had enough accurate data to plan and execute effective economic measures. The temptation of authorities from top to bottom of the system to lie about both supply and demand constantly disorted the process. It was not “totalitarianism” which destroyed the Soviet Union–it was the “private enterprise” of workers stealing from their factories, managers overestimating their output, and bureaucrats reporting whatever the current leadership would be most pleased to hear which in the end brought the system to its knees. Capitalism’s cycles may be irrational and painful, but they proved in the long run less self-destructive than vain attempts to control every aspect of large modern economies.

Oddly enough, as Communism has collapsed in Eastern Europe, devolved into a sort of Capitalism with a Communist face in China, leaving only North Korea and Cuba as true believers, Marxist thought has achieved extraordinary prestige in Western academies. Professors in the humanities and social sciences speak of “late capitalism” as if it were in its twilight years and debate the merits of such 20th-Century Marxists as Antonio Gramcsci, applying his ideas to social policy, art history, and literary theory. The result is that the aspiring graduate student would do well to have some Marxist background in order to understand much of the academic debate encountered in American and European universities these days; yet these debates seem headed nowhere in a world increasingly infatuated with a reinvigorated capitalism.

The situation of workers in contemporary America well illustrates the problems inherent in Marxist analyses. The power of labor unions has been largely crushed and capitalists are free to engage in huge mergers aimed at reducing labor costs and workers have been weakened dramatically. Their working hours have been lengthened and their income decreased relative to inflation, but they are mostly afraid to organize to resist lest they be thrown out of work entirely where no socialist-inspired safety net remains to catch them.

Meanwhile, almost half of all Americans have substantial sums invested in the stock markets through retirement-plan mutual funds. Downward pressures on the current incomes of workers may well enhance their future prospects in retirement and the inheritances of their offspring. In such a situation the line between “proletarian” and “capitalist” is hopelessly obscured. It is true that an ever-tinier proportion of the population possesses and controls an ever more enormous majority of the national wealth; but workers often identify their welfare with the prosperity of the rich, expressing little or no resistance to repeated tax breaks and other favors granted big business.

In an atmosphere like this, the academic study of socialism can seem futile indeed; but at the very least we need to understand the forces that got us where we are. In addition, the socialist critique of capitalism still has much persuasive power, and socialist arguments are often effectively wielded by non-socialist reformers. The dwindling of the socialist ideal to its present residual state may not be a permanent condition, since capitalism has not ushered in the golden age either for the poor of this world. It remains to be seen whether socialism can revive in some new, modified way at some point in the future. In the meantime, it must be frankly recognized that an era has passed–the era when Marxist socialism appealed to a broad array of people internationally as an alternative to capitalism.

More Study Guides for 18th and 19th Century European Classics

Created March 31, 1998.

Last revised March 28, 2005.

Misconceptions, Confusions, and Conflicts Concerning Socialism, Communism, and Capitalism

It is not surprising that after a century and a half of fierce conflict, the defenders of socialism, Communism and capitalism should have considerably muddied the waters by caricaturing each other’s positions and misusing each other’s terminology. One might suppose that with the collapse of Communist states internationally and the end of the Cold War these the ideas could be examined more dispassionately, but the problem is that leftist ideas are not being examined at all except in the rarefied atmosphere of Western universities and in scattered disempowered political movements around the world. Previous generations of Americans often had misconceptions about Communism, but the current generation usually has no conception of it at all.

Although there are some cases where common student notions are simply wrong (Karl Marx was not a Russian, for instance), clearly the most important controversies surrounding this subject cannot be settled easily; indeed, many of them cannot be settled at all. What follows is my own attempt to sort out some terms and ideas in a way that may help the student to make sense of history and current events without in any way claiming to be an authoritative “last word” on the subject. These are clearly just my own personal views, but may serve as a starting point to articulate your own, whether you agree or disagree with them. It is also only fair that someone who teaches such a highly controversial subject should let you know what his own attitudes are.

List of Misconceptions

 

More Study Guides for 18th and 19th Century European Classics

Created March 31, 1998