Il motivo faustiano nella letteratura russa del Novecento

The primary aim of the paper is to establish a connection between the twentieth century totalitarian systems and twentieth-century prose, all being tied by the common thread of the Faustian motif. The aim of the thesis is to investigate the effects of the totalitarian systems upon twentieth-century prose. More specifically, the thesis is centered on Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus, Klaus Mann’s Mephisto, Mihail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita and László Bogdán’s The Devil in Háromszék [Az ördög Háromszéken].

International Communication of Chinese Culture, 2016

This article is focused on the myths of Don Giovanni and Faust as emblems of Western culture and sensibility. The historical and literary iter is interrelated with an anthropological point of view. The target of the essay is to offer an outstanding example of Western way of thinking and civilization in implicit comparison with Eastern ones. Keywords Don Giovanni Á Faust Á Modernity This short essay is about the two myths of Don Giovanni and Faust as paradigms of western modernity. Both characters are joined by the mood of despair. But in the case of Don Giovanni the refusal of every kind of metaphysics is neat and lucid, and the involvement in the physical reality-as the only possible one-is enthusiastic and full of vitality. On the other hand, in Marlowe's Faustus the despair is a conscience of an exclusion from the beatitude and salvation (symbolized by the river of Christ's blood that inundates the heaven), and this desperation is evident just in the first monologue of the play. The two characters are two masks of modernity, which embodies the spirit of doubt, of desire of sensual delight and of knowledge, but with an insatiable tension towards something of sparkling and ephemeral. The representation of punishment is an exquisitely theatrical element, a sort of a stage machinery, which yet doesn't elude definitely the central issue: the situation of modern man in his new solitude,

P o l i l o g . S t u d i a N e o f i l o l o g i c z n e, 2021

The article studies the interpretation of the Faustian theme in the novel “We” by Yevgeny Zamyatin. The confl ict between the Apollonian and Dionysian is considered as a mode of the Faustian theme. The features of its development are analyzed at three levels, they are psychological, spatial and philosophical. The interaction of psychological, spatial and philosophical levels makes it possible to implement a number of ideas in the novel, such as a never-ending revolution, a protest against authoritarianism and the enslavement of man by civilization, the impossibility of changing human nature

Geographies of the Present Spaces and Places of the Anthropocene in Italy, 2023

This proposal wishes to tackle Giorgio Celli’s Le tentazioni del dottor Faust and the implications of using the myth of Faust in a environmentalist drama. In the ‘Introduction’ to the text, Celli claims that he was inspired by the “environmental challenge” and that he wanted to set his Faust in a contemporary scenario. It is very interesting to understand why he decided to write an ecological drama using Faust, since he represents man’s will to dominate over nature and bend it to his desires. However Celli turns over the paradigm by re-writing the character as a professor of toxicology and a green activist. Even though Celli wrote Le tentazioni in 1976, he was already fully aware of some of the risks implied in the ecological discourse. His eco-Faust is implied from the beginning with the structures of power (universities, corporations, etc.), and he is easily tempted by the possibility of power, even if – apparently – steered towards a greater good. Hence, Celli is hinting at the risks of green washing and the collusion of environmental movements with the capitalist power. Moreover, Celli reflects on anthropocentrism and man’s approach to nature as a way to establish control and affirmation of his central role in the world. Hence, Celli’ Faust is a play concerned with the Anthropocene before the concept was formalized and tackles the rule of man over nature and land.

the two myths as emblems of birth of modernity

Pdf of the complete book published on 2010. NB. The Pdf of the Spanish version of the book (2013) titled "La Caída de Fausto | Consideraciones sobre el Arte Contemporáneo y el Arte de Acción" is downloadable for free at: https://www.vest-and-page.de/publications "What distinguishes Pagnes and Stenke from other artists is that besides their constant practice which has taken them in major art centers around the world, they are also interested in the theoretical aspects of communication, in decoding the hidden fabric of art and of artistic activity. The current book, with its two sections, one devoted to theoretical aspects (written by Andrea Pagnes) and a second one devoted to artistic practice (written by Andrea Pagnes and Verena Stenke) coming as a result of the experience of VestAndPage, extensive touring, workshops and teaching, shows us that it is important to be not only a practicing entity of this form of art, but also to attempt a deeper understanding of the art phenomenon in general, which has undergone uncountable changes in both definition and concrete aspects in recent years. Being performers is just one of the facets of the art activity of VestAndPage, and it represents a translation of their theoretical armature." (Dana Altman, New York, 2010)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: When Czech filmmaker Jan Švankmajer released his film adaptation of the Faust legend in 1994, it was the culmination of a longstanding fascination with the story. His first screen credit was as a puppeteer on Emil Radok's short film Johannes Doktor Faust (1958), made during his time working as a director and designer at the Czech State Puppet Theatre. He had also staged a masked theatre production of Faust in 1962 for the Semafor Theatre in Prague. In the early 1980s, he attempted, unsuccessfully, to restage it at Prague's Laterna Magika, following his state-imposed ban from filmmaking (1972-79), after which he was permitted to work only from officially approved literary sources. By the time he came to make his own feature film version, the long-gestated project had come to encapsulate many of his aesthetic attitudes, as well as his relationship to his home city of Prague. As Švankmajer explained to Peter Hames in 2006: "When any civilisation feels its end is growing near, it returns to its beginnings and looks to see whether the myths on which it is founded can be interpreted in new ways, which would give them a new energy and ward off the impending catastrophe. The myth of Faust is one of the key myths of this civilisation, and its interpretations are numerous. My Faust is intended to be one of these interpretative returns. I believe that Faust is one of the basic morphological or archetypal situations in which both individuals and civilisations find themselves. Sooner or later, everyone is faced with the same dilemma—either to live their life in conformity with the misty promises of institutionalised 'happiness', or to rebel and take the path away from civilisation, whatever the results. The second path always ends in individual failure, while the first ends in the failure of humanity as a whole. Or is it the other way round? The ambivalence makes no difference when it comes to the tragedy of human fate." (quoted in Hames 122) Correspondingly, his film, Lekce Faust (although it was released as simply Faust in most territories, this full Czech title translates literally as A Faust Lesson, implying a reflexive examination of the legend itself ) is both a combination of multiple tellings of the story and a highly personal response, lodged firmly in the material realities of contemporary Czech culture. It therefore represents not an authoritative transliteration of a singular Faustus-text into the medium of film, but an indirect thesis on the contingencies of authorship, the chaos of interpretation, and the impossibility of direct adaptation. It is certainly true that the Faust story has proven to be endlessly malleable for adaptation, appropriation, and revision across all media. The durability of the Faustus story is matched only by the sheer variety of media containers into which it has been poured. Švankmajer's Faust intervenes in this cacophony of retellings by functioning as a stylistic and semic pile-up of references. We are instructed to read the film as an assemblage of visions from different registers and sources, as opposed to an assimilated, re-authored composite that might ordinarily characterize a straightforward film adaptation. As a result, the film is a true chimera, refusing to blend its many textual and historical tributaries into a single stream of influence or definitive interpretation. In order to map some possible routes through this labyrinthine film, this essay first explores the ways in which Švankmajer relates the Faust legend to Prague through references to the story's historical and textual relationship to the city, including forms of folk puppetry and marionette theatre. This leads, via the figure of the puppet, towards an analysis of Švankmajer's use of animation as a way of representing the contested Faustian body as a site of violent conflict and social subjection. [...]

19th-Century Music, 2017

Doktor Faust (1924) is Ferruccio Busoni's most extensive and complex musical setting of the Faust legend. 1 Relying on knowledge of Karl Engel's edition of the Volksschauspiel, Karl Simrock's version of the puppet play, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's Faust fragments, and versions of the Faust legend by Christopher Marlowe and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, among others, Busoni (1866-1924) crafted his own hybrid libretto that depicts a mystical and broadminded Faust. 2 Busoni's music reflects the richness of Faust's mind, combining heteroge-"A History of Man and His Desire": Ferruccio Busoni and Faust A history of man and his desire This night to sound of music has been told The tragedy of Faust did inspire The tale of doom before your eyes unroll'd. So many metals cast into the fire, Does my alloy contain sufficient gold? If so, then seek it out for your own hoard.-Busoni, Doktor Faust

Załącznik Kulturoznawczy, 2019

In his essay, author deals with the interpretation of a very original, new monodrama by Artur Pałyga, entitled In Radiance (2016), whose heroine is Maria Skłodowska-Curie. The author is interested in a poetic and performative dimension of Maria’s dozen monologues, which the author described as completely unknown letters’ of the scientist. These monologues reveal the process of Maria’s spiritual development from the moment Faust/ina of attaining maturity, until her death due to excessive irradiation. Author focuses on the aspects of Maria’s consciousness that Pałyga has brought forth from the myth of Faust, which comprises the foundation of the scientific world-view. In this monodrama, Skłodowska-Curie is the Polish Faust who is ready to break the moral rules and pay the price of her and others’ life for sheer possibility of revealing the mystery of the universe. Kopciński confronts this original literary image of a scientist with the history of her life and highlights the moments in...

Forum for World Literature Studies, 2020

The article studies the concept of an artist-man as an artistic personality in the philosophical aesthetics introduced by Richard Wagner, based on the idea of the synthesis of the arts, and its transformation in the aesthetics of modernism. The purpose of the research is to analyze the concept of Wagner, provide rationalization for its connection with the Faustian theme and consider its interpretation in the novel Mephisto by Klaus Mann. So, the purpose stipulates the usage of methodological basis of the study including cultural and historical, historical and literary, comparative, philosophical and aesthetic research methods. The Wagnerian image of an artistic person and the idea of the synthesis of the arts gain momentum at the turn of the 19 th and 20 th centuries and get a second wind in the artistic legacy and theoretical works of the famous Russian symbolist poet Alexander Blok, who developed the concept of Wagner. According to Wagner, the idea of the synthesis of the arts resulted in the idea of creating the image of a free person capable of comprehending, renewing and transforming the world, and thus revealed a connection with the Faustian theme, vital during this period. The essence of an artist-man, establish himself in his creativity, is considered in the article in terms of the development of the Dionysian principle as a primitive creative energy, aimed at creating and transforming the world and man with the help of art. Wagner's concept is realized in an invertible way in the novel by Klaus Mann, where the image of an artist-man is identified with the image of Mephistopheles as the embodiment of a destructive principle. The article analyzes the degrading artistic principle on the basis of the image of protagonist. Mann's interpretation of the Wagner concept and the Faustian theme enables to conclude that the modernist literature of the 1930s is accentuated by the idea of the degeneration of the artistic creative Faustian principle, its transformation into the demonic principle. So, the idea of transforming the world, implemented in the state reorganization headed by the totalitarian Nazi government, has got the features of the apocalypse. Key words image of an artist-man; artistry; the Faustian theme; Apollonian and Dionysian; image of Mephistopheles.