Dealing With The Devil

 Faust has been visitng me lately.

That time for working on "Chasing Ashes" keeps slipping away from me, but the Devil keeps knocking on my door.

Ed Simon's A Deal With the Devil: What the Age-Old Faustian Bargain Reveals About the Modern World has as much as to do with Christopher Marlowe as it does with Faust(us) or the Devil.

Marlowe’s scant seven plays are seldom produced today; the 2007 staging of Tamburlaine the Great mounted by the Shakespeare Theater Company in Washington DC or the riveting film adaptation of Edward II directed by Derek Jarman in 1991 notwithstanding. When compared to his contemporary, competitor, and possible colleague William Shakespeare, who four centuries after his death has productions mounted every day, of every year, in every major city on Earth, who is not just a writer but The Bard, the standard by which capital-L Literature is evaluated, Marlowe can seem an afterthought, a footnote, even if he is distantly the second most popular Elizabethan playwright whose work is still performed.

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An issue of signing on the dotted line is superficiality when it comes to Faust’s significance to modern readers, however, because more than any other myth the tale of the Devil’s contract is a succinct encapsulation of the human predicament over the past five centuries, right as modernity was gestated, born, thrived, and is now in the throes of its own death.

Marlowe staged his play at the very beginning of what is increasingly being called the Anthropocene, the geological epoch in which humanity was finally able to impose its will (in an almost occult manner) upon the earth. There are costs to any such contract, as the wisdom of the legend has it, so that it’s worth considering after five centuries of human domination of the planet that we might now be facing our own collective appointment at Deptford. We seem to finally be facing the final act, the apocalyptic tenor of our times, from climate change to nuclear brinkmanship making the continued survival of humanity an open question, our sad predicament the result of hubris, and greed, and vainglory. It may be appropriate to rechristen this age the Faustocene. Because whether or not the Devil is real, his effects in the world are. When it comes to “truth” and “facts,” the two words are not synonymous, and I wouldn’t at all be surprised if I could make out the smoke of some devilish chimera beyond the neon-line of the Rose Theater, deep within a darkness so all-encompassing that not a squib of light is capable of escaping.

Yeah, I am thinking along similar lines - the Devil making deals in modern America. Albeit, I am taking a bit more from Stephen Vincent Benet, and giving a nod to Robert Johnson.

 

Then the Public Domain Review sent a newsletter with a link to F. W. Murnau’s Faust (1926):

In Murnau’s rendition, co-written with Hans Kyser, Faust (played by Gösta Ekman) is portrayed as an alchemist who makes a deal with the demon Mephisto (Emil Jannings) to save his plague-stricken village. Disillusioned with both God and science, Faust initially seeks out the assistance of dark forces as a last resort, but later succumbs to Mephisto’s temptations. His pursuit of pleasure kicks off with murder and seduction, but not long after, this debauchery is halted by the appearance of Gretchen (Camilla Horn), with whom he falls deeply in love. Gretchen’s tragic fate ultimately serves as the impetus for Faust’s own expiation, made possible by an eternal word that Mephisto has failed to consider — “love”.

 sch 7/11