De Faust van Goethe is wereldberoemd. Minder bekend is dat het werk gebaseerd is op de Duitse legende over Faust. Die legende is een verhaal dat zijn oorsprong vindt in de historische Faust. Wie was de historische Faust? Wie was de persoon die aanleiding was voor het ontstaan van de legende en daarmee ook voor de latere Faust van Goethe?
Wie gaat zoeken op internet vindt wel een aantal beweringen, maar als iemand in deze tijd iets beweert over een persoon die honderden jaren geleden leefde, wil je wel graag precies weten waar hij/zij die bewering op baseert. En dan blijft er akelig weinig over.
Laten we eerst beginnen met de legende. De Engelstalige Wikipedia vermeldt dit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faust):
"Faust is the protagonist of a classic German legend based on the historical Johann Georg Faust (c. 1480–1540).
The erudite Faust is highly successful yet dissatisfied with his life, which leads him to make a pact with the Devil at a crossroads, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. The Faust legend has been the basis for many literary, artistic, cinematic, and musical works that have reinterpreted it through the ages. "Faust" and the adjective "Faustian" imply sacrificing spiritual values for power, knowledge, or material gain.[1]
The Faust of early books—as well as the ballads, dramas, movies, and puppet-plays which grew out of them—is irrevocably damned because he prefers human knowledge over divine knowledge: "he laid the Holy Scriptures behind the door and under the bench, refused to be called doctor of theology, but preferred to be styled doctor of medicine".[2] Plays and comic puppet theatre loosely based on this legend were popular throughout Germany in the 16th century, often reducing Faust and Mephistopheles to figures of vulgar fun."
Volgens de legende is Faust succesvol, maar ontevreden met zijn leven. Daardoor sluit hij een pact met de Duivel. In ruil voor onbeperkte kennis en wereldse genoegens verkoopt hij zijn ziel aan de Duivel.
Nu de historische Faust. De Engelstalige Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Georg_Faust) vermeldt het volgende.
"Johann Georg Faust (/ˈfaʊst/; c. 1480 or 1466 – c. 1541), also known in English as John Faustus /ˈfɔːstəs/, was a German itinerant alchemist, astrologer, and magician of the German Renaissance.
Doctor Faust became the subject of folk legend in the decades after his death, transmitted in chapbooks beginning in the 1580s, and was notably adapted by Christopher Marlowe as a tragic hero in his play The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus (1604). The Faustbuch tradition survived throughout the early modern period, and the legend was again adapted in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's closet drama Faust (1808), Hector Berlioz's musical composition La damnation de Faust (premiered 1846), and Franz Liszt's Faust Symphony of 1857.
Historical Faust
This section needs additional citations for verification. [. . .]
Because of his early treatment as a figure in legend and literature, it is difficult to establish historical facts about his life with any certainty. In the 17th century, it was even doubted that there ever had been a historical Faust, and the legendary character was identified with a printer of Mainz called Johann Fust. Johann Georg Neumann in 1683 addressed the question in his Disquisitio historica de Fausto praestigiatore, establishing Faust's historical existence based on contemporary references.
In the light of records of an activity spanning more than 30 years, the two suggested birth years (1466 vs. 1480/1), the two recorded first names (Georg vs. Johann) and the two recorded places of origin (Knittlingen vs. Heidelberg/Helmstett), it has been suggested[by whom?] that there were two itinerant magicians calling themselves Faustus, one Georg, active ca. 1505 to 1515, and another Johann, active in the 1530s.
Possible places of origin of the historical Johann Faust are Knittlingen (Manlius 1562)[incomplete short citation], Helmstadt near Heidelberg, or Roda. Knittlingen today has an archive and a museum dedicated to Faust. Baron (1978)[1] and Ruickbie (2009)[2] argue for Helmstadt as his place of birth.
Faust's year of birth is given either as 1480/1 or as 1466. Baron (1992) and Ruickbie[2] prefer the latter. The city archive of Ingolstadt has a letter dated 27 June 1528 which mentions a Doctor Jörg Faustus von Haidlberg. Other sources have Georgius Faustus Helmstet(ensis). Baron, searching for students from Helmstet in the archives of Heidelberg University, found records of a Georgius Helmstetter inscribed from 1483 to 1487, stating that he was promoted to baccalaureus on 12 July 1484 and to magister artium on 1 March 1487.
For the year 1506, there is a record of Faust appearing as performer of magical tricks and horoscopes in Gelnhausen. Over the following 30 years, there are numerous similar records spread over southern Germany. Faust appeared as physician, doctor of philosophy, alchemist, magician and astrologer, and was often accused as a fraud. The church denounced him as a blasphemer in league with the devil. Faust had also supposedly joined Protestantism.[3]
Johannes Trithemius in a letter to Johannes Virdung dated 20 August 1507 warns the latter of a certain Georgius Sabellicus, a trickster and fraud styling himself Georgius Sabellicus, Faustus junior, fons necromanticorum, astrologus, magus secundus etc. According to Trithemius, in Gelnhausen and Würzburg, Sabellicus boasted blasphemously of his powers, even claiming that he could easily reproduce all the miracles of Christ. Trithemius alleges that Sabellicus received a teaching position in Sickingen in 1507, which he abused by indulging in sodomy with his male students, evading punishment by a timely escape.[4]
Conrad Mutianus Rufus in 1513 recounts a meeting with a chiromanticus called Georgius Faustus, Helmitheus Heidelbergensis (likely for hemitheus, "demigod of Heidelberg"), overhearing his vain and foolish boasts in an Erfurt inn.
On 23 February 1520, Faust was in Bamberg, doing a horoscope for the bishop and the town, for which he received the sum of 10 gulden.[1]: 42
In 1528, Faust visited Ingolstadt, whence he was banished shortly after. In 1532 he seems to have tried to enter Nürnberg, according to an unflattering note made by the junior mayor of the city to "deny free passage to the great nigromancer and sodomite Doctor Faustus" (Doctor Faustus, dem großen Sodomiten und Nigromantico in furt glait ablainen). Later records give a more positive verdict; thus the Tübingen professor Joachim Camerarius in 1536 recognises Faust as a respectable astrologer, and physician Philipp Begardi of Worms in 1539 praises his medical knowledge. The last direct attestation of Faust dates to 25 June 1535, when his presence was recorded in Münster during the Anabaptist rebellion.
Faust's death is dated to 1540 or 1541. He allegedly died in an explosion of an alchemical experiment in the "Hotel zum Löwen" in Staufen im Breisgau. His body is reported to have been found in a "grievously mutilated" state which was interpreted to the effect that the devil had come to collect him in person by his clerical and scholarly enemies.[5] In 1548, the theologian Johann Gast in his sermones conviviales states that Faust had suffered a dreadful death, and would keep turning his face to the earth in spite of the body being turned on its back several times. In his 1548 account, Gast also mentions a personal meeting with Faust in Basel during which Faust provided the cook with poultry of a strange kind. According to Gast, Faust travelled with a dog and a horse, and there were rumours that the dog would sometimes transform into a servant.
Another posthumous account is that of Johannes Manlius, drawing on notes by Melanchthon, in his Locorum communium collectanea dating to 1562. According to Manlius, Johannes Faustus was a personal acquaintance of Melanchthon's and had studied in Kraków. Manlius' account is already suffused with legendary elements, and cannot be taken at face value as a historical source. Manlius recounts that Faust had boasted that the victories of the German emperor in Italy were due to his magical intervention. In Venice, he allegedly attempted to fly, but was thrown to the ground by the devil. Johannes Wier in de prestigiis daemonum (1568) recounts that Faustus had been arrested in Batenburg because he had recommended that the local chaplain called Dorstenius should use arsenic to get rid of his stubble. Dorstenius smeared his face with the poison, upon which he lost not only his beard but also much of his skin, an anecdote Wier says he heard from the victim himself. Philipp Camerarius [de] in 1602 still claims to have heard tales of Faust directly from people who had met him in person, but from the publication of the 1587 Faustbuch, it becomes impossible to separate historical anecdotes from rumour and legend."
Het is heel veel tekst met akelig weinig harde informatie.
Wat mij opvalt, is dat Faust op alle mogelijke manieren moest worden afgeschilderd als iemand die niet deugde. Hij zocht harde kennis, maar dat was helemaal fout, want je moest gaan voor goddelijke kennis. Hij werd beschuldigd van sodomie, maar op basis van wat we nu denken te weten, klinkt dat uit de mond van een Rooms-Katholiek geestelijke nogal merkwaardig. Hij wordt verondersteld een pact met de Duivel gesloten te hebben, maar dat is natuurlijk allemaal verzonnen. Kennelijk met het doel hem zwart te maken.
Iedereen doet enthousiast mee: Faust deugt volledig niet!
Het doet me denken aan de tijd dat ik nog bij de RUG werkte. Mijn leidinggevende merkte toen onder vier ogen op: ''Iedereen weet, dat jij niet deugt." Ik vroeg vol belangstelling: "Waarom deug ik niet?" Op die vraag bleef ze het antwoord schuldig. Zover reikte haar aangeleerde kennis nu ook weer niet.
Zijn dergelijke toestanden uitzonderlijk? Op basis van wat ik in de loop van mijn studie naar discriminatie heb opgepikt: nee, volstrekt niet.
Een groep mensen die dezelfde overtuigingen en waarden deelt en daardoor ook nog een prachtige inkomstenbron en machtspositie heeft, ziet mensen met andere waarden en normen al snel als een bedreiging die het beste kan worden geëlimineerd.
Een groep zit daarbij zo in elkaar, dat mensen die daar daadwerkelijk een steentje aan bijdragen daar rijkelijk erkenning en statusverhoging voor krijgen. Groepsleden zijn dus gemotiveerd om de afwijkende elementen zo snel en zo grondig mogelijk te verjagen en te beschadigen.
Wie een bekend voorbeeld zoekt, kan kijken naar Poetin die Navalny op alle mogelijke manieren kapot probeert te maken. Waarom? Omdat Navalny dingen durft te zeggen, die als iedereen ze zou zeggen, het einde van Poetin zouden betekenen.
Ik denk dat de Faust-legende alleen te begrijpen valt vanuit discriminatie-oogpunt. Faust trok de aandacht en week af van de waarden en normen die de elite in zijn tijd erop nahield. Dus moest de man op alle mogelijke manieren kalt gestelt.
Het einde van de historische Faust lijkt dat idee te bevestigen. Opeens was het boem en toen was de man niet meer. Maar tja, wat wil je? Dat soort mensen doet toch voortdurend gevaarlijk?
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten