Meet Mr. Mephistopheles

As I mentioned yesterday, the historical alchemist and astrologer Johann Faust (about whom Christopher Marlowe wrote his famous play Doctor Faustus, and about whom J. W. von Goethe wrote his enormous poetic play Faust, and about whom, in high school, I once began a never-completed spoof entitled Dr. Faustus, M.D.) lived for a couple of years just down the street to the left.  And, for what it’s worth, the Russian czar Peter the Great, visiting the town, wrote his signature in big white Cyrillic letters on a wooden door in the house to the right.

We’re surrounded by remarkable things here.

But now I offer a quotation from Goethe’s Faust, Part One:

Faust:  

“Who are you then?” 

Mephistopheles:  

“I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good. . . .

I am the spirit that negates.
And rightly so, for all that comes to be
Deserves to perish wretchedly;
‘Twere better nothing would begin.
Thus everything  that your terms, ‘sin,’
‘Destruction,’ ‘evil’ represent—
That is my proper element.” 

Posted from Wittenberg, Germany