X CONCERNING MEPHISTOPHELES ARGUMENT M. the real hero of Faust, but his character concealed behind his 'masks.' He is really a philosophic pessimist who knows his opposition to be futile. His pessimism compared with Faust's. IIow he has grown cheerful and an intellectualist. The meaning of Gretchen's criticism. M. as the Schalk. Not seriously concerned to win Faust's soul. Absurdity of the vulgar interpretation. M. as Faust's redeemer. But be has recourse to miracle; which spoils the argument from Faust's redemption. The possibility of redeeming M. the hero of the Goethe's Faust. IT has often been remarked that the Devil tends to become the real hero of any work of art into which he is introduced. However that may be, he is certainly greatest poem in modern literature, of Properly to appreciate Mephistopheles, it is fortunately not necessary to depreciate the other chief characters of the drama, to minimise Gretchen as an episode which usually comes earlier in the history of a German student, and to disparage Faust as an effete pedant, who, even when saved by the might of the Devil and the gracious permission of the Deity, remains to the end essentially commonplace and thoroughly deserving of eternal reunion with so excellent a Hausfrau as Gretchen would doubtless have developed into. But there certainly is an air of paradox about the I assertion that Mephistopheles is the real hero of Faust, and so it becomes necessary to clear away the prejudices that have obscured his character. We must try to understand Mephistopheles himself, to understand, that is, why he has become a rebel against the divine order, to 166
