19th Century
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
1749–1832
“Part of that Power, not understood, / Which always wills the Bad, and always works the Good.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a German poet, dramatist, and naturalist long associated with the court at Weimar. follows a scholar who bargains with Mephistopheles and is driven by endless striving, never content with a finished end. Goethe's devil wills evil and works good within a larger order. He is an instrument of divine pedagogy. The drama reworks older Christian treatments of temptation, grace, and the restless will for a modern audience. Readers still measure modern ambition against Faust's bargain.
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