Chekhov’s Mistess

I’ve been spending a lot of time with the Devil lately.

Themes are a driving force in my reading as I wind my way through authors and centuries and movements and styles. One theme that I’ve noticeably enjoyed over the years is the Devil, or Satan and all his correlatives. I think that in our culture we tend to think of the devil either comically or as a non-entity – it would seem that Satan and his horns and tail are overwrought – but not in literature.

Reading Milton’s Paradise Lost has renewed my interest in thinking about the ‘ol devil. In this epic poem we are confronted with Satan and his fellow fallen angels like Beelzebub filled with self-doubt, anger and sorrow. As Satan says:

Me miserable! which way shall I fly

Infinte wrath, and infinite despair?

Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell;

And in the lowest deep a lower deep

Still threat’ning to devour me opens wide,

To which the hell I suffer seems a heav’n.

O then at last relent: is there no place

Left for repentance, none for pardon left?

None left but by submission; and that word

Disdain forbids me, and my dread of shame

Among the Spirits beneath, whom I seduced

With other promises and other vaunts

Than to submit, boasting I could subdue

Th’ Omnipotent. Ay me, they little know

How dearly I abide that boast so vain,

Under what torments inwardly I groan:

While they adore me on the throne of hell,

With diadem and scepter high advanced

The lower still I fall, only supreme

In misery; such joy ambition finds.

It’s lonely at the top (of the bottom).

This type of characterization reminds of me of how great storytelling can be and that the oldest characters or themes still work because of their universality. The most famous depiction of the devil (outside of the Bible) is probably Mephistopheles in Goethe’s The Tragedy of Faust. Based on legend, it is the telling of the tale of Doctor Heinrich Faust who sells his soul to the Devil in return for knowledge and power. Here Mephisto, wearing a red coat, also has limitations, like the fact that he can’t initially leave Faust’s room without permission because of “laws,” and he ultimately has no power over Margaret, despite tempting her, as she is saved by the angels.

Poor, poor Satan, not only is he angry, sorrowful, and limited, but he’s lonely too: D.J. Enright’s A Faust Book ends with a regretful sounding Mephistopheles “I’ll miss you too” he says to Faust, “But then, I’m used to missing…”

Dante doesn’t treat “The Emperor of the Universe of Pain” very well either; besides his huge size, three faces and bat’s-like wings, “He wept from his six eyes, and down three chins the tears ran mixed with bloody froth and pus.” Then, after Virgil and Dante observe the sinners that Satan (Dis) is chewing with his “rake like teeth” from each of his three mouths, they use him as a ladder to climb out of hell. Earlier in Hell, one of Satan’s fiend’s in Hell is heard farting: “They turned along the left bank in a line; but not before they had formed a single rank and stuck their pointed tongues out as a sign to their captain that they wished permission to pass; and he had made a trumpet of his ass. (Ciardi translation)”

My favorite depiction of Satan though, is in Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, which also rings with echoes of Faust. Here Satan (or some manifestation of the Devil) is introduced as wearing an expensive grey suit, grey shoes and a grey beret, carrying a walking stick with a black knob shaped like a poodle’s head. One of his eye’s are black and the other green, and one of his black eyebrows is higher than the other. But despite the parodical depiction, Woland, the devil, wreaks havoc on those around him.

But there are many versions of Faust. I’ve seen Gounod’s operatic version and heard Berlioz’s “Damnation of Faust,” which played a central role in Carlos Fuentes’ dramatic novel, Inez. There was a movie in the twenties, but I’m not sure who made it. There are two versions of Faust that I’ve not yet read and I would like to: Marlowe’s Dr Faustus and Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus. I think if I read those two, I will finally be Fausted out, or maybe not.

Books Mentioned: (The Luke translation of Goethe’s Faust is highly recommended by the Oxford Guide to Literature in English Translation. Despite maintaining a metrical rhyme scheme, it maintains the integrity of meaning of the original German text.)

Goethe The Tragedy of Faust Part I	Goethe The Tragedy of Faust Part II
D.J. Enright Telling Tales: Paradise Illustrated & A Faust Book	Christopher Marlowe Dr Faustus
Thomas Mann Doctor Faustus : The Life of the German Composer Adrian Leverkuhn As Told by a Friend	John Milton Paradise Lost
Carlos Fuentes Inez: A Novel	Berlioz, London Symphony Orchestra La damnation de Faust music CD

Read widely, think well, and write often.

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About this Post

• Posted by: Bud Parr
• Date: September 07, 2004
• Filed Under:
  Wise Men Fish Here: Literature

• Comments:0
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