Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iași [605660]

„Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iași
Faculty of Letters
Doctoral School of Philological Studies

The Faustian Myth in Shakespeare’s and Ibsen’s Tragedies:
Hamlet, Othello, Brand, Peer Gynt

PhD Thesis
Summary

Doctoral Coordinator,
Professor Ștefan Avădanei, PhD

Candidate,
Iftime (Andrușcă) Andreea -Oana

Iași
2014

2
Contents

0. Introduction / 3
0.1. General Issues / 3
0.2. Research Methodology / 5
0.3. Research Objectives and Previous Approaches / 12

Part One: Morphology of the Faustian Myth / 20
I.1. General Considerations / 20
I.2. Goethe’s Faust /21
I.3. The Role of Tragedy in the Theatrical Horizon /31
I.3.1. Why Shakespeare and Ibsen? / 39
I.3.2. Four Literary References: Hamlet, Othello, Brand, Peer Gynt
/ 54

Part Two: Temptation of the P act / 73
II.1. The Faustian Unfulfillment / 73
II.2. Reiterations of the Faustian Bargain / 79
II.3. Mephisto pheles – Faust’s alter -ego / 95

Part Three: Confronting the Limit / 99
III.1. The Limits of Knowledge / 99
III.1.1. Knowledge of Love. Guidi ng Principles of the „Sacrificed
Woman” Paradigm / 125
III.1.2. Knowledge of Beauty/ 152
III.1.3. Knowledge of Power / 158
III.2. The Limits of Expectation / 175
III.3. Ontological Freedom – Feature or Desideratum ? / 190

3

Part Four: Dialectics of fatum – hybris – arbitrium relation / 200
IV.1. Tragic Consciousness / 200
IV.2. Being’s Duality – the Good -Evil antinomy in the philosophical -literary
field / 216
IV.3. Positivation of Demonism/ 231
IV.4. Four Types of Weltanschauung : Hamlet, Othello, Brand, Peer Gynt /
238

Conclusions / 257
Bibliography / 261

4
THE FAUSTIAN MYTH IN SHAKESPEARE’S AND IBSEN’S
TRAGEDIES:
HAMLET , OTHELLO , BRAND , PEER GYNT

The thesis entitled The Faustian Myth in Shakespeare’s and Ibsen’s
Tragedie s: Hamlet, Othello, Brand, Peer Gynt forms part of the comparative
literature field. T. S. Eliot says that the field of comparative literature
possesses the ability of revealing the significance of a unitary whole of each
literary work. We also find import ant Vasile Voia’s vision in what regards
the relation between the field of comparative literature and the literary –
spiritual phenomena. The main goal of this research thesis aims at revealing
other faces of the Faustian myth from the perspective of mythocr iticism.
There are various literary studies th at consider Goethe, Shakespeare and
Ibsen in the broader process of finding semantic similarities between various
literary characters, but the number of studies that advance the theory of
identifying Faustian s imilarities in the tragedies of Hamlet, Othello, Brand
and Peer Gynt is relatively small. Therefore, we mention Vasile Voia ’s
impressive Tenta ția limitei și limita tentației. Repere pentru o fenomenologie
a mitului faustic ( The Temptation of Limit and the Limit of Temptation ), in
which the professor discusses the modern aspects of the Faustian myth,
reuniting Shak espeare and Ibsen, while simultaneously questioning a series
of philosophical concepts, such as good, evi l, knowledge, identity, otherness ,
etc. W e also refer to Harold Bloom ( The Western Canon. The Books and
School of the Ages , Shakespeare. The Invention of the Human and The
Anxiety of Influence ), who offers a broad framework in order to understand
the relation between Goethe, Shakespeare and Ibsen , without referring
strictly to the Faustian myth, but arguing the place of Shakespeare as center

5
of the canon, and highlighting not only the contemporaneousness, but also
the modernity of his writing. The presentation of Shakespeare as magister
ludi offered us the opportunity of extending this concept to the literary
characters taken into account in the present thesis. Moreover, the analysis of
a large conceptual framework is offered by Ileana M ălăncioiu in Vina
tragică. Tragicii greci. Shakespeare. Dostoievski. Kafka (Tragic Fault.
Greek Tragic Authors. Shakespeare. Dostoyevski, Kafka ), and the relativity
of some of these concepts was understood from a philosophical (Martin
Heidegger, Immanuel K ant) and a theological (Nikolai Berdiaev, Dumitru
Stăniloae) perspective.
Cesare Brandi synthetizes in an elegant manner the relation between
language and referent, and states the fact that each language has its own
manner of segmenting the si gnifications. Moreover, the same matrix does
not create an identical sense in all languages1. The transfer of this judgment
in the field of comparative literature makes plausible the theory according to
which each writer reinterprets the primordial mythic structures, adding new
meanings/representations. This vision allowed us to advance the theory of
the collaboration between the activism of the Faustian myth’s theoretical
paradigm and the activism of the Faustian tragic character, in order to prove
the fac t that the Faustian myth becomes a pretext for discovering the
personal myth. Therefore, our aim was not that of considering the literary
work or the literary character as imitations of the Faustian myth, but that of
revealing the logos of the tragic chara cter as main element of arranging the
mythos . In order to achieve this thing, we referred to the concept of mathesis

1 Cesare Brandi, Teoria general ă a criticii. Translated by Mihail B. Constantin and
Victor Ieronim Stoichiță. Preface by Victor Ieronim Stoichiță. Bucharest, „Univers”
Publishing House, 1985, pp. 32 -33.

6
universalis , as our discourse is a triple one: literary, philosophical and
theological.
In order to highlight the personal myth as a version of the Faustian
myth, we presented the theor etical paradigm of the latter , and then we made
a brief presentation of its morphology. Therefore, our investigation started
from the double quality of the myth: the iconization of truth by means of a
false logos (Theonas) and placing the man in the world by giving him self –
consciousness (Malinowski). Moreover, in order to analyze the manner in
which the myth is reiterated in a specific imaginary of writing, we need to
take into account the relation b etween word and image, a relation mediated
by the concept of idea. Hence, we brought into discussion the theories
belonging to Mircea Eliade ( Aspects of the Myth ), Gilbert Durand ( Mythical
Figures and Faces of the Work ), Jean Burgos ( For a Poetics of the
Imaginary ), or Northrop Frye ( The Anatomy of Criticism ), and we created
the idea of understanding a literary work through the active and passive
elements subsumed to the myth. The originality of the thesis resides in
identifying the manner in which the clas sical elements of the Faustian myth
can be reordered and restructured. Moreover, one of our objectives is that of
proving the fact that the field of tragic goes beyond the so -called „classical”
characters of the tragedies, reaching the image of Iago as a t ragic character.
This image is supported by a double perspective on the literary character, as
resulted from the writings of authors such as George Banu ( Shakespeare –
the world’s a stage ), Coleridge ( Coleridge’s Essays and Lectures on
Shakespeare and Some Other Old Poets and Dramatists ), A. C. Bradley
(Shakespearean Tragedy ), Mihai R ădulescu ( Shakespeare – a modern
psychologist ), or Alexander Crawford ( Hamlet, an Ideal Prince and Other
Essays in Shakespearean Interpretation ). This direction of our analytic al
discourse was determined by the presentation of the tragedy’s interior

7
mechanism and the mutation that the tragedy and the tragic character suffer
as a result of the manner in which the reader perceives the writings. In order
to achieve this, we used Northrop Frye’s dissociation between the high
mimetic mode and the low mimetic mode, our will being that of proving the
arbitrary character of the tragic. Therefore, we consider ed the feminine
principle in a direct relation to the tragic evolution of the mas culine
principle, the latter bearing the distinction of an intrinsic Faustianism which
led him from hero to anti -hero and then to the final image of the
underground man. In order to capture the identity formula of this
Faustianism, we considered the essenc e of the Faustian myth as going
beyond the simple pact made between Faust and Mephistopheles.
The first part of the thesis ( Morphology of the Faustian Myth ) begins
with a short presentation of the F austian myth from a diachronic perspective.
In what regards Goethe’s Faust , we acknowledge the relation between
predestination and free will (Jaroslav Pelikan, Faust the Theologian ), the
idea of the F austian struggle generated by consciousness, the positivation of
demonism, man’s impossibility of being himself, or the idea of imposing
limits to what we prefer to call knowledge. We brought into discussion the
idea that modern tragedy incorporates the struggle between man and fate (a
struggle which is common to ancient tragedy), but it subsumes it to man’ s
struggle with himself, the being having the feeling of its own classlessness
(George Steiner, The Death of Tragedy ). The being does not become tragic
when leaving the profane familiarity, but when acknowledging the
impossibility of turning back to the ol d principles . An argument for putting
together Shakespeare (symbol of Renaissance) and Ibsen (symbol of
Modernism) is that of the common point where they meet: the general issue
of human being. The human being (therefore, the tragic character also) is
placed between fatality and a freedom dominated by suffering (J. –M.

8
Domenach, Return to Tragedy ). As a result, we have two manner s of
perceiving the literary character: as sign (an explosive confrontation between
its creator and the second creator of meaning – the reader) and as image (it
needs to be seen, to become). Another argument is the relation between
identity and otherness (Vladimir Jankélévitch, La mort ). Bringing into
discussion Tolstoy’s opinion on the Shakespearean literary work, Harold
Bloom ( The Western Canon ) highlights the open character of Shakespeare’s
literary work, underlining the importance of erasing the constraints imposed
by moral or religious overdeterminations, a feature that can be applied even
to Goethe and Ibsen, without turning th em into imitators of Shakespeare. We
aimed at discovering the core of demonism, bitterness and rebellion which is
specific to the tragic character. The existence of the tragic character revolves
around the absolute ontological problem (to be or not to be) , and the
impossibility of knowing the inner self makes it relative. The distinction
between conceptual and dramatic literary characters (Gilles Deleuze and
Félix Burchell, What is Philosophy? ) had offered us the possibility of
shaping, in the context of th e deconstruction and reconstruction of the
Faustian myth, the triumph of idea over action or that of the concept over
drama. We considered the impossibility of living the tragedy to its very end
to be the essence of the Faustian spirit. Because of this, th e reader might feel
the incompleteness of the Faustian character, placed somewhere between
concept and being, between work of imagination and ontological
representation.
In the second part of the thesis ( Temptation of the Pact ), we start from
the idea that the discontentment and unfulfillment are two features of the
Faustian man, the focus being on his vulnerability in the confrontation with
temptation and in his rebellion against the primordial forms of organization.
When referring to the Faust ian bargain, we bring into discussion the fact that

9
it determines a type of living according to the personal ideal, the result being
both the disproportionality between expectation and reality, and a moral
crisis. The unfulfillment in the field of love tri ggers the tragic consciousness,
in the linguistic sense of an incompatibility between the protagonists of the
communication act (Gretchen and Agnes die, Ophelia goes mad and
commits suicide, Desdemona is killed, and Solveig is abandoned), therefore
love ca nnot fulfill the archetypal pattern of perfection in the mundane
dimension. We brought into discussion the idea that the Faustian bargain
generates activism. Therefore, in Hamlet’s case, the encountering with his
father’s spirit signifies the actualization of a world, and setting the truth back
on the ground of the being, as Heidegger states. But the king’s spirit cannot
be fully equalized to the image of Mephistopheles, as we can find
reminiscences of the Mephistophelian principle even in the paradigm of t he
fatum concept. By deciding that he is the one chose n by fate to reorder the
external reality, Hamlet makes the supreme ontological act (G. Liiceanu),
and his throwing beyond the boundary transforms him in the architect of his
own individuality. The Prin ce understood this hypothesis of being and thus
became fit for the field of the sublime. In Othello’s case, the shift from
passivity to activism is generated by Iago, as an architect of life who, at the
end of his creation, does not speak anymore. In the c ase of Peer Gynt, the
character him self plays the part of Mephistopheles, his tragedy being the
impossibility of being himself. The character slides in the field of
empiricism, as he perceives as absolute freedom the possibility of being
himself. Brand bel ieves that self -accomplishment derives only from the
loyalty to the individual essence, trying to dissociate himself from the
common man, and this action will stand at the basis of his fall. Taking all
these into consideration, we tried to highlight the co nsubstantiality between

10
good and evil, perceiving the Mephistophelian principle as the alter -ego of
the Faustian man. For example, Iago can be perceived as Othello’s alter -ego.
The character living on the edge between suffering and rebellion,
wishing to understand the world in its absolute and aspiring towards a
conception of life, are enrolled in the horizon of a Faustian destiny, and we
discussed the Confrontation with the Limit of such a character in the third
part of the thesis. The Faustian m an’s aspiration towards the unknown can
be translated as the aspiration towards everything that exists beyond the self,
as finitude. Knowledge means observation and giving a sense to the
observed nature, therefore it is a three -folded kind of activism, con cerning
love, beauty and power. Othello’s knowledge is limited by his own image
used as a model for understanding the nature of the other. Despite all these
facts, he also perceives himself through Desdemona (symbol of the canon),
and her acceptance become s a symbol of his inclusion in the epoch’s canon.
In the case of Hamlet, the certitude of truth brought by the king’s spirit
determines him to engage in the p rocess of knowing himself. The P rince’s
activism becomes obvious in his discussion with the graved iggers or in his
fight with Laertes in Ophelia’s grave, the latter scene becoming a
transposition in the active dimension of the well -known „to be or not to be”
soliloqui. In the strict terms of the play, at least to a certain point, Hamlet
and Laertes spe ak from opposite positions. In other words, the logos of the
two literary characters shapes them as rivals, while the mythos offer s them a
conjoint ontological paradigm. But, if we perceive the nature as being, in
fact, the logos of the human being, then t he two Shakespearean characters’
logos and mythos derive from the same primordial ontological dimension. In
other words, Hamlet does not imitate Laertes, but he (re)finds himself in the
image of his rival, and subconsciously acknowledges this bond, in the end
being able to act according to his mind and spirit. Moreover, from a

11
theological perspective, the term logos has a very high importance, as it
includes both the otherness and the individuality, by means of the plural
form logoi2. Therefore, we consider ed that the main theme of the play is not
revenge, but the deinstitutionalization of revenge. In the case of Brand, the
dominating knowledge is that by means of an exacerbated reason and it
bears the core of the existential tragic of a single alternativ e, just like in the
case of Peer Gynt. He runs away from Solveig with the hope of finding his
true self and of breaking human nature, because, if not, he would have to
humble, and to renounce to himself in favor of the otherness. Othello
perceives Desdemona a s object of his love, and does not consider her
subdued to limitations; therefore, her p resupposed betrayal cancels Othello’s
knowledge on the world. Hence, the knowledge of love generates the
paradigm of the sacrificed woman, the main symbol being Gretche n who,
aprioristically sacrificed, is submitted only to the public opprobrium, and not
to the divine one. We underlined a triple hypostasis of the woman (Eve,
mother and lover), recognizable in Gretchen. The woman ca nnot be
challenged, as this process woul d equal that of challenging the world (G.
Durand). The first one to sacrifice Ophelia is Hamlet, but the Prince
transferred to Ophelia the sense of an ontological activism, and the symbol
of that is the girl’s madness (by means of which Ophelia idealizes H amlet’s
image, enrolling in the field of praxis). Hamlet’s madness can be
ontologically understood as an attempt to free from the immediate necessity
of the mundane. In this sense, Ophelia is superior to him, because Haml et’s
desire becomes true in her case. Until the decisive act of the suicidal – as an

2 Ioannis Zizioulas states the fact that the concept of logos, with his plural form logoi,
denominates both plurality and unity, the otherness and the individuality and has
become a key -notion in theology, in Comuniune și alteritate. Ființarea personal –
eclesială. Translation from Engl ish by Liviu Barbu, Bucharest, „Sophia” Publishing
House, 2013 , p. 43.

12
altered form of theosis -, Ophelia had been „decided” by all those around
her, except herself. In death, however, she regains her individuality, but,
ironically, this decision is denied to her by Gertrude’s attempt to transform it
in something accidental. Desdemona possesses (by contamination)
something of Othello’s overdetermination or of Iago’s rebellion, and she is,
therefore, one of the most unconventional feminine characters analyzed in
this thesis. Ger trude and Brand’s mother are symbols of the deviate
motherhood principle, while Agnes is the symbol of the universal mother.
Moreover, Ge rtrude’s tragic character resides in the incapacity of rising to
the goal that she had been created for, that of impers onating the motherhood
principle. Just like Solveig, Agnes chooses to appropriate a destiny that is
not her own, and to live it to its very end, in a more veridical manner than
Brand and Peer Gynt. The symbiotic relation between communion and
otherness arr anges the relation between the feminine principle (longing for
communion) and the masculine one (longing for solitude).
In what regards the knowledge of beauty, it can be perceived as the
equivalent of exuberance (see N. Frye), and from this perspective, all of the
tragic characters can be included in this paradigm, as the exuberance does
not necessarily have to refer only to happiness. There is exuberance is
suffering also, maybe more veridical than in happiness. Harold Bloom
advances the con cept of magister ludi in what regards the Shakespearean
game between suffering and pleasure in receiving the literary work, but this
concept can be applied to the tragic characters analyzed in this paper as
impersonations of those holding the power, advanc ing, at the same time, the
hypothesis of a supra -magister ludi in the concept of fate. The tragic
characters become variations of homo ludens. Moreover, as magister ludi ,
the Faustian man initiates emotion and aesthetical experience, in the form of
the des ire of eternalizing the delight, due to its cathartic effect (at least in the

13
case of Iago) . Trying to find its individual essence, Peer Gynt becomes the
slave of the will to power. On the other hand, Gertrude resembles more the
masculine principle, in the sense of exerting her free will and an autonomy
Hamlet does not understand, because they contradict the image of the
paternal authority. Because he does not succeed to identify himself with the
maternal image (hence, with the power), the Prince finds it i mpossible to get
contaminated with that force that he recognizes in his mother. The only way
in which he can confront it is through the logos, the literary character (and
the reader also) enrolling in a horizon of expectances (aspirational and
temporal), a s Domenach states. Moreover, it is exploited the abyss between
person and personal ideal. The symbol of this abyss is the disgust of Hamlet
and Faust regarding the limited condition of human being and the disgust of
Brand towards a limited God, who obliges him to find his self -sufficiency in
an artificial divine hypostasis. In what regards the ontological freedom,
between the two concepts – freedom and ontology – we find fear: not the
fear of acting, but the fear regarding the transformation of the tragic
character after acting in a certain direction. For example, we considered Iago
to be a tragic character, possessing a double freedom: that of the personal
truth and that of the general truth of the human being, these two types of
truth being enrolled in an ontological conflict.
The last part of the thesis , Dialectics of fatum – hybris – arbitrium
relation , takes into account, first of all, the relation between consciousness
and a series of concepts such as: fate, will and tragic f ault, the latt er
possessing the ability of setting the show of the ontological fault inside the
tragedy3. The tragic character gains self -consciousness through tragic
consciousness (Othello), which can be mediated by the consciousness of

3 Gabriel Liiceanu, Tragicul. O fenomenologie a limitei și depășirii , Bucharest,
Bucharest, „Humanitas” Publishing House, 1993, p. 98 .

14
duty and that of classlessness ( Hamlet and Brand). Therefore, we consider ed
the motif of paternity as a sensitive point of the Faustian tragedy, being also
related to the issue of Faustian identity. For example, Hamlet confronts the
image of an altered image of power and paternity, as th e ontological fear of
suffering transform s king Hamlet in a symbol of vulnerability, and this
feature will also reach Hamlet’s ontological dimension, without becoming a
main fundament of his action, either me ntal or physical. Personal suffering is
placed above general suffering. Hence, Hamlet’s destiny is intrinsically
related to the personal dimension of existence. In what regards the duality of
human being and the good -evil antinomy, we started from the theoretical
premise of the human being’s triple tend ency of carrying out the evil (Kant)
and the triple manner of developing the good (Frye). This dualism possesses
the ability of saving the human being from total degradation, perceived in an
ontological sense, being acknowledged from the beginning by Faust , Hamlet
and Brand, and only in the end by Othello and Peer Gynt. In the end of the
tragedy, Othello is a warrior, not a suffering man. Willing to make justice by
killing Brabant’s daughter, the Moor subconsciously desires to reestablish an
external law, w ithout taking into consideration his internal one. Because of
this, the end of the tragedy does not portray Othello in his battle against
Iago, in order to establish an external equilibrium, but portrays Othello in the
battle against himself, in his desire to reach again the primordial harmony of
his ethics. We also advanced the image of Iago’s duality, from the
perspective of the positivation of his intrinsic essence, and this vision is also
shared by the theological sphere (D. St ăniloae) and the literary criticism one
(A. C. Bradley) . The se two dimensions perceive the Mephistophelian
principle as being not the absolute evil, but the evil facing the good from
which it derives. Iago’s Weltanschauung develops between the two critical
perceptions regarding his character, as this literary character is driven by a

15
tragic passion, just like Brand. In Brand’s perception of life, there is no room
for compromise, and this leads to the essence of his tragedy: the will to gain
the human being, simultaneously with preserving his personal individuality.
Peer Gynt, unlike Brand, lives in a world of fairytales, as reminiscences of
an epoch filled with the perfection of the beginning, and this obsession is
sustained by a continuous regressus ad uter um of the character. However, he
does not end in despair, being able to sit next to Hamlet or Faust. Hamlet’s
Weltanschauung is dominated by a s adness which spreads to all tragic
literary characters in the play, and his view of the human being becomes his
view of life. Hamlet oscillates between two ontological possibilities,
between God’s „to be” and Mephistopheles „not to be” , going through the
intermediary stage of an identity lack of certitude .
In conclusion, we cannot talk about a universal s ense of the tragic
when it comes to the Faustian character, as each character relates to its own
individuality, the tragic being placed inside the ontological paradigm. Only
in the confrontation with the limit, the Faustian character steps away from
the co mfort of the self towards the path of his becoming. Being exposed to
two types of fault – the tragic fault and the personal fault -, the reconciliation
of the Faustian man with the self is, in fact, a variant of reconciliation with
the world.

16
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