50 Fun Facts About Faust

In Goethe's Faust, Mephistopheles first follows the scholar home from a country walk disguised as which animal?

A poodle trails Faust and his assistant back from their holiday stroll, then swells into a monster in the study before Mephistopheles steps out dressed as a travelling scholar.

Which figure of Greek myth does Faust conjure for the Emperor, then pursue and win, in Goethe's Faust Part Two?

Helen of Troy is at first only a phantom summoned to amuse the court, but Faust falls for the vision and later has a son, Euphorion, with her.

In Goethe's Faust Part Two, what does Mephistopheles introduce to rescue the Emperor's failing finances?

Paper money replaces gold at court, and the Emperor and his advisers promptly squander it: Goethe's satire on the banknotes issued during the French Revolution.

Which New York institution opened in 1883 with Gounod's Faust and was later nicknamed the Faustspielhaus?

The Metropolitan Opera chose Faust for its very first night, sung in Italian rather than French, and went on staging it so often that the house earned its German nickname.

Which Mississippi blues guitarist is said, in a legend that mirrors Faust, to have met the Devil at a crossroads?

Robert Johnson's crossroads tale was probably borrowed from an older bluesman, the unrelated Tommy Johnson, who first claimed to have traded his soul for skill on the guitar.

Which 1955 Broadway musical retells the Faust legend with a smooth-talking Devil who goes by Mr. Applegate?

Damn Yankees has a middle-aged Washington Senators fan sell his soul to become Joe Hardy, the young slugger his struggling baseball team needs.

In Goethe's Faust, the bells of which Christian festival stop the despairing scholar from drinking poison?

Easter bells reach Faust just as he lifts the phial, and they stir memories of a happy childhood rather than any sense of religious duty.

A 1625 painting in Auerbach's Cellar shows the legendary magician Faust riding out the door astride what?

A wine barrel was his mount, a feat the old tale credits to the Devil's help, and the young Goethe saw the painting while drinking there as a student.

Which 1967 British comedy, remade in 2000 with Brendan Fraser, retells the Faust legend with Peter Cook as the Devil?

Bedazzled has Dudley Moore's lovesick short-order cook trade his soul for seven wishes, each of which the Devil twists against him in Swinging London.

Despite the pact with Mephistopheles, where does Faust's soul finally go at the end of Goethe's Faust Part Two?

Angels carry Faust to Heaven while Mephistopheles is distracted, a reversal of the old legend, in which the Devil carries the magician off to Hell.

In Goethe's Faust, what does Mephistopheles insist the scholar use to sign the written pact between them?

Blood is the Devil's condition, and Faust grumbles that his word of honour ought to be enough before giving in and signing with a single drop.

In which German city is Auerbach's Cellar, the tavern Goethe frequented as a student and put into Faust?

Leipzig still has the cellar, its second-oldest restaurant, and in the play it is the first stop on the travels of Faust and Mephistopheles.

On which peak in the Harz Mountains do the witches gather for their revels in Goethe's Faust Part One?

The Brocken is the highest summit of the Harz, and Goethe had walked up it himself in 1777, decades before sending Faust there on Walpurgis Night.

Which Austrian composer was only 17 when he set Gretchen's spinning-wheel scene from Faust as a song?

Franz Schubert wrote the song in a single October day in 1814, with a whirling piano part that imitates the wheel and its foot treadle.

The German word Gretchenfrage, a blunt and awkward question, recalls Gretchen asking Faust where he stands on what?

Religion is what she presses him on in her neighbour's garden, and Germans now call any direct question that forces someone to reveal their true attitude a Gretchen question.

Which brother of Gretchen challenges Faust to a duel outside her door and curses his sister as he dies?

Valentin loses the duel because Mephistopheles guides his opponent's hand, and his dying curse deepens the torment of the already pregnant Gretchen.

Which bookish assistant joins Faust on his walk outside the town gate in Goethe's play?

Wagner, the famulus, stands for the vain scholar who understands only book-learning, a cold contrast to his master's hunger for deeper truths.

Which book of the Bible does Faust sit down to translate in his study, struggling with its opening sentence?

The Gospel of John begins with the Word, but Faust tries several renderings of the Greek Logos and finally settles on the deed, an act rather than speech.

The wager between the Lord and Mephistopheles that opens Goethe's Faust echoes which Old Testament book?

Job, too, is a good man whom Satan is allowed to torment on a bet, and the Lord in Goethe's prologue is just as sure that his servant will come through.

Which symbol on Faust's doorway traps Mephistopheles inside the study until rats gnaw part of it away?

A pentagram, slightly misshapen, let the demon slip in but not out, and from this Faust reasons that devils are bound by rules and can be held to a pact.

A book by which Renaissance figure does Faust take up in the opening night scene of Goethe's play?

Nostradamus wrote the mysterious volume Faust opens, yet neither its sign of the Macrocosm nor the Earth Spirit he then conjures gives him the knowledge he craves.

The magician of legend was called Johann, but which first name does Goethe give the scholar in Faust?

Heinrich Faust is the name in Goethe's cast, a step away from the real Johann Georg Faust, the wandering alchemist and astrologer behind the legend.

Which fellow dramatist and Weimar friend urged Goethe in 1797 to take up his unfinished Faust again?

Friedrich Schiller's prodding worked: Goethe returned to the abandoned play, though Part One only reached print in 1808, three years after his friend had died.

Goethe sealed the finished manuscript of Faust Part Two in 1831, intending it to be published when?

After his death was the plan, and it held: Part Two appeared in 1832, the year Goethe died, though he sometimes took it out to read aloud to his daughter-in-law.

Roughly how long did Goethe work on Faust, from his first drafts as a young man to the sealed Part Two?

About 60 years passed between the first sketches of the early 1770s and the finished Part Two of 1831, so the play grew with Goethe from his twenties into his eighties.

Which tiny being in a glass flask guides Faust and Mephistopheles to the Classical Walpurgis Night in Goethe's Part Two?

Homunculus is an artificial human made by alchemy in the laboratory of Faust's former assistant, and he can live only inside his glass until he finds a way to be fully born.

Which old couple from Ovid's Metamorphoses are killed when Faust covets their cottage in Goethe's Part Two?

Baucis and Philemon own a hut and chapel that Faust wants cleared from his new estate, and Mephistopheles, overreading the order, murders them.

What great engineering project occupies the ageing Faust in the final acts of Goethe's Faust Part Two?

Winning land from the sea with dikes and drainage ditches is his last ambition, and the Emperor rewards his help in a war with a strip of coast to do it on.

At Faust's death in Goethe's Part Two, what is showered on the demons who come for him, driving them off?

Rose petals scatter the lesser devils, and the roses even befuddle Mephistopheles with desire, so that he loses his grip on the prize at the last moment.

Which famous phrase from the closing chorus of Goethe's Faust names the force said to draw humanity onward?

The Eternal Feminine, das Ewig-Weibliche in German, comes in the last two lines of the play, sung by a mystical chorus rather than by any named character.

Which personified figure breathes on the aged Faust and strikes him blind near the end of Goethe's Part Two?

Care blinds him with her breath, yet the old man goes on planning a better life for his subjects, and in that vision he finds the moment he would hold on to.

Which English playwright gave the Faust legend its classic stage treatment around 1592?

Christopher Marlowe worked from an English translation of the German Faust chapbook, and his Doctor Faustus is thought to be the first play made from the legend.

The Faust legend has also been linked to Johann Fust, the business partner of which printing pioneer?

Johannes Gutenberg's partner Fust was, by some accounts, taken for a magician by French officials amazed at how fast and how exactly his press copied books.

By tradition, how did the real Johann Georg Faust die at an inn in Staufen around 1540?

In an explosion, the story goes: an alchemical experiment blew up, and his enemies read the badly mangled body as proof that the Devil had come to collect in person.

In what form was the Faust story often performed at the street fairs of Goethe's youth?

A puppet show of the Faust story was a fairground staple, so Goethe knew the tale as popular entertainment long before he turned it into high poetry.

In which German city, later Goethe's birthplace, did Johann Spies print the first Faust book in 1587?

Frankfurt publisher Spies larded his little book with pious warnings, and it became the main quarry for the Faust plays later written in England and Germany.

Which French composer worked his rousing Rákóczi March into La damnation de Faust, first heard in 1846?

Hector Berlioz added the march after it brought the house down at a concert in Pest, and he labelled the finished work a dramatic legend, since it sits halfway between a stage work and a cantata.

Which composer set the closing scene of Goethe's Faust as the vast second part of his Symphony of a Thousand?

Gustav Mahler paired the scene with a ninth-century Latin hymn in his Eighth Symphony, and he disliked the nickname, which a promoter coined to sell tickets.

Which German director made the lavish 1926 silent film Faust, his last at home before leaving for Hollywood?

F. W. Murnau, the director of Nosferatu, was already filming in America when his Faust opened in Berlin, at the time the costliest production its studio had made.

Which German novelist recast Faust as the composer Adrian Leverkühn in a novel published in 1947?

Thomas Mann has his composer deliberately contract syphilis, a bargain that buys twenty-four years of feverish genius before madness takes him.

In Bulgakov's Faust-inspired novel The Master and Margarita, under what name does the Devil visit Moscow?

Woland comes straight from Goethe, whose Mephistopheles warns the witches at their revel that Squire Voland has arrived.

Alexander Sokurov's 2011 Russian film Faust took the top prize at which major European film festival?

Venice gave the film its Golden Lion, the highest honour of the festival's 68th edition, even though this Russian production is spoken entirely in German.

Which German star, later the first Best Actor Oscar recipient, played Mephisto in the 1926 silent film Faust?

Emil Jannings also backed the director's campaign to be hired, having played the title role for him in Tartuffe the year before.

Which American songwriter cast himself as the Devil and James Taylor as the Lord in his musical Faust?

Randy Newman moved the story to the University of Notre Dame, with Don Henley singing the student Faust and Linda Ronstadt as Margaret.

Which Italian violin virtuoso was rumoured, like Faust, to owe his dazzling technique to a pact with the Devil?

Niccolò Paganini may not have started the rumour himself, but he played along with it instead of denying the tale.

In Stephen Vincent Benét's American Faust tale, which real statesman defends farmer Jabez Stone from the Devil?

Daniel Webster argues before a jury summoned from Hell and wins, and the beaten Devil must promise never to trouble another New Hampshire man.

For what crime is Gretchen condemned to death at the end of Goethe's Faust Part One?

Drowning her baby in a fit of madness brings the sentence, and when Faust breaks into the dungeon to free her she refuses to escape with him.

What does Faust give Gretchen to slip to her mother so the lovers can meet at night, with fatal results?

A sleeping potion is meant only to keep the old woman from waking, but the dose kills her, the first loss in the ruin of Gretchen's family.

In Goethe's Faust, what does Gretchen's mother do with the first casket of jewels that Mephistopheles leaves?

She gives it to the Church, wary of where such riches came from, and a furious Mephistopheles has to leave a second chest, which Gretchen wears only in secret at a neighbour's house.

Which genre label did Goethe print beneath the title Faust on the first edition's title page in 1808?

A tragedy was all the 1808 title page added, and the words Part One were only attached by publishers once the sequel appeared in 1832.