08.5 PP 68 77 Amnesia and Anamnesis in Goethes Faust

chapter 5
Amnesia and anamnesis in Goethe’s Faust

Wolf-Daniel Hartwich
In the dual conception represented by the German words Gedächtnis and

Erinnerung, memory and remembrance has, for some time now, enjoyed
considerable academic and popular discussion. The paradigms of this dis-
cussion have proved popular in cultural studies, from where they have
migrated to general cultural and political debates. The programme of
memory studies continues to be closely associated with the concept of
identity in the sense of individual and collective self-definition. Since
Freud, psychology has taught that the individual can only attain a healthy
psychological existence through anamnesis, repetition and working through
of personal history. More recently, sociologists and historians such as
Maurice Halbwachs, Pierre Nora and Jan Assmann have shown how
communities, religions, peoples and states understand their own constitu-
tion through long-term strategies of memory. Identity and memory, it
would seem, are related proportionally to one another. The inability and
the refusal to remember leads to a questionable definition of self. If
individuals and collectives deny and repress specific (usually negative)
aspects of their past, they are not able to attain unity with themselves, and
their self-understanding becomes damaged, unstable and threatened.
It is interesting to note that, from the point of view of memory studies,
Goethe’s Faust is repeatedly evoked as an example of this kind of memory
deficit and of the ensuing weakening of identity. Applied to a fictitious
character on the stage, this syndrome is described as a lack of unity
pertaining to character and its dramaturgical functions. In his book
Goethe. Der Zeitbürger,1 Dieter Borchmeyer emphasizes the fact that Faust
is a ‘great forgetter’, removing himself from all conflict as it arises and before
it can be brought to its catastrophic dramatic climax. This means that he is
unsuitable as a tragic character.
On the other hand, in his book Lethe,2 Harald Weinrich reads Goethe’s
Faust as a tragedy that is motivated by the power of memory and oblivion.
For Weinrich, Goethe’s Faust figure represents a modern way of thinking
68
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Amnesia and anamnesis 69
obsessed with innovation. The ensuing faith in progress finds justification
in abandoning traditional views on faith, history and wisdom. According to
Weinrich, the consequence of this is the loss of social and moral bonds. In
the story of Faust, Mephistopheles plays the part of the virtuoso of forget-
ting. The devil drives Faust through a maze of various existences up to the
point where Faust completely forgets his own identity. At the same time,
however, the devil knows perfectly well what he wants and who he is. The
devil remembers that he wants Faust’s soul. In the scene where they make
their pact, the devil reminds Faust: ‘Consider well your words – we’ll not
forget them’ (1707). And in the ‘Witch’s Kitchen’, when Mephistopheles
rejuvenates Faust through black magic, Faust forgets his previous experi-
ence of life. Similarly, the loss of memory has tragic consequences in the
Gretchen drama. Here, Mephistopheles’ devious diversions, as well as
Faust’s notorious fickleness, make Faust forget about his love for
Gretchen. This happens in the scenes ‘Forest and Cave’, ‘Walpurgis
Night’ and at the beginning of Faust ii in the ‘Pleasant Landscape’. Here
the nature spirits remedy the protagonist with water from the river Lethe,
which, as Greek mythology has it, causes oblivion. Weinrich argues,
however, that Faust’s redemption at the end of the second part of the
tragedy demonstrates that the heavenly powers have their own strategy of
memory, which undermines the Mephistophelean tactics of forgetting.
Unfortunately, Weinrich doesn’t elaborate on this divine politics of mem-
ory, and at the conclusion of this chapter I shall be proposing how this idea
might be productively developed.
For the time being, however, I would like to approach the question of the
loss and regaining of memory in Goethe’s Faust from two different angles.
On the one hand, I shall offer an interpretation of the psychological
syndrome of Faust’s chronic oblivion from the perspective of psychological
theory as it was discussed in Goethe’s own time. On the other hand, I shall
be arguing that Goethe provides a staging of the work of memory within the
framework of historical ideas. Alongside rhetorical mnemonics taught in
classical antiquity, the Platonic and Neoplatonic doctrine of mnemosyne
plays a major part in Goethe’s Faust. Anamnesis, in the method of philo-
sophical education, is intended to remind the individual of the transcen-
dental world of ideas as perceived by the immortal souls before they acquire
physical form.
But above all, the play continually refers to Christian ideas of memory.
Faust is intimately acquainted with this tradition. He has after all studied
theology – ‘to his regret’, as he puts it. In the New Testament, memory is
understood as the medium of the divine. When Jesus celebrated the last
70 wolf-daniel hartwich
supper with his disciples, thereby establishing the Christian cult, Jesus
spoke the injunction: ‘Do this in remembrance of me’ (1 Corinthians
11: 24). In Christianity there is no salvation without Christ, but after his
ascension Jesus Christ only lives on in Christian acts of remembrance.
Through anamnesis, the remembrance of the congregation, the scene of
the last supper comes back to life, and when the words of the last supper are
solemnly spoken, Jesus is present in the bread and wine. Therefore, there is
no salvation without memory. This is why Christianity contains a theatrical
dimension. The tragedy of the redeemer and the drama of salvation are
re-enacted on the stage of the altar, the stage of collective memory. Through
the re-enactment of the lives of Jesus and the saints, the festivals of the
ecclesiastical year call to mind the history of the church. In discussing the
St Rochus festival in Bingen (WA 1:34.1, 1–45), which he attended in August
1814, Goethe gives a benevolent account of the Catholic veneration of the
saints. At that time Christian dramaturgy had been absorbed and modern-
ized by Romantic aesthetics, a tradition of which Goethe’s Faust is also part.
In contrast to the ecclesiastical tradition and the staging of memory in
acts of Christian devotion, modern psychiatry has focused on amnesia, the
loss of individual memory. Amnesia is regarded as an illness, whereby those
afflicted lose information necessary for their self-understanding as well as for
their orientation in society. People who forget too much are threatened with
madness and marginalization. In this respect, the medical reconstruction of
memory seems to be a social continuation of religious redemption through
memory.
In this chapter, I intend to draw attention to a psychological theory
which can shed light on Goethe’s Faust as a great forgetter. The theory was
developed in an article published in a journal edited by one of Goethe’s
close friends, Karl Philipp Moritz, one of the founders of empirical psy-
chology. Moritz developed the Pietist tradition of religious introspection
into a novel analysis of the submerged psychic motives of human action.
His interest in psychological matters is evident in two of his most important
intellectual products: his autobiographical novel Anton Reiser, in which he
attempts to analyse the hidden motivations of his personal development,
and the Magazin fiir Erfahrungsseelenkunde (the Journal for Empirical
Psychology), which he edited between 1783 and 1795. In the third volume
(1784), Moritz published an article by Johann Werner Streithorst entitled
‘Beispiel einer außerordentlichen Vergessenheit’ (An example of an extra-
ordinary loss of memory),3 in which it is apparent that extreme amnesia as
depicted in Goethe’s Faust was not a singular phenomenon in the late
eighteenth century.
A clergyman from Halberstadt reports that several times he visited a sick
man who was in mortal danger because of a fever. Nevertheless, the man
remained lucid at all times. When the clergyman visited the afflicted man
again after he had recovered, the man suddenly talked to him as if they had
never met before. Streithorst chooses the very same image which Goethe
uses for Faust’s amnesia in the second part of the tragedy: ‘it was as if he had
drunk from the river Lethe’.4 In Streithorst’s article the patient describes
how, on the day before falling ill, he had turned away a boy begging for
alms. At the end of his illness the very same boy appeared as a vision in his
memory. All other occurrences in between these two impressions, however,
had been blotted out. This gap in the sick man’s memory can easily be
explained with Streithorst’s theory. He points out that only strong and vivid
impressions produce clear memories, but that the liveliness of the memory
impresssions depend on the strength of and stress on the nervous system.5
After he had sent the boy away, the patient’s nerves had become flaccid
because of his illness, and therefore he was only able to retain vague
impressions of his environment. Upon recovering, he was confronted
with so many new sensory impressions that the vague impressions from
his illness were suppressed. The appearance of the boy marks the boundary
of the two states of consciousness. The image serves as a point of orientation
for the powers of recollection and enables the recovered man to find his way
back into his own life story. However, the cost of this restoration of an
individual’s life narrative is the loss of his memory.
This case of an extraordinary loss of memory shows remarkable parallels
to the amnesia suffered by Goethe’s Faust. Helmut Schanze has attached a
great deal of importance to the fact that Goethe and Moritz exchanged ideas
on mnemotechnics in Italy.6 It is not far-fetched to suggest that these
conversations might also have touched upon the problem of forgetting,
thereby providing the impetus for Goethe’s incorporation of the amnesia
theme into Faust. My intention is not to reduce the psychological con-
stitution of a literary figure to that of historical individuals. Nor is it possible
to reduce the complex character development throughout Faust to the
aetiology described by Streithorst. Nevertheless, the theory of forgetting
derived from this aetiology may well have appeared useful to Goethe at a
time when he was reconsidering and reconceptualizing the figure of Faust
and the dramatical realization of his story.
There are two ways in which Goethe ascribes to Faust mental events
similar to those Steinhorst attributes to his patient. On the one hand, Faust
in his mental history also suffers from periods of apathy and over-
stimulation. On the other hand, Faust is also haunted by images produced
by his memory. And these visions cause a crisis in his memory which leads
to the extinction of whole stages of his life. The ‘Witch’s Kitchen’ defines
the end of a period of intellectual lethargy of the melancholic, bored Faust.
This tedium vitae reaches a climax in ‘Auerbach’s Cellar’ in Leipzig, a scene
where the students’ wild and mindless pastimes are regarded by Faust as
rather boring. The rejuvenation through black magic prepares the protag-
onist for the strain and emotional over-stimulation that will be caused by
the seduction story. Faust’s erotic fantasies are aroused when he sees
Helena’s image in the mirror, giving form to the cultural memory of the
most beautiful woman of antiquity. The ever-luring Mephistopheles prom-
ises the actual fulfilment of Faust’s desires: ‘With this drink in you, you’ll
soon see in every woman a Helen of Troy’ (2604–5). When he first meets
Gretchen in the ensuing street scene, the new and overwhelming impres-
sions make him forget his former life.
Just before Mephistopheles drags Faust into the pandemonium of
the ‘Walpurgis Night’s Dream’, Faust has a vision of Gretchen in the
‘Walpurgis Night’ scene in which her execution for infanticide is prefigured.
Faust then remembers the misery of the girl he has left behind as, in the next
scene, ‘An Expanse of Open Country’, he hurries with Mephistopheles on
magic horses to free her from prison. Having lost his ability to remember his
love, Faust isn’t able to connect emotionally with Gretchen. When
Gretchen tries to remind him of the story of their shared love, she is asking
too much of Faust’s imagination. Pointing out this lapse in his memory
means posing a vital threat to his identity. Faust tells her: ‘Let what is past,
be past, / You will be the death of me’ (4518–19). Subsequently, he falls once
more into an apathetic state and thus becomes a passive appendage to
Mephistopheles. Without hesitating, Faust obeys the devil’s imperious
command: ‘Away with me’ (4618).
In Part ii of the tragedy, the sequel to this crisis of Faust’s memory is
depicted when, in the first scene, Faust drinks from the river Lethe and thus
forgets about Gretchen’s tragic end. Faust’s lethargy is continued when the
opening stage directions show him ‘couched on grass and flowers, fatigued,
restless and endeavouring to sleep’. This scene marks Faust’s transition from
a psychological weariness to an even more challenging state of strain when
Mephistopheles makes Faust the political leader at the Emperor’s court.
Here, Faust conjures up the ghost of Helena with the assistance of an
astrologer. This vision is another important turning-point in the history
of his anamnesis. Faust wants to touch the image, but the projection of his
ideal explodes, and Faust drops back into an apathetic state. During the next
two scenes he remains in this state, oblivious to all that is happening around
him. That is why he cannot remember anything from this period. Only
when the ‘Classical Walpurgis Night’ begins does the protagonist awake.
The ‘Walpurgis Night’ floods his fantasy with chimerical figures from
ancient mythology, culminating in Helena’s incarnation. It is characteristic
for Faust that visions of a woman always cause him to forget about his
former life and adopt a new transformation of his identity. In keeping with
this, Faust now establishes a new identity as knight and lover.
Psychologically speaking, the vision of Helena has the same function as
the vision of the boy in Streithorst’s medical report. Both continue their
lives and forget what happened prior to their visions. Paradoxically, Faust is
able to salvage his identity through these acts of amnesia, although he is
constantly changing identities. It follows that the figure of Faust is not so
lacking in unity as has been claimed by many critics, beginning with
Madame de Staël. Goethe was able to derive a dramatic structure from
the psychological theory of forgetting, thereby compounding the episodic
multiplicity of Faust’s history into alternating sequences of over-stimulation
and fatigue, experience and amnesia. In this way, a psychological model of
forgetting, such as the one expounded by Streithorst, is used as a means of
poetic construction, resulting in the many-sided motifs and associations
that shape Faust’s character.
Apart from the psychological interpretation of memory, there is also a
recurrent motif from the Christian tradition of memory. This motif is
apparent in the opening ‘Night’ scene in the earliest prose version. In
Faust i the Christian concept of memory serves as a counterpoint to the
Mephistophelean temptation of amnesia. For example, Faust the scholar,
deeply despairing of human knowledge, is shaken out of his depression by
the Easter bells and is thus prevented from committing suicide. However,
Faust doesn’t accept the theological meaning of the liturgical sign of
memory any more: ‘Although I hear your gospel, I lack your faith’ (765).
Nevertheless, he is saved by remembering his faith: ‘And yet these sounds,
familiar with my youth / Summon me now again to life’ (769–70). It is in
keeping with this theme that Faust must renounce the redeeming power of
memory before concluding his pact with the devil. As Faust puts it, ‘the
sweet music long familiar’ (1584) had merely betrayed him with ‘echoes of
an earlier happier time’ (1585–6). The ability to remember a happiness
experienced in the past and experience it again seems to Faust a mere self-
deception. Faust prefers to place his trust in the sensually present, giving rise
to the stressful experience of constantly changing impressions flooding his
brain. In order to intensify his faculty of perception he makes a pact with the
devil, granting him an acceleration of impressions. His wish to go full speed
ahead with his experiences is evident in some of the paradoxical demands he
makes of Mephistopheles. With his wishes Faust puts the devil to the test
before he agrees to the pact: ‘Show me the fruit that, still unplucked, will
rot / And trees that leaf each day anew’ (1685–6). In this sentence Faust is
speculating on the extreme alternation of sensual stimuli, which leaves
behind natural laws. Faust’s thirst for experience can’t be drenched with
the present state of the objects; rather, he always wants to experience their
further development and even their destruction. In this context we also have
to interpret the famous moment when Faust and Mephistopheles wager
Faust’s soul. ‘If I ever say to any moment: / Tarry, remain – you are so fair!
Then you may lay your fetters, then I will gladly be destroyed’ (1699–1702).
Here Faust confesses that, for him, identity only means a transitional stage
from one stimulus to the next. But the fullness of experience is only attained
at the expense of loss of memory. Faust has dedicated himself to a diabolical
perversion of the Christian concept of self with its foundations in memory
and the acts of anamnesis associated with the history of salvation.
In Goethe’s Faust, the programmatic eradication of memory has direct
and violent consequences. Faust is quite content to accept the death of
anyone who stands between him and the realization of his changing
identities. The trail of blood leads from the murder of Gretchen’s mother
and brother to that of the old couple Philemon and Baucis and the
destruction of their chapel. It is the chiming of the bells of the chapel that
enrages Faust. The same cultic signs of memory that he had denied in the
first part of the tragedy now remind him of the earthly limitations of his new
project of colonization and sovereignty. In this scene, Goethe is making
implicit reference to a historical incident where a sacred place was destroyed
in the name of political progress. In his essay on the St Rochus festival in
Bingen, Goethe recounts how the chapel there had been ‘desecrated and
destroyed . . . because its position provided an advantageous view over the
entire surrounding area’ (WA 1:34.1, 9). The chapel of Philemon and Baucis
must also give way to Faust’s look-out tower. In the case of St Rochus, the
festival of the saint had managed to outlast the destruction of the chapel,
sustaining his memory among the people. Modernity was not able to cast
the mythic dimensions of the Christian cult into oblivion.
The famous turning-point at the end of Faust’s monologue at the end of
Part ii should be seen against the background of his temporal perception.
When Faust has the vision of a free society based on colonization, he
paraphrases the words spoken in the pact: ‘then, to the moment I could
say: / Tarry a while, you are so fair . . . Envisioning those heights of
happiness, I now enjoy my highest moment’ (11581–6). Faust’s perception
of time is here defined by things to come. The allegorical figure of Care
formulates this as ‘caring only for the future’ (11465). The acceleration of
perception leads to its complete virtualization. The busy sound interpreted
by Faust as the beginning of the canal-building is, however, the sound of the
gravediggers’ spades. Faust also expresses this loss of reality in his perception
with the subjunctive form ‘could’. This means that Faust does not wish to
experience the present moment, but instead to anticipate the future
moment. Experience has become mere auto-suggestion. It’s true, he has
renounced the Christian culture of memory with its moral obligations, but
the devil will not win the bet.
When, in a scene that has been given a great deal of attention in the
critical literature, Goethe has Faust saved in the fifth act of the play, this can
also be interpreted as an anamnesis, Faust’s memory regained. This scene,
like the one discussed earlier, can be interpreted from the perspective of
Steinhorst’s psychology of extraordinary forgetfulness, as well as through
the Christian theology of total recall. Abducting Faust through the moun-
tain gorges into heaven, the angels save his ‘Unsterbliches’ (immortality)
from the devil. Faust thus emerges from his final lethargy, which had
culminated in his death, in a realm of abundant experiences. This new
change of identity is once again introduced by a remembered vision of a
woman. Gretchen appears transfigured in penitential robes and greets
Faust: ‘the love of my youth, / No longer unhappy, / Has now returned’
(12073–5). Gretchen’s entrance refers to the Christian culture of memory as
depicted in Christian hagiography: Gretchen is joined in the entourage of
the Mother of God by the three prominent holy sinners of church history:
Mary Magdalene, the woman of Samaria and Mary of Egypt. Gretchen’s
appearance in Part ii, unlike that in Part i, doesn’t throw the protagonist
into a new state of amnesia, but promises Faust redemption by anamnesis.
Gretchen asks Mary, the Mother of God, to initiate the reborn Faust into
his new existence: ‘Grant me permission to instruct him – / He still is
dazzled by the strange new light’ (12092–3). Goethe has already portrayed
Gretchen as the representative of a culture of memory rooted in
Catholicism. She regularly attends Mass, hears the Word and prays to the
Holy Virgin. But already in Part i her religiosity exceeds the bounds of
dogma. The golden chalice, which the King of Thule received from the
hand of his dying lover in the ballad sung by Gretchen, is a symbol of the
sacrament of remembrance and faith outside the church.
The idea that Gretchen will instruct Faust on his new path to salvation
alludes to the scene in Martha’s garden in Part i, where Gretchen asks her
lover the famous question ‘say then, what is your religion?’ (3415). When
Mephistopheles then mocks Faust with the words ‘I . . . heard the professor
catechized’ (3523), he is alluding to another medium of the Christian culture
of memory. Religious instruction aims at impressing upon the memory of
young believers the subjects of Christian faith, thus preparing them for
conducting their lives in the spirit of the gospel. For this, the literary genre
of the catechism uses as a mnemonic aid the alternation of question and
answer. Since Faust had renounced Christian memory long ago, in Martha’s
garden he cannot with all his will commit himself to a traditional image of
God. In the last scene of the play Gretchen announces her intention to
make up the skipped lesson in a post-mortem existence. Nothing is said in
the play about the contents of the teachings that are to prepare Faust for a
heavenly life. It can be taken for granted that these teachings will be less
dogmatic than the ones written down in the catechism.
What is of decisive importance is that the chronic forgetter Faust will be
given the capacity for memory. Here the heavenly policy of memory uses
the Platonic teaching method of eros as a means of education. Erotically
attracted by beauty, the student of philosophy is led to the memory of our
innate idea of beauty. When Gretchen says that Faust will be blinded by the
heavenly light, the text alludes to the Platonic cave simile about human
beings imprisoned in the cave of the sensual world. Since they are used to
living in darkness, they must be gradually led out of the cave to the bright
light of the heavenly realm of ideas. Without this thorough guidance to
enlightenment they will be blinded. Gretchen becomes Faust’s guide,
leading him through the celestial spheres. The vision of Gretchen helps
Faust to overcome his amnesia. Platonic eros serves as a protection against
the invading new impressions. This shield prevents Faust from being over-
stimulated and enables him to gradually absorb the impressions and to save
them in his memory. In this way he can begin to attain an everlasting
identity.
To summarize, reading Goethe’s Faust as an engagement with anamnesis
and amnesia, memory and forgetting, allows us to engage with the wide-
spread criticism of the unity of the central figure’s identity. I juxtaposed
Faust’s amnesia with a medical case history from contemporary empirical
psychology, in which loss of memory was explained as being caused by
alternating lethargy and over-stimulation. Memory images serve as markers
for the onset of a crisis in memory. The eradication of earlier sensory
impressions allows a reconstitution of the patient’s life narrative. Goethe
was able to apply a similar principle in order to consolidate the episodic
existences of Faust, forming them into a single character. The story of Faust
also cites the Christian theology of memory and its wider mythological
context. The pact with the devil appears as the remainder of a stance
towards the world which has been preserved in memory.
Of course, Goethe’s Faust cannot be reduced to a mere psychological or
theological treatise. The author employs these diverse traditions as dramatic
means. The salvation of Faust combines Christian theology with the
mythology of classical antiquity, Platonic philosophy and modern psychol-
ogy. The memory image of Gretchen serves as an example of pedagogical
eros, overcoming Faust’s amnesia and suffering, and allowing him to be
reborn with a memory. But Faust’s salvation is not, finally, a coup de théâtre,
what might be called a stage spectacle in the sense of a theory of memory.
Goethe’s play uses dramatic means to bring to life the collective memory
archive of mythology and Christianity. Faust’s individual identity is
unfolded against the background of cultural memory. Goethe’s Faust
exceeds the theatre of the Christian cult by way of a collective act of
remembering in the medium of art. The purpose of the work of art is to
give form to personal and cultural identity in modernity and to free it from
the constraints of forgetfulness.
not es
1. Dieter Borchmeyer, Goethe. Der Zeitbürger, Munich: Hanser, 1999.
2. Harald Weinrich, Lethe. The Art and Critique of Forgetting, Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 2004.
3. Johann Werner Streithorst, ‘Beispiel einer ausserordentlichen Vergessenheit’,
Magazin fiir Erfahrungsseelenkunde 3/3 (1784), 1–14.
4. Ibid., 3.
5. Ibid., 8.
6. Helmut Schanze, Goethes Dramatik. Theater der Erinnerung, Tübingen:
Niemeyer, 1989.

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chapter 5

Amnesia and anamnesis in Goethe’s Faust

In the dual conception represented by the German words Gedächtnis and

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