The Faust Legend

"Faust sits restlessly at his desk in his narrow Gothic study, surrounded by parchments, instruments, and bones, striving to grasp with their lifeless aid what the archangels could not grasp. A creature of cogitation, remote from human experience, he is the prisoner of the only environment he knows, that of the University. The most learned scholar alive has found all the University faculties wanting; above all theology, the Queen of the sciences, has failed to provide, as it claimed to do, the truth about this world and the next. He is without religious scruples and preoccupations which might have impeded his intellectual progress. Yet he is frustrated. Academic learning, to which this titan for study has devoted himself, is not only vain, it has withdrawn him from life, aged him prematurely, denied him honour and glory and earthly gain, and has caused him to misinform his students. There is a material side to Faust, and he has a nascent sense of social responsibility; he is not purely and simply an intellectual. It is a satire upon human learning that he has to ally himself with the devil in order to escape the consequences of learning and to experience the life which it has denied him; and of course it is the evil aspect of life that is accordingly presented to him. He has to discover by protracted error the positive meaning in human life that his trusting but misdirected efforts have hitherto hindered him from grasping." -  From Goethe's Faust: An Interpretation by Alexander Gillies

"Knowing that knowledge tricks us beyond measure,
That man’s conversion is beyond my reach,
Knowing the emptiness of what I teach.
Meanwhile I live in penury,
No worldly honour falls to me.
No dog would linger on like this!...

And so I turn to the abyss
Of necromancy, try if art
Can voice or power of spirits start,
To do me service and reveal
The things of Nature’s secret seal,
And save me from the weary dance
Of holding forth in ignorance." 

- from Goethe's Faust, Part 1