Don Juan and Faust
| Data | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Don Juan and Faust |
| Genus: | Idea drama |
| Original language: | German |
| Author: | Christian Dietrich Grabbe |
| Music: | Albert Lortzing |
| Publishing year: | 1828 |
| Premiere: | 1829 |
| Place of premiere: | State Theater Detmold |
| Place and time of the action: | Rome and Montblanc, 16th century |
| people | |
|
|
Don Juan and Faust is a drama of ideas by Christian Dietrich Grabbe from 1828. In it the author lets two mythical figures from world literature , Don Juan and Faust , meet. Grabbe intended to surpass both Goethe and Mozart with his drama .
action
The notorious lover Don Juan travels to Rome with his servant Leporello after numerous love adventures and woos there for the daughter of the Spanish ambassador, Donna Anna, who is, however, already engaged to the naive noble Octavio. Without scruples, guided by selfish desire and lust for pleasure, he provokes a duel with Octavio at the engagement party in order to get rid of him. He stabs Octavio and shortly thereafter Anna's father, who wants to avenge Octavio's death. But before don Juan can grab Anna, now free again, she is kidnapped by the magician Faust. In his search for knowledge and power, he has dedicated his soul to the devil, who appeared to him in the form of a knight. Instead of satisfying Faust's thirst for unearthly knowledge, however, the knight only kindles in him the desire for this worldly love for Donna Anna. Faust therefore abducts the beautiful woman to a castle in the Alps, more precisely on Mont Blanc, and tries to win her love. But she has already resisted don Juan and asks Faust to release her. Don Juan and Leporello set out to free Anna, but Faust hurls the prevented liberators through the air back to Rome. Faust kills Anna in anger at her steadfastness with his magic. While he is now mourning the slain (“I smashed the most wonderful thing to the rubble because I did not understand it”), don Juan directs his thoughts on new love adventures, because Anna was just another challenge for him. In the end, death overtakes both protagonists: Faust, who has lost all will to live through Anna's death, and Don Juan, who refuses to repent of his sins, are brought into his kingdom by the knight.
interpretation
The core of the drama is the conflict of ideas between Don Juan and Faust. The first can only experience physical and sensual satisfaction, the second rejects materialistic needs as human weakness. In their struggle for Donna Anna, however, both fail because their actions are purely selfishly motivated. A dramaturgically effective confrontation between the two negative heroes fails because of Faust's superiority, which Don Juan is unable to counter. So the conflict of ideas is limited to the few dialogues between don Juan and Faust. Nevertheless, the piece developed a strong stage effect and was the only work by Grabbe to be performed during his lifetime (at the Detmold State Theater in 1829).
reception
Contemporaries criticized the play's manifest pessimism , which is particularly noticeable in Don Juan's cynical lines of text, but also in Faust's contempt for the world. Kierkegaard, however, praised the piece in his main work Either - Or , because it was “based on evil” in an extraordinary way.
Adaptations
A modernized radio play adaptation of the drama by Peter Barnes was successfully broadcast on the British broadcaster BBC . The painter Clara Siewert created an expressively pathetic sequence for the drama . In 1984 the playwright Carl Ceiss worked on a theatrical adaptation of the play.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Roman Zieglgänsberger: Between dream and reality. With contributions by Renate Berger, Michael Kotterer and Roman Zieglgänsberger. Ed .: Kunstforum Ostdeutsche Galerie Regensburg, Regensburg 2008; ISBN 978-3-89188-116-3 , pp. 30, 156, 160.