Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Faust Scholarship and the Project at Hand
- 1 The German Faustian Century
- 2 Faustus of the Sixteenth Century: His Life, Legend, and Myth
- 3 Cornelius Agrippa's Double Presence in the Faustian Century
- 4 Converging Magical Legends: Faustus, Paracelsus, and Trithemius
- 5 Faust from Cipher to Sign and Pious to Profane
- 6 The Aesthetics of the 1587 Spies Historia von D. Johann Fausten
- 7 The Lutheran Faust: Repentance in the Augsburg Confession and the German Faustbuch
- 8 Marriage in the Historia von D. Johann Fausten (1587)
- 9 Antiauthoritarianism and the Problem of Knowledge in the Faustbuch
- 10 Exploring the “Three-Fold World”: Faust as Alchemist, Astrologer, and Magician
- 11 The Devil in the Early Modern World and in Sixteenth-Century German Devil Literature
- 12 Encounters with “Schwarz-Hans”: Jacob Böhme and the Literature of the Devil in the Sixteenth Century
- 13 D. Johann Faust and the Cannibals: Geographic Horizons in the Sixteenth Century
- A Sixteenth-Century Chronology of Significant References to Faust with Parallel World Events
- Select Bibliography
- Notes on the Contributors
- Index
12 - Encounters with “Schwarz-Hans”: Jacob Böhme and the Literature of the Devil in the Sixteenth Century
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Faust Scholarship and the Project at Hand
- 1 The German Faustian Century
- 2 Faustus of the Sixteenth Century: His Life, Legend, and Myth
- 3 Cornelius Agrippa's Double Presence in the Faustian Century
- 4 Converging Magical Legends: Faustus, Paracelsus, and Trithemius
- 5 Faust from Cipher to Sign and Pious to Profane
- 6 The Aesthetics of the 1587 Spies Historia von D. Johann Fausten
- 7 The Lutheran Faust: Repentance in the Augsburg Confession and the German Faustbuch
- 8 Marriage in the Historia von D. Johann Fausten (1587)
- 9 Antiauthoritarianism and the Problem of Knowledge in the Faustbuch
- 10 Exploring the “Three-Fold World”: Faust as Alchemist, Astrologer, and Magician
- 11 The Devil in the Early Modern World and in Sixteenth-Century German Devil Literature
- 12 Encounters with “Schwarz-Hans”: Jacob Böhme and the Literature of the Devil in the Sixteenth Century
- 13 D. Johann Faust and the Cannibals: Geographic Horizons in the Sixteenth Century
- A Sixteenth-Century Chronology of Significant References to Faust with Parallel World Events
- Select Bibliography
- Notes on the Contributors
- Index
Summary
A number of conversations with the devil have come down to us in German literature. The best known in the twentieth century is surely the one familiar from Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus, where it takes the form of a protocol from memory found in the posthumous notes of the fictional composer Adrian Leverkühn, transcribed faithfully for the reader by Leverkühn's fictional biographer Serenus Zeitblom. It is a dialog in which a “frightfully different sort” of respondent guides the discussion ([ein] entsetzlich anderer … vornehmlich das Wort [führt]). The respondent is the devil, an exceedingly eloquent gentleman who converses in a somewhat old-fashioned tone and manner. His manner and expression are reminiscent of certain previously documented encounters of the kind. We are familiar with the interlude of twenty-four years that he grants his conversation partner, an erstwhile student of theology, to continue living with a prospect of achieving exceptional things but with the condition that he must renounce the “entire heavenly host.” The terms take us back by way of Goethe's Faust—where a scarcely less eloquent Mephisto places himself at the service of a magister dissatisfied with himself and the world—clear back to a seminal version of this story: the Historia von D. Johann Fausten.… of 1587.
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- The Faustian CenturyGerman Literature and Culture in the Age of Luther and Faustus, pp. 285 - 304Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2013