How can noble love be the seed of tragedy, and what is the meaning of love in Goethe’s “Urfaust”?

Love is perceived as a noble and beautiful emotion, but in Goethe’s Urfaust, love becomes a major factor in the destruction and tragedy of the main characters. “Goethe uses love as a tool to expose the inherent vulnerability of human beings, to cause moral confusion and tragedy, but also to offer the possibility of repentance within it.

 

When we think of love, we think of something sublime and beautiful, but at the same time hot and passionate. This idea of love seems to be a common image in people’s consciousness, both in the East and the West. The time of German playwright Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was probably no different. In fact, we can assume that the Christian worldview dominated society at that time, so the importance of love was emphasized even more. Even if you’re not a Christian, you’re probably familiar with the biblical phrase “faith, hope, love, but the greatest of these is love.” In this context, it is understandable that love was viewed as a virtue that went beyond mere personal feelings and was important even in the relationship with God. It is therefore likely that love was considered a noble emotion in Goethe’s time in Germany.
Nevertheless, the value of love in Goethe’s play Urfaust is somewhat negative and even pessimistic. Contrary to the universal perception of love, Goethe presents the emotion of love as a dark and tragic subject in his works. So, what did Goethe want to tell his readers through his works, and what was his idea of love?
The play “Urfaust” is a prequel to Goethe’s magnum opus “Faust”. It tells the story of a young Faust who seduces a woman and leads her down a path of destruction. The protagonist of the play, Faust, is a young man who has mastered all the world’s disciplines but still feels empty and frustrated. Of course, in the original version of Faust, Faust appears as an old scholar and regains his youth through a pact with the devil, but this scene is omitted in Urfaust. “To fill this void, Faust makes a pact with the devil Mephistopheles. The pact itself is symbolic of Faust’s approach to love: for him, love is merely a means of resolving unfulfilled desires.
One day, Faust meets and falls in love with the beautiful and pure maiden Kriemhild Gretchen. He borrows the power of Mephistopheles to win the heart of Kriemhild Gretchen. Eventually, Kriemhild Gretchen becomes pregnant while still unmarried. “Kriemhild Gretchen is rejected by the townspeople and her brother Valentin, as if branded with a scarlet letter, and ultimately ends in death.
In the play “Urfaust,” it was love with “Faust” that led “Kriemhild Gretchen” astray. The meaning of love here is quite ironic in some ways. For example, for Faust, love is the only emotion that can fill the void of scholarship, but for Kriemhild Gretchen, it is the decisive factor that leads her to her destruction. “For the sake of her love, Kriemhild Gretchen unintentionally causes the deaths of her mother and brother and becomes pregnant out of wedlock, which was unacceptable according to the customs of the time. She does not act with bad intentions, but is simply driven by feelings of love, and it is this action that causes all these tragedies. In addition, in a normal pregnancy, the child is a blessed being who symbolizes the fruit of love, but in Kriemhild Gretchen’s case, it is taken as the fruit of sin, which serves as a proof of her fall. Therefore, the illegitimate child is not loved, but rather dies at the hands of the mother. In light of this, we can see that while we universally consider love to be a noble and beautiful thing, Goethe uses it as a dramatic tool to subvert moral ideas.
Of course, love is not always associated with decadence. Throughout the works, love is used as a tool to suggest the possibility of repentance through the concept of conscience. “One such scene is when Kriemhild Gretchen asks Faust if he believes in God. Concerned that her beloved Faust will go astray, Kriemhild Gretchen asks him if he believes in God and tells him to return to Christ. Another example is the scene where Kriemhild Gretchen receives sleeping pills for her mother from Faust and repeatedly asks if the pills are safe. She cares about her mother’s safety because she loves her, and she shows concern when she is handed the sleeping pills. However, despite these various scenes, Goethe is still pessimistic about love. This is because even though these scenes reveal the possibility of repentance through love, repentance does not actually occur. If Faust had broken his pact with the devil and returned to God for the sake of his beloved Kriemhild Gretchen, the play might not have ended in tragedy. Or if Kriemhild Gretchen hadn’t fed her mother sleeping pills to keep her conscience, all the tragedy in the play might not have happened. But in fact, tragedy did happen, and love was powerless.
“It seems that Goethe did not consider love to be an emotion with any special powers; he considered it to be one of the many emotions that humans can have, such as joy, anger, compassion, and so on, and projected it in his works. It has value because it is an emotion, but it has no power beyond that. Rather, it is seen as something fragile, more susceptible to temptation than other emotions. However, it should also be noted that, in the end, Goethe chose love as an important element of his work among other emotions. Although he did not consider love to be capable of much more than the concept of emotion, he certainly considered it to be more special compared to other emotions. This suggests that love is an emotion that reveals the inherent vulnerability of human beings, while also carrying the potential danger of ultimately corrupting them. “Through the short play “Urfaust,” we have the opportunity to rethink what Goethe thought love meant.