The question why the Faustbuch was so astonishingly outdated in geographicis gains urgency when one turns to the Wagnerbuch for comparison (also a Historia and one which appeared only six years later). There, Faust’s stalwart traveling famulus (assistant) has certainly
“heard something” about the “New World” and takes it upon himself to investigate it and to get to know the manners and customs of the peoples who inhabit it (“[sie] besser zu erkündigen / vnd auch der innwonenden völcker Sitten vnd Gebräuch [zu] erkennen”).26 The author bases his three chapters about America (here, too, definitely the land of cannibals)
25 Although still considered heathen, the Pope, as noted, had declared them human beings in 1537.
26 Wagnerbuch (n. 21, abbreviated as W), I, 239–240. The original title is: Ander theil D. Johan Fausti Historien, darin beschriben ist. Christophori Wageners […] Pact mit dem Teuffel […].
almost entirely on a Latin version of Benzoni’s Historia del mondo nuovo of 1565. This story of the discovery and conquest of America by Columbus, Cortés, and Pizarro owes much to the earlier accounts, but was enriched by Benzoni’s own Central and South American travel experiences of more than fourteen years, beginning in 1541. To compare the chapters about America in the Wagnerbuch with the geographical horizon of the Faustbuch is hardly an arbitrary project, given the title-page of the Wagnerbuch where, before anything else, it is described as the second part of the 1587 Faustbuch. In addition, the foreword begins with the very quotation from the first epistle of Peter with which the Faustbuch not only began, in the “Vorred an den Christlichen Leser,”
but also emphatically closed. The passage warns that the devil prowls around like a roaring lion in search of victims “whom he may devour.”
But despite several additional parallel motifs, the differences between the two chapbooks become relevant already in their respective forewords. They differ with respect to the attitudes of both authors toward the new empirical thirst for knowledge and to the related geographical exploration of the “whole world.” In the Faustbuch, curiositas, the “Fürwitz” mentioned on the title page — in other words, the quest for knowledge demonized by the theological authorities — is the sin which drives Faust into the net of the devil, turns him away from God, and ultimately dispatches him to hell. “Fürwitz” is the main theme of the whole book.27 The root cause of Wagner’s sin, on the other hand, as stated unmistakably in the foreword, is that he lets himself be led astray by the devil into the pact through the enticements of magic,
“Zauberey.” Certainly, the forbidden “vbernatürlichen Magischen […]
künste” (“supernatural magical arts,” W, I, 69) impart secular knowledge the likes of which he has never dreamed, and in accord with the zeitgeist of the age of discovery and as stipulated in the pact, this includes geographical knowledge (the knowledge of foreign lands, “frembder Land,” W, I, 70). Above all, however, magic affords Wagner something else: prestige in society, an abundance of experience, pleasure in life, riches, and luxury.28
27 Müller, 257: Fürwitz is the dominant theme the Faustbuch.
28 W, I, 69–71. See Barbara Könneker, “Faust und Wagner: Zum literarischen Phänomen des Außenseiters in der deutschen Literatur,” Akten des VIII. Internationalen Germanisten-Kongresses Tokyo 1990, XI (München, 1991), 31–39.
The author of the Wagnerbuch warns against the thirst for knowledge and intellectual curiosity only in passing and then only inasmuch as they make use of supernatural magic inimical to God.29 Instead of the warning against intellectual curiosity (“Fürwitz”) found on the title page of the Faustbuch, the title page of the Wagnerbuch courts the audience with a reference to knowledge about the New World, such as “what kinds of people live there” (“was für Leute darinn wohnen”) — cannibals, of course — what their “Religion” is like, what kinds of native products they have there, and what encounters they have had with the Spaniards.
“Striving after knowledge per se is not presented as something negative in the Wagnerbuch. In this respect, it represents a spirit diametrically opposed to [that of the Faustbuch].”30 This reflects the spirit of an empirical investigation of nature or curiositas that has emancipated itself from theological sanctions against the autonomous acquisition of knowledge.31 The Wagnerbuch recommends such study (“Studiren”) and inquiry (“nachforschung”) in mathematics, astronomy, optics, medicine, and even alchemy — that is, the practice of the “natural arts”
(“natürlichen Künst”) instead of the forbidden supernatural, “magical”
(“zauberischen”) ones — as activities pleasing to God. For it leads to the knowledge of “GOttes Allmächtigkeit / vnd [der] wund[der] die er in die natur gelägt hat” (“God’s omnipotence and the wonders he established in nature,” W, I, 88–89).
Of course, such a liberal understanding of curiositas, which contradicts the theology of both Christian confessions (and the Faustbuch), does not preclude the Protestant understanding of sin from defining the intellectual framework in the Wagnerbuch. Wagner escapes damnation no more than Faust, but not for the same reason, not for the same sin.
His sin is not his thirst for knowledge which, compared to Faust’s, is not especially distinctive of his mindset. Rather, it is his enslavement by a supernatural magic inimical to God, which, to be sure, gives him knowledge, but also something else decisively more important to him.
If, then, in the Wagnerbuch, the quest for knowledge is not a sin per se,
29 See the “Nachwort” in the Wagnerbuch, II, 342.
30 Ehrenfeuchter, 364; see also W, II, 342.
31 Müller, 257: “die Naturerkenntnis [hat] sich gegenüber dem theologischen Rahmen […] vollends verselbständigt.” See also Gerhild Scholz Williams, “Magie und Moral: Faust und Wagner,” Daphnis, XIX (1990), 17–18.
but serves the legitimate interests of the audience (to which the title page appeals), then more space can be given to the worldwide journeys.
And this is where the experience of the New World becomes especially meaningful in the Wagnerbuch. After all, knowledge of that part of the world rests on the solid and (for the author) unobjectionable scientific curiosity and experimental propensity of Columbus. In the Wagnerbuch, Columbus is pointedly showcased as the exemplary, empirically minded, calculating natural scientist in the fields of astronomy and mathematics (W, I, 78–81). The Wagnerbuch consequently offers a defense of the “natural” instead of the forbidden supernatural arts.
Such an attitude would have been judged impertinent and sinful by the author of the Faustbuch.
This difference in the orientation of the two chapbook authors as well the sins of their protagonists (an impertinent passion for knowledge of the world vs. magic as a way to pleasures of a questionable kind) also explains why the journeys in the Wagnerbuch are so much more exploratory, more packed with experience, more permeated by reality, and as a result more reader-friendly than in the Faustbuch, where they are brief, to the point, and at best satirical, as in the case of the religious bogeymen, the Pope and the Sultan. The Wagnerbuch author is much less engaged, not only psychologically, but also theologically, than the Faustbuch author. That is, he is not concerned, as was his predecessor, with the distress, fear, and despair sub specie theologiae of a protagonist who is bent on knowledge: not with his having forfeited God’s grace, as the author of the Faustbuch was, and not with the nagging and eminently Lutheran problem of becoming worthy of such grace through faith. On Faust’s third journey, the author of the Faustbuch pointedly identified any religiously significant building, and was careful also to mention their Christian inhabitants and sacred objects. The author of the Wagnerbuch (or his devil as tour guide) takes a completely different approach. In Lapland (W, I, 227–232), China (W, I, 280–291), and America (W, I, 239–
274), he features exotic regions and exhibits an enthusiastically worldly orientation and open-minded interest in the peoples who live there and are demonstrably heathen with their sorcerers, conjurors of devils, demonic gods, and the devil himself who resolutely plagues them (W, I, 250).