Episoder
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Walpurgis Night, April 30, the day before May Day, an old fertility festival demonized by northern Christianity into a witchesâ Sabbath. Goethe backs away from initial plans to show an orgy, substituting a strange âIntermezzo,â but there is a catalogue of demonic female spirits, from Lilith to a figure who looks like Gretchen, with a red line across her neck.
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Gretchen distrusts Faustâs lack of religion. What does he think about God? âFeeling is all,â he says. Faust, with Mephistophelesâ help, kills Gretchenâs brother Valentine in a sword fight. Then Faust and Mephistopheles begin ascending a mountain to attend the witchesâ sabbath on Walpurgis Night.
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The âGretchen tragedyâ is not a tragedy at all but Aristotelian or Shakespearean standards, not to fall of a great and elite figure but of a common and unknown one. Perhaps more accurately called âmelodrama,â an important genre in the 19th century. Faust seduces Gretchen, who falls in love with him. Her friend Martha, a much more down-to-earth figure.
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The Witchâs Kitchen episode is satiricâthe Witchâs servants are marmosets, and the spell by which she makes a youth potion for Faust parodies the symbolism of alchemy. Faust sees an ideal Feminine image in a mirror. On the street, he sees and is infatuated with Margarete, or Gretchen. He and Mephistopheles snoop in her bedroom and leave jewels.
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The black poodle turns into Mephistopheles, who escapes by having a rat gnaw a hole in the pentagram that traps him. But he returns. The famous pactâwith the twist that what Faust demands is unsatisfied desire. The minute in which he is fulfilled enough to wish the moment to lingerâthen he loses. Mephistopheles disguised as Faust demoralizes an idealistic student. In Auerbachâs tavern, drinking, drinking songs, and hijinks. --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/michael-dolzani/support
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Distracted from suicide, Faust walks with Wagner among the townspeople celebrating Easter and spring. Faustâs famous speech about having âtwo souls,â one aspiring upward, the other holding fast to earth. A black poodle follows him back to his study, where, in another famous speech, he changes âIn the beginning was the Wordâ to âIn the beginning was the act.â The black poodle turns into Mephistopheles.
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Faust has mastered all conventional knowledge and finds it worthless, so he turns to âforbidden knowledge,â a book of magic. He sees a vision of celestial harmony, the Macrocosm, but it is transcendent and beyond him. So he conjures the Earth Spirit, but is terrified. The Earth Spirit dismisses him with contempt. Faust is about to drink poison in despair, but is distracted by Easter celebrations outside his study.
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Three preliminary poems deepen the meaning and experience of the poem to follow. The third, the âPrologue in Heaven,â is a revisionist version of the Book of Job. God and Mephistopheles make a betâbut about Faust, not Job. God says that humanity is lazy and needs to be pricked out of its passivity by the likes of such a ârogueâ or Trickster.
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The greatest work of German literature by Germanâs greatest writer, by reputation. Goethe as Renaissance man with accomplishments in many fields. The Romantic style of Faust: the Contraries of visionary idealism and down-to-earth satire. The Faust legend. Marloweâs Dr. Faustus and other works about Faust. The development of Faust over 60 years.
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Prosperoâs melancholy speech about life as a vanishing illusion seems to subvert the paradisal vision of the wedding masque. But the illusions of art provide the model of a greater reality and the power to work towards it by changing people. In three hours, true love has transpired, people have been rehabilitated and changed for the better, and the dead have come back to life. Life is âstrange,â life is a âwonder.â
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Prospero summons up a masque, a spectacle in honor of the newly betrothed Ferdinand and Miranda. Using characters from Classical mythology, it dramatizes the four levels of the Chain of Being, especially the paradisal imagery of the Golden Age. Then, suddenly, Prospero dismisses the vision, and gives his famous speech. All things pass away leaving ânot a rack behind.â How to reconcile this with the ideal vision?
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In the central act, Prospero puts three sets of characters through ordeals that are at once punitive, when appropriate, and transformative. Ferdinand humbles himself to draw logs to win Mirandaâand does. Stephano, Trinculo, and Calibanâs attempt at a Jan.6-style insurrection is turned into farce by Ariel. The Court Party is offered an illusory banquet, which vanishes and a harpy accuses all but Gonzalo.
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Gonzalo indicates that he does not mean literally his speech about ruling the island to excel the Golden Age. But in what sense, then, does he mean it? While the Court Party sleeps, Antonio and Sebastian plot murder. Caliban meets the two lower-class, satiric characters: Trinculo, the jester, and Stephano, a âdrunken butler,â and begins to worship them as gods.
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Ferdinand and Miranda see each other and fall in love. Prospero pretends to be the irate senex or possessive father of New Comedy. The Court Party: Alonso is in deep depression; Gonzalo tries to get him to change his negative, hopeless attitude, but is countered by the nihilistic cynicism of Antonio and Sebastian.
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The long but necessary back story of Propero and Mirandaâs exile. Prosperoâs servants, the elemental spirits Ariel and Caliban. Shakespeareâs prophetic foreshadowing of later imperialism and colonialism in the treatment of the native Caliban. Shakespeareâs most famous song. Ferdinand and Miranda meet.
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Prospero, in Act 1, Scene 2, gives a long speech to his daughter Miranda telling how, 12 years ago, he was deposed as Duke of Milan to this island by his evil brother Antonio. Prospero and the theme of the wielding of power, in four roles: as ruler, as magician, as artist (creator of theatrical illusions), and as educator.
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The four romances at the end of Shakespeareâs career, belonging to an age-old genre, the tale of wonders and marvels, from the Wanderings of the Odyssey to fantasy and science fiction in our time. Act 1, scene one. Why try to stage a storm at sea? A touchstone: how various people face imminent death.
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The Duke returns and passes judgment. Mariana pleads for Angelo, wanting him despite his faults. Remarkably, Isabella pleads for Angelo. Four possible weddings: Angelo and Mariana, Isabella and the Duke, Claudio and Julietta, Lucio and the prostitute he got pregnant. A happy ending? The double meaning of âmeasure for measure,â according to justice or to mercy.
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The Dukeâs plan to fool Angelo by substituting the head of Barnardine wonât work because Barnardine humorously refuses to be hanged. So they substitute the head of an already dead criminal for Claudioâs. The Duke âreturnsâ in Act 5. Isabella and Mariana accuse Angelo but are arrested for slander. Lucio unhoods the Friarâto reveal the Duke.
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In the middle of Act 3, at a dark moment, the plot turns. The Duke speaks of Mariana, abandoned by Angelo, now in the âmoated grange.â Tennysonâs famous monologue âMariana.â Pompey and Mistress Overdone are arrested. Lucio has gotten a prostitute pregnant and refuses marriage and child support.
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