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Naming Goethe’s Faust: A Matter of Significance

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Abstract

Why Goethe’s Faust bears the personal name “Heinrich” has not been convincingly explained by far-reaching research into the sources of the text. However, a semiotic approach that deciphers the name as a polyvalent semiotic system offers new perspectives.

Zusammenfassung

Weshalb Goethes Faust “Heinrich” als Vornamen trägt, konnte durch weitschweifende Quellenforschung noch nicht überzeugend geklärt werden. Dagegen eröffnet ein semiotischer Ansatz durch eine intensive Dechiffrierung des Namens als vielsagendes Zeichensystem neue Perspektiven.

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Literature

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  116. On Beatrice as “an arrogant queen”, “a stern mother,” see Allan H. Gilbert, “Beatrice in Dante’s Plot,” A Dante Symposium in Commemoration of the 700th Anniversary of the Poet’s Birth (1265–1965), ed. William de Sua, Ginor Rizzo, Chapel Hill 1965, 99–113, here 107; and Singleton (note 47), 742.

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  117. Dino S. Cervigni, “Beatrice’s Act of Naming,” Lectura Dantis 8 (1991), 85–99, here 90–91. My analysis depends heavily on his reading.

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  118. Compare James Simpson, Goethe and Patriarchy: Faust and the Fates of Desire, Oxford 1998, 33–34.

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  119. On eightness and baptismal fonts, see in addition to Dölger (note 82), the wealth of information in Paul A. Underwood, “The Fountain of Life in Manuscripts of the Gospels,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 5 (1950), 41–138. From Underwood’s encompassing discussion it is possible to develop an explanation as to why the whole of this scene is set in a garden; space will not permit doing so here.

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  120. Her recoil mirrors Dido’s reaction to Aeneas in the underworld, which Dante had explicitly alluded to in Purgatorio XXIX-XXX; see Peter S. Hawkins, “Dido, Beatrice, and the Signs of Ancient Love,” in: The Poetry of Allusion: Virgil and Ovid in Dante’s “Commedia,” ed. Rachel Jacoff, Jeffrey T. Schnapp, Stanford 1991, 113–130, rpt. in his Dante’s Testaments: Essays in Scriptural Imagination, Stanford 1999, 125–142.

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  121. See Otto Pniower, “Goethes Faust und das Hohe Lied,” Goethe-Jahrbuch 13 (1892), 181–198.

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  122. It is not fashionable to see Faust’s shortcomings, but see Alberto Destro, “The Guilty Hero, or the Tragic Salvation of Faust,” trans. Charles Hindley, A Companion to Goethe’s Faust: Parts I and II, ed. Paul Bishop, Rochester, NY 2001, 56–75; originally published as “L’eroe colpevole o la salvezza tragica di Faust,” Studia theodisca 3 (1996), 109–126.

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  123. Leslie A. Howe, “Queer Revelations: Desire, Identity, and Self-Deceit,” The Philosophical Forum 36.3 (2005), 221–242, here 242.

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    Arnd Böhm

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[…] der Eigenname eines Menschen ist nicht etwa wie ein Mantel, der bloß um ihn her hängt und an dem man allenfalls noch zupfen und zerren kann, sondern ein vollkommen passendes Kleid, ja wie die Haut selbst ihm über und über angewachsen, an der man nicht schaben und schinden darf, ohne ihn selbst zu verletzen

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Böhm, A. Naming Goethe’s Faust: A Matter of Significance. Dtsch Vierteljahrsschr Literaturwiss Geistesgesch 80, 408–434 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03375663

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