Faust's Two Souls
About
Introduction
In Goethe's Faust, Faust explained that he possessed two souls - one that sought divinity, purity, and the higher powers of Nature, while the other was driven by sensual pleasures and earthly desires. For example, in Scene 11, Faust showed the struggle and clash between the two souls as follows:
- Earthly
- Hold! hold! It will!—If such my flame,
- And for the sense and power intense
- I seek, and cannot find, a name;earthly
- Divine
- Then range with all my senses through creation,
- Craving the speech of inspiration,
- And call this ardor, so supernal,
- Endless, eternal and eternal,—
- Is that a devilish lying game?
Research Question
As shown in this excerpt, Faust was in a constant struggle and underwent conflict between his earthly soul and divine one. These two souls were in clash and each tried to dominate and supress the other. Therefore, they were not equally represented throughout In other words, each soul sometimes dominated some scenes over the other but it was difficulty to quanitfy each soul's representation and knew which soul had the overall domination. This project, therefore, seeks to analyze Faust's actions, thoughts, and wishes throughout Part 1 of Faust, and find which of these souls each act, thought, or wish aligns with.
- In the light of the two souls' domination and representation, How many times does each soul reveal itself in Part 1?
- Are there some scenes are more dominated by one of the two souls over the other?
Method of research
In order to answer these questions, we used the follwoing technologies xml, schema Relax NG, XSLT, HTML, CSS, and SVG. We tagged Part 1, which includes 26 scenes. We traced Faust's speeches throughout the play and classifies each of his sentences as an either earthily thought, wish, or an action or a divine one. Then, we used XSLT to show the graphs and SVG to show...
