Abstract / DOI
Faust’s Temptations. The prologue in Goethe’s «Faust» is commonly associated by commentators with the quarrel between God and Satan in the Book of Job, but not with the sixth petition of the Lord’s Prayer. Goethe transforms the motif of temptation by disconnecting it from the question of salvation. Mephistopheles tempts Faust in order to stimulate his genuinly modern and subjective human pursuit. «Faust» is not a heroic epos, but a tragedy and a warning; it does have a salvific but immanent undertone.