Interpretation of the text in the conditions of ideological discourse:Interpretation of Goethe's Faust in Soviet Georgian German Philology/Studies

Abstract

During the Soviet period (1921-1990), Goethe's Faust was mainly discussed by Georgian Germanists of the first generation in their researches: in particular, Otar Jinoria - see his monograph Goethe's Creative Path (1966, pp. 259-396), Grigol Khavtasi - see his essays The problem of Goethe's Faust and Goethe's attitude towards the French bourgeois revolution from his book Researches from German Classical Literature (1975, pp. 196-231, 258-283) and Davit Lashkaradze - see his work Goethe in Georgian Literature (1983; pp. 110-241), as well as the literary critic, Prof. Mikheil Kveselava - see his monograph Faustian Paradigms, Book I (1961, pp. 372-453).

     Since the research by these authors was written in the Soviet period and shared Marxist research methods (dialectical materialism) and the postulate of class struggle, it is clear that Goethe's Faust discussed by them has a Soviet ideological basis: namely, in their works, Goethe's tragedy is predominantly based on bourgeois and socialist revolutionary ideas. It was discussed and read from the perspective of criticism of bourgeois-feudal social existence, class struggle or communist eschatology, or dialectical materialism, from the perspectives of Friedrich Engels' vulgar form of historicism or radical Soviet Marxism. In the same extensive review dedicated to M. Kveselava's Faustian Paradigms, Shalva Nutsubidze criticised the author for the "Marxist methodology" of the research (that is, the method of dialectical materialism) and the "Marxist worldview" (1966, p. 360), while in O. Jinoria's work Goethe's Creative Path, seven whole pages are devoted to the criticism of the Western bourgeoisie based on the works of Marx-Engels and G. Plekhanov (1966, pp. 300-307), to further substantiate the uniquely "bourgeois" essence of Mephistopheles from the perspective of class struggle or struggle between social classes.

These ideologized interpretations lead researchers (O. Jinoria,         M. Kveselava, Gr. Khavtasi, etc.) to curious conclusions, to put it mildly, and fundamentally wrong points of view, as if "Faust" has "essentially a Jacobin spirit", as if Goethe and his character Faust should "approve the idea of a revolutionary struggle" and Goethe's literary heritage (including "Faust") should have a "revolutionary essence" (Jinoria, 1966, pp. 109, 110, 371), as if Goethe and Faust were "revolutionary" "Jacobins", "to be fighting communists" (Jinoria, 1966, p. 112, 113, 466) or they were planning to build a "socialist state" in the future (Jinoria, 1966, p. 465-466), or they were going to build a "communist society" by renewing Faustian ideas (Kveselava , 1961, p. 209), as if Goethe and Faust more or less shared the ideas of the Great French Revolution of 1789 (Khavtasi 1975, p. 268, 282), or, at least, they were "raised" with these ideas and "Faust" himself was a "revolutionary" to be a work carrying an idea" (Jinoria, 1966, p. 387, 390), as if they aspired to the formation of a "classless communist society" (Jinoria, 1966, p. 112, 318; Kveselava, 1961, p. 105-106), as if the confrontation between Faust and Mephistopheles allegorically represents the "class struggle" within the western bourgeois society (Kveselava, 1961, p. 104), as if Faust was in "irreconcilable opposition" with "capitalist society" (Jinoria, 1966, p. 390), and the historical Faust himself - Georgius Faustus (according to M. Kveselava, Johann Faust) - to be "left-wing" (Kveselava, 1961, p. 205), or as if "Faust" was "the crown of Goethe's materialistic-humanistic thought" (Jinoria, 1966, p. 274) and it turns out that "Goethe shows a symbolic picture of Mephistophelian- How Faustian-socialist humanism emerges from the contradictions of capitalist reality in the form of their ideological overcoming and removal" (Jinoria, 1966, p. 466), while Faust himself seemed to have a "socialist dream" (Jinoria, 1966, p. 463) and others.

Apart from the fact that the Georgian Germanists of the Soviet period studying "Faust" came to absurd conclusions, against the background of similar absurd and ideologized interpretations, the issues of symbolism (images) and poetics of Goethe's "Faust" are completely ignored in the Faustian studies of Georgian Germanic studies of the Soviet period, i.e. detailed discussion of purely literary and poetical issues, which is natural, in a sense that the Georgian "Marxist" "Goethologists" or "Faust experts" were so carried away by the interpretation of "Faust" from the perspectives of dialectical materialism, class struggle or communist exatology that the issues of the poetics of the tragedy were left aside.

      Thus, the situation here was the same as in the communist part of Germany, the German Democratic Republic (GDR, DDR), where the study of "Faust" was also largely ideologized and Goethe's tragedy was discussed from the perspectives of class struggle or communist eschatology and in the context of building socialism (Schmidt, 2011, p. 316-319).

     In such ideologized interpretations, Faust was brought out as a "reformer", a "flagman" of machine-technical "progress", and a builder of a new "socialist state". That is why he, as a character, was often heroized, and his deeds - idealized: compare, "a brave fighter for the happiness of the people", "his practical activities aimed at the welfare of the people" (Khavtasi, 1975, p. 214, 218), "a militant humanist" (Jinoria, 1966, p. 377) and others.

      Obsessed with Leadership and violent Faust, who constantly referred to the population of his colony as "servants" ("Knechte") and forced them to worship him, it was probably his visionary-utopian-dictatorial posture that attracted and fascinated both Nazi Germany and Communist Germany (GDR). ideologists and tyrant rulers, and they used Goethe's tragedy as a lever to strengthen the legitimacy of their regimes, which was facilitated by the ideologized interpretations of "Faust" tested and dominated in the "Goethe Studies" and Germanistics of both Nazi and Communist Germany (GDR).

     As seen above, a similar situation existed in the German studies and "Goethology" of the Soviet Union and Soviet Georgia, where the ideologized interpretations of "Faust" were one of the levers for the legitimation of the Soviet regime and the propaganda of the utopian communist aspirations set by the Bolshevik-Communist Party. These ideologized interpretations of Goethe's "Faust" in the Soviet space and the heroization of Faust's character as a political leader, should have originated from the works of A. Lunacharsky, Soviet People's Commissar of Education, who is often quoted by O. Jinoria in his work (Jinoria, 1966, 415-416).