Was Faust Caught in the Web of Maya?
A scene from Part IV of Berlioz’s “La Damnation de Faust” with John Relyea as Mephistopheles.
Photo: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera
Taken during the final dress rehearsal on November 4, 2008 at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City.
I recently watched Berlioz’s The Damnation of Faust, performed by the Metropolitan Opera Company. Based on Goethe’s play (Part I), Faust is a crotchety old scholar in search of life’s meaning. He longs for a transcendental moment, a knowledge beyond what the mind can grasp. Enter Mephistopheles, the Devil, who seizes on Faust’s despair and offers a deal he can’t refuse: knowledge, power, youth and love. But there’s no free lunch; at death, he must surrender his soul.
Absorbed as I was by the music and singing, it struck me that the Devil had played a nasty trick on Faust. Sure, the old man was now young again, but he was caught in a web of lust, murder, and revenge. By the end of the opera, Faust has impregnated Margaret, his love, and inadvertently poisoned her mother, after which Margaret drowns her child, is convicted of murder, and lands up in prison. To save his beloved, Faust sells his soul to Devil and (no good turn goes unpunished) lands up in an unspeakably grotesque hell.
As someone with a background in India, it looked like Mephistopheles had pulled the Indian wool over dear old Faust’s eyes. He was hopelessly plunged into the unreality that is maya. According to the Upanishads, maya is like a veil that prevents us from seeing the world as it really is. It is India’s cosmic “trick.”
Berlioz’s opera ends here. In Goethe’s Faust Part II similarities between the Faust legend and Indian philosophy depart. Our hero/anti-hero ends up in heaven, reunited with his bartered soul. From the lens of Indian philosophy, the Christian world of heaven and hell—with its angels dancing above and raging fires below—might also be considered the world of maya. In India, salvation is not heaven, but a deep understanding that one’s true self (atman) is none other than the all-encompassing Absolute (brahman), described in Brihadaranyaka Upanishad III.8.8
[Brahman is] not gross, not subtle, not short, not long, not glowing, not shadowy, not dark, not attached, flavorless, smell-less, eye-less, ear-less, speech-less, mind-less, breath-less, mouth-less, not internal, not external, consuming nothing, and consumed by nothing. (translated by S. Radhakrishnan)
If we confine ourselves to Berlioz’s opera, Faust has become trapped in a world of love, crime, and deception. He is caught in a web of maya. Which raises the question: was Germany’s greatest playwright influence by Indian thought?
We know Goethe loved Kalidasa, India’s favorite poet. His Prologue to the Theater of Faust—where the stage manager tells the audience of their wisdom and cultured disposition to seek their blessings and patronage—is modeled on the prologue of Kalidasa’s play Shakutala.
So is it far-fetched to wonder if Goethe’s Faust was inspired by the Upanishads or Shankara’s Vedanta philosophy, which builds on the Upanishadic notion that maya has played all of us? I doubt it, if for no other reason than the fact that the Faust legend goes back to the sixteenth century. More likely, Goethe seized on a universal truth. We don’t need Indian philosophy to know humans are forever caught in a web of worldly desires and that even actions meant to undo our mistakes (however well intended) often lead us deeper into the muck.
A scene from Part IV of Berlioz’s “La Damnation de Faust” with John Relyea as Mephistopheles.
Photo: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera
Taken during the final dress rehearsal on November 4, 2008 at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City.
Nevertheless, as I watched the production, I was struck at how well the Faust story illustrates maya’s cosmic play. But reveling in the music, the colorful costumes, and the captivating librettos, I thanked God that Berlioz was an artist and not Indian philosopher. An opera about a limitless, unnamable, immortal, soul would have made for a very dull evening.