Goethe's Faust

Faust "How uselessly I've laboured to collect
The treasures of the human intellect,
And now I sit and wonder what I've done.
I feel no new strength surging in my soul
I'm not a hairsbreadth taller, I'm not one
Step nearer to the infinite goal"

A significant theme emerging from the first volume of Goethe's Faust is the contrast between a life of study, deep introversion, observation and a life of direct action, involvment, raw emotion. Herman Hesse took this one theme, one contrast, and wrote a brilliant novel centred almost entirely on it, Narcissus and Goldmund.

I feel this theme addresses a fundamental element of human experience. As humans we have constructed complex, complicated cultures; epigenetic worlds. We are able to involve ourselves in these worlds and in some way detach ourselves from the physical, genetic world.

I think some people can involve themselves in an epigenetic world too much and lose connection with raw reality and direct experience. Thus it is understandable that Faust would, after years involvment in this world, want to break away from it. He undertsands that full, deep knowledge doesn't derive entirely from book learning.