Faust’s Wanderings
Abstract
The figure of Faust, along with the motif of the desire for knowledge, self-knowledge and eternal youth, and finally confrontation with evil personified by Satan, belongs to the archetypes of European culture. The author traces Faust’s journey from the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries, when he emerged as a historical figure and became the hero of folk legend, to the present day. At the end of the 16th century, the Frankfurt printer Johann Spiess dedicated a book to him, which became extremely popular. Then Christopher Marlowe and Johann Wolfgang Goethe wrote about him, and finally Thomas Mann. Jackiewicz describes the transformations of this figure in the context of historical and cultural conditions. He is also interested in how Faust was adapted in film art, first in the silent era (by Louis Lumiére, Georges Méliès and Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau), and to the researcher’s contemporary times. He devotes a lot of space to the analysis of René Clair’s film Beauty and the Devil (La beauté du diable, 1950). He compares Clair’s vision with literary prototypes, but above all, he places him in the field of the French humanistic tradition, as well as in relation to Jean Marcenac’s novella. (Non-reviewed material; originally published in Kwartalnik Filmowy 1953, no. 10, pp. 40-65).
Keywords:
Faust, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, René Clair, satan, archetypeReferences
Nie dotyczy / Not applicable
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Authors
Aleksander Jackiewiczkwartalnik.filmowy@ispan.pl
Poland
Born in 1915, died in 1988; Polish film scholar, film critic and author. He took Polish studies and journalism in Warsaw. In 1939, Jackiewicz published his first novel, Człowiek i jego cień [A Man and His Shadow]. During WWII he fought in horse artillery units. After demobilization he worked in a mine in the Zagłębie Dąbrowskie. For refusing to sign the Deutsche Volkliste he was imprisoned in the Racibórz prison camp and subsequently went through several labour camps. Then he fled to Vienna, where he lived to see liberation. Jackiewicz worked there at the Polish Repatriation Mission and later lectured at the University of Vienna. Between 1946 and 1947, he served as a cultural attaché. Having returned to Poland, he was a civil servant and then became a lecturer and researcher at the University of Warsaw, in the Faculty of Journalism at the Higher School of Political Science, and then at the Łódź Film School. Initially, his main area of interest was literature, but gradually he became preoccupied with film studies. In 1953, he began working at the National Institute of Art which, in 1960, was transformed into the Institute of Art, Polish Academy of Sciences. Jackiewicz was associated with this institution until the end of his life. There, he supervised the renowned Film Studies Department. Jackiewicz had a strong influence on the direction of research and he created an integrated and creative community; he also ran doctoral seminars. He was close to French humanities. Especially those strands of it in which the boundaries between literature, philosophy and art theory, in contrast to more disciplined Anglo-Saxon thought, were fluid. Jackiewicz was involved in popularizing film through discussion clubs as well as radio and television programmes. In addition to hundreds of magazine reviews, he wrote more than a dozen books on film, including Latarnia czarnoksięska [The Wizard’s Lantern] (1956, 1981), Film jako powieść XX wieku [Film as the 20th Century Novel] (1968), Niebezpieczne związki literatury i filmu [The Dangerous Liaisons of Literature and Film] (1971), Antropologia filmu [The Anthropology of Film] (1975), Fenomenologia kina. T. 1: Narodziny dzieła filmowego [The Phenomenology of Cinema. Vol. 1: The Birth of the Film Work] (1981), the four volumes of Moja filmoteka [My Filmotheque] (1983-1989), as well as fifteen novels.
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