The Holy Roman Empire is broke, but Faust and Mephistopheles “solve” the Emperor’s problem by inventing wealth that only exists on paper—in short, by inventing modern finance, based not on material wealth like gold but symbolic wealth like money. It is fake alchemy, a con job. It is also the world of modern finance.

Goethe does judge Faust morally, but not in the Aristotelian framework of the tragic hero, which is how he’d like to see himself. He is instead an antihero, redeemed, but not by the sacrifice of Christ: instead, perhaps unfortunately, through that of an innocent female figure, saving an unworthy man. The metaphor of the waterfall, the rainbow created by the sun within its spray: spirit immanent in this material world.

For stark power, the end of Part 1 is almost unequalled in modern literature. Gretchen, mad, will not leave the dungeon, and Faust leaves her. Why is there a Part 2? In it, Faust moves in new directions: into the larger sociopolitical realm, and into transpersonal psychological depths. The difficulty of making a moral judgment of Faust.

Walpurgis Night, April 30, the day before May Day, an old fertility festival demonized by northern Christianity into a witches’ Sabbath. Goethe backs away from initial plans to show an orgy, substituting a strange “Intermezzo,” but there is a catalogue of demonic female spirits, from Lilith to a figure who looks like Gretchen, with a red line across her neck.

Gretchen distrusts Faust’s lack of religion. What does he think about God? “Feeling is all,” he says. Faust, with Mephistopheles’ help, kills Gretchen’s brother Valentine in a sword fight. Then Faust and Mephistopheles begin ascending a mountain to attend the witches’ sabbath on Walpurgis Night.

The “Gretchen tragedy” is not a tragedy at all but Aristotelian or Shakespearean standards, not to fall of a great and elite figure but of a common and unknown one. Perhaps more accurately called “melodrama,” an important genre in the 19th century. Faust seduces Gretchen, who falls in love with him. Her friend Martha, a much more down-to-earth figure.

The Witch’s Kitchen episode is satiric—the Witch’s servants are marmosets, and the spell by which she makes a youth potion for Faust parodies the symbolism of alchemy. Faust sees an ideal Feminine image in a mirror. On the street, he sees and is infatuated with Margarete, or Gretchen. He and Mephistopheles snoop in her bedroom and leave jewels.

Distracted from suicide, Faust walks with Wagner among the townspeople celebrating Easter and spring. Faust’s famous speech about having “two souls,” one aspiring upward, the other holding fast to earth. A black poodle follows him back to his study, where, in another famous speech, he changes “In the beginning was the Word” to “In the beginning was the act.” The black poodle turns into Mephistopheles.

Faust has mastered all conventional knowledge and finds it worthless, so he turns to “forbidden knowledge,” a book of magic. He sees a vision of celestial harmony, the Macrocosm, but it is transcendent and beyond him. So he conjures the Earth Spirit, but is terrified. The Earth Spirit dismisses him with contempt. Faust is about to drink poison in despair, but is distracted by Easter celebrations outside his study.