Consider the following exchange between Faust and his servant Wagner, part of a larger argument on the value of studying the past. WAGNER How hard it is to master all the stuff For dealing with each and every source, And before you’ve travelled half the course, Pooer devil, you have gone and left this life. … Continue reading “Consider the following exchange between Faust and his servant Wagner, part of a”
Consider the following exchange between Faust and his servant Wagner, part of a larger argument on the value of studying the past. WAGNER How hard it is to master all the stuff For dealing with each and every source, And before you’ve travelled half the course, Pooer devil, you have gone and left this life. FAUST Parchment, tell me,– that’s the sacred fount you You drink out of, to slake your eternal thirst? The only true refreshment that exists You get from where? Yourself–where all things start. WAGNER But sir, it’s such a pleasure, isn’t it, To enter into another ages’ spirit, To see what the sages before us thought And measure how far since we’ve got. FAUST As far as to the start no doubt! Your history, why, it’s a joke; Bygone times are a seven-sealed book. What you call an age’s spirit, What is it? Nothing but your own poor spirit With the age reflected as you see it. Faust Part 1 [NAWL 2 269] Using references to FOUR of the works from the past listed below, PLUS your own experience researching your presentation, write an essay supporting either position – or explain why both are,or are not valid. Christine de Pizan: from The Book of the City of Ladies Miguel de Cervantes: from Don Quixote Frederick Douglass Narrative of the Life Gustave Flaubert “A Simple Heart” Jorge Luis Borges “The Garden of the Forking Paths” The post Consider the following exchange between Faust and his servant Wagner, part of a appeared first on Essaybrook.
