Note on this edition: this is an electronic version of the 1999 book ...

200Demonic Texts and Textual Demonstion used here is, however, the story of Faust in its different versions. Barkerhas admitted that he repeatedly varies the Faustian theme in his works: TheDamnation Game, Hellraiser and The Last Illusion are all according to himfundamentally Faust stories. 28 In this particular piece Goethe’s Faust (1808-32) with its reference to the alchemists’ dream of making a homunculus (asmall artificial human) is important. 29 Goethe was interested in the “daemonic”spirit of Faust expressed in his ceaseless striving for more knowledge,more experiences, in his pursuit beyond all conventional morality orideas of good or evil. The endless wanderings and experiments of Barker’sDevil follow very much the same imperative. 30 Furthermore, the question oftradition and originality, of machine-like determination and free will, arecentral to both the form and content of the play.Jeffrey Burton Russell calls the figure of Faust “the single most popularcharacter in the history of Western Christian culture” – overtaken only byChrist, Mary and the Devil. 31 This demands quite a liberal interpretation of aliterary “figure” and opens up some problems, especially in a case likeBarker’s play. “The History of the Devil” attributes to the Devil some of theexperimental curiosity that traditionally belongs to the figure of Faust. TheFaustian tradition seems to have gone through a reversal. The original sixteenth-centuryversion of the story was already an important modificationof a medieval legend about the pact with the Devil. Russell cites the followingchanges from the earlier tradition:[Faust’s] story is homocentric. In the medieval tales the tension is betweenthe Devil and the Christ, or the Virgin , or another saint. [...] But inFaust, the tension is between Devil and man [...].Second, this homocentrism is closely tied to individualism. [...] Fausthas no recourse to a community or a communion of saints. [...]Third, the story is pessimistic [...] like the horror films of our own century[...].Fourth, the story reveals a Protestant and modern ambivalence towardknowledge [...].Fifth, the character of Mephistopheles begins a transformation of theDevil’s character: he is at least a little sympathetic with his victim, and heshows some small signs of introspection [...]. The internalization and humanizationof Satan’s character became the main theme in the post-Faustian literature of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 3228 Ibid., xiii. Cf. Barker - Jones 1991, 113 (“The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus”[1988]).29 Goethe, Faust II (1832/1959, 99-106).30 At one point, for example, the Devil tries to justify his actions during the massacreat Bucephalus (the Greek settlement in India) as an experiment: “If you were givenpower over a species, wouldn’t you want to examine its passions? It was my sentimentaleducation.” (HD, 293.)31 Russell 1986/1992, 58. To reach his conclusion on the dominance of the Faust as aliterary figure Russell is ready to include even the legend of Don Juan “with all its manifestationsfrom Mozart’s Don Giovanni to Shaw’s Don Juan in Hell” as Faustian (ibid.).32Ibid., 63-64.