ABSTRACT
Faust in Russia is a vast topic to which we can scarcely do justice here. Nevertheless, a few comments might be offered by way of introduction. The Russian literati took to Faust in a way that no other European nation did, Germany excepted, of course. From the moment Goethe published Faust, Part I, it was read and acclaimed in Russia. Pushkin wrote a short play, A Scene from Faust, in 1828 based on it. In 1858, Turgenev published a short story entitled Faust. In 1908, Valery Bryusov’s novel The Fiery Angel took up the Faust theme; it was later turned into an opera by Prokofiev. These are only the well-known Fausts in Russia; there are many more minor ones. And besides all these works, throughout Russian literature there are Faustian elements such as the nightmare appearance of the Devil to Ivan Karamazov, which, as we have seen, was the model for a similar scene in Doctor Faustus and, as we shall see, also in Doctor Zhivago. Goethe’s work was held in highest regard in Russia, a view already expressed by Pushkin when he said, “Faust is among the greatest creations of the human spirit”.
