Faust: My Soul be Damned for the World, Volume I

E.A. Bucchianeri
AuthorHouse (2008)
ISBN 9781434390608
Reviewed by Dr. Michael Philliber for Reader Views (4/09)


The fascinating story about Dr. Faust is thick, deep, involved, and embedded with layers of editorial narratives by various compilers throughout the centuries of its formation.  This is the case made by E.A. Bucchianeri in the 2-volume scholarly work, “Faust: My Soul be Damned for the World.” The author has written a heavily footnoted, pedagogic work of over 1100 pages, which is a self-contained historical, psychological, literary library.

The first volume of “Faust: My Soul be Damned for the World” unravels the mythical from the (likely) historical person of Johannes Faustus. The writer then moves through several works from the 16th and 17th century of the Faustian legend, exposing the multifaceted layers of editorial expansions, moralizations, and propagandizing. This includes the Wolfenbuttel manuscript, the Orwin Edition of the English Faustbook, and the work of Christopher Marlowe.

The second, and far larger, volume of “Faust: My Soul be Damned for the World” covers the work of the one author who immortalized Faust for the world: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The author tangles with the formation of Goethe’s life and temperament, moving from his early background, through his university experience, to involvement with Freemasonry and the occult, on to the final chapters of his life. Bucchianeri reveals a full grasp of the life of Goethe, and how all the pieces of his life fed into the completion of his masterpiece.

On occasion Bacchianari shows a strident Roman Catholic edge, especially when describing Marlowe’s environment, where the writer waxes a bit harsh in anti-Protestant, anti-Lutheran, and anti-Calvinistic rhetoric. But if the person reading these tomes can get past that, they will find a vast resource of information and insight. Historians, occultists, Faust-lovers, and academics will draw great pleasure from the citations, observations, and applications in “Faust: My Soul be Damned for the World.”

The reader will quickly recognize that “Faust: My Soul be Damned for the World, Volume I and Volume II” by E.A. Bucchianeri is not a simple, easy work. It is meant to be a serious approach to the study of the Faustian legend, and one who picks up these volumes must be prepared to invest time and cerebral energies to successfully complete the material. But the labor will be well worth it.

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