The anchorite in the closing scene of Goethe's Faust through whose consciousness Faust ascends, and whom Steiner identified outright with Faust himself.
Doctor Marianus in Anthroposophy is the anchorite of the final scene of Goethe's Faust, read by Rudolf Steiner as the consciousness through which Faust's own ascent becomes visible. In the cycle Faust, the Aspiring Human (GA 272), lecturing at Dornach on 14 August 1915, Steiner observed that Goethe first named the figure Pater Marianus and only later Doctor Marianus, and that he stands in the poem so that Faust may appear through his consciousness. Steiner therefore let Doctor Marianus be Faust himself, the anchorite and the striving man being one being seen from two sides. Unlike the penitent women, who are drawn toward the Christ directly, Doctor Marianus is drawn first to what belongs to the Christ as feminine, and so beholds the Mater Gloriosa as the woman clothed with the sun, the moon reflecting beneath her. He marks the point where a soul stops merely striving and begins to behold its own striving.
Doctor Marianus is the last named speaker in Goethe's Faust before the Chorus Mysticus, an anchorite stationed in the highest cell of the mountain gorge. Steiner treated him not as a separate saint but as Faust's own awakened consciousness, the organ by which an ascending soul perceives what is happening to it. The Marian vision of that scene belongs to him, and through him to Faust.
In Steiner's Own Words
Here I have tried to take a liberty with respect to what is actually there in Faust. I have said: all this must be revealed to us through consciousness. Up to now, everything passes through the consciousness of the choir, the anchorites. Now Faust himself must ascend through consciousness, but he must ascend through full consciousness, he must fill a new consciousness completely, a new consciousness that is, however, identical with him, for he ascends as a fully developed human being. Much in Faust is still unfinished, and certainly unfinished is the Pater Marianus, whom Goethe later called Doctor Marianus. This Doctor Marianus is there so that Faust may appear through his consciousness, so I simply let Doctor Marianus be Faust himself. The anchorite Doctor Marianus is at the same time Doctor Marianus and Faust.
What it Means Today
The living continuation of this figure is not a commentary but a stage. Steiner gave the lecture quoted above on 14 August 1915 at Dornach, and its opening sentence tells the audience that the closing scene of Faust would be presented in eurythmy the following day. The Goetheanum Stage in Dornach still performs both parts of Goethe's Faust uncut, alone among theatre companies, a practice established in 1938 when Marie Steiner directed the first complete unabridged production of the whole work.
In that staging Doctor Marianus is cast and spoken as the perceiving centre of the scene: speech formation carries what he says, eurythmy carries what he sees, and the audience watches the beholding and the beheld at once. The reading can be tested on the page. Mark every line Doctor Marianus speaks in the Mountain Gorges scene and notice that each one reports a perception, while the penitent women around him report a history. Thalira synthesis: Doctor Marianus is Goethe's instruction to the reader that the end of Faust is not an event but an act of sight, and that Faust earns his ending by becoming someone who can see it.
Where to Read More
- Faust, the Aspiring Human, GA 272
- Find Steiner on Goethe's Faust at SteinerBooks [THALIRA_BLOG_LINKS_PLACEHOLDER]