ABSTRACT
The name of Faust has cropped up several times in this discussion; indeed, it would not have been possible to talk of Hoffmann’s influence without making such references. In Faust, the loneliness of the urge for knowledge is set off against the desire for pleasure in Don Juan. Faust and Don Juan are the Middle Age’s Titans and giants. Faust’s ambitions have usually involved a desire to know or experience everything or to set the world to rights, to play God. In Wiese’s play, Don Juan’s attempt to be a superman hinges on the fact that unerring pursuit of his desires logically demands that he escape from the apparently inevitable human consequence: remorse.
