ABSTRACT
This chapter presents evidence of the route Goethe had taken in order to arrive at the position implied by the scene 'Wald und Hohle', namely a bitter rejection of the values of the patriarchal idyll. The exchange between Tasso and the Prinzessin comes from the play as it was revised in the years 1788 to 1789, that is after the composition of the Faust episode. In 'Abend' Faust comes in the company of Mephistopheles, who bears the visible marks of his genealogy, horns and cloven hoof. Torquato Tasso depicts the failure of the female counsellor's therapy, Iphigenie auf Tauris shows its success, and if within the fictive world of Torquato Tasso Arcadia can only be inside the poet-hero, in Iphigenie auf Tauris the heterotopia is the outward scene of the action itself. Whether the setting is Palestine or Arcadia, altgermanisch or oriental, past or future, the heterotopia is potentially the site of the idyll.
