Deal with the Devil

“For man always seeks a happiness far beyond that which is meted out to him.  But man's greatness consists in the very fact of wanting to be better than he is” (Alejo Carpentier, “Kingdom of this World” p. 179).

The characters in this novel go through awful difficulties. They live through a revolution where some are tortured, tossed aside, and eventually turned back over to slavery.  This book of incoherency and complete lack of structure, ends with a long paragraph of entirely lucid brilliance.  After experiencing this mad, upside-down, reversed, jumbled world, the author wanted the readers to know that through all the nonsensical aspects of life, you have to keep going, you have to keep progressing.

There is a German legend where a man named Dr. Faust makes a deal with the devil. There are many different versions of the legend (but the one my Classics professor likes is Goethe’s rendition). In the story, Faust exchanges his soul for unlimited knowledge and pleasure of the world. The deal is, as soon as Faust says (something to the effect of) “I could stay in this moment forever” then the devil gets his soul. So the devil gives Faust everything he could possibly want, in hopes that in any given moment, Faust won’t want to change his circumstances.  But Faust never says it. In the ending twist, Faust describes a time in the future where he is constantly changing. And says, “I could stay in that moment forever,” the moment of constant striving, moving, progressing, is where he could stay.

Different versions have different endings, but here, Faust tricks the devil and with a little help from God, Faust is saved from hell because of his desire for an unchanging state of always changing.

In the words of one of my favorite hymns, If You Could Hie to Kolob:

The works of God continue, and worlds and lives abound;

Improvement and progression have one eternal round…

There is no end to wisdom

There is no end to light…

There is no end to truth

There’s something innately necessary about progression. Maybe Faust or Carpentier are trying to say that somehow we’ll be protected from the devil if we keep moving forward?

But stagnancy is not an option.