Epic Solutions of the “Goethe Problem” in Lukács and Moretti

Abstract

What made Goethe’s Faust so special to Georg Lukács? The contribution explores possible answers and examines the theoretical implications of the unique position Goethe’s Faust occupies in Lukács’s postwar writings. During his engagement Lukács modifies some of his most dearly held convictions. For example, his criticism of mixing genres disappears in his identification of Faust’s peculiar form as an “epic-dramatic form” said to approximate the elusive epical poem. But as such, it is also the paradoxical manifestation of a singular form without predecessors or followers. The essay concludes with a coda on the aftermath of Lukács’s Faust obsession in the work of the latter-day Marxist Franco Moretti.