This episode: we can’t leave well enough alone — another literary elaboration of the Faust legend by a member of the Mann family, Thomas Mann’s Doktor Faustus (1947.) We discuss: why learning is actually interesting to young people, the problems with studying theology and the humanities, why the devil owns music, whether committing yourself to creative excellence always means a deal with the devil, and what you’re not allowed to say about hell.
English translation of Mann’s Doktor Faustus
The “Jeremy Brett” version of Love’s Labor’s Lost.
Seven Heads, Ten Horns: The History of the Devil