Mephistopheles

But also, let's do remember John Lovitz.

In one of his first roles on SNL, he did play Mephistopheles on The People's Court.

Yes.

An absolutely classic bit that somewhere, Greg, I still have on videotape 40 years later.

He's the Mr. Bean of the Kremlin.

He's also Mephistopheles and all of the other things all at the same time.

It's just extraordinary what they say about it.

All right.

So perhaps part of the threat of Lilith was her capacity to be both male and female, and perhaps inspiration for her later need for equality when she became the first wife of Adam came from this male-female duality.

Additionally, Lilith briefly appears in the Valpurgis Night scene in Goethe's 1808 play Faust a Tragedy, again as an evil temptress, frightening even Mephistopheles.

Though by the mid-19th century, she would be reimagined by the English painter and poet Dante Gabriele Rossetti as a young woman who admires her own reflection while combing her hair.

This 19th century artistic change from a woman of supernatural evil to a woman of flesh and blood whose vanity and narcissism harmed those, particularly the men, around her, would mirror the change vampires would go through at the beginning of the 20th century, which we will discuss at the end of the episode.

And a huge part of it's rooted in this existential shame and horror at the condition of being human and the fact that life is rife with suffering and a lot of it's unjustified.

It's a Mephistophelian position, so Mephistopheles was laid out, portrayed in Goethe's Faust.

That's

the

story of a man who sold his soul to the devil for knowledge.

It's a story of intellectual pride, and Goethe stands in relationship to German literature in the same manner that Shakespeare stands in relationship to English literature.

Goethe's Mephistopheles... says straight out twice in the play, once in the first, there's two books, once in the first book and once in the second.

Goethe has him restate it twice.

You would feel as if a most profane bargain were proposed to you.

you would suspect the presence of Mephistopheles or some other form of the Archdeceiver.

And yet your actions practically come to the same thing.

For how many years have you lived without attending to your souls? Oh, but we mean to.

a sweet young woman whose chief crimes are being beautiful, owning a little house, and encountering the most catastrophically male man alive.

Meanwhile, Mephistopheles is operating less like the Prince of Darkness and more like an impeccably dressed HR nightmare who has been waiting centuries for someone to ask him to facilitate a situationship.

It's not so much an opera as it is a 19th century moral panic wearing couture.

Horny, Catholic, misogynistic, gorgeous, spiritually overwrought, and somehow convinced that the solution to every problem is either a ballet and or a chorus of demons.

This clip is why I am the way I am.

You

need to understand that this Mephistopheles was so scary to me that when I was four, I dressed up exactly as I had my grandparents do the makeup from this performance.

and I corrected all of their friends and said that I wasn't the devil, I was Mephistopheles.

So perhaps part of the threat of Lilith was her capacity to be both male and female, and perhaps inspiration for her later need for equality when she became the first wife of Adam came from this male-female duality.

Additionally, Lilith briefly appears in the Valpurgis Night scene in Goethe's 1808 play Faust a Tragedy, again as an evil temptress, frightening even Mephistopheles.

Though by the mid-19th century, she would be reimagined by the English painter and poet Dante Gabriele Rossetti as a young woman who admires her own reflection while combing her hair.

This 19th century artistic change from a woman of supernatural evil to a woman of flesh and blood whose vanity and narcissism harmed those, particularly the men, around her, would mirror the change vampires would go through at the beginning of the 20th century, which we will discuss at the end of the episode.

So, number one.

Is this a craft ale, a demon, or both? Mephistopheles.

Sure.

I mean...

Sean? Yes, it's a demon, but not a craft ale.

Sorry, Sean.

Mephistopheles is both.

It's an imperial stout by Avery Brewing Company, 15.1%, and is a demon featured in German folklore, originating as the chief devil in the Faust legend.