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Faust (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)

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Faust (fowst), a perpetual scholar with an insatiable mind and a questing spirit. The middle-aged Faust, in spite of his enthusiasm for a newly discovered source of power in the sign of the macrocosm, finds his intellectual searches unsatisfactory and longs for a life of experiences in the world of humans. On the brink of despair and a projected suicide, he makes a wager with the Devil that if he ever lies on his bed of sloth- fulness or says of any moment in life, “Stay thou art so fair,” at that moment he will cease to be. He cannot be lured by the...

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