How to sell your soul

by David Benjamin

“MEPHISTO: Hence sin and havoc and ruin—all you call evil, in sum—for me’s the element in which I swim.” — Goethe, Faust

MADISON, Wis.—The sudden death of Senator Lindsey Graham this month set off a cliché storm in the punditocracy, with numerous references to Graham’s “Faustian bargain” for the royal favor of Donald Trump. On its face, this seems an apt analogy, But it left me with a nagging whisper in the back of my mind, asking “What would Goethe say?” I couldn’t help wondering how Graham and Trump might stack up beside their archetypal alter egos, Dr. Faust and Mephistopheles?

So, I went back to the library and read my Faust.

At first glance, the analogy doesn’t fit the characters. Goethe’s Faust is an aged academic, sick of his callow students, resigned to end a meaningless life with an unmourned death. Graham, by contrast, was cheerful, outgoing, ambitious and, to all appearances, fond of his constituents. As for the villain of the piece, Goethe’s Mephisto is a Shakespearean orator. He’s cerebral, nuanced and richly articulate, with a vocabulary, unlike Donald Trump, well in excess of a hundred words.

However, although I’m stuck with a couple contemporary real-life characters who are clearly anti-Goethian, the literary parallel doesn’t entirely fail.

Appropriately, for example, Goethe’s depiction of Faust and Mephisto’s introduction is cynically comic. The Devil appears to Faust in the form of a poodle, foreshadowing both the absurdity and grubbiness of their alliance. Similarly, Lindsey Graham encounters his future capo as an orange-faced clown in golfing togs. Each protagonist is blinded to his eventual horror by a veil of silliness.

An even more evident parallel is that both Mephisto and his metaphorical descendant are self-touted artists of “the Deal.” Each has a con. Each perceives, in his prospective mark, a profound need. Each promises unlimited benefactions.

Faust needs to escape his despair. He has given up on knowledge, forsaken his quest for meaning. “Who wants to know the real truth, tell me?” he asks. “Those few with vision, feeling, understanding,/ Who failed to stand guard, most unwisely,/ Over their tongues, speaking their minds and hearts,/ For the mob to hear—you know what’s been their fate:/ They were crucified, burnt, torn to bits.”

He later confesses to Mephisto, “I awake each morning, how? Horrified/ On the verge of tears, to confront a day/ Which at its close will not have satisfied/ Not one smallest wish of mine …”

Faust is ripe for a life of sensual pleasure and mindless diversion, exactly the blessings Mephisto can bestow in spades. “I’m not your grandest devil, no,” he says with mock humility. “But still, throw in with me—that way, united,/ Together life’s long road we’ll travel./ And my, how I would be delighted!/ I’ll do your will as if my will,/ Every wish of yours fulfill …”

Lindsey Graham’s deepest need was not just for temporal power but for a place in history. He knew this wish exceeded his importance not only in American politics but even in the pantheon of his own state, South Carolina, where he’s dwarfed by two malignant giants. John C. Calhoun was a champion of slavery, Strom Thurmond a hypocritical bulwark of Jim Crow. New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie drew the contrast: “Compared with them, Graham is a minor figure at most, not so anonymous that he’ll be forgotten, but not so noteworthy that he’ll be remembered outside of South Carolina.”

Graham’s ticket to immortality was to cling like a lamprey to the man who has declared himself the “most powerful person that has ever walked this planet.” Like Faust, Lindsey had misgivings about dealing with the devil. He once said astutely that Trump is a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot,” and—after the Hang Mike Pence riot—he declared that he’d had “enough” of the mad king.

After which, he backslid, onto Trump’s capacious lap.

When Faust succumbs and signs his deal, in blood, Mephistopheles’ smug benediction wakes echoes, two hundred years later, in an oft-repeated Trumpian boast. Quoth Mephisto: “Oh, how my tricks will tickle your fancy!/ I’ll show you things no man has seen before.”

This sort of hyperbole erupts endlessly, tediously, from both Goethe’s demon and the Mar-a-Lago demagogue whom Der Spiegel called “Der Feuerteufel” (the fire-devil). Both Mephisto and Trump speak dizzyingly in a blend of pompous lies and pseudo-smart folderol. In the words of Goethe’s prince of darkness, “Despise learning. heap contempt on reason,/ The human race’s best possession,/ Only let the lying spirit draw you/ Over into mumbo-jumbo,/ Make-believe and pure illusion—/ And then you’re mine for sure, I have you.”

Of course, every law of God and man is meaningless both to Goethe’s Archfiend and his White House manqué. Mephisto proclaims his Trumpian contempt of court. “What’s jurisprudence?” he asks. “A stupid rite/ That’s handed down, a kind of contagion,/ From generation to generation,/ From people to people, region to region,/ … As for the rights with which we’re born—/ Not a word!—as if they were unknown.”

Without law, the only means of preserving order is mastery over obsequious solons like the late Senator Graham, like the student in Goethe’s drama who mistakes the Devil for his professor, Dr. Faust. From this diabolic imposter, the boy learns his foremost value: loyalty.

“It’s safer to choose/ One single master,” counsels Mephisto, “and echo his words dutifully—/ As a general rule, put your trust in words,/ They’ll guide you safely past doubt and dubiety/ Into the Temple of Absolute Certainty.”

The student responds, “But shouldn’t words convey, ideas, a meaning?”

“Of course they should,” smirks Trump’s great forebear. “But why overdo it?”

Faust’s inevitable disappointment is also true to the Trump formula. Offered the world by the Devil, he opts, merely, to get laid. His choice, Margarete, is young, innocent, beautiful and very likely underage. When she’s exposed by her pregnancy, Faust is stricken with remorse but powerless to rescue her from execution as an adulteress. The Devil, after all, has no power to do good.

Yeah. Trump all over again.

Faust’s heartbreak, of course, doesn’t quite match our contemporary parallel. In the tragedy of Lindsey Graham, there’s no fallen woman, no scaffold, no last-minute contrition. Faust’s agony, on the other hand, evokes tearful allusions galore—Orpheus and Eurydice in the Greek myth, Lot’s wife in Genesis 19, John Book and the hot Amish girl in Witness.

However, Luke Chapter 22 provides an allusion that serves. In this passage, first to a strange woman, then to a man he doesn’t know, Peter twice denies knowing his master, friend and savior, Jesus Christ.

Lindsey Graham, exactly like Peter, has twice denounced his messiah.

It is his third denunciation that hits home and overwhelms Peter with guilt and shame. It crushes him as it exalts him. This momentary surrender to rank cowardice—and his need to atone—becomes Peter’s life force. He transforms into the prophet of the Christ, founding a faith that will eventually sweep the world and wreath his memory in sainthood.

Not so much for Lindsey, who might have saved his soul with a third denunciation. He was, after all, smart enough to see, again, the tragic error of his loyalty to Mephistopheles. He was honorable once, and could be once more.

Instead, he died—too soon to repent, too late to wash away his Faustian stain.