A Fallen Angel’s Pain

(FYI: my version of the play is on my I Pad and only gives me page numbers and not line numbers)

My favorite part, by far, of the play, Doctor Faustus, is the character Mephistopheles. When Dr. Faustus asks Mephistopheles about hell “First I will question with thee about hell. Tell me where is the place that men call hell?” (31). Mephistopheles responds with “[Hell is] within the bowels of these elements, where we are tortur’d and remain for ever; Hell hath no limits, nor is it circumscrib’d in one self place ; for where we are is hell, and where hell is there must we ever be” (31).

Before this Mephistopheles states how hell pains him, “…I who saw the face of God, and tasted the eternal joys of Heaven, [I am] tormented with ten thousand hells, in being depriv’d of everlasting bliss” (21).

This reminded me of the movie Dogma, written and directed by Kevin Smith (director of the Jay and Silent Bob stoner movies). When the fallen angel Bartleby rants to Loki about God’s love and forgiveness of his favorite creation (man) and how as angels they must constantly feel the absence of God. (It’s a great movie, I highly recommend it).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSQYRq8kf4g  (sorry for the advertisement)

In artwork from around the period Doctor Faustus was written, the Devil was commonly depicted as blue or black. The color blue was chosen (as I believe) to represent the coldness the devil and demons feel no longer being warmed by God’s love. Without God there is nothing. According to physics you cannot add cold, you can only remove heat. Without God there is nothing, removing everything from life. Essentially, in the realm of physics, hell could only be darkness and cold, void of everything. Like cold, you cannot add darkness, only remove light. I find this an incredibly interesting concept. Even more so is the transition of the interpretation of the Devil and hell. Here he is blue, later he is half-beast/half-human, then red with fire and brimstone, and then in class we agreed that the Devil would simply be an attractive person. The Bible also supports a blue devil with the hot/cold interpretation in Revelations 3:15-16—I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth.

This means (in my understanding) that you are either hot (passionate) for the Lord our God or are cold (uncaring) of Him. Then there are those who feel he exists, but do not love Him or worship Him and to God these people are just as bad and he will spew them from his mouth and cast them aside. Indifference is worse than cold in God’s eyes.

Giotto’s The Last Judgment, painted in 1306, shows this tormenting and tormented blue devil:

 

http://www.julianporterqc.com/images/giotto.jpg