Patočka’s Reflections on Faustus and Modern Art

The article deals with two Jan Patočka essays, each written to mark the 25th anniversary of the publication of Thomas Mann’s novel Doctor Faustus (1947). In these essays, the writer is defined as an ‘interpreter of myth’. In contrast to his essays ‘The Concern of the Writer’ (1969) and ‘Art and Time’ (1966), Patočka here examines the relationship between modern art and myth in two essays on Faustus. The article presents Patočka’s interpretation of the fundamental subject of Faustus literature in its metamorphosis from the sixteenth century to the twentieth, and points out that Patočka’s Faustus essays manifest an important aspect of his concept of modern art.