Yuho Hisayama

• This paper examines the atmospheric character of the Erdgeist (Earth Spirit) in Goethe's Faust, Part I. Goethe's Earth Spirit can be regarded as atmospheric both in the sense of New Phenomenology and in relation to the ancient concept of pneuma or spiritus, which originally meant breath, wind, and atmosphere. Similar language appears in the first volume of Herder's Älteste Urkunde des Menschengeschlechts (1774), a possible background for Goethe's conception of the Earth Spirit in his so-called Urfaust (before 1775). Yet, Goethe's portrayal departs from Herder's by emphasizing the Earth Spirit's position in between light and darkness, life and death, heaven and earth, a liminal quality more or less absent from Herder's framework. By also analysing Goethe's later sketch of the Earth Spirit (1810-1812?) and his plans to stage it in the theatre, this paper argues that Goethe has continually been aware of the atmospheric character of the Earth Spirit, while, over time, its in-between nature progressively transformed into a Jupiter-like simplified figure.