The metaphysic of mist : Faustian shades in Matthew Shirfield's elemental 𝘋𝘪𝘳𝘨𝘦

Abstract

If there is anything that distils Matthew Shirfield's unsettling revisioning of Faust's tragedy, it is arguably that his Dirge's Faust appropriates Mephistopheles's metamorphic might. Unlike Goethe's Mephistopheles, however, Shirfield's Faust never changes into a black poodle, for he clearly prefers to mutate into mythical beings like Mephistopheles does when he transmutes into the hermaphroditic hag Phorkyas while copulating with Thessalian witches. Shirfield's is, in fact, a fallen Faust, a damned spirit shrouded in ashen atmospherics, whose elemental plight pales from inky black to ghostly grey to misty white. The perfect palette, one would say, for a Faust whom Shirfield converts into a Mephistophelean shade, and whose spiritual malaise he constantly tethers to ambient emptiness. Hence Shirfield's twilight zone of cloud, fog, mist and smoke whose immaterial materiality mirrors the horror vacui of Faust's soul. Consequently, what Shirfield's Faust leaves in his misty trail impels us to contend with metaphysical nothingness.