If (as I rant about in the previous entry) Bloom mirrors the gluttonous and sexual (physical) half of Faust, the other, academic character of Faust reminds us of Steven.
“Two souls, alas, are dwelling in my breast, and one is striving to forsake its brother. Unto the world in grossly loving zest, with clinging tendrils, one adheres; the other rises forcibly in quest of rarified ancestral spheres.” (Faust lines, 1110-1117)
The above quote from Faust outlines the duality of his character as well as the juxtaposition of Bloom and Steven. Faust, on the one hand, desires the physical world. But, on the other hand, pursues the world of knowledge. In the last chapter we discussed in class, Scylla and Charybdis, the latter half of Faust’s character (the academic) is shown through Steven.

The first part of the chapter is a discussion of Hamlet. One opens up the chapter by describing the “ineffectual dreamer”. “The ineffectual dreamer who come to grief against hard facts. One always feels that Goethe’s judgments are so true. True in their larger analysis” (p.184) Hamlet was, no doubt about it, an ineffectual dreamer. He had his head in the books (studied abroad and was constantly contemplating life and the meaning of death). Faust, as well, can be described as the ineffectual dreamer, (at least for a time). Before Faust meets the devil, he is lost in a world of books and knowledge, which leads him nowhere. As his apprentice says to him—“Ah, when one is confined to one’s own museum and sees the world on holidays alone, but from a distance, only on occasion, how can one guide it by persuasion? (Faust lines, 528-533)” Faust, like Steven, is well acquainted with the past and with antiquity, but as his apprentice articulates; when an individual has his face and attention in a book, he can hardly know what is right in front of him.