135112 SE BA-SE: "Sympathy for the Devil?" Depictions of the Devil in the Occidental Culture (2023W)

"Pleased to meet you/ Hope you guess my name, oh yeah/Ah, what's puzzling you/Is the nature of my game, oh yeah/ ". After the most common interpretation of this well - known rock' n roll text of the Rolling Stones is Lucifer set the same with the Humanity. The American rock band here refers to the well-known novel by Mikhail Bulgakov "The Master and Margarita". Also, in the Bible, in the book of Isaiah, (chapter 45, 7), basically, there is not much else written: "I create the light and make the darkness, / I bring about salvation and create the evil. / I am the Lord who accomplishes all this. " God created light as well as darkness, salvation and evil as if they were two sides of the same coin, always present. An encounter with the devil or with the "other side of the coin" is therefore inevitable in life and of course in literature. The Bible uses about forty names for the devil, which are often very different, such as "Morning Star," "Baal-sebub" or "Snake." All these names have different explanations and tell us a different characteristic of evil. It is perhaps just because of this diversity that the devil has been taken over by the art and with a certain "sympathy" again and again and has produced a few interesting characters who populate novels, stories, poems as well as songs and films. In the seminar, we will explore the history of this biblical figure and its exciting reuse from the perspective of various genres and art forms.