# Short Story 71: Silhouette Mephisto/Johann limp *The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 03 Aug 2014* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### Marc Aramini *03 Aug 2014, 12:03* Even though Borski loves to assert Goethe's Faust is everywhere in Wolfe's fiction, it really is everywhere in Silhouette. But why is it Johann who has a limp in the story when it is Mephistopholes in Faust? Does this complicate his imagery? Is he taking his silhouette off the planet of neuerddraht to infect the galaxy? Algol has such a bad astronomical reputation, and the images of a civilization which drowned in sand and perished on the planet are a bit apocalyptic. Are the seeming good guys in this bad, in light of the fact that the diabolists keep scrying Johann's name rather than, say, Satan's? ---