Faust: A Tragedy: Backgrounds and Sources, the Author on the Drama, Contemporary Reactions, Modern Criticism

by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Cyrus Hamlin (Other Contributor), Walter W. Arndt (Other Contributor)

This edition includes Parts I and II complete. The backgrounds include the medieval Chapbook, the puppet play, and a surviving fragment of G.E. Lessing's Faust play. The author's plans and sketches, and a rich selection of his letters and comments to Eckermann, trace Goethe's lifelong involvement in the work, as does an analytical table showing the phases of composition. The contemporary reactions show how rapidly Faust came to be seen as a quintessential expression of German Romantic consciousness. The essays have been chosen to help readers perceive and understand Faust's extraordinary thematic and formal complexity.

626 pages, Paperback

Published December 1, 1976

About the author

A master of poetry, drama, and the novel, German writer and scientist Johann Wolfgang von Goethe spent 50 years on his two-part dramatic poem Faust , published in 1808 and 1832, also conducted scientific research in various fields, notably botany, and held several governmental positions.

George Eliot called him "Germany's greatest man of letters... and the last true polymath to walk the earth." Works span the fields of literature, theology, and humanism.
People laud this magnum opus as one of the peaks of world literature. Other well-known literary works include his numerous poems, the Bildungsroman Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship and the epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther .

With this key figure of German literature, the movement of Weimar classicism in the late 18th and early 19th centuries coincided with Enlightenment, sentimentality (Empfindsamkeit), Sturm und Drang, and Romanticism. The author of the scientific text Theory of Colours , he influenced Darwin with his focus on plant morphology. He also long served as the privy councilor ("Geheimrat") of the duchy of Weimar.

Goethe took great interest in the literatures of England, France, Italy, classical Greece, Persia, and Arabia and originated the concept of Weltliteratur ("world literature"). Despite his major, virtually immeasurable influence on German philosophy especially on the generation of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling, he expressly and decidedly refrained from practicing philosophy in the rarefied sense.

Influence spread across Europe, and for the next century, his works inspired much music, drama, poetry and philosophy. Many persons consider Goethe the most important writer in the German language and one of the most important thinkers in western culture as well. Early in his career, however, he wondered about painting, perhaps his true vocation; late in his life, he expressed the expectation that people ultimately would remember his work in optics.

Reviews

[Raya · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent edition and translation of Geothe's Faust. The inclusion of footnotes and interpretive notes provide information on allusion to other text and conversation Geothe held with other writer that many reader may not recognize without the inclusion of these notes. As a musicology major I found these notes especially helpful in developing a deeper understanding of Geothe's influences and writing style.

[Basel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stories of humans selling their souls to an evil entities in exchange of gifts have been around for a really, really long time. Yet, no story is as influential or famous as Goethe's drama, Faust. Based on the German legend, this is the story of Faust, a scholar who signs his soul away to Mephistopheles in exchange of worldly pleasures, knowledge, and power. With an earthly wager between these two on Faust's soul made to the backdrop of another heavenly wager on Faust's salvation, Goethe delivers a remarkable, rich, and captivating drama. It engages us as readers as we go along with it.

[Noah · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Part 1)