Faust I & II

Goethe’s most complex and profound work, Faust was the effort of the great poet’s entire lifetime. Written over a period of sixty years, it can be read as a document of Goethe’s moral and artistic development. As a drama drawn from an immense variety of cultural and historical material, set in a wealth of poetic and theatrical traditions, it can be read as the story of Western humanity striving restlessly and ruthlessly for progress.

Faust is made available to the English reader in a completely new translation that communicates both its poetic variety and its many levels of tone. The language is present-day English, and Goethe’s formal and rhythmic variety is reproduced in all its richness. With stylistic ease the translation conveys both the sense and the tonal range of the German original without recourse to archaisms or to interpretive elaborations. A short essay affords the reader an understanding of Goethe’s considerations as he composed the drama in the course of six decades, and the notes elucidate allusions that may be obscure to an English reader and indicate the significance of metrical features of the text.

This book is part of a projected twelve-volume paperback series that brings into modern English a reliable translation of a representative portion of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s vast body of work. Selected from over 140 volumes in German, this edition is the new standard in English and contains poetry, drama, fiction, memoir, criticism, and scientific writing. The twelve volumes are also available in hardcover, individually or as a set, through Princeton University Press.