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Title: Faust I and II (Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von//Goethe's Collected Works)
ISBN: 3518030558
Author:
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Publicate Date: 1984-09
Publish: 1984-09
List Price: $39.50
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: Hardcover
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $125.00
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $30.33
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1: The Reviews fail to note....
The most important thing all of the reviews fail to note is that Stuart Atkins was one of the greatest Goethe scholars of the 20th century. I was fortunate enough to take his Faust course almost 40 years ago and it remains one of the high points of my university experience.
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2: Part II sucks the life out of Part I--read Marlowe
If you have read (and not just seen) Goldman's "The Princess Bride," you will understand my reaction to this classic. The short of it is that Marlowe's "Dr. Faustus" is a more-to-the-point rendering of the classic tale. Goethe starts strong, but Part II loses focus, and dulls the story.
The play is called "Faust," therefore our focus should be on Faust, as the focus of "The Hobbit" is on the Hobbit Bilbo. Goethe does this to perfection in the first part of the story. Mephisto's seduction of Faust is palpable--you can taste the evil dripping of every page, and you twist in time with Faust as he wavers back and forth under Mephito's barrage.
However, Part II does not follow logically from the events in Part one. Instead of focusing on the decline and fall of Dr. Henry Faust, we get setting after setting after setting. Goethe's main gimmick is the Pleasure Garden, which takes place in Oberon's Enchanted Forest. Furthermore, there are ample helpings of Greco-Roman mythology that sent me packing to my "Bulfinch's Mythology." This is all nice, but if we wanted Homer or the Bard, we would go to the source. As Bruce R. McConkie said, "Don't drink below the horses."
This brings me to William Goldman. Part of the humor in "The Princess Bride" is that it is "the good parts version." Marlowe's "Dr. Faustus" should be considered "the good parts version" of Goethe's retelling. A lot of Goethe's flourishes and irrelevant asides could be excised without any violence to the plot and the story telling. Of course Goethe was building on Marlow's work, but in several places, he went a too far.
I do not hate Goethe's version. Psychologically, and romantically it is a better work. The seduction scenes are longer and more realistic, unlike Marlowe, whose seduction is slightly better than Palpatine's beguiling of Anakin. The interaction between Faust and Helen is meatier, and that much more entertaining.
However, the ending was the most disappointing ending conceivable: deus ex machina by virtue of grace. So eat, drink and be merry (and sell you soul to boot), for mercy CAN rob justice, and we CAN be saved in our sins, not from our sins.
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3: more than butchered. Pureed
This has got to be the most dumbed-down version of Faust I have ever come across. Where as any good english translation reads like poetry that tells a story this version reads like two guys in a coffee shop having a conversation. Honestly all the beauty of words that Goethe spent so much effort putting to perfection is dumbed down to such a layman level that a lot of the effect of his genius is lost in this version. I was terribly dissappointed with this version when I got it. Don't buy this translation unless you have no ability whatsoever to understand poetic language.
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4: !!!FLAME-ORBS!!!
what basalt! what flare! faust is and always be one of those megalo-gigantic characters that continue to inspire drama and thought for centuries. he may even be literatures's most allur-ing, most sympathetic and most fascinating character. for here is a man who succumbs to the temptation that all of us wrestle with time to time yet on how grand a scale does he accomplish it! all of us from time to time consider selling our souls to the devil, all of us have considered attempting to swindle the fool-ish of capital, or thought of joining a corrupt financial firm so as to at last satiate our lust for wealth and power. it is in our nature for we humans to hunger for the easier, the more com-fortable, the more efficient and often, frustrated with the fruits that God rewards to the pious, we instead slurch into the manacles of the sinister and bind our souls to the fiends where profit is assured! and faust succumbs to these temptations and not simply on a petty insignificant scale he does so in gargantua! he summons the devil himself and agrees to exchange his immortal soul for twenty four years of unlimited puissance!
yet goethe unlike marlowe or the anonymous german author of 1587 rather than use this as a simple morality play and a vehicle for spreading christian obedience instead employs it for a study of one of the greatest human dilemmas, namely our combat against the lechers of vice and the apparent contradic-tion that the injustice profit while the obedient suffer! vol-canica! blare! how my heart riots as i read this epic poem! how the human quandary shines into me in limpid array! and then in part two after a host of death and bedlam faust embarks on his quest for redemption and his attempt to improve mankind. it is a star-glorious adventure, bold, quaking and sublime.
author of Lorelei Pursued, Wrestles with God
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5: It's disappointing...
... how the work has been translated. Goethe spent more or less his whole life on writing and improving this drama. In the original text nearly every line rhymes with another. In fact, there are only a few exceptions.
It's sad that all that is gone with the translation. In my opinion a lot of the magic surrounding the text disappeared, too.
If possible, you should definately read it in german.(only if you're really good) It's hard enough to fully understand it even if german is your native language.
Quotation: (beginning)
Faust: Habe nun, ach! Philosophie,
Juristerei und Medizin,
Und leider auch Theologie
Durchaus studiert, mit hei??em Bem??hn.
Da steh ich nun, ich armer Tor!
Und bin so klug als wie zuvor;
Hei??e Magister, hei??e Doktor gar
Und ziehe schon an die zehen Jahr
Herauf, herab und quer und krumm
Meine Sch??ler an der Nase herum-
Und sehe, da?? wir nichts wissen k??nnen!
Das will mir schier das Herz verbrennen.
....Marthens Garten
MARGARETE: Versprich mir, Heinrich!
FAUST: Was ich kann!
MARGARETE: Nun sag, wie hast du's mit der Religion?
Du bist ein herzlich guter Mann,
Allein ich glaub, du h??ltst nicht viel davon.
FAUST: La?? das, mein Kind! Du f??hlst, ich bin dir gut;
F??r meine Lieben lie??' ich Leib und Blut,
Will niemand sein Gef??hl und seine Kirche rauben.
...
I LOVE these parts!
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