Authors: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
ISBN-13: 9780217835732, ISBN-10: 0217835732
Format: Paperback
Publisher: General Books
Date Published: August 2009
Edition: (Non-applicable)
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) perhaps comes as close as any man to deserving the title of universal genius. Poet, dramatist, critic, scientist, administrator and novelist, he was born at Frankfurt-am-Main in 1749, the son of well-to-do parents with intellectual interests; and he studied at the University of Leipzig and at Strassburg, where he wrote a play which initiated the important Sturm und Drang movement. During the next five years he practiced law in Frankfurt and wrote The Sorrows of Young Werther, a remarkable novel autobiographical of one side of Goethe's nature. In 1775 he went to visit the court of the young Duke of Weimar, and, except for an extended journey to Italy a decade later, stayed there the rest of his life, filling at one time or another all the major posts in the Weimar government. Here a close friendship with Schiller developed, and here he conducted important scientific experiments and published a steady stream of books of the highest order and in many different forms. He became the director of the Weimar Theatre in 1791 and made it the most famous in Europe. His life held a number of ardent loves, which he celebrated in lyrics that are compared to Shakespeare's, and in 1806 he married Christiane Vulpius whom he had loved for many years. In later life Goethe became a generous patron of younger writers, including Byron and Carlyle. In 1790 he published the first version of his life work as Faust, a Fragment, but Part I of the completed Faust did not appear until 1808, while Part II was finished and published only a few months before Goethe's death in 1832.
Cyrus Hamlin is Chairman of the Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Yale University.
Walter Arndt is Sherman Fairchild Professor in the Humanties, Emeritus, at Dartmouth College. His translation of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin was awarded the Bollingen Prize.
Walter Arndt’s translation of Faust reproduces the sense of the German original and Goethe’s enormously varied metrics and rhyme schemes.
This edition of Goethe's , translated by Walter Arndt (emeritus, humanities, Dartmouth College), contains over 100 pages of interpretive notes, as well as excerpts from both contemporary and modern criticism and analysis of the piece. Hamlin (German and comparative literature, Yale U.) offers extensive introductory and supporting material which will allow readers to gain a deeper understanding of Goethe's masterpiece. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Preface | ix | |
The Text of Faust. A Tragedy | 1 | |
The Tragedy's First Part | 12 | |
Walpurgis Night | 110 | |
Walpurgis Night's Dream or the Golden Wedding of Oberon and Titania. Intermezzo | 120 | |
The Tragedy's Second Part in Five Acts | 135 | |
Act I | 135 | |
Act II | 187 | |
Classical Walpurgis Night | 199 | |
Act III [Helena. Classical-Romantic Phantasmagoria] | 241 | |
Act IV | 287 | |
Act V | 313 | |
Interpretive Notes | 345 | |
Contexts | 493 | |
Selected Illustrations for Faust | 494 | |
The Composition of Faust | 505 | |
Goethe on Faust | 514 | |
From Goethe's Autobiography | 514 | |
From Italian Journey | 515 | |
Faust Plan of 1800 | 515 | |
From Goethe's Correspondence with Schiller, 1794-1801 | 516 | |
Outline of the Contents for Part Two | 521 | |
Second Sketch for the Announcement of the Helena | 523 | |
From Goethe's Letters and His Conversations with Eckermann | 530 | |
Comments by Contemporaries | 550 | |
[Response to the Newly Published Fragment of Faust] | 550 | |
[First Impression of Faust] | 551 | |
[Review of the Fragment of 1790] | 552 | |
[On Hamlet and Faust as Philosophical Tragedies] | 553 | |
[On Faust as Tragicomedy] | 555 | |
[Paraphrase of Faust, from The Phenomenology of Mind] | 557 | |
"Faustus" | 558 | |
[First Notice of Faust in English] | 560 | |
[Faust] | 563 | |
"Goethe" | 565 | |
[General Remarks on Goethe] | 567 | |
Modern Criticism | 571 | |
[Survey of the Faust Theme] | 573 | |
Faust as Doctor of Theology | 586 | |
Interrupted Tragedy as a Structural Principal in Faust | 598 | |
[Goethe's Faust as Modern Epic] | 611 | |
[Faust and Discourse Networks] | 634 | |
The Presence of the Sign in Goethe's Faust | 650 | |
The Economics of Translation in Goethe's Faust | 668 | |
[The Spirit of Water: Faust, Part Two, Act II] | 688 | |
[The Ethics of Faust's Last Actions] | 704 | |
[Faust as Developer] | 715 | |
What the Lovers in the Old Songs Thought | 728 | |
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: A Chronology | 731 | |
Selected Bibliography | 735 |