Faust: Part 1 - J.W. von Goethe

First Published in 1808, Goethe’s Faust is a text most English speakers will only ever encounter in translation. Faust was undoubtedly Goethe's greatest work into which he poured a lifetime of experience - the whole work took him his whole life, as the second part was only finished a year before his death. The play contains an amazing combination of religion, the supernatural, romance, tragedy and the utterly strange. Faust is the play of the romantic movement. Goethe transforms the old legend of Faust's temptation into a universal metaphor for human existence and striving. Temptation and spiritual corruption run alongside a desire to salvage ...

I never knew how enjoyable reading plays could be until I read Part I of FAUST. I enjoyed it much more than The Odyssey and Romeo and Juliet. It has an interesting plot and several lines that I will never forget. It also shows how able a man is to hold his morals under the worst circumstances. Buy the Philip Wayne translation. He translated the work without using any Old English, makes it very easy to understand by the word order, and most of all makes great rhymes. Here indeed is a monumental Faust, an audacious man boldly wagering with the devil, Mephistopheles, that no magic, sensuality, experience or knowledge can lead him to a moment he would wish to last ...