Faust, Part 1 (Translated by Anna Swanwick with an Introduction by F. H. Hedge)

By Johann Goethe

Considered by many as Johann Goethe’s magnum opus, “Faust” has a peculiar history of composition and publication. What began as a project in Goethe’s youth, at the age of twenty, in 1769, “Faust” would not fully be completed until 1831 very near the end of the author’s life. Based on the German legend of Johann Georg Faust, a magician of the German Renaissance who reportedly gained his mystical powers by selling his immortal soul to the devil, the Faustian legend has forever come to symbolize the inherent peril in dealing with unscrupulous characters and supernatural forces. Presented here in this volume is the first part of “Faust”, which begins with a prologue in heaven in which we find god challenging the devil that he cannot lead astray one of his favorite scholars, Dr. Faust. The devil, known in the play as Mephistopheles, accepts the challenge and so begins the struggle of Faust between the allure of supernatural power and the fate of his soul. Despite numerous adaptations, Goethe’s “Faust” stands out as arguably the most famous version of this legend. Only Christopher Marlowe’s “Dr. Faustus” can be claimed to rival it for that position. This edition is translated by Anna Swanwick, includes an introduction by F. H. Hedge, and a biographical afterword.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Digireads.com Publishing
• Release date: Sep 20, 2017
• ISBN: 9781420956023

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FAUST

(PART 1)

By JOHANN GOETHE

Translated By ANNA SWANWICK

Introduction by F. H. HEDGE

Faust, Part 1

By Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Translated by Anna Swanwick

Introduction by F. H. Hedge

Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-5601-6

eBook ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-5602-3

This edition copyright © 2017. Digireads.com Publishing.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Cover Image: a detail of Faust on Easter morning, by Johann Peter Krafft (1780-1856), oil on canvas / De Agostini Picture Library / G. Nimatallah / Bridgeman Images.

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CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

DEDICATION

PROLOGUE FOR THE THEATRE

PROLOGUE IN HEAVEN

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

FAUST

BIOGRAPHICAL AFTERWORD

Introduction

The notion of a formal compact with a personal fiend, once so prevalent, had in the Middle Ages a special application to such as were versed beyond the mark of their time in the mysteries of physical science, like Friar Bacon, Albert the Great, and Cornelias Agrippa. Dr. Faustus, of German tradition, was one of those to whom this suspicion attached. Johann Faust, not to be confounded with his namesake, the reputed inventor of the art of printing, was a veritable historical personage. Born at Knittlingen, in Würtemberg, he studied medicine, and also magic, then a recognized branch of learning, at the University of Cracow, visited various parts of Europe, and afterward led a wandering life in Germany, professing supernatural power, and styling himself philosophus philosophorum. Melancthon, as reported by his pupil Manlius, speaks of him as having visited Wittenberg some time after the battle of Pavia, 1525, and as boasting that by his magic arts he had procured the victory in that battle for Charles V.

He is also mentioned by Philip Begardi, a physician of repute in his day, in a work entitled Index Sanitatum, published in 1539.

Around this slight nucleus of historic fact there clustered, in the sixteenth century, portentous accretions of fabulous matter. A supposed league with the enemy of mankind was precisely the soil for such growths. Gast, a theologian of the time, who dined with Faust at Basel, as he says in his Sermones Conviviales, represents him accompanied by two devils, one in the shape of a dog, the other in that of a horse.

His death, of which nothing certain is known, was depicted with great horror of circumstance as a warning against commerce with Satan. By some he is said to have been torn in pieces by the Adversary when the term of his service—twenty-four years—had expired; by others to have been turned on his face in the coffin as often as he was laid in the right position.

The earliest printed narrative of Faust’s adventures is that of Spiess, published in Frankfort, in 1587. An English translation of this in 1590 furnished Marlowe with the subject matter of his Dr. Faustus, a Tragedy, which enjoyed a brief popularity on the English stage, but was not published until ten years after the author’s death.

Goethe appears to have derived his knowledge of the Faust legend partly from the work of Widmann, published in 1599, and another more modern in its form, which appeared in 1728, and partly from the puppet plays exhibited in Frankfurt and other cities of Germany, of which that legend was then a favorite theme. He was not the only writer of his day who made use of it. Some thirty of his contemporaries had produced their Fausts during the interval which elapsed between the conception and completion of his great work. Oblivion seems to have overtaken them all, with the exception of Lessing’s, of which, unfortunately, we have only a few fragments. The MS. of the complete work was unaccountably lost on its way to the publisher, between Dresden and Leipzig.

It is known to all who are familiar with Goethe’s life and writings, that the composition of Faust proceeded spasmodically, with many and long interruptions between the inception and conclusion. Projected in 1769, at the age of twenty, it was not completed till the year 1831, at the age of eighty-two. The reasons for so long a delay in the case of a writer who often composed so rapidly, have been widely discussed by recent critics. The true explanation I think is to be found in the fact of the author’s removal to Weimar when only a small portion of the work had been written, when only the general conception and one or two leading ideas were present to his thought, and before the plan of the whole was matured. That change of residence, with the new interests, the official duties, the multiplicity of engagements attending it, made a thorough break in Goethe’s literary life. Several works begun or planned were left unfinished, and Faust among the rest. Some of these were never resumed, and the same fate would apparently have befallen Faust but for the urgent solicitation of friends. He took the MS. with him to Rome, and from there he wrote, in 1788, to friends at home, that he was going to work upon his Faust again, and that he thought that he had recovered the thread of the piece. For thought, Bayard Taylor says felt sure; but Goethe’s language was not so decided.{1} The thread of an unfinished work after the lapse of fifteen years is not easily recovered; my own opinion is, that Goethe never did recover it; and hence the long delay in the completion of the work. We know, at any rate, that the only addition made to it then was the scene in the Witch’s Kitchen. That, as we learn from Eckermann, was written in the villa Borghese—the most unlikely place in the world for such a composition. In the midst of southern and classic associations, this extravaganza of northern diablerie! In 1790 a fragment of the First Part was published, wanting several of the best scenes in the work, as we now have it. Then again there is a long gap. Meanwhile he had become acquainted and intimate with Schiller, and at his instigation he made several unsuccessful attempts to finish Faust. Grief for Schiller’s death, which occurred in 1805, caused new delay; but at last, in 1808, the First Part was published entire as we now have it in a uniform edition of the author’s works. Meanwhile a portion of the Second Part, comprising the whole of the third act, had been already composed. This was published separately, in 1827, with the title, Helena, a Classic-Romantic Phantasmagoria, With the exception of parts of the first act in 1828, nothing more of the second part of Faust appeared in print during the author’s lifetime. But the octogenarian had rigorously bound himself to finish it if possible before, as he said, the great night should come, in which no man can work. Fortunately the closing scenes were already written. Slowly and painfully the work proceeded at intervals during the three remaining years, and was not completed until within seven months of his death.

Had ever a poet’s masterpiece such a genesis? Birth-pangs extending over sixty years!

The history of its composition reveals itself here and there in the finished work, especially in the second part. The first half of the fifth act gives one the impression of an outline not filled up, indications instead of representations; a design imperfectly executed. Single passages, striking in themselves, are loosely connected, and this first half bears no proportion to the last. The fourth act is rich in suggestion, but labors in the structure. The third act, an exquisite poem in itself, is an interlude, and does not further the development of the plot. The same may be said of the Classical Walpurgis Night in the second. In short, although one grand design may be supposed in the poet’s mind to have comprehended and clinched the whole, the want of unity in the execution of the Second Part is painfully apparent to all in whose estimation the interest of single portions does not compensate for the halting of the plot. Even the First Part, with all its grandeur and its fire, its pathos and its sweetness, bears marks of interruption in its composition. A single prose scene contrasts with strange though not unpleasant effect the metrical movement of the rest. Gaps and seams and joints and splicings are here and there apparent. The work is too great to be injured by them, but they bear witness of arrested and fitful composition. The scene with Valentine, one of the most spirited, is introduced with some violence by Mephistopheles’ serenade before Gretchen’s door. The Walpurgisnachtstraum, or Oberon and Titania’s Golden Wedding is lugged in with no motive in the drama, whose action it only serves to interrupt. In old English poems the divisions are sometimes called Fyttes (fits). It has seemed to me that the term would be an apt designation of the scenes in Faust, They were thrown off by the author as the fit took him.

But the effect of the long arrest which, after Goethe’s removal to Weimar, delayed the completion of the Faust, is most apparent in the wide gulf which separates, as to character and style, the Second Part from the First. So great indeed is the distance between the two, that without external historical proofs of identity, it would seem from internal evidence altogether improbable, in spite of the slender thread of the fable which connects them, that both poems were the work of one and the same author. And really they were not the same. The change which had come over Goethe when returned from Italy had gone down to the very springs of his intellectual life. The fervor and the rush, the sparkle and foam of his early productions had been replaced by the stately calm and the luminous breadth of view that is born of experience. The torrent of the mountains had become the river of the plain. Romantic impetuosity had changed to classic repose. He could still, by occasional efforts of the will, cast himself back into old moods, resume the old thread, and so complete the first Faust. But we may confidently assert that he could not, after the age of forty, have originated the poem, any more than, before his Italian tour, he could have written the second Faust, purporting to be a continuation of the first. The difference in spirit and style is enormous.

As to the question which of the two is the greater production, it seems to me a very preposterous one. They are incommensurable. It is like asking which is greater, Dante’s Commedia or Shakespeare’s Macbeth. As to which is the more generally interesting, no question can arise. There are thousands who enjoy and admire the First Part to one who even reads the Second. The interest of the former is poetic and thoroughly human; the interest of the other is partly poetic, but mostly philosophical and scientific. The one bears you irresistibly on; you forget the writer and his genius in the theme. The other draws your attention to the manner, and leaves you cold and careless of the theme. The transition from the first to the second is like the change from a hill country to a richly-cultured champaign; from the wild picturesqueness of nature to the smooth perfection of art.

In one respect, at least, the Second Part is nowise inferior to the First, namely, in rhythmical beauty. It abounds in metrical prodigies, proof at once of the marvelous plasticity of the language, and the technical skill of the poet, whose versification, at the age of fourscore, exhibits all the ease and dexterity of youth, and to whom it seems to have been as natural to utter himself in verse as in prose.

The symbolical character of Faust is assumed by all the critics, and in part confessed by the author himself. Besides the general symbolism pervading and motiving the whole, a symbolism of human destiny, and here and there a shadowing forth of the poet’s private experience, there are special allusions, local, personal, enigmatic conceits, which have furnished topics of learned discussion, and taxed the ingenuity of numerous commentators. We need not trouble ourselves with these subtleties. But little exegesis is needed for a right comprehension of the true and substantial import of the work.

The key to the plot is given in the Prologue in Heaven. The Devil, in the character of Mephistopheles, asks permission to tempt Faust; he boasts his ability to get entire possession

Reviews for Faust, Part 1 (Translated by Anna Swanwick with an Introduction by F. H. Hedge)

[iffland · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Unmatched!

[viccavalli · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Part One of Faust was one of the few books in my life that forced me to put on a pot of coffee and give up a night's sleep to finish it. The young Goethe simply nailed it. When I then got a hold of Part Two (written by the much older Goethe) and sat down with it, I was stunned. His style had completely changed; I never would have guessed it was by the same author. I'm not judging Goethe or the work as a whole, that would be arrogant and ridiculous given his stature as a writer, but simply noting that the experience of reading those two parts of Faust raised serious questions about critical editorial / literary analysis research which makes claims about authorship. It also convinced me that as a writer I should finish what I start. The idea of a long work being as organic and unified as a grapefruit--as John Gardner puts it--instinctively appeals to me.

[antao-3 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

(original review, 2004)I’m planning on spending a few weeks on Goethe’s Faust in multiple translations and as much of the German as I can manage, supplemented by hundreds of pages of notes and commentary.I first read the book while in high school in the totally un-annotated Bayard Taylor translation from Modern Library – one of the texts I’m currently reading. I’m still pretty fond of Taylor’s version – with some exceptions generally preferring him to Walter Arndt in the Norton Critical Edition. Taylor’s a relatively local boy – born in Kenneth Square, PA where the town library carries his name.One thing I recall from that ML edition is that a few lines were Bowdlerized with dashes. For example, this song sung by Faust and Mephistopheles with two witches:FAUST ( dancing with the young witch)A lovely dream once came to me;I then beheld an apple-tree,And there two fairest apples shoneThey lured me so, I climbed thereon.THE FAIR ONEApples have been desired by you,Since first in Paradise they grew;And I am moved with joy, to knowThat such within my garden grow.MEPHISTOPHELES ( dancing with the old one)A dissolute dream once came to meTherein I saw a cloven tree,Which had a————————;Yet,——as 'twas, I fancied it.THE OLD ONEI offer here my best saluteUnto the knight with cloven foot!Let him a—————prepare,If him—————————does not scare.I imagined something really obscene was being masked there, but it turns out to be a double entendre only slightly more risqué than the “apples” in the first exchange. Here’s Arndt’s uncensored rendering:FAUST [ dancing with the YOUNG ONE]In a fair dream that once I dreamed;An apple-tree appeared to me,On it two pretty apples gleamed,They beckoned me; I climbed the tree.THE FAIR ONEYou’ve thought such apples very nice,Since Adam’s fall in Paradise.I’m happy to report to you,My little orchard bears them too.MEPHISTOPHELES [ dancing with THE OLD ONE]In a wild dream that once I dreamedI saw a cloven tree, it seemed,It had a black almighty hole;Black as it was, it pleased my soul.THE OLD ONEI welcome to my leafy roofThe baron with the cloven hoof!I hope he’s brought a piston tallTo plug the mighty hole withal.I am reminded in re-reading it how much in common Faust has with the fantasy books that were my staple reading at the time I first encountered it Tolkien, Peake, E. R. Eddison. I was reminded of this by some of the comments today about "The Buried Giant" (disclaimer I’ve not read any Ishiguro). For centuries literature and fantasy were almost synonymous – only in the 18th century did it start to require a kind of warning label.Just about all the operas are adaptations of Faust Part 1, though Arrigo Boito, as I recall, included an episode with Helen of Troy. The dual language Anchor Books edition with Walter Kaufmann’s translation, which seems to be the most commonly available in my neck of the woods, includes only bits of Part 2 from the first and last acts. This may make sense insofar as the edition is intended for students of German, but really makes a hash out of Goethe’s intentions for the work as a whole. I’m really enjoying wrestling with the complexities of Part 2; my recent readings in Greek tragedy helps – Goethe writes a very credible pastiche of the form in the first half of Act 3. [2018 addenda: In Portuguese, our most distinguished Germanist, João Barrento, has already published his Magnum Opus, Faust’s full translation. I haven’t read it yet, but I will].In acquiring various versions of Faust over the years I’ve been mainly interested in those that are complete – the portions editors are the most likely to cut are those that I think would gain the most from multiple viewpoints.

[jonfaith · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Dear friend, all theory is gray, and green the golden tree of life.

What else to say? Towering as an archetype, akin to Hamlet, the Inferno and White Whale -- this tale of pact has been absorbed into a our cultural bones, like an isotope. It is more telling to consider that I listened to Tavener while reading this. I recently gave Pandora a spin but found that I owned more Schnittke than was afforded by my"station" but if I leave such, will I miss those Penn Station ads?

I will say that I should've read my Norton critical edition, well actually, my wife's copy -- the one I bought for her in Columbus, Ohio ten years ago. I went with a standard Penguin copy and I'm sure many of the historic references were lost for me.

No one should consider that I regard Faust as emblematic of power politics in the US or a possible Brexit across the water. I'm too feeble for such extrapolation.

[gturkington-2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

yo. evil is evil y'all.

also I'm a closet Romantic

[brakketh-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Holding off on further review until finished Part II. Currently finding it a little challenging to read but sticking with it as a seminal work (see for example the use of Faustian as a tag).

[papirofagia · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

"Último grande poema dos tempos modernos", no dizer de Otto Maria Carpeaux, o Fausto de Goethe está para a modernidade assim como a Divina Comédia de Dante está para a Idade Média. Repletos de referências aos mais diversos campos do saber, os dois textos representam não apenas a obra máxima de seus autores, mas a suma do conhecimento humano e das aspirações espirituais de suas épocas.Escrito e reescrito ao longo de mais de 60 anos, o Fausto integral - compreendendo a primeira e a segunda parte - só seria concluído às vésperas da morte do autor, ocorrida em março de 1832. Já a primeira parte da tragédia (também conhecida como Fausto I), que tem como cerne o pacto de Fausto com Mefistófeles e a conseqüente "tragédia de Margarida", foi elaborada por mais de três décadas, de 1772 a 1806, sendo finalmente publicada, com aprovação de Goethe, em 1808. É esta primeira parte - que pode ser lida também como obra independente - que aqui se publica. A presente edição, bilíngüe, traz a elogiada tradução de Jenny Klabin Segall (livre dos vários erros tipográficos que se haviam acumulado ao longo de sucessivas reedições) acompanhada por uma esclarecedora introdução do professor Marcus Vinicius Mazzari, da Universidade de São Paulo, autor também das notas e comentários.Este volume conta ainda com o chamado "Saco de Valpúrgis" - versos bastante obscenos que deviam integrar a cena "Noite de Valpúrgis" mas que o próprio Goethe, num gesto de autocensura, deixou de fora da edição canônica de 1808, e que são agora publicados, pela primeira vez em nossa língua, em tradução literal de M. V. Mazzari.Ilustrado com desenhos e litografias de Eugène Delacroix, considerado por Goethe o homem certo "para se aprofundar no Fausto e provavelmente criar imagens que ninguém poderia imaginar", este lançamento tem tudo para se tornar a edição de referência do Fausto I em nosso país, a ser seguido em breve pelo Fausto II, também em tradução de Jenny Klabin Segall, com apresentação e notas de M. V. Mazzari.

[thorold_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It's a strange notion, "reviewing" a text that is one of the pillars of German national identity and has had untold hectolitres of ink spilled over it by critics in the last couple of centuries. Maybe the most appropriate question to ask in a place like this is "What does Faust I have to offer the casual modern reader?" Two main things, I think: amazing language and a cracking good yarn.Like Hamlet or the KJV in English, reading Faust through is a bit like joining the dots between dozens of quotations you already know. The language has a very direct appeal to the reader: you don't have to be an expert in 19th century German verse to make sense of it (though I'm sure you would get more out of it if you were). After a few pages you entirely forget what a strange notion it is to be reading a verse drama, and just enjoy the sound of the words.The story isn't as "big" and "epic" as you might imagine. The core story of Gretchen's seduction and fall is told in a very intimate, naturalistic way, and even the big Walpurgisnacht scene is essentially a series of little cameos rather than a big spectacular.

[gbill_7 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Faust is Goethe’s masterpiece and the heart of his life’s work. He started thinking about it and writing it when he was bored with his studies at University and at the time he quickly cranked out “The Sorrows of Young Werther”, but by contrast he did not complete Faust (Part 1) until decades later, when he was in his fifties. He continued on with Part 2 right up until death at 82.This is not the origin of what has been popularized in so many different ways over the centuries in “selling your soul to the devil” stories, but one of the better versions and certainly a standard reference for the others. It’s the story of not just the condition of Faust’s everlasting soul as he ponders the abyss of suicide, but the condition of man on planet Earth. Jacques Barzun summarizes it well in the introduction to this edition: “…the torment comes from the awareness that man is at once wretched and great. He is wretched because he is a limited, mortal creature; he is great because his mind embraces the whole universe and knows its own wretchedness. No ordinary satisfaction can quench Faust’s desires; forever he sees and wants something beyond. The ultimate bliss would be to feel at one with nature, through knowledge not merely intellectual but emotional also, virtually instinctive; whereas all learning serves but to make Faust more self-conscious and isolated, till he scarcely feels that he lives. Clearly, this defines the situation of modern civilized man, whose increasing knowledge makes him more and more self-critical, anxious, beset by doubts, and hence more and more an alien in the natural world that is his only home.”Epic and grand in scope. Man’s soul, his passions, his fate. Not quiiite as brilliant as I had hoped for from its reputation, but Part 1 is in the “must read” category. Quotes:On beauty:“Often the perfect form appearsOnly when ripened slowly many years.What glitters lives an instant, then is gone;The real for all posterity lives on.”On living life:“Yes, of this truth I am convinced –This is wisdom’s ultimate word:Only he deserves this life in freedomWho daily earns it all anew.”On transience:“Here shall I satisfy my need?What though in thousand volumes I should readThat human beings suffered everywhere,And one perchance was happy, here or there?Why grin, you hollow skull, except to sayThat once your brain, perplexed like mine,Yearning for Truth, pursued the light of day,Then in the dusk went wretchedly astray?”On the passing of youth. :-(“Then give me back those years long pastWhen I could still mature and grow,And when a spring of song welled fastOut of my heart with ceaseless flow,When all the world was veiled in mist,When every bud a miracle concealed,And when I gathered myriad flowersCrowding the valley and the field.Though naught was mine, I had enough in youth,A joy in illusion, a longing for the Truth.Give back the surge of impulse, re-createThat happiness so steeped in pain,The power of love, the strength of hate –Oh, give me back my youth again!”

[multifaceted_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I'm not sure what to think of the tone of the book over all, as I come away from it with a feeling that Faust is being condemned to the devil for seeking too much knowledge. I feel like there is also something of the old "doctor wanting to be god" joke in here, as well. But I get the feeling that, over time, Faust will come to be one of my favorite characters, along with Voltaire's Candide and Camus' Meursault. And there is definitely something "absurdly" tragic about Goethe's character, as well. Because, to me, Faust isn't just about someone who makes a deal with the devil to make his life better. Rather, it's about someone whose thirst for knowledge is never slaked, who seeks to know everything and what it's like to be everyone. Or, should I say, Faust seeks to be omniscient. (And I have to wonder, is that necessarily a bad thing? Would the world be worse off if we knew just what it was like to be the millionaire in his mansion, or the low class beggar in the city?) But to get back on track: at the same time, he realizes he is merely only a human, and he is burdened, depressed, and frenzied by the knowledge that he probably can never know everything--and there is something so full of humility, so pathetically human about his situation. This leads him to not just "make a deal" with the devil, but to acquiesce to Mephistopheles as a sort of last resort. Why not, if there is no other way he can gain omniscient knowledge, anyway? Of course, Mephistopheles makes him become enamored with a woman, and this love transports Faust, and makes him finally feel like he has gained everything he's ever wanted. Where am I going with this? I don't know, because I don't quite know what Goethe was going for, either. But Faust's words say it all the better:"And here, poor fool! with all my loreI stand, no wiser than before"

[haidji-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Goethe is an amazing writer. Faust despairs and wants the death because he can not understand the truth.Dissatisfied with knowing all there is to know about everything, Faust sells his soul to the devil to learn, experience and understand more.It's classic, it's brilliant and full of wisdom and eternal truths.

[miquixote · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

What does Faust mean? Tough to find too many books more open to interpretation since Columbus landed on American soil. Obvious comparisons with Adam and Eve and the serpent: except the sinner/first one to bite the apple/knowledge-seeker here is a man (yup, feminists have jumped all over that one). interpretations still up for grab: is the sinner a rebel? overly ambitious? is wanting knowledge a deadly sin (ie. pride) -- should Faust be punished? ; or maybe the socialist interpretations are right and Mephistoles symbolizes dissidence -- truth seekers may just be rejecting oppression...down with the elites, closed minds and limited worldviews! Is Mephistopheles the tempter, trying to destroy Faust or is he freeing him? This book was also the center of a cultural war of interpretation in Germany between the Nazis and the spirit of the Weimar....we all know who won that battle... What Goethe was really trying to say, you'll have to decide for yourself...The cultural war (or class war?) is far from over...so read it!