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Goethe's Faust, Part Two is distinguished by its extraordinary range of allusion, tone, and style. Full of variety of historical scene and poetic effect, the masterpiece is at times satirical, witty, and even broadly comic, at others grand and soaring. This sparkling new translation of Faust, Part Two now affords English-language readers much of the pleasure afforded readers of the original German. Award-winning translator Martin Greenberg casts Goethe's verse in a natural, vigorous, lucid English that preserves Goethe's poetic effects while accurately rendering the sense of the original lines.The book contains a preface by the translator that helps to bridge the abrupt transition from Part One to Part Two. The story is still that of Faust and his compact with Mephistopheles, but no longer narrowly domestic, ranging through classical Greece, medieval and modern Europe, and an exalted conclusion in a Goethean heaven.… (more)
User reviews
What struck me most on this reading was what an unexpectedly modern work it is. The classical allusions and medieval trappings of the story give you a vague feeling that it must be very ancient, but actually Goethe completed it in 1831. It's very much part of the modern, industrial, capitalist world. Jane Austen was dead, Walter Scott was dying; steam trains were running in England, and would soon be imported to Germany; Bismarck was at school; Alfred Krupp would have been at school if he hadn't been obliged to take over his late father's steelworks; Dickens was a young court reporter, etc. Especially in Act V, where Faust and Mephistopheles have become capitalist entrepreneurs involved in shipping and land reclamation, it becomes very obvious that Goethe wants the reader to see the play in this context. One of the biggest questions he addresses is where we can find a space for humanity and morality in such a world, where we are no longer bound by the traditional constraints of religion, and where growth of power and wealth are the only indicators we measure ourselves against.
Just a few quotes:
On life; I thought of the mist trail in Yosemite when I read these lines:
“And so I turn, the sun upon my shoulders,
To watch the water-fall, with heart elate,
The cataract pouring, crashing from the boulders,
Split and rejoined a thousand times in spate;
The thunderous water seethes in fleecy spume,
Lifted on high in many a flying plume,
Above the spray-drenched air. And then how splendid
To see the rainbow rising from this rage,
Now clear, now dimmed, in cool sweet vapour blended.
So strive the figures on our mortal stage.
This ponder well, the mystery closer seeing;
In mirrored hues we have our life and being.”
On marital dissatisfaction:
“Observe the married creature:
There I begin; and can in every case
The purest bliss by idle whims deface,
So varies mood and hour and human nature.
And holding in his arms what most should charm him,
Each fool will set his dreams on some new yearning;
From highest joy, now grown familiar, turning,
He shuns the sun, and takes the frost to warm him.
With practiced hand I rule in these affairs,
And bring in Asmodeus, trusty devil,
To sow, when time is ripe, conjugal evil,
And thus I wreck the human-race in pairs.”
Still, an amazing piece of German literature: 4.5 stars!