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Faust: A Tragedy (Norton Critical Editions)

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"Vainly in the day time labored, pick and shovel, clink and strike." Goethe worked on Faust for much of his career, but composed some of the best of Part II in a time of life when most are in their rocking chairs or in the intensive care ward of the local nursing home. Goethe in his late seventies and early eighties would rise in the early dawn and compose some of the best poetry written. "I would elevate my mind to a kind of productivity which brought all this forth, in a full state of consciousness and which pleases me still, even though perhaps I could never swim again in such a river." It has been said that German poetry is difficult to translate or untranslatable, and this seems true with some translations of Faust, but the Norton contains a superb effort by Walter Arndt which appears always so on the mark that one suspects Arndt actually embellishes the German, but, rather than quibble over accuracy, it is all so good you will hardly care. Goethe builds upon the medieval Faust legend as a skeleton for his own writing in epic-poem style with various meter fashioned to fit the subject. Faust, weary of the ways of the world (one can almost hear the 60s hippy) embarks on a journey of self-discovery, skirt chasing and empire building finally ending in his 100th year in the ultimate trip, with a little help from his friend, Goethe. This composition is remarkable in innumerable ways. One can use a thesaurus of superlatives: wonderful imagery, perfect choice of words, peerless imagination, beautiful poetry, a unity to the whole which is memorable, as well as numerous wonderful scenes and lines, and always an intelligence that seems to absorb and understand everything. Of course, one can differ with Goethe philosophically. There are other angles from which to view life than Faust and his Mephistophelean foil. And Faust, which contains all the universal ingredients, can be faulted at times, dwelling too much on the antique philosophy, politics and literary questions which interested Goethe in his long life. But all this seems irrelevant to Faust as a work of art, permanently canonized for its beauty and writing alone, whatever disparagement or praise one might hold for its meaning or content. The Norton Edition is edited by Cyrus Hamlin whose interpretive notes are scholarly, contain a subtle respect for Goethe, and are in themselves a book worth reading. The selections of Goethe comment and scholarship range from the brilliant to the outer eliptics of literary criticism, and the included illustrations and Goethe letters on composition are a nice touch. The work of Hamlin and the Arndt translation which here frame Goethe as the main event make the Norton Critical Edition of Faust (2000) one of the better books one is likely to pick up.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was a marvel. How he managed to write a dark, complicated, and immensely riveting play based loosely on the life of Dr. Faustus is beyond my imagination. This is truly a great work of art.

This book, containing only the English translation, contains detailed commentaries, selected illustrations, Goethe's own remarks about Faust, observations from modern playwrights, and so much more. A great buy.

The text of Faust itself is brilliant. It is so richly detailed, it is an amazing and spellbinding story - though very disorienting. A detailed knowledge of poety, Greek Mythology, and other things will add to successful reading of this complicated text. The translation is very good with only a few errors.

On the flip side of the coin, the book is laiden with notes, interpretations, and valuable details. For anyone seriously going to study Faust, not in the original German, this is for you.

I won't bother to review Goethe's "Faust". It's ability to withstand the test of time and invade our lexicon is proof enough of its greatness and worth more than anything I could say. However, I would like to comment specifically on the Norton Critical Edition.

I was not particularly satisfied by this edition. Having never read Faust before, I was expecting this edition to contain within its copious annotations helpful summaries of what was going on in the play. Particularly in Part II, where things are often quite disorienting, a first-time reader would often be lost without some outside help. Unfortunately, this edition, despite all the extras it added, didn't contain what I was looking for.

If you are deeply interested in Faust, and familiar with the story itself, the annotations are amazingly detailed, describing the sources and motivations that guided Goethe. If you are a casual reader, however, they will rarely help you understand what is going on if you get confused. This edition is geared towards the scholarly, not the casual.

Having tried my hand at translations myself, I am awestruck by the performance of Walter Arndt. Faust is rightly regarded as a climax in German letters and,together with Don Quixote,The Divine Comedy, War and Peace and King Lear,in world literature. The nobility of its language, the sharpness of its mockery, the breadth of its subject matter and the beauty of its lyricism all make it unique. And all pose seemingly insuperable problems to the translator

What should a translator do? Try to convey meaning as literally as possible? Reproduce rhyme and meter patterns as faithfully as possible? Convey the spirit of the work more than its form and letters? All of these are worthy objectives but they all are competing and, seemingly, mutually exclusive ones.

It is a measure of Mr.Arndt's artistry that these conflicts seem to dissolve in his text. From the beautiful and melancholy Dedication that precedes Part I to the mystical and esoteric completion of Part II I was unable to find a single jarring note, even though I love the German text with some fanaticism. Compare the following:

Ihr naht Euch wieder, schwankende Gestalten
Die frueh sich einst dem trueben Blick gezeigt
Wag ich es wohl Euch diesmal fest zu halten..

Once more you near me, wavering apparitions
That early showed before the turbid gaze
Will now I seek to grant you definition...

Or this:

Alles Vergaengliche
Ist nur ein Gleichniss
Das Unzulaengliche
Hier wird's Ereignisss
Das Unbeschreibliche
Hier ist es gethan
Das Ewig-Weibliche
Zieht uns hinan.

All that is changeable
Is but refraction
The unattainable
Here becomes action
Human discernment
Here is passed by
Woman Eternal
Draw us on high.

One may quarrel with the last line (I would have preferred "draws" since the chorus is not praying but praising), but what matters much more is that the sensation of "Ausklang", of a closing chord, is reproduced perfectly without doing (much) violence to the meaning.

Mr. Arndt's (or are they the Editor's?) generous explanatory footnotes are a mine of erudition and good sense. Only the quality and relevance of the Essays by various authors, appended to the work, are of variable quality.

Certainly, the sixty years Goethe spent writing volumes I & II paid off. Unlike Shakespeare, there is a moral lesson which sums the human experience regardless of one's actual circumstances. By illusion and yearning are we enmeshed in lifes toils, only to find the simplicity of innocence and life's early beauty, before we possessed, was the greatest of our soul. Though greatly influenced by Shakespeare, Goethe takes the life's tale to another level which is wrapped in other dimensions of past, present, and future, in addition to heavens and hells. The Faustian choice is one made everyday and is weaved into every moment, until death and afterwards.
An understanding of Indian philosophy (i.e., Buddhism, Hinduism) and the Sanskrit texts brings a deeper depth of understanding, with their complexity and breadth giving greater meaning to a highly mystical and even transcendental text.

One of these days, someone asked if I believed in God. I answered: "Of course I do. There are some things in the world that couldn't have been created by men, such as Faust or The Divine Comedy. They must have been created by another entity, by God himself or through His direct inspiration. The human spirit is not that great."

Darwin was wrong. Men have not evoluted since Dante or Goeth. The modern man has become an ancient monkey: our brain has diminished and it doesn't conceive these kinds of Masterpieces anymore.

Who Am I to review such a Masterpiece as Faust? I`m just a monkey. A monkey that is going to read Faust for the fifth time in four years and still hasn't got it all, and, probably, never will.

This has to be one of the worst pieces of literature. People in prison should be forced to read it. The only reason I bought it is to read it with my niece, who was assigned this book to read over the summer! It is totally inappropriate for a high school student!