Faust - The Original Classic Edition (Paperback)

Heinrich Faust, a learned scholar, feels that none of his many achievements has provided him with satisfaction or a sense of fulfillment. He yearns to gain knowledge of absolute truth and the meaning of existence. Faust turns to magic in the hope of finding a solution and finally makes a pact with the devil. He agrees to sell his soul if the devil can give him one moment of experience which is so rewarding that his sense of alienation disappears and he calls upon that moment to stay as it is forever.

This is a high quality book of the original classic edition. It was previously published by other bona fide publishers, and is now, finally, back in print.

This is a freshly published edition of this culturally important work, which is now, at last, again available to you.

Enjoy this classic work. These few paragraphs distill the contents and give you a quick look inside:

The prose version of Hayward seemed to have been accepted as the standard, in default of anything more satisfactory: the English critics, generally sustaining the translator in his views concerning the secondary importance of form in Poetry, practically discouraged any further attempt; and no one, familiar with rhythmical expression through the needs of his own nature, had devoted the necessary love and patience to an adequate reproduction of the great work of Goethe's life.

The care and conscience with which the work had been performed were so apparent, that I now state with reluctance what then seemed to me to be its only deficiencies, -a lack of the lyrical fire and fluency of the original in some passages, and an occasional lowering of the tone through the use of words which are literal, but not equivalent.

Lewes reaches this conclusion: 'If, therefore, we reflect what a poem Faust is, and that it contains almost every variety of style and metre, it will be tolerably evident that no one unacquainted with the original can form an adequate idea of it from translation, ' E] which is certainly correct of any translation wherein something of the rhythmical variety and beauty of the original is not retained.

The English language, by and through which the greatest and most eminent poet of modern times-as contrasted with ancient classical poetry-(of course I can refer only to Shakespeare) was begotten and nourished, has a just claim to be called a language of the world; and it appears to be destined, like the English race, to a higher and broader sway in all quarters of the earth.

It is true that the metrical foot into which the German language most naturally falls is the trochaic, while in English it is the iambic: it is true that German is rich, involved, and tolerant of new combinations, while English is simple, direct, and rather shy of compounds; but precisely these differences are so modified in the German of Faust that there is a mutual approach of the two languages.