Goethe

 

I won't attempt here to analyze Goethe's Faust: the academic corpus surrounding this important work is extensive. That said, I'd like to offer a response to the Oxford edition of Part One: Goethe's play -- if that's what it can be called -- was more poetic that I was expecting. And for David Luke to translate this work so effectively is truly something to be celebrated. I can't imagine it's easy to translate eighteenth and early nineteenth century German in modern English, but that's exactly what Luke has done. I found Faust to be full of life: Goethe's language and characters are defined in equal measure by their movement, their sense of momentum. Again, I won't pretend to offer an academic analysis of Part One; I'll only say how surprised I was by the play: both in terms of how approachable I found it to be, but also in terms of how much I enjoyed its attempts at moral conjecture. This is a piece rich with European tradition and culture. I'm committed -- I think I am, at least -- to Part Two.