Faust

About this book

Faust, a scholar who has studied everything and found no satisfaction, makes a wager with the devil Mephistopheles: if Mephistopheles can ever give him a moment so perfect that he wishes it to last, he may take his soul. What follows takes Faust from a student tavern and a witches' kitchen to the tragic love story of Gretchen, a young woman whose life he destroys.

Context and significance

Goethe worked on Faust for almost sixty years; Part One appeared in 1808 and Part Two after his death in 1832. It is the central work of German literature, here in an English verse translation. Read The Sorrows of Young Werther to see the young Goethe first.

About the author

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) was born in Frankfurt and trained as a lawyer, but at twenty-four his novel The Sorrows of Young Werther made him famous across Europe. Invited to the small court of Weimar, he served as a minister for years while writing poems, plays and novels, and pursuing serious research in botany, anatomy and the theory of colour.

His friendship with the poet Schiller and his journey to Italy shaped German classicism, and his Faust, the work of sixty years, is the summit of German literature. Goethe admired the Persian poet Hafez and the Quran, and his West-Eastern Divan was an early bridge between European and Islamic poetry.