Faust (1823)

No denying the beauty of the language in this, the iconic "sell your soul to the devil" story, but it seemed lightweight for it's subject. This modern verse translation of Part I is the only verse translation to be perfomed in the modern theater--which speaks highly of it's readability. ( )

This weird, beautiful, complicated play was the work of Goethe's entire life; he wrote it over 60 years, and I doubt he was done when he died. Part II was published posthumously in 1832; it had his, uh, prehumous approval, but that doesn't mean he wouldn't have been happy to spend another ten years tweaking it. To call it an exploration of the Faust myth seems almost like an insult; it's more the distillation of everything he knew and believed, framed loosely by Faust. (And I do mean loosely.)

That's undoubtedly part of why it's so complicated. It abruptly switches scenes, themes, tone and meter; sometimes I was halfway through a scene before I even figured out what was going on. It's one of the few works where, at the halfway mark, I was already imagining what it would be like when I read it again.

That's a way of saying I didn't get it, and I didn't get it, at least not fully. Hell, it's the entire life of one of our greatest thinkers; I'm not ashamed to admit it. It's also a way of saying that I'm not sure I picked the right translation. I have nothing to compare it to, but Atkins' felt matter-of-fact - plodding - unpoetic. As well, the endnotes and introduction were cursory.

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Rating refers to the translation. ( )

The first half was excellent. The Gretchen tragedy was incredibly disturbing and dramatic. However, I was bored by the second halfs descent into what seemed like a series of unrelated scenes. By the end of the long digression into Greek myth, I was bored by the whole thing and no longer even cared what happened to Faust ( )

While I do not care for Goethe, I do like MacDonald's rhyming translation. It makes it much better to get through it! Did this for Part II so that the Kindle could read the rhyming to me with the text to speech feature. ( )