B00ARI2G5C EBOK

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Authors: J. W. von Goethe,David Luke

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First published as a World’s Classics paperback 1994
Reissued as an Oxford World’s Classics paperback 1998 Reissued 2008

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ISBN 978-0-19-953620-7

5

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OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS

For over 100 years Oxford World’s Classics have brought readers closer to the world’s great literature. Now with over 700 titles—from the 4,000-year-old myths of Mesopotamia to the twentieth century’s greatest novels—the series makes available lesser-known as well as celebrated writing
.

The pocket-sized hardbacks of the early years contained introductions by Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, Graham Greene, and other literary figures which enriched the experience of reading. Today the series is recognized for its fine scholarship and reliability in texts that span world literature, drama and poetry, religion, philosophy and politics. Each edition includes perceptive commentary and essential background information to meet the changing needs of readers
.

Refer to the
Table of Contents
to navigate through the material in this Oxford World’s Classics ebook. Use the asterisks (*) throughout the text to access the hyperlinked Explanatory Notes
.

OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

Faust

Part Two

Translated with an Introduction and Notes by

DAVID LUKE

OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS
FAUST
PART TWO

J
OHANN
W
OLFGANG
G
OETHE
was born in 1749, the son of a wellto-do citizen of Frankfurt. As a young man he studied law and briefly practised as a lawyer, but creative writing was his chief concern. In the early 1770s he was the dominating figure of the German literary revival, his tragic novel
Werther
bringing him international fame.

In 1775 he settled permanently in the small duchy of Weimar where he became a minister of state and director of the court theatre; in 1782 he was ennobled as ‘von Goethe’. His journey to Italy in 1786-8 influenced the development of his mature classical style; in the 1790s, he and his younger contemporary Schiller (1759-1805) were the joint architects of Weimar Classicism, the central phase of German literary culture.

Goethe wrote in all the literary
genres
but his interests extended far beyond literature and included a number of scientific subjects.
Faust
, written at various stages of his life and in a variety of styles, became a constantly enlarged repository of his personal wisdom. His creative energies never ceased to take new forms and he was still writing original poetry at the age of more than 80. In 1806 he married Christiane Vulpius (1765-1816), having lived with her for eighteen years; they had one surviving son, August (1789–1830). Goethe died in 1832.

D
AVID
L
UKE
was a Student (Fellow) and Tutor in German at Christ Church, Oxford, until 1988. He has edited and translated the Penguin Poets
Goethe
(1964) and the Oxford World’s Classics
Faust Part One
(1987, awarded the European Poetry Translation Prize in 1989) and
Erotic Poems
(1997), as well as various other works of German literature including Heinrich von Kleist’s stories, the tales of the Brothers Grimm, and
Death in Venice and Other Stories
by Thomas Mann.

CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

Chronology of Composition and Publication

Index of Scenes

F
AUST
, P
ART TWO

Selected Paralipomena

Explanatory Notes

Bibliography and Index of Names

Index of Classical Mythology

Map of Greece (Acts II and III)

PREFACE

‘Faust
, Part Two’ (or as Goethe calls it
Faust, der Tragödie zweiter Teil
) may arguably be regarded either as a loose, almost independent sequel to
‘Faust
, Part One’, or (as the word ‘part’ suggests and as many critics insist) as the continuation of a single work called
‘Faust’
. Readers will differ as to which approach makes better sense; in any case, largely for practical reasons, I have not tried to integrate this translation and edition of Part Two with that of Part One in a single bulky
‘Faust’
volume. I have assumed, however, that those who read this sequel, if such it is, will probably be acquainted with Part One in some form or another, and perhaps with my own version of it which was published by Oxford University Press in 1987. In this hope I here occasionally refer (by page or line or scene number) to the Part One text or to my introduction and notes to it. (In both translations I have preserved the standard line-numbering of the German text, and for greater clarity added editorial numbers to Goethe’s scenes; a scene-index appears on p. lxxxiii.)

As with Part One, the German text is so well established that it makes no significant difference which of the many standard editions one translates from, but I have in fact used the relevant Reclam volume (Reclams Universal-Bibliothek, Stuttgart, 1986), which is itself based on volume 15 (
Faust
, II Teil, ed. Erich Schmidt, 1888) of the venerable Weimar Edition of Goethe’s works (1887-1919). I have also frequently consulted the
Faust
volume (vol. 8, ed. Gotthard Erler, 1965) of the more modern Berlin Edition, in which Goethe’s different
Faust
texts, peripheral writings, and other relevant material are presented in a rational and accessible way. The ‘Weimarer Ausgabe’ and ‘Berliner Ausgabe’ are referred to as WA and BA. For the complex problem of the genesis of Act V, which (as in the case of the genesis of Part One) must affect any interpretation of the conclusion and indeed of the whole of Part Two, an indispensable aid has been Ulrich Landeck’s recent text-critical edition of this Act (
Der fünfte
Akt von Goethes Faust II:
kommentierte kritische
Ausgabe, Artemis Verlag, Zurich 1981).

As in the Part One edition, I have tried to condense what seemed to be the most important points for discussion into the introductory
essay, using asterisks to relegate specific miscellaneous details to the ‘Explanatory Notes’; the Notes are placed after the text since they annotate it as well. They are also preceded by a few extracts from Goethe’s unpublished sketches and other material on the periphery of Part Two: the so-called paralipomena, which are, so to speak, a penumbral extension of his official text of
Faust
, without reference to which it is difficult to understand his developing (and therefore his final) conception of the whole work. The Notes are followed by a short bibliography of sources used or mentioned in the Introduction or in the Notes themselves; since I also frequently quote from Goethe’s letters and conversations, an index of names is included in this section, giving brief details of his correspondents and conversation-partners. (A more extended bibliography of translations and other literature concerning
Faust
and Goethe generally, together with a chronological table of relevant events, appears after the Introduction to Part One.) Since Acts II and III of Part Two supposedly take place in Thessaly and the Peloponnese respectively, and contain numerous mythological or other classical allusions, I have also added an index of classical mythology and a map of Greece. Here and elsewhere, with regret but for the sake of consistency, I have in nearly all cases adopted the conventional Latin spellings of Greek names and place-names (Achilles for Akhilleus, Patrodus for Patroklos, Peneus for Peneios, etc.; Helen/Helena has inevitably been Anglicized as well as Latinized).

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