Goethe, J - Faust [Trans. Walter Kaufmann] (Anchor, 1963)

GOETHE'S

FAUST THE ORIGINAL GERMAN AND A NEW TRANSLATION AND INTRODUCTlON BY

WALTER KAUFMANN PART ONE AND SECTIONS FROM PART TWO

ANCHOR BOOKS

A DIVISION OF RANDOM HOUSEl INC, NEW YORK

Anchor Booles Editions, 1963,1990 Copyright ©1961 by Walter K~ufrtlann All rights reserve&u~~~r Intemati0nala:nd· Pa~-Ame.rican Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Doubleday in 1961. The Anchor Books edition is published by arrangement With Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc. Anchor Books and, colophon are registered Random House, lnc.

trad~:rnarks

Library.o[C?ngress Cataloging::-in-Publtfation Data Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1749..:..1832. [Faust] Goethe's Faust: the original German and a new translation and introduction by Walter Kaufmann. p ..... em. apart one and sections from part two." I. Kaufmann, Walter Arnold. II. Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1749-1832. Faust. English. 1961. III. Title. PT2026.F2K3 1989 89-18328 832'.6-dc20 CIP ISBN 0-385-03114-9 Copyright © 1961 by Walter Kaufmann

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FRIEDA AND EVA WUNDERLICH in gratitude

INTRODUCTION Goethe is generally recognized as the greatest Gerr.han of all time, and Faust as his most important single work. Everybody has some idea of both, but few of those who don't read German really know either the poet·· or his play. Some associate Faust with Marlowe's tragedy or Rembrandt's etching; others with Bernoz' ca.ntata· or Thomas Mann's novel; more· people with Gounod'g opera. Few realize that Gounod's Fatlst is based on the First Part of Goethe's drama, and ignores the Second; fewer still that it does not give an adequate idea even of the First Part. Charles Lamb criticized Goethe, saying: C'What has Margaret to do with Faust?" . . But there is much more to Goethe's Part One, though notto Gounod's opera, than the Gretchen tragedy~ (Goethe sometimes calls her Margaret) sometimes more affectionately Gretchen~) Uncertainty about the end of GoethelOs Faust is even more widespread, and even those who know that he is saved are frequently unsure about the details. In 1949, when Goethe's two-hundredth birthday was widely celebrated, Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary faithfully reflected the fortunes of Faust in the Englishspeaking world: "Faust" rated a special entry and was defined as c'The title and hero of a drama by Goethe." But the lexicographers' respect for Goethe exceeded their knowledge of his play, leading them to say of Faust's end: 'tAfter a sensual life he is carried off by the Devil, hut in the final nct he is regenerated and his soul is saved)'-as if the last act but one were set in hell. Perhaps the last quality which most people associate with Faust is its overflowing humor, which runs the whole J

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Introduction

scale from the benign to the sardonic, including in between the raw, the witty, the subtle, and Olympian malice. The old Goethe, intent on husbanding his energies for his creative work, could affect the stiff pose of a Herr Geheimrat to cut short unwelcome visits. But in his poems he is anything but stiff, and Faust ,manifests an overwhelming disrespect for etiquette and almost every thinkable propriety, including the established canons of poetic form. The play abounds in doggdrel,. slang, and jokes, and contains more light verse than solemn poetry. Wlty, then, is it a cliche in the English-speaking world that . the Germans have no sense of. humor and have always been a rather pompous, saturnine, and ponderous p ople? It is partly because Luther's often coarse bu.. ¥1. r has been so religiC)usly ignored, and· Goethe's and Ni tzsche,'s: wit was spirited away. by Vi9.~orian translat()rSothe .toJ:tuo~ in.yersions . of the word. order, the p. 111 archaislIls;. a~dthe soleD]n affectations .Qf some En . . ·sh versions have come to be falsely imputed to the Ori~ .. als.llut $ereis no warrant whatsoever in Goethe's F a~ for the translators' incessant "ye" and "thou" with theil'. ttendant verb forms. Faust is one of the relatively few great books that is not only profound and inexhaustible,but also readable, enjoyable, and fun.

2 Goethe. The poet was bom on August 28, 1749; and by the time- he was twenty~six he had finished the so-called U rfaust, an early version of the First Part which' was not discovered until 1887. Nothing in previous German literature equals the bold conception and the concentrated power of that draft, and the final scene may well be the high point of German drama, not barring the later version which the poet deliberately made less stark. When he wrote the Urfaust, Goethe was by no means unknown. His storm-and-stress drama, Gotz von Berlich-

Introduction

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ingen (1773) and his novel on Werther (1774) were in.. stant successes. Werther's suicide actually inspired many lovelorn young men and women, in France as well as Germany: their corpses were fished from the water with copies of the novel in their pockets. Well before he was thirty; Goethe had proved himself a master of the drama, of the novel, and of lyric poetry as well. He needed only to repeat himself to enjoy perpetual acclaim.. What distinguishes Goethe' is less this early at~ tainment of success, though his versatility is certainly unu~ual, than his deliberate refusal to repeat himself. No s()