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Translation and editorial material © David Luke 1987

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First published 1987 by Oxford University Press as a
World’s Classics paperback and simultaneously in a hardback edition
Reissued as an Oxford World’s Classics paperback 1998

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Data available

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1749–1832.
Faust, part one.
(Oxford world’s classics)
Translation of: Faust, 1. Theil.
I. Luke, David, 1921–   .   II. Title. III. Title:
Faust, part 1.   IV. Series.
PT2026.F2L85   1987   832′.6   87–1559
ISBN–13: 978–0–19–283595–6
ISBN–10: 0–19–283595–5

11

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OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS

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OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

Faust Part One

Translated with an Introduction and Notes by
DAVID LUKE

OXFORD WORLD’S CLASSICS

FAUST
PART ONE

JOHANN WOLFGANG GOETHE was born in 1749, the son of a well-to-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.

DAVID LUKE was an Emeritus Student (Emeritus Fellow) of Christ Church, Oxford. He published articles and essays on German literature, and various prose and verse translations, including Goethe’s Selected Verse, Stifter’s Limestone and Other Stories, Kleist’s The Marquise of O and Other Stories, Selected Tales by the brothers Grimm, Goethe’s Iphigenia in Tauris and Hermann and Dorothea, and Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice and Other Stories. His translation of Faust Part One was awarded the European Poetry Translation Prize in 1989. His translation of Goethe’s Erotic Poems is also available in Oxford World’s Classics.

CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

Synopsis of the composition of Faust Part One

Select Bibliography

Chronology

FAUST, PART ONE

Explanatory Notes

For Lawrence Brown

PREFACE

The present translation is from Faust, der Tragödie erster Teil, which Goethe published in 1808. I have used the edition by L. J. Scheithauer (Reclams Universal-Bibliothek, Stuttgart, revised 1986) which is itself based on the monumental ‘Weimarer Ausgabe’, the historical-critical edition of Goethe’s writings by E. Schmidt and other authorities (Weimar 1887–1919; Faust / in vol. 14).