Faust

FAUST
A Bantam Book

PUBLISHING HISTORY
Bantam Dual-Language edition published November 1962
Bantam World Drama edition published February 1967
Bantam Classic revised edition / May 1985
Bantam Classic reissue / September 2007

Published by
Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved
Copyright © 1962 by Bantam Books
Revised translation copyright © 1985 by Peter Salm
Cover photo © Robb Kendrick/Getty Images
Cover design by Elizabeth Shapiro

Bantam Books and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

eISBN: 978-0-307-75497-4

www.bantamdell.com

v3.1

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Introduction

A Note on Using this eBook

A Note on the Translation

Goethe Chronology

FAUST: ENGLISH

DEDICATION

PRELUDE IN THE THEATER

PROLOGUE IN HEAVEN

THE FIRST PART OF THE TRAGEDY

Night

Before the Gate

Faust’s Study

Study

Auerbach’s Cellar in Leipzig

Witch’s Kitchen

A Street

Evening

Promenade

The Neighbor’s House

A Street

Martha’s Garden

A Summer Cabin

Forest and Cavern

Gretchen’s Room

Martha’s Garden

At the Well

By the Ramparts

Night

Cathedral

Walpurgis Night

Walpurgis-Night’s Dream

Gloomy Day—Field

Night—Open Field

Dungeon

FAUST: GERMAN

ZUEIGNUNG

VORSPIEL AUF DEM THEATER

PROLOG IM HIMMEL

DER TRAGÖDIE ERSTER TEIL

Nacht

Vor Dem Tor

Studierzimmer

Studierzimmer

Auerbachs Keller in Leipzig

Hexenküche

Strasse

Abend

Spaziergang

Der Nachbarin Haus

Strasse

Garten

Ein Gartenhäuschen

Wald Und Höhle

Gretchens Stube

Marthens Garten

Am Brunnen

Zwinger

Nacht

Dom

Walpurgisnacht

Walpurgisnachtstraum Oder Oberons Und Titanias Goldne Hochzeit

Trüber Tag • Feld

Nacht • Offen Feld

Kerker

Notes

Selected Bibliography

About the Author

INTRODUCTION

A MAN WHO called himself Faust, or Faustus, lived in the early part of the sixteenth century and left his traces in cities like Erfurt, Leipzig, and Wittenberg. We have the testimony of Martin Luther, for example, who in the context of one of his “Table Talks” (1536–7) incidentally referred to Faust, his contemporary, as a conjurer and necromancer who was wont to refer to the devil as his brother-in-law. In the mid-sixteenth century, about ten years after Faust’s death, Philipp Melanchthon, Luther’s close friend and adjutant, spoke of Faust with a mixture of awe and fervent repugnance:

Once upon a time [Faust] intended to put on a spectacle in Venice and he said that he would fly into the heavens. Soon the devil took him away and pummelled and mauled him so terribly that, upon coming back to earth, he lay as if dead. But this time he did not die. (Faust, eine Anthologie, Reklam, Leipzig, n.d., p. 16, translation mine)

There are other bits of documentary evidence, but while Faust’s goings-about are not ascertainable in detail, the legends proliferated and in due time began to envelop the scanty verifiable facts. Whatever contributed to the object lesson in the necromancer’s reprobate life was worthy of being singled out and enlarged upon for the benefit of pious souls who lived in hope of salvation.

Magic and alchemy were related endeavors, and their practitioners inspired both awe and suspicion; awe because they could produce near-miracles in their vials, alembics, and retorts. They were, after all, in pursuit of ancient and persistent dreams: transmutating base metals into gold, discovering the elixir of eternal youth, achieving human flight, finding panaceas for the plague, and, finally, the dream of possessing superhuman wisdom. There were reports that the alchemists Paracelsus and Agrippa had performed feats that came close to attaining those wondrous goals, reports that, along with other fanciful tales, often became transmuted into Faustian lore.

On the other hand, the alchemists and necromancers were regarded with suspicion because to bring about their marvels in the laboratory they “obviously” had to resort to black magic and hence had to be motivated by evil purposes, much like the powerful “evil scientist” of our day as he appears in animated cartoons on Saturday morning television. In the sixteenth century, an age of great religious turmoil and fervor, the alchemist-magicians were seen as tampering with the divine order of things. They furtively took minerals, crystals, and waters out of God’s nature and carried them off into their laboratories and, by compounding, boiling, distilling, and filtrating, forced them to minister to their dark purposes. They were “speculating the elements,” illicitly prying into deeply hidden mysteries. In our own century, rather more tolerant of scientific probings into nature’s inmost recesses, Thomas Mann put to good use a tenacious ambiguity still embedded in the language. In his novel Doctor Faustus (1947), he has the narrator play on the common root in the German words versuchen, meaning to try or test, Versuch, experiment, and Versuchung, temptation—all by way of evoking the alchemists’ suspect trade. Here is the passage in English:

But the enterprise of experimenting on Nature, of teasing her into manifestations, “tempting” her, in the sense of laying bare her workings by experiment … that all this … was itself the work of the “Tempter,” was the conviction of earlier epochs. (Thomas Mann, Doctor Faustus, New York, 1960, p. 17, trans. H. T. Lowe-Porter)

Surely where there is temptation, the devil, or Mephistopheles, cannot be far behind. After all, Jesus himself, having been led into the wilderness by the Evil Spirit, had to confront three temptations, and three times he stood fast against their lure (Luke 4: 1–12).

The stories that were circulating about Faust were excellent raw material for the newly established printing shops. It should not be forgotten that during the sixteenth century printers were on the lookout for new, preferably sensational stories that might be offered to the public. After Johannes BookishMall.com invented movable type, the books printed during the remainder of the fifteenth century were largely of a religious nature: editions of the Bible, collections of religious songs, and prayer books. But printing presses constituted a big investment and became economically interesting only if they were also used for nonreligious ends. There were the medieval legends about Virgil, the Roman poet and author of the Aeneid, whom the Middle Ages had endowed with superhuman wisdom and prophetic powers; and much entertainment was found in the rude tricks perpetrated by the arch-prankster Till Eulenspiegel. The printers produced cheap, pamphletlike chapbooks and hawked them at street corners and country fairs. The hair-raising episodes in the life of the mighty conjurer Johann Faust, who in the end paid in full for his impious life, quickly captured the imagination of people looking to be both entertained and edified.