Faust (Volume 1) - Softcover

Reseña del editor

Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1871. Excerpt: ... I should only confuse the reader by attempting to set forth all the forms of intellectual, ethical, or theological significance which have been attached to the characters of Faust. The intention of the work, reduced to its simplest element, is easily grasped; but if every true poet builds larger than he knows, this drama, completed by the slow accretion of sixty years of thought, may be assumed to have a vaster background of design, change, and reference than almost anything else in Literature. Like an old Gothic pile, its outline is sometimes obscured in a labyrinth of details. While, in the Notes which succeed, it will now and then be necessary for me to give the conflicting interpretations, I shall endeavor to wander from the text as little as possible, and, even when dealing with enigmas, to keep open a way past, if not through them. The embarrassing abundance of the material is somewhat diminished for me by the omission of all technical or philological criticism, and my chief task will be to distinguish between those helps which all readers require and the points which are interesting only to special students of the work. In many instances, I have simply illustrated the text by parallel passages. Where I have discovered these, in Goethe's works or correspondence, they have often been of service in suggesting (in the absence of any direct evidence) the probable time when certain scenes were written, and thereby the interests or influences which may have then swayed the author's mind. The variation in tone between different parts of the work, though sometimes very delicate, is always perceptible; and the reader to whom the original is an unknown tongue needs all the side-lights which can be thrown upon its translated forms. The " Paralipomcna" (Supplementary Fragments) to Faust h...