Goethe's Faust
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Goethe's Faust Customer Reviews
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♥♥♥♥♥
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A very readable Faust, including the German!
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Goethe's Faust', translated and with an introduction by Walter Kaufmann was quite a surprising find, as I had been, in an earlier life, quite a fan of Professor Kaufmann's works, but I simply had no idea he had translated the Faust' of Johan Wolfgang von Goethe, the most famous of the many different literary renderings of this story. My surprise is based on the fact that Kaufmann was primarily a professor of Philosophy, who also did several important translations of Friedrich Nietzsche's most important works. But, I had him pegged as primarily a late 19th century / early existentialist scholar, even though late in his life, he did do a scholarly work on Hegel.
Once having recovered from my surprise, I recalled that Professor Kaufmann had written several semi-scholarly articles on Goethe, which were published in his Critique of Religion and Philosophy' and From Shakespeare to Existentialism'. I was also delighted, in that Walter Kaufmann singlehandedly convinced me to major in philosophy, all the way to entering a doctoral degree program on the subject. So, I was really quite thrilled to find this volume, since I was simply looking for a simple, hopefully competent translation of the German into English.
Before I go too much further, let me point out that Herr Kaufmann decided to NOT include all of Part II! And, not only did he drop parts, he dropped the entire first four of five acts, leaving only the prologues and Act V. Now fortunately, I really only wanted Act V anyway, so my goals were met with this translation, but if you happen to be intent on reading the entire Part II, look elsewhere for the complete text.
Needless to say, the good professor had a relatively sound reason for excluding 4/5 of a work which is commonly considered one of the monuments of 19th Century German literature. First, Part II was really a posthumous work, and Goethe really didn't spend as much time editing and refining it as he did with the much tighter Part I, which is actually performed very regularly in Germany and by many German faculties in U.S. colleges. The second reason is that most of Part II is deathly dry and not a pleasure to read. I can attest to this, having tried to read parts of it many years ago in a relatively pedestrian translation.
That aside, Herr Kaufmann promises us that his translation, which appears on the right side of the page, facing the original German text on the left, will leave nothing out and add nothing not said by Goethe's words. This is fine, but all one has to do is read a literal translation of some New Testament material to realize that a closely literal translation may not be the best of all possible worlds. My German is very rusty, and I am not a scholar of translations in general, but I do find Kaufmann's translation quite literal. Unfortunately, Herr Kaufmann is NOT a poet, and even with my creaky German, I can easily see how there is much in the tone of Goethe's German which is not captured by the English. I found it very interesting that Kaufmann made a point of quoting Edgar Allan Poe on some points, because I find Kaufmann's translation of Goethe's verses to come out sounding remarkably like Edgar Allan Poe's verses, especially those in The Raven'.
Joined with this faithful translation is a fine introduction to the work, seeing Goethe's work far more from the philosophical rather than the literary point of view. Kaufmann's primary thesis is that Goethe's world view has much more in common with later 19th century literature and thought than with the 18th century, let alone the origins of the Faust legend. Here, I was really surprised to discover that the origins of the Faust story arose not only from a real person, but a real contemporary of Martin Luther. This little connection tickled me to no end, as I was researching Faust Part II to find an example of some thoughts in Paul's Letter to the Romans, one of Luther's favorite books of the Christian scriptures.
All in all, anyone who simply wants to become familiar with this work for their own pleasure can do much worse than use Kaufmann's translation, especially if you have some passing knowledge of German, so you can make use of the original text. And, I did verify Kaufmann's claim that in fact, Goethe's writing does contain an enormous amount of humor. That discovery alone makes this edition worthwhile.
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