About the book

Faust begins with a crisis of learning: study has not brought the certainty or fulfilment its central figure desires. Mephistopheles offers movement, sensation, and worldly opportunity, but the promise of release from frustration carries consequences for other lives. The drama shifts between argument, song, comedy, and scenes of acute distress, making its changes of register part of the experience. Margaret's story gives human weight to Faust's restless pursuit, preventing the philosophical questions from remaining abstract. John Stuart Blackie's revised English verse translation supplies preliminary discussion and extensive notes, and arranges the drama into acts and scenes. This is a particular rendering of the tragedy, not a claim to include Goethe's entire two-part Faust. Its strongest questions concern responsibility as much as aspiration.

Knowledge and desire
Responsibility
Temptation and consequence

Why read it

For a dramatic encounter between limitless aspiration and the lives affected by its pursuit.

English verse translation by John Stuart Blackie · revised second edition, 1880

Contents and reading sections