Goethe's Faust facts for kids

Sculpture of Mephistopheles bewitching the students in the scene "Auerbachs Keller" from Faust, at the entrance of what is today the restaurant Auerbachs Keller in Leipzig

Anton Kaulbach: Faust and Mephisto

Faust is a tragic play in two parts by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, usually known in English as Faust, Part One and Faust, Part Two. Nearly all of Part One and the majority of Part Two are written in rhymed verse. Although rarely staged in its entirety, it is the play with the largest audience numbers on German-language stages. Faust is considered by many to be Goethe's magnum opus and the greatest work of German literature.

Faust, Part One
Faust, Part Two
Relationship between the parts
Translations
Historic productions
In music and film
See also

Faust, Part One

Faust I, first edition, 1808

The principal characters of Faust Part One include:

Heinrich Faust (see also Faust), a scholar, sometimes said to be based on Johann Georg Faust, or on Jacob Bidermann's dramatized account of the Legend of the Doctor of Paris, Cenodoxus
Mephistopheles, the Devil
Gretchen, Faust's love (short for Margarete; Goethe uses both forms)
Marthe Schwerdtlein, Gretchen's neighbour
Valentin, Gretchen's brother
Wagner, Faust's attendant

Faust, Part One takes place in multiple settings, the first of which is Heaven. Mephistopheles (Satan) makes a bet with God: he says that he can lure God's favorite human (Faust), who is striving to learn everything that can be known, away from righteous pursuits. The next scene takes place in Faust's study where the aging scholar, struggling with what he considers the vanity and uselessness of scientific, humanistic, and religious learning, turns to magic for the showering of infinite knowledge. He suspects, however, that his attempts are failing. Frustrated, he ponders to end his life, but rejects it as he hears the echo of nearby Easter celebrations begin. He goes for a walk with his assistant Wagner and is followed home by a stray poodle.

In Faust's study, the poodle transforms into Mephistopheles, dressed as a travelling student who refuses to give his name. He reveals to Faust that although the misshapen pentagram carved into Faust's doorway has allowed him to enter, he cannot leave. Faust is surprised that Mephistopheles is bound by mystical laws, and from this reasons that he could make a pact. Mephistopheles says that he is willing to make a deal but wishes to leave for the night. Faust refuses to release him because he believes it would be impossible for him to catch Mephistopheles again. Mephistopheles then tricks him into permitting a demonstration of his power; Faust falls asleep listening to the song of the spirits, allowing Mephistopheles to escape by calling upon rats to chew away the pentagram.

The next morning Mephistopheles returns. He tells Faust that he wishes to serve him in life, and in return Faust must serve him in the afterlife. Faust is willing to accept but is concerned that accepting the services of Mephistopheles will bring him to ruin. To avoid this fate, Faust makes a wager: if Mephistopheles can grant Faust an experience of transcendence on Earth—a moment so blissful that he wishes to remain in it forever, ceasing to strive further—then he will instantly die and serve the Devil in Hell. Mephistopheles accepts the wager.

When Mephistopheles tells Faust to sign the pact with blood, Faust complains that Mephistopheles does not trust Faust's word of honor. In the end, Mephistopheles wins the argument and Faust signs the contract with a drop of his own blood. Faust has a few excursions and then meets Margaret (also known as Gretchen). He is attracted to her and with jewelry and with help from a neighbor, Marthe, Mephistopheles draws Gretchen into Faust's arms. Gretchen's mother dies from a sleeping potion, administered by Gretchen to obtain privacy so that Faust could visit her. Soon afterwards Gretchen discovers she is pregnant. Gretchen's brother condemns Faust, challenges him and falls dead at the hands of Faust and Mephistopheles. Gretchen kills her child and is convicted of the murder. Faust tries to save Gretchen from death by attempting to free her from prison. Finding that she refuses to escape, Faust and Mephistopheles flee the dungeon, while voices from Heaven announce that Gretchen shall be saved – "Sie ist gerettet" – this differs from the harsher ending of Urfaust – "Sie ist gerichtet!" – "she is condemned."

Faust, Part Two

Faust II, first edition, 1832

Cover of the first edition of Faust Part Two, 1832

1876 Faust, large edition (51×38cm)

Rich in classical allusion, in Part Two the romantic story of the first Faust is put aside, and Faust wakes in a field of fairies to initiate a new cycle of adventures and purpose. The piece consists of five acts (relatively isolated episodes) each representing a different theme. Ultimately, Faust goes to Heaven. He had lost his wager with Mephistopheles, that he would never seek to remain in a transcendental moment and have it prolonged forever. However, God had won his wager from the Prologue (and thus Faust's soul) as the transcendental moment was derived from his righteous pursuits. Angels, who arrive as messengers of divine mercy, declare at the end of Act V: "He who strives on and lives to strive / Can earn redemption still" (V, 11936–7).

Relationship between the parts

Throughout Part One, Faust remains unsatisfied; the ultimate conclusion of the tragedy and the outcome of the wagers are only revealed in Faust, Part Two. The first part represents the "small world" and takes place in Faust's own local, temporal milieu. In contrast, Part Two takes place in the "wide world" or macrocosmos.

Translations

In 1821, a partial English verse translation of Faust (Part One) was published anonymously by the London publisher Thomas Boosey and Sons, with illustrations by the German engraver Moritz Retzsch. This translation was attributed to the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge by Frederick Burwick and James C. McKusick in their 2007 Oxford University Press edition, Faustus: From the German of Goethe, Translated by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In a letter dated 4 September 1820, Goethe wrote to his son August that Coleridge was translating Faust. However, this attribution is controversial: Roger Paulin, William St. Clair, and Elinor Shaffer provide a lengthy rebuttal to Burwick and McKusick, offering evidence including Coleridge's repeated denials that he had ever translated Faustus and arguing that Goethe's letter to his son was based on misinformation from a third party.

Coleridge's fellow Romantic Percy Bysshe Shelley produced admired fragments of a translation first publishing Part One Scene II in The Liberal magazine in 1822, with "Scene I" (in the original, the "Prologue in Heaven") being published in the first edition of his Posthumous Poems by Mary Shelley in 1824.

In 1828, at the age of twenty, Gérard de Nerval published a French translation of Goethe's Faust.
In 1850, Anna Swanwick released an English translation of Part One. In 1878, she published a translation of Part Two. Her translation is considered among the best.
In 1870–71, Bayard Taylor published an English translation in the original metres. This translation, which he is best known for, is considered one of the finest and consistently remained in print for a century.
Calvin Thomas: Part One (1892) and Part Two (1897) for D. C. Heath.
Alice Raphael: Part One (1930) for Jonathan Cape.
Mori Ōgai: 1913 both parts into Japanese.
Guo Moruo: Part One (1928) and Part Two (1947) into Chinese.
Philosopher Walter Kaufmann was also known for an English translation of Faust, presenting Part One in its entirety, with selections from Part Two, and omitted scenes extensively summarized. Kaufmann's version preserves Goethe's metres and rhyme schemes, but objected to translating all of Part Two into English, believing that "To let Goethe speak English is one thing; to transpose into English his attempt to imitate Greek poetry in German is another."
Phillip Wayne: Part One (1949) and Part Two (1959) for Penguin Books.
Louis MacNeice: In 1949, the BBC commissioned an abridged translation for radio. It was published in 1952.

In August 1950, Boris Pasternak's Russian translation of the first part led him to be attacked in the Soviet literary journal Novy Mir. The attack read in part,

... the translator clearly distorts Goethe's ideas... in order to defend the reactionary theory of 'pure art' ... he introduces an aesthetic and individualist flavor into the text... attributes a reactionary idea to Goethe... distorts the social and philosophical meaning...

In response, Pasternak wrote to Ariadna Èfron, the exiled daughter of Marina Tsvetaeva:

There was some alarm when my Faust was torn to pieces in Novy mir on the basis that supposedly the gods, angels, witches, spirits, the madness of poor Gretchen and everything 'irrational' was rendered too well, whereas Goethe's progressive ideas (which ones?) were left in the shade and unattended.

Peter Salm: Faust, First Part (1962) for Bantam Books.
Randall Jarrell: Part One (1976) for Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Walter Arndt: Faust: A Tragedy (1976) for W. W. Norton & Company.
Stuart Atkins: Faust I & II, Volume 2: Goethe's Collected Works (1984) for Princeton University Press.
David Luke: Part One (1987) and Part Two (1994) for Oxford University Press.
Martin Greenberg : Part One (1992) and Part Two (1998) for Yale University Press. He has been credited with capturing the poetic feel of the original.
John R. Williams: Part One (1999) and Part Two (2007) for Wordsworth Editions.
David Constantine: Part One (2005) and Part Two (2009) for Penguin Books.
Zsuzsanna Ozsváth and Frederick Turner: Part One (2020) for Deep Vellum Books, with illustrations by Fowzia Karimi.

Historic productions

Part One

May 24, 1819: Premiere of selected scenes. Castle Monbijou, Berlin
January 29, 1829: Premiere of the complete Part One. Braunschweig
In 1885, the Irish dramatist W. G. Wills loosely adapted the first part of Faust for a production starring Henry Irving as Mephistopheles and Ellen Terry as Margaret at the Lyceum Theatre, London.
In 1908, Stephen Phillips and J. Comyns Carr freely adapted the first part of Faust for a production at Her Majesty's Theatre. It starred Henry Ainley as Faust, Herbert Beerbohm Tree as Mephistopheles and Marie Lohr as Margaret.
1960: Deutsches Schauspielhaus, Hamburg: Directed by Peter Gorski, and produced by Gustaf Gründgens (who also played Mephistopheles), with Will Quadflieg (Faust), Ella Büchi (Gretchen), Elisabeth Flickenschildt (Marthe), Max Eckard (Valentin), Eduard Marks (Wagner), Uwe Friedrichsen (Student). The film of this performance was very successful.
1989: Fragments from Part One. Piccolo Teatro di Milano: Director Giorgio Strehler, scenographer Josef Svoboda
October 26, 2006: Teatro Comunale Modena, Italy: Directed by Eimuntas Nekrošius; complete playing length (with intervals): 4½ hours

Part Two

1990: Fragments from Part Two. Piccolo Teatro di Milano: Director Giorgio Strehler, scenographer Josef Svoboda
2003 of Ingmar Thilo; with Antonios Safralis (Faust), Raphaela Zick (Mephisto), Ulrike Dostal (Helena), Max Friedmann (Lynceus), and others
2005 Michael Thalheimer at the Deutsches Theater, Berlin, with a.o. Ingo Hülsmann, Sven Lehmann, Nina Hoss and Inge Keller

Entire piece

1938: World premiere of both parts, unabridged, at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland
July 22–23, 2000: The Expo 2000 Hanover performance: Directed by Peter Stein; both parts in their complete version, with Christian Nickel and Bruno Ganz (the young and the old Faust), Johann Adam Oest (Mephistopheles), Dorothée Hartinger, Corinna Kirchhoff and Elke Petri. Complete playing length (with intervals): 21 hours

In music and film

Ludwig van Beethoven's Opus 75 no 3 (1809) Song – Aus Goethes Faust: "Es war einmal ein König"
In 1814 Franz Schubert set a text from Faust Part I, scene 18 as "Gretchen am Spinnrade" (D 118; Op. 2). It was his first setting of a text by Goethe. Later Lieder by Schubert based on Faust: D 126, 367, 440 and 564.
Robert Schumann's secular oratorio Scenes from Goethe's Faust (1844–1853)
Hector Berlioz's "légende dramatique" La damnation de Faust (1846)
Franz Liszt's Faust Symphony (1857)
Charles Gounod's opera Faust (1859)
Arrigo Boito's opera Mefistofele (1868; 1875)
Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 8 (Mahler) (1906) sets the text of the final scene of Faust Part II in its lengthy second movement.
F. W. Murnau's film Faust (1926) is based on older versions of the legend as well as Goethe's version.
Havergal Brian's opera "Faust" written in 1955–56.
Peter Gorski directed Gustaf Gründgens in the 1960 film, Faust.
Randy Newman's musical Faust (1993)
Jan Švankmajer's film Faust (1994)
Rudolf Volz's Rock Opera Faust with original lyrics by Goethe (1997)
American metal band Kamelot's CDs Epica (2003) and The Black Halo (2005) are based on Faust.
Alexander Sokurov's film Faust (2011)
American band Agalloch's Faustian Echoes EP is directly based on Goethe's work and contains direct quotations from it.
Philipp Humm's modern art film The Last Faust (2019) is directly based on Goethe's Faust and is the first film made on Faust part I and part II.
The production is also briefly mentioned in Katja Ebateins 1976 personality television show “Katja and Co”. The work is mentioned in a song segment called Theater, Theater die Gosse Illusion where Katja plays the part of Gretchen.