Faust: The Second Part of the Tragedy - Paperback

by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (Author), A. S. Byatt (Preface by), David Constantine (Introduction by)

In this sequel to Faust, Mephistopheles takes Faust on a journey through ancient Greek mythology, conjuring for him the insurpassably beautiful Helen of Troy, as well as the classical gods. Faust falls in love with and marries Helen, embodying for Goethe his 'imaginative longing to join poetically the Romantic Medievalism of the germanic West to the classical genius of the Greeks'. Further to the themes of redemption and salvation in this great drama, are Goethe's eerie premonitions of modern phenomena such as inflation and the creation of life by scientific synthesis.

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Author Biography

Johann Wolfgang Goethe was born in 1749. He studied at Leipzig, where he showed interest in the occult, and at Strassburg, where Herder introduced him to Shakespeare's works and to folk poetry. He produced some essays and lyrical verse, and at twenty-four came to fame as part of the Sturm und Drang movement - a position established on the publication of The Sorrows of Young Werther. Goethe worked on Faust throughout his life, while travelling through Italy and returning to Weimar, where he directed the State Theatre. He died in 1832.