Faustus: From the German of Goethe (review)

In late summer 1814 Coleridge began translating Faust for John Murray, but abandoned the project that October. A few years later, interest in Faust was reawakened by Moritz Retzsch’s drawings of scenes from the play. In June 1820 another publisher, Messrs Boosey and Sons, published a version of Retzsch’s drawings with a summary and partial translation of the text by ‘a German in humble circumstances’. In September 1820 they published a different version, also anonymous, and that version is presented here as the work of Coleridge. But is it?

The evidence for Coleridge’s authorship has been reviewed by Roger Paulin, William St Clair, and Elinor Shaffer (at http://ies.sas.ac.uk/Publications/stc-faustus-review.pdf ) – and found wanting. The main counter-argument is simple and powerful. In May 1820 Coleridge wrote to Booseys refusing their request for a partial translation of Faust to accompany Retzsch’s illustrations. He considered such a task mere hackwork. He did send them his ‘Advice and Scheme’, explaining how the summary of the text should be conducted and introduced, but Faustus does not conform to this scheme. Coleridge’s letter, reproduced by Paulin et al. but not by the present editors, is readily accessible as No. 1233 in the Collected Letters of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, edited by E. L. Griggs, Vol. 5, with ‘My Advice and Scheme’ as a footnote.

The materials that the editors do produce go far to undermine their case for Coleridge’s authorship. Writing to Murray in 1814, Coleridge insisted that much of Faust should not be translated into blank verse but ‘must be in wild lyrical meters’ (quoted p. xvii; Coleridge wrote ‘metres’). In ‘My Advice and Scheme’, too, he said that selected passages should be translated ‘in the manner & Metre of the original’. Yet, apart from songs and choruses, Faustus is all in blank verse. The editors claim that he thought Faust should be translated ‘as for the stage’ (an unreferenced quotation) and hence used ‘dramatic blank verse’ (p. xx). However, Coleridge’s statements just quoted are, to my mind, decisive evidence (if more were needed) against his authorship of Faustus.

The editors lay weight on the review of Faustus by ‘R.’ in the European Magazine, which allegedly reports rumours that Coleridge was the translator (see p. 142). But ‘R.’ actually writes: ‘Rumor [sic] says the author of Christabelle tried at it and resigned it’ (quoted p. xxiii). So this is not evidence that Coleridge translated Faustus, or even that he was believed to have done so.

Coleridge consistently denied that he ever translated Faust. The editors think this was because he did not want to be associated with such an immoral and irreligious work. Yet Faustus leaves out all the immoral and irreligious bits, so why should Coleridge assiduously deny his authorship? Moreover, when he said he had never translated Faust, this was not in response to questions; he volunteered the information, something seldom done by people who want to conceal their actions.

This edition reproduces many more materials that illustrate the early British reception of Faust. We have, first, extracts from the English translation of Madame de Staël’s De l’Allemagne, with prose extracts from Faust that are presumably by the translator of the main text, identified here as Francis Hodgson (p. 116). Then we have Extracts from Göthe’s Tragedy of Faustus, Explanatory of the Plates by Retsch [sic], by George Soane (son of Sir John Soane, famous for his museum near Lincoln’s Inn), and published by Bohte, a rival to Booseys. These extracts are very short quotations, serving only as captions to the illustrations, but they are followed by lines 1–577 of Faust translated by Soane which reached proof stage but were not published. Then comes Booseys’ partial prose translation by the ‘German in humble circumstances’ whom the editors identify, on only circumstantial evidence, as an émigré called Daniel Boileau (Paulin et al...