Faust: The First Part of the Tragedy by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (review)

To translate a text requires a unique skill set involving knowledge of the subject, acquaintance with the targeted material, and the keenest technical facility for rendering the idiom of one language into another. Translating Goethe's Faust is all the more daunting because it requires a clear understanding of the German Enlightenment as well as of the cultural and philosophical underpinnings of this monumental work. Moreover, any new translation of Faust is doubly problematic because it invariably lends itself to comparisons with previous successful editions: the Walter Kaufmann, Peter Salm, and Barker Fairley versions of the sixties (Doubleday, 1961); the Walter Arndt and Cyrus Hamlin Faust from the seventies (Norton, 1976); the more recent David Constantine edition (Penguin, 2004), the sumptuously illustrated John Anster and Henry Clarke version (Calla, 2013), the recently revised Martin Greenberg version (Yale University Press, 2014, originally 1992), and sundry other Fausts. Aware of such pitfalls, Margaret Kirby thankfully provides us with an introduction to her new translation that lays out her perspective and methodology. In large strokes, Kirby's introduction focuses on Faust's feelings of confinement, his alienation from nature, and his misplaced dependence on knowledge, "discursive reason," and "academic learning" (xii). Despite these feelings, Faust, as Kirby points out, is curiously charmed by Gretchen's satisfaction with the nearly cloistered living conditions in which he finds her room and even allows "that there is something of substance in finitude" (l. 1338; xiii). Kirby also points to the irony that Gretchen feels similarly confined both physically and mentally while imprisoned. But unlike Faust's nearly existential angst, her feelings of entrapment are strictly the result of her own transgressions, for which she says she will pay, one way or the other (ll. 4544–49; xv).

However enlightening this argument might be, Kirby nonetheless seems not to understand precisely just how negatively Faust's feelings truly affect him; in fact, they have made him something of a manic-depressive. For example, he is depressed at the start of the "Night" scene, but when he sees the sign of the macrocosm (l. 430), he becomes ecstatic. Unfortunately, his enthusiasm instantly evaporates right after the Earth Spirit rejects and mocks him (l. 490), which brings him to his lowest point. Curiously, Kirby merely relates that following this scene, "the sound of the Easter bells evokes memories of Christian faith" and "calls [Faust] out of his study" (ll. 759–70; xii). But the result of the Earth Spirit's rejection is far more devastating than that: Faust is so depressed that he comes close to committing suicide by drinking from the "small flask" (l. 687) of poison. It is the "brown potion" that Mephistopheles later mentions when he chides Faust that he had a chance to end his misery—but did not (ll. 1579–80). In truth, Faust's manic-depressive behavior represents a clear pattern through both parts of the tragedy right up to the "Baucis/Philemon" episode in Part II, when he is finally ensnared by Frau Sorge. For in the end, it is care's corrosive power, something to which Faust already alludes in Part I (ll. 644–51), that works its awful, debilitating influence on him.

Kirby also passes over the contribution of eighteenth-century thought: the influence, for example, of the likes of Spinoza and Leibniz on Goethe's concepts of action and activity, which become major themes of Faust. To be sure, Kirby recognizes Faust's thirst for activity, but she merely sees it in the same way that Mephistopheles does—that is, as a "world of endless activity … that lacks any direction" (xvii). But the concept actually represents far more than that. Activity is central to all that happens in Faust. As Kirby also points out, Goethe understands the universe to be in continuous flux and a realm of unfettered activity while man is finite and limited. In fact, Goethe sums up Faust's grievance in the mouth of the...