Faust (Parts I & II)

Faust, encompassing both Part One and Part Two, stands as the supreme achievement of German literature and the lifework of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The retelling of the Faust legend — in which a scholar sells his soul for knowledge and experience — becomes in Goethe's hands a vast dramatic poem encompassing the full range of modern humanity's restless striving for meaning, power, and transcendence.

Goethe labored on Faust for approximately sixty years, from the early Sturm und Drang drafts of the 1770s to the completion of Part Two shortly before his death in 1832. The work engages with the entire sweep of Western civilization, from classical antiquity to the modern industrial age. Nietzsche, Spengler, and Thomas Mann all deeply engaged with its themes, while composers including Gounod and Berlioz drew on it for celebrated operas. Faust is universally recognized as the greatest work in the German literary canon.