Translations and Editions

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Faust, A Tragedy, Part I: A New Translation with an Introduction and Notes. Translated and introduction by Eugene Stelzig. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 2019. 231 pp.

When one discovers a new translation of Goethe's Faust, especially when researching the large number of Faust texts available for course adoption, one may indeed need to assess many points of comparison with the other available translations. While I was still teaching, I did this on several occasions, especially for general education classes for undergraduates (in which the students seem to desire a “good read,” which I have usually taken to mean “an understandable text”), as well as for a liberal studies course in which graduate students, eager to engage with this profound work, desire a certain thematic depth that the translation does not hamper. Eugene Stelzig's new translation of Faust I can be recommended on both scores: the themes and complexities come through with minimal loss via Stelzig's most readable text.

Stelzig begins with an informative, albeit brief, introduction to interesting aspects of the author's life and the play. He emphasizes that Faust I is, in fact, two plays: first, it is a philosophical inquiry into the nature of human dissatisfaction with existence and evil, and second, it relates the Gretchen tragedy. With regard to the former, Stelzig is more perceptive than many a translator or critic, especially in terms of crucial issues, such as the dynamic between “becoming” and “negation.” This dialectic encompasses far more than merely the human condition and diabolical opposition on the surface level; the polarity extends to nature and science as well, and in fact to all areas of human experience. Stelzig recognizes this, and it comes through in his translation.

Faust has, of course, undergone numerous translations into English by some of the great and most adept translators of German literature, such as David Luke, Martin Greenberg, Walther Kaufmann, and others, as well as by a number of eminent Goethe scholars; each of these presents virtues that recommend it. Thus, today one discovers numerous choices when it comes to Faust translations available to the anglophone reading public. Stelzig's Faust I competes satisfactorily with them all: it is modern and notably unstuffy, earthy, and humorous where the original is humorous as well. But it also reflects elegance in the places where Goethe's language achieves high registers.