Goethe laboured over Faust throughout much of his life, transforming the familiar tale of a man who bargains with the Devil into one of the most ambitious works in Western literature.
Volume II of Faust: My Soul be Damned for the World examines Goethe’s drama in the order it developed, reading each stage of its composition alongside the author’s biography, intellectual formation, and changing historical world.
The result is both a guide to Goethe’s famously difficult masterpiece and an investigation of the literary, religious, political, and philosophical ideas concealed within it.
Inside Volume II
Faust, Gretchen, and the Tragedy of Part One
The familiar bargain with Mephistopheles becomes intertwined with one of literature’s most tragic love stories. The study traces the sources, ideas, and personal influences behind Goethe’s evolving treatment of Faust and Gretchen.
Three Thousand Years Compressed into Part Two
The enigmatic second part ranges across Greek mythology, the Crusades, the French Revolution, the Napoleonic era, and the industrial and financial theories of Saint-Simonism—compressing centuries of Western history and culture into a single dramatic vision.
Symbols, Secrets, and Prophetic Questions
Goethe’s biblical, Hermetic, classical, and Masonic symbolism frequently conceals his meaning from modern readers. This study asks whether the drama also anticipates later developments involving global finance, industrial power, political revolution, and threats to religious institutions.
Volume I traces the tradition from the historical Dr. Faustus through the earliest Faust books, folk legends, Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus, the puppet theatre, and Lessing’s unfinished reinterpretation.
