I’m reading David Luke’s translation of Faust Part One for my college world lit 2 class and I’m having a lot of trouble. Usually with assigned books that challenge me I can at least comprehend some of it and then go back and re read some but I’m already on page 11 and have 0 recollection I what I just read. The words are literally flowing into one ear and out the other. It just seems like the characters are saying words just to say them, nothing makes sense or has a solid point.
What am I doing wrong? I feel like a dumb ass (even though I have read many other books and enjoyed them) I just don’t get it at all
by Sheehan7
5 Comments
I had this same problem when I tried to read it. I want to eventually go back to it, but for now, I’m in the same boat as you are.
you have to make a Faustian bargain in order to understand it.
You should sloooow down. Get it? Faust?
Sparknotes is pretty dope tho
Shmoop is a pretty great resource.
I love this book!
First, it’s poetry, so that’s always gonna be more difficult reading. The language in the intro sections (the “Prologue in Heaven,” for example) is very lofty, so I’d expect difficulty there. But once “Night” starts in Faust’s chamber, should be a bit easier.
He’s totally exasperated that after all his years of study, he realizes that we still can’t get at the truth, he still doesn’t know what life is all about. He wants to discover “what holds the world together at its inner core.” (That’s a key quote there, line 382).
So it’s not only poetry, but the theme of the book is sort of a philosophical one. That also might make things a bit difficult to read. But soon he encounters a different sort of truth that he hadn’t suspected, when he hears the bells and the chorus from the church. He considers the profundity of the music and of the religious words. Maybe that is where truth lies? A little later on, he is outside and is praising the power of nature. Again, a different source of knowledge and inspiration and truth.
So, a scholar at the peak of his book knowledge is at the peak of despair. All the old ways of trying to understand what it all means seem to have failed. But, slowly, he starts making new discoveries, new insights. The play shows many different types of knowledge, many sources of inspiration, many sides of humanity (the lower classes, for example). Faust is always striving to grow, to learn more, to understand more, to experience more. That is the core of Faust’s (and Goethe’s) philosophy. And that is the basis of the pact he makes with Mephistopheles: The latter can take him if ever the moment should come where Faust stops growing and is satisfied with how things presently are: “when I say to the moment, linger! you are so beautiful!” (lines 1699-1700).
As to where Faust’s profound search leads him in Part I, well, that’s part of the fun of the book.
Hope this helps a little, and good luck!