Faust
A complete annotated translation of Goethe's "Faust," plus extensive interpretive notes, "Faust" illustrations and other visual sources used by Goethe, several pieces of Goethe's correspondence and commentary, eleven contemporary reviews by well-known writers, and ten modern pieces of criticism; also includes a Goethe chronology and selected bibliography.
Stats for nerds
17recommend
63mentions
61people
2011–2026years
27% recommend71% neutral2% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- > Since Mephisto (the brother of Diablo)
Unbelievable. Perhaps some techies should read Goethe's Faust instead of Lord of the Rings.
- Parallel texts work quite well without having read it before too if you keep the original next to you. I lifted by German up a whole grade my last year, largely by reading Goethe's Faust in parallel with a translation.
Having an easy version is a big boon, though, and I think LLMs now provide an amazing opportunity to create custom proper parallel texts (showing both) where you could adjust the difficulty level of the translation to suit your current skill level.
- You, too, don't appear to understand what the Faustian is about specifically. Guys, you should read up on something other than Wikipedia, & not embarrass yourself with dimwit attempts at allegory.
Allow me to suggest Faust by Goethe!
- I got to read, shortly after the Tao, a book that compiled for part of the texts something like 4 of the 'best'[0] translations. It was very enlightening to see how different yet similar they could be. If you think of it as semantic vectors, I would say the meaning is probably the common part between all translations. It is definitely a recommended exercise to read different ones.
It's not unique to taoist texts either, as I recommend to check different translations of works such as Dante's Comedy, Beowulf, or Goethe's Faust. When there is meaning, style, sub-meanings and connotations, a translation can only convey some parts accurately. Different translations will usually make different trade-offs.
[0] Note that 'best' is a term that markedly changed meaning these last two centuries, for anyone who would read more in-depth about the subject. For instance some of the earliest translators dismissed more modern taoist authors as having strayed too far from the Tradition, but the attitude changed in a few generations.
- Maybe reading good books could help - like Goethe's Faust:
> If Mephistopheles can grant Faust a moment of transcendence on Earth, a moment that he wishes to remain forever, then he will instantly die and serve the Devil in Hell. Faust does not believe that Mephistopheles can accomplish this and accepts the wager.
- I recently bought a cheap, delightfully printed, otherwise hard-to-find Kaufmann translation of Goethe’s Faust.
Probably my best value-for-money purchase ever.
https://www.amazon.com/Goethes-Faust-Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe/...
