Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship

Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Wilhelm Meister comes of age. He spends some time in the theater trying to find himself. There are also romances with women and a deep relationship with another man. The book did carry on for a long time.

Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self

In German Universities from two centuries ago, students paid tuition directly to their professors. Just imagine how different things would be today.

The magnificent rebels focuses on people in a small German University town right before the 1800s. Goethe, Schiller, Novalis, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. Of those, Hegel and Goethe were the only that I recognized. The author takes it for granted that we already have a great deal of respect for all the people that she discusses. There is little that helps provide for more respect. It was at a time when intellectuals could span multiple different areas rather being stuck in a certain discipline.

Faust Part 2

In Faust Part 1, Goethe stuck pretty closely to the Faust legend. In Part 2, he goes off the deep end.

The story delves heavily into Greek mythology. Faust even gains Helen of Troy. The language (even in translation) shows a great, well thought out complexity. I could see it as an elaborate science fiction movie driven by powerful music and impressive imagery. However, even there, I probably would not have a clue as to what was happening.

The librivox recording has generally well done vocals. However, the "choruses" are horrid. It seems obvious that the different members recorded their lines separately. When combined, the different speeds of speech make it quite difficult to understand the words. However, even when I did understand most of the other words, I had trouble understanding the story. Faust 2 is supposedly a very difficult work in its native German. An English translation does not make it easier.

Faust Part 1

References to "Faustian" bargains abound in popular culture. But who was Faust? Both Goethe and Marlowe have created plays that tell their versions of the story.

The Faust story is akin to the story of Job in reverse. Faust makes an agreement with the devil and gets to enjoy the good life for a while. At the end, the debt becomes due and he becomes the devil's property.

I listened to the librivox recording which suffers from inconsistent sound quality, making some of the voices difficult to hear and understand. Add in the fact that Faust is notoriously difficult to translate and it got even harder to follow.

In spite of the difficulty, you can still tell why it is such an acclaimed work. The story itself has been told many times, from Marlowe to Brendan Frasier (in Bedazzaled). Goethe's seems to probe deeper into the psychology. I only wish I understood German better.