Goethe's Faust, Part I: A New American Version

Goethe said that all his works were "one long confession," and certainly into Faust, this greatest masterwork of German literature, on which he worked sixty years, he welded his own search for meaning of existence and of the soul.

From the wager between God and Mephistopheles and the pact Faust makes with the latter—that this genial, urbane devil could have his soul if ever Faust became satisfied with any experience or knowledge Mephistopheles could show him—the drama unfolds in scenes that ...