Faust: Parts One and Two

The power and magic of the Faust story, the man who, in a pact with the Devil, trades his soul in return for a period of total knowledge and absolute power, is one of the most potent of all European myths. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749—1832) worked on this poetic drama in bursts from his twenties until the end of his life. He reshaped the perpetually fascinating legend, probing the nature and process of human striving and questioning the assumed divisins between the forces of good and ev...