Faust

Goethe’s dramatic poem in two parts: a scholar who has exhausted every discipline and found none of them satisfying wagers his soul against Mephistopheles’ promise of a moment he would want to hold on to forever. Part One is the intimate tragedy of that bargain and of Gretchen; Part Two leaves realism behind for classical myth, imperial finance, land reclamation and the cosmos, and ends by saving Faust on the grounds that he never stopped striving. Goethe worked on it across roughly sixty years and finished Part Two in the last year of his life.

Why it’s on the list: Section V is Li Lu’s Western-canon spine, read in sequence from Plato and Homer through Hobbes, Locke, Mill and Darwin; Faust is the literary entry in it, and the one that puts restless, unlimited striving on trial rather than simply admiring it.

Where I saw it: Li Lu’s Recommended Book List, entry 10 of section V, given with no edition or year. Full transcription: Li Lu’s Recommended Book List.

Connections

• Li Lu’s Recommended Book List — the list this came from.
• Li Lu — the Himalaya Capital founder who assembled it.
• Doctor Faustus — Marlowe’s earlier play on the same legend, which damns its Faust where Goethe’s is redeemed.
• Enlightenment — the confidence in inquiry that Faust starts out exhausted by.