Faust

Why it’s on the list: Goethe’s two-part dramatic poem of a scholar who wagers his soul against Mephistopheles’ promise of a moment he would want to hold forever — an intimate tragedy in Part One, a sweep through myth, imperial finance and land reclamation in Part Two — that puts restless, unlimited striving on trial rather than simply admiring it.

Where I heard about it

• Li Lu — entry 10 in the History of Western Civilization section of Li Lu’s Recommended Book List, the literary entry in a Western-canon spine that runs from Plato and Homer through Hobbes, Locke, Mill and Darwin. No edition or year given.

About this edition

Part One appeared in 1808 and Part Two in 1832, after Goethe had worked on the material for roughly sixty years; he finished Part Two in the last year of his life. Not to be confused with Doctor Faustus, Marlowe’s 1604 play on the same legend.

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.