Overview

A classic of world literature, Goethe’s Faust is a philosophical and poetic drama full of satire, irony, humor, and tragedy. Martin Greenberg renders not only the text’s varied meters and rhymes but also its diverse tones and styles—dramatic and lyrical, reflective and farcical, pathetic and coarse, colloquial and soaring. His translation of Faust has been widely praised as the most faithful, readable, and elegantly written translation of Goethe’s masterpiece available in English. "“Greenberg has accomplished a magnificent literary feat. He has taken a great German work, until now all but inaccessible to English readers, and made it into a sparkling English poem, full of verve and wit. Greenberg's translation lives; it is done in a modern idiom but with respect for the original text; I found it a joy to read.”—Irving Howe "Martin Greenberg's translation, here presented in newly revised form, has rightly been celebrated for its colloquial idiom....The translation brings Goethe's seminal text to life for twenty-first century readers." - from the Introduction by W. Daniel Wilson