{"product_id":"goethe-faust-eine-tragodie-zweyter-theil","title":"The posthumous first separate edition of Faust II, completed by Goethe shortly before his death","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFaust. Eine Tragödie. Zweyter Theil in fünf Acten.\u003c\/strong\u003e Stuttgart and Tübingen, J. G. Cotta, 1833.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePosthumous first separate edition; Hagen 480 records the D° state, a first separate printing from volume 41 of Cotta's \u003cem\u003eAusgabe letzter Hand\u003c\/em\u003e, the sheet-norm altered to \"\u003cem\u003eGoethe's Faust. II. Th.\u003c\/em\u003e\" Title-page and 344 pp. Small octavo (133 × 90 mm). It comes from the same ownership as the \u003cem\u003eFaust I\u003c\/em\u003e (No. 10).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eContemporary speckled boards, later spine label (well-preserved; internally very good and almost free of spotting).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFaust II is the close of Goethe's longest imaginative labour, a project begun in the 1770s.\u003c\/strong\u003e Finished in the summer of 1831, it was withheld and issued only after his death; Goethe told Zelter that the Second Part was \"now complete in itself\" and that he would \"put a seal on it\" [Goethe to Zelter, 4 September 1831], and never saw it as a separate printed book, which makes the 1833 Cotta edition the first separate appearance of his last dramatic act. Goethe himself drew the sharpest line between the parts. To Eckermann on 17 February 1831 he called Part I almost wholly subjective, born of a perplexed and passionate individual, and saw in Part II \"a higher, broader, clearer, more passionless world\" [Eckermann, 17 February 1831]. It is not a sequel in ordinary narrative terms but the transformation of \u003cem\u003eFaust\u003c\/em\u003e into world-drama, concerned now with history, culture, power and redemption.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGoethe finished \u003cem\u003eFaust II\u003c\/em\u003e against age and failing strength, sealing the manuscript for a posterity he knew he would not live to see [Eckermann]. The alchemy of his Frankfurt reading returns in the Laboratory, where Wagner brews the Homunculus [Gray, \u003cem\u003eGoethe the Alchemist\u003c\/em\u003e]; the fourth act sets the imperial constitution of the old Reich, conferring the arch-offices on the electors as the \u003cem\u003eGoldene Bulle\u003c\/em\u003e of 1356 ordained; the \u003cem\u003eClassical Walpurgisnacht\u003c\/em\u003e stages the Neptunist–Vulcanist contest of the geological writings; and the third act is the marriage of Helena and Faust, of Greek antiquity and the Romantic North, whose son Euphorion—Goethe's figure for Byron—soars, overreaches, and falls [Schöne, \u003cem\u003eFaust. Kommentar\u003c\/em\u003e]. The verse ranges across the whole tradition, from the \u003cem\u003eKnittelvers\u003c\/em\u003e of the old puppet play, through the Alexandrine that the \u003cem\u003eSturm und Drang\u003c\/em\u003e had discarded as outworn and that Goethe now reclaimed for the imperial tent, to the Greek trimeter in which Helena enters and the free rhythms of the close [Schöne's commentary on \u003cem\u003eFaust\u003c\/em\u003e]. The argument is carried by symbol and allusion rather than by direct statement, the mode Jane Brown takes to govern the whole play [Brown, \u003cem\u003eGoethe's Faust: The German Tragedy\u003c\/em\u003e]; the closing \u003cem\u003eChorus mysticus\u003c\/em\u003e states it plainly, that all which passes is but a likeness of the eternal (\u003cem\u003eFaust II\u003c\/em\u003e, lines 12104–11). The immortal part the angels bear aloft Goethe conceived as an \u003cem\u003eEntelechie\u003c\/em\u003e, an indestructible active monad that, because it never ceases to strive, may be redeemed [Eckermann].\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe \u003cem\u003eSecond Part\u003c\/em\u003e met contempt and ridicule when it appeared after Goethe's death, the salvation of Faust striking many as incongruous with his crimes; Wolfgang Menzel scorned the redemption as wholly unmerited, granted to a \"vornehmer Lüstling,\" and mocked the closing heaven as a \"Mädchenhimmel\" [Menzel, \u003cem\u003eDie deutsche Literatur\u003c\/em\u003e (Stuttgart, 1836)]. The play was long thought impossible to stage, and was not performed complete until Peter Stein's twenty-one-hour staging of both parts at Hanover in 2000 [Fischer-Lichte, \u003cem\u003eTheatre Journal\u003c\/em\u003e 53 (2001)]. Oswald Spengler made \"der faustische Mensch\" the emblem of his account of Western culture [Spengler, \u003cem\u003eDer Untergang des Abendlandes\u003c\/em\u003e]; Thomas Mann read Faust's rescue as a Pelagian \"labour forwards towards grace\" [Mann, \"Goethe and Tolstoy,\" \u003cem\u003eEssays of Three Decades\u003c\/em\u003e]; Adorno found in the closing scene not merit rewarded but grace [Adorno, \"Zur Schlußszene des Faust,\" \u003cem\u003eNoten zur Literatur II\u003c\/em\u003e]; and Ortega y Gasset confessed that the age had grown weary of the statue of Goethe and asked instead for the Goethe shipwrecked and lost in his own existence [Ortega y Gasset, \"Um einen Goethe von innen bittend,\" \u003cem\u003eNeue Rundschau\u003c\/em\u003e 43 (1932)]. The copy is especially meaningful beside the 1808 \u003cem\u003eFaust I\u003c\/em\u003e from the same ownership. The two volumes hold both parts of Goethe's lifelong project, joined now by provenance as well as by text.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003ePROVENANCE\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFrom the same ownership stream as the 1808 \u003cem\u003eFaust I\u003c\/em\u003e; associated with Friedrich Günther, Prince of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Heribert Tenschert Collection.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003eREFERENCES\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eGoedeke IV\/3, 614; Hagen 480; Kippenberg I, 2397; Hirzel A 462; Brieger 672; Wilpert\/Gühring 165.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEckermann, \u003cem\u003eGespräche mit Goethe\u003c\/em\u003e, 17 February 1831; Goethe to Carl Friedrich Zelter, 4 September 1831; Thomas Mann, \"Goethe\" (1932); Thomas Mann, \"Goethe and Tolstoy,\" in \u003cem\u003eEssays of Three Decades\u003c\/em\u003e, trans. H. T. Lowe-Porter (New York: Knopf, 1947); Albrecht Schöne, \u003cem\u003eFaust. Kommentar\u003c\/em\u003e (Frankfurter Ausgabe, 1994); Ronald D. Gray, \u003cem\u003eGoethe the Alchemist\u003c\/em\u003e(Cambridge, 1952); Jane K. Brown, \u003cem\u003eGoethe's Faust: The German Tragedy\u003c\/em\u003e (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986); Oswald Spengler, \u003cem\u003eDer Untergang des Abendlandes\u003c\/em\u003e (1918–1922); Marshall Berman, \u003cem\u003eAll That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity\u003c\/em\u003e (New York, 1982); Theodor W. Adorno, \"Zur Schlußszene des Faust,\" in \u003cem\u003eNoten zur Literatur II\u003c\/em\u003e(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1961); Erika Fischer-Lichte, review of \u003cem\u003eFaust I und II\u003c\/em\u003e (dir. Peter Stein), \u003cem\u003eTheatre Journal\u003c\/em\u003e53, no. 3 (2001), pp. 488–489; Wolfgang Menzel, \u003cem\u003eDie deutsche Literatur\u003c\/em\u003e (Stuttgart, 1836); José Ortega y Gasset, \"Um einen Goethe von innen bittend,\" \u003cem\u003eNeue Rundschau\u003c\/em\u003e 43 (1932); Osman Durrani, \"Biblical Borrowings in Goethe's \u003cem\u003eFaust\u003c\/em\u003e,\" \u003cem\u003eModern Language Review\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Atelier Zweig Rare Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46929893228732,"sku":null,"price":27500.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0736\/1285\/3436\/files\/Faust-Teil-2_1833-1-Photoroom.png?v=1781057717","url":"https:\/\/atelierzweig.com\/products\/goethe-faust-eine-tragodie-zweyter-theil","provider":"Atelier Zweig Rare Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}