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Bradley's Reviews > Faust
Faust
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Yep, it's actually epic fantasy. Don't let the stage actors or the music and the poetry fool you. There's demons, vast battlefields, an epic battle for one's soul with TWO WHOLE HOSTS fighting, and, of course, there's that thing about the toothpick and getting Helen of Troy pregnant.
The original is in German. There MIGHT be something in that. An interesting story. Or perhaps Goethe was one hell of a weird artist.
Actually, scratch that, he was. Like an opium dream.
Breakdown: I loved the poetry and most of the translation. It was pretty neat. What there was of the original story was slightly convoluted and drawn out. The battle was pretty cool, too.
It's Faust. A classic tale. But you know what?
I LIKE MARLOWE'S BETTER.
The original is in German. There MIGHT be something in that. An interesting story. Or perhaps Goethe was one hell of a weird artist.
Actually, scratch that, he was. Like an opium dream.
Breakdown: I loved the poetry and most of the translation. It was pretty neat. What there was of the original story was slightly convoluted and drawn out. The battle was pretty cool, too.
It's Faust. A classic tale. But you know what?
I LIKE MARLOWE'S BETTER.
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Reading Progress
June 27, 2019
– Shelved
June 27, 2019
– Shelved as:
to-read
July 13, 2019
–
Started Reading
July 13, 2019
– Shelved as:
2019-shelf
July 13, 2019
– Shelved as:
fantasy
July 13, 2019
–
Finished Reading
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Silvana
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Jul 13, 2019 07:03PM
Yeah that Helen of Troy thing was weird.
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Goethe was VERY weird. Had to read this back in school and liked it very much - either despite or exactly because of its weirdness.
Strangely enough, it was just odd. BUT, I did get this rockstar vibe going on and that helped it out. :)
Wait... What? This sounds weirdly different from any of the versions I've read, heard about, and seen!
More like an aging rockstar vibe, the thumb your nose at everything, aren't I the best, vibe. :) I read this and thought of Crowley, actually. lol just a feeling.
(I read it early in my college years, iirc, and I forget if I got all the way through part 2 which I'm aware is very different from part 1 - deliberately. There are reasons why musically there are many settings of Goethe's part 1 and, aside from the famous closing Chorus Mysticus (Mahler's term? I forget) that Mahler (symphony 8, finale) and others have set, there have been very few dramatic/musical settings of part II. (Though in counting "musical settings of Goethe's Faust" one needs to be careful and remove from the list settings/dramatizations/incidental music that are not of _Goethe's_ Faust at all- Busoni's, iirc, and even perhaps more famously Gounod's?... for example... anyhow. Tangent. Sorry!!!)
Yep. Rockstar. Deals with devils, sexy femme fatale, and heavy metal. Well, Mahler always FELT like heavy metal to me. Especially 10, adagio. :)
“Ich bin der Geist der stets verneint!” (- as quoted, not meant to be said in performance, by K Sorabji at the very end of a piano piece it had taken him years to write…)(otoh the line “why this is hell, nor am I out of it” which I have misattributed to Goethe’s Mephisto is actually from Marlowe’s version, which contains several good quotable lines. The title of one of Marie Brennan’s fantasy novels, for example, is taken from Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus.)
(the piano piece iqu iirc was Sorabji’s Opus Clavicembalisticum)
Well, I enjoyed his walkon role in DODO (as I enjoy Faust & Mephisto’s walkon role in The Fiery Angel…)
