/lit/ - Literature

>>11521292
I want to read it in German but my vocab isn't good enough so I have to look up a bunch of words

It is the best. I didn't know Bloom downgraded it but he's a jew who should have no say on the canon so we

>>11521324
>jew threatened by a powerful, proud, handsome german
jews have the anglos in their pocket, which is why bloom acts like he can comfortably own shakespeare. theres your answer.

Is Faust a name or is it called Fist in german?

Haven't read it. Tried reading Liedens des junge Werther in german but that turned out to be Liedens des junge Ich.

>>11521297
don't worry, even germans struggle with it

>>11521600
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Georg_Faust

>>11521292
Woah great thread

>>11521434

>>11521292
My gf read this and she hated it and thought it was shit. Best translation to read?

>>11521292
It really suprises me that /lit doesnt talk about Faust

This is the best description of the Western man
as an Intellectual Titan struggling to find the truth and what is really meaningful in life and how to be fucking happy at last.

“All theory is gray, my friend. But forever green is the tree of life.”

>>11522853
Meanwhile she probably like the Master & Margarita. Tell her she's a pleb.

I read David Luke translation recently by recommendation of /lit/ and it was quite pleasant.

>>11523293
I really agree with you anon.

>>11523293
I think it's due to there not being a definitive, go-to translation, or simply being too difficult to translate. I read Faust comparing 3-5 translations while consulting the original German and they can vary widely/stink cringe-style. I can understand people picking some of those translations up and not being able to get into it or connect with the text. For instance, an above poster mentions the Luke translation but I thought his was one of the worst, while the Bayard Taylor translation is imo the best by far. It's old school but it keeps the poetry the best in tact. The others often try to modernize it and the result is trash.

>>11523293
I haven't read Faust but that line you posted is just awful.

>>11523837
Nah, you're wrong.

Bayard Taylor inserts too much Shakespeare and Poe into Faust. It's very good, and deservedly the 20th century's classic Faust translation.

David Luke is an excellent modern translation, and the most successful modern Faust translation, though obviously not ideal. David Luke is the translation that modern American and British Faust studies are being developed on.

>>11524217
Nah, you're wrong, and the modernizing insertions Luke's translation is full of is a bad thing.

>>11521292
>Oh, don't mind me, just being the single best work in the Western canon
That's a funny way to spell Moby Dick

>>11521292
>>11524582
Neither of those are Paradise Lost or The Fairie Queene

>>11524627
gimme a rundown on why the faerie queene is so good

>>11524325
And Bayard's Tayloring of Faust isn't? I gave a concession that Luke isn't ideal, but it's one of the best translations in a century, and it is sufficiently clear, poetic, impactful, and faithful to Goethe. Its aberrations are negligent compared to its strengths, at least until a better version is done.

>>11524649
I haven't finished it yet, but I really enjoyed the description of the grotesque monster that the Red Cross Knight kills in the beginning of the book. I also like morality plays/stories so that's a plus. I mentioned it cuz it's underrated, but it's surely not the best. A lot of people find it monotonous, can't say how you'll like it so just start reading a bit and see how you like it.

read tolstoy on art to understand how irrelevant and derivative faust is
goethe is nowhere close to shakespeare. german romantics needed a literary hero and he was all they had, so, voila!

>>11524769
If it were up to Tolstoy, we'd have a world modeled on Plato and Muhammad's aesthetic philosophies, that is, no art that exists from degeneracy, and virtually no art at all. So there's no point in you participating in this thread, if you're only here for insignificant attempts to diminish Goethe.

Legitimate arguments can be made that he's Shakespeare's equal, and perhaps superior, but not the ones he made himself, as it's overwhelmingly obvious that they're underlined with an inferiority complex to Shakespeare. Nor can his views on Goethe be taken seriously, for similar reasons.

>a fucking play
>best work in the western canon
Dream on faggot

Just learn German if you want to read iit. German is literally as close to English as you can get. I taught myself German in like four months. I moved to Japan and this language is torture to learn by comparison and I'll never learn it. German is so easy you don't even have an excuse. Just learn German and read Faust in the original. Don't bother with translations.

>>11524823
Bloom placed Hamlet as the single best work in the canon, and he'll have more weight on trends even after he flatulates his soul down to hell. You keep dreaming that your uninformed novice opinions matter.

Hamlet isn't even the best of Shakespeare

>>11521297
I graduated university with a degree in German after having studied the language for five years, one of which was spent in Germany.
It's still beyond my reading comprehension. Even natives have a hard time with it.

>>11524942

>>11524854
How did you learn it?

>>11525034
By a long process of studying words, remembering, internalizing, and using them.

>>11524823
Actually a play is the best work in the canon; but it's not Hamlet, it's the Theban plays.

>>11521292
It may be better than Hamlet but Lear > Faust.

>>11525070
Did you use any particular resources?

>>11524942
Fair enough. I imagine the language is archaic and poetic. I haven't actually read Faust. I know I could get through an ebook version with a dictionary, though. It would just take like five times the amount of time to read it. German is just so easy that no English speaker has an excuse not to know it.

>>11524926
Then what is dummy and if you say Titus then you are a pretty cool guy

>>11521292
That's not don Quixote

>>11524627
Edmund Spenser never even finished the Faerie Queene, and he wrote it as a propaganda piece for the Elizabethan court so he could receive a stipend. It doesn't even belong in the top 20 IMO. It really loses its momentum after book two. Hundreds of pages of rhymed narrative verse wear down the will to read after a while. Some people love it, but most people find it terribly tedious to work through. Allegory as a literary device has not aged well at all.

>>11524926
Yes it is. Seconds are probably Lear and maybe the Tempest. But Hamlet has been recognized as Shakespeare’s supreme achievement by the greatest writers and critics of the west for hundreds of years.

>>11521600
>Tried reading Liedens des junge Werther in german but that turned out to be Liedens des junge Ich.
kek

looking for a copy with English and German side by side