'Faust' by Goethe (German)

$75.00

Sale

Sold Out

Shipping calculated at checkout.

Product variants

Quantity

book summary

Goethe’s Faust is one of those texts that has been absorbed so thoroughly into Western thought that we all think we've read it but we're not entirely sure.

A pact with the devil, yes—but more precisely a study in appetite: for knowledge, for sensation, for transcendence without limit. Returning to it in a 19th-century German edition like this, is how physical the language feels. The metaphysics aren’t abstracted yet. Desire, guilt, intellect, damnation—they all move through the body. Mephistopheles is a presence, a voice that insists that striving itself is already a kind of corruption.

This edition, with its engraved illustrations and dense Gothic type, sits closer to the work’s original atmosphere than most modern printings. It reads less like a “classic” and more like something still slightly dangerous—ornate, moral, theatrical, and unresolved.

German-language edition of Faust (Berlin, G. Grote’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1888). “Neue Ausgabe,” eighth in sequence. Edited by Moritz Ehrlich, with woodcut illustrations after Alexander Zick. Original red decorative cloth with black and gilt stamping; bright and presentable with light edge wear and rubbing. Spine slightly softened but sound. Interior illustrated throughout; moderate toning with some foxing, heavier at prelims. Ownership inscription, endpaper notes, and occasional but light pencil marginalia.