F a u s t -- short

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Summarizing:

Faust curses his books and his papers and wishes he could get out. He even considers suicide but is held back by childhood memeories.

A few weeks later, around Easter, he goes out for a walk. A black poodle follows him home. The black poodle turns out to be Mephistopheles.

Mephistopheles is a most entertaining elderly cynic dressed up as a gentleman who has come to offer Faust a deal: "I will show you the wonders of the world, and in return, when you die I will get your soul."

Faust accepts.
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Fast forward: They travel and end up at a beer cellar where Mephistopheles produces free wine for everybody by drilling holes in their table, but Faust insists that he wants better and greater things.

So Mephistopheles helps him seduce a teenage girl called Gretchen who gets pregnant and in despair drowns her baby. She faces the death penalty.  Mephistopheles comments: "She is damned". From Heaven comes an answer: "She is saved".

That is where the first part ends. It is easy and great reading.
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Faust II is indigestible because it is full of Greek mythology and German   witchcraft, and I have read only part of it.

The most famous passage is where Mephistopheles in the role of a court jester finances a bankrupt emperor by creating a flood of paper money.

Another good read is Faust's death where some angels sent by Gretchen's prayers come down from Heaven. Mephistopheles, too, arrives in time to catch Faust's soul, but he lets it escape because the angels successfully seduce him with their splendour.

Goethe's introduction to Faust is based on the Biblical Book of Job where God and Satan bet on the soul of a man.


Below are some lines from the beginning of  Faust I with prose translations to show the liquid elegance of Goethe's verse.

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