A poetic exploration of good and evil from the towering figure of world literature in the best translation available.

This edition of Faust provides the original German text and its English counterpart on facing pages. Walter Kaufmann's translation conveys the poetic beauty and rhythm of the play as well as the complex depth of Goethe's brilliant language in this singular work of German literature. The volume includes the entirety of Part One and selections from Part Two.

Be on your guard ... and take care not to fall in love!

Visiting an idyllic German village, Werther, a sensitive and romantic young man, meets and falls in love with sweet-natured Lotte. Although he realizes that Lotte is to marry Albert, he is unable to subdue his passion for her and his infatuation torments him to the point of absolute despair. The first great 'confessional' novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther draws both on Goethe's own unrequited love for Charlotte Buff and on the death of his friend Karl Wilhelm Jerusalem. The book was an immediate success and a cult rapidly grew up around it, resulting in numerous imitations as well as violent criticism and even suppression for its apparent recommendation of suicide. Goethe's sensitive exploration of the mind of a young artist at odds with society and ill-equipped to cope with life is now considered the first great tragic novel of European literature. This edition includes notes and an introduction by Michael Hulse who explores the origins of the novel in the author's life and examines its impact on European culture.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The Sorrows of Young Werther propelled Goethe to instant fame when it first appeared in 1774. Goethe's story of a sensitive young artist--an alienated youth of searching introspection and passionate intensity--captured the Romantic sensibility of the day and led to a wave of imitations. Translated by the award-winning author David Constantine, this new edition captures the novel's lyric clarity and powerful immediacy. In addition, Constantine's critical introduction sheds light on the autobiographical background, the novel's epistolary form and structure, and Werther's reception and afterlife. The explanatory notes illuminate contemporary allusions, literary references, and the parallels with Goethe's life.

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Goethe's Faust reworks the late medieval myth of a brilliant scholar so disillusioned he resolves to make a contract with Mephistopheles. The devil will do all he asks on Earth and seeks to grant him a moment in life so glorious that he will wish it to last forever. But if Faust does bid the moment stay, he falls to Mephisto and must serve him after death. In this first part of Goethe's great work, the embittered thinker and Mephistopheles enter into their agreement, and soon Faust is living a rejuvenated life and winning the love of the beautiful Gretchen. But in this compelling tragedy of arrogance, unfulfilled desire, and self-delusion, Faust heads inexorably toward an infernal destruction.

A.S. Byatt's preface considers Goethe's lifelong relationship with the myth of Faust and its influence on modern literature. This edition includes an introduction by the translator, a chronology, suggestions for further reading, explanatory notes, and an addendum on the writing of Faust.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

In this sequel to Faust, Mephistopheles takes Faust on a journey through ancient Greek mythology, conjuring for him the insurpassably beautiful Helen of Troy, as well as the classical gods. Faust falls in love with and marries Helen, embodying for Goethe his 'imaginative longing to join poetically the Romantic Medievalism of the germanic West to the classical genius of the Greeks'. Further to the themes of redemption and salvation in this great drama, are Goethe's eerie premonitions of modern phenomena such as inflation and the creation of life by scientific synthesis.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

The Sorrows of Young Werther brings to life an idyllic German village where a youth on vacation meets and falls for lovely Charlotte. The tragedy unfolds in the letters Werther writes to his friend about Charlotte's charms, even after he realizes his love will remain unrequited. Reflections on Werther and Goethe in Sesenheim, collections of excerpts from the author's own memoirs, reveal the genius who, as Nietzsche said, disciplined himself into wholeness. Next is The New Melusina,the delightful story of a pixie princess who assumes the form of a woman as she searches for a human mate. Finally, The Fairy Tale is a sophisticated but strange story in which the laws of nature and physics do not apply--mingled among its human characters is a cast of two sentient will-o'-the-wisps, a giant and his shadow, a talking green serpent, and four metal statues.

With an Introduction by Marcelle Clements

and a New Afterword

Goethe's influential text, newly illustrated with stunning color photographs.

The Metamorphosis of Plants, published in 1790, was Goethe's first major attempt to describe what he called in a letter to a friend the truth about the how of the organism. Inspired by the diversity of flora he found on a journey to Italy, Goethe sought a unity of form in diverse structures. He came to see in the leaf the germ of a plant's metamorphosis--the true Proteus who can hide or reveal himself in all vegetal forms--from the root and stem leaves to the calyx and corolla, to pistil and stamens. With this short book--123 numbered paragraphs, in the manner of the great botanist Linnaeus--Goethe aimed to tell the story of botanical forms in process, to present, in effect, a motion picture of the metamorphosis of plants. This MIT Press edition of The Metamorphosis of Plants illustrates Goethe's text (in an English translation by Douglas Miller) with a series of stunning and starkly beautiful color photographs as well as numerous line drawings. It is the most completely and colorfully illustrated edition of Goethe's book ever published. It demonstrates vividly Goethe's ideas of transformation and interdependence, as well as the systematic use of imagination in scientific research--which influenced thinkers ranging from Darwin to Thoreau and has much to teach us today about our relationship with nature.

Elective Affinities was written when Goethe was sixty and long established as Germany's literary giant. This is a new edition of his penetrating study of marriage and passion, bringing together four people in an inexorable manner. The novel asks whether we have free will or not and confronts its characters with the monstrous consequences of repressing what little real life they have in themselves, a life so far removed from their natural states that it appears to them as something terrible and destructive.

About the Series: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the broadest spectrum of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, voluminous notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

A groundbreaking text on colour theory, Goethe's seminal work challenges Newtonian theories to explore the human experience and subjective nature of colour.

First published in 1810 as Zur Farbenlehre, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's classic work took a pioneering approach to colour science, exploring the interplay of light and shadow, the emotional effects of colours and their dynamic relationships. Thoroughly detailed and highly illustrated, The Theory of Colour laid the foundation for modern understanding, with Goethe producing the universal colour wheel that is still referenced today.

Its contents include:
• Effects of Light and Darkness on the Eye
• Dazzling Colourless Objects
• Conditions of the Appearance of Colour
• Achromatism and Hyperchromatism
• Augmentation of Colour
• Physical and Chemical Effects of the Transmission of Light through Coloured Mediums
• Relation to Natural History
• Allegorical, Symbolical, Mystical Application of Colour

Though initially controversial, Goethe's insights have profoundly impacted art and science, influencing figures like Wassily Kandinsky and the Bauhaus School. This facsimile edition faithfully reproduces Goethe's original text and illustrations. The Theory of Colours remains essential for anyone interested in the intersection of art, science, and the multifaceted world of colour.

By closely following Goethe's explanations of the color phenomena, the reader may become so divorced from the wavelength theory--Goethe never even mentions it--that he may begin to think about color theory relatively unhampered by prejudice, ancient or modern.

By the time Goethe's Theory of Colours appeared in 1810, the wavelength theory of light and color had been firmly established. To Goethe, the theory was the result of mistaking an incidental result for an elemental principle. Far from pretending to a knowledge of physics, he insisted that such knowledge was an actual hindrance to understanding. He based his conclusions exclusively upon exhaustive personal observation of the phenomena of color.

Of his own theory, Goethe was supremely confident: From the philosopher, we believe we merit thanks for having traced the phenomena of colours to their first sources, to the circumstances under which they appear and are, and beyond which no further explanation respecting them is possible.

Goethe's scientific conclusions have, of course, long since been thoroughly demolished, but the intelligent reader of today may enjoy this work on quite different grounds: for the beauty and sweep of his conjectures regarding the connection between color and philosophical ideas; for an insight into early nineteenth-century beliefs and modes of thought; and for the flavor of life in Europe just after the American and French Revolutions.

The book does not have to be studied to be appreciated. Goethe's subjective theory of colors permits him to speak most persuasively of color harmony and aesthetics. In some readers these notions will evoke a positive response on their merits. Others may regard them as pure fantasy, but savor the grace and style of their exposition.
The work may also be read as an accurate guide to the study of color phenomena. Goethe's conclusions have been repudiated, but no one quarrels with his reporting of the facts to be observed. With simple objects--vessels, prisms, lenses, and the like--the reader will be led through a demonstration course not only in subjectively produced colors, but also in the observable physical phenomena of color. By closely following Goethe's explanations of the color phenomena, the reader may become so divorced from the wavelength theory--Goethe never even mentions it--that he may begin to think about color theory relatively unhampered by prejudice, ancient or modern.

Goethe's masterpiece and perhaps the greatest work in German literature, Faust has made the legendary German alchemist one of the central myths of the Western world. Here indeed is a monumental Faust, an audacious man boldly wagering with the devil, Mephistopheles, that no magic, sensuality, experience, or knowledge can lead him to a moment he would wish to last forever. Here, in Faust, Part I, the tremendous versatility of Goethe's genius creates some of the most beautiful passages in literature. Here too we experience Goethe's characteristic humor, the excitement and eroticism of the witches' Walpurgis Night, and the moving emotion of Gretchen's tragic fate.

This authoritative edition, which offers Peter Salm's wonderfully readable translation as well as the original German on facing pages, brings us Faust in a vital, rhythmic American idiom that carefully preserves the grandeur, integrity, and poetic immediacy of Goethe's words.

'At three in the morning I crept out of Carlsbad, they wouldn't have let me go if I hadn't. I wasn't going to be stopped, for it was time.'

This is the authentic day-to-day record never before translated, of the first eight weeks of freedom as Germany's greatest poet heads for the Italy he has been yearning to see since childhood. Leaving behind the growing frustrations of administrative work, a difficult love-affair, and lack of time to write, he discovers himself again as a sensuous being and an artist. His fresh and spontaneous notes, sometimes dashed down at crowded tables in primitive Italian inns, bring together art and nature, Antiquity and the Renaissance, aesthetics and science, observations of climate, rocks, plants, and the Italian people, in an unpremeditated mixture through which the poet's mature vision of the natural and human world can be seen taking shape. Goethe's Italian diary brings us close to a great European writer at a turning-point in his life.

ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe ( Fr ncfort del Meno, 28 de agosto de 1749-Weimar, 22 de marzo de 1832) fue un poeta, novelista, dramaturgo y cient fico germ nico, contribuyente fundamental del Romanticismo, movimiento al que influenci profundamente.

This edition presents Parts I and II complete. Cyrus Hamlin provides essential supporting material for this difficult text, and his Interpretive Notes have been expanded and reset in larger, easy-to-read type. Comments by Contemporaries includes short pieces by Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Thomas Carlyle, and Wilhelm von Humboldt. Modern Criticism--comprised of ten essays newly added to the Second Edition--presents the perspectives of Stuart Atkins, Jaroslav Pelikan, Benjamin Bennett, Franco Moretti, Friedrich A. Kittler, Neil M. Flax, Marc Shell, Jane Brown, Hans Rudolf Vaget, and Marshall Berman. A Selected Bibliography is included.

An overnight sensation upon its 1774 publication, The Sorrows of Young Werther became one of the first European best-sellers and secured its young author both fortune and fame. Loosely based on Goethe's personal experiences, the novel is written mostly in the form of letters in which Werther recounts his unrequited love for a married woman. Its Sturm und Drang style, portraying the rebellion of youthful genius against conventional standards, makes it a perennial favorite with readers of every era. Includes the original German with English translation on the facing pages.

Throughout his long, hectic and astonishingly varied life, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) would jot down his passing thoughts on theatre programmes, visiting cards, draft manuscripts and even bills ... Goethe was probably the last true 'Renaissance Man'. Although employed as a Privy Councillor at the Duke of Weimar's court, where he helped oversee major mining, road-building and irrigation projects, he also painted, directed plays, carried out research in anatomy, botany and optics - and still found time to produce masterpieces in every literary genre. His fourteen hundred Maxims and Reflections reveal some of his deepest thought on art, ethics, literature and natural science, but also his immediate reactions to books, chance encounters or his administrative work. Although variable in quality, the vast majority have a freshness and immediacy which vividly conjure up Goethe the man. They make an ideal introduction to one of the greatest of European writers.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

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The best-known work of the Enlightenment literary giant Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust took a lifetime to write. For more than sixty years, Goethe worked on his masterpiece and ultimately divided it into two parts, the second of which was published in 1832, the year of his death. Hailed as Germany's greatest contribution to world literature, Faust drew upon the legends surrounding a sixteenth-century sorcerer as well as Marlowe's Dr. Faustus. But Goethe's epic interpretation further explores the tension between learning and experience, and in this version Faust sells his soul not simply for magic powers but also for a heightened sense of existence.
Part One of the dramatic poem concerns the magician's devilish pact with Mephistopheles and his seduction of Gretchen, an innocent girl. Part Two incorporates a vast array of influences -- theological, mythological, philosophical, political, musical, and literary--to relate Faust's life at court, his romance with Helen of Troy, and his salvation. This edition features the acclaimed translation by Bayard Taylor.

These are the letters of Werther, a young artist of highly sensitive and passionate temperament, sent to his friend Wilhelm. In these letters Werther gives an intimate account of his stay in the village Wahlheim. He is enchanted by the peasants there and falls instantly in love with Charlotte. Charlotte is however already engaged.