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According to the main article, Goethe's Faust is a closet drama, meaning it was meant to be read rather than performed. As there is no reference to performances, I'm assuming this is true. There have been many theatrical works called "Faust" or similar, but they have (or will eventually have) their own pages.-- Dereksmootz ( talk) 17:59, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
Faust has been performed on stage several times, I can´t believe there is even a discussion about this! If I remember the lessons I had in German correctly it is one of the most performed plays, at least in Germany. Faust I is performed more often because it is easier to understand, unlike Faust II which is considerably longer and full of mythological references. 79.4.187.17 ( talk) 15:40, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
In Henry Morley's 1883 introduction to the english translation of The First Part of Goethe's Faust, he says the play was first published in 1806. However, other sources say that Faust I was first published in 1808 in volume VIII of Goethe's Werke by Cotta in Stuttgart. I wouldn't give that much credence to Morley's introduction except that he was a Professor of English Literature at University College, London. Anyone know which is right? Kaldari ( talk) 16:25, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
As it stands this is awkward. Was someone trying to translate the title on the title page? Because that's not what it means. A better translation would simply be "Faust, a tragedy (First Part)" ZarhanFastfire ( talk) 05:58, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
De-indent
I have to agree with the OP, the title is not only mannered and unwieldy, but also simply wrong in various ways:
1. It grates in English, and it's not a translation of any German title. If "Faust: the first part of the tragedy" (ignoring capitals etc.) is indeed a correct translation of this play's title, then the original would have to be called something like "Faust: Der erste Teil von der Tragödie" (or "des Tragödies"), which it wasn't. Transcriptions of the title pages of the first editions published during Goethe's lifetime appear to read: "Faust. / Der Eine Tragödie" and "Faust. / Der Tragödie / zweiter Teil". So the Germans retrospectively call the original "erster Teil" and we call it "part one". NB Although the Teutophones say "Faust, erster Teil", in normal speech the Anglophones don't say "Faust, first part" : and conversely "Henry the fourth, part one" is natural to the English, but - strangely annoyingly - the Germans don't say "Heinrich der vierter, Teil eins".
2. Let us not forget Goethe himself (quoted in an English translator's foreword, ref: Faust: A Tragedy tr. David Syme, 1834, p. iv):
Of the two modes of translating I certainly prefer that "which," in the words of Goethe, "requires that the author of a foreign nation be brought to us in such manner as we may regard him as our own," - to that other - "which, on the contrary, demands of us that we transport ourselves over to him, and adopt his situation, his peculiarities."
In other words, Goethe would prefer that we thought of him as an English playwright and referred to this part of Faust err- which technically would be Fist, Part one - as if it were a well-known Shakespeare play such as The First Part of Henry the Fourth. Hmmm, see what I mean? Neither is there a WP article on Shakespeare's less-popular follow-on called The Second Part of Henry the Fourth, although that's how it appears on its title page in the First Folio. (It would be lovely if German WP supported me, but they worryingly seem to believe that the Shakespeherian [ sic] Henry was only half a king, thus weakening my argument somewhat: how about Heinrich IV, der Halbenkönig?)
3. Annoyingly, many people don't always refer to plays by their original title pages: z.B. the FF title-page of a certain Shakespeare play reads "The Tragedy of Anthony and Cleopatra", although it's commonly called
Antony and Cleopatra. Let's assume - for the sake of argument - that Shakespeare wrote it in German, and that the title-page of the first edition (like the title-page of "Faust. / Der Eine Tragödie") read "Antonius und Cleopatra. / Der Eine Tragödie". To further assume, let us imagine that this ShaksGoethe wrote a sequel, whose title-page read "Antonius und Cleopatra. / Der Tragödie / zweiter Teil", just like "Faust. / Der Tragödie / zweiter Teil". The resulting en:WP article might well be called
Anthony and Cleopatra: The First Part of the Tragedy, but it would be slightly missing the point: and since there is a clear precedent in
Henry IV, Part 1, may I civilly suggest that Goethe's ghost would be content with
Faust, Part 1? >
MinorProphet (
talk)
16:48, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
No response in five months. Having also noticed that Faust, Part 1 (see Revision history) was changed to Faust Part One by the original creator of the article, I feel (despite my advocacy of 'Henry IV, Part 1') that Faust, Part One is best. That particular page doesn't exist at the moment, so I'm going going to make the move. > MinorProphet ( talk) 06:44, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Faust, Part One/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.
==C Class== I rated this article C Class for wikiproject Germany because it is realtively well sectioned, contains a picture, and a good amount of information. It still requires massive cleanup and more references however before it can be even considered for B class. -- Banime ( talk) 13:48, 19 October 2008 (UTC) |
Substituted at 18:17, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Faust, Part One article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
![]() | This article is rated C-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||
|
According to the main article, Goethe's Faust is a closet drama, meaning it was meant to be read rather than performed. As there is no reference to performances, I'm assuming this is true. There have been many theatrical works called "Faust" or similar, but they have (or will eventually have) their own pages.-- Dereksmootz ( talk) 17:59, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
Faust has been performed on stage several times, I can´t believe there is even a discussion about this! If I remember the lessons I had in German correctly it is one of the most performed plays, at least in Germany. Faust I is performed more often because it is easier to understand, unlike Faust II which is considerably longer and full of mythological references. 79.4.187.17 ( talk) 15:40, 8 December 2008 (UTC)
In Henry Morley's 1883 introduction to the english translation of The First Part of Goethe's Faust, he says the play was first published in 1806. However, other sources say that Faust I was first published in 1808 in volume VIII of Goethe's Werke by Cotta in Stuttgart. I wouldn't give that much credence to Morley's introduction except that he was a Professor of English Literature at University College, London. Anyone know which is right? Kaldari ( talk) 16:25, 24 June 2009 (UTC)
As it stands this is awkward. Was someone trying to translate the title on the title page? Because that's not what it means. A better translation would simply be "Faust, a tragedy (First Part)" ZarhanFastfire ( talk) 05:58, 17 December 2014 (UTC)
De-indent
I have to agree with the OP, the title is not only mannered and unwieldy, but also simply wrong in various ways:
1. It grates in English, and it's not a translation of any German title. If "Faust: the first part of the tragedy" (ignoring capitals etc.) is indeed a correct translation of this play's title, then the original would have to be called something like "Faust: Der erste Teil von der Tragödie" (or "des Tragödies"), which it wasn't. Transcriptions of the title pages of the first editions published during Goethe's lifetime appear to read: "Faust. / Der Eine Tragödie" and "Faust. / Der Tragödie / zweiter Teil". So the Germans retrospectively call the original "erster Teil" and we call it "part one". NB Although the Teutophones say "Faust, erster Teil", in normal speech the Anglophones don't say "Faust, first part" : and conversely "Henry the fourth, part one" is natural to the English, but - strangely annoyingly - the Germans don't say "Heinrich der vierter, Teil eins".
2. Let us not forget Goethe himself (quoted in an English translator's foreword, ref: Faust: A Tragedy tr. David Syme, 1834, p. iv):
Of the two modes of translating I certainly prefer that "which," in the words of Goethe, "requires that the author of a foreign nation be brought to us in such manner as we may regard him as our own," - to that other - "which, on the contrary, demands of us that we transport ourselves over to him, and adopt his situation, his peculiarities."
In other words, Goethe would prefer that we thought of him as an English playwright and referred to this part of Faust err- which technically would be Fist, Part one - as if it were a well-known Shakespeare play such as The First Part of Henry the Fourth. Hmmm, see what I mean? Neither is there a WP article on Shakespeare's less-popular follow-on called The Second Part of Henry the Fourth, although that's how it appears on its title page in the First Folio. (It would be lovely if German WP supported me, but they worryingly seem to believe that the Shakespeherian [ sic] Henry was only half a king, thus weakening my argument somewhat: how about Heinrich IV, der Halbenkönig?)
3. Annoyingly, many people don't always refer to plays by their original title pages: z.B. the FF title-page of a certain Shakespeare play reads "The Tragedy of Anthony and Cleopatra", although it's commonly called
Antony and Cleopatra. Let's assume - for the sake of argument - that Shakespeare wrote it in German, and that the title-page of the first edition (like the title-page of "Faust. / Der Eine Tragödie") read "Antonius und Cleopatra. / Der Eine Tragödie". To further assume, let us imagine that this ShaksGoethe wrote a sequel, whose title-page read "Antonius und Cleopatra. / Der Tragödie / zweiter Teil", just like "Faust. / Der Tragödie / zweiter Teil". The resulting en:WP article might well be called
Anthony and Cleopatra: The First Part of the Tragedy, but it would be slightly missing the point: and since there is a clear precedent in
Henry IV, Part 1, may I civilly suggest that Goethe's ghost would be content with
Faust, Part 1? >
MinorProphet (
talk)
16:48, 16 April 2015 (UTC)
No response in five months. Having also noticed that Faust, Part 1 (see Revision history) was changed to Faust Part One by the original creator of the article, I feel (despite my advocacy of 'Henry IV, Part 1') that Faust, Part One is best. That particular page doesn't exist at the moment, so I'm going going to make the move. > MinorProphet ( talk) 06:44, 24 September 2015 (UTC)
The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Faust, Part One/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.
==C Class== I rated this article C Class for wikiproject Germany because it is realtively well sectioned, contains a picture, and a good amount of information. It still requires massive cleanup and more references however before it can be even considered for B class. -- Banime ( talk) 13:48, 19 October 2008 (UTC) |
Substituted at 18:17, 17 July 2016 (UTC)