This edition presents the first part of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust in an English translation that attempts to reproduce the original verse metres — a notoriously difficult undertaking given Goethe’s varied and intricate prosody. Faust Part One follows the despairing scholar Faust as he makes his wager with Mephistopheles and falls ruinously in love with the innocent Gretchen.
Metered translations offer a different reading experience from prose versions, preserving something of the musical architecture of the original German. Download this free public-domain EPUB to compare Goethe’s masterwork in a verse-conscious English rendering.