Goethe even foresees such modern phenomena as inflation and the creation of life by scientific synthesis. But his greatest theme, dramatically represented by the marriage of Faust and Helen of Troy, embodies Goethe's "imaginative longing to join poetically the Romantic Medievalism of the Germanic West to the classical genius of the Greeks."
Completed a few months before he dies, Faust was the culmination Goethe's lifelong obsession and assured him a place in the first rank of world literature.
Faust Part Two
Introduction
Act One
Pleasing Landscape
Imperial Palace
Spacious Hall
Pleasure Garden
A Gloomy Gallery
State Rooms
Baronial Hall
Act Two
High-vaulted, narrow Gothic Chamber
Laboratory
Classical Walpurgis-Night:
Pharsalian Fields
On the Upper Peneus
On the Lower Peneus
Again on the Upper Peneus
Rockey Inlets of the Aegean
Act Three
Before the Palace of Menelaus in Sparta
Inner Courtyard of a Castle
Arcadia
Act Four
Mountain Heights
On a Mountain Spur
The Rival Emperor's Tent
Act Five
Open Country
In the Little Garden
Palace
Deep Night
Midnight
The Great Outer-Court of the Palace
Burial Scene
Mountain-Gorges, Forest, Cliff, Wilderness
“ One of those great works of literature into which a writer has been able to combine his ranging preoccupations and understanding as he worked.”
—A. S. Byatt, from the Preface
