Where to start with Goethe
The Sorrows of Young Werther gives Goethe's emotion, form, and cultural force in a compact novel before Faust.
Faust's two parts and monumental reputation have kept Goethe distant; a voice in letters offers a more immediate meeting.
Reading Faust at the speed of prose and missing that it is a verse drama; or reading only Part One and concluding Goethe is a writer of romantic temptations rather than the more demanding cosmic argument Part Two makes. Or reading it in an old verse translation that obscures the music the modern ones make audible.
Books in order
- The Sorrows of Young Werther — Goethe's short epistolary novel from his twenties — the book that made him famous across Europe. The warmest, fastest door into his sensibility before the two-part verse drama asks for sixty years of patience.
- Faust — A modern verse translation — Walter Arndt, David Luke, John Williams. Read Part One first; the famous Gretchen tragedy is the spine. Then Part Two, which is stranger, more allegorical, and the masterpiece of Goethe's very late work. Slowly. The verse is the point.
Further reading
- Italian Journey — Goethe's travel book about his time in Italy — the warmest, most readable of the prose works. Not in this catalog yet.
- Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship — Goethe's long bildungsroman. Save it; it rewards a reader who already trusts him at length.