The new edition of Faust, one of the masterpieces of modern European thought and German literature, is monolingual this time, with an introduction, translation, and commentary by Petros Markaris.
The metrical rendering of Goethe's approximately twelve thousand verses is the lifelong translation work of the international author and translator, who worked on it for over ten years.
Faust embarks on a long journey, which traverses four consecutive tragedies: the tragedy of the Logicians, the tragedy of Margarita, the tragedy of Helen, and the tragedy of Humanity. And yet, despite its enormous volume and the four separate tragedies, Faust is at times a tragicomedy thanks to Mephistopheles and his ironic to sarcastic comments about humans. Essentially, Mephistopheles is the mirror of the modern man.
Moreover, the work begins in the Middle Ages but continuously moves through time. It devotes an entire act to Greek mythology and culminates in Helen.
The richness of the work is not only in the dramatic poetry and tragic moments it offers us. It is also the richness of the moments that come alive from ancient Greek history and ancient Greek civilization.