Excerpt from The Tragedy of Faustus
The addition of one more to the forty odd translations of "Faust" already before the public, may perhaps be a compliment to Goethe, but requires an apology to the reader. I began it in my boyhood, while yet ignorant of what had already been done, and without any design of publication; other work caused me to lay it aside, and only the accident of leisure in a country house induced me to take it up again. But with succeeding years the difficulty of adding anything of worth to the mature work of our predecessors becomes increasingly apparent, and he must be a bold man who thinks he has entirely superseded what has been done before him. Nevertheless, I trust this translation will have a certain value of its own. Fettered by rhyme and metre, an entirely satisfactory translation is, perhaps, impossible; for one cannot choose ones expressions as can the author, or change ones imagery to suit the exigencies of rhyme. I have endeavoured, however, to do my best.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works. Это и многое другое вы найдете в книге The Tragedy of Faustus (Classic Reprint) (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)