Faust Part 1

The drama was given to the public first as a fragment in 1790; then the completed First Part appeared in 1808; and finally the Second Part was published in 1833, the year after the author's death. Writing in "Dichtung und Wahrheit" of the period about 1770, when he was in Strasburg with. Herder, Goethe says, "The significant puppet-play legend . . . echoed and buzzed in many tones within me. I too had drifted about in all knowledge, and early enough had been brought to feel the vanity of it. I too had made all sorts of experiments in life, and had always come back more unsatisfied and more tormented. I was now carrying these things, like many others, about with me and delighting myself with them in lonely hours, but without writing anything down." Without going into the details of the experience which underlies these words, we can see the be ginning of that sympa