Goethe's Faust: the Jacqui's Room Notes

With apologies to Charlie Daniels. For the full effect, click here to listen while you read...

Goethe's Faust, Part 1, the country music hit

The devil went up to heaven, he was looking to spar with God.
He said, “You’d better bet the devil can get that Faust down there. He’s odd.”
God laughed and said, “No way, Evil Angel. You know Faust’s my favorite man.
He spends his days a-just a-learnin’ stuff and doin’ the best he can.”

But the devil he was cocky, he got God to say okay,
Then Mephisto fell back down to earth, to steal Faust’s soul away.
Now Faust was suicidal; he’d been whining for a while:
“I’m so bereft, ain’t nothing left on earth can make me smile.”
So he thought he’d outsmart the devil, signed in blood and at the end
Added “Come the day you hear me say, ‘stop time!’ you kill me then.”

Faust, it’s you they say’s so smart, come on and use your noodle.
‘Cos hell’s broke loose in Germany and it’s dressed up like a poodle.
While you’re on earth, it’s you he’ll serve with love and smiles and gold,
But when you die, the devil gets your soul.

(feel free to dance during the guitar solos and the next verse and join us for Johnny's performance)

Fire on the streets, twirl boys, twirl.
The devil's gonna get Faust a girl.
Kill her mother and her brother, and her honor too.
Faust'll run away before part two.

August 25 - Goethe's Faust

Welcome to Week #14 of our 15 Classics in 15 Weeks project.

This week I will be reading Goethe's Faust. Don't get confused; there are a lot of Fausts out there. I am reading Goethe's. The Mighty Thor is livid because whatever version he read in college was like 1,000 pages and mine is only 200. Also I think he is still mad because his roommate acted in the production of Faust someone put up in my college dining hall and it was 4 hours long and the Mighty Thor sat through the whole thing. Nevertheless, I am excited about this play.

If you look left, you'll see next week's book is still TBA. I need your help deciding. What should my final classic be? If you joined us late, the whole point of the project was that I am pretty well-read but had holes in the canon of traditional American and European lit. So, here's the question: what is your all-time, number one, anyone-who-calls-herself-well-read-MUST-have-read-this-book classic novel (that we haven't already discussed this summer)? You can see everyone's original suggestions in the comments here.

It's like American Idol for literary dorks, isn't it? Sigh.

Also, what are you reading this week?