I've heard Faust described as one of the most important works in western literature, and I even read somewhere that it's worth learning German just to read Faust in its native language.
So I was all set to go, and then I read a claim that Goethe defended pederasty.
Is it true? And is Faust worth reading?
is there pederasty in the work?
if not, then it shouldn't matter to you, because he's dead and canonized already.
That's not what Faust is about so why does it matter?
Gretchen is like 14, that kind of counts.
is that a deal-breaker for you?
>it's worth spending like 10 years learning German to academic fluency to read a single book
It's not THAT good, you have to consider the huge amount of literature written in German, then it is worth learning German.
Marlowe's play was better desu
He is one of the most important figures in Western literature. He may have been a pederast.
Why is this relevant to his work?
Get off the /pol/ or tumblr identity politics train
Not the OP, but can someone please explain to me why Faust is so monumental? I've read it and liked it, but I'm not seeing it. I understand why Don Quixote is big, for example, but not this.
Not realising it was far from uncommon people getting married at this age.
>Goethe defended pederasty
Based, truly the Germans are the rightful heirs to the Greco-Roman tradition of boy-diddling.
It's fantastic. But you don't need to read it in German. Germanic languages are similar enough to English that not so much is lost in translation.
>10 years to learn German to academic fluency
Are you retarded? This will take An average student maybe 3 years, a bright one only one. Lrn2lrn brainlet
Wrong. I love Marlowe, but to suggest Goethe's Faust is inferior is ridiculous.
The "two parts" of the Faust play entail a timespan from ~1771 to ~1831 inbetween writing both (even though the first one was done by ~1775 if I recall). That is a lifetime of consideration on the many aspects of life such as philosophy, politics, man's relations to another beings and his/her relation to nature, and all of this Goethe presents inside Faust.
Goethe himself, in spite of anyone's disagreement with his apparent pederasty, was one of those "do everything" people that believed a man had to undertake science, philosophy, work and all other kinds of things in order to fulfill life. At least for me, Faust embodies in an interesting way the struggle of everyone to have things "mean something" or at least having the illusion that they do, and how one reacts upon discovering that things in themselves did not have all that meaning, one idealizes, but they still do mean something else, in a sense.
Also, if you like to analyze your literature, it is an interesting take on a character's exploration of his inner cosmos (his soul, his desires, etc.) proceeding to said character coming to terms with the macrocosmos around (dealing with other souls and other desires).
>and then I read a claim that Goethe defended pederasty.
WHAT THE FUCK.... omg GROSS>.... i cant believ this...
ANOTHER AUTHOR I CANT READ
Thanks for the response, I understand better now.
Basically the Milo Yiannopoulos of German literature, desu.
Kek
Before you judge a person on a trait such as pederasty, try to place yourself in their time period and reflect upon the mores and culture of the time. If you were born of common stock, your childhood was well done and over with by the time you hit puberty. Being the object of a poet's fleshly desires is in many ways a fate benign compared to the average lives people led in those days — you were lucky to reach the ripe old age of 40, and blessed if you could afford even a fraction of the leisure we enjoy today.
Would you discard the works of a writer from the nineteen-fifties who smoked? Give it another five decades and nearly all of our successors will find such a habit loathsome and inconceivable. Or consider any male writer from the nineteenth century; clearly racists and misogynists, the lot of them — compared to our modern day standards. At the time some might be considered almost too progressive in the eyes of their fellow men!
>So I was all set to go, and then I read a claim that Goethe defended pederasty.
>He hasn't yet swallowed the most patrician pill
>This will take An average student maybe 3 years, a bright one only one
Holy fuck, it doesn't get stupider than that. You either are a degenerate native or think you speak German better than you actually do.
I speak English for over 10 years now and had a hard time reading Tristram Shandy, so I had to stop because the vocabulary and syntax where something another level of unknown difficulty.
10 years in order to learn German on an academically fluent level is realistic, or let's say even generous if you do not live in a German-speaking country.