Mercedes Gómez

Faust (Part I) is an incredible, funny, dramatic, philosophical and poetic play with many layers to be understood from. First, we need to take in count that it was written in 1808 and that it took 35 years for Goethe to move in to the second part of the story. I consider relevant to dive a into a short Goethe biography before going straight to the book to understand it better. The medieval moral values where still pretty strong at the time (as if they weren’t today!) and it was a very clever way to generate a social critic about the eclectic political system. Germany didn’t go trough a revolution as France did, because the monarchy knew that they had to allow intelectuales to have more freedom, or their heads would roll as well. So Faust was some kind of silent revolution from within. The devil, Mefistófeles, is a incredibly developed character. Gives you a lot of fun trough-out the book. Can’t wait to read the second part!