WORKS, DAYS AND FALL OF FAUST

Oxy Publications presents Friedrich Maximilian Klinger's novel Works, Days and Fall of Faust. This book continues the series of "white" books published by Oxy, after Notes from the Other Side, by Wilhelm Hauff. The legend of Faust – the wise man who sold his soul to the devil to gain knowledge, glory and power – inspired great writers like Marlowe and Goethe, composers like Berlioz, painters like Delacroix, cinematographers like Murnau. There is something always contemporary and relevant in the figure of this tragic hero who rebels against the limits of the world, who seeks to rise to the top and is ultimately crushed by his own hubris. Klinger's Faust, a merciless indictment of bourgeois society, has waited more than two centuries to be translated into Greek, but it seems – unfortunately – much more modern than one might expect. The Faust legend is a patchwork of anonymous, mostly medieval folk tales, which in the 16th century became associated with a real person, Johann Faust, who was said to have sold his soul to the devil in order to gain earthly goods and power. Klinger's Faust is a pioneer, who stumbles upon people's ignorance and is thus driven into the hands of the devil, trying to prove to him, paradoxically, that the human race has a moral core. Their journey passes through monasteries, courts and cities, through the fragmented Germany of the rulers, through the France of Louis the Fourth, through the England of the usurper Gloucester, through the Spain of the Inquisition and through the Borgia dynasty in Italy, from earth to hell. Faust's rationality leads him to doubt and ultimately reject both God and men.