Now that I'm done with my annotated Plato's Republic, I'm now going to start an annotated Goethe's Faust with my leather bound edition I bought months ago. Goethe's faust is like an encyclopedia of poetry, he uses all types. This makes it hard to translate if one wants a poetic edition. George Madison Priest is the translator and wow, he made the entire tragedy rhyme in poetry. This is an amazing feat I didn't think was possible. But I consider poetic devices as surface beauty, what really matters is how literal it is to the original. I was zipping through it and it's pretty good compared to the rest of the translations, minus the Kline translation. The Kline translation is the sharpest translation. Period. But I like the older English Priest uses too. I think it was translated in 1926 maybe, and Franklin Press decided to use it instead of Bayard Taylor or the newer most literal translation by Stuart Atkins.

Does anyone have trouble reading old translations from 1850-1930? I typically enjoy the older translations. :-/