The Paths of Faust

Dr. Johann Georg Faust was a German astrologer, alchemist, who lived between 1480 (or 1466) and 1540. His personality firstly became a protagonist of an anonymous book of tales about Doctor Faust, in 1580s. This book’s translation is believed to be taken by Christopher Marlowe for the basis of “The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus”, published in 1604, 11 years after Marlowe’s death. Two ages later, a German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe got back to the legend and wrote his own play “Faust”, consisted of two parts. Part One was finished in 1806, and Part Two in 1831. Written two centuries later, Goethe’s play differs from the Marlow’s interpretation of the legend, being influenced by the ideologie of the author’s ages.