Doktor Faustus

Doktor Faustus is a German novel written by Thomas Mann, begun in 1943 and published in 1947 as Doktor Faustus. Das Leben des deutschen Tonsetzers Adrian Leverkühn, erzählt von einem Freunde.

English translations

• Helen Lowe-Porter translated many of Mann's works, including Doktor Faustus, almost contemporaneously to their composition. Mann completed Doctor Faustus in 1947, and in 1948 Alfred A. Knopf published Lowe-Porter's English translation (referenced below). It is quite serviceable, and if in certain instances Lowe-Porter's rendering becomes convoluted or arcane, it yet preserves most deeply the linguistic spirit of the author's own era (a stylistic sensiblitity so difficult to reproduce in subsequent generations).
• John E. Woods' translation of 1997 is a competent, intelligible, English version. Necessarily, in achieving its goal of unified readability by English speakers of its own generation, it sacrifices a good deal in those sections of the text where characters speak in Early New High German.