The Continental Edition of World Masterpieces
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 1 LIVES, WRITINGS, AND CRITICISM 35
THE OLD TESTAMENT
[The Creation] 37
[The Story of Joseph] 41
The Book of Job 55
Psalm 8 75
Psalm 19 75
Psalm 23 76
Psalm 104 76
Psalm 137 78
[The Song of the Suffering Servant] 79
HOMER
The Iliad 80
AESCHYLUS (524-456 B.C.)
Agamemnon 182
THUCYDIDES
History of the Peloponnesian War—[Athenian Democracy] 224
SOPHOCLES (495-406 B.C.)
King Oedipus 232
THUCYDIDES
History of the Peloponnesian War—The Melian Dialogue 256
EURIPIDES (480-406 B.c.)
Medea 263
PLATO (4297-347 B.C.)
The Apology of Socrates 297
Crito 321
Phaedo—[The Death of Socrates] 332
JEAN RACINE (1639-1699)
Phaedra 1032
FRANCOIS, DUC DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD (1613-1680)
Maxims 1077
JEAN DE LA FONTAINE (1621-1695)
Fables 1080
FRANCOIS-MARIE AROUET DE VOLTAIRE (1694-1778)
Candide, or Optimism 1085
DENIS DIDEROT (1713-1784)
Rameau’s Nephew 1140
Masterpieces of Romanticism
INTRODUCTION 1169 LIVES, WRITINGS, AND CRITICISM 1192
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU (1712-1778)
Confessions 1198
Musings of a Solitary Stroller 1208
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE (1749-1832)
Faust
Prologue in Heaven 1213
The First Part of the Tragedy 1216
The Second Part of the Tragedy—Act V 1302
FRIEDRICH HÕLDERLIN (1770-1843)
Hyperion’s Song of Fate 1328
To the Fates 1328
Sunset 1329
Brevity 1329
NOVALIS (1772-1801)
Hymns to the Night 1330
FRANCOIS RENÉ DE CHATEAUBRIAND
(1768-1848)
René 1336
ERNST THEODOR AMADEUS HOFFMANN
(1776-1822)
Don Juau 1358
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE (1790-1869)
The Lake 1370
VICTOR HUGO (1802-1885)
The Child 1372
Tomorrow, at Dawn … 1373
GÉRARD DE NERVAL (1808-1855)
El Desdichado 1373
Myrto 1374
GIACOMO LEOPARDI (1798-1837)
The Infinite 1375
The Evening after the Holy Day 1375
To the Moon 1376
HEINRICH HEINE (1797-1856)
The Lyrical Intermezzo 1377
Where? 1378
ALEXANDER PUSHKIN (1799-1837)
Eugene Onegin
Canto I 1379
Canto II 1400
Masterpieces of Realism and Naturalism
INTRODUCTION 1416 LIVES, WRITINGS, AND CRITICISM 1443
HONORÉ DE BALZAC (1799-1850)
Gobseck 1446
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT (1821-1880)
A Simple Heart 1493
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY (1821-1881)
Notes from Underground 1520
LEO TOLSTOY (1828-1910)
The Death of Iván Ilyich 1608
ANTON CHEKHOV (1860-1904)
The Kiss 1655
HENRIK IBSEN (1828-1906)
The Wild Duck 1671
Masterpieces of Symbolism and the Modern School
INTRODUCTION 1753
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE (1821-1867)
A Carcass 1758
Correspondences 1759
ARTHUR RIMBAUD (1854-1891)
Drunken Boat 1763
LIVES, WRITINGS, AND CRITICISM 1788
ALEXANDER BLOK (1880-1921)
The Twelve 1795
ISAAC BABEL (1894-1938?)
Di Grasso 1804
The Sin of Jesus 1807
FEDERICO GARCÍA LORCA (1899-1936)
Lament for the Matador 1812
RAINER MARIA RILKE (1875-1926)
Duino Elegies 1817
SAINT-JOHN PERSE (bom 1887)
Anabasis 1822
ANDRÉ GIDE (1869-1951)
Theseus 1826
THOMAS MANN (1875-1955)
Tristan 1859
FRANZ KAFKA (1883-1924)
A Hunger Artist 1890
JEAN-PAUL SARTRE (bom 1905)
The Room 1898
MARCEL PROUST (1871-1922)
Remembrance of Things Past 1919
ITALO SVEVO (1861-1928)
This Indolence of Mine 1940
RAUL BRANDÃO (i867?-i93o)
The Thief and His Little Daughter 1966
INDEX
PREFACE
The Continental Edition of World Masterpieces is an anthology of Western literature in translation. It is based on the same principles as its parent anthology, World Masterpieces, but essays to meet the demand for a collection in one volume containing only writings from the ancient and the modern foreign languages. The omission of English and American works has made it possible to extend somewhat the representation of foreign literatures.
We have sought here, as in World Masterpieces, to make the range of readings unusually wide and varied. Our contents reach in time from Genesis and the Iliad to the works of Mann, Kafka, Proust, and Sartre; and the literatures represented include Russian, German, Scandinavian, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Latin, Hebrew, and Greek. The Oriental literatures are again omitted, but students or teachers desiring an introduction to them will find one that is richly waned, and extensive enough to be illuminating rather than misleading, in a companion volume: Masterpieces of the Orient. Work of our own century is liberally represented in all three of these anthologies, because we feel that it is important for students to grasp the continuity of literature.
Those who have not seen World Masterpieces will wish to know the principles governing the Continental Edition. Like World Masterpieces, this is predominantly an anthology of imaginative literature. We have not tried to cover the entire history of European civilization, and have avoided filling our pages with philosophy, political theory, theology, historiography, and the like. This principle was adopted not because we disapprove of coming at the history of an epoch by way of literature, but because imaginative literature, in our view, itself best defines the character of its epoch: great monuments of art, we would be inclined to say, furnish the best documents for history. They lead us deeper into the meaning of a past age than other modes of writing do, because they convey its unformulated aspirations and intuitions as well as its conscious theorems and ideals; and yet, being timeless, they have also an unmatched appeal to our own age. For this reason, we have admitted into the Continental Edition, as into World Masterpieces and Masterpieces of the Orient, only works which have something important to say to modern readers, and we have made it a point to interpret them with reference not only to their time but to ours. Teacher and student will find here a number of selections which they have not encountered before in a text of this kind.