Goethe even foresees such modern phenomena as inflation and the creation of life by scientific synthesis. But his greatest theme, dramatically represented by the marriage of Faust and Helen of Troy, embodies Goethe's imaginative longing to join poetically the Romantic Medievalism of the Germanic West to the classical genius of the Greeks."

Completed a few months before he dies, Faust was the culmination Goethe's lifelong obsession and assured him a place in the first rank of world literature."