Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1808 · exile

Goethe's tragedy in two parts, written across sixty years. A scholar who has exhausted every field of learning and found none of it satisfying signs a wager in blood with Mephistopheles - and is shown the world, from a Leipzig wine cellar to a witches' sabbath on the Brocken, and in Part Two back through classical antiquity itself.

1. 1
   The study

   Faust has mastered philosophy, law, medicine and theology, and knows he is no wiser for it. A poodle follows him home from an Easter walk and turns into Mephistopheles, who offers a wager: satisfy me once, and I am yours.

2. 2
   Auerbach's Cellar

   The first place the devil takes him is a Leipzig wine bar, to show him conviviality. Mephistopheles bores holes in the table that run wine, sets it alight, and Faust watches drunk students and is disgusted rather than tempted.

3. 3
   The Brocken

   Walpurgis Night on the highest peak of the Harz, the witches' sabbath in full swing - and dancing with a young witch, Faust sees a red thread at her throat and a vision of Gretchen in chains, and the night ends.

4. 4
   The Pharsalian Fields

   Part Two takes him to the plain in Thessaly where Caesar beat Pompey, for a Classical Walpurgis Night among sphinxes, griffins and centaurs - the German sabbath answered by a Greek one, and Faust looking for Helen.

5. 5
   Sparta

   Before the palace of Menelaus he wins Helen of Troy herself, and they have a son, Euphorion, who tries to fly and falls - and Helen goes back to the underworld after him, leaving Faust holding her empty robe.