fii Tharls Marshall Berman Solid Melts Inin fiir The Experience of Modernity PENGUIN BOOKSaor ‘sre wean "901 248 07 Kay Guo amo 5 auaypno 9 fo 210 goin oy pu ‘au 240 a 2404 aa 241 40 ps07] 24) au 0} pousuussyep 280 uoynng 0 440 244 gst ay Hg pry Bu} 4°" pe POON cao wpemasaeg— -ngode sy qd pro sy 99 so4s puomspun ayy fo tuamod oy yoaruaa 07 499 sa8u0y on oy anazion oy ayy 1 ‘oBuoyans pu woyonpaad fo vou 200053 sone dn paunfucn roy sys Goon w Gr20r Hoadanog wsopony qusurdojaasq jo Apasery, UL -NDY SIyI20)38 Aut Twat Is Soup Mets Into Aim For as long as there has been a modern culture, the figure of Faust has been one of its culture heroes. In the four centuries since Johann Spiess’s Faustbuch of 1587 and Christopher Marlowe's Tragical History of Doctor Faustus a year the story has been retold endlessly, in every modern language, in every known dium from operas to puppet plays and comic books, in every cary form from lyrical poetry to theologico-philosophical tragedy to vulgar farce; it has proven ible to every type of modern, artist all over the world. Though the figure of Faust has taken ‘many forms, he is ly always a “long-haired boy"—an intel- ‘marginal and suspicious character. versions, to0, the tragedy or comedy comes when Faust “loses con- trol” of the energies of his mind, which then proceed to take on a dynamic and highly explosive life of their own. Almost four hundred years after his debut, Faust continues to modern imagination. Thus The New Yorker magazine, in an anti-nuclear editorial just after the accident at Three Mile Is- land, indicts a symbol of scientific irresponsibility and difference to life: “The Faustian proposal that the experts make heir fallible human hands on eternity, and Meanwhile, at the other end of the cu Designs of... DOCTOR FAUS resembles Orson Wel ble. “Even as we wat those canisters contai ‘wo bound and help- nious mind-gas are CONTROL!" This means trouble: the last time Dr. Faustus passed through, he confused the minds of all Americans, leading them to paranoia \d denounce their neighbors, and gener- ating McCarthyism. Who knows what he will be up to now? A Feluctant Captain America comes this enemy, "And, unfashionable Jaded 1970s readers, “I've got « could never be the land of the free onc grip!” When the Faust in is finally thwart Statue of Liberty feels free to smile again.* The Tragedy of Development 39 Goethe's Faust surpasses all others in the richness and depth of its moral imagination, its political in- itopens up new ‘oethe and his contemporaries went through; the whole movement of the work enacts the larger move- an industrial revolution. It starts in an inan abstracted and isolated realm of though of a far-reaching realm of production and exchange, ruled by giant corporate bodies and complex organizations, which Faust's thought is helping to create, and which are enabling him to create more. In Goethe's version of the Faust theme, the subject and ‘object of transformation is not merely the hero, but the whole “world. Goethe's Faust expresses and dramatizes the process by “Which, at the end of the eighteenth century and the start of the nineteenth, a distinctively modern world-system comes into being ‘The vital force that animates Goethe's Faust, that marks it off ertain clearly defined and universally de- sired good things of life: money, sex, power over others, fame and