Week 5 Geothe’s Faust: The Tragedy of Development – ‘All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity’ by Marshall Berman

Speed. Speed. Quicker, faster. Speed. Speed. Destroy and progress. Mesphisto’s guide to modernity, or as Berman suggests, a guide to the modern capitalism. The crux of Berman’s exploration of Goethe’s Faust with regards to modernity.

In the first of the three elements of Goethe’s Faust, Berman discusses Faust’s recovery from suicidal despair. How the bells of the church returned the happiness of childhood. Exploring the concept from an architectural perspective, is this a manifestation of the need to carry on copying the traditions. A barrier to modernity? As a part of psychological study, in the early 20^th century Sigmund Freud famously was exploring how childhood experiences affect decision making in later life. So is this why many people still hark back for ‘traditional’ architecture? The safety of the childhood memories physically manifesting itself in the style of one’s choice of dwelling (Cost dependant).

If we follow the allegory of Goethe’s Faust further, the re-joining to society, the life giver of past memories, also opens the gateways to the guilt and regret of past. Architectural history has quite a nice symbiosis with this aspect. The modernist’s reaction to a world of backward looking neo-classism. Minimalist movements when confronted with postmodernism. Eventually throughout the writing of both Goethe and Berman, this will come to symbolise the inevitable theme of one must destroy the past to create.

The search for innocence... and its death. Part two of the exploration of Goethe’s Faust introduces the character of Gretchen. Faust falls fall the young Gretchen, as described, not animalistic desire for her youth or body, but for her innocence. The innocence missing from Faust due to his past life haunting him. An innocence provided to Gretchen, not only by age, but by a life formed in the more simplistic world of a German country town with its traditional values. Following showering her with love and gifts, although note Gretchen falls for the fact Faust has given her something at all rather than the object itself, the pair fall for each other. However as the relationship evolves, and Gretchen becomes more and more reliant on Faust, as many have throughout history, finding Gretchen unequal to his ambitions, Faust needs to get away, running to the mountains with Mestopheles where they enjoy an evening almost the complete opposite of the feudal Christian world embodied by Gretchen. At this point an unmarried Gretchen is pregnant in a feudal, almost medieval Christian Germany. The sleeping potion used in order to render Gretchen’s mother unable to put a halt to the conception has been discovered to be deadly and, whilst not touched on by Bernam, a theatrical dual on Faust’s return where he kills Gretchen’s brother, Gretchen is consigned to prison. This is the first time Faust has to come to terms with his actions. He tries to convince Gretchen to escape with him however she, crippled by the guilt of god, she prefers to stay, unready for Faust, as Faust is beginning to encapsulate the modern man, in the new world he moves to create… and Gretchen, the corrupted innocence is left to die.

The birth of the capitalist. The final instalment in our trilogy of Geothe’s Fausts by Bernam, is the creation of Faust’s new world. Faust’s vision for the road to development. Goethe’s premonition of the modern world. Faust exploit dirty money from a corrupt King, destroys landscapes, marginalises his workforce to a replicable machine, tames nature to us its power all to create his new world. As Bernam notes, the similarities with the industrial revolution, which was only just beginning at the time of Goethe’s writing are harrowing. The final lesson.

The last chance for Faust to take responsibility for his actions, occurs as Faust’s vision of modernity is nearly complete. He has befriended an elderly couple, who have lived their entire lives atop the hill from which he likes to view his creation being formed. To complete the project the thought arises to create a viewing platform to allow people to bask in the glory if his creation. However there is one thing in the way. The elderly couple. Destruction for one’s own vanity. Personally, this is the moment which breaches history. As Bernam and many other have before, we could sit, uncork an a mid-range bottle of red as soft lighting reflects of off the aging varnish of the timber panelling, and hypothesise to the Goethe’s thoughts and vision towards industrialism preceding capitalism. However, as one who has lived a majority of his years in the 21^st century, it is the scene as Faust despatches Mephistos to deal with the elderly couple, and the return which became the most pertinent.

A flash of doubt, a moment of regret. Briefly one is treated to a flash of humanity. Grief for a loss of a friend. But that is the problem, whilst the guilt is felt and deep, it was necessary and recoverable. No regrets! The rabid call to arms of the ‘Instagram Generation’. (Also image living with being the Instagram generation. Summer of love? No just a moment of interaction removed of its humanity forced through a warm filter. What a legacy.) The continuing confirmation that the attitude which has allowed Faust to build his metropolis seeps through modern society. The mantra of ‘no regrets’ has become the constant of modern society. Whether compared to contagion of gentrification as it eats through London, the distancing of workers’ rights from the Architect (hello Zaha) or even the governments desperation for financial security. Reaffirmed to instas, do what you have to do. Don’t worry who you hurt. Be Faust the third not the Faust of part one. The completion instinct reigns supreme.

The man of the renaissance, the thinker, the doctor, depressed and desperate and what his past had become. The flash of the happiness of childhood stripped by methods of enlightenment. The 18^th and early 19^th centuries came to confront the loss of innocence as encapsulated by Gretchen and the feudal space she inhabited. And finally the true power of unwavering industrialisation. The politics of time laid plain by Goethe, wrapped in the human tragedy of Faust.