In the first chapter of 'All That Is Solid Melts Into Air - The Experience Of Modernity' Marshall Berman uses Goethes interpretation of the legend of Faust as a literary interpretation of modernization. In the other chapters he uses Marxist texts, French poetry and Russian Literature to analyze modernisation and modernism, but I am yet to read that far. Goethe's version of Faust, as Berman tells us, is the most extensive and rich interpretaion there is, not unexpected from a man who spent sixty years working on it. The main difference, we are told, of Goethe's Faust to its predecessors is the desire for development which previous incarnations had represented by more obvious desires such as money, sex and fame.
Berman goes on to describe the most original idea in Goethes Faust as that of the two modes of development in Faust as both self-development and economic-development and that these must be fused to achieve either. He analyses the story in its three parts, The Dreamer, The Lover and The Developer and through this explains how the Faust tradgedy of Development comes to pass. From his desire for knowledge to his unexpected encounter with love and eventually his
unstoppable thirst for development, it is clear why Berman sees this as the original tale of modernity.
1926 German Expresionist Film 'Faust' by F.W. Murnau:
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