ABSTRACT
A lot of people ask me: “So who influenced whom? Was Henri Lefebvre Guy Debord’s mentor, or was it the other way around?” In truth it’s impossible to say, because for one brief moment, for about half a decade-between 1957 and 1963the two men helped shape one another.They were kindred spirits for a while, yin and yang opposites, a dialectical unity of disunity, a thesis and antithesis, an affirmation and a negation all rolled into one, ready to combust internally, to create light, and to catch fire. It was a love affair, Lefebvre said, destined to end badly-very badly.And it did, just as it had for Faust and Mephistopheles in Goethe’s great drama. “You cannot do what you desire,” Mephisto reminded Faust.“With us the elements conspire,/And ruin reaps your crop at last.”1
