ABSTRACT
In All That is Solid Melts Into Air, Marshall Berman depicts Faust’s inner struggle as a prototypical condition for, as the subtitle of his book declares, “the experience of modernity.” The central decision over which Faust labors regards how he wishes to orient himself to the social world: he remains, as we witness in Goethe’s opening act, torn between modalities based on separation versus participation. While isolated at “home,” Faust revels in the capacity to invent, without limitations, his own idiom of subjectivity; he embodies the modernist ideal of self-creation. Yet he also feels trapped, and longs to venture outside so that he may apply his vast stores of knowledge and creativity to further the transformation and development of the material world. Faust, we know, will eventually choose to escape his unhappy seclusion by establishing attachments and assuming meaningful social roles. In his initial metamorphosis, he pursues a romance with Gretchen. Then, in a second metamorphosis, he becomes a land developer and proceeds to modernize, with sweeping scale, the world around him.
