[In the following essay, Thornton interprets Homo faber in terms of the Daedalus myth.]

Juvenal, in the first of his Satires, asks why he should not attack the vices of his age instead of choosing safe subjects like “mugitum labyrinthi / et mare percussum puero fabrumque volantem” (lines 52-54). In this reference to the Cretan Labyrinth, to Icarus, and to his father, Daedalus, the last appears as a “faber volans”—the very mode in which Max Frisch's Walter Faber is discovered in the opening pages of Homo faber.¹ It is probably no more than a verbal coincidence, but the question of whether the figure of Daedalus, one of the ancient world's arch-technologists, sometimes identified with Hephaestus himself,² might have served Frisch in some way in the creation of his own mid-twentieth-century version of Man the Maker is a reasonable one. In fact it is surprising that it has not been considered already, especially in view of Frisch's references to Icarus in Die Schwierigen (1: 504) and the postscript to Don Juan oder die Liebe zur Geometrie (3: 168).³ However, as Françoise Frontisi-Ducroux has pointed out, the figure of Daedalus has fallen into relative oblivion—”A peine sait-on que Dédale fut le père de cet Icare dont la gloire imméritée a eclipsé la sienne”⁴—and this might partly account for it.

Attempts to interpret Homo faber in terms of Greek myth are as old as the novel itself. It would serve little purpose to enumerate the earlier studies here, or to do more than note in passing the reaction that soon set in, with its tendency to play down Frisch's references to myth as “Spielmomente” and devices of “Verfremdung.”⁵ More to the point is to draw attention to the publication since the early 1980s of a number of studies which, with their methodical and detailed approach, have reinstated the importance of investigating extended mythological motifs to understanding Homo faber. Rhonda L. Blair's work has been particularly influential in resetting the terms of the mythology debate.⁶

The present study will range far beyond the well-known tale of the flight of Icarus, important though this will be. Less-familiar attributes of Daedalus, and incidents involving him, will be considered at the appropriate stages of the argument, but as a first illustration of how fruitful detailed comparison with Homo faber can be, it is instructive to look briefly at one of the myth's relatively minor episodes.

After Daedalus's escape from the Labyrinth to Sicily, Minos sets off to track him down. Minos presents those he suspects of harboring Daedalus an apparently impossible problem—to pass a thread through the convolutions of a snail shell and out through a hole at its tip—knowing that only Daedalus would be resourceful enough to solve it. When Cocalus of Sicily is given the task, he secretly consults Daedalus, who attaches the thread to the body of an ant, which is then made to crawl through the shell.⁷ (The whole episode is of course a structural analogue within the Daedalus myth to the Cretan Labyrinth, which Daedalus designed, and Ariadne's clue). In the “Zweite Station” of Homo faber, on his first visit for decades to his native Zürich, Faber encounters Professor O., his former teacher at the ETH. As they sit together in the Café Odéon, Professor O. suddenly asks, “‘was zeichnen Sie denn, Faber?’ Ich zeichnete auf das Marmor-Tischlein, nichts weiter, eine Spirale, in dem gelben Marmor gab es eine versteinerte Schnecke, daher meine Spirale …” (4: 194). The only hypothesis that accounts adequately for both the main features of this passage—the references to spiral and snail—is that it contains a direct allusion to the Daedalus myth. The spiral is one of the patterns used to represent the Labyrinth on the coins of ancient Crete.⁸ The incident provides a good example of what James J. White has termed “retroactive” or “delayed action” prefiguration, which “emerges late on in the narrative and invites the reader to re-examine the plot in the light of the analogy which then obtains for it”⁹—though there are also “prefigurations” of the more usual kind to be found earlier. It is sufficient to note here that the passage establishes beyond reasonable doubt a firm, if small, foothold for the Daedalus myth within Homo faber.

Clearly, the question now arises as to the extent of Frisch's familiarity with the Daedalus myth. The works on Greek religion and mythology that Frisch is known to have read offer nothing on Daedalus.¹⁰ However, it is clear that his acquaintance with the classics and Greek and Roman mythology went far beyond these particular sources. Frisch reflects on the Iliad and the Olympian gods in Blätter aus dem Brotsack (1: 146-50), steeps himself in the atmosphere of Greece in “Glück in Griechenland” (1: 57-65), and there are references in his work to Icarus, the Minotaur, Ariadne, and many more. Like anyone with access to a good library, he would have had Roscher and Pauly-Wissowa at his disposal, as well as numerous collections of myths retold. His disarmingly realistic views on literary influence in “Spuren meiner Nicht-Lektüre” (1976) might also be recalled: “Es gibt nicht nur die direkte Literatur-Kenntnis, sondern auch das Gerücht; viele Motive kennt man vom Hörensagen, und wenn sie in der eignen Arbeit auftauchen, so könnte ich keine Quelle angeben.”¹¹ Our inability to demonstrate direct knowledge on Frisch's part of specific texts bearing on the Daedalus myth is therefore no great cause for concern, least of all in light of remarks in the Tagebuch 1946-49, that attest to a keen awareness of the nature of myth and legend: “In dunkler Vorzeit. So beginnen die Sagen, die nicht Geschichte sind, sondern Bilder unseres Seins” (2: 363).

1. FABER VOLANS

It is thanks to Ovid that by far the best-known part of the Daedalus myth is the story of the escape of Daedalus and Icarus from the Labyrinth with wings made of feathers, and Icarus's plunge to his death when he flies too near the sun, which melts the wax holding the feathers together. This, together with a small amount of additional material, is the sequence retold in both the Metamorphoses and the Ars amatoria.¹² A comparison of these influential accounts with Faber's story, from the planned abortion of Sabeth up to her death, yields interesting results.

Daedalus flees Athens to escape justice after hurling his nephew and apprentice Talos (or Perdix) from the Acropolis, being jealous of the boy's talent for invention, which threatens to surpass his own. In the Metamorphoses (uniquely), just before he strikes the ground Talos is saved by Athena, who transforms him into a partridge (Met. VIII, 251-53), the bird that mocks Daedalus as he grieves for Icarus after his fall (Met. VIII, 236-40). By showing two precipitations, one avenging the other, Ovid turns the story into one of just and appropriate retribution. The first striking parallel with Homo faber is the death of the beloved child through a fall caused unintentionally by the father (4: 157-58). The terms in which the respective fathers mourn their children seem to point to a direct allusion on Frisch's part to Ovid:

at pater infelix, nec iam pater, “Icare,” dixit,

“Icare,” dixit, “ubi es? qua te regione requiram?”

devovitque suas artes. … (Met. VIII, 231-34; my italics)¹³

Ihre zwei Hände, die es nirgends mehr gibt … ihre Lippen, ihre Augen, die es nirgends mehr gibt, ihre Stirn: wo soll ich sie suchen? Ich möchte bloß, ich wäre nie gewesen.

(4: 192; my italics)

Other features common to the myth and the novel fall into place, in particular the intended (and assumed) killings of Talos and the unborn Sabeth, obstacles in the way of uncle and father respectively. Talos threatens Daedalus's pre-eminence, whereas fatherhood would hinder the development of Faber's professional career (4: 47). However, also in the case of Sabeth, and again due to female intervention, the death of the child does not take place, and the intended victim returns to “mock” the would-be perpetrator. The irony of Ovid's account is actually capped in Homo faber, in which the intended victim of the abortion and the actual victim of the fall are one and the same or, equally important in the novel, the mother's daughter and the father's daughter.

If the beginning and the end of Ovid's sequence and his interpretation of the events find unmistakable echoes in Homo faber, straightforward one-to-one identification of Faber with Daedalus and of Sabeth with Icarus is not possible in the intervening material. But if allowance is made for the subtle patterns of inversion, adaptation, and compression characteristic of Frisch's best work, correspondences of a more complex nature emerge. Generation differences, crucial in Homo faber, are also central to Ovid's accounts (especially the Metamorphoses).¹⁴ An examination of Ovid's treatment of such differences will prepare the ground for later discussion of the relationship between Faber and Sabeth and at the same time lead directly into a comparison with the opening flight sequence in Homo faber.

The two aspects that interest Ovid are first, the displacement in life of the old by the young, as seen above; second, and more importantly, the conflict between adult prudence and the impetuous rashness of youth. So important is the generation problem, that Ovid's treatment of the invention of winged flight can only be understood properly in relation to it. Tempting though it is to assume that the fall of Icarus is divine punishment for the invention itself, as representing an illegitimate aspiration to rise above humankind's natural and preordained status, this would be a quite unwarranted simplification. It is true that Daedalus is fully aware that he is discovering techniques hitherto unknown to humans, and is indeed changing nature: “ignotas animum dimittit in artes / naturamque novat” (Met. VIII, 188-89). However, it is clearly not this that constitutes the transgression, but the youthful imprudence and disobedience of Icarus alone. Daedalus is careful to reassure Jupiter that no challenge to him is intended—”Da veniam coepto, Iupiter alte, meo: / Non ego sidereas adfecto tangere sedes” (Ars II, 38-39)—and to warn Icarus to fly neither too low nor too high, but to pursue a middle course (Met. VIII, 206). Daedalus is the model of bold human enterprise but at the same time the soul of prudence. Significantly, he flies on safely to Sicily after the demise of Icarus.

In her study of the Olympian pantheon, Clémence Ramnoux claims that Homeric Greece had invented “un mode original de la relation de l'homme au dieu.”¹⁵ Greek man neither attempted to force the gods to serve him by ritual observances nor prostrated himself before them in humility. However, he was careful not to act without due reference to the gods: “[Il] appartenait à l'homme d'oser, et de ne pas trop oser. S'il bâtit des digues, qu'il ne le fasse point sans sacrifice préalable. S'il s'échappe à la tempête, qu'il rende grâces. ‘Sans sacrifice’ et ‘sans grâces’ est un excès de présomption” (6). To challenge the elements “en y dépensant force, intelligence et vertu” was legitimate, but only if man respected “le dieu qui se manifeste précisement en toute dépense de force, de courage et d'intelligence” (6). The conduct of Ovid's Daedalus conforms exactly to this prescription: he dares, but not too much. However, the same cannot be said of “l'imprudent Icare” of Frontisi-Ducroux (156). Her interpretation confirms the picture that has emerged:

On peut … lire, à travers les recommendations de Dédale à son fils, une définition du statut de l'homme, à égale distance entre deux éléments … également nocifs … un énoncé aussi de la conduite à tenir entre deux excès contraires. Et Icare, négligeant les conseils de son père, entraîné par l'exaltation de l'envol, et montant toujours plus haut, est une figure symbolique de l'homme qui veut échapper aux limites de sa condition, défaut d'hubris, immédiatement puni par la chute.

(156)

The flight of the Super Constellation in Homo faber shows striking parallels with Ovid, and it will be argued later that these opening pages of the novel actually prefigure the events from the first meeting between Faber and Sabeth up to her death and his moral downfall, when questions of youth and middle age are, of course, also of overwhelming importance. Frisch's original choice of “Die Super-Constellation” as a subtitle for the whole “Erste Station”¹⁶ might be seen as powerful evidence for such an interpretation. For this and various other reasons, a careful consideration of the aircraft is essential.

In the literature to date, there has been no serious consideration of the possibility that Frisch chose the Super Constellation for its particular technical qualities as a flying machine.¹⁷ In point of fact, it was the most advanced passenger aircraft of its time, completing once and for all the transformation of civil aviation from a relatively risky and uncomfortable adventure into a tedious and (usually) uneventful routine. Only the following features need be noted here: the full pressurization of the hull, enabling operation at very high altitudes; a novel system of insulation and temperature control, ensuring passenger comfort in extreme climatic conditions; and, not least, the unprecedented care lavished on the decor of the passenger accommodation.¹⁸ In effect, Lockheed provided for its clients a hermetically sealed, self-sufficient, man-made world, which enabled its occupants to survive comfortably an environment in which human life would otherwise be impossible. Frisch's comments in the Tagebuch on the resourcefulness of the engineers of ancient Rome and the debt owed them by civilization, immediately come to mind:

Aber wie schmal ist das Klima, wo dieses Lebewesen, dem wir angehören, hat entstehen können! Einige Küsten sind es, einige Flußläufe—dann, einmal entstanden, geht es natürlich weiter; es erobert sich Räume, wo es nie entstanden wäre, wo das Klima natürlicherweise keine Kultur gestattet … aber unser Lebewesen richtet sich ein. Gegen das natürliche Klima. Es erschafft sich den Spielraum auch dort, wo die Natur ihn nicht schenkt. Durch Technik … Durch Errichtung einer außernatürlichen Welt, die ihm günstig ist. …

(2: 720; my italics)

The opening image of this passage is recurrent in Frisch's writings of the 1940s and 1950s. It appears in “Nach einem Flug”—“[Wie] gering eigentlich [ist] die Zone … die den Menschen ernährt und gestaltet … ein ganz dünner Hauch in den Mulden” (2: 389); in “Orchideen und Aasgeier,” in which Frisch remarks, inspired by the desert, that “alles, wovon wir leben, Geschenk einer schmalen Oase ist” (3: 196); and, most important for present purposes, in Homo faber. Looking down from the Super Constellation on his last flight over the Alps, Faber is struck by how tenuous humankind's hold on earth is:

Zone des Lebens, wie dünn sie eigentlich ist, ein paar hundert Meter, dann wird die Atmosphäre schon zu dünn, zu kalt, eine Oase eigentlich, was die Menschheit bewohnt, die grüne Talsohle, ihre schmalen Verzweigungen, dann Ende der Oase, die Wälder sind wie abgeschnitten … eine Zeit lang gibt es noch Herden … Blumen … Insekten, dann nur noch Geröll, dann Eis—.

(4: 195)

This motif of the “Zone des Lebens” and the questions it raises find an extraordinary echo in Ramnoux, as she sets the scene for man's encounter with the gods:

Pour l'homme, et vu de son côté, ce “cosmos” se distribue autour de son habitat fait de choses prochaines et familières [“eine Oase eigentlich, was die Menschheit bewohnt”]. Qu'on se le représente de préférence comme une plaine côtière [“Einige Küsten sind es, einige Flußläufe”], avec des prolongements remontant le long des pentes et les vallées [“die grüne Talsohle, ihre schmalen Verzweigungen”].

(13)

The further the traveler ventures, the closer he approaches the “pays des dieux”: “Plus on avance, plus les choses se chargent de numinosité … En remontant les pentes, on traverse la zone des nuages, et par delà se dressent les rocs inaccessibles et les neiges éternelles des hautes montagnes confinant à l'éther. … Là-haut derrière les nuages dans le ciel, c'est le domaine de Zeus” (13-14; original italics).

The man-made capsule of Faber's Super Constellation is an intruder sustained by technology in an alien, almost airless, sub-zero world. However, Ramnoux's words provide the clue to the full significance of this, for the aircraft is not only above the zone of life, but above the “zone des nuages,” high in the “ether,” to use the word in its ancient sense. The Greek distinction between “aer” and “aither” was an important one. The “aer,” impure, dense, and hazy, was the stuff humans breathed, containing mist and the clouds. Beyond the clouds was the pure upper air, or “aither,” and the blinding sun. Looking down from this great height one would see the clouds below—”unter uns der blaue Golf von Mexiko, lauter kleine Wolken, und ihre violetten Schatten auf dem grünlichen Meer” (4: 15)—and the earth through the haze of the “aer”: “Wir … flogen in großer Höhe und vollkommen ruhig … reglos in einem wolkenlosen Himmel. … Man erkannte die Wasserzweige des Mississippi, wenn auch unter Dunst, Sonnenglanz drauf …” (4: 8-9). The “aither,” however, was the domain of the immortal gods, where mortal man had no business to be. A rigorous distinction between the Greek derivatives “aër” and “aether” to denote two separate areas of the sky is also maintained in Ovid. When the area through which Daedalus intends to travel is meant, “aër” is used, six times in the two versions; for the upper air, which Daedalus is careful not to enter, knowing that even rising into the “aër” is an enterprise that he can undertake safely only with Jupiter's indulgence, Ovid uses “aether.”

The Greeks saw no contradiction in their gods inhabiting the “aither” and at the same time dwelling on Mount Olympus, ostensibly on earth. As W. K. C. Guthrie writes, Olympus “gave to the Greeks the impression, as it reared its ten thousand feet through and beyond the clouds, of being … at its summit heavenly rather than earthly. … Olympus is bathed in … pure, aetherial light whose presence betokens divinity.”¹⁹ Frisch's descriptions of mountains are frequently reminiscent of the terms used by Ramnoux and Guthrie for the abode of the gods. Most of the ingredients are already present in Blätter aus dem Brotsack: “[A]us einem See von Dunst … lösen sich die Hänge, steigen empor wie eine Klangschleife, je höher um so klarer, um so reiner, um so glühender. … Dort möchte man sein!” (1: 161). In “Nach einem Flug” this yearning is, however, already tempered with “ein[em] Gefühl von Gefahr … mit der Unruhe eines verspäteten Klettrers” (2: 390), and by the time the image recurs in Homo faber, ascending above the “Zone des Lebens” is unambiguously perilous. The climber who stays too long on the summit is granted a glimpse of the pure light of the sun on the “Gipfelkreuz,” but it is a light “das man mit dem Tod bezahlen müßte” (4: 196). The ascent of mountains in Frisch is akin in many respects to an ascent into the “aither” as described above, the full significance of which will become clearer later, when Faber and Sabeth's climbing of the Acrocorinth is considered.

The first engine failure on the Super Constellation occurs appropriately “im wolkenlosen Himmel” (4: 16). The aircraft maintains altitude on three engines, as the pilot announces a diversion to Tampico, but then, inexplicably, turns inland again and begins to climb. Faber is “sprachlos” (4: 17), for to fly on to Mexico City will mean crossing the barrier of the Sierra Madre Oriental, which he recognizes at once for the foolhardy undertaking it is. The loss of the engine is a warning, requiring the crew to respond cautiously, to follow the middle way, as it were, and Faber's consternation is the reaction of the experienced, mature individual to the disregard of that warning. The stewardess, however, “ein Mädchen von zwanzig Jahren, ein Kind mindestens dem Aussehen nach” (4: 16), finds no time to heed his concern. It is even thanks to this “junge Person, die meine Tochter hätte sein können” (4: 18; my italics), that Faber is in this predicament at all, for it was she who sought him out at Houston, when he tried to miss the flight. Here Faber is the prudent Daedalus, aghast at youth's impetuous rashness, as the Super Constellation continues its climb higher into the “aither,” to challenge Ramnoux's “domaine de Zeus.” The fall seems inevitable, and the loss of the second engine scarcely surprising. With the crash-landing completed and the air conditioning out of action, they are exposed to the blinding heat of the sun: “Hitze, wie wenn man einen Ofen aufmacht, Glutluft” (4: 21).

These parallels between the myth as told by Ovid and the opening pages of Homo faber seem deliberate. However, the view of Faber as a Daedalus homologue, with the crew of the Super Constellation standing for Icarus, is correct only up to a point. In Ovid, Daedalus does not fall, whereas in the novel Walter Faber manifestly does, both literally, when the aircraft descends into the desert, and morally, as a consequence of his behavior in relation to Sabeth. Further investigation of both men is needed.

2. ART AND THE ENGINEER

Without giving a complete catalog of Daedalus's exploits, some idea of his versatility must be conveyed.²⁰ The father of aeronautics not only designed the Labyrinth on Crete but devised for Ariadne and Theseus a way of entering and escaping from it. More mundanely, but no less usefully, he invented numerous tools for the working of metal and wood and carried out a number of prodigious building projects in Sicily, involving the creation of an artificial reservoir and the sophisticated application of hydraulics. From this selection alone, it is clear that Daedalus is the prototype of technological man, of Man the Maker. However, perhaps most importantly of all, Daedalus was also credited with the invention of sculpture, which gives the epithet a crucial extra dimension.²¹

Comparison of this Daedalus with Walter Faber reveals striking parallels and equally striking dissimilarities. Especially illuminating are the latter, appearing as they do as direct antitheses, in which Faber and Daedalus, like Daedalus and Icarus in Frontisi-Ducroux's analysis, become “doublé[s] inversé[s]” (162), or binary opposites.²² As engineers, both Daedalus and Faber are practical men, not abstract thinkers. Like his “Vorbild,” Professor O., Faber is not the stuff of which Nobel Prize winners are made, but “immerhin ein seriöser Fachmann” (4: 103), “der mit den Tatsachen fertig wird” (4: 77), “[und] mit beiden Füßen auf der Erde steht” (4: 47). He has his limitations, but “so viel wie ein Baptist aus Ohio, der sich über die Ingenieure lustig macht, leiste ich auch, ich glaube: was unsereiner leistet, das ist nützlicher, ich leite Montagen, wo es in die Millionen geht, und hatte schon ganze Kraftwerke unter mir …” (4: 97). Most of this could have been said, mutatis mutandis, of Daedalus. In all accounts of him, practical know-how is the common denominator. He is no theorist, and the Greek mind would not have expected him to be,²³ rather he is a problem solver, tackling a whole succession of practical challenges. In this, too, Faber resembles him: “[I]ch bin gewohnt, Lösungen zu suchen, bis sie gefunden sind …” (4: 159).

For the Greeks this practical intelligence was a characteristic of the complex mental phenomenon known as mètis, a faculty distinct from the deductive reasoning involved in geometry or philosophy. Frontisi-Ducroux sees the “artisan” Daedalus as a perfect example of it—“l'homme à la mètis” (150). The concept of mètis proves an invaluable tool for a further comparison of Faber and Daedalus, for it embraces more than the qualities noted so far as being shared by the two men. Among its other defining features are ingenuity, adaptability, inventiveness, the ability to handle shifting situations that do not lend themselves to exact calculation, and a capacity for improvisation.²⁴Mètis is “[une] intelligence souple et inventive, qui sait s'adapter aux conditions naturelles” (Frontisi-Ducroux, 174; my italics). Its possessor takes nothing for granted, for in a continuously changing world, complacency can be fatal. It is here that Faber and Daedalus, strikingly alike so far, part company, or more precisely, it is the point at which Faber becomes Daedalus's binary opposite. Daedalus was an inventor of the greatest ingenuity, a talent that Faber explicitly admits that he lacks: “[E]s ist nicht mein Ehrgeiz, ein Erfinder zu sein” (4: 97). Faber's practical ability is exercised solely within the confines of routine, and the imaginative lateral thinking and intuition that give Daedalus his special genius Faber actually despises as a weakness. Far from adapting to changing situations, he cleaves to the predictable, “das Übliche,” and instead of mental suppleness, he demonstrates mechanistic rigidity of thought. From the point of view of mètis, he is in fact one-dimensional, and in this respect might be described as a “flawed” Daedalus. One-sidedness is, of course, Faber's most striking general characteristic. He inhabits a world of polarities, identifying absolutely with one in each pair, treating the other with disdain or hostility. A long list could be drawn up, but the one most relevant here (and which in fact typifies them all) is the radical dualism in his thinking between the technological and the artistic.²⁵

Apart from Walter Faber's contempt for it, the most striking point about art in Homo faber is that it is virtually synonymous with sculpture, whether the reliefs of the Maya temples and the Ludovisi Throne are meant, or the endless “Sammlungen von steinernen Trümmern” through which Sabeth works her way in Rome, and the “Kopf einer schlafenden Erinnye,” which provides Faber with his first artistic “experience” (4: 110, 111). Faber's pronouncement on the subject during the shipboard conversation about the Louvre makes clear that this is not accidental:

Das Mädchen … bringt das Gespräch, da ich die Skulpturen im Louvre nicht kenne, auf meinen Roboter; ich habe aber keine Lust, davon zu sprechen, und sagte lediglich, daß Skulpturen und Derartiges nichts anderes sind (für mich) als Vorfahren des Roboters. Die Primitiven versuchten, den Tod zu annullieren, indem sie den Menschenleib abbilden—wir, indem wir den Menschenleib ersetzen. Technik statt Mystik!

(4: 77)

This goes to the heart of the dualism in Faber's thinking, and once again Daedalus provides the key to a full understanding.

The Greek mind found nothing incongruous in the mythical engineer also being the first sculptor. The two activities, far from being separate, much less antithetical, were the product of the practical intelligence that informed all creative activity.²⁶ One of the most useful accounts of Daedalus's “artistic” genius is that of Diodorus Siculus in the first century B.C.:

In natural ability he towered far above all other men and cultivated the building art, the making of statues, and the working of stone. … In the carving of his statues he so far excelled all other men that later generations invented the story about him that the statues of his making were quite like their living models; they could see, they said, and walk and, in a word, preserved so well the characteristics of the entire body that the beholder thought that the image made by him was a being endowed with life. And since he was the first to represent the open eye and to fashion the legs separated in a stride and the arms and hands as extended, it was a natural thing that he should have received the admiration of mankind. …²⁷

The rationalist Diodorus is clearly attributing to Daedalus the advances in sculptural technique seen in the kouroi of archaic Greece. However, as Frontisi-Ducroux points out, legend went even further than this: “Mais l'apparence de la vie dépasse franchement le plan de l'imitation. Toute une tradition … relate la prodigieuse mobilité des oeuvres de Dédale. … Elles se sauvent, sont douées de la vue et même de la parole” (100-01). But they were more than automata (or robots): “Leur agitation … n'évoque pas la raideur figée d'un automate … leur mouvement semble déterminé par une intelligence interne” (101). It appears that in legend Daedalus had actually created living beings.²⁸

This excursion into one of the less-familiar areas of the Daedalus myth gives Faber's views on sculptures and robots a greater significance than he himself could possibly have imagined. If the ancient homo faber could not only achieve astounding technological feats, but at the same time invent an art so revolutionary that its products not only seemed to come alive, but actually did so, then the modern Faber's distinction between the ancients, with their “Skulpturen,” and the moderns with their “Roboter” can no longer be formulated in terms of a distinction between art and technology, with art relegated to the role of a primitive and obsolete forerunner. Instead, what appears are two radically different conceptions of the “maker,” the one capable of synthesizing technology and art as aspects of a single creative activity, the other marked by a profound dislocation that sets technology in opposition to art, dehumanizing the first and marginalizing the second. The full implications are apparent in the twofold problem that lies behind Faber's remarks in the passage under discussion: that of the body and the “annulment” (“Annullierung”) of death.

Faber's loathing of the flesh, with its vulnerability to the ravages of time—Fleisch ist kein Material, sondern ein Fluch (4: 171)—is the context in which to assess his general attitudes. The body represents for him humankind's ultimate limitation, as an individual and a species; it is the only obstacle to a triumph over nature and the only bar to immortality. Without flesh, there would be neither aging nor death, for if humans were machines, worn-out parts could be replaced ad infinitum. Even if the vision of the “replacement” of the body can never be realized, Faber would clearly have it act as a guide whenever the technologist seeks to bring the organic under control. This accounts partly for the disturbing vehemence of his advocacy of birth-control and defense of abortion (however logically argued his case might be). Medical science having already done much to check nature's depredations, the next logical step is to control systematically the reproductive process itself. As usual, the terminology and the tone reveal more about underlying sentiments than the narrator realizes: “Der liebe Gott! Er machte es mit Seuchen; wir haben ihm die Seuchen aus der Hand genommen. Folge davon: wir müssen ihm auch die Fortpflanzung aus der Hand nehmen. … Was wir ablehnen: Natur als Götze!” (4: 106-07). The attitude finds its equivalent, as might be expected, in Faber's general attitude toward time, which is mechanistic and additive, and in the way he tries to cheat his own aging, first by ignoring its outer and inner signs, and finally (and sinfully) by trying to turn back the clock and relive his life as the lover and husband of his own child. It is a delusion inseparable from his mechanistic ideology, as Hanna so trenchantly observes (4: 169-70). The whole notion of defeating mortality by “den Menschenleib ersetzen” is in any event fundamentally flawed. To abolish the body would indeed be to abolish death, but only by abolishing life; the result would be extinction, not immortality. Faber's choice of the verb “annullieren” is highly significant. It is, however, a term appropriate only to his own aspirations, and not at all to those of ancient sculpture. His indiscriminate application of it to both merely underlines his inability to comprehend the sophistication of so-called “primitives” and the wholeness of their world-view.

The activities of Daedalus as sculptor, in whichever of the legendary variants chosen, have one great characteristic in common that distinguishes them from Walter Faber's: they are life-affirming, whereas Faber's are life-denying. As the maker of living sculptures, Daedalus gives life to inert matter, whereas Faber would replace life with inert matter. As the originator of archaic sculpture, he created the splendid kouroi, with all their youthful vitality.²⁹ The earlier examples might have served as grave markers, but it was not long before the kouros “could become Apollo … as easily as he could surmount his funereal origin to commemorate an athlete at the site of his victories.”³⁰ In other words, the kouros was not so much an attempt to “abolish” death as a celebration of life and the body. Finally, as the maker of carved images,³¹ Daedalus was a practitioner of a type of sculptural production, namely the glyptic, which held a special significance for Max Frisch in the years leading up to Homo faber. In the Tagebuch 1946-1949 there are important passages on Michelangelo and Fritz Wotruba (2: 516, 551), in which direct carving, in contrast to modelling, is praised as true sculpture: “Wirkliche Bildhauerei: nicht das Kneten einer Gestalt, sondern das Heraushauen, das Erlösen einer Gestalt” (2: 516). The creative process itself, “Vorgang, nicht Ergebnis,” is made visible: “Das Geburthafte mit Qual und Wunder” (2: 516). Once again it is the life-affirming nature of the sculptural process, as the vitality already present in the inert matter is released into form, that is emphasized.

Nothing in any of this suggests the intention of “den Tod annullieren.” If the carved image nevertheless confers immortality, then it does so in a quite different way, for it was no part of Greek (in contrast to Egyptian) belief that “an image could affect the bodily or spiritual survival of the dead.”³² Walter F. Otto, whom Frisch read, is a powerful advocate of this view.³³ The growth in influence of the “new” Homeric gods, the Olympian pantheon, at the expense of the “old” chthonic gods,³⁴ brought with it “[eine] Idee von Tod und Gewesensein,” which is “ebenso neu und kühn wie tiefsinnig” (137). In the Homeric religion, the dead inhabit another world entirely, where they exist as shades, all contact with the living severed. For the first time “Sein und Gewesen” are confronted as “Größen verschiedener Ordnung” (142). However, this is far from being the negative idea it might at first seem to be: “Der Schatten des Toten … ist kein Nichts, er hat wesenhaften Bestand, aber seine Realität ist von einer besonderen Art. An ihm ist alles Vergangenheit, alles stehengeblieben. … So ist hier zum erstenmal in der Welt das Gewesensein, die Vergangenheit Idee geworden” (143). Otto sees this expressed in the Attic grave sculptures of the fifth century: “Da steht … das abgeschlossene Leben in seiner natürlichen Haltung als bleibende Gestalt … und das Auge … schaut ergriffen die Ewigkeit des Vergangenen” (144).³⁵ The sculpted image obviously offers a kind of immortality, but very different from the one that Faber seeks. Death is not “annulliert” but accepted and thus transcended: “[Die homerische Anschauung] ist … die echt griechische Überwindung des Todes, denn sie ist zugleich seine vollkommenste Anerkennung” (145; my italics). Read with reference to the above, the full significance of Faber's “Verfügung für den Todesfall,” as well as the vast spiritual distance he has traveled since his remarks on death and sculpture considered here, become clear:

Auf der Welt sein: im Licht sein … aber vor allem: standhalten dem Licht, der Freude … standhalten der Zeit, beziehungsweise Ewigkeit im Augenblick. Ewig sein: gewesen sein.

(4: 199)³⁶

3. THE GENERATIONS

It is, however, not only Faber's attitude toward death that is defective, but his attitude toward the whole question of aging. In his relationship with Sabeth he behaved, according to Hanna, “als gebe es kein Alter, daher widernatürlich” (4: 170). The question of generation differences thus arises once again. The two aspects that concerned Ovid—the displacement of one generation by another and the contrast between the mature prudence of the middle-aged and the exuberant folly of youth—are both conspicuously present in Homo faber.

A clear example of the first is Faber's resentment of “der junge Techniker,” who is assigned to him to help prepare his film material for the directors of Hencke-Bosch in Düsseldorf (4: 185). This is a younger version of Faber (as Talos is a younger version of Daedalus), and Faber's obsessive repetition of the adjective “jung” (seven times) reveals how much he feels threatened by his “Besserwisserei” (4: 187), as Daedalus felt threatened by Talos. Faber's relations with Sabeth and especially his feelings toward her young companion on the boat are similar, though more complex, because they also involve jealousy of another kind. Faber is stung by the casual appropriation of the future by the young and by what he takes to be the condescension of the boyfriend:

Meinerseits kein Grund zu Minderwertigkeitsgefühlen, ich bin kein Genie, immerhin ein Mann in leitender Stellung, nur vertrage ich immer weniger diese jungen Leute, ihre Tonart, ihr Genie, dabei handelt es sich um lauter Zukunftsträume, womit sie sich so großartig vorkommen, und es interessiert sie einen Teufel, was unsereiner in dieser Welt schon tatsächlich geleistet hat; wenn man es ihnen aufzählt, lächeln sie höflich.

(4: 82)³⁷

Ovid's second preoccupation figures equally prominently. Faber is repeatedly filled with wonder by the sheer youth of Sabeth—“Wieder die Verblüffung, wie jung sie ist!” (4: 76)—and by her gusto and “Übermut” (4: 112), but the painful awareness of the enormous gulf that separates them, defined precisely by the contrasts that preoccupied Ovid, never leaves him: “[I]ch langweilte sie mit Lebenserfahrung, und sie machte mich alt, indem sie von Morgen bis Abend überall auf meine Begeisterung wartete …” (4: 110). However, Frisch's treatment of generation differences is more complex than these examples suggest. Every aspect of the youth-age problem in Homo faber is in fact marked by an ambivalence absent from Ovid.

Most of Faber's important encounters in the novel are with considerably younger men and women. The young seem either to intrude into Faber's life (e.g., Ivy, the stewardess, Hencke) or to exclude him from theirs, at least initially (e.g., Sabeth on the boat and her boyfriend); if he is not irritated by their wearisome insistence, he is hurt and humiliated by their indifference. However, the ambivalence in Faber's relationships with the young reflects what is in fact a deep-seated ambivalence within the man himself. On the level at which he seeks to present himself in his narrative, Faber is stubbornly rational, unemotional, sure of himself, and self-contained. Yet the very uncompromising nature of this self-projection suggests an underlying defensiveness. The avoidance of commitment, the dislike of human contact, the preference for machines and gadgets, the misogyny, the harsh intolerance, the extreme opinions, the cleaving to habit and the familiar—might all be seen as signs of emotional insecurity. The maturity of this fifty-year-old is in fact bogus, or at least one-sided: maturity in terms of worldly experience is not matched by maturity in terms of emotional development, which explains both the cogency of many of Faber's views and the fanaticism with which he states them. Faber's immaturity is essentially the immaturity of one who has not lived an authentic adolescence and youth. The reader is inclined to answer his question, “ob man selber je so jung gewesen ist,” in the negative (4: 76). At school, he was the pupil who never made mistakes, and his loveless sexual initiation was with his mathematics teacher's wife, a woman old enough to be his mother (4: 99). The unconscious impulse behind Faber's aberrant behavior, from the moment he postpones a business trip to visit a friend from his past, is twofold: an incipient rejection of his previous life and a search for a repressed self, but also, inextricably entwined with this, an attempt not so much to recapture a lost youth, as to live a youth he never truly had—to repeat his life.³⁸ Sitting in the tough waterfront bar shortly before he embarks for Europe, he is for all the world like an adolescent leaving home for the first time—”[I]ch freute mich aufs Leben wie ein Jüngling. … Meine erste Schiffahrt!” (4: 64; my italics). Once Faber meets Sabeth, the ambivalence in his conduct increases rapidly. Without ever losing the reflexes ingrained through years of habit, he begins to show classic signs of adolescent infatuation, such as petty jealousy and surreptitious staring—”Sie beobachten mich die ganze Zeit, Mister Faber, ich mag das nicht” (4: 85). In Paris, this man of the world, used to affairs with sophisticated New York models, haunts the Louvre in the hope of a “chance” encounter with a pretty student. The passage soon afterwards, in which he loses his hat (obligatory wear for the mature man in the 1950s) as he and Sabeth dash for safety across the Place de la Concorde, is both ridiculous and touching: “Eh bien! sagte ich und ging Arm in Arm mit dem Mädchen weiter, hutlos wie ein Jüngling im Schneegestöber” (4: 100-01; my italics). Throughout the entire relationship, Faber remains caught in a field of tension between the “gesetzter Herr” (4: 99) he cannot cease to be and the “Jüngling” he has never truly been.

The relationship with Sabeth is the culmination and the clearest expression of the general changes that Faber undergoes, as the intuitive, emotional principle he has always denied asserts itself, interacting bewilderingly with the mechanistic rationalism of his previous existence. Significantly, the two modes of behavior noted in the analysis of the flight of the Super Constellation, the one associated with youth, the other with middle age, are in evidence throughout, but now joined in an unholy alliance within the same person. Before and especially after the incestuous union in Avignon, indications of the real nature of Faber's relationship accumulate steadily, but as in the Super Constellation sequence, which can now clearly be seen as a prefiguration, all warnings are consistently and wilfully disregarded. “Youthful” infatuation and “middle-aged” rationalization are a potent combination: the first instinctively shies away from disturbing realities, the second explains away such evidence as manages to filter through. The most poignant example is the fateful calculation in Rome that sets Faber's mind at rest regarding the parentage of Sabeth, followed by an almost reckless elation as he buys round after round of drinks for the locals (4: 122). Shrinking from the question that would have confirmed what he intuitively knows, he resorts to mathematics, as is his life-long habit, but ironically a mathematics that would have earned nothing but contempt from his earlier self, typical as it is of what makes man in Faber's view so inferior to the computer. It is, as he implicitly admits, contaminated with “Angst” and “Hoffnung,” with those all-too-human “Wünsche in bezug auf das Ergebnis” of which the robot is free (4: 75):

Ich rechnete im stillen … bis die Rechnung aufging, wie ich sie wollte: Sie konnte nur das Kind von Joachim sein! Wie ich's rechnete, weiß ich nicht; ich legte mir die Daten zurecht, bis die Rechnung wirklich stimmte, die Rechnung als solche … ich hatte ja die Daten … so gewählt, daß die Rechnung stimmte … der Rest ging nach Adam Riese, bis mir ein Stein vom Herzen fiel.

(4: 121-22)

The young stewardess who could have been Faber's daughter tracked him down at Houston airport and thus ensured his participation in the fall of the Super Constellation; his actual daughter (with ambitions to be a stewardess) came to his hotel room in Avignon and set him irrevocably on the path to his moral downfall.³⁹ That Faber should have continued on it to the end despite all the alarm signals follows with absolute inevitability from the kind of man he is and the self-deluding strategies he uses to deal with experience. Just as the aircraft resumed its fateful ascent toward the mountain peaks, so Sabeth and Faber now resume their course to Greece, where their final act just hours before the catastrophe is to climb the Acrocorinth, this “Bruder vom Mythen,”⁴⁰ before daybreak to enjoy the ecstatic moment of the sunrise (4: 150-52).⁴¹ The reward for those who climb to the mountain peak before dawn is the same as for those who remain on the mountain peak until sunset, but so is the price: “Licht, das man mit dem Tod bezahlen [muß]” (4: 196). This was the price Icarus paid for his exuberance and his folly.

4. “SICH MIT GöTTERN MESSEN”

According to Erika Simon, Walter F. Otto's disregard of historical development in his work on Greek religion derived from his belief that “[die] griechischen Götter waren und sind auch heute noch geistige Realität.”⁴² Though few nowadays would claim to discern the agency of the Olympians in human affairs, the workings of hubris have frequently been detected in Homo faber.⁴³ Hubris is a complex notion, and claims of this kind can appear glib. Nevertheless, Faber's outlook and actions as they have so far emerged invite a prima facie examination in such terms, and because one has it on Frisch's own authority that myths are “Bilder unseres Seins,” a temporary suspension of disbelief will do no harm.

There are three distinct, though related, ways in which Walter Faber and the type he represents might be said to have acted in a manner likely to provoke the wrath visited by the gods on mortals who will not keep their place. The first involves a wrong attitude toward aging and death. The transcending of death through its acceptance, and a continuing existence in memory, has been seen to be the only kind of “immortality” available to the Greeks. Immortality of the literal kind was reserved for the gods. However, the gods were not only deathless but ageless too: “Dort in den Aetherhöhen gibt es … kein Alter und keinen Tod” (Otto, 129). Within this system of belief, Faber's behavior throughout his life and most of the novel is tantamount to aspiring to divine status.⁴⁴ His transgression is not limited to his personal determination to ignore the signs of aging and illness, nor even to his sinful “Repetition” (4: 170), but includes his more general determination not only to emulate, but actually to supplant the “gods.” His patronizing dismissal of “[der] liebe Gott” as an anachronism, as control over both life and death now passes into the hands of technological man, gives the full measure of his presumptuousness.⁴⁵ It is ironically fitting that he should be brought low first by the incest arising from the incompleteness of control over procreation, and second by an illness for which no effective cure is guaranteed.

The second provocation concerns the flight of the Super Constellation. One recalls that in Ovid, the invention of aviation was not in itself a presumptuous act. The prudence of the mature Daedalus enabled his flight to succeed, whereas the rashness of the youthful Icarus brought his to a disastrous end. It was a question of attitudes. The case of Faber and the Super Constellation is similar but more complicated, for two variants of hubris are involved, one of which might be called “active,” the other “passive.” The first has to do (as in the case of Icarus) with a specific foolhardy act despite clear warnings, as the Super Constellation, in the hands of its young crew, challenges the mountains on three engines, while Faber (like Daedalus) looks on in consternation. The second derives from a general complacency—and here it is principally Faber himself who is afflicted—which takes for granted and reduces to mere routine the awesome phenomenon of flight in the stratosphere. Faber's adult life spans the whole development of intercontinental flight, from the pioneering Spirit of St. Louis to the sleek Super Constellation—”Was [Sabeth] am meisten Eindruck machte an mir: daß ich mich an den ersten Atlantikflug von Lindbergh (1927) noch persönlich erinnere” (4: 83)—yet already faber volans spares little more than a casual glance for the earth so far below: “Wir befanden uns (ich sah es mit meinem rechten Auge) irgendwo über dem Mississippi …” (4: 8; my italics). On one level, then, there are the same antitheses between prudence and rashness and maturity and youth that make Daedalus and Icarus into “doubles inversés,” but on another there is a complacent, casual self-assurance that shifts Faber, and the type of modern man for which he stands, closer to the folly of Icarus. The fall of the aircraft punishes not only youthful foolhardiness, but the complacency that takes man's mastery of nature for granted.⁴⁶

The third provocation follows from Ramnoux's observation that, whereas high aspirations were legitimate so long as humans respected the god “qui se manifeste précisement en toute dépense de force, de courage et d'intelligence” (6), to act as if the gods were irrelevant to human striving was to invite disaster, a point also made by Otto: “Andere Mythen zeigen den furchtbaren Sturz des Menschen, der eine der himmlischen Mächte vergessen oder sich gar vermessen hat, ohne ihren Beistand fertig zu werden” (235; my italics). This is precisely what the modern Faber, unlike Ovid's Daedalus, takes it upon himself to do. In a very real sense he fails to respect the “god,” or the force, which manifests itself in all technological activity. All technical achievements, from communicating tubes and antibiotics to aeronautics, depend on the understanding and harnessing of natural laws. To blind oneself to this, and to regard nature as a hostile adversary to be subjugated and progressively eradicated, is “sich mit Göttern zu messen” (Otto, 235). This adds yet another layer of significance to the failure of the hermetically sealed, man-made alternative world of the Super Constellation. “Der Mensch … der nie vergessen soll, daß er nur Mensch ist” (Otto, 238), has with enormous skill and daring intruded into the ethereal regions inhabited by the gods; or in terms more acceptable to modern thinking, he has extended his “Zone des Lebens” far beyond what nature has allotted to him, “[g]egen das natürliche Klima” in fact (2: 720). But he has done so without due respect (either in mythical terms for the gods on whose domain he is encroaching, or in modern terms for the forces of nature that have made the achievement possible), but with an arrogantly complacent sense of his own infallibility. With the substitution of a natural order and humanity's relation to it for a mythical Homeric order in which gods and men have their separate if not always absolutely clearly demarcated places, the argument has returned to a concept with which the modern reader can feel at home. However, it is worth noting how easily, indeed almost imperceptibly, the transition was made. This might well have to do with what Otto sees as the essential naturalness of Homeric religious belief and its conception of gods and man (236-37).

Walter Faber is deeply flawed, and it is tempting to dismiss him out of hand. This is only possible, however, if the ambivalence in Frisch's portrayal of him, which seems to reflect a general ambivalence in Frisch's view of modern technology, is ignored. Repellent though Faber's arrogant utilitarianism can be, not all his ideas are to be despised. It is surely no bad thing for humankind to wish to take its fate into its own hands—“Würde des Menschen, vernünftig zu handeln und selbst zu entscheiden” (4: 106). Frisch was far from viewing the “Techniker” with lofty disdain, for after all it is the technologist, however uncultured, who creates the conditions for civilization.⁴⁷ Technology can be life-denying and destructive, but it can also be a heroic affirmation of the human spirit. Such ambivalence appears nowhere more clearly than in flight itself, as Frisch perceives so keenly in “Nach einem Flug”: “Es ist herrlich! Aber etwas bleibt luziferisch” (2: 388). The flier views the earth “aus einem ganz unmenschlichen Abstand” (2: 388), one might say with the eyes of a god, rather than of a man, and this emancipation is dangerous: “Es gibt, so scheint es, einen menschlichen Maßstab, den wir nicht verändern, sondern nur verlieren können” (2: 392). Flight is heroic and exhilarating but at the same time beset with temptations, as is technology as a whole. It is this ambivalence that makes Icarus, whose imprudent disobedience one deplores, but whose sheer exuberance and soaring aspiration is applauded despite everything as an assertion of the human spirit, perennially fascinating. One sees it in Faber, too, though in him heroic assertion has hardened into the fatal complacency noted earlier, and the loss of “der menschliche Maßstab” is irretrievably advanced.

The changes in Walter Faber come too late to alter his life, and though they affect his attitudes profoundly, they do so only toward the end. For most of the novel he remains the one-sided technocrat, his maturity in terms of worldly experience unmatched by his emotional development. In one sense, then, he combines in a single contradictory, flawed personality the binary opposites as Ovid presented them in Daedalus and Icarus respectively. However, the disjunction within Faber runs even deeper, involving the relationship between intellect and feeling, the rational and the intuitive, the male and the female, the technological and the artistic. The real lesson that emerges from this reading of Homo faber in terms of the Daedalus myth is about wholeness and integration. The modern homo faber and his ancient counterpart resemble each other in numerous important ways, not least in the daring of their aspirations. However, in their one-sidedness, Faber and his kind have lost, perhaps forever, Daedalus's sense of proportion and the wholeness of the natural (and divine) order of which he knows he is part, and particularly his keen sense of his own place and the place of humankind within it. Like Faber, Daedalus is the type of the maker, ready to test the limitations of humankind and push them back, but unlike Faber, he is without either arrogance or complacency. He dares, but not too much, and above all he respects the gods and the natural forces that make his achievements possible.

Notes

1. “Flying Faber.” All references to Frisch's works (by vol. and page in parentheses in the text) are to the Gesammelte Werke in zeitlicher Folge, ed. Hans Mayer and Walter Schmitz, Jubiläumsausgabe, 7 vols. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1986).

2. For a comprehensive account of the Daedalus material, including references to all ancient sources cited later, see Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1893 ff.), “Daidalos,” 4: 1994-2006. Wilhelm H. Roscher, Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie (1884-1937; Hildesheim, 1965) is also useful.

3. Frederick A. Lubich's note that the “Ikarus-Gestalt figuriert bislang … in der Sekundärliteratur als unbekannte Größe,” Max Frisch: “Stiller”, “Homo faber”, “Mein Name sei Gantenbein,” 2nd ed. (Munich: Fink, 1992) 79 n.67, is not strictly accurate. Icarus (though not Daedalus) is touched on by Werner R. Lehmann, “Mythologische Vexierspiele: Zu einer Kompositionstechnik bei Büchner, Döblin, Camus und Frisch,” Studien zur deutschen Literatur: Festschrift für Adolf Beck zum siebzigsten Geburtstag, ed. Ulrich Fülleborn and Johannes Krogoll (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1979) 210f., incl. n.220 (Don Juan, obliquely Homo faber), and Walter Schmitz, Max Frisch: Das Werk (1931-1961): Studien zu Tradition und Traditionsverarbeitung (Bern, Frankfurt am Main, New York: Peter Lang, 1985) 76, 92 n.47, 95, 98f. (Die Schwierigen) 155 n.17 (Nun singen sie wieder) 164 (Die chinesische Mauer and “Nach einem Flug”). Lubich's own brief reference to the myth, in the context of his preoccupation with the “magna mater” archetype, makes Icarus the mythical “Himmelsbezwinger,” with Daedalus relegated to a single mention, as his father (79).

4. Françoise Frontisi-Ducroux, Dédale: mythologie de l'artisan en Grèce ancienne (Paris: Maspero, 1975), p. 19. The only full-length study of Daedalus (subsequent references in parentheses).

5. See esp. Hans Geulen, Max Frischs “Homo faber”: Studien und Interpretationen (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1965) 96-97; Ferdinand van Ingen, “Max Frischs Homo faber zwischen Technik und Mythologie,” Amsterdamer Beiträge zur neueren Germanistik 2 (1973) 74; Walter Schmitz (a consistent champion of this view), Max Frisch. Das Werk (1931-1961) 288.

6. Rhonda L. Blair, “Homo faber, homo ludens, and the Demeter-Kore Motif,” The Germanic Review, 56, 4 (1981) 140-50, and “Archetypal Imagery in Max Frisch's Homo faber: The Wise Old Man and the Shadow,” The Germanic Review, 59, 3 (1984) 104-08. See also Lubich, Max Frisch: “Stiller”, “Homo faber”, “Mein Name sei Gantenben”; Lubich, “Homo fabers hermetische Initiation in die Eleusinisch-Orphischen Mysterien,” Euphorion 80, 3 (1986) 297-318; Bettina Kranzbühler, “Mythenmontage in Homo faber,” Max Frisch: Materialien, ed. Walter Schmitz (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1987) 214-24.

7. See Apollodorus, Library, ep. I. 14-15. For Greek and Latin sources the Loeb Classical Library editions (text with English translation) have been used throughout. Translations of quotations are given only where exact wording is important.

8. See Frontisi-Ducroux for illustration (fig. 8). Michael Butler, The Novels of Max Frisch (London: Oswald Wolff, 1976) recognizes the “connotations of labyrinth,” but is more concerned with the spiral as indicating movement toward a “vortex” (90).

9. John J. White, Mythology in the Modern Novel: A Study of Prefigurative Techniques (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1971) 119.

10. Walter F. Otto's Die Götter Griechenlands (cf. later) was identified originally by Walter Schmitz, Max Frisch, “Homo faber”: Materialien, Kommentar, Reihe Hanser 214 (Munich, 1977) 106 n.10. Blair and others cite this work and Károli Kerényi and C. G. Jung, Einführung in das Wesen der Mythologie: das göttliche Kind, das göttliche Mädchen 4th ed. (1941). On the evidence of Montauk (6: 688), Frisch attended lectures by C. G. Jung.

11. Walter Schmitz, ed., Materialien zu Max Frischs “Stiller,” 2 vols. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1978) 1: 341.

12. Abbr. Met. and Ars (references in parentheses).

13. “But the unhappy father, now no longer father, called: ‘Icarus, Icarus, where are you? In what place shall I seek you?’ … and cursed his skill.” Trans. Frank Justus Miller, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA and London, 1984).

14. Ars omits the attempted murder of Talos.

15. Clémence Ramnoux, Mythologie ou la famille olympienne (Paris, 1962) 5. (Subsequent references in parentheses).

16. See Schmitz, “Die Entstehung von Homo faber. Ein Bericht,” Frischs “Homo faber,” ed. Walter Schmitz (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1983) 64.

17. It has been seen as a general symbol of modern technology (e.g., Butler 98; Lubich, Homo faber 79). Other interpretations have concentrated on its name, especially in the translation “Über-Konstellation.” Klaus Schuhmacher, “Weil es geschehen ist”: Untersuchungen zu Max Frischs Poetik der Geschichte (Königstein: Hain, 1979), sees it as (among other things) “technische Chiffre … für die quasi-mythische Konstellation der Ereignisse” (66); for Bettina Kranzbühler, “Überkonstellation ist das auffallendste Merkmal des Mythologiemodells,” indicating “die mythologischen Figurenkonstellationen” (215 and n. 14).

18. For full technical details see Kenneth E. Wixey, Lockheed Constellation (London: Ian Allan, 1987), esp. chap. 5.

19. W. K. C. Guthrie, The Greeks and their Gods (London: Methuen, 1950) 207-208.

20. See Pauly-Wissowa for further information.

21. See Apollodorus, Library, III. 15. 8.

22. An interesting minor example of this combination of exact parallels and direct opposites is found in the journeys of the two men. Both are exiles from their birthplaces (Switzerland and Athens) who form no permanent ties in their adopted countries (the USA, Crete), but remain outsiders—foreigners valued for their technical skills. The routes they take in their wanderings are in direction of movement the mirror-image of each other: Ovid's Daedalus heads north and west, Faber south and east (each losing his child on the way). Ironically, Daedalus set out for Attica and ended his days far to the west in Sicily; Faber, whose destination was far in the west, is destined to end his days in Attica.

23. See Jean-Pierre Vernant, Myth and Thought among the Greeks (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1983) chap. 12, “Remarks on the Forms and Limitations of Technological Thought among the Greeks,” passim. Originally published as Mythe et pensée chez les grecs (Paris: Maspero, 1965).

24. See Marcel Detienne and Jean-Pierre Vernant, Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society, trans. Janet Lloyd (Sussex: Harvester Press, 1978) 2-4; originally published as Les ruses d'intelligence: la Metis des grecs (Paris: Flammarion, 1974).

25. For the dualities in Homo faber, see Alan D. Latta, “Walter Faber and the Allegorization of Life: A Reading of Max Frisch's Novel Homo faber,” The Germanic Review, 54 (1979) 152-59.

26. See Frontisi-Ducroux, 24: “Dédale, qui … était l'incarnation [de la techné], conjoint les figures de l'artiste et de l'artisan, catégories bien distinctes à nos yeux,” indicating “l'écart qui peut séparer notre conception de l'art de celle de l'Antiquité.”

27. Library, IV. 75.5-76.4, trans. C. H. Oldfather, Loeb Classical Library (London and Cambridge MA, 1939).

28. Michael Grant, Myths of the Greeks and Romans, rev. ed. (London, 1989), even suggests that Daedalus is “an ancient culture-hero almost of the calibre of Prometheus, for he sought to rival creation itself …” (385).

29. For the kouros see Gisela M. A. Richter, Kouroi: Archaic Greek Youths: A Study of the Development of the Kouros Type in Greek Sculpture (London: Phaidon, 1960).

30. Rhys Carpenter, Greek Sculpture: A Critical Review (Chicago: Chicago UP, 1960) 20.

31. Diodorus, IV. 75.5-76.4. See also Pauly-Wissowa, 4: 2002-05.

32. Carpenter 19.

33. Walter F. Otto, Die Götter Griechenlands: Das Bild des Göttlichen im Spiegel des griechischen Geistes, 6th ed. (1929; Frankfurt am Main: G. Schulte-Bumke, 1970). (References in parentheses).

34. See also Blair 145, 148; Kranzbühler 216-19.

35. For illustrations see Gisela M. A. Richter, The Sculpture and Sculptors of the Greeks (New Haven: Yale UP, 1930) 484-86.

36. See also Blair 148.

37. This young Swiss, capable of discussing turbines and of talking both “kaufmännisch” and “tüchtig” (4: 82), is another younger Faber-homologue. The two young men, with Faber and Professor O., represent three generations, emphasizing the constant process of displacement, with Professor O. as a memento mori.

38. See Hanna's diagnosis of his attraction to Sabeth: “Ich habe … eine Art von Beziehung erlebt, die ich nicht kannte” (4: 169).

39. “Jedenfalls war es das Mädchen, das in jener Nacht … in mein Zimmer kam” (4: 125).

40. “Glück in Griechenland” (1: 58).

41. Significantly, Frisch's description of the sunrise on the Acrocorinth in “Glück in Griechenland”—”wie wenn man eine Ofentür öffnet und hineinstaunt auf die Kohlen, die glühen zwischen der Asche” (1: 58)—resembles closely Faber's words after the crash of the Super Constellation (4: 21; quoted above).

42. Erika Simon, Die Götter der Griechen, 3rd ed. (Munich: Hirmer, 1985) 11. Hanna springs to mind: “Athene, die Erinnyen … das sind Tatsachen für sie” (4: 142).

43. Notably by Gerhard Kaiser in his seminal “Max Frischs Homo faber” (1958), Max Frisch: Materialien, ed. Walter Schmitz (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1987) 212.

44. See also his lifelong preoccupation with (neg)entropy. Apart from his references to the second law of thermodynamics, according to which entropy always increases, and closed systems are in a state of irreversible decline to disorder—”[Hanna] redet von Mythen, wie unsereiner vom Wärmesatz …” (4: 142)—there is his (significantly uncompleted) doctoral thesis on Maxwell's Demon, the famous attempt to describe a way in which entropy might be arrested (which would mean that time would stop and immortality be achieved).

45. Walter, with its suggestion of “walten,” is as significant a name as Faber.

46. Faber's last flight is in many respects an inversion of the first: “Ich war gespannt, als fliege ich zum ersten Mal” (4: 197). Gone are the blasé attitude—replaced with rapt attention as Faber presses his face to the cold glass of the window staring down at the earth he now wishes (too late) to embrace—and the complacency: Faber now takes nothing for granted, choosing a seat where he can see the aircraft's landing gear when it is lowered, “gespannt, ob die Piste sich im letzten Augenblick … nicht doch in Wüste verwandelt” (4: 196).

47. See “Unsere Arroganz gegenüber Amerika” (3: esp. 225, 228); Tagebuch 1946-1949 (2: 720).