SOURCE: Blair, Rhonda L. “Homo Faber, Homo Ludens, and the Demeter-Kore Motif.” Germanic Review 56, no. 4 (fall 1981): 140-50.

[In the following essay, Blair underscores the importance of the Demeter-Kore motif in Homo faber by examining the mythological and archetypal imagery in the novel.]

Since the publication of Max Frisch's novel Homo faber: Ein Bericht in 1957, no detailed study of Frisch's use of Greek mythology and related archetypal imagery has appeared. Indeed, discussions of Frisch's use of mythology have narrowly focused on the Oedipus myth, while little has been written at all concerning archetypes in Frisch's work generally.¹ Walter Schmitz, in fact, has recently written, “Es gibt nur wenige Textbelege für ein Interesse am Mythischen (als Reich der Kunst) im Homo faber Einige Anspielungen auf den Ödipusmythos und die Erinnyen … denn Fabers Reisen enden ja in Griechenland, der klassischen Heimat des Mythos.”² Consequently, the highly important thematic and structural use of the Demeter-Kore motif has been consistently overlooked while critical attention has been misdirected to various, and apparently unrelated, mythological allusions. Moreover, the lack of recognition of this central motif in Homo faber has led to an incomplete understanding of the role of the novel, of Frisch's artistic methods, and of the importance of the notion of homo ludens.

The significance of the Demeter-Kore motif in the novel becomes apparent through a detailed consideration of mythological and archetypal imagery. Some of the dangers and shortcomings of different critical approaches to so-called “mythological novels” have been discussed by John J. White in his comparative study Mythology in the Modern Novel.³ Among the shortcomings which he mentions are incorrect, ambiguous, or inconsistent terminology; and methodologies based on prejudices, over-simplification, or faulty comparisons to well-known “model” novels such as Ulysses.

One has only to examine the criticism dealing with mythology in Homo faber to see many of these shortcomings exemplified.⁴ It is not surprising then that Schmitz has been reluctant to attach much importance to the mythological elements in Homo faber, simply because earlier critics have so confused the subject. But a more important cause of critical inattention to the use of mythology in Homo faber is due to the apparent lack of familiarity with the myth of Demeter and Persephone and to the obvious ignorance of the geography of ancient and modern Greece.⁵

Even more than in other critical approaches to literature, problems with terminology are endemic in archetypal criticism. The word “archetype” has been so used and misused in literary criticism as to make one wary of it. Perhaps the most common misapplication of the term is to identify a particular myth with an archetype, whereas a myth is only the expression of an archetype. In this essay, however, I refer only to one archetype, the Mother, described by C. G. Jung. Briefly, Jung describes “archetypes” as “archaic or … primordial types, that is, with universal images that have existed since the remotest times.”⁶ As Frisch acknowledges in Montauk, he attended Jung's lectures in Zürich;⁷ I contend that he is consciously drawing on Jungian material for artistic and thematic purposes in Homo faber, whether or not he subscribes to Jung's theory or psychology.

Homo faber differs from most other “mythological novels” in two ways. In the first place, Frisch uses the Jungian archetype the Mother as well as one particular expression of the archetype, namely the Greek myth of Demeter and her daughter the Kore, or Persephone. Secondly, the Demeter-Kore myth forms a motif which is also a prefiguration: that is, it prefigures Hanna's relationship to her daughter. However, due to Frisch's departure from ordinary chronological narration, the prefiguration does not begin to suggest itself until the last third of the novel, and its full presence and force only emerge at the end and through the reader's reflection back over the entire work. White describes this type of prefiguration as “retroactive” and one which “invites the reader to reexamine the plot in the light of the analogy which then obtains for it.”⁸ Frisch has given his reasons for preferring the “delayed action” technique, and though specifically referring to Mein Name sei Gantenbein, he could have been speaking of Homo faber: “The novel [Gantenbein] had to be fairly long, since a pattern had to be established; and for that you need a considerable number of variations. … As soon as the pattern emerges, the novel, as written, ceases to exist.”⁹ Moreover, the reader's situation in dealing with this kind of prefiguration is analogous to Faber's: for Faber has travelled blindly through the world and is reexamining his experiences by writing his Report (Bericht), while the reader has travelled through the novel, unaware of the prefiguration until the end, and must then look for a pattern beneath the surface. And it is fitting that the reader should question his own ability to “see” while reading about the fictional experiences of a “blind” man.

Frisch's handling of allusions—both mythological and non-mythological—requires some comment. Basically, Frisch employs four kinds of allusions: (1) straightforward, obvious allusions; (2) straightforward allusions which are less obvious because they are placed in an everyday context or refer to a less common analogy than what first comes to mind; (3) veiled allusions expressed through an art work, a dream, an ordinary object, or a place, in which the reader must search for the underlying association; and (4) allusions through word play, in which the ordinary meaning of a word or phrase takes on an additional, allusive meaning through multiple definitions or specific context. Obviously, these categories overlap. An example of the second kind is the often-cited allusion to Agamemnon murdered in his bath by Clytemnestra. The allusion itself is straightforward, but the analogy to Faber's situation is unclear because Hanna is not similar to Clytemnestra, and Faber did not “sacrifice” his daughter in the real sense that Agamemnon knowingly did. Rather, a closer analogy exists between them in aspects of blindness and the Erinyes, for Agamemnon states in the Iliad that blindness and the Erinyes were partly to blame for his actions toward Achilles.¹⁰ The allusions to Oedipus are also of the second kind, and one can see that Oedipus and Agamemnon do resemble each other in moral blindness, in association with the Erinyes, and in having a daughter with whom they are particularly associated. One must remember that the blind Oedipus was guided through the world by his daughter Antigone—analogous to “blind” Faber accompanied by Sabeth—and that while Oedipus knew what Man (anthropos) was and thus solved the riddle of the Sphinx, he did not know who he, an individual man, really was—exactly like Faber.¹¹ For these reasons, then, there are certain exact respects in which Agamemnon, Oedipus, and Faber are analogous, rather than in the much-belabored, generalized respects of incest and sacrifice, which obviously do not apply to all three.

The Ludovisi altar relief and Faber's second dream may be cited as illustrations of the third kind of allusion. These examples and others will be discussed in their appropriate places. The last type of allusion, that based on word play, exhibits much variety in subtlety and tone. Critics have passed by many of these, yet Frisch's fondness for word play and double meanings is well-known.¹² Ulrich Weisstein, for instance, notes the following about Mein Name sei Gantenbein:

Endless diversion is furnished by the play on words which results from the literal application of certain metaphorical expressions relating to the phenomenon of sight and blindness: Man kann einen Blinden nicht hinters Licht führen (one can't deceive a blind man), Sie werden sehen (You will see), blindlings (blindfold), etc.¹³

Some of these allusions reveal their importance through triple occurrences, thus falling into the triadic pattern which has already been discussed by Michael Butler.¹⁴ These four kinds of allusions, as well as the motif itself, also serve several artistic purposes: for “Verfremdungseffekt,” for irony, and as elements of play or “Spielmomente.”¹⁵ The average reader, however, can not always be expected to recognize these allusions, and Frisch probably does not expect this of him. Rather, these allusions reveal Frisch's own playfulness and point to homo ludens, “man the player,” standing opposite homo faber, “man the maker.” Indeed, the notion of homo ludens is as important to understanding the novel as is the notion of homo faber; homo ludens and the role of play will be discussed in the concluding section of the essay.

Concerning the mythological sources used in this study, I believe that Frisch was undoubtedly familiar with Walter F. Otto's Die Götter Griechenlands (1929), as Schmitz suggests.¹⁶ A work of equal relevance which Frisch probably knew is Essays on a Science of Mythology (1941) by Karl Kerényi and C. G. Jung.¹⁷ Kerényi was a student of Otto, and from about 1943, when he immigrated to Switzerland, he began working closely with Jung in Zürich. Since Frisch was acquainted with Jung's work, it is virtually certain that he knew of Kerényi's work also. Thus, I refer principally to the works of Otto and of Kerényi. In addition, I have cited relevant sections in Roscher's Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie (1884-1937).¹⁸

I. THE DEMETER-KORE MOTIF AND THE MOTHER ARCHETYPE

All of the action in Homo faber is related to, or caused by, travel and all of the main characters are travelers; travel also occupies a large part of the characters' past lives.¹⁹ In addition, all of the characters' travels or “passages” consist of a series of separations from old situations, transitions characterized by changes of habit or even confusion, and incorporations into new situations or planes of existence—in short, the travels are “rites of passage.”²⁰ This point is important because the concept of rites of passage emphasizes the social, psychological, and emotional meaning of passing from one stage to another, rather than mere physical location. It is clear to any reader of Homo faber that physical travel is subordinate to psychological and emotional journey, and for this reason I think that the Stationen are best understood as “stages.” In the Erste Station, or First Stage, Faber's stage in life is contrasted with Sabeth's, and through contact with her he enters a new, second stage in the Zweite Station. In the latter, Hanna also enters a new stage in life as a result of the loss of Sabeth and the presence of Faber, and the respective journeys and stages in Faber's and Hanna's lives are directly related to the Demeter-Kore motif.

It is not a chance happening that Walter Faber's journey, which begins in darkness, should carry him eastward to light: Greece, land of sun and sea, is noted as much for its light as for its mythological past. Edward Stäuble has already drawn attention to the similarity between Faber's descriptions of light (199) and the white houses of Corinth (151) and Graf Öderland's description of the Greek island of Santorini, whose chief city is situated “Hoch über der schäumenden Brandung. Eine Stadt wie aus Kreide, so weiß, so grell, emporgetürmt in den Wind und ins Licht, einsam und frei, trotzig, heiter und kühn” (5:54);²¹ and in his first Tagebuch Frisch describes his North Sea island home as if it were a scene from antiquity surrounded by the sea and blazing light (4:700). In Homo faber light is clearly a metaphor for the self-knowledge which Faber and Hanna must acquire. Nor is it due to chance that once in Greece Faber thrice passes the small town of Eleusis, the most famous sanctuary of Demeter and the Kore and site of the Eleusinian Mysteries: once with Sabeth and twice with Hanna. Indeed, the very mention of Eleusis and the description of the road taken into Athens (128-29)—the famous Sacred Way taken by celebrants in procession from Athens to Eleusis to celebrate the Greater Mysteries—should alert the reader to the possibility that Frisch is hinting at some relationship between the Eleusinian goddesses and the mother and daughter in the novel. However, critics have apparently overlooked these hints because either they are not personally familiar with Greece or have not consulted a travel guide, such as Baedeker's Griechenland or Grèce in the series “Les Guides Bleus.”²²

The Homeric Hymn to Demeter is the oldest account of the Demeter-Kore myth.²³ The hymn begins with the Rape of Persephone: the Kore was picking flowers with the daughters of Oceanus on the Nysian Plain, when the earth suddenly gaped open and Hades sprang out in his chariot and carried her off into the Underworld. Hecate, however, heard the Kore's cries, and Helios saw the abduction. At last Demeter too heard her daughter's cries and sped off in search of her, wandering and searching in vain, until Helios finally revealed what had happened. Demeter was angry and grief-stricken; and wandering again, disguised, she came to Eleusis, where she cared for the king's baby son. But when her plan to immortalize the boy was discovered, she angrily left the palace, and for her appeasement she commanded the people to build a great temple to her. Nevertheless, she remained inconsolable over the daughter's disappearance and withheld the earth's productivity until Zeus sent Hermes to the Underworld to bring back the Kore and avert wide-spread famine. But because the Kore had eaten of a pomegranate offered to her by Hades, she could only remain with Demeter for two-thirds of the year; the rest of the year she had to spend with her husband in the Underworld. Demeter was thus appeased, restored the earth's fertility, and gave grain and the Eleusinian Mysteries to men. The Homeric poet stresses that the Mysteries, not the grain, was Demeter's greatest gift.

Two important variations of the Homeric account are of Arcadian origin. One version, from Thelpusa, tells how Demeter was amorously pursued by Poseidon while she, enraged and grieving, was searching for her daughter. Even after she had transformed herself into a mare to elude him, he discovered her and overpowered her in the form of a stallion. Here, she was known as Demeter Erinys. A similar story is told in Phigalia where she was called Demeter Melaina, or the Black Demeter, and where she was represented as having a horse's head and holding a dolphin and a dove. Finally, Ovid's version of the Rape of Persephone, which is perhaps better known to the modern reader than the Homeric hymn, states that the Kore spent half of the year with Demeter, half in the Underworld.

Both Otto and Kerényi explore the relationship between Demeter and the Kore, and both conclude that some kind of identity existed between them. Otto, for instance, remarks that no other relationship between deity and daughter is so close as the one between Demeter and the Kore and furthermore that “Demeter, mourning her daughter, is mourning some nature that is essentially akin to her [and] that makes the impression of a younger double.”²⁴ Kerényi goes further than this in his conclusion: “The daughter as a goddess originally quite independent of her mother is unthinkable; but what is thinkable … is the original identity of mother and daughter. Persephone's whole being is summed up in an incident that is at once the story of Demeter's own sufferings.” But another goddess must be added to this closely-tied pair: Hecate. She hears the Kore's cries, accompanies Demeter to question Helios, and upon the Kore's return she becomes her companion forever; she is almost as close to the Kore as Demeter herself. Hecate and Persephone are also commonly associated with the moon. Of the association between the three Kerényi writes: “The budlike idea of the connection between three aspects of the world—maiden, mother, moon—hovers at the back of the triad of goddesses in the Homeric hymn.”

In Homo faber Frisch is using the Homeric and Arcadian versions of the Demeter-Kore myth to prefigure, retroactively, the situation of his three principal characters and their relationship to each other. The principal Eleusinian deities—Demeter, the Kore, Hades—form the triad “Mother-Kore-Seducer” which is suggested by the Hanna-Sabeth-Faber triad; and as I will show, each of these characters resembles one from the Eleusinian group. Frisch develops the Demeter-Kore motif through all of the previously mentioned kinds of allusions, and by accepting the identity of Demeter and the Kore, he can allude to Hanna through Sabeth and vice versa.

From the first mention of Eleusis (129) and the description of the Sacred Way into Athens (128-29), important allusions to the Demeter-Kore motif follow in quick succession. When, for example, Faber wishes to see Sabeth and can not understand Hanna's unwillingness to allow this, he remarks: “sie [Hanna] ließ mich, als wollte ich ihr die Tochter stehlen, nicht eine Minute lang im Krankenzimmer” (131). Frisch here plays on the literal meaning of “stehlen” and thus alludes directly to the abduction of Persephone, while Faber remains unaware of the appropriateness of his phrase. Sabeth, too, is unaware of the literal truth in her remark, “ich sollte verschwinden” (117), which she exclaims to Faber while they are resting among the tombs in the Campagna. Faber repeats this twice more (117-18), which emphasizes the word play on “verschwinden,” meaning, in this context, “to go to the toilet” but literally “to disappear.” Similarly, when Hanna says, “Ich habe Elsbeth ein halbes Jahr lang nicht gesehen” (138), and Faber remarks, “alles für die Tochter, die ein halbes Jahr in der Fremde gewesen ist” (147), one realizes that Sabeth has been away from her mother the same length of time that the Kore, in Ovid's account, was to spend in the Underworld, away from Demeter. Moreover, Faber repeats this, for the third time, at the very end of the novel, so that the allusion can no longer remain uncertain: “es ist Hanna schon schwer genug gefallen, das Mädchen allein auf die Reise zu lassen, wenn auch nur für ein halbes Jahr” (203).

The resemblance between Sabeth and the Kore is also suggested in a variety of allusions scattered throughout the novel. First of all, Faber refers to Sabeth sometimes as “das Mädchen” and sometimes as “das Kind” which in part reveals his uncertainty whether she is a child or a woman (“ein Kind, das ich als Frau behandelte, oder eine Frau, die ich als Kind behandelte, das wußte ich selber nicht,” 114), and which in part is due to the fact that when writing his Report, he already knows that she is his own child. But “das Mädchen” and “das Kind” translate literally the Greek names of Demeter's daughter which are actually more common than the name Persephone: Kore (“maiden”) and Pais (“child, girl”).²⁵

Sabeth and the Kore are also linked together through moon and flower imagery. Among the moon-related images, three stand out sharply: the full moon festival in Palenque (45) and Sabeth's conversation with Faber about constellations and the comet (90), which taken together prefigure the lunar eclipse in Avignon (124-25); and the moonlight and moonshadows on the Acrocorinth (150-51). The Kore was not only picking flowers when she was abducted but was herself “like a budding flower”;²⁶ and in her youthful freshness Sabeth, too, is like a flower. Indeed, Faber's description of the agaves in the moonlit desert seems to prophesy Sabeth's fate: “Ich weiß nicht, wie verdammte Seelen aussehen; vielleicht wie schwarze Agaven in der nächtlichen Wüste. Was ich sehe, das sind Agaven, eine Pflanze, die ein einziges Mal blüht und dann abstirbt” (24). Insofar as Sabeth is innocently caught up in the fates of Faber and Hanna, she is also a “verdammte Seele.” Moreover, the name agave derives from agaue (agavi, Modern Greek), a feminine adjective meaning “illustrious, noble” which forms a proper-name formula for Persephone as Queen of the Underworld and which occurs only in the Nekyia.²⁷ The Kore is alluded to twice more in connection with flowers: poppies, an attribute of Demeter, Hypnos, and sometimes Persephone, are growing near the highway where Faber and Sabeth are finally picked up and taken into Athens (155); and while Faber is viewing his films in Düsseldorf, the image of Sabeth picking flowers flashes across the screen and then is gone: “Sabeth beim Blumenpflücken—” (191).

Hanna resembles Demeter in the general respect of a loving mother enraged and grief-stricken over the loss of her daughter. But specifically, Frisch alludes to the Arcadian versions of the myth and to the figures of Demeter Erinys and the Black Demeter in developing the Demeter-Kore motif in Homo faber. The first allusion occurs early in the novel and the reader has no preparation for it—only in retrospect can one see the logical connection—namely, Faber's dream of Hanna: “Hanna als Krankenschwester zu Pferd!” (29). In the context of events in the novel, only the nurse image is explicable: the foreshadowing of Faber's hospitalization and Hanna's bedside visits. But within the mythological context, everything becomes clear: in the Arcadian versions of the myth, the horse is the form assumed by Demeter and then by Poseidon who overpowered her against her will, and one of Demeter's epithets is Kourotrophos or “nurse and nourisher” because she cared for the king's baby boy in Eleusis.²⁸ Moreover, Kerényi speaks of the name Brimo (related to the verb “to rage”) which was given to Demeter in her Mysteries: “[Brimo] is Demeter, Persephone, and Hecate rolled into one. Demeter's most elementary form bears the name of Brimo; it was also the name of Pheraia, the torch-bearing goddess seated on a running horse.” In respect to the Arcadian versions the allusive meaning of Sabeth's ponytail (“Roßschwanz”) surfaces as well: her ponytail, along with her frequent appearance in black clothing, alludes to Demeter Erinys and the Black Demeter. Because of the physical resemblance between Sabeth and Hanna, Frisch can easily play upon the identity of Demeter and the Kore and thus enlarge—and complicate—his range of allusions.

The second allusion, or rather complex of allusions, centers on the sculpture Head of a sleeping Fury (Kopf einer schlafenden Erinnye) which so fascinates Faber when he and Sabeth are in Rome. Although it is not at first apparent, this sculpture is also inextricably linked to the marble altar-top known as the Ludovisi Throne which Faber first notices shortly after entering the museum. Concerning its relief sculpture he says: “Geburt der Venus. Vor allem das Mädchen auf der Seite, Flötenbläserin, fand ich entzückend …” (119-11). What Faber does not say is that on the other side of the Venus is a matrona holding an incense burner; thus, the Venus figure is literally positioned between a woman and a maiden. Baedeker's Italy describes the relief as follows:

Ludovisi Throne, probably the upper part of the side of a large altar, an admirable specimen of developed archaic art; on the back, which is turned towards the spectator, is shown the birth of Venus from the sea; on the right side is a veiled woman offering sacrifice and on the left is a nude girl playing the flute.²⁹

Faber then moves on to the Head of a sleeping Fury, his own discovery: “Es war ein steinerner Mädchenkopf, so gelegt, daß man drauf blickt wie auf das Gesicht einer schlafenden Frau, wenn man sich auf die Ellbogen stützt” (111).³⁰ He describes the strange effect caused by the fall of shadow on the sculpture, which is first noticed by Sabeth, when he moves again towards the Venus relief: “Wenn Sabeth (oder sonst jemand) bei der Geburt der Venus steht, gibt es Schatten, das Gesicht der schlafenden Erinnye wirkt, infolge einseitigen Lichteinfalls, sofort viel wacher, lebendiger, geradezu wild” (111). In other words, when Faber moves towards the woman-Venus-maiden relief, in which the association Hanna-love-Sabeth-Faber is readily seen, the Erinys seems to wake up. That Sabeth is to be associated with the flute player on the relief becomes explicit when Faber, alone in Sabeth's room, remarks, “Ihre Flöte auf dem Bücherbrett—” (149).

Moreover, two other scenes link both women to the sculpture. First, while in the Campagna Faber is reminded of a dog when he holds Sabeth's head and questions her among the tombs: “Ich hielt den Kopf so, daß sie sich nicht rühren konnte, mit beiden Händen, wie man beispielsweise den Kopf eines Hundes hält … sie schloß wieder ihre Augen, wie ein Hund, wenn man ihn so festhält” (119-20). The Erinyes are associated with the dog, a chthonic animal: they hunt their victims like hounds and bellow and bay in their sleep like dogs, and Aeschylus actually calls them “dogs” in The Libation Bearers.³¹ But Faber does not make this dog-closed eyes association when he holds Hanna's head in the same manner: “Ich sah nur: ihre Augen, die entsetzt sind, ihre grauen und weißen Haare, ihre Stirn, ihre Nase, alles zierlich, nobel … ihre Augen, die nicht müde, nur entsetzt sind, schöner als früher” (154). Sabeth's head, with her eyes closed like a dog's, resembles the Head of a sleeping Fury; Hanna, her eyes wide open, is like the awakened sculpture, “geradezu wild.”

Hans Geulen has pointed out the allusive value of the droning Alfa Romeo which, Erinys-like, continuously circles Faber's hotel one night (123), but it has been overlooked that a similar image, automobile-dog-Erinys, first appears in the Paris scene in which Faber and Sabeth meet again: “Wir mußten rennen, da der Gendarm bereits seinen weißen Stab hob, eine Meute von Autos startete auf uns los; auf dem Trottoir, Arm in Arm gerettet, stellte ich fest, daß ich meinen Hut verloren hatte—er lag draußen im braunen Matsch, bereits von einem Pneu zerquetscht” (100, my italics).³² The image of the squashed hat is symbolic of the fate of a victim of the Erinyes' vengeance. Thus, the allusions to the Erinyes form a secondary motif which is firmly bound up with the Demeter-Kore motif. The transformation of the Erinyes into the Eumenides, suggested by a vase in Hanna's apartment (142), is alluded to in Hanna's peripeteia—the “sudden change from anger and grief” to calm acceptance, experienced by the Eleusinian Demeter as well as by Demeter Erinys—when she changes from black, mourning clothes to white (182).³³

Ironically, Faber resembles the third member of the Eleusinian triad, Hades (Plouton). He figuratively carries off Sabeth near the sea and Eleusis, as Hades did the Kore. This would be mere allusion by association if it were not for recurrent images of death and the Underworld. Throughout the First Stage, Faber chances upon death's-head faces, tombs, and underworldly scenery in his attempt to avoid thinking about death. As he regains consciousness after a fainting spell in Houston, for instance, he is greeted by the cleaning woman's “Riesenmaul mit den schwarzen Lippen, das Rosa ihres Zahnfleisches” (11), an unintentionally sinister greeting, of course, for she only wishes to help him. This image will later recur as Professor O.'s grinning mouth.³⁴ An underworldly landscape is suggested several times as well: in the moonlight, the desert at Tamaulipas seems like a “Totenreich” and the black agaves might be damned souls (24). The flitting, buzzing birds (“Vögel zwitscherten, sonst Grabesstille” 110; also, 43, 166), and especially the Erinys-like “huschende Vögel … die Zopilote … hockten auf den Bäumen ringsum” (54, passim) seem to come straight out of the Underworld and, indeed, are evoked in Frisch's recent work Triptychon.³⁵ Even the disgusting water of the Rio Usumancinta, “ein trübes und warmes Wasser, das stank” (51), could almost be the River Acheron or Cocytus. Faber himself sometimes uses comparisons or ordinary words which are really plays on words: he describes his face as “scheußlich wie eine Leiche” (11) and New York city as “Wolkenkratzer wie Grabsteine” (162); and words such as “totmüde,” “Totenstille,” “Höllenhitze,” “Todesangst,” and “Grabesstille” are frequent.

Although Faber was shown a burial chamber in Palenque (170), it is in Italy that tombs seem to proliferate around Faber. Near the Via Appia (which, as Schmitz points out, was built by the blind censor Appius Claudius Caecus³⁶) Faber and Sabeth enjoy the surrounding landscape from the top of a burial mound or tomb, prophetically referred to as “unser Grabmal” and “unser Grabhügel” (114, 119); and cypresses, sacred tree of Hades, grow in many places along the tomb-flanked Via Appia. Nor can the Baedeker passage describing the Tomb of Caecilia Metella, a daughter, which Sabeth reads to Faber (116), be simply a random choice, particularly since it follows soon after her remark, “Du tust wie ein Papa!” (115). Moreover, when the tourists spoil the calm by their picnic, Sabeth “stampfte wie ein Kind” and then says, “Herrgott, … ich sollte verschwinden” (117), apparently unaware that the action of stamping the ground with one's foot was thought to summon spirits from the Underworld.³⁷ Even the bathtub in Hanna's apartment triggers a chain of tomb associations in Faber's mind, leading to the thought of suicide: “die Spintisiererei (die Badewanne als Sarkophag; etruskisch!) … Die Via Appia—Die Mumie im Vatikan—Mein Körper unter Wasser—” (136).

Hades is also associated with the fig tree, a tree sacred to Demeter and Dionysus as well.³⁸ A wild fig tree was thought to mark an entrance to the Underworld, and some accounts relate that Hades descended with the Kore beside one near Eleusis. This place was afterwards called Erineos. Even the superstitious fear of sleeping under a fig tree still persists. Faber, however, suggests this very thing: “Sabeth fand es eine Glanzidee von mir, einfach weiterzuwandern in die Nacht hinaus und unter einem Feigenbaum zu schlafen” (150). The fig tree (mentioned three times), the barking dogs, and the “Totenstille” atmosphere (150-51), all combine to create an uncanny night on the Acrocorinth; yet, paradoxically, this night and the following dawn is one of Faber's happiest moments.

Finally, there are also allusions to Dionysus which are directly related to the Demeter-Kore motif. The proper name of the Athenian doctor, Dr. Eleutheropulos (126, 160), can hardly be an accidental choice. The stem of the name, “Eleutheros,” is the same as that in one of Dionysus' names, Dionysus Eleuthereus (“the Deliverer”), and the Theater of Dionysus, which Hanna so abruptly indicates to Faber after they leave the hospital (131), is located within the Sacred Precinct of Dionysus Eleuthereus, as travel books indicate.³⁹ The priestess of Demeter also had a place reserved in the theater with the inscription “Of Demeter Kourotrophos Akhaia.” Moreover, Dionysus, “Lord of the Dead,” has chthonic associations, shares some of Hades' epithets, and essentially represents the unity of life and death.⁴⁰ “As a sacrificial victim and one who is doomed,” writes Kerényi, “Dionysos is the male counterpart of Persephone.”

As I mentioned at the beginning of this paper, the Demeter-Kore myth is, according to Jung, one expression of the Mother archetype; to be more exact, Demeter is one expression of the archetype and with the Kore offers a variation in which the mother appears again as the maiden.⁴¹ Among the great variety of aspects in which the Mother archetype manifests itself are found the personal mother or mother-figure (aunt, grandmother), “figurative” mothers such as mother goddesses and the Mother of God, and various symbols suggestive of maternal qualities; and both positive and negative meanings may be attached to the archetype, such as the serene and protective Madonna or the all-devouring, chthonic Earth Mother. It is important to remember that Demeter is associated with the earth and its fertility. Indeed, the origin of Demeter lies in the earth-bound religion of remote, pre-Homeric times, as Otto describes: “Der alte Glaube ist erdgebunden und dem Element verhaftet, ganz wie das alte Dasein selbst. Erde, Zeugung, Blut und Tod sind die großen Realitäten, von denen er beherrscht wird.”⁴² The deities of this ancient faith are concerned equally with life and death and may thus be called earth and death deities; the Erinyes are included here as they exact the penalty of death from those who violate the laws of nature. Otto further remarks that Demeter became the noblest symbol uniting life, death, and holy justice, and in Athens the dead were said to belong to her: “[Der Tote] wohnt in der mütterlichen Erde—Demetreios, d.h. Angehöriger zu Demeter, der ‘Erdmutter,’ nannte man ihn vor alters in Athen.” This idea of maternal earth-life-death is expressed by Marcel, “Tu sais que la mort est femme! … et que la terre est femme!” (69), though he possibly had in mind only the feminine gender of the nouns.

The Mother archetype forms the basis of the “mother-complex,” a complex which also has both positive and negative aspects. One type of mother-complex in the woman is of especial importance to the Demeter-Kore motif and to Hanna's personality: “Hypertrophy of the Maternal Element,” or the exaggeration of feminine, maternal instincts. Jung describes its negative aspect which is manifested in the woman whose only interest is childbirth and for whom the man (procreative instrument) and her own personality are much less important. This kind of woman, writes Jung, is similar to Demeter in that

she compels the gods by her stubborn persistence to grant her the right of possession over her daughter. Her Eros develops exclusively as a maternal relationship while remaining unconscious as a personal one. An unconscious Eros always expresses itself as will to power. Women of this type, though continually “living for others,” are … unable to make any real sacrifice. Driven by ruthless will to power and a fanatical insistance on their own maternal rights, they often succeed in annihilating not only their own personality but also the personal lives of their children.⁴³

One can easily see the relevance of Jung's remarks to Hanna who, after she and Faber parted in 1935, realized that she wanted her own child, “ein vaterloses, einfach ihr Kind, ihr eigenes, ein Kind, das keinen Mann etwas angeht” (201). She was content that Faber had simply disappeared; and although she was fond of Joachim, who loved her and wanted a child of their own, she selfishly denied him the experience of fatherhood by having herself secretly sterilized, thus causing their divorce (201-202). Both the exclusively maternal Eros and the unconscious “will to power” are visible in Hanna's relationship to Joachim. She probably acted motherly to her second husband, Piper, just as she does to Faber: “Komm … trink deinen Tee” (126) and ‘“Walter … hast du Hunger?’ Hanna als Mutter—” (133), and Faber's mother as well as Hanna concealed his fatherhood from him as if he were a child (183-84). Even the music lessons which Hanna resumed when she was forty were not for her own satisfaction or development but for the ability to accompany Sabeth (202). As Faber explains, “Obschon sie in den folgenden Jahren nicht ohne Männer lebt, opfert sie ihr ganzes Leben für ihr Kind” (202). Ironically, all of this self-sacrifice results in the destruction of her daughter and of her own life.

But another aspect of Hanna's personality must be explained: the fact that as a girl, she rebelled against the (male) God who had made boys stronger than girls. With some girlfriends she formed a secret club to do away with Jehova: “Jedenfalls kam nur ein Himmel in Frage, wo es auch Göttinnen gibt. Hanna wandte sich vorerst an die Mutter Gottes, veranlaßt durch Kirchenbilder, wo Maria in der Mitte thront” (183). What this knowledge of Hanna's girlhood suggests is the strong possibility that she, consciously or unconsciously, imitated the example of Demeter as a model for her own life, just as she had earlier consciously founded a club honoring goddesses and excluding Jehova. Faber's words, “Hanna wandte sich vorerst an die Mutter Gottes” (my italics), implies that later she may have turned to something else. There is no reason for Frisch to have expressed this idea more clearly, for the ambiguity is far more revealing of something dark and hidden in Hanna's personality, which, if stated, would have sounded melodramatic. Finally, Hanna's “archaische Wanduhr mit zersprungenem Zifferblatt” (134)—the counterpart of Faber's “Omega” watch—and her own description of her job as “Scherbenarbeit … Ich kleistere die Vergangenheit zusammen—” (139) point to her broken down life fixed in the past and “verpfuscht.”

The importance, therefore, of the Demeter-Kore motif is that it fully reveals Hanna's guilt and “déformation professionnelle.”⁴⁴ Indeed, every error (“Irrtum”) which Hanna attributes to Faber (169-70) can be applied to herself: she has arranged the world to fit the past, in order to avoid experiencing it as it really is; she has not tolerated creation as partner because creation consists of male and female, and she has excluded the male; she, too, has eliminated the world as resistance, but by slowing it down and pushing it into the past, rather than by speed; her own “Weltlosigkeit” has been covered up by making Sabeth her “world”; while Faber has avoided having any relationship to death, Hanna has avoided having any with her own personal life; she has not treated life as form (“Gestalt in der Zeit”) but as image (“Bildnis”), like the images of Greek art with which she works; and she, too, is guilty of repetition in trying to repeat an archaic, matriarchal pattern which is unnatural in its exclusion of the male. Hanna's errors belong to her in the same way that Faber's belong to him: to her entire life, partly due to her job (“Götter gehören zu ihrem Job” 142), and partly due to motherhood. As Hanna tells Faber, “Leben ist nicht Stoff, nicht mit Technik zu bewältigen” (170), but neither is contemporary life the “Stoff” of mythology.

Hanna is thus guilty towards Sabeth for denying her a family with a father, which then causes Sabeth to misinterpret her relationship with Faber and to think she is in love, as another critic has pointed out; she is guilty towards Faber for concealing his fatherhood from him and towards Joachim for denying him the fatherhood he wanted, which made him unhappy and probably contributed to his suicide; and she is guilty towards herself for stifling her own individuality and hiding behind the image “Mother.” Hanna is as much homo faber as Faber: their guilt towards each other lies in having made images of each other, of themselves, and of the person they both loved, Sabeth. Only with Sabeth's death and Faber's hospitalization does Hanna begin to know and understand her own self, and weeping, she asks Faber's forgiveness as she kneels at his bedside and kisses his hand. She has had to pay an enormous price, but she is on the road to true self-knowledge.

II. “EWIG SEIN: GEWESEN SEIN”

The themes of repetition, of the necessity of self-knowledge, of “Bildnis” or “Du sollst dir kein Bildnis machen,” and of the inseparability of life and death are all related to the Demeter-Kore motif. The motif thus in no way suggests “‘Mythos vs. Technik’ als Deutungschema.” Nor can one describe such an extended structural and thematic motif as “kolportagehafte Stoffelemente.”⁴⁵ Frisch's adaptation of the myth into a motif inseparably bound to the contemporary world of Homo faber reveals his artistic imagination and expertise in handling such material. In the artistic sense of “craftsman” Frisch himself is homo faber; but in the sense of the creative, transforming artist he is homo ludens, “man the player,” aware of the play elements in life and art, as Frisch has explained in a 1971 interview:

Spiel ist kein Ausweg. Kunst ist Spiel … Spiel entgegengesetzt der Geschichte: Spiel ist das, was wir tun können ohne eine Sachnötigung, aus Lust. Spiel ist, was wir repetieren können, was Sie im Leben nicht können. Spiel bedeutet auch, nicht einer direkten Lebensnotwendigkeit dienen … Das Spiel ist eine höhere Art der Existenz. Ich würde nicht unbedingt sagen, daß es die leichteste Art sei, aber die höhere Art. Von daher ist sogar dieser absurde Satz von Schiller interpretierbar: Ernst ist das Leben, heiter die Kunst. Aber das ist natürlich schwierig. Das ist Der homo ludens gegenüber dem homo faber. Wo dann noch dazwischen der homo sapiens steht, müßte man auch einmal untersuchen. …⁴⁶

Hans Geulen has correctly described Frisch's mythological allusions as “Spielmomente,” and the words allusion (alludere, “to play with,” from ludere, “to play”) and Anspielung (spielen, “to play”) both indicate their connection with “playing.” The “Verfremdungseffekt” is related to playing as well, as Frisch has written: “Verfremdungseffekt mit sprachlichen Mitteln, das Spielbewußtsein in der Erzählung, das Offen-Artistische” (4:601).

The last of the above mentioned themes, the inseparability of life and death, is very important and merits careful consideration. One of Faber's errors, according to Hanna, is that he has tried to live without death, and hence he has had no relationship to time: “Leben sei Gestalt in der Zeit” (170). Life can only be defined in relation to death, and time only exists for the living and because at some point it will cease with death, when timelessness begins. In trying to live without death, Faber has been living without life, outside of time; he has existed as a dead man: futureless, numb, unrelated to his surroundings—in short, “Weltlos.” Yet he has been very lonely, as his words, and what he does not say, reveal; and the gnawing desire for life and relatedness, which consciously he has tried so hard to deny and kill, eventually leads him to Sabeth, as if by fate. Sabeth represents not only a precarious balance between Hanna and Faber but also life and light: futurity, spontaneity and warmth, and awareness of the wonder surrounding her. With her death, she comes to symbolize the uniqueness of life, of the moment lived: “Licht, das man mit dem Tod bezahlen müßte, aber sehr schön, ein Augenblick” (195-96).

That Walter Faber, who finds nature, birth, and death repugnant, should come into contact with the Demeter-Kore motif and himself resemble Hades is, of course, highly ironic. This is one of Frisch's purposes in using the motif. The other purpose is bound to the deeper meaning of the motif, the inseparability of life and death which the Eleusinian Mysteries celebrated in such a way as to give the initiate the expectation of a happy lot after death.⁴⁷ The Kore in her Persephone aspect embodies the idea of non-being which “in Greek religion forms the root-aspect of being”; she is the “eternally unique.” The “mystery” of which Faber must become aware is that to really live one must accept death as ever-present, for only then can one grasp the moment which, once grasped, is eternal because it has been. Frisch has expressed a similar idea in Tagebuch 1946-1949:

Es gibt kein Leben ohne Angst vor dem andern; schon weil es ohne diese Angst, die unsere Tiefe ist, kein Leben gibt: erst aus dem Nichtsein, das wir ahnen, begreifen wir für Augenblicke, daß wir leben. … man freut sich und weiß mit jedem Atemzug, daß alles, was ist, eine Gnade ist. Ohne dieses spiegelnde Wachsein, das nur der Angst möglich ist, wären wir verloren; wir wären nie gewesen …

(4:500)

In the First Stage Faber does not experience fear of death. He does indeed experience panic and fear, but he does not know of what because he has suppressed all thoughts relative to death. Nevertheless, his language does a poor job of masking his emotions. On the other hand, he clearly has become conscious of death and fear of death in the Second Stage, and this fear is accompanied by the desire to live: “Ich hänge an diesem Leben wie noch nie, und wenn es nur noch ein Jahr ist, ein elendes, ein Vierteljahr, zwei Monate (das wären September und Oktober), ich werde hoffen, obschon ich weiß, daß ich verloren bin” (198).

To the question whether or not Faber changes in the course of writing his Bericht, I would answer unequivocally in the affirmative, for otherwise he could not have written the “Verfügung für Todesfall.” The beneficial effect of being with Sabeth is first apparent in Faber's description of the night spent on the Acrocorinth, but this is so brief that it remains a hint of change rather than a clear indication. Then, in the Second Stage, in the emotional chaos following Sabeth's death, Faber tries to slip back into his former routine, but he is no longer the same man who used to attend the “usual” Saturday-night parties. Yet the confusion which he is still experiencing forces him to try to do the “usual” things in order to have some sense of order and security in the chaos. When he arrives at Palenque, everything seems unchanged, and he is pleased because of the security which familiar things afford and because he would like to turn back the clock. But things have changed: the Rio Usumancinta, like time itself, is flowing much faster, and Faber realizes that the going will be difficult. Likewise, Herbert has become apathetic and almost part of the jungle itself, and his example acts as a powerful stimulus to Faber to keep a grip on himself; ironically, the only way he can do this is by working on Herbert's car, a task associated with his past life as an engineer. Thus, this entire situation is the reverse of Faber's first visit, where he was apathetic while Herbert was continually busy. This reversal of roles, so to speak, is another indication that Faber is changing.

Cuba, too, reveals a changed Faber. Here in a dream-like environment of shoe-shine boys, “wunderbare Menschen,” prostitutes and pimps, Faber sensually experiences the world around him.⁴⁸ From his rocking chair, he watches it all, laughs, and sings—even on his last night in Havana, with everything hot, sweaty and dusty around him, he sings and exclaims, “Ich preise das Leben!” (181). His singing, without compulsion, like his playing of Sabeth's simile game while flying over the Alps, also shows that he is now moving towards homo ludens. The important point about Cuba is that it is an island containing contradictions, good and bad: it is a little world, a microcosm, and still Faber sings. In one pithy remark he describes the lifetime in the moment: “Licht der Blitze; nachher ist man blind, einen Augenblick lang hat man gesehen” (175); he echoes this remark about light and the moment in his flight over the Alps (195-96), quoted above.

If there is any “poetry” to be found in Faber's more than prosaic Report, it is undoubtedly his handwritten entry for “04.00 Uhr”:

Verfügung für Todesfall: alle Zeugnisse von mir wie Berichte, Briefe, Ringheftchen, sollen vernichtet werden, es stimmt nichts. Auf der Welt sein: im Licht sein. Irgendwo (wie der Alte neulich in Korinth) Esel treiben, unser Beruf!—aber vor allem: standhalten dem Licht, der Freude (wie unser Kind, als es sang) im Wissen, daß ich erlösche im Licht über Ginster, Asphalt und Meer, standhalten der Zeit, beziehungsweise Ewigkeit im Augenblick. Ewig sein: gewesen sein.

(199)

Just as Faber gave up photography in Cuba (182), so now he renounces his various written documents—mere lifeless copies of experience—but not the experiences themselves. The writing of his Report has been the means to self-discovery, not the end. As Butler has noted, this passage marks Faber's “true anagnorisis, its genuineness underpinned by the awareness of death.”⁴⁹ But this very awareness of death, as well as the two earlier moments of awareness, is inseparable from the acceptance of life, and it is a triumph over death. The key words here are “Licht,” “Ewigkeit/Augenblick” and “sein/gewesen sein.” The journey which Faber began in darkness and emotional and spiritual death is now coming to an end in light, in the east with the rebirth of the sun, and his last diary entry is made in the morning.

“Sein/gewesen sein” is an old idea. It came into Greek thought with the Homeric spirit, whose brightness overshadowed the elemental, earth-bound spirit, as Otto explains: “Im Weltbild Homers aber treten sich Sein und Gewesen zum erstenmal als Größen verschiedener Ordnung gegenüber. … Der neue Geist bringt keine bloße Negation, sondern eine positive Idee.”⁵⁰ The individual who no longer lives and has become a shade belonging to the “Gewesen” or “has-been” is now endowed with a special kind of reality, in which there is no present or future, but only the past:

So ist hier zum erstenmal in der Welt das Gewesensein, die Vergangenheit Idee geworden. Daß die Toten dauern, ist nicht mehr eine Nachahmung des Lebens; seine Wesenhaftigkeit haben sie ein für allemal verloren. Und doch stehen sie noch da, feierlich und in sich gekehrt, eine ewige Gestalt.

The Homeric spirit thus realized the meaning of being past while at the same time having eternal permanence, for “der Tote kann kein handelndes Subjekt mehr sein, aber die Gestalt des Gewesenen ist nicht ausgelöscht.” If “Homeric spirit” seems objectionable to some readers of Frisch, one may substitute “Goethean spirit,” for the same idea is expressed in Part Two of Faust:

Des Lebens Bilder, regsam, ohne Leben.
Was einmal war, in allem Glanz und Schein,
Es regt sich dort; denn es will ewig sein.

Faber and Hanna both change and discover who they really are, though at an exorbitant price. Hanna finally realizes the full extent of her guilt and accepts it; it may not be too late for her. Faber now looks at the world as though for the first time and sees the beauty of life in all its contradictions and brevity. But for him it is too late. Ironically, after years of being dead in life, he begins to live just before he dies. Faber does not achieve “das wirkliche Leben” but at least he now understands what it is; and he learns to face death by facing the light of life. Herein lies the “optimism” of the novel: that one so dead in life could finally come alive and, if not achieve, at least posit “das wirkliche Leben.” But can “das wirkliche Leben” be achieved at all? It is an ideal one must strive for, but one recognizes it only because it is not yet attained. And perhaps in the striving one lives “das wirkliche Leben.”

Notes

1. I only know of two studies in which the influence of C. G. Jung on Frisch's work is considered: Doris Fulda Merrifield, Das Bild der Frau bei Max Frisch (Freiburg im Breisgau: Becksmann, 1971), pp. 28-29, 58-62, and ns. 6, 8; and Jean Quenon, Die Filiation der dramatischen Figuren bei Max Frisch, Bibliothèque de la Faculté de Philosophie et Lettres de l'Université de Liège 214 (Paris: “Les Belles Lettres,” 1975), pp. 21-26 and ns. 1-27 in particular.

2. Walter Schmitz, Max Frisch “Homo faber”: Materialien, Kommentar Reihe Hanser 214, Literatur-Kommentare 5 (München: Carl Hanser, 1977), p. 48.

3. John J. White, Mythology in the Modern Novel: A Study of Prefigurative Techniques (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1971), pp. 32-66. The term “mythological novel” means only that a novel contains an extended mythological motif (p. 7).

4. Notable for the confusion of generic and metaphorical comparisons and for over-simplification of material, often without supporting allusions or explanations, is much of Manfred Jurgensen's chapter on Homo faber in his Max Frisch, Die Romane: Interpretationen (Bern: Francke, 1972), pp. 101-76; cf. pp. 126, 143, 149-51, 168-69. Most of these weaknesses are avoided by Ferdinand van Ingen, “Max Frischs Homo faber zwischen Technik und Mythologie,” Amsterdamer Beiträge zur neueren Germanistik 2 (1973): 63-81, but he narrowly base an important part of his argument (Sabeth as a messenger of Athena) on one highly ambiguous smybol, the snake. On the other hand, Schmitz (pp. 53-57) clears up some of the problems connected with the allusions to Oedipus and those related to the “Technik vs. Mythos” problem.

5. If critics were familiar with the geography of Greece, the confusion concerning the Acrocorinth and Agii Theodori would not have arisen. Sabeth was not bitten on “the beach at Acrocorinth”—the Acrocorinth is a hill, about 5 km. from the sea—but near Agii Theodori, which is some 20 km. NE of Corinth, off the main road into Athens and on the Saronic Gulf; see Baedeker, Griechenland, p. 137; or Guide Bleu Grèce, p. 343. Thus, one usually encounters incorrect outlines of events and places: Faber recalls the night on the Acrocorinth only once (150-52), the beach near Theodori (the fatal accident) three times (127, 155-58, 176), and Faber and Hanna do not visit the Acrocorinth together but Theodori (cf. Geulen, pp. 23, 26, 29; Butler, p. 113; and Schmitz, p. 23).

6. “Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious,” p. 5, in The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, Vol. 9, Pt. 1 of The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, eds. Herbert Read, Michael Fordham, and Gerhard Adler, trans. R. F. C. Hull, Bollingen Series XX (New York and Princeton: Pantheon and the Princeton Univ. Press, for the Bollingen Foundation, 1959). The original title of this paper is “Über die Archetypen des kollektiven Unbewußten,” first published in Von den Wurzeln des Bewußtseins (Zürich: Rascher, 1954).

7. Montauk, 12:688, in Gesammelte Werke in zeitlicher Folge, ed. Hans Mayer, Werkausgabe Edition, 12 vols. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1976); all references to Frisch's works are to vol. and page of this edition, except for Homo faber, vol. 7, for which page numbers only are given, cited hereafter parenthetically in the text or notes of this paper. In Tagebuch 1946-1949, for example, Frisch writes: “In dunkler Vorzeit. So beginnen die Sagen, die nicht Geschichte sind, sondern Bilder unseres Seins. Und daß es Vorzeit heißt: es ist überhaupt noch keine Zeit, es ist ein Davor, es gibt noch nicht das helle Bewußtsein, das zerlegt” (4: 363); see also pp. 361-63, 513-14, 554-55.

8. White, p. 119; see also pp. 11-14, 118-90.

9. From a radio interview with Dieter Hasselblatt (Deutschlandfunk, 8 Nov. 1964), quoted by Ulrich Weisstein, Max Frisch, Twayne World Authors Series 21 (New York: Twayne, 1967), pp. 84-85, 176 n. 14. By using the “delayed action” technique, Frisch may also have wished to avoid comparisons between his novel and another novel employing a Demeter-figure, Hermann Broch's Der Versucher (1953), which had been published in Zürich only four years before Homo faber.

10. Iliad 19. 86-92: “And I am not responsible myself, but Zeus and the Moira (Fates) and the Erinys who walks in darkness put fierce blindness in my mind, in the assembly on that day when I myself took Akhilleus' war prize from him” (my trans.).

11. Faber thinks he knows what man is—that is, he has made an image (Bildnis) of what man should be like: homo faber. This Sphinx-question is alluded to in Faber's remark about the vase depicting Oedipus and the Sphinx (142) and in his description of Hanna, Sphinx-like, drinking tea (143). As Frisch has indicated, the incest theme of the Oedipus myth is not appropriate for Faber and Sabeth (Schmitz, p. 57 and n. 206; see also, pp. 75-76).

12. Schmitz, for example, writes: “Neben den vergleichsweise groben, zumindest auffälligen iterativen Verfahren bietet auch der Homo faber eine Fülle von subtileren einmaligen Korrespondenzen, Spiegelungen und Umkehrungen, die jedem Leser zu entdecken bleiben” (p. 29).

13. Weisstein, p. 176 n. 16.

14. Michael Butler, The Novels of Max Frisch (London: Oswald Wolff, 1976), pp. 109-113; see also Schmitz, pp. 29, 104-105 ns. 67, 71.

15. For Frisch's thoughts on the use of Brechtian “Verfremdungseffekt” in the novel, see Tagebuch, 4:600-601; for “Spielmomente” see Hans Geulen, Max Frischs “Homo faber”: Studien und Interpretationen, Quellen und Forschungen zur Sprach- und Kulturgeschichte der germanischen Völker N.F. 17 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1965), p. 97. Butler's criticism that the Alfa Romeo-Erinyes, and the Agamemnon and Oedipus allusions are examples of Stilbruch (p. 164 n. 21) is unfounded. First, there is no evidence that Faber is aware of making any allusions; secondly, there is no reason to take Faber at his word in the statement that he is ignorant of “belles-lettres” when in scores of places he says precisely the opposite of what he really means. Indeed, it has long been recognized that Frisch's narrative technique in Homo faber consists in creating a tension between what Faber does and does not say. Cf. Weisstein, p. 73.

16. Schmitz, p. 106 (source: “persönliche Mitteilungen”); Walter F. Otto, Die Götter Griechenlands: Das Bild des Göttlichen im Spiegel des griechischen Geistes, 3rd ed. (1929; Frankfurt am Main: G. Schulte-Bulmke, 1947). Because of its wide availability, page numbers of the English translation are also given in parentheses: The Homeric Gods: The Spiritual Significance of Greek Religion, trans. Moses Hadas (New York: Pantheon, 1954), with illustrations.

17. Karl Kerényi and C. G. Jung, Essays on a Science of Mythology: The Myth of the Divine Child and the Mysteries of Eleusis, trans. R. F. C. Hull, Bollingen Series XXII (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, for the Bollingen Foundation, 1963). The original German work is entitled Einführung in das Wesen der Mythologie: Das göttliche Kind, Das göttliche Mädchen, 4th ed. (1941; Zürich: Rhein, 1951). The English edition is cited hereafter as Kerényi.

18. Wilhelm H. Roscher, Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie, 6 vols. and 4 supp. vols. (1884-1937; rpt. Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1965).

19. Cf. Geulen, pp. 26-30, 38-44; and Butler, pp. 90-91, 98.

20. “Rites of passage” is the name given by the anthropologist Arnold van Gennep (Les Rites de passage [1908]) to “ceremonial patterns which accompany a passage from one situation to another or from one cosmic or social world to another,” including ceremonies of birth, initiation, marriage, and death (“life crises”), as well as those concerning territorial, celestial, seasonal, and yearly changes (Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, trans. Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee [Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1960], pp. 10-11, 3-4, vii; see also pp. 166-88). The full moon festival in Palenque (45) is a formal rites of passage ceremony.

21. Edward Stäuble, Max Frisch: Gesamtdarstellung seines Werkes, 3rd ed. rev. (St. Gallen: Erker, 1967), pp. 43-45, 196. Apparently, Stäuble quotes from an earlier version of the play.

22. Karl Baedeker, Griechenland: Handbuch für Reisende, 5th ed. (Leipzig: Karl Baedeker, 1908), pp. 104-106 (this ed. was reprinted through 1930); and Grèce, “Les Guides Bleus,” ed. Francis Baulier (Paris: Hachette, 1953), pp. 217, 220-21.

23. See also Kerényi, pp. 107-115; or Roscher, 2:1311-20. For the Arcadian versions, see Kerényi, pp. 122-23, 126; Otto, p. 31 (27); or Roscher, 2:1299, 1339. For Ovid's version, see Metamorphoses 5. 566-67; Kerényi, p. 114 n. 50; or Roscher, 2:1319.

24. Kerényi, p. 179, citing Walter F. Otto, “The Meaning of the Eleusinian Mysteries” (1940). For the succeeding quotations see Kerényi, pp. 121, 109-110.

25. Kerényi, p. 107.

26. Homeric Hymn to Demeter 8; I have used N. J. Richardson's edition with commentary (Oxford: Clarendon, 1974). See also Kerényi, p. 108.

27. Odyssey 11. 213, 226, 635: agaue Persephoneia; this formula is adapted in 1. 348 of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (see commentary, pp. 47, 267). Besides Kluge's Etymologisches Wörterbuch, several other German dictionaries give the Greek origin of Agave. Agave is also the proper name of several mythological figures, including the famous mother of Pentheus (see Roscher, 1:99-100). For poppies, see Roscher, 2:1322-23, 1340, 1342-44. Hypnos (Sleep) is the brother of Thanatos (Death); cf. Faber's remark, “Sie schläft!” (160).

28. For the epithet Kourotrophos, see Kerényi, pp. 142-43, 111; and Roscher, 2:1292, 1330 (the German word Wärterin is used as an equivalent). Kerényi's quote about Brimo is found on p. 179.

29. Karl Baedeker, Italy from the Alps to Naples, Abridged Handbook for Travellers, 3rd. ed. rev. (Leipzig: Karl Baedeker, 1928), p. 268; Head of a sleeping Fury is on the same page. See also Kerényi, Essays, pp. 150-51, for the relationship between the birth of Aphrodite from the sea, the “Primordial Maiden” and the Kore, and the Eleusinian Mysteries; in Roscher's time (c. 1887) the Ludovisi relief was considered by some scholars to represent the Kore rising from the sea (Roscher, 2:1319, 1379).

30. For an illustration of the Head of a sleeping Fury see Schmitz, p. 92; or the trans. of Otto, Homeric Gods, fig. 7 (“Sleeping Maenad”).

31. Roscher, 1:1793, 1315-17, citing Aeschylus Eumenides 131 and Libation Bearers 924, 1054.

32. Geulen, p. 71. Cf. Montauk (12:634): “ERYNNIEN sie zerreißen dich nicht, sie stehen nur an irgendeiner Ecke … Wo werden die Erynnien mich packen?”

33. Kerényi, p. 179. Cf. Roscher, 1:1331, where it is noted that the Erinyes in black dress change to the Eumenides in white.

34. Several critics (e.g. Weisstein, pp. 67, 70, 72; Butler, pp. 96-98; Schmitz, pp. 55, 125 n. 192) have compared these two images, and others, to the death images in Thomas Mann's Der Tod in Venedig (1913).

35. Cf. the description of Hades in Triptychon: Drei szenische Bilder (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1978): “Man hört ein kurzes Vogelzwitschern. Dann wieder Stille” (p. 31, passim) and the Pastor's remark, “Wie hier die Vögel zwitschern!” (p. 33). For the rivers Acheron and Cocytus, see Virgil Aeneid 6; or Roscher, 1:9-11 and 2:1267-68.

36. Schmitz, p. 75, caecus = blind. For the Baedeker passages which Sabeth reads, see Italy, pp. 364-67.

37. Roscher, 1:1792-93.

38. Roscher, 1:1060-61, 2:1315, 1323, and 6:52, 49; erineos = wild fig tree. For the superstitious fear of the fig tree, see Funk & Wagnalls Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology and Legend, ed. Maria Leach (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1949-50), p. 378.

39. Roscher, 1:1240-41, 1070, 1074-75. For the Theater of Dionysus, see Baedeker, Griechenland, pp. 33-34; or Guide Bleu Grèce, pp. 101-107; and Roscher, 2: 1292 (Akhaia is Demeter's cult name in Athens).

40. Otto, pp. 144, 153-54 (144, 152-53); and Roscher, 1:1032-34. For the quotation following, see Kerényi, p. 139.

41. Jung, “Psychological Aspects of the Mother Archetype,” Archetypes, pp. 81-82. This essay, originally a lecture entitled “Die psychologischen Aspekte des Mutterarchetypus” (1939), was revised and published in Von den Wurzeln des Bewußtseins. Concerning the Madonna, cf. Frisch's description of the Virgin of Michaelangelo's Pietà as “unvollendet, Steinmasse, das ferne Erwachen einer Gestalt, ein Emporkommen aus dem Urdunkel, das noch nie ein Licht empfangen hat” (4:513). Fra Angelico's paintings, which Sabeth goes to see in the Convent of San Marco, Florence (108), include several frescoes and panel paintings of the Virgin (Baedeker, Italy, pp. 190-91).

42. Otto, p. 20 (16); and pp. 22, 153, 29 (19, 153, 26). It is clear that Faber's reaction of disgust to the jungle is due to its elemental nature, where everything seems to be simultaneously procreating and decaying. Here, as in the earlier desert landscape, nature is linked with death in Faber's mind. One must remember, too, that his first sexual experience was with a dying woman (99-100).

43. Jung, Archetypes, p. 88; for the preceding paragraph, see pp. 85-88.

44. Gerhard Kaiser was one of the first critics to discuss Hanna's guilt in some detail, in “Max Frischs Homo faber” (1959), rpt. Max Frisch-Beiträge zu einer Wirkungsgeschichte, ed. Albrecht Schau (Freiburg im Breisgau: Becksmann, 1971), pp. 87-89; see also, Ernst Schürer, “Zur Interpretation von Max Frischs Homo faber,” Monatshefte 59 (1967): 340-42; Merrifield, pp. 71-79, 82-83; and Butler, pp. 100-101, 106, 118, 120. Merrifield has pointed out that Sabeth misinterprets her relationship with Faber (p. 82).

45. Schmitz, pp. 57, 81; and Hans-Egon Holthusen, “Ein Mann von fünfzig Jahren” (1964), rpt. in Schau, p. 123; both refer to the Oedipus allusions and incest.

46. Rolf Kieser, Max Frisch: Das literarische Tagebuch (Frauenfeld: Huber, 1975), pp. 121-22; this part of the interview was translated and published by Kieser in the Contemporary Review 13 (1972): 14. For the idea of homo ludens see Johan Huizinga, Homo ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture (1938), trans. anon. (Boston: Beacon, 1955); Frisch is summarizing pages 7-14 of Huizinga in the passage quoted.

47. Homeric Hymn to Demeter 480-82. For discussion of the Mysteries (the Greater Mysteries took place in Sept.-Oct.), see Kerényi, pp. 136-55, 178-83. For the succeeding quotations, see Kerényi, pp. 120, 125.

48. Cf. Butler, pp. 96-98; my view of the positive side of the Cuban interlude is similar to Butler's, as is my view of the flight over the Alps.

49. Butler, p. 119; cf. Brigitte Weidmann, “Wirklichkeit und Erinnerung in Max Frischs Homo faber,” Schweizer Monatshefte 44 (1964-65): 455-56. Schmitz, p. 139 n. 18, only understands this passage, and the flight over the Alps, as ironic (e.g. “Esel treiben, unser Beruf!—”). However, this phrase means, I believe, that one should follow one's “calling” in life, whether it be artist, scholar, or donkey driver, because in the end it is all the same and what matters is that one “stands up to the light.” Schmitz does not mention that this passage is quoted in Montauk (12:685), where it follows the remark that literature has a theme which concerns everyone (perhaps Montaigne's that “to philosophize is to learn how to die”?) and where Frisch's tone is not ironic.

50. Otto, p. 142 (142); and for the following quotations, pp. 143-45 (143-45), where Otto also quotes Goethe, Faust, Pt. 2, lines 6430-32.