VV(15) - Fausto's Roles

[David Morris]

>From the start of his confessions Fausto presents himself to us as one who
casts himself into roles.  Some of these roles may be the product of hindsight,
but the first one (Fausto I) is not: as one of the three seminal members of the
"Generation of '37" and it's grand School of Anglo-Malteese Poetry."  Fausto
was to be the God-representative of a trinity of the three "major areas of
human struggle," the other two being engineering and politics.

His next role (Fausto II) is one of "an aristocracy deeper and older, we were
builders."  This new role was cast him by the circumstance of the war, but is
still self-cast: Builders, rather than destoyers, idealistic as ever.

Then "Fausto III was born on the day of 13 Raids.  Generated: out of Elena's
death, out of a horrible encounter with one we only knew as the Bad Priest." 
This role is characterized by a _movement_ away from humanity toward the
inanimate.  It is also characterized by a "retreat from [the] retreat" of
Abstraction, AKA Poetry.  Thus here we have "humanity" linked with a man's
concern for "what ought to be" rather than "what was." The loss of this
idealistic function is here likened to becomming less human and more inanimate.

Fausto IV is likewise described in terms of a movement, this time a return to
humanity.  "No single event produced him.  Fausto II had merely passed a
certain level in his slow return to consciousness or humanity." (307)  Both
Faustos III and IV are seen as involutary roles more akin to the tides or the
seasons, or any other wave-oscillation.  One might ask why Fausto IV does not
begin when he reaches the apex of his "retreat from [the] retreat" of
Abstraction, when he begins to take back on is humanity...

David Morris



__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Auctions - buy the things you want at great prices
http://auctions.yahoo.com/