The text this week is chapter one of this book concerning Goethe's story of Faust. Obviously this is an interpretation by Berman, but it is a useful one, bringing an explanation to an overall story we have delved in to so far only in parts. Please read the consecutive sections if you can, sections Berman decides to lable the dreamer, the lover and the developer.
Goethe's story of Faust took him most of his life to write, and ranks as one of the greatest stories ever told, seeming to predict the consequences of the industrial revolution from it's root in the C18th and still relevant to us to day. Goethe is not unlike Shakespeare in significance, and this epic story has been adopted in many variants. To architecture students, it gives an emotive handle on the processes of urban development aside from those you might get from historical texts.
Berman died recently, so there are obituaries you may wish to read. In persona he certainly looked like Allen Ginsberg, and was certainly, in his love of New York, an academic who was no stranger to the counterculture New York is so famous for. Personally it is his love hate relationship with the processes of development which I find captivating, after all they brought him the metropolis he loved.
The university library assures us that core reading lists are now available on-line, so you should be able to download this text without difficulty.
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