Faust / Metamorphosis of Plants
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Mephisto visits Faust in his Study:
What does the name “Faust” refer to in the context of the band name?
Jean-Hervé Peron: It is German for “fist” which is a symbol for revolution which is what we thought we were part of and maybe we were too. Also it is the name of a work by Goethe where a man sells his soul to obtain what he longs for. This was what we were doing; selling our souls to the music industry in order to do the music we wanted to.
Faust IV:
The Faust Tapes:
This hybrid of English and German material reflected Faust's transitional period: they were moving away from the isolated, commune-based Wumme environment toward a more conventional studio setting, yet retained their experimental ethos.
According to producer Uwe Nettelbeck, the band "spent weeks chasing sounds that could not be repeated twice," leading to difficulties in finalising mixes.
Faust Part 1: “When I say to the Moment flying; 'Linger a while -- thou art so fair!' Then bind me in thy bonds undying, And my final ruin I will bear!”
Bridget Riley, Fall, 1963:
Daemonic marketing trick: The album cost: 49 pence
Che reading Goethe:
Metamorphosis of Plants:
What reconciled poetry and politics in his eyes was not aesthetics, but the study of nature.
"Hypothesis: Everything is leaf, and through this simplicity, the greatest diversity becomes possible."
"Goethe's quote "All is leaf" is perhaps the most famous line from his botanical writings. What exactly did he mean by this?
To argue his case that all is leaf, Goethe assumed that other botanists and plant enthusiasts had observed some degree of similarity in plant parts. "Anyone who devotes the least attention to the growth of plants can easily note that certain of their external parts are often transformed, assuming, either completely or to some lesser degree, the form of neighboring parts. From this point of consensus, Goethe began to make his case, piece by piece, that all parts of the plant are merely variations on one part. He made the case that the seed, when dissected, appears to be damp and tightly compact leaves. The first sprout out of the ground emerges with two cotyledons. These tiny oval-shaped pieces are not similar to the plants mature leaves, (but tend to look the same from plant to plant, as will later be important for the development of Goethe's theory.) Goethe made the case that the cotyledons are form of leaf.
Goethe argued that the petals of flowering plants are leaves of another color. Proceeding to the next plant part, Goethe desired to convince his readers that they should also view the stamen as a variation of the petal (which, of course, is a variation of the leaf)." – Goethe's Plant Morphology: The Seeds of Evolution, TANYA KELLEY, 2007
"She [nature] is the sole artist, creating extreme contrast out of the simplest material, the greatest perfection seemingly without effort, the most definite clarity always veiled with touch of softness. Each of her works has its own being, each of her phenomena its separate idea, and yet all create a single whole." Goethe, The Metamorphosis of Plants
Their existence is characterized by the positive and the negative, by development, progress and evolution, negated in reflux, regressions and revolution. Fruit is the revolution of the plant, for it makes itself an autonomous being. Fruit is the plant backwards, for it grows from the blossom not the root. The leaf is its beginning, the root its end.
"Everything that has been round about us from youth, with which we are nevertheless only superficially acquainted, always seems ordinary and trivial to us, so familiar, so commonplace that we hardly give it a second thought."
Regular Metamorphosis: This involves a step-by-step progression from seed to fruit, showcasing nature's hierarchical development leading to reproduction.
Irregular Metamorphosis: Represents backward steps in development, resulting in forms that, while visually pleasing, lack the inherent force of growth.
"Nature precludes the possibility of growth in endless stages, for it wants to hasten toward its goal by forming seeds." Goethe, The Metamorphosis of Plants
André Masson, Goethe or the Metamorphosis of Plants, 1940
Esther Leslie: Goethe is seeing time: the beginning of everything, of every form. He seeing space: see everything in its entirety', the whole of life unlocked by a single law. His desire to order plants in time and space was perhaps prompted by book that he picked up in Padua. It was Andrea Palladio's The Four Books of Architecture and it develops a grammar of architectural parts, walls, ceilings, stairs, columns, doors. windows, frames, roofs, details. Perhaps the systematic orderings of this treatise worked on him. In any event, as he continues on his Italian journey, including a visit to the botanical gardens of Palermo in Sicily, he formulates a notion of the primal, archetypal plant and its history. An idea came to Goethe, in a flash. In the organ of the plant which we call the leaf' lies the true Proteus who can hide or reveal himself in all vegetal forms. If we could understand what drives a leaf to take shape, if we can understand what form is and how form forms and reforms itself, we could, perhaps, create any form, any shape, any life. His thoughts that were to be conveyed to Herder noted that he had come to realise that the organ of the plant we ordinarily call the leaf conceals the true Proteus, who can conceal and reveal himself. Backward and forward, he argues, the plant is only leaf, and it is linked so inseparably to the future seed that one should not think of one without the other.
"An eternal living activity works to create anew what has been created, lest it entrench itself in rigidity." from Goethe's poem "One in All"
Faust in A.D. Reader Pt. 1.: Benjamin's Reversal of the Myth:
