Faust and Facundo, tragedy and identity

Abstract

Throughout the article, it is shown how some of the theoretical approaches that Marshall Berman wields in his book All that is Solid Melts into Air (1982), to analyze Faust (1808 and 1832), by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, enrich the reading of Facundo (1845), by Domingo Faustino Sarmiento. Above all, because these approaches allow deepening and expanding interpretations already disclosed about this last book by various authors such as Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria, Noe Jitrik, Silvia Molloy and others. These theoretical scopes refer to the dialectical character of modernity and, therefore, to the high price that must be paid to achieve it; hence Berman speaks of the tragedy of modernity; likewise, they allude to the traits that make up the identity of the hero of modern times, and, finally, they show how this hero embodies a colossal development project that is carried out from a center of power and is sustained by industry, commerce, technology, financial investment, and legal and political transformation. In this sense, the article also uses, as an interpretative tool for analyzing Facundo, the notion of self-fashioning coined by Stephen Greenblatt.