Homo faber

Homo faber, a novel by M. Frisch, published in 1957. The title virtually subsumes the book. Walter Faber, who relates his own story, represents the species homo faber (Latin for workman), an ironic taxonomic invention by Frisch to denote the modern technologist. Faber, a Swiss engineer, is due to fly from New York to Caracas. During a stopover at Houston, Faber, irritated by Herbert, his German neighbour in the aircraft, tries to miss his flight. But he misinterprets the departure announcements and finds himself on the same plane as Herbert again. An emergency landing is made in the Mexican desert. During the four days before their rescue, Faber becomes friendly with Herbert and finds that he is the brother of Joachim, once Faber's closest friend, that Joachim married Hanna, with whom Faber had lived, and that the couple are now divorced. Faber decides to go with Herbert to the Guatemalan tobacco plantation which Joachim is now managing, but they arrive to find that Joachim has hanged himself in a fit of depression. Faber, the man who prides himself on a highly organized life which no one is allowed to disrupt, has now already made serious changes to his schedule. He returns to New York and, freeing himself from a brief episode with Ivy, a woman friend, sets off for Europe. On the liner he meets a girl, Elisabeth; a sympathy springs up between him and Sabeth, as he calls her, and he proposes. She turns him down, but he calls on her in Paris and they go south by car, becoming lovers. In Italy Faber discovers that Sabeth is his own long-lost daughter by Hanna, who now lives in Athens. They cross to Greece, and near Athens Sabeth, bitten by a snake, has a bad fall. She is taken to hospital and in consequence Faber and Hanna meet again. A serum cures Sabeth's snake bite, but she dies suddenly of complications resulting from her fall. In this story, of which the final twist comes when Faber dies of cancer, there are echoes of the Oedipus myth and also of Th. Mann. A chain of chance events has involved the rational, aloof technologist in an archetypal situation. Homo faber is no advance on homo sapiens. Volker Schlöndorff produced the novel as a tragic love story (film 1990), to which Frisch exceptionally gave his consent.

Homo faber (Latin for "Man the Smith" or "Man the Maker"; in reference to the biological name for man, "Homo sapiens" meaning "man the wise") is a concept articulated by Hannah Arendt and Max Scheler. It refers to humans as controlling the environment through tools. Henri Bergson also referred to it in The Creative Evolution (1907), defining intelligence, in its original sense, as the "faculty to create artificial objects, in particular tools to make tools, and to indefinitely variate its makings."

In Latin literature, Appius Claudius Caecus uses this term in his Sententiæ, referring to ability of man to control his destiny and what surrounds him: Homo faber suae quisque fortunae (“Every man is the artifex of his destiny”).

In anthropology, Homo faber (as "the working man") is confronted with "Homo ludens" (the "playing man," who is concerned with amusements, humor and leisure).

It can be also used in opposition or juxtaposition to "deus faber" (god the creator, the making god), an archetype of which are the various gods of the forge.

Homo Faber is the title of an influential novel by the Swiss author Max Frisch, published in 1957. The book was made into the film Voyager starring Sam Shepard.

Homo Faber was one of the five IBMYP areas of interaction, before it was replaced with "Human Ingenuity".

"Homo Faber" is also the title of a short poem by Frank Bidart that is included in his collection Desire (1997).

See also

• List of alternative names for the human species

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External links

• Study guide about the novel "Homo Faber" by Max Frisch

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