Daemon Absconditus: Entropy in Max Frisch’s Homo Faber 335 Daemon Absconditus: Entropy in Max Frisch’s Homo Faber K� Eckhard Kuhn-Osius Hunter College, CUNY Abstract: In Max Frisch’s- Homo Faber, the implicit narrator’s successful discrediting of the story’s explicit narrator leaves the reader grasping for a key to the novel’s interpretation� Walter Faber’s apparently triumphalist, strident value judgments are contradicted by his own story, but the opposing model offered by his ‘antagonist’ Hanna is ultimately not more convincing� Instead of adducing external mythological models to interpret the novel as the realization of a preordained model, this essay interprets-Homo Faber-on the basis of Faber’s dissertation topic: the (non-existent) Maxwell’s Demon� Faber must have been aware of the inevitability of entropy and thus death� His life’s work is a desperate attempt to postpone the inevitable, but he begins to realize the futility and insufficiency of this antagonism� He eventually discovers that the ‘codes’ he applies to interpreting life are insufficient and changes his outlook� In a similar way, the reader has to learn that the frequently suggested cultural ‘codes,’ most stridently the numerous allusions to classical mythology, are ultimately just as unreliable as Faber’s scientist screeds� The implicit narrator seduces the reader into a view which is almost as limited as Walter Faber’s� Keywords: Max Frisch, Homo Faber, Maxwell’s Demon, entropy, statistics, unreliable/ implicit/ explicit narrator, implied reader, semiotics, fate Max Frisch’s Homo faber 1 has become a school classic, rivaled in his oeuvre only by his parabolic Third-Reich-themed plays Biedermann und die Brandstifter and Andorra� With a print run of 4�3 million by 2004 (NZZ; also cf� Schmitz 1998, 261), Homo faber is one of the most widely read German novels of the 20th century� After over 60 years of continued reception, Homo faber has taken great strides towards passing the test of time� 2 This is partly due to the novel’s 336 K� Eckhard Kuhn-Osius themes as such, which are likely to remain salient in a society preoccupied with questions of identity, oscillating between consumerism and ecological despair, the promise of progress and freedom from the restrictions of nature vs� the fear and rejection of technological overreach and technological failure� The book’s unusually high standing is owed to the way in which Frisch treats these themes by bringing opposites down to individual decisions whose impact does not become palpable until it is too late to change things� The overarching theme is how humans deal with nature, by fighting it or succumbing to it as antagonists and as parts of nature� The novel as a whole does not take specific positions regarding these themes, but it permits the reader to examine them as if under a magnifying glass� In this essay I will take a closer look at a motif and theme of the book which has not found very much attention� This is the topic of Walter Faber’s dissertation, Maxwell’s demon, and the related notion of entropy� The novel succeeds by employing the notion of entropy in three ways: as an explicit theme of the narrative, as part of the diegesis of the story, and as a structuring principle of the novel as a whole� Examining this topic will lead to a clearer perspective on Faber’s personality and world view, elucidate the conflict between the explicit narrator and the implicit author and will show that the novel presents an entropic representation of an entropic world� I will first provide a brief summary of the plot of Homo faber, then describe the novel’s narrative set-up� This will be followed by an explanation of Maxwell’s demon and entropy and the role they play both for Walter Faber as a character and the structure and meaning of the novel� Homo faber is the story of a Swiss engineer and New York resident named Walter Faber, which begins a few weeks before his 50th birthday in 1957 and ends with his death a few weeks later (for the year, cf� HF 17)� During a business flight to Caracas, which is interrupted by an emergency landing in the Mexican desert, Faber finds out that the person sitting next to him is the brother of his best friend from 20 years ago, which brings up reminiscences of Faber’s earlier life� Faber learns that his friend, Joachim, had married Faber’s old love Hanna, whom he met in the context of a planned abortion after wedding plans between Faber and Hanna had gone awry� Faber decides to join Joachim’s brother, who is on his way to visit Joachim in the jungle of Guatemala� After a laborious trip through the hot and humid jungle, they find that Joachim has committed suicide� While the brother decides to stay in the jungle to finish Joachim’s project, Faber returns to New York� In an effort to escape the amorous attentions of his current lover, Ivy, Faber decides to take the boat for his next business trip to Paris� On the ship, he meets a young woman whom he calls Sabeth� The relationship eventually turns into a love affair while Faber chauffeurs Sabeth through Daemon Absconditus: Entropy in Max Frisch’s Homo Faber 337 France and Italy so that she can return to her German mother, who lives in Athens� In the course of the affair, Faber finds out that Sabeth’s mother is Hanna, the woman he almost married some 20 years ago� Faber and Sabeth take the ferry to Greece for one last night on the beach before Sabeth is to return to her mother, but in the early morning Sabeth is bitten by a snake� With heroic effort, Faber transports Sabeth to an Athens hospital (he has no car in Greece)� While she is being treated, Faber encounters Hanna, who in the course of long talks reveals that Sabeth is his own daughter� Sabeth dies a day later, not from the snake bite, but an undiagnosed brain injury� Faber must leave Athens to finish the construction task in Caracas, which had been the cause for the journey that set the story in motion� He follows his previous itinerary visiting New York and the Guatemalan jungle� Stomach troubles make it impossible for him to work in Caracas� While sick, he writes a report to an unidentified recipient (perhaps himself) about the events of the last weeks� Then, via Cuba, Düsseldorf, and Zurich, he returns to Athens where he, partly attended to by Hanna, enters a hospital to be operated for what presumably is incurable stomach cancer� The novel ends with Faber expecting to be picked up for surgery� The first part of the book (“Erste Station,” the bulk of the novel, pages 7-160) is the report Walter Faber has written in Caracas� The narration in “Erste Station” begins in a deceptively simple way, but soon interweaves three distinct time levels: 1� the narrated time around Sabeth’s conception, told through flashbacks (up to 1936, HF 57); 2� Faber’s narrated travels from New York to the jungle, back to New York, then to France, Italy, and Greece (late March - May 28, 1957); 3� the writing/ narrating time, which is made explicit only at the conclusion of “Erste Station” via the date line, “Geschrieben in Caracas, 21� Juni bis 8� Juli” (160)� This time level intrudes repeatedly through Faber’s numerous opinionated comments and flash-forwards� Faber’s typed and handwritten notes and reflections from his hospital stay constitute the “Zweite Station,” the end of the novel (pages 161-203)� The entire novel is a peculiar type of frame narrative, with the miserable final days of Faber’s life serving as the ex-post-facto frame� The “Zweite Station” fleshes out details from preceding events and completes the story of Faber’s travels (cf� Geulen 49)� In “Zweite Station” the logical concatenation of the events leading to Sabeth’s death is replaced with the less tightly timed evolution in Faber’s world view� The frame as a metatext is weak since it provides neither addressee (170) nor an editorial note to provide a (fictional) point of leverage to evaluate the story� 3 The closest we come to an editorial note is Faber’s instructions that his papers (including his own story) be destroyed for being all wrong (199)� 338 K� Eckhard Kuhn-Osius Throughout the book, Faber appears as a disingenuous narrator, whom the reader learns to mistrust� It is obvious that a fictional character like Walter Faber cannot truly tell his own story� There must be a hidden narrator behind him, who invented the story as well as the explicit narrator, who experiences, tells, and comments on the events of the story� The artful, educated implied author of Homo faber does his best to collude with the educated (implied) reader to undercut the explicit narrator� 4 But he only lets us know things through Walter Faber’s voice� The novel partly lives by the conflict between the explicit narrator Walter Faber and the book’s implied author, who does his best to make the explicit narrator appear unreliable in his intentions and evaluations� Max Frisch himself commented on the divergence between the two narrators: Der Witz des Buches, der Kniff […] ist ja der: Es ist fast die unwahrscheinlichste Geschichte, die man sich ersinnen kann […]� Da ist wirklich ein Zufall nach dem anderen: auf dem Schiff trifft er die Tochter; er trifft den Schwager seiner Frau [sic]� Gehen wir […] von der Kunst des Schreibens, also von der Literatur aus: Wenn ich das mit Schicksalsgläubigkeit erzählen würde, so würde jeder mit Recht nach fünfzehn Seiten auflachen und sagen: “Das auch noch! Hab’ ich’s mir doch gedacht! Und wen trifft er jetzt? ” Und da trifft er die da� - Und der Witz daran ist, daß ein Mensch, der in seinem Denken die Zufälligkeit postuliert, eine Schicksalsgeschichte erlebt� (quoted from Schmitz 1977, 17) Attentive readers might recognize already on the first pages how Faber is made to talk in incongruous absolutes (“einzig und allein,” HF 7)� They might also note Faber’s incantations of “das Übliche” which, again and again, is superseded by “das Plötzliche” (see Pütz), so that one might question how “üblich” things really can have been� The implied author makes us doubt Faber’s ingenuousness by making his commentary contradict his narration� Faber often announces what he usually does or plans to do right before doing the exact opposite� For example, he states that he does not care about dreams right before telling us one of them at length (15 f�)� He sits down to write a letter to his superior, but without further explanation writes a good-bye letter to his lover, Ivy (30)� After asserting twice that he is ready to return to Mexico City and take a plane instead of traveling with Joachim’s brother Herbert, he hangs around and goes to Palenque (34, 35)� Faber declares that he does not want to touch Sabeth during their visit to the ship’s engine room - and then he does (87)� He asks for a vacation (104) right after telling the reader that he has no idea why his boss would have recommended one (96 f�)� A variation of this approach is the direct contradiction between Faber’s words and the obvious events he describes� During his stay in the desert, Faber is winning in a chess game with Herbert when he finds out that his friend Joachim married his former lover Hanna� Faber states, “Ich ließ Daemon Absconditus: Entropy in Max Frisch’s Homo Faber 339 mir nichts merken, glaube ich” (28)� He then proceeds to light a cigarette in close proximity to the damaged airplane and lose several chess pieces, ultimately forfeiting the game, so that Herbert asks him whether something is wrong with him� Incidents of this type multiply when Faber meets Sabeth� Faber is not sure whether the girl he sees playing ping pong is the one he had seen earlier and continues, “Jedenfalls war die andere nirgends zu finden” (71)� Without admitting it, he obviously had been looking for her everywhere� Similarly, Faber had only mentioned going to the Louvre once for an hour and not seeing a redhaired girl (99)� When Sabeth tells Faber that she observed him in the Louvre for three days in a row (100), he comments patronizingly, “Sie war wirklich ein Kind […], sie hielt es wirklich für Zufall, daß man sich in diesem Paris nochmals getroffen hatte” (100)� While in Rome, he suddenly remarks, “[Sabeths] Ähnlichkeit mit Hanna ist mir immer seltener in den Sinn gekommen” (115) - a similarity that he belittled before, when he claimed that probably any woman would remind him of Hanna (78)� The implied author undermines Faber’s credibility also by having Faber reveal his story piecemeal with flash-forwards and flashbacks� The effect is reminiscent of an analytical drama, but without the process of discovery� This leads the reader to second-guess why Faber tells the story at this point� Faber’s retelling of his almost-wedding to Hanna in three flashback installments (33, 45-48, 56 f�) makes the reader wonder if there might be details the narrator is hiding� The general distrust is enhanced when Faber announces his incestuous and ultimately fatal relationship with Sabeth in advance, in forward-looking reflections (22, 63 f�, 72 f�)� The reader observes Faber’s actions in a situation of dramatic irony because acting Faber does not realize what he does, while the information given by narrating Faber causes readers to watch him suspiciously every step of the way (Würker 55)� We cannot read about the Faber-Sabeth tryst in a romantic spirit, accepting Faber’s coy protestations about not being in love (72) and not pursuing Sabeth (73)� We expect Faber’s report to be colored by guilt feelings, justifications, rationalizations, and downplaying his active role� Faber’s sexual relationship with Sabeth (122, 125) and the events leading to her fatal accident (127-30, 150-52, 156-58) are also told in this time-lapse fashion, which is bound to arouse suspicion� We are primed to be cautious regarding anything Faber tells us� The implied author creates further distance to his explicit narrator by arranging a large web of references in the diegetic world of Walter Faber’s story for Faber to mention, but not to see� Faber lives in a “semiotic universe” (Schmitz 1998, 237) which is beyond his full comprehension and interest� A few examples must suffice: Faber never comments on the name of his “Baby Hermes” typewriter, or the “Romeo y Julieta” cigars, or the giving away of his “Omega” 340 K� Eckhard Kuhn-Osius watch, or the “Alfa Romeo” car whose senseless noise irritates him (all are established brand names)� Faber seems unaware what an “Erinnye” is and sees no symbolism in the observation that the sculpture seems more awake to Faber and Sabeth when their incestuous partner stands in front of the “Birth of Venus” (HF 111)� Faber is not reminded of Greek myths by his incestuous affair, his “return home” with wounded feet (132, 134 f�), his notion of being slain with an axe in the bathtub (136), or the idea of gouging out his eyes (191)� Faber does not know that the fat Tolstoy book which Sabeth reads (83) may well be War and Peace, which ends with copious ruminations on the forces that drive human destiny etc� The implied author, of course, knows all that, or at least that is what the educated reader assumes, given the wide range of themes and the large number of suggestive elements (cf� Latta’s extensive listing)� At the same time, Faber’s failure to notice these elements raises the suspicion that the failure results from denial and repression� But it is the opinionated nonnarrative intrusions which create even more distance� Faber’s disquisition on probability (22), which hints at the tragic ending, is the first utterance to interrupt the linear narrative flow, surprising the reader who does not yet know what Faber is talking about� Shortly thereafter, Faber presents a similar disquisition about not being impressed by the sight of the desert at night� He presents a highly romantic description by denying every descriptive term he uses� He simply says that he hates to be told what he should see; he knows what he sees and proceeds to undercut the images he presents (24 f�)� This denial of feelings gained via metaphor is a third element causing distance� Schmitz (1998, 225) explains this desert description as “reading practice” for the double perspective he recognizes as characteristic for the novel� For the educated reader, there is often more to events than Faber sees� When one tries to look for ‘truth’ in the pronouncements of the book’s protagonists, one will end up disappointed� All events in the book are narrated by the “Techniker” Walter Faber, who likes to state his pronouncedly rationalist opinions in binary oppositions, such as Masculine vs� Feminine; Rationality vs� Myth; Technology vs� Nature; Statistics vs� Fate; Orientation towards the Future vs� Past; USA vs� other parts of the world� Faber connects and valorizes masculinity with rationality, technology, statistics, progress, and the USA as opposed to the presumably other concepts, for which he has little use� Faber’s apodictic, masculinist (though not always consistent) views are often contradicted by the more sensitive, culturally richer Hanna, whose tendency towards a binary world view almost matches Faber’s, either by inclination or in response to his pronouncements� She provides a corrective counterpoint to Faber, but challenging Faber’s insufficient world view does not bestow correctness on her opinions� Falsification of one opinion does not verify an alternative one� As Daemon Absconditus: Entropy in Max Frisch’s Homo Faber 341 Schmitz points out, “obwohl in Hannas Einwänden gegen das Technische ein wahrer Kern steckt, so ist doch auch Fabers Position keineswegs haltlos” (1977, 46 f�)� He summarizes, “[es] bleiben nur Standpunkte, die sich wechselseitig relativieren�” (82) In a later commentary on Homo faber, Schmitz warns against “den Mythos als Auslegungssystem, das noch immer verwendet wird, obschon es auf die Wirklichkeit der ‘Moderne’ nicht passt” (1998, 228)� Myths are no more than thought experiments which have to meet the test of a contingent reality (245)� Leber, who tries to do justice to Faber’s view, comments on the collapse of Faber’s world, “Dies geschieht mit einer Konsequenz, die sich mit der Wahrscheinlichkeitslehre und dem Wärmesatz nicht minder sinnfällig erklären läßt als mit dem Glauben an das unerbittliche Walten mißachteter Mächte” (Leber 124)� Faber’s sad fate would not be different if he adduced mythical explanatory models� There is no stringent causal link between Faber’s professed world view, his actions, and the sad turn of events, even if they can be seen as somehow “typical” (cf� Günther 14-19)� The implied author has diligently undermined the only source of information we have for the events without giving us a clear indication how Faber’s text should be understood� He has loaded Faber’s diegetic world with potential significance, but none of the subtexts are cogent enough to leave the reader satisfied� Any interpretation that tries to locate the work’s meaning within the confines of the polarities explicitly developed in Homo faber instead of transcending them is bound ultimately to fail� One popular way to find a meaning in the novel that transcends Faber’s dichotomies is to adduce additional stories and subsume the events and views in the novel under “master narratives,” be they psychological (e�g�, Horn), mythological (e�g�, Blair), or archetypical (Lubich 59- 81)� Such studies provide interesting insights into various motifs in the novel, but will always leave some unease if they claim to represent its sole meaning� 5 The topic of Faber’s dissertation, which (like so many things in his life) he did not complete, was “Über die Bedeutung des sogenannten Maxwell’schen Dämons” (33) and must have dealt with questions of energy preservation, energy loss and its statistical describability, stability of structures and machines, as well as their ultimate destruction through a process of increasing entropy� It is one of the few elements in his world which Faber does not subject to his binary polarities� “Maxwell’s demon” appears four times at pivotal points in the narration� The first mention occurs in Faber’s first explication of his past relationship with Hanna (first time level) and right before he decides to accompany Herbert to the jungle (33)� Faber then mentions Maxwell’s demon during his first longer conversation with Sabeth: “[…] sie […] gab’s nicht auf, bis sie mich zum Plaudern brachte, über […] Elektrizität, Entropie, wovon sie noch nie 342 K� Eckhard Kuhn-Osius gehört hat� Sie war alles andere als dumm� Nicht viele Leute, denen ich den sogenannten Maxwell’schen Dämon erläuterte, begreifen so flink wie dieses junge Mädchen […]” (74)� Faber’s choice of topic and his approving comment show his continued interest in the subject� During their last encounter, Faber's former teacher Professor O� expresses his regret about Faber’s unfinished dissertation on Maxwell’s demon (194) - a conversation Faber reports after he has already informed us in a handwritten note that Professor O� has died in the meantime (172)� In his report on his last set of flights to Athens (on the same day when he last encountered Professor O�), Faber mentions his fear that some demon could thwart the standard landing, but he brushes the thought off with a brief reference to the nonexistence of Maxwell’s demon (197)� “Maxwell’s demon” refers to a theoretical construct devised by James Clerk Maxwell in a thought experiment on the second law of thermodynamics� This law states that the entropy within a closed thermodynamic system increases and that, contrary to processes described in classical mechanics, this process is irreversible� Gases consist of molecules moving at different speeds, based on the gas’s overall temperature� 6 In the absence of lost or added energy from outside, gas molecules in a closed system will tend towards an even distribution of slowand fast-moving molecules, i�e�, a state of entropy� Now imagine two chambers filled with gas molecules� These two chambers are connected through a small opening� With equal temperatures in both chambers, the molecules would all move at the same average speed (some faster, some slower)� Imagine a mechanism, today known as Maxwell’s demon, at the small opening between the chambers that would permit fast-moving (high energy) molecules to enter the right chamber and permit slow-moving molecules into the left chamber (leading to cooler temperatures)� After a while, there would be a temperature differentiation between the two chambers caused by the mechanism; entropy would decrease� Or, to think of it in the opposite way, assume that one of our two chambers contains many fast-moving molecules, the other one many slow-moving ones� Under normal circumstances, fast-moving molecules would enter through the opening into the cold chamber, and slow-moving molecules would move into the hot chamber� Eventually, we would have an even, entropic distribution of molecules in both chambers� If there were a Maxwell’s demon between the two chambers, the leveling of energy would not take place� If the demon continually allowed only fast molecules into one chamber and slow ones into the other, one could somehow attach a heat motor and obtain a perpetual motion machine, a setup which would prevent disorder and ultimately death, which occurs when the orderly structures of life lose their energy differential with the environment� But Maxwell’s demon cannot exist in real life since it Daemon Absconditus: Entropy in Max Frisch’s Homo Faber 343 would drain energy from the system to carry out its selecting tasks and thus would come to a standstill� Maxwell’s demon, if it existed, would identify and affect individual molecules individually� Scientists can only describe gas kinetic processes, including entropy, in a statistical manner� This necessity of a statistical approach for describing thermodynamic processes explains and corroborates (at least partially) the probabilistic world view Faber espouses repeatedly when he talks about issues of fate and probability, most pronouncedly in his excursus that interrupts the narrative flow of the story for the first time� Es war mehr als ein Zufall, dass alles so gekommen ist, es war eine ganze Kette von Zufällen� Aber wieso Fügung? Ich brauche, um das Unwahrscheinliche als Erfahrungstatsache gelten zu lassen, keinerlei Mystik […]� Es ist aber, wenn einmal das Unwahrscheinliche eintritt, nichts Höheres dabei […]� Indem wir vom Wahrscheinlichen sprechen, ist ja das Unwahrscheinliche immer schon inbegriffen und zwar als Grenzfall des Möglichen, und wenn es einmal eintritt, das Unwahrscheinliche, so besteht für unsereinen keinerlei Grund zur Verwunderung, zur Erschütterung, zur Mystifikation� (22) Faber’s position is not satisfying for the readers primed by the implied author because, as Frisch noted, Faber’s story is a “Schicksalsgeschichte” (quoted from Schmitz 1977, 17)� Statistics cannot offer explanations, only correlations, which are ‘true’ only with a sufficient sample size� Faber as a statistician can only acknowledge (“gelten […] lassen,” HF 22) the existence of the improbable, while a mythological view claims to explain it� In contrast to the commonly held interpretation that Faber considers the world as “berechenbar,” we should stress that a statistical world view does not make the world calculable for an individual; it just offers probabilities� The implied author drives the point home when he lets Faber fall back one last time on his assertive bluster: his impending surgery is 94�6 percent successful and will relieve him “von sämtlichen Beschwerden für immer” (164)� We are not amazed that Faber revises this optimistic prediction on page 198� The shortcoming of Faber’s personal statistical view of the world is well stated by Hanna who tells him that a low mortality rate from snake bite would indeed be a comforting thought if she had 100 daughters of whom only a few would die� But she has only one daughter who may be lost (136, 139)� Unfortunately, Hanna’s wise words echo Faber’s fake reasoning with Ivy when he looks for an excuse for taking the boat: “[…] was interessiert es mich, daß am gleichen Tag, wo ich ins Meer stürze, 999 Maschinen tadellos landen? ” (61; cf� Jurgensen 122, who takes this seriously)� What is worse, Hanna’s deeds belie her words� In not revealing to Sabeth the identity of her true father, Hanna fell victim to a Faber-type of statistical fallacy� It was statistically inconceivable that 344 K� Eckhard Kuhn-Osius Sabeth would run into her own father, but it was not impossible� She simply assumed that Faber and Sabeth would never meet, as if they were in unrelated thermodynamic systems� Perhaps, an awareness of this flaw in her own thinking keeps Hanna from being more antagonistic towards Faber than she is (HF 192, especially 202)� Leber (107-26) and Horn seem to be the only two authors who deal at length with the role of Maxwell’s demon in Homo faber� They use Maxwell’s demon as an apt metaphor for the description of Faber’s blustery, faulty world view and thus follow, to a certain extent, the ground rules that the implied author has suggested� But both interpretations suffer from the assumption that Faber somehow believes that Maxwell’s demon would empower him to overcome the entropic tendencies of nature, to escape aging and to escape death� His death is a kind of punishment for this hubris� 7 But such interpretations appear questionable� It seems that “der Maxwellsche Dämon” plays a different, but no less important role in the novel than Horn and Leber have claimed� Faber’s dissertation research in the 1930s can only have led to the conclusion that Maxwell’s demon does not and cannot exist; entropy (and thus death) is inescapable� Faber’s life henceforth, in spite of his swagger, is a constant and desperate defense against entropy; it is characterized by repeated attempts to mitigate and postpone the unavoidable entropic events of disorder and death� Faber is irritated when things do not operate properly and energy is squandered in entropic processes� The very beginning of the novel describes an airplane takeoff in a blizzard with wildly (and entropically) swirling snowflakes: “[…] was mich nervös machte, war […] einzig und allein diese Vibration in der stehenden Maschine mit laufenden Motoren” (7)� Although Faber soon mentions other irritants, it is worth noting that the first one in the entire novel is a sign of entropic energy loss� Faber even looks at functioning technology in terms of entropy, when aboard the ship he muses about the vessel’s vibrations when the engines are running (79)� During his excursion to the engine room with Sabeth, Faber not only writes in easily interpretable sexual imagery (Lubich 49), but is unmetaphorically concerned with issues of energy loss, entropy, and material fatigue: “Torsion, Reibungskoeffizient, Ermüdung des Stahls durch Vibration” (HF 87)� We never watch Faber working as an engineer, but we do observe him fixing things that do not work right, attempting to slow entropy down� He usually cannot do much more than make entropy less visible, as in the many times he shaves or would like to do so (e�g�, 10, 27, 34, 41, 63, 70 f�, 104, 152, 172)� Shaving cannot stop the entropic growth of facial hair, but at least shaving can make it invisible� Faber keeps fastening the rattling jerry cans on their Land Rover (49), which he fixed before setting out into the jungle (45); he scrapes the carrion out Daemon Absconditus: Entropy in Max Frisch’s Homo Faber 345 of the tread of their car’s tires after Herbert has driven over a dead animal to scare the vultures (50); he fixes his razor (63); he rebuilds the car engine in the jungle during his second visit to the plantation (167-69) after repairing Herbert’s glasses (166)� His wondering about the radio battery retaining its energy, when they find Joachim, belongs into this entropy-focused context (55), as does his incessant filming� We never see Faber at work creating orderly, clean electric energy because when the turbines are finally ready after many delays, Faber himself is sick from stomach cancer, an entropic, jungle-like growth inside of him which he cannot shave away, although he does not yet know that� Faber is annoyed by technical glitches such as the rattling jerry cans while they drive through the jungle: “Was mich nervös machte: das Scheppern unserer Kanister […]” (49)� He is annoyed by the malfunction of his razor (63 f�, 70 f�) or the senselessly revved-up engines of a car (Alfa Romeo) and motorcycles circling his hotel in stop-and-go fashion (123)� On the other hand, he regards functioning machines with joy since they reassure him� He claims “daß es immer Freude macht, Maschinen in Betrieb zu sehen” (86)� When he is in emotional turmoil after realizing that Hanna is Sabeth’s mother, Faber wants to operate his car to calm his nerves (121), just as he normally does after leaving a party (92)� His first urge had been to escape to the airport in Rome, whose starting and landing planes he watches from the distance in a reassuring display of functioning technology (118)� In Palenque he had noted with obvious displeasure, “Nie ein Flugzeug! ” (43)� Faber’s strident pronouncements on technology and culture must be seen in the context of his ongoing fight against energy loss� He feels underappreciated in his hopeless heroic, manly struggle against overwhelming odds� In spite of his blustering tone, his posture remains defensive� He declares the machine to be the functional equivalent of sculpture: “Die Primitiven versuchten[,] den Tod zu annullieren, indem sie den Menschenleib abbilden - wir, indem wir den Menschenleib ersetzen� Technik statt Mystik! ” (77)� In spite of his brazenness, Faber still classifies the replacement of the human body through machines as an attempt, grammatically and conceptually comparable to primitive art� He does not claim that this attempt has been or will be successful� But Faber would like to be recognized in his struggle against disorder: “[…] es ist nicht mein Ehrgeiz, ein Erfinder zu sein, aber so viel wie ein Baptist aus Ohio, der sich über die Ingenieure lustig macht, leiste ich auch, ich glaube, was unsereiner leistet, das ist nützlicher […]” (97)� Faber perceives most cultural issues in the same framework� He faults the Mayans for not having invented the wheel and for being wasteful, abandoning their cities instead of developing technology (43 f�)� He claims that the Roman aqueducts would not have been necessary if the Romans had understood the principle of communicating vessels which he has sketched 346 K� Eckhard Kuhn-Osius on his cigarette pack (119) - but this is a diversion after he has found out the identity of Sabeth’s mother� It takes Faber far too long to grasp the option of accepting and making the best of humanity’s limitations� A chief limitation is the human body, whose mortality is clearly suggested through Faber’s various descriptions of his mirror images (11, 98, 170 f�) and his descriptions of Professor O� (102 f�, 193)� In spite of Faber’s euphemisms, it is clear throughout the book that his body is aging, even if he is not as bad off as Professor O� Close to his end, Faber comes to the conclusion, “Überhaupt der ganze Mensch? - als Konstruktion möglich, aber das Material ist verfehlt: Fleisch ist kein Material, sondern ein Fluch” (171)� Faber’s stance towards women is a part of his fear of entropy� At best, women can be a distraction, at worst, they drag him into the life cycle, which he mostly seeks to avoid; it is too closely related to death� As the French-American Marcel remarks, “[…] la mort est femme! […] et […] la terre est femme! ” (69)� Faber’s relationship with Hanna deteriorated after she told him she was pregnant and he talked about “her child” (48)� We do not know details of Faber’s and Hanna’s love life, but after ruminations about the absurdity of human physical love, Faber comes to the conclusion, “Nur mit Hanna ist es nie absurd gewesen” (100, cf� 94)� In his relations with Ivy and Sabeth, Faber styles himself as rather passive: “Jedenfalls war es das Mädchen, das in jener Nacht […] in mein Zimmer kam -” (125, cf� 122)� Faber’s relationship with Ivy remains strangely undetermined concerning her marital and professional status (30, 64 f�, 67 f�)� We do know that Faber feels encroached upon after his assertion on the first page of the novel that he is not the marrying type (7)� Although Faber calls her “ein herzensguter Kerl” (65; cf� 68, 94 - note the masculine noun he uses to refer to her), he dislikes Ivy’s insistent sexuality after his first return to New York (57-68)� He mostly talks about Ivy in terms of a loss of control� “Es kam genau, wie ich’s nicht wollte� […] Ich haßte mich selbst - […] und es ekelte mich ihre Zärtlichkeit, ihre Hand auf meinem Knie […] es war unerträglich - […]” (62, cf� 66 f�)� Later, Faber explains that all women remind him of the clinging plant ivy, whose vines are reminiscent of jungle-like growth (91)� While any entropy upsets Faber, he reserves expressions of disgust for his description of the jungle� Even before he gets to the jungle, his excessive sweating (which controls body heat) makes him almost part of this environment (e�g�, HF 34-38)� There are the ubiquitous black vultures which tear apart all dead animals (first mention 34, last 182)� What Faber sees is not a green, miraculous wilderness, but a constant cycle of decay and (for Faber) senseless growth: “Was mir auf die Nerven ging: Die Molche in jedem Tümpel, in jeder Eintagspfütze ein Gewimmel von Molchen - überhaupt diese Fortpflanzerei überall, es stinkt nach Fruchtbarkeit, nach blühender Verwesung� Wo man hinspuckt, keimt es! ” (51 f�)� Daemon Absconditus: Entropy in Max Frisch’s Homo Faber 347 There is no way that systems can stay in place when the overwhelming natural entropic processes in the jungle create permanent change� It is not very surprising that Faber’s friend Joachim killed himself here, and that later Joachim’s brother falls into an aimless existence, forgetting about “die Zukunft der deutschen Zigarre! ” (168; cf� 15, 42)� The brothers cannot escape from this entropic environment while Faber extricates himself as fast as he can� Ironically, when Faber returns for his second visit after his life has been turned upside down, he is pleased with the town’s apparent lack of entropy: “Das Wiedersehen mit Palenque machte mich geradezu froh, alles unverändert […]” (165)� But the apparent stability in town is countered by the changes in Herbert, who has succumbed to the temptation of jungle life (166)� While the heat of the jungle is the most obvious physical entropic attack on Faber’s corporality, Müller-Salget (103 f�) points to several instances of the opposite: shivering by Faber and Sabeth (“schlottern”), which he attributes not only to the cold, but also to a shudder in facing danger� The conflict between order and chaos, technology and the jungle informs the geographic program of Homo faber� While Faber detests the entropic chaotic growth in the jungle, it is not the only environment inimical to higher life� Faber originally sees energy loss as the chief antagonist of human existence, but he later learns that its opposite, a state of changeless order, is just as inimical to life� Life occurs where order and entropy intersect� The complete order of the two gas-filled chambers of Maxwell’s thought experiment are unsuitable to sustain human life, which is not a closed-off energetic system, but requires energetic interaction between organism and environment, the addition and dispersion of energy� New York stands as the epitome of entropy-free technology� In the early part of the story, Faber’s life in New York is somewhat ambivalent, torn between the relative impersonality of American social relations and the sexuality of Ivy� Faber is friends with Dick, his chess partner, admired and envied as “einer von denen, die uns das Leben retten könnten, ohne daß man deswegen je intimer wird -” (59)� But the distance of American-style friendship upsets Faber (like many German speakers with culture shock)� In his last night before embarking on the boat, a drunk Faber suggests that the American way of life in the 1950s may not be life-sustaining� “In eurer Gesellschaft könnte man sterben, ohne dass ihr es merkt, von Freundschaft keine Spur, […] wozu diese ganze Gesellschaft, wenn einer sterben könnte, ohne daß ihr es merkt -” (67)� The life-negating qualities of New York as seen by Faber become clearer after Faber has returned from Greece� Social life is disjointed with ritualized parties, professing friendship and sociability� The word “üblich,” which has had a reassuring quality throughout most of the book, now connotes insignificance and a stifling lack of 348 K� Eckhard Kuhn-Osius life for the individual (161-63): “Wenn man nicht mehr da ist, wird niemand es bemerken” (163)� The city’s skyscrapers stand like tombstones (162)� New York now is a place where Faber literally cannot find himself at home anywhere; the city remains unperturbed� His apartment is still there, but he doesn’t have a key (162)� His phone number exists, but Faber doesn’t know who the new owner is (163 f�)� His Studebaker is still in the garage, but not accessible� New York, as a “frozen” environment where nothing seems to change, prevails against entropy only as Faber’s shaving controls the growth of his beard or his filming preserves moments of life� They hide entropy or divert attention from it, and thus create only an illusion of stability; Marcel has voiced this early on, “The American Way of Life: Ein Versuch, das Leben zu kosmetisieren” (50)� Faber’s hefty tirades against “America” (and his own past: “Mein Zorn auf mich selbst! ” 176) mostly take aim at the fact that entropy is not overcome, but only glossed over� This motif crops up when Faber scrutinizes the women on board the ship while thinking of Hanna: “Amerikanerinnen, die Geschöpfe der Kosmetik� / Ich wußte bloß: So wird Hanna nie aussehen” (79)� After his last trip to Venezuela, Faber flies via Havana to avoid New York� His anger that people think he is an American (172) triggers awareness and expression of his anger at America (175), although he remains aware of his financial dependence on the US and of the fact that many Cubans dream of emigrating there (175, 179)� Faber comments negatively on American food, Americans’ pale looks, their personality, American conveniences, advertising that hides aging and death, their “obszöne Jugendlichkeit,” etc� (177; diatribe on 172-77)� Faber repeatedly refers to Americans’ vacuum between their loins, but his own attempt at intercourse ends in a “Blamage” (178), which might indicate that he has been more than superficially tainted by “America�” Faber’s stay in Cuba suggests the possibility of life between the two extremes of New York and the jungle, a humane existence in the face of entropy� 8 For the first time in the story, Faber is by himself and he has nothing to do, no project to complete, no party to attend, no friend to visit, no woman to pursue� It is not without irony that the implied author lets Faber develop this positive attitude towards life largely through interactions with pimps and prostitutes� Faber is happy just to be alive and watch things� Faber has ended his decades-long fight against entropy� It is noteworthy that he describes transitory, impressionistic scenes, often connected with light and wind (Geulen 80), unstable and somewhat entropic� Just seeing and experiencing makes him happy� “Ich hatte keinen besonderen Anlaß, glücklich zu sein, ich war es aber� Ich wußte, dass ich alles, was ich sehe, verlassen werde, aber nicht vergessen […]” (HF 180)� He even stops filming (182)� He engages in two expressive activities when he rocks and sings by and for himself (174, 181)� Singing seems to be something he picked up Daemon Absconditus: Entropy in Max Frisch’s Homo Faber 349 from being with Sabeth, who expressed her joy of life that way (152, 191)� These activities do not fight entropy, but accept it� What may have caused Faber to abandon his technology-driven mindset? During his second visit to the jungle, he still felt the need to rebuild Herbert’s car to save him from the entropy of the jungle, although Herbert is disinterested and mocking: “Ohne Nash war Herbert verloren� Ich ließ mich nicht anstecken und arbeitete” (169)� All his work only leads to Herbert and Faber playing mock traffic jam with a propped-up car spinning its wheels, a waste of energy and labor born out of Faber’s desire to maintain order� This jungle episode is followed by Faber’s breakdown in Caracas, which forced him to abandon his work and gave him time to write the report of “Erste Station�” So Faber has just finished his reflections on his life and the events leading to Sabeth’s death (170)� We should notice that in the course of “Erste Station,” Faber’s protestations about the meaning or non-meaning of life have become less and less frequent (his last extended and strident reflection on progress and the need for birth control ends on page 107)� Faber’s monologic disquisitions are replaced by his increasingly dialogical interactions with Sabeth and later Hanna� It seems that completing his decreasingly assertive Bericht readies Faber for Cuba, where he finally sees how life could be lived� He understands that life is fleeting, an entropic process, fighting against which is futile� During his stay in Cuba, Faber for the first time openly mentions feeling sexual desire (173, 175, 177, 178, 181)� But he also mentions for the first time, and brushes off, the possibility of having a serious entropic disease: “Mein Hirngespinst: Magenkrebs” (178)� Entropy as desire and uncontrolled internal growth is catching up with Faber while he chastises Americans for denying it� Faber’s final return to Athens with stopovers in Düsseldorf and Zurich illustrates his development� After his declaration in Cuba that he has stopped filming events of his life (182), he experiences entropy because the film reels of his recent travels, with which he wants to document Joachim’s fate, are in disarray (187)� Faber blames customs inspectors, but also admits that he stopped marking the reels� After Faber-typical attempts to create order by previewing the beginning of each reel, he ultimately just watches a reel showing Sabeth during their travel through France� Faber notices how the mere filmic rendition does not do justice to the reality he experienced� Fighting against the transitoriness of life by filming it is insufficient as the film leaves out many elements of experience (e�g�, temperature, stench [187], but also all emotions)� Every now and then the old Faber comes to the fore, when in viewing the film, he mentions the model year of the car he is driving (the modernist classic Citroën 1957 [189]), or when he comments on the lighting and his camera technique� “Ich habe (endlich! ) die 350 K� Eckhard Kuhn-Osius Kamera weniger hin und her bewegt, dadurch kommen die Bewegungen des Objekts viel stärker” (190)� Faber has learned that his attempts at fighting entropy are a failure� After hearing that Professor O� died, Faber describes his last encounter with him in Zurich a week earlier, when, speaking as someone close to death, the professor considered it a pity that Faber never completed his dissertation on (death-defying? ) Maxwell’s demon (194 f�)� During his last flight, Faber observes a bright, late sunlight on a mountain peak that a mountain climber could never see because at pain of death, he would have had to descend before such light ever became visible� Traveling on the plane enables Faber to see something in nature that would not be accessible otherwise� Faber’s use of technology no longer serves his obsessive fight against entropy, but becomes humanly enriching� Shortly before he lands in Rome, on the last leg of his flight and toward the very end of his typewritten notes, Faber remarks, “[I]ch bin in meinem Leben noch keinem Dämon begegnet, ausgenommen der sog� Maxwell’sche Dämon, der bekanntlich keiner ist” (197)� This may be read as the shortest possible epitaph on his fruitless fight against entropy� Apart from serving as an important motif in much of Faber’s development, the concept of entropy, in a different meaning, plays a role in the structure of the novel as a whole� The term “entropy” has entered communication theory because the statistical distribution of gas molecules at different speeds is similar to the information potential of complex messaging systems� If an information system only has one device (e�g�, a light bulb), which may be on or off, one can distinguish between positive message (bulb on) and negative message (bulb off)� But an apparently negative message (bulb off) could also be the result of a flaw in the system (perhaps the bulb burned out)� To distinguish between messages and failures of the device (so-called “noise”), one needs to create a system with more states� The number of binary steps necessary to define all possible constellations in a communicative system is described as the entropy of the system� The thermal and communicative concepts of entropy are mathematically similar, but communication cannot settle for a probabilistic statistical value telling us the number of equally possible states of a system� In order to create messages, one needs to know which message is intended� “A message selected from a very large number of symbols (among which an astronomical number of combinations may be possible) would consequently be very informative, but would be impossible to transmit because it would require too many binary choices” (Eco, Theory 44)� It becomes necessary to have a code, which reduces the number of possible messages to a manageable size� “The original information diminishes, the possibility of transmitting messages increases […]� The fewer the alterna- Daemon Absconditus: Entropy in Max Frisch’s Homo Faber 351 tives, the easier the communication” (44)� For a simplified example, assume a system containing the letters “eimost” with permission to use e, m, and s twice� In this system, the messages “eeimmosst, itoeemms, iotemems, iotemmes, iotmems,” etc� are all possible, but it becomes quite difficult to remember them or to make sure that they have been transmitted correctly because they are not part of the code of English� In contrast, the message “sometimes” can be immediately recognized as an English word� The code of English does not permit the other combinations, although they are possible based on the information (in terms of information theory) of the system� As a human recipient, I could even make allowance for some misspellings, such as “soemtimes” or “somteimes” because they come close enough to English to be guessed from context� The code adds redundancy to messages by reducing the number of admissible letter combinations and thereby makes the message communicable� Codes in the shape of schemata can also be said to underlie our cognition� We do not perceive isolated sense impressions, but objects of experience which are culturally conditioned� We do not perceive disconnected events in life, but form narratives, which are largely conditioned by cultural codes, but also partly observational� Culturally conditioned codes thus help us organize our perception by accepting certain constellations of perceptions as meaningful while discarding others� The situation becomes more complicated in a text like Homo faber because there are culturally and individually coded connotations potentially evoked by every word as well as by what the words refer to� The difficult issue is describing and justifying the codes we apply to our cognition of life and literature because these codes can never be fully exhausted� Umberto Eco states […] it would then be necessary to admit that any subcode (for example a certain type of connotative association between two elements of two semiotic fields) is a comparatively transitory phenomenon which it would be impossible to establish and describe as a stable structure� […] Moreover the fact that every item of the game can simultaneously maintain relations with many other elements makes it difficult to draw explanatory but simplifying graphs such as a compositional tree� A compositional tree then can be viewed as a purely temporary device posited in order to explain a certain message, a working hypothesis that aims to control the immediate semantic environment of given semantic units� (Eco, Theory 126 f�) 9 Faber tries to encode his experiences in the statistical, probabilistic code of science and engineering and resists other cultural codes� In fact, he stoutly defends himself as an (entropy combating) engineer against the codes of art lovers and culture enthusiasts, stressing that he sees things as they are� The events that befall him are but entropic, i�e�, uncoded, accidental experiences, possible but meaningless� Early in his report he writes, “Ich brauche, um das 352 K� Eckhard Kuhn-Osius Unwahrscheinliche als Erfahrungstatsache gelten zu lassen, keinerlei Mystik; Mathematik genügt mir” (22)� But before applying mathematics, one has to make sure that the variables one enters into a calculation are right� And these variables are strongly influenced by the cultural code one applies to the myriad facts of reality� Faber’s praise of the non-emotional calculations of the computer (75) neglects the necessary coding of events before the calculation can begin� Faber’s misapplication of variables is most striking when he calculates that he cannot be Sabeth’s father: “[…] ich legte mir die Daten zurecht, bis die Rechnung wirklich stimmte, die Rechnung als solche” (121)� Faber’s correct calculation based on insufficient input becomes deadly, when he tells doctors in Athens that Sabeth was bitten by a snake, but forgets to mention her fall from a small incline� Faber does the right thing by bringing Sabeth to the Athens hospital where she is treated for snake bite, but the overlooked condition of a head injury kills Sabeth� Faber’s heroic efforts to save his daughter were based on incomplete premises and thus had to fail� The treatment did not cover the entropy of the situation, as Sabeth’s symptoms fit both a snake bite and a skull fracture� The signals of reality and nature cannot be read when the wrong code is applied� The same lack of code application glaringly underlies the progress of Faber’s stomach cancer� In retrospect, the signs clearly point towards the disease, but Faber considers them as entropic signals, as noise dependent on situational circumstances, which does not congeal into a coded signal� The theme of encoding reality is made explicit in the novel in Faber and Sabeth’s game of images which they play during their last day together (150-52)� They compete playfully in finding different similes for what they perceive� For example, Sabeth likens the braying of a donkey to someone practicing the cello while Faber hears unlubricated brakes; Faber likens the surf on the shore to the foam of beer, while Sabeth compares it to a frill (“Rüsche,” 152)� Sabeth often prevails in this game: “Sabeth weiß fast immer etwas” (152)� Faber resurrects this game and plays it by himself during his final flight across the Alps, assigning various similes to the same observation (195 f�)� He learns to recode his experience in various ways and practices encoding the world from more than one perspective� Not only has Faber given up his futile fight against entropy, but he has augmented his outlook on life� This brings us back to the beginning of this essay� The failure of Faber’s technically encoded statistical world view, which is partly the result of a sleight of hand by the real author Max Frisch, is obvious and explicit� The collapse of Faber’s life after enduring an unbelievable number of coincidences cannot be read as a corroboration of his views� Instead, the implied author goads the reader into understanding events in terms of fate, no matter the declarations of the explicit narrator� The implied author’s liberally dropped hints, allusions Daemon Absconditus: Entropy in Max Frisch’s Homo Faber 353 to classical and pop-cultural traditions, his evocations of “Super Constellation,” “Hermes Baby,” or the snake bite in a scene reminiscent of paradise gone bad - all these are never put to the test� The implied author tempts the reader into employing the same type of simplistic coding mechanisms that Faber uses, but from the opposite end, by dropping hints of congruence between notions of myth and fate with the modern story� Instead of falling into the trap of adducing our own images prematurely, we should understand informational entropy as a structuring principle of the book� The fragments of classical mythology or of technological details never congeal into a clear message� As readers, we are dealing with an entropic process which refuses to fall into a familiar coded pattern� The message is entropic, although the implied author plays with us, inviting us to be as myopic and self-righteous as Walter Faber is, but from a different point of view� If we are not careful, all we would do is create an insufficient image of Walter Faber and his world, just as he did� Art and Nature remain hard to read and nature is unforgiving� Notes 1 All quotations from Homo faber are identified by the initials “HF” and the page number in the text� Where the novel is obvious as a source, only page numbers are provided� 2 The novel has also found considerable scholarly attention� Lubich lists 37 scholarly publications that comment on or exclusively deal with Homo faber by 1990, while Walter Schmitz’s annotated edition of the work (1998) already lists over 60 such works� Homo faber has also occasioned the publication of various study guides and handbooks for high school students; the extensive Wikipedia entry on Homo faber (close to 10,000 words) lists eight such Lektürehilfen, and there is a plethora of internet resources� 3 We do not know for whom Faber writes the “Bericht�” The way in which he introduces Hanna and talks about her in the third person makes it impossible that she should have been its recipient� It is not an act of communication, but of self-exploration� In that sense, the book has an internal contradiction, which Frisch himself acknowledged: A writer assumes that most people have an urge “sich durch Sprache zu manifestieren,” but an engineer might not feel that the same way (quoted from Schmitz 1977, 16)� 4 In his essay “Öffentlichkeit als Partner” (1958), Frisch postulates that the first thing a writer has to invent is his/ her reader, a choice which determines what needs to be said in the text and what can be presumed to be agreed upon� “Der erste schöpferische Akt, den der Schriftsteller zu leisten hat, ist die Erfindung seines Lesers� […] Was der Schriftsteller sich unter sei- 354 K� Eckhard Kuhn-Osius nem Leser vorstellt, […] dies ist für den Schriftsteller eine Frage auf Gedeih und Verderb, eine Ehe-Frage mehr als eine Talent-Frage” (Frisch 1976, 251)� Conversely, the reader invents a narrator who shares his world knowledge and serves as a foil for his/ her understanding� The interplay of the implied author and the implied reader is mostly a reformulation of the old issue of the hermeneutic circle� 5 Frisch himself claimed that he had no intricate mythical knowledge, but he found Blair’s Demeter-Koré myth to be more convincing as a mythical motif than the Oedipus myth (Schmitz 1998, 269)� 6 The description of Maxwell’s demon is mostly based on general knowledge� Details can be found in the articles by Horn (from a more literary perspective), as well as Bennett and Norton� The latter authors have each published several articles on the topic, but any encyclopedia article on Maxwell’s demon may also serve as an introduction� 7 Leber posits Faber as almost having created a death-eliminating system which, in the jungle, is destroyed by an “attack” of entropy inside and outside of Faber’s body� Leber perceives “[…] das Bild einer Totalentropie […], in die der Techniker unversehens geraten ist […]� Einbezogen in diesen Prozeß gegenseitiger Durchdringung von Erde, Wasser, Luft und Wärme sind auch die entkleideten Körper von Faber und Marcel� Es ist, als ob sie in ihrem Schwitzen selbst danach strebten, in den allgemeinen Auflösungsprozeß einzugehen” (126)� Leber argues that Faber should have realized that the system of modern technology is no match for reality� Leber claims, “[…] daß dieselbe Technik ab einem bestimmten Punkt - auch dies analog dem göttlichen Dämon der griechischen Tragödie - die von ihr geweckten Erwartungen selbst wieder destruiert” (135)� According to him, Faber is too slow to understand the death orientation of a world where Maxwell’s demon does not exist� Horn, too, sees Faber indulging in a faulty faith in technology’s victory over entropy� Recognition of the inescapability of entropy is the primary development Faber undergoes� “[W]as Faber nicht wissen will, ist, daß alles Leben in den Tod geht” ( 62)� After a Freud-inspired interpretation of Faber’s and Sabeth’s behaviors, Horn summarizes: “[Faber] begreift endlich, daß weder physikalisch (Maxwellscher Dämon), noch mythisch (die Verjüngung durch die Liebe zur Tochter) die anthropologische Zeit umgekehrt werden kann […]� Der Traum von der Umkehrung der Entropie ist ausgeträumt” (67 f�)� 8 It should be noted that Faber is clearly beholden to sexist, cultural and racial stereotypes of the 1950s which are beyond the scope of this paper� The happy life of prerevolutionary Cubans (or other inhabitants of the Caribbean) is Daemon Absconditus: Entropy in Max Frisch’s Homo Faber 355 purely a projection of European and White American dreams, wishes, and stereotypes on cultural and racial ‘others’ and historically goes back at least to the notion of the ‘noble savage’ of the 18th century� 9 The description of semiotic processes presented here is based on general reading, but mostly on Umberto Eco’s magisterial Einführung in die Semiotik� The German book is a translation and further development of ideas originally published in Italian� The English version of this book is yet another rewrite after Eco was unhappy with various translation attempts� I present the German version here because I think it makes the point more clearly� “[…] daß der Code vermutlich weder eine natürliche Bedingung des Globalen Semantischen Universums ist, noch eine Struktur, die fest und unverrückbar dem Komplex von Bindungen und Verzweigungen zugrundeliegt, der das Funktionieren jeder Zeichenassoziierung begründet� […] Es muß also ein methodologisches Prinzip der semiotischen Forschung sein, daß das Entwerfen von semantischen Feldern und Achsen und die Beschreibung von Codes als gegenwärtig funktionierend fast immer nur bei Gelegenheit der Kommunikationsumstände einer bestimmten Botschaft durchgeführt werden können� […] Sobald man die Möglichkeit eines Codes behauptet, erkennt man deren ständige Partialität und Revidierbarkeit an; und man muß zugeben, daß sich diese Semiotik nur dann konstituieren kann, wenn die Existenz einer Botschaft sie als ihre Erklärungsbedingung postuliert�” (Eco, Einführung 131 f�; italics from the original are not indicated) The temporary nature of secondary codes is yet another reformulation of the issue of the hermeneutic circle� Cf� note 3 above� In the absence of any clear point of reference beyond Faber’s diligently undermined descriptions, the possible codes for Homo faber are especially entropic� Works Cited Bennett, Charles H� “Demons, Engines and the Second Law�” Scientific American 257�5 (1987): 108-16� Blair, Rhonda L� “Homo Faber, Homo Ludens, and the Demeter-Kore Motif�” Germanic Review 51 (1981): 140-50� Eco, Umberto� Einführung in die Semiotik. Trans� Jürgen Trabant� Munich: Fink, 1972� —� A Theory of Semiotics� Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1976� “Frisch aus der Asche�” NZZ 12 Dec� 2004� Web� 6� Jan 2020� Frisch, Max� Homo faber: Ein Bericht. Gesammelte Werke in zeitlicher Folge 1957-1963� Ed� Hans Mayer and Walter Schmitz� Vol� IV, 1� Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1976� —� “Öffentlichkeit als Partner�” Gesammelte Werke in zeitlicher Folge 1957-1963� Ed� Hans Mayer and Walter Schmitz� Vol� IV, 1� Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1976� 244-52� 356 K� Eckhard Kuhn-Osius Geulen, Hans� Max Frischs “Homo Faber”: Studien und Interpretationen� Berlin: De Gruyter, 1965� Günther, Klaus� “Poetische Gerechtigkeit in Recht und Literatur - Max Frischs Homo Faber�” Zeitschrift für Internationale Strafrechtsdogmatik 1 (2010): 8-19� Horn, Peter� “Der Maxwell’sche Dämon und die Entropie der Liebe� Zu Max Frischs ‘Homo Faber’�” Zwischen den Wissenschaften. Beiträge zur deutschen Literaturgeschichte� Festschrift für Bernhard Gajek zum 65� Geburtstag� Ed� Gerhard Hahn and Ernst Weber� Regensburg: Pustet, 1994� 49-69� Jurgensen, Manfred� Max Frisch, die Romane: Interpretationen� Bern: Francke, 1972� Latta, Alan D� “The Nature and Variety of Signifying Elements in Max Frisch’s Novel Homo faber: An Approach�” Germanic Review 64�4 (1989): 146-57� Leber, Manfred� Vom modernen Roman zur antiken Tragödie: Interpretationen von Max Frischs “Homo Faber.” Berlin/ New York: De Gruyter, 1990� Lubich, Frederik A� Max Frisch: “Stiller”, “Homo faber” und “Mein Name sei Gantenbein.” Munich: Fink, 1990� Müller-Salget, Klaus� “Max Frisch: Homo faber. Ein Bericht�” Interpretationen: Romane des 20. Jahrhunderts. Vol� 2� Stuttgart: Reclam, 1993� 95-119� Norton, John D� “Maxwell's Demon Does Not Compute�” Physical Perspectives on Computation, Computational Perspectives on Physics. Ed� Michael E� Cuffaro and Samuel C� Fletcher� Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP� 2018� 240-56� Pütz, Peter� “Das Übliche und das Plötzliche� Über Technik und Zufall im Homo Faber�” Frischs Homo faber: Materialien� Ed� Walter Schmitz� Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1983� 133-41� Schmitz, Walter� “Kommentar�” Max Frisch. Homo faber: Ein Bericht� Mit einem Kommentar von Walter Schmitz. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp� 1998� 223-301� —. Max Frisch. Homo faber: Materialien, Kommentar� Reihe Hanser� Literatur-Kommentare� Vol� 5� Munich: Hanser, 1977� Würker, Achim� Technik als Abwehr. Die unbewußten Lebensentwürfe in Max Frischs Homo faber. Frankfurt am Main: Nexus, 1991� 69-77�