This is my second reading of this masterpiece. I continue to be amazed at how these novels transition from romantic nostalgia to deep philosophical modernism. With Broch, one reaches the boundary of what can be done with literary fiction. ( )

Ok, commentiamo su I sonnambuli... (E chi sono io per discettare su cotanto libro?)

Si incomincia col sorriso, quasi a ritmo di walzer.
La prosa di Broch massaggia le celluline grigie scorrendo sulla pagina tersa, nitida (chiedo umilmente scusa se, per rendere l'idea, sotto sforzo, dovessi esagerare con le castronerie) ma poi il magnetismo e la tensione aumentano.
Gravitano, eterodiretti, come sonnambuli, i personaggi e, come in un vortice, la pagina cattura anche noi lettori.
Il peso specifico delle ultime pagine del terzo romanzo della trilogia è più alto del piombo (l'allegoria e il simbolismo che trovavano spazio nelle prime due parti ormai vengono messe da parte e ci troviamo davanti pagine di filosofia pura con qualche accenno e qualche rimando alle vicende precedentemente narrate).

E' una lettura che lascia il segno. Una bella esperienza.
Mi taccio. ( )

3.75. I really loved the first book of the trilogy, found the second OK, and then felt as if the third degenerated into something I couldn't put my finger on– but maybe that last development was exactly what the author had in mind. ( )

The Sleepwalkers is a novel in the form of a trilogy of novels set in Germany at different times, The Romantic (1888), The Anarchist (1903) and The Realist (1918), introducing in each some additional characters and retaining the previous, now older, characters. At its high points, it was brilliant. At many other points it was a bit flat and hollow.

From the beginning of The Romantic, Broch’s description of a Prussian aristocrat and his particular style of walking really wowed me. But as the book went on, the whole left me unmoved and it never reached its full potential. In The Anarchist, Broch has a great set up: a disgruntled book keeper who leaves that world for the world of an entertainment promoter; his idea – lady wrestlers! However, it never reached its full potential and I was unmoved, despite many fine chapters and passages and a few big ideas.

The final novel, The Realist, was outstanding and brought to fullness the themes and ideas Broch had only barely explored in the prior novels. Many interesting characters are set in motion in a setting that naturally brings to the fore their strengths and weaknesses and a clash of values. The style varies depending on the character and it is always well wrought. Readers of William Vollmann will appreciate the similarities between the form of The Realist and Vollman’s best: radically subjective viewpoints of each character, alternating with sequences in which the narrator narrates his own experiences and thoughts in lyrical or philosophical fashion with the narration relating, sometimes obliquely, sometimes more directly, to the events in the story. ( )

This is the epitome of the "philosophical" novel. In the novel Broch explains the decline of values beginning with Joachim von Pasenow's hesitation between a lower-class mistress and a noble fiance in the first part. The story ends in Joachim's wedding night when both he and Elisabeth are afraid of a possible physical act of love and they finally find deliverance in his falling asleep.
Pasenow is sure of his virtues and their meaning. Esch too knows about such virtues as justice or fidelity but ignores their substance; that is why he can be both faithful and unfaithful, and can think of murder or denunciation to find their sense.
Amoral Huguenau's only criterion is profit and he follows this maxim in all his actions. He swindles and murders without remorse and his dealings bring him finally to the zero point of values, a state when old values have disappeared and the new ones have not been created. This is a massive book that has had an impact on artists as disparate as Milan Kundera and Michelangelo Antonioni. ( )