Hermann Broch (1886–1951)

There are books weirder than The Sleepwalkers, but none that I know wear such weirdness so lightly. The experiments in structure and point-of-view you find throughout are hardly experimental—not precious, I mean, or flashy—but the logical outcome of what Broch had to say. That doesn’t mean The Sleepwalkers is an easy read. Far from it. But the story it tells of the spiritual dissolution of the German Empire, through the intersecting lives of three terrifying yet ordinary men, has no show more match in intimacy or panoramic scope. show less

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 show more 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. show less

Hermann Broch was fifty-one years old in 1937 when he began to write The Death of Virgil. In doing this he was adhering to certain principles that he had outlined in an essay, "Joyce and the Present Age", written in the previous year. In this essay he argued that "the work of art, the "universal work of art" becomes the mirror of the Zeitgeist"; that being the totality of the historic reality of the present age. This totality is reflected in great works of art like Faust and the late works show more of Beethoven. Reaching his fiftieth year was significant for Broch as a time that would allow him to achieve this sort of significance in his own writing. The work known as The Death of Virgil would be his "great work of art".

With the use of third person narrative that often seems like a "stream of consciousness" Hermann Broch is able to put the reader inside the head of Virgil for much of the book. From the opening pages we meet a poet/artist Virgil who is on the edge of life in several different respects. The edge between water and land is explored as Virgil's ship, one among the parade of ships escorting Augustus back to the port of Brundisium in Roman Italy, sails toward land on the first page of the novel.

"as the sunny yet deathly loneliness of the sea changed with the peaceful stir of friendly human activity where the channel, softly enhanced by the proximity of human life and human living, was populated by all sorts of craft". (p 11)

The sunny sea is seen as also deathly in its loneliness. This signals another edge that will be important throughout the novel as Virgil in his illness hovers between life and death. Further there is the personal and historical background with the tension between Virgil and Augustus mirroring that of Athens and Rome. Even though Virgil dearly loved the life of study and thought in Athens he was torn by his memories of home as he arrived in Brundisium:

"lifted up in the breath of the immutable coolness, borne forward to seas so enigmatic and unknown that it was like a homecoming, for wave upon wave of the great planes through which his keel had already furrowed, wave-planes of memory, wave-planes of seas, they had not become transparent, nothing in them had divulged itself to him, only the enigma remained, and filled with the enigma of the past overflowed its shores and reached into the present, so that in the midst of the resinous torch-smoke, in the midst of the brooding city fumes, , , how they all lay behind him, about him, within him, how entirely they were his own," (p 31)

Throughout the beginning of the novel, a section titled "Water--The Arrival", Virgil is filled with doubts. He is nearing the end of his life with a feeling that "it was time itself that called down scorn upon him, the unalterable flood of time with its manifold voices," and he may not be able to escape his fate. But what was that fate and why was it important to him as creator? This is something that he is unsure of even to the point of asking himself why he was writing this book (The Aeneid which is always by his side).

"Nothing availed the poet, he could right no wrongs; he is heeded only if he extols the world, never if he portrays it as it is. Only falsehood wins renown, not understanding! And could one assume that the Aeneid would be vouchsafed another or better influence?" (p 15)

His own Aeneid as quoted epigraphically by Broch suggests that Virgil is "exiled by fate" just as his creation, Aeneas, was. Is that the fate of all poets? Must they be exiled by their fate to become an artist of this world? Perhaps the final three sections of The Death of Virgil will suggest answers to these and other questions. show less

I could not have finished The Sleepwalkers without the able assistance of Amazon reviewers. I assumed that this would be a novel similar to Embers or The Radetzky March. I could not have been more wrong. This is a very complex novel that can be read on many levels, philosophical, moral, and psychological. Regardless of which level you read, The Sleepwalkers is not a novel to take or read lightly. It requires great concentration and will inspire much reverie about modern life, values, and show more philosophy.

The Sleepwalkers is a trilogy taking place in Prussia and Germany, starting in 1888 and ending in 1918. The first of the trilogy, The Romantic, takes place in 1888 and is about a Prussian aristocrat who adheres to the strict moral code of his forebears, leading to a loveless marriage that his family desires him to make. The second of the trilogy, The Anarchist, involves a bookkeeper struggling to find his place in Cologne and Mannheim in 1903. These two parts are fairly straightforward to read.

The final part of the trilogy, The Realist, is longer and more difficult to read. Taking place in the final year of the First World War, it is a combination of five parts. The most straightforward part concerns an army deserter who settles in a German small town and insinuates himself into their society. He joins The Romantic, now a much older commander, brought forth from retirement to become Town Commandant, and The Anarchist, who has become editor of the local paper. Other fairly straightforward parts involve patients at the town’s hospital and an alienated young woman whose husband is away at the war. The final two parts involve a character who has appeared in the other parts of the trilogy, Bertrand, who apparently represented the author himself. One part is Bertrand’s journal, relating to his relationships to the Jewish community and a young woman in the Salvation Army. The last part is Bertrand’s essay titled “The Disintegration of Values”. Bertrand’s essay is actually the point of the novel as a whole, and is integrated to correspond to various parts of the plot. However, it is very intense and philosophical.

I recommend this book to those who want to read a complex, well-written, involving novel interspersed with profound philosophy. If you are looking for a quick read, this is not the novel for you. Although I’ll probably never re-read the novel as a whole, I will read “The Disintegration of Values” again often. show less