Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Editor's Preface
- Introduction: Broch, Our Contemporary
- I. Hermann Broch: The Critic
- II. Hermann Broch: The Novelist and Dramatist
- Inscriptions of Power: Broch's Narratives of History in Die Schlafwandler
- The German Colonial Aftermath: Broch's 1903. Esch oder die Anarchie
- Neither Sane nor Insane: Ernst Kretschmer's Influence on Broch's Early Novels
- Non-Contemporaneity of the Contemporaneous: Broch's Novel Die Verzauberung
- “Great Theater” and “Soap Bubbles”: Broch the Dramatist
- A Farewell to Art: Poetic Reflection in Broch's Der Tod des Vergil
- Poetry as Perjury: The End of Art in Broch's Der Tod des Vergil and Celan's Atemwende
- “Beyond Words”: The Translation of Broch's Der Tod des Vergil by Jean Starr Untermeyer
- Between Guilt and Fall: Broch's Die Schuldlosen
- Broch Reception in Japan: Shin'ichiro Nakamura and Die Schuldlosen
- Notes on the Contributors
- Index of Broch's Works
- Index of Names
Inscriptions of Power: Broch's Narratives of History in Die Schlafwandler
from II. Hermann Broch: The Novelist and Dramatist
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Editor's Preface
- Introduction: Broch, Our Contemporary
- I. Hermann Broch: The Critic
- II. Hermann Broch: The Novelist and Dramatist
- Inscriptions of Power: Broch's Narratives of History in Die Schlafwandler
- The German Colonial Aftermath: Broch's 1903. Esch oder die Anarchie
- Neither Sane nor Insane: Ernst Kretschmer's Influence on Broch's Early Novels
- Non-Contemporaneity of the Contemporaneous: Broch's Novel Die Verzauberung
- “Great Theater” and “Soap Bubbles”: Broch the Dramatist
- A Farewell to Art: Poetic Reflection in Broch's Der Tod des Vergil
- Poetry as Perjury: The End of Art in Broch's Der Tod des Vergil and Celan's Atemwende
- “Beyond Words”: The Translation of Broch's Der Tod des Vergil by Jean Starr Untermeyer
- Between Guilt and Fall: Broch's Die Schuldlosen
- Broch Reception in Japan: Shin'ichiro Nakamura and Die Schuldlosen
- Notes on the Contributors
- Index of Broch's Works
- Index of Names
Summary
IN PREPARING THIS ESSAY I discovered that rereading Hermann Broch's Die Schlafwandler after having been away from it for several years is like taking a literary Rorschach test. You discover what is really on your own mind at the moment of critical reception. I was very impressed, for example, with how cleverly Broch had anticipated the business metaphors and practices that would dominate every part of our lives — and perhaps most annoyingly our academic lives — over the past decade. I was convinced that Broch had understood resource-centered management and its ruthless and dehumanizing consequences long before it debilitated a number of American universities in the 1980s and 90s. I was sure that Broch had foreseen the fact that business models and management schools would monopolize university life — and that we would end up with a Harvard MBA as our president.
But I then recalled that every time I had read Broch's trilogy, I was equally impressed with his prescience. When I first encountered the “Huguenau” section twenty-eight years ago, I presumed that Broch had predicted Adolf Hitler and had described what facilitated his rise to power. When I taught the book ten years ago, I would have sworn he had foreknown the philosophical positions of post-structuralism and deconstruction. Five years ago, I was certain that Broch had scooped both Hayden White and Jean-Francois Lyotard. Strangely enough, despite being painfully and self-consciously aware of what we might term the “prophetic fallacy,” I am not sure these readings of Broch as seer of the Twentieth Century are that far afield.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Hermann Broch, Visionary in ExileThe 2001 Yale Symposium, pp. 107 - 124Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2003