The Sleepwalkers (Broch)
Encyclopedia
The Sleepwalkers is a novel
(or a novel trilogy) by the Austria
n novelist and essayist Hermann Broch
. It is considered, along with Robert Musil
´s The Man Without Qualities
and Thomas Mann
´s The Magic Mountain
, to be a masterpiece of modern German prose of the first half of the 20th century.
In creating the plot of the book, Broch was inspired by his associates and friends for several characters and events, e.g. his mistress and confidante, the Viennese journalist Ea von Allesch gave him the idea of the vaudeville
artist Ilona.
In the variety of styles and stories Broch tried to represent the complexity of the world, much as, for example, James Joyce
did in Ulysses
.
At the time of its appearance, The Sleepwalkers was highly esteemed by critics including Elias Canetti
. Nowadays The Sleepwalkers and other novels by Broch belong to the lesser-known part of the Central European literary legacy.
and a Prussia
n province in 1888 and is a parody of 19th century literary realism
. The main character, Prussian aristocrat and military officer Joachim von Pasenow, balances between romantic devotion to a Czech prostitute Ruzena (Rose) Hruska and a neighbor, Elisabeth von Baddensen, who is his social equal. In his secret liaison with Ruzena he finds emotional and sexual fulfilment while courting a delicate and distant young lady. In the ocean of doubts and hesitation, he finds refuge in rationality, order and prejudice (represented by the theme of a military uniform) which lead him into a loveless marriage with Elisabeth.
Almost all the decisions and actions of Joachim, Ruzena and Elisabeth are inspired and controlled by his diabolical friend, the rich merchant Eduard von Bertrand whom, for his evident lack of comprehension for old values, Joachim never trusts fully.
and Mannheim
in 1903. Instead of the upper crust, the reader finds a working-class and low bourgeoisie setting. Having left his promising career as an accountant and his old friends, including social democrat Geyring and inn-keeper Gertrud Hentjen, the book-keeper August Esch starts a new life as a circus manager and starts up a women's fights production. As the circus production does not satisfy him he aspires to leave Germany for the USA and take Hentjen with him.
Like Joachim in the first part, Esch feels insecure in the world of decaying old values (here the values of business and middle-class life) and tries to find a guilty party, first in his former superior, then in unfeeling industrialist Bertrand (Eduard von Bertrand from the first part), who not only exploits his employees but is a homosexual. In fury, Esch decides to murder Bertrand but does not achieve his goal. His dream of America is destroyed when his associate runs away with all his money. Finally Esch marries Hentjen and moves to Luxemburg, where he gets an even more prestiguous job as a bookkeeper.
. The well-ordered way of their lives is disrupted as deserter Huguenau arrives in town and pretends to be a businessman and publisher. While Esch fulfills himself through a sect, Huguenau cheats him out of his newspaper and attempts to insinuate himself into the favour of Major von Pasenow, the military commandant of the town.
The third novel contains parallel stories of Hanna Wendling, a young woman alienated from her family; of shell-shocked and mutilated soldiers and field hospital nurses; and that of a Salvation Army
girl in Berlin. The plot of each chapter determines the genre used (occasional verse for the story of a Salvation Army girl, journalistic style of the hospital chapters, etc.).
The outstanding element of the third novel is the essay titled The Disintegration of Values. While prosaic or balladic chapters refer to fictional characters and their attitudes to the community and ideas of their social role, the essay deals with the transformation of values in society theoretically.
The finale takes place during the last days of the war; in the total chaos Huguenau murders Esch and violates his wife, then legally leaves the town and soon becomes a respectable businessman in Lorraine.
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.
The Sleepwalkers is among the Czech-French novelist Milan Kundera´s
favorite novels. He dedicated a chapter of his essay The Art of the Novel (L´Art du roman) to interpreting the novel, upon which he asks his companion, perhaps with an ironic tone: "Who is reading The Sleepwalkers?".
The novel is also mentioned in Michelangelo Antonioni
's La notte
where the protagonist played by Marcello Mastroianni
(within the film a respected novelist) finds the book lying around the mansion where a party is being held.
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
(or a novel trilogy) by the Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
n novelist and essayist Hermann Broch
Hermann Broch
Hermann Broch was a 20th century Austrian writer, considered one of the major Modernists.-Life:Broch was born in Vienna to a prosperous Jewish family and worked for some time in his family's factory, though he maintained his literary interests privately...
. It is considered, along with Robert Musil
Robert Musil
Robert Musil was an Austrian writer. His unfinished long novel The Man Without Qualities is generally considered to be one of the most important modernist novels...
´s The Man Without Qualities
The Man Without Qualities
The Man Without Qualities is an unfinished novel in three books by the Austrian writer Robert Musil....
and Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual...
´s The Magic Mountain
The Magic Mountain
The Magic Mountain is a novel by Thomas Mann, first published in November 1924. It is widely considered to be one of the most influential works of 20th century German literature....
, to be a masterpiece of modern German prose of the first half of the 20th century.
History
Since his early forties Broch had devoted himself to writing, and The Sleepwalkers, composed between 1928 and 1932, was his literary début. Before that he had published only essays.In creating the plot of the book, Broch was inspired by his associates and friends for several characters and events, e.g. his mistress and confidante, the Viennese journalist Ea von Allesch gave him the idea of the vaudeville
Vaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
artist Ilona.
In the variety of styles and stories Broch tried to represent the complexity of the world, much as, for example, James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
did in Ulysses
Ulysses (novel)
Ulysses is a novel by the Irish author James Joyce. It was first serialised in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, and then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, in Paris. One of the most important works of Modernist literature,...
.
At the time of its appearance, The Sleepwalkers was highly esteemed by critics including Elias Canetti
Elias Canetti
Elias Canetti was a Bulgarian-born modernist novelist, playwright, memoirist, and non-fiction writer. He wrote in German and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1981, "for writings marked by a broad outlook, a wealth of ideas and artistic power".-Life:...
. Nowadays The Sleepwalkers and other novels by Broch belong to the lesser-known part of the Central European literary legacy.
Plot summary
The novel contains three parts, in fact three novels in one, which differ from each other in style, time and place of action, characters and atmosphere.Pasenow or The Romantic
The first part of the trilogy takes place in BerlinBerlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
and a Prussia
Prussia
Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...
n province in 1888 and is a parody of 19th century literary realism
Literary realism
Literary realism most often refers to the trend, beginning with certain works of nineteenth-century French literature and extending to late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century authors in various countries, towards depictions of contemporary life and society "as they were." In the spirit of...
. The main character, Prussian aristocrat and military officer Joachim von Pasenow, balances between romantic devotion to a Czech prostitute Ruzena (Rose) Hruska and a neighbor, Elisabeth von Baddensen, who is his social equal. In his secret liaison with Ruzena he finds emotional and sexual fulfilment while courting a delicate and distant young lady. In the ocean of doubts and hesitation, he finds refuge in rationality, order and prejudice (represented by the theme of a military uniform) which lead him into a loveless marriage with Elisabeth.
Almost all the decisions and actions of Joachim, Ruzena and Elisabeth are inspired and controlled by his diabolical friend, the rich merchant Eduard von Bertrand whom, for his evident lack of comprehension for old values, Joachim never trusts fully.
Esch or The Anarchist
The second part, a pastiche of an expressionistic prose, is situated in CologneCologne
Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
and Mannheim
Mannheim
Mannheim is a city in southwestern Germany. With about 315,000 inhabitants, Mannheim is the second-largest city in the Bundesland of Baden-Württemberg, following the capital city of Stuttgart....
in 1903. Instead of the upper crust, the reader finds a working-class and low bourgeoisie setting. Having left his promising career as an accountant and his old friends, including social democrat Geyring and inn-keeper Gertrud Hentjen, the book-keeper August Esch starts a new life as a circus manager and starts up a women's fights production. As the circus production does not satisfy him he aspires to leave Germany for the USA and take Hentjen with him.
Like Joachim in the first part, Esch feels insecure in the world of decaying old values (here the values of business and middle-class life) and tries to find a guilty party, first in his former superior, then in unfeeling industrialist Bertrand (Eduard von Bertrand from the first part), who not only exploits his employees but is a homosexual. In fury, Esch decides to murder Bertrand but does not achieve his goal. His dream of America is destroyed when his associate runs away with all his money. Finally Esch marries Hentjen and moves to Luxemburg, where he gets an even more prestiguous job as a bookkeeper.
Huguenau or The Realist
The last part focuses on several characters (including Joachim von Pasenow, Esch and his wife Gertrud) in a little town on the Mosel River during the last year of World War IWorld War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. The well-ordered way of their lives is disrupted as deserter Huguenau arrives in town and pretends to be a businessman and publisher. While Esch fulfills himself through a sect, Huguenau cheats him out of his newspaper and attempts to insinuate himself into the favour of Major von Pasenow, the military commandant of the town.
The third novel contains parallel stories of Hanna Wendling, a young woman alienated from her family; of shell-shocked and mutilated soldiers and field hospital nurses; and that of a Salvation Army
Salvation Army
The Salvation Army is a Protestant Christian church known for its thrift stores and charity work. It is an international movement that currently works in over a hundred countries....
girl in Berlin. The plot of each chapter determines the genre used (occasional verse for the story of a Salvation Army girl, journalistic style of the hospital chapters, etc.).
The outstanding element of the third novel is the essay titled The Disintegration of Values. While prosaic or balladic chapters refer to fictional characters and their attitudes to the community and ideas of their social role, the essay deals with the transformation of values in society theoretically.
The finale takes place during the last days of the war; in the total chaos Huguenau murders Esch and violates his wife, then legally leaves the town and soon becomes a respectable businessman in Lorraine.
The disintegration of values
In the novel Broch explains the decline of values beginning with Joachim's hesitation between a lower-class mistress and a noble fiancée. 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.
Further information
Broch often criticised the era of 1880 until 1918. He found another chance to do so in his book of essays Hofmannsthal and His Time (Hofmannsthal und seine Zeit) criticising fin-de-siecle culture in Vienna which he felt was represented by kitsch and fussiness. He created his own term, "the gay apocalypse", to describe this period.The Sleepwalkers is among the Czech-French novelist Milan Kundera´s
Milan Kundera
Milan Kundera , born 1 April 1929, is a writer of Czech origin who has lived in exile in France since 1975, where he became a naturalized citizen in 1981. He is best known as the author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, and The Joke. Kundera has written in...
favorite novels. He dedicated a chapter of his essay The Art of the Novel (L´Art du roman) to interpreting the novel, upon which he asks his companion, perhaps with an ironic tone: "Who is reading The Sleepwalkers?".
The novel is also mentioned in Michelangelo Antonioni
Michelangelo Antonioni
Michelangelo Antonioni, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI was an Italian modernist film director, screenwriter, editor and short story writer.- Personal life :...
's La notte
La Notte
La Notte is a 1961 Italian film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. It is considered the central film of a trilogy beginning with L'avventura and ending with L'Eclisse.- Plot :...
where the protagonist played by Marcello Mastroianni
Marcello Mastroianni
Marcello Vincenzo Domenico Mastroianni, Knight Grand Cross was an Italian film actor. His honours included British Film Academy Awards, Best Actor awards at the Cannes Film Festival and two Golden Globe Awards.- Personal life :...
(within the film a respected novelist) finds the book lying around the mansion where a party is being held.