Despite half a century’s engagement with literature, Hermann Broch (1886-1951) was completely new to me.

Between 1931 and 1932 he published a trilogy of self-contained novels, collectively called ‘The Sleepwalkers’.

Together they span a period of thirty years, set in 1888, 1903 and 1918 respectively. Each is intended to capture the zeitgeist: in 1888 this is labelled ‘romanticism’; in 1903, ‘anarchy’; and in 1918, ‘realism’.

I read the first novel, ‘The Romantic’ in the English translation by Willa and Edwin Muir.

Joachim von Pasenow is the stereotypical ‘spare’. His elderly father oversees the family’s country estate, expecting to be succeeded by Joachim’s elder brother, Helmuth. Joachim has been sent to join the army as a young cadet.

As the novel opens, he is increasingly confident in his role as a junior officer, stationed in Berlin. He takes as his mistress, Ruzena, a pretty Bohemian girl of easy virtue, escaping his sensitive, repressed nature through an intensely physical affair.

But his enjoyment is cut short, for Helmuth is killed in a duel, sending his father into a physical and mental decline. Joachim is expected to leave the army, inherit the family estate and marry Elizabeth von Baddensen, long regarded by his father as the perfect match.

Joachim has a friend, Eduard von Bertrand, formerly a fellow soldier who has since left the army for a business career. He may or may not have had a prior interest in Ruzena.

Joachim believes at times that Eduard is the devilish instrument of his father. Both Joachim and Ruzena think Eduard is to blame for breaking up their relationship, but we’re never quite sure whether he does so deliberately.

And, when Joachim invites Eduard to visit him on the family estate, it seems that Eduard is interested in Elizabeth Baddensen too. Does he intend to steal her away, or has Joachim willingly sacrificed his own interest in Eduard’s favour? Alternative realities contest for dominance in Joachim’s mind.

Ultimately, Eduard steps back from the relationship, though Elizabeth remains drawn to him. As the novel reaches its climax, Joachim has asked for Elizabeth’s hand. Both know that the marriage is expected of them, but there is no spark of love or desire between them, merely a duty to conform.

The story closes on their wedding night, as Joachim struggles to establish physical intimacy, to overcome his own repression and Elizabeth’s Madonna-like purity – such a striking contrast with the delicious Ruzena.

The final lines inform us that a child is born eighteen months later.

This sounds a standard plot for a late Nineteenth Century novel, yet this is a decidedly experimental work with deep philosophical undertones. And it was written in 1931.

Although short, at only 150 pages, it is emphatically not ‘an easy read’. Most of the paragraphs are long and dense; many of the sentences take up several lines.

It strives hard to fulfil its author’s ambition that it should capture the zeitgeist of romanticism in the Berlin of 1888…

… But that may have been a literary feat impossible to pull off.

TD

October 2024