Hermann Broch, Visionary in Exile: The 2001 Yale Symposium

By Matthias Konzett and Christa Sammons

Hermann Broch was along with Kafka and Musil one of the three greatest Austrian novelists of the twentieth century, and indeed one of the century's most gifted novelists in German from whatever country. Broch established his reputation with The Sleepwalkers, a trilogy of political and philosophical novels that showed his interest in theories of politics. His best-known work is The Death of Virgil, a challenging, lengthy work that is written in a lyrical, exuberant, and provocatively innovative musical style, a kind of cerebral stream-of-consciousness reflecting the fevered thoughts of the dying Virgil. Broch also wrote extensively about the art and architecture of the modern age, about Hofmannsthal, and about mass psychology. Broch has a special connection to Yale, as he lived the last years of his life there after having escaped Austria in 1938, and died there.

The participants in the Yale Symposium of April 2001 are among the world's most prominent Broch scholars, from Germany, Austria, Italy, Japan, Canada, and the United States. Fourteen of their presentations have been extensively revised, yielding the essays in this volume, which focus on two areas: Broch as critic, and Broch as novelist and dramatist. Topics include Broch's views on kitsch and art, and on drama, his cultural criticism, his cooperation with Borgese and Arendt, his theory of mass psychology, history as reflected in his works, Ernst Kretschmer's influence on the early novels, Virgil and Celan's Atemwende, Jean Starr Untermeyer's translation of Virgil, the problem of guilt and the fall in The Guiltless, and Broch reception in Japan. PAUL MICHAEL L TZELER is The Rosa May Distinguished University Professor in the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, and is the editor of Broch's collected works. MATTHIAS KONZETT is associate professor of German at Yale University, WILLY RIEMER is associate professor of German at the University of Delaware, and CHRISTA SAMMONS is curator of the German literature collections of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1571132724
• ISBN13: 9781571132727
• Release Date: March 2003
• Publisher: Camden House (NY)
• Length: 280 Pages
• Weight: 1.23 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.3" x 9.5"