Thanks to MFT for advising me of his existence. He had been, until a few minutes ago, one of those rumsfeldian "Unknown Unknowns" in my life. He seems interesting, and I'll go see if I can pick up his books in English translation.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
Hermann Broch
Thanks to MFT for advising me of his existence. He had been, until a few minutes ago, one of those rumsfeldian "Unknown Unknowns" in my life. He seems interesting, and I'll go see if I can pick up his books in English translation.
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4 comments:
Great mini-bio and literary review. The Mongolian Front turned me onto Broch, and he could provide even more context as well.
Sleepwalkers, arguably one of Broch's best, is going to be the next piece I read. Here's a review of that little number.
Broch was also upset with the state of early 20th century Vienna and Europe, and how there was a facade without substance behind it. He articulates this in several essays, one of which is "Hugo von Hofmannsthal and His Time: Art and Its Non-Style at the End of the 19th Century," showing where Impressionism led the artistic world into interesting areas of "Irrational" thought (van Gogh is referenced several times), but how that push into the irrational direction turned down the road of anarchical rather than re-steadied by rationale.
For example, what van Gogh created was wonderfully irrational in the sense that a totally new way of expressing, in Broch's words, "the primal symbolism of an irrational, immediate vision of the world" was achieved. The wrong turn down one of the dismal roads of irrationality came when L'art pour l'art and the bourgeois businessman stopped talking to one-another entirely. It was fine that artists and business hated one-another (Broch says by despising or offending the other, they still acknowledged their respective existence and thus still contributed to pushing Western Civilization in some type of direction). But business and art developed a social indifference toward one another, and stopped talking altogether (at least as I understand this essay). This social indifference was, to Broch (and he's correct), "a state of genuine cruelty." People stopped caring, period.
This works back into a couple posts down about Deep [and accurate] Thoughts on the American Educational system. I'll have to send you an article I'm working on when finished. I'll try calling you on the tele later this evening.
DOes he have anything to do with Karl Popper?
JJ, they were in Vienna at the same time, and bounced ideas around in the same social circles (the "Vienna Circle," which Broch had issues with). I searched "Karl Popper Hermann Broch" and thisis what it produced.
Damn. I just read that review, and it wasn't very good. Be careful!
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