The Sleepwalkers

By Hermann Broch

With his epic trilogy, The Sleepwalkers, Hermann Broch established himself as one of the great innovators of modern literature, a visionary writer-philosopher the equal of James Joyce, Thomas Mann, or Robert Musil. Even as he grounded his narratives in the intimate daily life of Germany, Broch was identifying the oceanic changes that would shortly sweep that life into the abyss.
   Whether he is writing about a neurotic army officer (The Romantic), a disgruntled bookkeeper and would-be assassin (The Anarchist), or an opportunistic war-deserter (The Relaist), Broch immerses himself in the twists of his characters' psyches, and at the same time soars above them, to produce a prophetic portrait of a world tormented by its loss of faith, morals, and reason.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Jul 20, 2011
• ISBN: 9780307789167

Reviews for The Sleepwalkers

[le.vert.galant · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is my second reading of this masterpiece. I continue to be amazed at how these novels transition from romantic nostalgia to deep philosophical modernism. With Broch, one reaches the boundary of what can be done with literary fiction.

[slickdpdx · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Sleepwalkers is a novel in the form of a trilogy of novels set in Germany at different times, The Romantic (1888), The Anarchist (1903) and The Realist (1918), introducing in each some additional characters and retaining the previous, now older, characters. At its high points, it was brilliant. At many other points it was a bit flat and hollow.From the beginning of The Romantic, Broch’s description of a Prussian aristocrat and his particular style of walking really wowed me. But as the book went on, the whole left me unmoved and it never reached its full potential. In The Anarchist, Broch has a great set up: a disgruntled book keeper who leaves that world for the world of an entertainment promoter; his idea – lady wrestlers! However, it never reached its full potential and I was unmoved, despite many fine chapters and passages and a few big ideas.The final novel, The Realist, was outstanding and brought to fullness the themes and ideas Broch had only barely explored in the prior novels. Many interesting characters are set in motion in a setting that naturally brings to the fore their strengths and weaknesses and a clash of values. The style varies depending on the character and it is always well wrought. Readers of William Vollmann will appreciate the similarities between the form of The Realist and Vollman’s best: radically subjective viewpoints of each character, alternating with sequences in which the narrator narrates his own experiences and thoughts in lyrical or philosophical fashion with the narration relating, sometimes obliquely, sometimes more directly, to the events in the story.

[jwhenderson_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is the epitome of the "philosophical" novel. In the novel Broch explains the decline of values beginning with Joachim von Pasenow's hesitation between a lower-class mistress and a noble fiance in the first part. 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. This is a massive book that has had an impact on artists as disparate as Milan Kundera and Michelangelo Antonioni.

[rccarol · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I could not have finished The Sleepwalkers without the able assistance of Amazon reviewers. I assumed that this would be a novel similar to Embers or The Radetzky March. I could not have been more wrong. This is a very complex novel that can be read on many levels, philosophical, moral, and psychological. Regardless of which level you read, The Sleepwalkers is not a novel to take or read lightly. It requires great concentration and will inspire much reverie about modern life, values, and philosophy.The Sleepwalkers is a trilogy taking place in Prussia and Germany, starting in 1888 and ending in 1918. The first of the trilogy, The Romantic, takes place in 1888 and is about a Prussian aristocrat who adheres to the strict moral code of his forebears, leading to a loveless marriage that his family desires him to make. The second of the trilogy, The Anarchist, involves a bookkeeper struggling to find his place in Cologne and Mannheim in 1903. These two parts are fairly straightforward to read. The final part of the trilogy, The Realist, is longer and more difficult to read. Taking place in the final year of the First World War, it is a combination of five parts. The most straightforward part concerns an army deserter who settles in a German small town and insinuates himself into their society. He joins The Romantic, now a much older commander, brought forth from retirement to become Town Commandant, and The Anarchist, who has become editor of the local paper. Other fairly straightforward parts involve patients at the town’s hospital and an alienated young woman whose husband is away at the war. The final two parts involve a character who has appeared in the other parts of the trilogy, Bertrand, who apparently represented the author himself. One part is Bertrand’s journal, relating to his relationships to the Jewish community and a young woman in the Salvation Army. The last part is Bertrand’s essay titled “The Disintegration of Values”. Bertrand’s essay is actually the point of the novel as a whole, and is integrated to correspond to various parts of the plot. However, it is very intense and philosophical.I recommend this book to those who want to read a complex, well-written, involving novel interspersed with profound philosophy. If you are looking for a quick read, this is not the novel for you. Although I’ll probably never re-read the novel as a whole, I will read “The Disintegration of Values” again often.