Heavy German parable

Press, 23 January 1988, Page 26

Heavy German parable

The Spell. By Hermann Broch. Translated by H. F. Broch de Rothermann. Andrew Deutsch, 1987. 391 pp. $49.95. (Reviewed by Ralf Unger) Broch is associated with Kafka and Thomas Mann as one of the classic German writers of the 19205. His style, therefore, is as heavy as a large, basic German meal but, if one can overcome the ensuing indigestion, one can taste the fine basic flavours and overtones of subtle condiments. The message — as is typical of his time and place — is one of the universality of philosophical thoughts cloaked in parables of descriptions of everyday life. With several rewritings of this particular novel it was not finally published in German until 1976, and this is the first English translation. Some of the difficulties of language are no doubt due to translation, but much of it is the ponderous original German style, such as: “I apprehend the inter-woven texture of all knowledge, I apprehend the apprehension of myself being both mountain and hill, myself being both

light and landscape, unreachable because it is my own self and yet forever striven for, goal which I shall reach in spite of everything when in the deepest depth of the oceans, of the mountains, and of the sunken islands, when on the golden bottom of darkest darkness, the great oblivion will overtake me one day” — and that is not even the full sentence! The story is one of Marius Ratti who comes to a village in the mountains and preaches with a fanatical zeal the destruction of all farm machinery and a return to pagan rites. Simultaneously comes the scape-goating of a somewhat despised local salesman, who does not work the soil as do the others, and a breaking down of sexual bonds between couples while comradeship between men is built up. The miniaturisation of the rise of Hitler’s National Socialist movement is quite clear as is the following horrific collapse into barbarism, all the time brooded over by a mountain which it is hoped will offer up its gold. Of its time this is a - classic novel, Mit unfortunately its blunt sophistication does not sit happily in the 1980 s.