Genre-synthesis in Hermann Broch’s novel “Bewitchment”

Abstract

The novel “Bewitchment” shows the progress through Hermann Broch’s novel-poetics. Broch argued for the synthesis on both the story- and the genre-novel-layer, that was Broch’s way to overcome the crisis of the novel-genre, that is the crisis of the narrator (the “dumbness” of the modern man) caused by the “disintegration of values”: the 1920s face with contrasting ideologies and seeks for universal tools of mutual social interaction. Broch’s answer to “dumbness” with his “poly-history novel”, meaning not only the synthesis of some stories (plots) but also of the narrative attitudes (genre forms). Broch considers his own novel as a “polyphonic instrument” combining the epic, dramatic and lyric narrative modes. On the plot-layer, the novel-figures refer not only to the well-known mythos-plots, what was already pointed out also in Russian germanistic (by E. Erohin and A. Strel’nikova). This article however emphasizes first, that each protagonist of “Bewichment” longs to establish a certain form of social organization — matriarchy, communism, totalitarianism, and capitalism. At the same time, each key-figure represents a certain narrator-type, whose speech expresses a concrete narrative mode — epic, dramatic or lyric. The novel-action is exposed by the country-doctor. Thus, his narration includes all the modes and genres given in “Bewitchment” as a synthetic unity. The application of the essays “Heritage of Our Time” by Ernst Bloch for analysis of “Bewitchment” could reveal the ethic aspect of the Broch’s synthesis-idea. This means the “conciliation” of all genres by the narrator, who provides a communicative basis enabling the conciliation of all social groups.

Keywords:

H. Broch, Bewitchment, genre-synthesis, poly-history novel, ethic aspect of writing, E. Bloch