|
| Hermann
Broch, Death of Vergil |
Date:
Wed, 3 Mar 1993
From: James O'Donnell
Subject:
Broch?
Finally
reading, it's been recommended by George Steiner so often, Hermann
Broch's *Death of Vergil*. Is there any discussion of this by
classicists? Is there a mysterious fraternity of Broch-readers
lurking in our midst that I've never stumbled in to? The book is a
stream-of-consciousness 500 page story of Vergil's last night and
day, with the leather box with the MS of the Aeneid in it standing
vulnerably close at hand.
Date:
Wed, 3 Mar 1993
From:
"Jenny S. Clay"
Subject:
Re: Broch?
I
am a patient person, not averse to the germanic mind in its complex
ramifications. BUT I have never gotten beyond page 50 in Broch. Good
luck, Jim.
Date:
Wed, 3 Mar 1993
From:
Lowell Edmunds
Subject:
Re: Broch?
George
Steiner also said that Eberhard Bethge's biography of Dietrich
Bonhoeffer is the "only assured classic" of our time.
Those tempted to accept his judgment on Broch may wish to read a
couple of hundred pages of Bethge first .
Date:
Thu, 4 Mar 1993
From:
David Tandy
Subject:
Re: Broch?
Jim O'Donnell mentions Broch's _Death of Vergil_. I think Harry
Rutledge devotes a chapter to it in his _Guernica Bull: Studies in
the Classical Tradition_ (Georgia, about 1988).
Date:
Fri, 5 Mar 1993
From:
Dougal Blyth
Subject:
Re: Broch? >I am a patient person, not averse to the germanic
mind in its complex >ramifications. BUT I have never gotten
beyond page 50 in Broch.
For
what it's worth, the same has happened to me--twice. (I'm talking
about the English translation--were you?)
Date: Fri, 5 Mar 1993
From:
Robin Mitchell
Subject:
Re: Broch?
To
the best of my knowledge, no classicist has approached Broch,
although one book does speak of both Broch and Vergil together:
Lawrence Lipking, The Life of the Poet: Beginning and Ending Poetic
Careers (UC Press). It's an interesting book. The topic of fin de
siecle classicism has great potential, and one I've begun to explore
(I'll avoid a shameless plug here for my study of Freud which will
be appearing soon). I'd love to hear from anybody else interested in
this topic, particularly as it pertains to Vienna. Hofmanstahl
remains to be studied beyond the usual cliches. For example, I've
been sporadically tackling his claims about his Elektra being
derived from the Sophoclean version of the myth, but his approach,
and his aesthetic (as well as Strauss's) tastes Euripidean to me.
Hofmanstahl wrote several other plays based on Euripides. It has
long seemed to me that there was almost as as much a Renaissance in
fin de siecle Wien as in Florence (and that last remark should
really confirm your suspicions that I'm a lunatic).
Date:
Fri, 5 Mar 1993
From:
"Jenny S. Clay"
Subject:
Re: Broch?
I Was trying the German, but am relieved to hear that the
translation is equally rebarbative (a favorite word).
Date: Fri, 5 Mar 1993
From:
Terry Papillon
Subject:
Re: Broch?
I
agree with JS Clay on "The Death of Vergil" by Broch. I
have started it each time I teach a Virgil course and never get very
far, feel guilty, and vow to do better next time. I is one of those
books I look forward to "having read," but when?
Date: Mon, 8 Mar 1993
From:
Robin Mitchell
Subject:
Broch problems
Now
that a number of our members have mentioned great difficulties
making it through Broch's masterpiece on Vergil's death, perhaps it
might be useful for me (as a one-time resident of Austria and a
student of fin de siecle culture) to offer some suggestions. To
start, Vergil is but one of the subjects of the book; a classicist
will not have immediate access to understanding simply from having
read the Aeneid. Second, Austrian culture during this period, aside
from exceptions like Kafka and Popper-Lynkeus, is marked by an
expansion of form and structure. Musil's Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften
will help you understand Broch as much as the Aeneid. Vergil,
however, did feature prominently in the Viennese Gymnasium; it was
required reading for Freud (see the nice picture book of Freud's
life edited by Ernst Freud -- the title escapes -- and my
forthcoming study will provide more details). Thomas Mann was also
enormously influential in Vienna, and try slogging through, say,
Doktor Faustus in German and you'll grow tired in a hurry. In other
words, you've got to adjust your aesthetic horizons. Consider
Austrian music: Bruckner and Mahler. If you've no taste for 90
minute symphonies, Broch or Musil won't do for you. (I'll refrain
from the old story about the American who goes to Vienna and
complains about how long the symphonies last and the Austrian
replies: Nein, Sie sind zu kurz). So, read the Aeneid for Broch, but
also spend some time with Musil, and have some recordings of
theBruckner 8th, the Mahler 3 and 7th, and the Berg Violin Concerto,
a short piece, but one so unworldly beautiful it just has to be
plugged here.
Date:
Mon, 8 Mar 1993
From:
John Peradotto
Subject:
Re: Broch problems
I strongly support Robin Mitchell's remarks on Broch. If we can't
hack Broch and can't say why, what do we tell our students when they
tell us that the Iliad, the Aeneid, Dante's Commedia, Joyce's
Ulysses, Moby Dick, etc., etc. are too long and too boring? Are we
close to some unstated aesthetic pre- dispositions here?
Date:
Mon, 8 Mar 1993
From: gregory crane
Subject:
Re: Broch problems
Thanks
to Robin for providing at least some of us for the first time with a
framework that makes Broch's popularity at least comprehensible in
the abstract (as yet another person who collapsed and died of
exposure while struggling through the foothills). But I would
qualify Jack's comments somewhat. A lot of the people who choose to
live in Cambridge, for example, have a puritanical idea that if its
boring and doesn't make sense, but very pretentious, then a
book/film/play must be worth suffering through. We have a local
theater which will remain nameless but which has capitalized on this
kind of masochistic reverse snobbery. This also represents a failure
in standard education: the people numbly sitting in their seats
always did think that Homer, Sophocles and Virgil (or whoever)
really were boring.
Date:
Mon, 8 Mar 1993
From:
Dan Hooley
Subject:
Re: Broch problems
Cheers
to JP and RM for their comments on Broch. Still, I think it is
charming and healthy to admit, sometimes, in moments of unassuming
candor that we, some or all of us, find those ambitious European
classics like the Death of Verg. or Ullyses or Finnegan's Wake not
among the first things we turn to late of a Friday evening. I very
much like the first of these, am devoted to the latter two, but
reading each of them was a concerted project. Acknowledging that,if
we have to, may *help* us teach things like them.
Date:
Mon, 8 Mar 1993
From:
"Jenny S. Clay"
Subject:
Re: Broch problems Wait a minute.
I
adore Ulysses. Think Balzac's 50 page description of a French card
game fascinating, and wallow in the Catalogue of Ships. Am even
thinking of doing a course on the Boredom of Great Art. Just didn't
cotton to Broch.
Date:
Mon, 8 Mar 1993
From:
"C.G. BROWN"
Subject: Re: Broch problems
Some
of the Brochers out there might be interested to learn that there is
an interesting work by Jean Barraque/ entitled *Le temps restitue/*,
which consists of six settings of extracts from Broch's *Tod* in
French translation for mezzo, chorus & orchestral ensemble. In
style Barraque/ (1928-1973) is reminiscent of Boulez and other
post-Messiaen composers such as Gilbert Amy. There is a recording of
the Broch work directed by Paul Mefano on French Harmonia Mundi (HMC
905199). In light of my comparison above, Barraque/ is more than
just an all-purpose French modernist; his is a very distinctive
voice that brought an earthy directness to what is often a an overly
cerebral brand of modernism (not that I'm complaining-- I admire
both Boulez and Amy).
Date:
Mon, 8 Mar 1993
From:
Lowell Edmunds
Subject:
Re: Broch problems
Wait!
does the Death of Vergil really go in the same category as Joyce's
Ulysses? How about another "European classic," Mann's
Doctor Faustus. And how about the even more intolerable book (Story
of a Novel) that Mann wrote about writing Doctor Faustus? And how
about "the third humanism"?
Date:
Wed, 10 Mar 1993
From:
Robin Mitchell
Subject:
Re: Broch problems
Ulysses
gets a big yes from me, but I must confess that Finnegan's Wake
leaves me baffled, although I do love reading it aloud. |
| Culled
from
classics.log9303 |
|