“Kurzum die Hölle”: Broch's Early Political Text “Die Straße”

Summary

WRITTEN IN 1918, BROCH'S “Die Straße” (KW13/1,30–35) is not only one of the author's most interesting and enigmatic essays, it is also one of the most important literary documents showing how Austrian authors dealt with the consequences of the First World War, a war that in Robert Musil's words tore “Welt und Denken” so completely asunder that they could not be mended again. The text is also rather strange from our point of view, particularly the apodictic judgments it pronounces on Judaism and socialism, suggesting at least a hint of deviation from political correctness. On the other hand, the text does contain in essence much of what determined the political and literary discourse of Austria during the First Republic, a fundamentally different discourse from that of the Weimar Republic. As early as 1973 Paul Michael Lützeler dedicated a thorough study to Broch's text, examining the aspect of the “Auseinandersetzung mit dem Marxismus.” I base my observations here on Lützeler's work, which I would like to complement with an analysis of the text's specific rhetoric, elucidating in the process its peculiar amalgamation of individual theses and viewpoints. From here I move to the literature of Broch's Austrian contemporaries in order to highlight the text's unique features against this background. I then point out the traces of Broch's thoughts about the upheaval of 1918 discernible in the third part of the Schlafwandler trilogy.