THE SPELL

by Hermann Broch ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1986

Later Broch, touted as a constellation-point with the two masterpieces, The Death of Virgil and The Sleepwalkers, but lacking those books' density and sustained cosmologies. Broch here is making allegory, using the tale of a small mountain-town's response to a nature-genius guru, Marius Ratti, who has come to save the town by unleashing its primal energies and reining in its established social and sexual ones. Narrated by a country doctor (a fine, embossed character but, like most anyone in an allegory, a tad too obvious to be believable), the town does begin to fall under Ratti's sway--Ratti's parallel of course being Hitler. It's finally the mountain itself, the Kuppron, that has the last word, though (a penultimate warning against lusting after false gods is delivered too by a crusty old sibyl named Mother Gisson). But if the architecture is bald, the intent a little (if understandably) shrill, Broch's strengths are here nonetheless. Even in the stiff, not adequate translation of de Rotherman, the book contains brilliant passages, especially of the anti-pastoral--gorgeous but penitential nature writing; and Broch's facility at mixing into his scenario essays and meditations is strong as well, with aphorisms everywhere ("". . .human beings in their loneliness, bereft of love and fallen prey to hatred, become bare of shame and. . .only the saint is able to gain a solitude in which he is still capable of preserving love and divine shamefulness""). Mostly a book for Broch-ians--but no small potatoes for that.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1986

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1986

Categories: FICTION