A Philosophical Novel Of First Principles
in flashes the empty space between them with that inconceivable
thing called life, and it almost seemed to him as if hope blinked up
again in those flashes . . . if only in this instant . . .”
(from Book II: Fire - The Descent, Pg. 96)
Today (November 1st) is Hermann Broch’s birthday; born this day in 1886 (d. 1951), Broch is best remembered now as a contemporary of Joyce, Mann, Musil, and Freud, and perhaps less well known as the Austrian innovator of the stream-of-consciousness technique in fiction. The son of a prominent Jewish family of fin de siecle Vienna, Broch ran (for ten years) and then sold the family’s textile business, in 1928, to pursue studies in Mathematics and Philosophy (much like Musil), before turning away from Logical Positivism in dismay to seek a unifying “totality” of perception in literature.
