The Sleepwalkers

by Hermann Broch

  Once he said:

  “The war will stop now.”

  “Indeed,” I said.

  “Then there will be a revolution,” he went on.

  I saw a chance of pouncing upon him:

  “Then they will put an end to religion.”

  I heard him laughing silently in the darkness:

  “Is that said in your books?”

  “Hegel says: it is infinite love that makes God identify Himself with what is alien to Him so as to annihilate it. So Hegel says … and then the absolute religion will come.”

  He laughed again, a vague shadow in the darkness:

  “The law remains,” he said.

  His obduracy was unshakable: I said:

  “Yes, yes, I know, you’re the eternal Jew.”

  He said softly:

  “We’ll go back to Jerusalem now.”

  I had talked too much in any case and let the matter drop there.

  CHAPTER LXXXVII

  The broad keel of the ship whose port is never found

  Cleaves heavy furrows in the phantom waves

  That die far off in shoreless watery graves:

  O sea of sleep, whose spindrift rings our void around!

  Dream heavy with blind freightage! dream of founts unsealed,

  Dream seeking for Another on that swift bark,

  Dread longings! far more dreadful through the stark

  Law by which far from land their soundless knell is pealed:

  No dream has ever found another’s dream,

  Lonely the night, even though Thy mighty

  Wraps it, a deep from whence suspires our faith

  That we some time transfigured and raised on high

  May face each other in the radiant beam

  Of grace, may face each other and yet not die.

  CHAPTER LXXXVIII

  DISINTEGRATION OF VALUES (10)

  Epilogue.

  All was well.

  And Huguenau, furnished with an authentic military permit, had returned to his home in Colmar at the army’s expense.

  Had he committed a murder? had he done a revolutionary deed? he had no need to reflect upon it, nor did he do so. Had he done so, however, he might simply have said that his procedure had been quite reasonable and that any one of the town’s prominent citizens, among whom, after all, he had a right to range himself, would have done exactly the same. For there was a firm line of demarcation between what was reasonable and what was unreasonable, between reality and unreality, and Huguenau would have conceded at most that in less warlike or less revolutionary times he would have left the deed undone, which would have been a pity. And he would probably have added judiciously: “There’s a time for everything.” But the opportunity did not arise, for he never gave a thought to that deed, nor was he ever to think of it again.

  Huguenau did not think of what he had done, and still less did he recognize the irrationality that had pervaded his actions, pervaded them indeed to such an extent that one could have said the irrational had burst its bounds; a man never knows anything about the irrationality that informs his wordless actions; he knows nothing of “the invasion from below” to which he is subject, he cannot know anything about it, since at every moment he is ruled by some system of values that has no other aim but to conceal and control all the irrationality on which his earth-bound empirical life is based. The irrational, as well as consciousness, is, in the Kantian sense, a vehicle that accompanies all categories—it is the absolute of Life, running parallel, with all its instincts, conations and emotions, to the other absolute of Thought: irrationality not only supports every value-system—for the spontaneous act of positing a value, on which the value-system is based, is an irrational act—but it informs the whole general feeling of every age, the feeling which assures the prevalence of the value-system, and which both in its origin and in its nature is insusceptible to rational evidence. And the powerful apparatus of cognitive interpretation which is erected around all atomic facts to make their content plausible has the same function as that other and not less powerful apparatus of ethical interpretation which makes human conduct plausible; both of them consist of bridges thrown out by reason, crossing and recrossing at different levels, for the sole purpose of leading earthly existence out of its essential irrationality, out of “evil,” by way of a higher and “reasonable” meaning up to that ultimate metaphysical value which by its deductive structure helps man to assign a fitting relevance to his own actions, to all things and to the world, but at the same time enables him to find himself again so that his vision ceases to be erratic and transient. In circumstances like these it is not surprising that Huguenau knew nothing about his own irrationality.

  Every system of values springs from irrational impulses, and to transform those irrational, ethically invalid contacts with the world into something absolutely rational becomes the aim of every super-personal system of values—an essential and radical task of “formation.” And every system of values comes to grief in the endeavour. For the only method that the rational can follow is that of approximation, an encircling method that seeks to reach the irrational by describing smaller and smaller arcs around it, yet never in fact reaches it, whether the irrational appears as an irrationality of one’s inner feelings, an unconsciousness of what is actually being lived and experienced, or as an irrationality of world conditions and of the infinitely complex nature of the universe—all that the rational can do is to atomize it. And when people say that “a man without feelings is no man at all,” they say so out of some perception of the truth that no system of values can exist without an irreducible residue of the irrational which preserves the rational itself from a literally suicidal autonomy, from a “super rationality” that is, if anything, still more objectionable, still more “evil” and “sinful” from the standpoint of the value-system, than the irrational: for, in contradistinction to the plastic irrational, the pure Ratio, arising through dialectic and deduction, becomes set and incapable of further formation when it grows autonomous, and this rigidity annuls its own logicality and brings it up against its logical limit of infinity,—when reason becomes autonomous it is thus radically evil, for in annulling the logicality of the value-system it destroys the system itself; it inaugurates the system’s disintegration and ultimate collapse.

  There is a stage in the development of every system of values during which the mutual interpenetration of the rational and the irrational reaches its maximum, a kind of saturated condition of equilibrium in which the elements of evil on both sides become ineffective, invisible and harmless—and these are the times of culminating achievement and of perfect style! for the style of an epoch could almost be defined in terms of this interpénétration: when such a stage of culminating achievement is reached the rational may penetrate through countless pores into life, but it remains subject to life and to the central will to value; and the irrational may flow through countless veins of the value-system, but is as it were canalized, and even in its most minute ramifications subserves and assists the central will to value,—the irrational by itself has no style, the rational by itself has no style, or rather they are both liberated from style, the one in the freedom of Nature, the other in the freedom of mathematics; but when they are combined, when they mutually restrain each other, the result of this restrained and rational life of the irrational is the phenomenon that may be described as the peculiar style of a value-system.

  But this condition of equilibrium is never permanent, it is only a transitional stage; the logic of facts drives the rational towards the super-rational, and drives the super-rational towards its limits; it initiates the process of disintegration, the splitting up of the whole value-system into partial systems, a process which ends in complete dissociation, with free and autonomous Reason on the one hand, and free and autonomous Life on the other. For a time, of course, the partial systems are still penetrated by reason and even led by reason to their own independent autonomy, to the limits of their own autonomous
infinity; but the play of reason within a partial system is restricted to its immediate environment. So there arises a specific commercial kind of thinking, or a specific military kind of thinking, each of which strives towards ruthless and consistent absoluteness, each of which constructs a deductive schema of plausibility to suit itself, each of which has its “theology,” or its “private theology,” if one may call it so—and the degree of success attained by such a military or commercial theology in constructing a specific and diminished organon of its own is precisely determined by the proportion of irrational elements which have been retained in its partial system: for the partial systems also are reflections of the Self and of the total system, and they too pass through or strive towards a phase of equilibrium which gives them style, so that it is possible to speak of a military or a commercial style of living. The smaller the system becomes, however, the more restricted is its power of ethical expansion and its ethical will, the more hardened and indifferent does it become to evil, to the super-rational and to the irrational that is still alive within it, the smaller grows the number of forces at its disposal and the greater the number of those to which it is indifferent, relegating them to the individual as his private concern: the further the breaking-up of the total system proceeds, the more the reason in the world becomes detached, the more visible and effective does the irrational become. The total system of a religion makes the world that it dominates a rational world, and in the same way the independent sovereignty of reason must liberate all that is irrational and mute.

  The final indivisible unit in the disintegration of values is the human individual. And the less that individual partakes in some authoritative system, and the more he is left to his own empiric autonomy—in that respect, too, the heir of the Renaissance and of the individualism that it heralded—the narrower and more modest does his “private theology” become, the more incapable is it of comprehending any values beyond its immediate and most personal environment: whatever comes from beyond the limits of its narrow circle can be accepted only in a crude and undigested state, in other words accepted as dogma—and so arises that empty and dogmatic play of conventions, that is to say of super-rationalities reduced to the smallest dimensions, which is typical of the average Philistine (a term which undeniably fits Huguenau), a play of unconflicting interaction between a living vitality sunk in the irrational and the empty form of a super-rationality that functions in a vacuum and subserves nothing but the irrational; both of them unrestrained and without style, associated in an incongruity that is incapable of creating any further value. The man who is thus outside the confines of every value-combination, and has become the exclusive representative of an individual value, is metaphysically an outcast, for his autonomy presupposes the resolution and disintegration of all system into its individual elements; such a man is liberated from values and from style, and can be influenced only by the irrational.

  Huguenau, a man liberated from values, was nevertheless still a member of the commercial system; he was a man who had a good reputation in provincial business circles; he was a conscientious and prudent agent, and he had always fulfilled his commercial duties wholly and completely, even with radical thoroughness. His murder of Esch, moreover, while it hardly came within the province of his duty as a business man, was not an infringement of the business code. It had been a kind of holiday deed, committed at a time when even the commercial system of values was temporarily suspended and only individual motives remained. On the other hand it was quite in accordance with business ethics, to which Huguenau had now reverted, when in consideration of the depreciation of the mark after the conclusion of peace he addressed the following letter to Frau Gertrud Esch:

  DEAR MADAM,

  Hoping that this finds you well as it leaves me at present, I take the opportunity of reminding you that according to our contract of 14.5.1918 I am in control of 90 per cent. of the shares of the “Kur-Trier Herald,” including, to be correct, 30 per cent. belonging to various gentlemen of that town, whose representative however I have the honour to be, so that without my knowledge and consent the business cannot be carried on nor any fresh commitments undertaken, and I must hold you and these gentlemen wholly and completely responsible for all possible losses arising out of any such infringement of my rights. Should you and these gentlemen, however, be continuing to issue the paper, I must beg you to remit immediately a statement of accounts and the profits accruing to my group of shareholders, amounting to 60 per cent. of the whole (see contract § 3), and courteously reserve to myself the right of taking further action.

  On the other hand, with my customary loyalty, of which you are already aware, I admit frankly that the force majeure of the war collapse has prevented me from remitting at the proper time the two remaining instalments due from me on behalf of my group, amounting in all to 13.400 marks, of which 8000 marks fall to you as heir of the late Herr August Esch. With the same frankness, however, I must point out that you, as you must admit, have neglected to send to me, as business manager of the paper, a demand note properly registered claiming the payment of these instalments before a duly fixed date, so that now, should you present the said demand note, I am merely bound to pay you that sum of money plus deferred interest in order to settle all legal claims between us.

  But since I am anxious to avoid having any dispute in a law-court with the amiable wife of my late respected friend Herr August Esch, even although the property in question lies in occupied territory and my French nationality would give me the greatest advantage in any such dispute, and since moreover I prefer to have things settled out of hand, I beg to propose that we should compound our affair by mutual agreement, which would be all to your advantage, considering the legal position.

  The simplest way of doing this would be for you to buy back from me, acting on behalf of my group, our 60 per cent. of shares in the business, and I am ready to sell them on the most favourable conditions; and without prejudice, unless I can dispose of them meanwhile on better terms, I offer them to you for the half of the original price, reckoned in francs at par. The total price was 13.400 marks—at par about 16,000 francs—so that I am giving you exceptionally favourable terms if I offer them at 8000 francs (eight thousand French francs), with the reminder that I have not taken into consideration at all either the sums of money I expended privately on the business, or my current expenses, or the time and labour I sacrificed on its behalf, although these alone have increased the value of the business to considerably more than when I took it over. And in adopting this generous attitude and offering you such exceptionally favourable terms, my only motive is to make things easy for you and bring about a convenient settlement, all the more as you can easily raise the money by a mortgage on your freehold, if you do not have it at hand.

  Finally I take the liberty of pointing out that with my group’s 60 per cent. of shares in addition to your own existing 10 per cent. you will have an overwhelming majority of 70 per cent. under your control, with which you can easily squeeze out the other minority group, and I am convinced that you will shortly find yourself sole proprietor of a flourishing business, and in this connection I cannot refrain from adding that the advertising department, after the way in which I flatter myself that I organized it, is a gold mine in itself, and that I put myself gladly at your disposal to assist you further with it by word and deed.

  Under these circumstances you can quite well see that I am sacrificing my own interests in making you this offer, merely because it would be difficult for me to manage the paper from here, but I am convinced that I could get a considerably better offer from other clients, which would not redound to your advantage, and so I beg you to send me an affirmative answer within 14 days, in default of which I shall put the matter in the hands of my lawyers.

  In the pleasant conviction that you will appreciate my friendly and generous proposal, so that we shall come to a complete and final settlement, I take the liberty of informing you that business in our district is extremely satis
factory and that I am doing very well, and remain

  Yours respectfully

  WILH. HUGUENAU.

  Registered. (André Huguenau and Co.)

  That was an ugly and oppressive proceeding, but it did not appear in that light to Huguenau; it violated neither his private theology nor that of the commercial value-system; indeed, not one of Huguenau’s fellow-citizens would have found it objectionable; for no exception could have been taken to the letter on legal or commercial grounds, and even Frau Esch accepted its legality as a fate to which she could submit with a better grace than to a confiscation by communists, for instance. Huguenau himself regretted afterwards that he had been so unnecessarily modest in his demands—the half of what it had cost him!—only one must never put on the screw too much, and the 8000 francs, when they actually arrived, made a welcome contribution to the firm in Colmar, and more than that: they were the final liquidation of his war adventures, the final seal set upon his return home, and perhaps, although only perhaps, that gave him a twinge of sorrow. For now his holiday was definitely at an end. And in so far as human life, running its insignificant course, can be said to contain anything worthy of comment, nothing of the kind occurred during the rest of Huguenau’s life. He had taken over his father’s business, and he carried it on in the spirit of his forefathers, solidly and with an eye to profit. And since a bachelor’s life is no life for a prosperous business man, and the tradition of his family, that had determined his own existence, required him to marry some worthy woman, both for the sake of having children and because her dowry could be used in consolidating the family business, he set about taking the necessary steps to that end. And since the franc meanwhile had begun to depreciate, while the Germans had established a gold currency, it was only natural and not worth commenting on that he should look for his bride on the right bank of the Rhine. And since it was in Nassau that he eventually found a girl with a suitable dowry, and Nassau is a Protestant district, it was not surprising that love and financial advantage combined should persuade a Freethinker to change his religion. And since the bride and her family were stupid enough to attach some weight to the question, he did adopt the evangelical creed to please them. And when one or another of his fellow-citizens shook a disapproving head over such a step, Huguenau the Freethinker pointed out that it was a meaningless formality, and as if to emphasize the fact voted, in spite of his Protestantism, for the Catholic Party when it formed a political alliance in the year 1926 with the communists. And since the Alsatians, like most of the Alemanni, are often whimsical people and many of them have a slate loose somewhere, they did not wonder for very long over Huguenau’s eccentricities, which were really not eccentricities at all, for Huguenau’s life flowed peacefully on between sacks of coffee and bales of cloth, between sleeping and eating, between business deals and games of cards. He became the father of a family, his elastic plumpness grew rounder and in time became a little flabby; his upright walk, too, visibly degenerated into a waddle; he was courteous to his customers, and to his subordinates a strict master and a model of industry; he was out and about early every morning, he indulged in no holidays, his pleasures were few and his æsthetic enjoyments either non-existent or dismissed with contempt; his obligations left him barely time even to go for a walk on Sundays with his wife and children, so how could he visit the Museum?—he didn’t care for pictures anyhow. He rose to municipal honours, his feet were again on the path of duty. His life was the same life that his physical forbears had led for two hundred years, and his face was their face. They all resembled each other strongly, the Huguenaus, fat and complacent and serious in their folds of solid flesh, and it was hardly to be suspected that one of them should develop an ironically sarcastic expression. But whether this peculiarity was the result of mixed blood, or was merely a freak of nature, or marked a certain maturity in this descendant of the Huguenaus, a maturity that detached him from the family tree, it is difficult to determine, and in any case it was not considered important by anybody, least of all by Huguenau. For many things had become indifferent to Huguenau, and whenever his war adventures came into his mind they shrank into smaller and smaller compass, until at last all that remained was a single entry of 8000 francs in which they were symbolized and which was their final balance; and all that he had experienced at that time faded into a mere silhouette, into the delicate half-tones of the French banknotes that Huguenau the business man had been handling ever since. The soft grey shadow of dream-like and silvery sleep drew a veil over all that had happened; it grew more and more vague, more and more shadowy, as if a darkened glass had been set before it, and in the end he could not tell whether he had lived that life or whether it was a tale someone had told him.