Review of “Der fürchterliche Lärm der Stummheit”: Zur Politik des Hörbaren bei Hermann Broch by Victoria Weidemann
Document Type
Review
Publication Date
Winter 2018
Department 1
German
Abstract
In her study "Der fürchterliche Lärm der Stummheit": Zur Politik des Hörbaren bei Hermann Broch, Victoria Weidemann delivers a compelling case for the role of sound across the oeuvre of the celebrated Austrian modernist. Powered by thorough and lucid close readings that draw primarily—though not exclusively—from Broch's novels Der Tod des Vergils and Die Verzauberung, Weidemann highlights the ubiquity of sound as a key signifier of the tension "zwischen literarischer Aktivität und politischer Realität" (12) at the center of each work. Departing from careful analysis of the primary literary texts, Weidemann asserts that Broch's literary transposition of acoustic stimuli is a self-conscious tactic designed to inspire political modes of reading to combat the mass acoustic propaganda of fascism. [excerpt]
DOI
10.1353/oas.2018.0066
Recommended Citation
Lambert, Richard III. “‘Der Fürchterliche Lärm Der Stummheit’: Zur Politik Des Hörbaren Bei Hermann Broch by Victoria Weidemann (Review).” Journal of Austrian Studies 51, no. 4 (2018): 95–97.
Required Publisher's Statement
This article was originally published by the University of Nebraska Press.