Beschreibung
An den Schriftsteller Hermann Broch, der im Genfer Exil lebte. Broch hatte ihn um Hilfe bei Robert Musil gebeten: „[…] I was very glad to hear from you and to know that you are in this country and well. I wish I could help you in regard to Robert Musil; but as I know German very imperfectly and read it only under the stress of necessity – for the business of finding a piece of otherwise unavailable information, never for pleasure – I am as completely ignorant of Musil’s work as of most other recent German writing. I think you would have better luck among the professional critics – Edmund Wilson, for example – who make it their business to read works of imaginative literature as they appear – thing which I have time for less and less; as I become increasingly absorbed in the history, the theory and the practical implications of religious mysticism, or the transformation and enlargement of consciousness. What you say of your Death of Virgil sounds interesting indeed. It is very kind of you to offer to let me see the manuscript; unfortunately two difficulties stand in the way, the first mental, connected with my poor knowledge of German, and the second physical, connected with poor vision, which forces me to ration my reading very strictly, and which makes the reading of typescript almost an impossibility. I have recently finished a book, to be published next month [‚Grey Eminence‘, 1941], on one of the strangest figures in European history, Father Joseph, the collaborator of Cardinal Richelieu. Very little has ever been written about this man, and of that little none has stressed the essential point, which is that l’Eminence Grise was an advanced mystic who, in middle life, took to power politics of the most horrifying kind, while attempting at the same time to keep up his religious practices and remain in contact with ultimate reality. Needless to say, he failed in the latter effort and only succeeded in the former – specifically in prolonging the Thirty Years War. His case, when presented with the relevant religious documents, emerges as something quite extraordinary […]“ – Randläsuren.
