Modernism and the political right

The Anarchist, section two of Hermann Broch's trilogy The Sleepwalkers, is coalescing into a structure similar to what we read in section one: both novellas are pentagrams, with 5 characters in a similar pattern of relationships, in this one the protagonist (August Esch, love that name) in opposition in various ways to: his roommate and co-worker whom he seems to dislike or even at times despise, roommate's homely sister whom everyone seems to think is his girlfriend or even fiancee, the alluring and sexual and foreign (Hungarian) state-magician's stage partner, and the somewhat elderly and more austere magician himself. And the relations are similar: protagonist town between his affections for two women, one conventional and expected and the other an outsider, in language and culture and mores; his opposition and sexual rivalry with the guy who seems to be his best friend, and his subservience to an older man, although that relationship not developed as much as the father-son relationship in part one. But there's a whole other element to this section, i.e., the political, which I'd hinted at yesterday - as Esch feels exploited in his work and he has a friendship with a guy who seems to be a political activist and union organizers. Yesterday I noted that this political novel echoes others of its era, notably some of Conrad's pieces - and today I'd also add a few other works Sleepwalkers calls to mind: James's The Princess Cassamassima, Dostoyevsky's Devils - each of these about loners on the edges of society drawn to left-wing political causes and ultimately (I'm just guessing now in the case of Sleepwalkers) to violence and tragedy - and note that each of this is a literary take on leftist politics from the point of view of a socially conservative, even reactionary, author - this material would be (and was) treated very differently by other authors of the same era, notably for example Steinbeck, Richard Wright, for two examples - that is, a tragic novel in a leftist/progressive literary context looks very different in America than it does in Europe, particularly from the lofty and socially privileged vantage of high modernism. Much as I love the great modernist works of European fiction, their political short-sightedness and biases are something that I have to think about and take into account - but I'll see how Broch develops this material.