THE VIEW OF HUMANITY IN Hermann Broch's Schlafwandler trilogy is, in part, the fictional equivalent of the insight that there is no definite borderline between the sane and the insane. The insane character is no more than the distorted picture of the sane character; the one is contained in the other: a porous, even fluid concept of man. Its mental stigmata are revealed to the reader almost as norms of the disfigured and damaged life.

This psychopathological twilight zone appears most clearly in two characters who may be called historical epitomes, since they not only are typical of their own epoch, but also refer to the highest decision maker of their respective periods: Joachim von Pasenow, the Prussian officer of the Wilhelmine Era, and Marius Ratti, the newcomer and village demagogue of the Hitler period. Both characters raise the question of autonomy and responsibility: when can they no longer be held accountable for their ideas, decisions, and actions? When does a character slide into the realm where the observer must take responsibility as much as, or even more than, the actor?

Broch's view that normalcy cannot be taken as a constant in the life of most individuals is based on publications by the psychiatrists Emil Kraepelin and Ernst Kretschmer. Both stress that there is no clearly ascertainable point at which the border is crossed in the development of mental disease. Kretschmer wonders what constitutes the difference between individual eccentricity (Verschrobenheit) and lunacy (Wahnsystem).