Hermann Broch's "Unpublished Writings from the Casanova Archive at Dux" (1918): Notes on an Unknown Early Work

Hermann Broch's "Ungedrucktes aus dem Duxer Casanova-Archiv [Unpublished Writings from the Casanova Archive at Dux]", until now an unknown early literary work by the author, was published in 1918 under the pseudonym K. L. Hib. The text breaks in spectacular manner with the characteristic representations of Casanova in the early 20th century and presents ideas and positions in embryonic or skeletal form that were to reach full intellectual maturity in Broch's later literary and theoretical writings. Broch's "Casanova" is embedded in multiple meaningful ways in the discourses of literature, philosophy, and cultural criticism of its time, not least in its perceptive literary metacommentary on the contemporary "Kino-Debatte [cinema debate]" (Kaes).