Pasenow Oder Die Romantik by Hermann Broch

Die Romantik

A focused psychological portrait of Pasenow, a disenchanted provincial civil servant who, repelled by bourgeois conformity, embraces Romantic ideals in an attempt to reclaim meaning and authenticity; his inward quest—marked by aesthetic longing, moral confusion and social alienation—reveals the tensions between idealism and mundane modern life and serves as a critique of both Romantic myth and the surrounding society.