Schlafes Bruder Schlafes Bruder Schlafes Bruder is a novel by the Austrian Robert Schneider. The book was first published in German in 1992. It was an international success and was adapted to a film and an opera, among others. The plot is set in an Austrian mountain village in the 19th century. The protagonists (Elias, Peter and Elsbeth) face hardship and fate that they cannot understand nor prevent. The title is derived from Greek mythology, where Hypnos, god of sleep, is the brother of Thanatos, god of death. A chorale which Bach set to conclude his cantata "Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne
Greek mythology was their sexual companion, to every important god except Ares and to many legendary figures. Previously existing myths, such as those of Achilles and Patroclus, also then were cast in a pederastic light. Alexandrian poets at first, then more generally literary mythographers in the early Roman Empire, often re-adapted stories of Greek mythological characters in this fashion. The achievement of epic poetry was to create story-cycles and, as a result, to develop a new sense of mythological chronology. Thus Greek mythology unfolds as a phase in the development of the world and of humans. While self-contradictions in these stories make