Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften II: Aus dem Nachlaß

The Man Without Qualities #3-4

by Robert.- MUSIL

Musils Protagonist Ulrich ist gar kein Mann ohne Eigenschaften. Der Romantitel führt da ein wenig in die Irre. Tatsächlich ist es eine "Welt von Eigenschaften ohne Mann", die im Buch nichts Charakteristisches mehr zu bieten hat. Bereits die umwerfende Eingangssequenz macht diesen Leerlauf anschaulich, indem sie den Leserblick trichterförmig von metereologischen Banalitäten zu einem Verkehrsunfall in Wien an "einem schönen Augusttag des Jahres 1913" hinunterlenkt, dessen vermeintliche Tragik technische Erklärungen (Bremsversagen) bagatellisieren. Wie in Samuel Becketts Murphy darf auch hier die Sonne zunächst "auf nichts Neues" und Besonderes mehr scheinen. Diese Erkenntnis bringt Ulrich letztlich dazu, "Urlaub vom Leben" zu nehmen und sich in Reflexionen über eben dieses Leben zu ergehen. Die selbstgewählte "Eigenschaftslosigkeit" der Figur erweist sich so als ihre herausragendste Eigenschaft.

Im Mann ohne Eigenschaften passiert nur wenig. Aber es wird unendlich viel gedacht im Buch, und am Ende wird sogar noch intensiv gefühlt: In der Geschwisterliebe Ulrichs zu Agathe realisiert sich die Utopie eines "anderen Zustands" jenseits der absurden Welt. Hierfür findet der Mann ohne Eigenschaften dann poetisch präzise Bilder ohne intellektuelle Schwere, so in meinem Lieblingskapitel Atemzüge eines Sommertags: "Die Sonne war unterdessen höher gestiegen, die Stühle hatten sie wie gestrandete Boote in dem flachen Schatten beim Haus zurückgelassen. Ein geräuschloser Strom glanzlosen Blütenschnees schwebte, von einer abgeblühten Baumgruppe kommend, durch den Sonnenschein; und der Atem, der ihn trug, war so sanft, daß sich kein Blatt regte. Kein Schatten fiel davon auf das Grün des Rasens, aber dieses schien sich von innen zu verdunkeln wie ein Auge". Gäbe es nur diese wunderschöne Stelle, so hätte sich die Lektüre der weit über 1000 vorangegangenen Seiten schon gelohnt. --Thomas Köster

Genres: Fiction, Literature, Classics, German Literature, Novels, 20th Century, Germany

2160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1933

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

An individual freedom is restricted by the reedom of others…

What we still refer to as a personal destiny is being displaced by collective processes that can finally be expressed in statistical terms.

The main character – the man without qualities – continues to rebel against conformity and uniformity…

…he had been annoyed countless times by his contemporaries’ capacity for enthusiasms, which almost invariably fasten on the wrong object and so end up destroying even what indifference has let survive.

And he literally hates social conventionalities and false artificial morality…

The morality that has been handed down to us is like being sent out on a swaying high wire over an abyss, with no other advice than: ‘Hold yourself as stiff as you can!’

Some musings become more abstract and viscous while the narration turns more linear. And Robert Musil immerses yet deeper in the contemplation of sexuality, sexual freedom and sexual pathology.

Nowadays, when a woman’s appearance suggests that of a well-plucked fowl ready for the oven, it is hard to imagine her predecessor’s appearance in all its charm of endlessly titillated desire, which has meanwhile become ridiculous: the long skirt, to all appearances sewn to the floor by the dressmaker and yet miraculously in motion, enclosing other, secret gossamer skirts beneath it, pastel-shaded silk flower petals whose softly fluttering movements suddenly turned into even finer tissues of white, which were the first to touch the body itself with their soft foam.

The culmination of the Into the Millennium part is a visit to the madhouse and the high social assembly ending up with the foolishly mad yet smashing resolution, both events happen at the same day and there are the apparent parallels between them.
Fortunately the freedom of thought can’t be restricted even in madhouse…

[°°°·.°·..·°¯°·._.· ʜᴇʟᴇɴ Ροζουλί Εωσφόρος ·._.·°¯°·.·° .·°°° ★·.·´¯`·.·★ Ⓥⓔⓡⓝⓤⓢ Ⓟⓞⓡⓣⓘⓣⓞⓡ Ⓐⓡⓒⓐⓝⓤⓢ Ταμετούρο Αμ · Rating 5 out of 5]

«Γενική γραμματεία ακρίβειας της ψυχής»
Ο άνθρωπος χωρίς ιδιότητες σκεφτόταν
ένα πρόγραμμα στο οποίο θα έπρεπε
να αφοσιωθεί η ανθρωπότητα,
προκειμένου να στρέψει τις προσπάθειες της
προς έναν σκοπό, τον οποίο δεν μπορούσε ακόμη να γνωρίζει.
Ήταν χαρακτηρισμένος με πολλές ιδιότητες ο σκοπός και με άπειρα ονόματα, μα παρέμενε μια αληθινά, πειραματική ζωή.

Ο Ούλριχ ήταν άνθρωπος πιστός, που απλώς δεν πίστευε τίποτε.
Διότι με τον όρο πίστη δεν εννοούσε την καχεκτική θέληση γνώσης, την αμάθεια, αλλά κάτι άλλο,
που δεν έγκειται ούτε στην πίστη, ούτε στην φαντασίωση μα ούτε και στην γνώση.
Κάτι διαφορετικό.
Σαν βίωμα που διαφεύγει όλων αυτών των εννοιών.

Η μελωδία της σκέψης μυρίζει υπέροχα, δελεαστικά και αναμφίβολα σε τούτο το βιβλίο που προσπαθεί
να αποκαταστήσει κάθε κατεστραμμένο δεσμό ηθικής και συνειδησιακής αρχαίας κακίας, παθιασμένης και καταφατικά απόλυτης προς την ανθρωπιστική σκάλα αξιών,
με έναν νέο, απελευθερωτικό σαν μέθη και νηφάλιο σαν την αλήθεια.
Έναν δεσμό, που να απεικονίζει πεποιθήσεις για τον ηθικά ερμαφρόδιτο άνθρωπο με έναν διχασμό που δελεάζει.
Με μια μελαγχολική ικανοποίηση και ειρωνική ενάργεια πως η φύση προτιμά τα κακά συμβάντα και τα προστατεύει περισσότερο απο την καλοσύνη σαν πρόσχημα προστασίας.

Η νέα τάξη πραγμάτων που θα ακύρωνε την πραγματικότητα δεν θα μπορούσε να είναι πόθος για νόμους ορθής ζωής που δεν επιδέχονται
εξαιρέσεις μα ούτε και ευαγγελικές, αυταρχικές χίμαιρες.
Θα ήταν ενδεχομένως οι κοινές προσπάθειες όλων.

Διαβάζοντας όλο και περισσότερες σελίδες
απο το είναι του Εγώ του ήρωα-συγγραφέα
αισθάνεσαι να σε παρακινεί να συζητήσετε
τις απόψεις σας πάνω στις αιώνιες αλήθειες.
Αν παρακολουθήσεις λέξη προς λέξη τα γραφόμενα
και τις σκέψεις που πραγματεύεται, χωρίς επιτήδευση προς την φιλοσοφική αναλυση τότε σίγουρα
και με πάσα βεβαιότητα παρακολουθείς την αναγνωστική πορεία σε τούτο το έργο
όχι απο την σκέψη σου αλλά απο την ύπαρξη σου.

Μεταρσιώνεσαι σε μύθους και η αναγέννηση σου έγκειται στην ανεπάρκεια της ολοκλήρωσης,
αυτή που χάθηκε οριστικά.
Κι όμως εσύ εξακολουθείς να ακούς τα λόγια στο Συμπόσιο του Πλάτωνα και να θεωρείς πως ο πρώτος άνθρωπος ήταν ολόκληρος επειδή είχε τη διττή φύση του ανδρόγυνου και η αιώνια τιμωρία
θα είναι να ψάχνεις απεγνωσμένα το άλλο σου μισό
για να συγχωνεύσεις την ύπαρξη σου σε ένα ολόκληρο, αυτό που οι θεοί έκοψαν στα δυο δημιουργώντας τον άνδρα και τη γυναίκα.
Δυστυχώς η συνέχεια του διχασμού του ανθρώπινου οργανισμού θα εξακολουθεί να υφίσταται αφού ουσιαστική συνένωση δεν προκύπτει σχεδόν ποτέ.

Παραμένει ο πόθος για έναν έρωτα σωσία του αλλού φύλου, για ένα διαφορετικό ον,
μια μαγική μορφή που θα είναι πανομοιότυπη
μα όχι ίδια με το εγώ μας, καταλήγει να είμαστε εμείς, αλλά να φανταζόμαστε πως το άλλο μισό υπερέχει
διότι αποπνέει ανεξαρτησία και ισχυρή θέληση αυτονομίας.
Όλα αυτά είναι αληθινά και απαράλλακτα ονειρικά.
Ίσως ο πανάρχαιος πόθος να πραγματοποιείται ενδόμυχα και ασυνείδητα. Ίσως και να αναδύεται απο την ψυχή της παρανοϊκής φαντασίας σε στιγμές μοναχικής αλχημείας.

Ο άνθρωπος χωρίς ιδιότητες στοιχειώνει τα όνειρα μας και τα εξηγεί με βάση την θέση της σελήνης σε ένα όραμα του πνεύματος.
Αφήνει παντού το στίγμα της μαγείας
μέσα σε αλήθειες και σε τρόπους συμπεριφοράς.
Στην τέχνη, στη ζωή, στο όνειρο, στον μύθο,
στα παιδικά γέλια, στα πένθιμα εμβατήρια,
στα ποιήματα που δεν καταλαβαίνουμε,
στον έρωτα, στις παραβιασμένες σχέσεις, στις απαραβίαστες απαγορεύσεις του περιπτύσσω και περιπτύσσομαι του μυαλού, το μερίδιο του συναισθήματος πωλείται και αγοράζεται ανταλλάσσοντας προσφορές για έλλειψη κατανόησης,

κι αυτό απλά σημαίνει έλλειψη πραγματικότητας.
(Τρελαθείτε λίγο, να δω κάτι!..Να γιατί σε αγάπησα Μούζιλ).

Φυσικά ανάμεσα σε λογική και συναίσθημα, επιστήμη και θεοσέβεια, σκέψη και φαντασία, συναισθηματική νοημοσύνη και ορθολογισμός ψυχρός και άκαμπτος προηγείται εκείνο που εξάρει, το ασύλληπτο των βιωμάτων, των μεμονωμένων βιωμάτων, που για περιφανείς λόγους πρέπει να υποστεί ο καθένας ολομόναχος ακόμη και αν αποτελεί ζευγάρι με άλλο άτομο.
Όμως, το Εγώ μας ποτέ δεν αντιλαμβάνεται τα μεμονωμένα βιώματα, συναισθήματα, εντυπώσεις, πάντα τα συσχετίζει τα ταυτίζει σε με πραγματικά
ή νοούμενα ή υπονοούμενα περιεχόμενα.
Τα πάντα αλληλοστηρίζονται με κοινές εντάσεις, απόψεις, ακολουθίες και συνάπτονται
ως μέλη μεγάλων, ανεξιχνίαστων συνόλων.

Όταν για κάποιον λόγο γήινο ή υπεργήινο, αποτύχουν αυτές οι συνάφειες, το Εγώ μας έρχεται αντιμέτωπο με την απερίγραπτη, σκοτεινή, απάνθρωπη και άμορφη δημιουργία.
Είναι η στιγμή που το άτομο ζητάει μέσα απο την άβυσσο, το Θεό, που οφείλει να βοηθήσει.


«Δεν ξέρω που βρίσκομαι, ούτε με ψάχνω, ούτε να το ξέρω, ούτε να το μάθω θέλω. Είμαι τόσο βυθισμένη στην πηγή της αγάπης του, όπως εάν ήμουν στη θάλασσα, κάτω απο το νερό και δεν μπορούσα ούτε να δω ού τε να αισθανθώ άλλο γύρω μου απο νερό. Έχω υπερβεί όλες μου τις δυνάμεις και έχω φτάσει μέχρι την σκοτεινή δύναμη. Και άκουγα τώρα χωρίς ήχο και έβλεπα χωρίς φως. Και η καρδιά μου έγινε απύθμενη, η ψυχή μου άστοργη, το πνεύμα μου άμορφο και η φύση μου ανυπόστατη.
Είσαι εσύ ο ίδιος ή δεν είσαι; Δεν το ξέρω, έχω άγνοια και έχω άγνοια του εαυτού μου. Είμαι ερωτευμένη αλλά δεν ξέρω με ποιον, δεν είμαι ούτε πιστή ούτε άπιστη. Τι είμαι λοιπόν; Ακόμα και για τον έρωτα μου έχω άγνοια, έχω την καρδιά γεμάτη έρωτα και άδεια απο έρωτα συνάμα!»

( Δάσκαλε προσκυνώ)

Στο δεύτερο μέρος του Ανθρώπου χωρις Ιδιότητες γράφει και δημιουργεί με νόηση και συναίσθημα ένα ατελείωτο δοκίμιο προσπαθώντας να εξερευνήσει και να αναλύσει τους αντίποδες της ζωής.
Την αντίθετη μα και όμοια σημασία ανάμεσα στην
τέχνη και την επιστήμη, την ακρίβεια της λογικής και την παραινετική ύπαρξη της ψυχής,
την ενόραση και την γνώση, το ένστικτο και
το θυμικό με αρχαϊκές ρίζες στο πλαίσιο
του αταβιστικού πυρήνα, με το σκοτεινό χάος
μέσα και έξω απο το Εγώ και το γίγνεσθαι,
τη διαίσθηση και την σκέψη όσων συμβαίνουν,
την αγάπη ως συναίσθημα και την αγάπη ως κατάσταση ή συμβάν.
Είναι ο δρόμος προς την ουτοπία.

Ο Μούζιλ είναι σαφώς ένας συγγραφέας με άπειρες και εξαιρετικές ιδιότητες.

Δημιουργεί ένα μυθιστόρημα ιδεών που θα διέπουν
για πάντα την ανθρωπότητα, όσο θα υπάρχει.
Είναι καυστικός, σατιρικός, προφητικός,
διαχρονικά και αναφορικά με την εξέλιξη
και την τροπή της Ιστορίας του Κόσμου,
των Χιλίων Ετών Θρησκευτικού Πολέμου,
την ίδρυση μιας Γενικής Γραμματείας Ακρίβειας και Ψυχής.
Ίσως να φαίνεται αστείο ή παράλογο το γεγονός πως συντήκει και αξιολογεί, αναπτύσσοντας δυο μεγάλες ιδέες μαζί, ώστε να καταλήξει σε παράλογο και
άστοχο αποτέλεσμα.
Στην ουσία όμως η πραγματικότητα του δίνει
τα εχέγγυα να αντικατοπτρίσει ένα απο τα μεγάλα και κύρια ενδιαφέροντα του.
Την ανάγκη να συμβιβαστεί η ορθολογική και επιστημονική προσέγγιση στη ζωή, (« ακρίβεια»)
με την πνευματική και ευφάνταστη, («ψυχή»).

Ο Μούζιλ συνδυάζει, όχι εύκολα, την μοναδική, εντυπωσιακή και αναντικατάστατη ανάλυση
του Μαρσέλ Προυστ ( θα σκότωνα για έναν ακόμη τόμο του Αναζητώντας Τον Χαμένο Χρόνο)
με τον σκοτεινό κυνισμό του Κάφκα.

Θεωρείται ημιτελές έργο ξεπερνώντας τις χίλιες σελίδες.
Δεν θα μπορούσα να το χαρακτηρίσω ημιτελές,
εφόσον εξ αρχής δεν παει κάπου,
δεν ορίζει αρχή, μέση και τέλος, δεν αφήνει κάτι αναπάντητο ή ατελείωτο σε σχέση με αυτά που τεκμαίρονται απο το σκεπτικό του.
Το νήμα της αφήγησης του μεταρσιωνεται στο νήμα της ζωής.
Και κάνει κάποια αξέχαστα περάσματα με την πένα του χρησιμοποιώντας ψυχοτρόπες ουσίες
που αλλάζουν την κοσμοθεωρία και την αντιληπτική ικανότητα σε σχέση με τον χώρο και τον χρόνο που δεν αλλάζουν
αλλά ποτέ δεν μένουν σταθερά.

Πως να πιστέψω πως κάτι που δεν μπορεί σήμερα να αποκλειστεί -και αυτό, δεν με απογοητεύει πλήρως- έχει γίνει η βασική στάση, η μόνιμη πηγή άγνοιας και συμβιβασμού σε θέματα πίστης.

Θα κλείσω με την ενδελεχώς σχολαστική συζήτηση περί μεγάλων συναισθημάτων, ιδεών, εννοιών, αξιωμάτων, αισθήσεων, νόησης, συμβάντων, και, τόσο μη πραγματικών, άσχετων καταστάσεων που συμπληρώθηκαν απο την
υπεργήινη πραγματικότητα, η οποία ακυρώνει την γήινη και την χαρακτηρίζει εύστοχα με σχετικές και καθολικά εμπεριστατωμένες ανθρώπινες και θεϊκές επιδιώξεις.

Οι φιλόσοφοι λέει ο δάσκαλος είναι ανώτατοι στρατιωτικοί που δεν έχουν όπλα και στρατεύματα
για να διοικούν και έτσι υποτάσσουν τον κόσμο στην τυραννία τους κλείνοντας τον σε ένα σύστημα, ένα ολοκληρωτικό σύστημα σκέψης.
💯📚💯📚📚📚
Καλή ανάγνωση.
Πολλούς ασπασμούς.

[Christopher Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s taken me exactly two months (the entirety of January and February 2021), but I’ve finally reached the end of The Man Without Qualities. I come away from it in total awe. It must be the ultimate Novel of Ideas; characters think about the big ideas more or less constantly, and discuss and debate them in nearly every scene where more than one of them happen to be present. They discuss love, sexuality, gender, romance, war, peace, militarism vs. pacifism, the societal roles of art, literature, music, mathematics, science, philosophy... and then there is a ton of emphasis on morality, ethics, criminal justice, what constitutes mental illness... the list goes on and on and on, and the ideas are addressed from basically every conceivable angle.

Sounds a heavy slog, a real chore to read, doesn’t it? Well, I’m quite sure it could very easily have been a total bore in a lesser author’s hands, but Musil masterfully juggles all of this cerebral grandeur (and much, much more) and somehow manages to make it all feel very un-stuffy, in fact shockingly breezy. It feels odd to use that word, “breezy,” to describe a work like this, but I truly never found it tough-going despite the subject matter. The chapters are short and digestible, cleverly titled, perfect little bite-sized morsels of brilliance. I could never eat just one, so to speak. I actually had to force myself to slow down in many places, lest I miss out on some important detail or other (which I’m positive I did anyway... it’s unavoidable in a work of this scope and density, especially on a first read). Additionally, the characters are endlessly compelling (Clarisse and Agathe in particular were my favorites... I’ve always been drawn to complicated women though, so that didn’t much surprise me), and Ulrich himself is just terribly fun to follow around from place to place, interaction to interaction, idea to idea. Being the titular man without qualities, he’s the perfect conversational foil for everybody, hence his being at the center of this monstrous swirl of often conflicting notions, emotions, etc.

The work in its incomplete, as-originally-published state, comprising Volumes I - III, is utter perfection. Everything is so polished it almost hurts to look at it, and reading it was addictive in a way I wasn’t expecting at all. Indeed, it’s only in the Posthumous Papers where anything even remotely dry or tepid is to be encountered, and even there surprisingly little. I’ll admit to finding chapters 50, 52, 54 and 55, in which Agathe reads from Ulrich’s assorted writings, to be quite dull. Additionally, all of the sketches and outlines from page 1335 onward were only really interesting to me because they offered a view of Musil’s working mind. He takes things in all sorts of directions, explores so many avenues... it all made me really wish he had lived long enough to truly finish this project to his satisfaction. But in terms of simple readerly enjoyment, I found this material it to be very non-essential. I’ll compare it to DFW’s The Pale King, an also unfinished masterpiece. Would I like to read the things that were left out of that manuscript as published? Oh, most definitely. But do I need to in order to feel I’ve truly read The Pale King? Absolutely not. Likewise, I could have very easily lived without reading the later sketches toward the end of the bulky second volume, and I’m mentioning it here for the curious. If you want to see a brilliant writer’s mind at work, as I did, read the sketches. But if you’re just here for a purely pleasing literary experience, feel free to skip them. Academically they’re very interesting, but on a literary level they’re underwhelming and offer little in the way of actual entertainment.

In short, you should read The Man Without Qualities. Don’t treat it like homework, don’t overthink it, just read it at a conversational pace and appreciate it for what it is: an incredible work of imagination, unfathomably deep thought, and outrageous intellect. Let this book have its conversations with you. If you’re anything like me, it will be among the more unforgettable experiences of your reading life.

I fully intend to read this again in some years, as it’s far too epic a work for me to fully comprehend on the first pass, and likely the second and third. I feel like this is a text I’ll be rereading every few years until I die, and I’m greatly looking forward to those future reads.

In the meantime, I’m not the least bit hesitant to call it a masterpiece. It’s an incredible piece of work that deserves to be more widely read and appreciated. Get on it. Don’t be scared. Where the hell’s your sense of adventure? Climb aboard the ludicrously brainy train that is The Man Without Qualities and enjoy the ride of your life.

Five stars, obviously.

[George · Rating 5 out of 5]

Θα εναποθέσω κάποιες σκόρπιες σκέψεις για αυτό το βιβλίο.

Προσωπικά το βιβλίο αυτό το θεωρώ ένα τεράστιο φιλοσοφικό μυθιστόρημα. Ένα χείμαρρο ιδεών για το γίγνεσθαι του ανθρώπου και την εξέλιξη του από ένα ανθρώπινο ον σε ένα πνευματικό ον.

Ο Μουσιλ δεν έχει γράψει απλά ένα βιβλίο αλλά μια διαφορετική διάσταση της πραγματικότητας μας. Μια μη πραγματικότητα. Πριν αναλύσω όμως τι κατάφερε να συλλάβει ως ιδέα, ας αναφέρω ότι η πλοκή περιστρέφεται γύρω από ένα λόμπυ Αυστριακών διανοούμενων, πολιτικών και άλλων που προσπαθούν να συλλάβουν μια ίδεα αναγεννήσης της Αυστριακής ταυτότητας και θέσης στο γεωπολιτικά ζητήματα της εποχής τους.

Χρησιμοποιώντας διαφορετικούς χαρακτήρες και με το σκοπό να βρει την Μεγαλη Ιδέα που θα οδηγήσει το Αυστριακό έθνος στην επόμενη σελίδα του συγγράφει μια φιλοσοφική περιπέτεια, μια φιλοσοφίκη Οδύσσεια χωρις προορισμό.

Ο Μουσιλ μας τοποθετεί στο κέντρο των εξελίξεων και μας ιντριγκάρει να συμμετέχουμε ενεργά στον διάλογο αυτό. Ποια ιδέα μπορεί να εμπνευσει τον κόσμο και να τον οδηγήσει στην λύτρωση του;

Ποια είναι ιδέα λοιπόν κ. Αναγνώστη; Η αγάπη, ο πόλεμος, η ηθική, τα οικονομικά συμφέροντα, η ειρήνη; Και πως ακριβώς ορίζονται όλα αυτά; Και πως; και πως; Ένα ταξίδι αναζήτησης που είναι τόσο προσωπικό και ταυτόχρονα απαραίτητο για όλους.

Φυσικά το βιβλίο έχει πλοκή, έρωτες, συγκρούσεις, ίντριγκες που είναι απλά τα μέσα για να δημιουργήσει τις αντιθέσεις, τον λογο και τον αντίλογο.

Καταλήγοντας δεν ξέρω πόσα θα σας αφήσει αυτό το βιβλίο στο τέλος του, αλλά θα κάνω μια προσπάθεια να μαντέψω ότι θα σας αφήσει ανάλογα με την αναζήτηση και την συμμετοχή σας στην συζητηση που έχει ανοίξει.

Enjoy!!

[Wes Allen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review of Volumes I and II

The Man Without Qualities represents the pinnacle of modernism, ranking alongside Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain as one of the 20th century’s most poignant works. Though unlikely to equal Mann in recognition, Robert Musil deserves the attention of anyone fond of heady, long, and dense literature.

As anyone who’s read the book (or maybe just a summary) can tell you, The Man Without Qualities is dubbed “a novel of ideas.” Adumbrating just what ideas are found therein is rendered challenging due to the sheer number of thoughts Musil throws the reader’s way. One that particularly stands out is Ulrich’s (the man without qualities) desire for a new morality—a desire he is never quite able to flesh out (though his odd relationship with his sister in vol. II does tend to further this idea, and even comes close to realizing it). Ulrich is tired of his contemporaries—the bourgeois culture that surrounds him. He is weary of spending his life contributing to mathematics in minor ways. In the nearly 1,800 pages of both volumes, Ulrich is seeking something new, a “secretariat for precision and soul,” as he not-quite-seriously observes in volume I.

Musil spends a good deal of time throughout this monolith describing the Parallel Campaign, a political movement to celebrate the 70th year of the reign of the Austrian emperor. The members of the campaign futilely try to create the defining idea for the country, a way to immortalize the emperor and the time; however, they consistently come up short, crafting nebulous ideas about “action” and a “year of Austria.” These buzz words, while uttered in the most stentorian and reverent manner by the myriad committees of the Parallel Campaign, are taken lightly by Ulrich (and Musil, too, I might add). The many pages spent on this campaign add a good deal of humor to The Man Without Qualities, while also playfully criticizing the bourgeois society and politics that permeated Austria pre-WWI. While the Parallel Campaign provides a humorous backdrop to the novel, it also cleverly reflects Ulrich’s own search for something that inevitably eludes him.

While Musil never completed The Man Without Qualities, the work does feel finished to a degree, whether one stops after Into the Millennium or carries on to the unpublished section. Though many decry the posthumous papers—which comprise the majority of volume II—the material therein is excellent, if admittedly rougher than the published portions. In fact, some of my favorite sections of the entire work can be found within the posthumous papers. Musil structures The Man Without Qualities in a way that doesn’t rely overmuch on the linear quality of many narratives. This aspect of the writing makes the flow of the posthumous material manageable, though it’s not seamless. While the posthumous papers are less polished, they are still worthwhile reading, and provide (at least for this reader) a more holistic version of the work Musil had in mind.

This is essential reading for lovers of long books and the modernist style. The edition I have lists The Man Without Qualities alongside Remembrance of Things Past and Ulysses as a sort of elite trinity. While Proust and Joyce have garnered more of a reputation than Musil ever likely will, The Man Without Qualities is a landmark of literature and deserves the attendant time and study.

[Irena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Napatili ste se s Uliksom? Želite nastaviti patnju? Musil je pravi odabir za vas!

Ovo je teška, depresivna (preduga) knjiga koja ne daje nikakve odgovore, ali koja usprkos navedenom ima veliku vrijednost ako ostanemo uporni i dođemo do kraja.

Problem našeg čovjeka bez osobina je taj što objektivno, sudeći po kriterijima vremena u kojem živi, on posjeduje sve sposobnosti i osobine "kvalitetnog" čovjeka, ali mu njihova primjena izmiče. Pisac izbjegava pobliže opisati koje su to osobine/sposobnosti, nego samo ističe da se radi o onim osobinama koje njegovo vrijeme favorizira.
Urlich si uzima "pauzu od života" ne bi li pronašao gdje svoje sposobnosti može adekvatno upotrijebiti, odnosno, smisao svog života i neku akciju (tj. djelovanje) koje je vrijedno njegovih sposobnosti i osobnosti.
Smiješno-tužno je to da je pisac u startu frustrirao Urlichove pokušaje jer je radnju stavio u august 1913., neposredno prije početka 1. sv. rata, koji jednogodišnju pauzu prekidaju i onemogućavaju ostvarenje cilja.
Paradoks je i taj da Urlich napušta aktivni život (djelovanje) i ulazi u kontemplativni, pasivni život, ne bi li našao vrijednu aktivnost.

Urlich je, za razliku od Arnheima, čovjek koji je iznimno samosvjestan. Urlich pokušava sve razne podražaje života poredati linearno i što pobliže sagledati. Međutim, što bliže gledate sliku, više vidite uljane obrise kistom, ali ne vidite da su na slici suncokreti. Dalo bi se zaključiti da veći stepen samosvjesti znači da teže definiramo stvari i teže im iznalazimo smisao.
Arnheim je samouvjeren i multiplicitet života agresivno sjecka i reda ne bi li stvorio umjetno jedinstvo koje bi dalo neku smisao i samim time proizvelo sreću za njega. Poanta romana, mislim, je ta da čovjek posjeduje tu snagu da agresivno stapa rascjepkane djeliće i daje im smisao.

Urlich eventualno zaključuje da jedino djelovanje koje je potaknuto vlastitim nagonom, željama i strašću može smatrati djelovanjem (Moosbrugger bi bio primjer potpunog djelovanja).
Potpuno djelovanje postaje čista samoekspresija, ali znači i izopćenje iz društvenog života; znači solipsistički način funkcioniranja. Dakle, Urlich prestaje biti društveno biće i postaje čisto ja. Nakon smrti njegovog oca, posljednje povezice sa društvenim, Urlich postaje potpuno slobodan (ali i potpuno sam jer nema ničega do čega mu je stalo u životu).
Što bi u slijedećih 800ak str. trebalo slijediti je popunjavanje te potpune slobode sadržajem, ali mislim da to pisac ne uspijeva (i nije završio knjigu nego se pogubio).
Prva knjiga, dakle, završava velikom pozitivnošću - potpunom slobodnom; velikom negativnošću - potpunom usamljenošću i apsolutnom disorijentacijom.

Ovo nije pročitajte-prije-nego-umrete knjiga. Za utrošeno vrijeme i broj okrenutih stranica, radije pročitajte Rat i mir.

[Lee Klein · Rating 3 out of 5]

Putting it down for now at the end of the chapters published during Musil's life -- that is, before the onslaught of 600+ pages of posthumous papers. If Volume II maintained Volume I's towering literary artistry (TLA), I'd read all the drafts and notes etc, but I need a break from so much talk and talk and talk and talk about morality and willpower and the soul and action and the science of thought and feelings and stuff. All these ideas were animated and elevated and entangled in the first volume by consistently robust/deepening characterization and a bit of plot tension and old-fashioned love/power intrigue among the characters, but all that pretty much comes to a halt in Volume II -- characterization ceases or at most functions to remind you what's already been established, and there's really no tension except whether or not Ulrich and his sister Agathe are gonna make out. There's an affecting bit from the perspective of Agathe's husband, some good bits from Clarise's progressively insane perspective, a vivid scene in an insane asylum, high level stuff early on about Ulrich's father and his funeral etc, and also insight into the historical/intellectual foundation of what would become Nazism, but otherwise in Volume II the POV shifts way more often (sometimes among a few people within a paragraph), the conversations seem to go on too long and too often they cover similar ground, and the newly introduced characters aren't particularly interesting, other than Agathe, who's more or less Ulrich's twin in female form. The first volume makes it worthwhile reading, like watching the deleted scenes on the DVD of a movie you love, but I think Musil was writing a shorter novel than he thought he was and so after a while what he was bringing up from the well was dull and murky instead of refreshing and clear. Also seemed like there was a different translator. Many more apostrophes and awkward phrases. Oh well. I'm more likely to go back and read Volume I again than I am to read the remaining 600+ posthumous papers and notes.

[Red · Rating 4 out of 5]

divine madness

that day in an early month of 2005 i took a high-speed train to heidelberg. my traveling companion was tmwq. the people in the coupe looked a bit gruesome to that book. oh yeah tmwq... after checking in a hotel i did a walk on the boxberg that is basically max planck institute dominion. in the evening looking out of the window of the hotel this is what i saw. the sky was blue at the bottom and pink on top. some fluffy clouds and birds gave it deepness and a private jet gave it even more deepness.

likewise tmwq resembles to me a clear mind that is a framework for unbiased reflection.

well if you happened to have read the glass bead game by herman hesse
you'll maybe agree that tmwq is like a lucid twin.
both in a fictive country i.e. castalia and kakania. hesse received a nobel prize for his work.
tmwq on the other hand became nr.1 on the german list for most important books of the 20th century written in german.

robert musil is deglamourizing life to it's bare nudity.
with so much respect for all of his characters
that i compare him to the dutch painter johannes vermeer.

[Stephen P(who no longer can participate due to illness) · Rating 5 out of 5]

It happens after the transfer. The tedium, then the lurking state of thought-rush, irretrievable perceptions. It may be for three minutes or many hours. I no longer live in time. I am alone in the small cottage. It isn't that I have anything to prove. Simply, I want to be alone with my thoughts. The absence of the weight of another person's unspoken ideas became important. Oppression has become my medium.
The transfer occurs in stages. It must be thought out first. Each stage etched into the mind. Then, the mind leads to action. There is the moment of the thrill where mind and action meet and are one. I recall it on the basketball court; the fake left, hard dribble right, stop in the moment within a moment, twenty feet out, the lifting high and away, and at the peak the ball spinning off the fingertips arcing high.
The coach once yelled at us to concentrate when shooting foul shots. The mind didn't shoot the ball. Thinking on the court dulled the instincts, destroyed the rhythm. The cat in the jungle missed its prey.
It was the stalking cat I watched out of the fade of darknesses, the shifting ethereal images, when I heard a knock at the door. Just once. A lonely knock I imagined, patient. It fit with the shifting panoramas as pain began its ease blending between sleep and wake or the imagined sleep; the sleep within sleep, the sleep within wake and its scrum of partial gradients. I liked the sound of the word gradients. It stayed with me, its sounds, echoes of its own music.
Gradients. The stages in reverse; I didn't know if I locked the chair. Unlocked, I swiveled down the hall. The wheels smoother at dusk, night, the blackness peeling its whir. In the past, I halted at a determined distance, reaching. Now I angled up turning the knob, scuttling back, the door opening.
Drenched, his long soggy coat, puddled shoes, single pure drops pealed off the brim of his broad-brimmed hat, the double handled leather satchel clutched in his hand.
"I'm afraid I'm lost. Could I just come in to get out of the weather for a moment?"
"Are you alone?"
"Very."
Bending slow he hung the steaming coat, hat, on the hooks a few feet up the wall over my coat. He made the soft groans of aging, the whispered ease into fading.
From the satchel he removed a square of polished wood. Then popping levers beneath, legs appeared, a bunsen-burner, a lighter arced in the fluid curve of a winged swan. A pure white cup. His graceful movements produced the tea, its solvent of whipped curls of steam. He sipped. Elegant.
"Oh, you are…?"
Shaking his head, smiling, "No, I'm not who you think."
"But you speak, appear, just as you write. This book…"
What did I say? What would one say? It needed to be witty, doubled-meaning, learned. No, no. Casual. Grovel. That would embarrass him. Me. I'm already embarrassed. Denying who he is for the sake of putting me at ease. Now posture correctly being at ease. He has heard it all already over the years, the preening, the trying to not sound so. The attempts to sound collegial. Everything sounds false.
"What others think I am is not wholly accurate. I am simply an old man with an Austrian accent, drenched, wet, dripping on your nice wood floor and sipping ancient tea which I carry with me."
"Where is it you are going?"
"Maybe we should start with the elephant in the room, a cliche not to be used."
"My missing legs?"
"No." He scratched his chin. "My death. You see it is not simple or easy. Much of it is like being a door-to-door traveling salesman. You said you were or have read the first volume."
"No, I didn't. But I have. On my bed."
"Good," he brought his hands together, "so maybe you have the sense that all that I am is a man trapped in the battle of his own thoughts, trying just to free them from the boundaries and bonds of familial, cultural, national, political prejudices," he shrugged his shoulders. "To spend my life as so, what value is thought compared to action? Have I maybe," he held his opened wrinkled palms out, "wasted my life?"
"But sir…," my voice cracked. I sounded genuine. On the right track.
"Robert."
"Robert," I repeated solemnly, "You…you…"
"You," he noticed, "look like you need to, not rollover but reposition yourself slightly to the left to be more comfortable."
"I can put up bars by pressing a button around the sides of my bed. I walked in my sleep. Used to. I could only dream while in motion."
He laughed, "I could only write while on the move." I carried and worked on this manuscript," he pulled the stack of yellowed marked papers from the leather satchel. Years between Austria and Germany, then of course out of Germany and finally in Switzerland."
"Sir. Robert," I heard this voice in the room asserting itself, then realized…it was mine, "you…the way I read it showed the importance of thought, the weave through your mind which deepened it, drilling and scraping until you reached its essence…"
"But then all…"
"Quiet Robert." Oh my god. Holy shit. I just told Robert Musil to be quiet. "Bob, in Volume 1 I read that… in my own words," he nodded his head, encouraging, prodding me, " that the crystallization of an idea into its essence enjoins action. There can be no action, no moral action without thought. Also," since I was on a roll I put my un-quivered hand up to stop him, "there was a gem tucked in that basically said that any small thing that we do, stance we take, idea we explore, may appear insignificant at the time but may very well be the small piece that will lock other pieces together, which we will never know of."
"Yes," He reached into his trouser pocket, "I carry it with me." He held up two folded pieces of lined paper. "Ach. They stick together. This one is about each generation's rebellion and counter rebellion. Always they feel the fervor that theirs is the first, unique. In youth's passion they can only be oblivious to the repetition through the ages. I wrote this volume during the nineteen thirties, the stories time was nineteen thirteen. I bet it sounded, felt exactly as your rebelling during nineteen sixty nine." Reluctantly I admitted it. "No, don't feel bad it still contributed," he said pushing this piece of paper back into his trouser pocket. "It is cumulative. Remember? "I leave these with people when I visit them. I have another visit three blocks up from here. I only visit in the rain. People are more likely to read then, to allow the dead in."
"I'm glad I have. Your book is a towering achievement of thought, how to think, its great importance. You did Bob what Proust accomplished. You dissected and analyzed human nature in its general and particular forms."
"Hey, you're getting good here."
"Don't stop me, I may lose it. But…and here is the thing, you say it in the style of clarity, simplicity, elegant grace. You not only preach but follow your fear that, 'beauty,' of language could distract, possibly hide meaning."
"You are falling into the trap," he said.
"What trap?"
"You are leaning now too far over to the left. You must roll back to the right. Shift. There you have it. Now you will be comfortable."
"Thanks."
"That is what I am here for. But also another trap. The trap of fame. It is the hollow adoration of what is in vogue or adoring who one is told to adore. Either way the adored is no longer a person but an inflated icon. I do not get the privilege of being with other people, or did not."
"Is it difficult to be dead?"
"No," shaking his head. "Is it difficult to not have legs."
"No," I say.
"And maybe this is because we still are who we are inside, still seeking who that is, and have the courage to express this person. Here, this is who you are, who I am."
"Inside I don't feel any different."
"No. So maybe you can get this person who you are inside to continue forgetting I am famous and inform me about what you do not appreciate about my writing, this book."
"Robert…"
"Bob."
"Bob," I tightened the safety belt on the chair rolling into another more comfortable position, "you…here it is…now don't take offense because I truly care about Ulrich, Clarisse, Walter but there are a few times where you allow them to slide into being…"
"…The idea I am trying to express to the reader and…"
"…Not the full rounded characters you have created."
I listened to the joints and rafters of the small cottage yield and join, its poignant reminder and threat, a large dog's bark in the night's patter of rain. He placed a finger against his chin.
"So," he said, "You have done it now. Criticized my work. Are you okay?"
I laid my hands where my legs had been then folded them below my chest almost touching the tightened safety belt. "I'm fine."
"Good. Then maybe there is more."
"Well, there is one more thing. There is much more importance now, in writing, the showing versus telling, the lesser involvement of the narrator…it is very sensitive…but it determines a space which allows the reader to drop into the story, the narration. It is difficult to measure and more to calculate."
"He nodded his head, "I can approach this in many ways. I wrote during a different time, time replaced by survival, a smaller harried readership. Not always understanding myself what was coming from my pen, I found the fear of how the present might turn into the future.The need to start to explain." He laughed, "As though explanations can ever change anything. Ultimately my hope was to raise readers level of thought. There are some things I strive for that is beyond what can be dramatized through characters, which can only be left to be filled in. What I would like to leave you with is that unintentionally I may have minutely altered the style of writing, which after many alterations by others over the years, we have arrived here and on our way to somewhere else. Speaking of which please excuse me for a moment."
I called out where the restroom was. He returned quickly. Then the table was folded up and all items disappeared back into the satchel. He slipped into his coat and arranged his still dripping hat on his head. "You need gloves," I said.
He looked at his hands, his long fingers.
The wheelchair glided with ease. I returned with a pair of my lined leather gloves. He took them and thanked me.
"I," he said, "wrote a note to you. In the book on your bed. You have started the second volume?"
"Yes. Some. I already…"
"I will return. Again, tomorrow."
The rain continued to patter against the cottage roof. I raised the bed's safety bars.Turning left then right I slid into dreams. Dreams of dreaming. Dreams of writing. Dreams of writing about dreams. My room is windowless. It is why I chose it. It's hard to say when I woke. How long I slept. The book lay by my side. I opened it and read the note. His hand? Mine? When I heard the lone knock I lay there, listened.

[Josh Friedlander · Rating 3 out of 5]

Volume 2 is for the fans, with the novel ending halfway and then about 600 pages of drafts, notes and rough chapters. (Apparently the German edition has thousands, on a supplementary CD.) Actually, all of this - along with some notes from the translator - is quite helpful in understanding where Musil was going with this large, saggy haystack of a novel, and what he intended it to mean. Also, once you slog through the sometimes interminable Ulrich-Agathe dialogues where they talk in circles and always merely hint at getting it on, you actually get quite a bit of closure (on Clarisse, Rachel, Hans Sepp and yes, Moosbrugger!) But surely the plotlessness, the circularity, is part of the point here. The book grows and grows but can never end, just like the Parallel Campaign that is always being planned but can never happen.

Musil stresses that the inaction of the man without qualities - the opposite of the man of action - is one of the main themes of the book: better to not do anything than to do something, and true happiness is not doing anything. One of the key events of this volume is Agathe's changing of her father's will and subsequent desire to confess that never quite happens, just like their relationship. Much of volume II feels like one of those dreams where you're walking in treacle and never get anywhere. Is that intentional? Even in his time Musil's few readers seem to have asked for more action, but he wasn't having it. Perhaps the point of the novel and its hero might be its nothing-happening-ness, a very Modernist idea (Ducks, Newburyport anyone)?

Anachronistic even when written, long (too long?) and philosophical (too philosophical?), and looking back to the unhurried salons before the Great War: surely comparisons to The Magic Mountain are inevitable. (Apparently the humanist and banker Arnheim is partly based on Mann.) But unlike that novel, this one is unfinished, scattered, even more ambitious but not able to pull together its threads. Musil can't stop thinking of ideas nor escape the solipsism in which the unfinished part III bogs down. TMWQ is also weirder and darker than TMM. It has a random trip to a southern island in the extra chapters, as well as rape, incest, molestation and attempted suicide. (Look, it's Viennese! Schnitzler's Traumnovelle, which was filmed as Eyes Wide Shut, was written there around this time.)

Some of the characters of Musil's cynical Austrian intelligentsia are archetypes of the great people of the age, the assassinated, cultured socialist-intellectual-politician-industrialist Walter Rathenau (Arnheim), the high-minded but neurotic educational reformer Eugenie Schwartzwald (Diotima). No mere satire of manners, TMWQ in its enormous length still seems to be groping quixotically for some higher truth. Portraying a society which has lost its bearings but still clings to antiquated ideas, Musil was obsessed with the idea of using the modern scientific method to answer questions of feeling and the soul, something we've written off by now as a hopeless mirage. We might phrase it like this: if one rejects materialism as shallow, but spirituality as empirically unfounded, where does one go for meaning? Musil thinks attempting to live a moral life is a form of evil, a paling of life. Better to do nothing. Proto-Nazis like Hans Sepp are all about action. But in a sense the War overthrows Ulrich's inertia/frozenness, because it's a time of action and destroys all of the paradoxes and philosophy.

As with any book coming from a German milieu very foreign to anglophones in 2019, there are big cultural gaps. The translators admit that Geist is hard to convey, with much more primary connotations than the English "spirit". Goethe's idea that art must not just reflect nature but be of it, the desire for a "natural" morality vs (more English) pragmatism, and Nietzsche and Wagner are all in the background here. My interpration is that the serial killer Moosbrugger represents Nietzsche, or rather how the characters see him - an insane, raw will to power. Nietzsche's influence lies all over the book, especially for the androgynous (or "hermaphrodite") Clarisse.

Pike also notes in the afterword that Musil's German is radical and jarring, in the vein of Rilke and Wittgenstein and Kraus, and hard to render into English, that unforgivingly concrete language. It might be necessary to read the German to fully evoke the meandering and soulful intellectual culture of Austria/Kakania.

[Stefania · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ο άνθρωπος χωρίς ιδιότητες , ο Ζαρατούστρα του Μούζιλ!

[Steve]

The issue we Americans face as readers these days, I think, is that our world is so orderly and apparently safe, free from domestic warfare as we have been since 1865. Herr Musil and his peers experienced something entirely different. They knew a world of destruction resulting from murderous betrayals and that even before the Germans perfected the murderous betrayals that incubated the Second World War. What exactly was that formalist construction all about, the culture so impressively described in Barbara Tuchman's Proud Tower? In the end, nothing. Absolutely nothing. It was all meaningless, a sham. And that’s what Herr Musil conveys in The Man Without Qualities, an unfinished work that is itself a manifestation of meaninglessness. I understand Herr Musil’s logic in the wake of the First World War where the ruling systems self-destructed. This seems different, interestingly, from the social forces that permitted the Second World War, where a significant minority, if not at some point outright majority, of Germans and Austrians supported a suicidal design. I wonder how his thoughts might have evolved as a result.

We are born, we die; these are the bookends to reality. Everything that develops in between is illusory. The old trope about the inmates in the asylum being the sane and those outside the insane echoes throughout. After visiting an asylum earlier in this volume in a failed attempt to connect Clarisse with the convict Moosbrugger, Ulrich remarked to Stumm von Bordwehr and Leinsdorf, “the difference between a normal person and an insane one is precisely that the normal person has all the diseases of the mind, while the madman has only one!” Yet, you and I must abide an orderly world, however arbitrary. Without that, we would walk the halls of our own unpleasant asylum, an outcome much more easily conjured away given a proper combination of education, wealth and health.

As with the first volume, Herr Musil’s writing is delicious, an aromatic presentation served to sate the cynic’s palate.

Ulrich of course saw the preposterous arrogance of assuming that everything had in effect come to nothing. And yet it was nothing. Immeasurable as existence; confusion as meaning. At least, judging by the results, it was no more than the stuff of which the soul of the present is made, which is not much. While Ulrich was thinking this he was nevertheless savoring the “not much,” as if it were the last meal at the table of life his outlook would permit him to have.

This second volume focuses on Ulrich’s sister, Agathe, who was raised largely separated from her brother. The two have reconnected following their father’s death at the end of the first volume. Often in these pages, I found long internal discussions incorporating concepts of reality and morality, to consider, then reconsider, then further reappraise every conceivable decision. Even the near-incestuous relationship that develops between Ulrich and Agathe amounts to nothing, and not for want of imagination. Consider being the therapist who had these characters as patients.

With humorous understatement, and a keen appreciation for the revelatory power of the subordinate clause, Herr Musil takes us along endless conversations and pathetic digressions, wasted energies that again amount to nothing.

‘Wherever we may roam, there’s no place like home,’ Bonadea said, with her characteristic taste for platitudes and quotations. For it came about that Diotima, in the role of guardian angel, soon took on Bonadea as a pupil in these matters, in accordance with the pedagogical principle that one learns best by teaching. This enabled Diotima to go on extracting, from the still undirected and unclear impressions she gained from her new reading, points she could really believe in—guided as she was by the happy secret of ‘intuition,’ that you are sure to hit the bull’s-eye if you talk about anything long enough. At the same time it worked to Bonadea’s advantage that she could bring to the dialogue that response without which the student remains barren soil for even the best teacher: her rich practical experience, doled out with restraint, had served the theoretician Diotima as an anxiously studied source of information ever since she had set out to put her marriage in order with the aid of textbooks.

All will agree that the best place to turn when the chips are down in a relationship is a textbook. What wonderful writing from this exceptional author. For the record, my favorite character was General Stumm von Bordwehr who understood his station as a careerist devoted to inaction, having no apparent interest in killing or being killed. What really drew my interest, however, was the General’s habit of having his orderly carry his briefcase about bulked with two loaves of regulation army bread, new Model 1914, offering the suggestion of important plans and undertakings to his audience; this provided the dual advantage of a snack at opportune moments, best accompanied with some schnapps, a reflection of the General’s practical survival skills, both military and dietary.

[v · Rating 4 out of 5]

Volume II begins with the best scenes, tone, and dialogue of the whole novel as Ulrich leaves the city to attend to some important matters with his sister. Musil sustains something of this in the rest of the volume, though it is on the whole more uneven than the first. Then there is the great plain of the unfinishment, which I will not be entering right now. After over a thousand pages, the characters and plots just stop, unresolved: a unique reading experience to the last.

[Goatboy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another one that should have been marked read a long time ago...

[Jesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

With the exception of the second part of the posthumous papers (which I intend to browse over time), I've finished. I don't know how Musil could have finished this novel but the ample material he provided us is enough to make it worthy of comparison to Joyce and Mann.
The galley chapters are worth reading and the selections from Ulrich's journal on emotions are absolutely brilliant.
I am somewhat saddened by having reached my endpoint in reading this book since I feel as though, even after nearly 1400 pages, it still possessed a quality of mysteriousness and elusiveness that was both maddening and delightful. And, though I feel some guilt about not immediately reading the pages and pages of drafts/notes, etc., I justify my decision by Musil's obvious obsessiveness over every minute detail and feel as though peering into his notebooks is almost a betrayal. (Retaining my sanity is also a consideration)
I have gone through two bouts of insomnia while reading this book and, though it is probably unrealistic, I can't help but feel that some of the anxiety I felt in relation to morality and immorality (or what McBride, in his book on MWQ, calls "The Void of Ethics") stemmed from this book. I felt the beginnings of a gnawing nihilism that caused me to greatly admire and relate to Clarisse and Moosbrugger. This was somewhat alleviated by the entrance of Ulrich's sister, Agathe, in the third (and unfinished) volume.
I will continue to mull over my thoughts about this massive novel over a great deal of time but, for the sake of the simplicity of Goodreads, will temporarily refer to it as an undeniably "5 Star" novel.

[Sunny · Rating 5 out of 5]

this is undoubtedly the most underrated book i have ever read in my entire life. amazing. i must have underlined somethign thought provoking on every second page.

[Liza Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is nothing like this book, an overabundance of experience.

[Owlseyes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Top quality dialogues. Socrates' would pale, in a way.

[Martin]

marking this as done though i did not finish (yet, or ever? who knows) the 600+ posthumous papers. as its a bit of an infinite novel, trailing into the void as drafts and sketches as musil himself croaked, i don't think this is a dishonest 'mark as read'.

its hard to make heads or tails of MWOQ, especially given ive been pecking at it for, at this point, years (?). nor was i in any way attempting a close reading of the allusions, references, and whatever else. I merely let it wash over me and picked from the objects floating in the sea foam.

Questions of morality, epistemics, philosophy of science, aesthetics are all in there. Among one of the prevailing themes is "the two cultures", or how to marry the rational with the romantic.

I still don't know what quite to make of the title itself, except for that Ulrich has a slippery shape shifting quality; taking one side, then the other; manic, and depressive -- but not in the same way Clarisse is perhaps the first manic pixie dream girl.

One can feel everything in reading MWOQ, including boredom, sadness, and the disturbing contemporaneousness of a slow, sliding descent into futures already known to the reader.

Among essayisms that stood out to me were Strumm in the Library, for its interesting almost modern takes on LLMs and the geopolitical discussion in the asylum.

Some of the sentences and descriptions peppered throughout the prose were really remarkable and original.

[Nik Maack · Rating 1 out of 5]

I can't finish this. It's too boring. I barely made it through volume 1. Volume 2 just goes on endlessly.

It is hard to believe an editor ever touched this book. Because it rambles and rambles and rambles without end. While I found some nice passages now and then, the book is profoundly boring for long stretches. VERY long stretches.

It is weird to have read so much of this text, and then to abandon it. I've read something like 1200 pages and there's 500 more to go. Forget it.

[Victoria]

Can one finish a book that itself is unfinished? I've stopped reading in the fourth book, feeling that I was going where the novel itself had not gone -- through a final editing to a finished or abandoned work. Here we're approaching the territory of the well-known idea that a novel is never finished, it's simply abandoned. Thus death prevented Robert Musil from getting The Man Without Qualities to the point of abandonment.

So I'll say a bit about the parts he abandoned to print during his lifetime, secure in the belief that more was to come. Perhaps it wasn't just my imagination that the attitude and writing seemed inconsistent with the earlier parts once one entered the fourth volume, the sensibilities seeming less finely honed, justifying Musil's dissatisfaction.

The imminence of WWI hangs over the work, the date letting the reader know that everything described is going to change radically and often horribly very soon. Does the novel record the way the world was before the cataclysmic war, or show us the origin of the folly and waste that brought it on?

There's no answer to this, but while inwardly quaking at the disaster to come, we can enjoy the social comedy Musil lays before us, the great national event to be commemorated in ways everyone can object to, planning done at posh gatherings in posh surroundings by high society with a sprinkling of the titled among them.

Against this, Walter and Clarisse and Ulrich and Agathe thrash out intellectual propositions that mean everything to them but are remote from the world and even their lives.

A wonderful book, unfinished or not: its reputation precedes it and sets the stage for disappointment, which never appears. I plan to re-experience it in the shorter version by different translators published earlier, material Musil saw through publication. It's been said that translation is more appropriate if less smooth, though this one, by Sophie Wilkins and Burton Pike, was expressive and elegant.

Despite the growing disorganization of the last volume, withdrawn from publication for reworking which his short life denied him, interest and even excitement lasted to the end...and may continue some day with the drafts and sketches that give this complex, polished work such a rag-tag ending.

[Ted · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is more on a single page of this masterpiece than most novels hold in their entireties. It is a work of unparalleled genius (so don't ask what it's about, as I would not be able to say).

[Tan Thanh · Rating 5 out of 5]

The experience is comparable to that of the monstrous pleasure and danger of having a new lobe burgeoning in one’s underdeveloped brain. Maybe there is a correct way to live, fermenting, yet to be manifested. A singular kind of the question, and while certainly i’m on cloud nine from literary ecstasy, its weight exposes itself to me the first time. Musil wrote here, arguably, some of the most supreme proses (too early for me to say, but if i find myself to be wrong someday, i’m more than delighted). The grappling of the ambiguous precision and scrupulous ambiguity, the irrational and the rational, the daring to play at the last front of something to be called mankind, render this a most radical revolt against the platitude of dichotomies and common causes of existence - I will come back to this book many times, to explore its range of topics, or simply for a bedtime story. As of reality, even though I do expect a coming mass catastrophe, and that puts significant anxiety over my head, I have learned the lesson: dethrone the ideocracy.

[Jon Norimann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Volume two of Musil's Masterpiece is slightly more focused than vol 1. Other than that its mostly more of the same. The hero, Ulrich, walks through life commenting on daily events. It becomes a literary version of the TV series Seinfeld, mostly about "nothing". Musil does have some original ideas and choice of words here and there but to me it overall just becomes many pages of rather dull musings.

[Alan Wake · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish Musil had the chance to finish this, because I could not get enough of this world and characters he created. The prose was esoteric and pedantic, almost to a ridiculous amount, but I think consuming this as the satire it ultimately is, it shouldn’t bother you. That is, if you don’t mind having a dictionary on hand. My new favorite phrase came to say now came from the first volume: “emphatic reproof”

[Mike Polizzi · Rating 5 out of 5]

“...when the rubble of ‘ineffectual feelings,’ which every period bequeaths to the next, has grown into mountains without anything being done about it. So the War Ministry can sit back and serenely wait the next mass catastrophe.”

I still have the Posthumous Papers to read, but the second volume draws the elements from the first into stark relief, the meandering path of thought and feelings builds and builds, a combinative essay of narrative voices, intelligent fully observed and realized - capable of deeply challenging each other’s points of view- yet still builds to a remarkable synthesis of the human creature’s capabilities and short comings in an age of relativism and materialism. I thought every so often of Gaddis’s The Recognitions which seems to share a few of Musil’s concerns but doesn’t handle them with a quarter of deftness or genuine human feeling that Musil does.
Though the book is incomplete, I wonder if I need more. As a project, Musil’s conception of an open novel where the structure can build in any direction or multiple directions simultaneously prefigures the Post-modern novel. It uses the scientific method to self-interrogate and rebuild from both a formal perspective and as a key character of Ulrich’s skepticism.

[Pierre E. Loignon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Après avoir été franchement épaté par la génialité du tome 1, j’étais vraiment enthousiaste en ouvrant ce livre. Je savais qu’il ne contenait que des ébauches pour la suite. J’avais un peu peur d’être déçu, mais j’étais trop curieux. Il me fallait aller lire ça tout de suite!
J’ai donc été très agréablement surpris de découvrir que les 450 premières pages contiennent les premiers chapitres publiés de la troisième partie qui était alors en cours d’écriture lors du décès de Müsil. Les cent pages suivantes ont également été données à la publication, mais avaient été reprises pour être retravaillées éventuellement. Le niveau d’écriture y est d’ailleurs tout aussi brillant que l’est celui du tome 1 et nous pouvons ainsi suivre le cours du roman pour 550 pages.
Ulrich s’est alors complètement lassé de se divertir de son ennui en servant de secrétaire à l’action parallèle. Il se concentre alors complètement à vivre une relation incestueuse avec Agathe. Il ne voit presque plus personnes, hormis le brave et rondelet général Stumm, qui passe de temps à autre, en donnant des nouvelles et en cherchant conseil pour tenter de sortir Ulrich de son isolement afin de le rendre utile à nouveau à l’action parallèle.
En ce qui concerne la scandaleuse relation entre le frère et la sœur, elle permet un reflet féminin de l’homme sans qualité. Agathe trouvera aussi, à son tour un pendant masculin à la Bona Dea du premier tome en un professeur veuf dont le caractère morale ressemble à celui de Kant, mais en plus fragile. Cette ébauche aboutit sur la lecture que fait Agathe de textes brouillons écrit par Ulrich sur le sentiment.
S’ensuit quelques 200 pages données à la publication par Müsil, puis reprises pour être retravaillées. L’écriture n’est plus à la hauteur du roman ici. Müsil n’arrive pas à synthétiser ses réflexions à sa trame narratrice comme il le faisait précédemment. Il se contente de faire lire des brouillons d’Ulrich à Agathe où de nous faire entrer dans la réflexion intérieure d’un Ulrich se préparant à écrire un article sur le sujet. L’essentiel de ces pages présente une conception du sentiment qu’Ulrich développe, conception qui, pour l’essentiel, exprime en termes plus actuels ce qu’on trouve déjà dans les traités de Hume et de Descartes sur les passions et le sentiment. Le tout est intéressant, mais manque de fini.
S’ensuit une véritable exploration au pays de l’écriture de Müsil. Les conversations y sont souvent données laconiquement avec les noms précédants chaque échange, comme pour une pièce de théâtre, et quelques descriptions d’un vêtement, d’un rire, d’un meuble liés à cette conversation se trouvent parfois ensuite données, séparément, diverses ébauches d’un même passage et plusieurs indications d’auteur sont données entre parenthèses, etc.
Mais on trouve aussi certains passages achevés qui n’ont simplement pas eus le temps d’être greffé à l’ensemble et qu’on pourrait s’imaginer qu’ils s’y trouvent réellement, rétrospectivement, comme, par exemple, celui où Clarisse raconte sa seconde visite à l’asile à Stumm, l’évasion de Moosbrugger, le moment où Clarisse convainc Rachel de prendre Moosbrugger sous son aile après son évasion, pour le cacher, etc. L’ensemble donne une très bonne idée de ce qu’aurait pu donner le roman achevé.
Enfin, les 100 dernières pages contiennent les possibilités préparatoires que Müsil a explorées avant de se lancer dans l’entreprise titanesque de L’homme sans qualités. Les râles mal articulés retrouvés dans les cahiers d’un cadavre s’achèvent ainsi avec les balbutiements incertains des tous premiers commencements.

[Víctor Sampayo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Con este segundo tomo de El hombre sin atributos, aún más grosero que el primero en cuanto a número de páginas —me llevó cerca de seis meses de lectura—, sucede algo curioso: luego de la muerte del padre y el singular encuentro con su hermana Agathe, a quien Ulrich no ha visto más que un puñado de días en su vida, la novela da un vuelco: la Acción Paralela poco a poco se va diluyendo y sólo las periódicas y humorísticas visitas del general Stumm siguen manteniendo al tanto a Ulrich acerca de las reuniones, de lo que uno saca más o menos en claro que aquello se precipita cada vez más hacia el absurdo.
Lo medular de la narración se traslada entonces a la relación entre Ulrich y Agathe, suerte de espejo mutuo, no sin ciertas deformaciones, donde se van perdiendo también los neblinosos confines de la novela. Empieza la sospecha de una proclividad hacia el incesto en las cavilaciones de Ulrich acerca de Agathe. Ya ambos se habían confabulado, casi como en una broma estudiantil, para dejar sin su parte de herencia al esposo de Agathe, quien ya no soporta su presencia y concibe la idea de propinarle un golpe bajo; pero cuando se leen los análisis que Ulrich hace de su hermana, de los que emana un cierto tufillo onanista, como en una suerte de relación especular con una zona hasta entonces desconocida de sí mismo, si bien con sus deliciosas diferencias, la sospecha va tomando forma y sustancia.
De hecho, después de la muerte del padre, Agathe va a vivir a casa de Ulrich, donde siguen en mutuo embelesamiento, la mayor parte del tiempo en casa, sin casi ya vida social, lo que despierta en Ulrich extensas reflexiones acerca de las emociones y los sentimientos, a veces desplegadas en las perezosas discusiones con su hermana, o puestas por escrito, acaso a sabiendas de que ella las descubrirá en algún momento, por lo que hay diversas zonas en el libro donde la narración se pone en pausa para dejarnos entrar a una dimensión más ensayística. Aún siguen también por ahí Clarisse y Walter —de hecho Clarisse consigue satisfacer la obsesión de conocer en persona a un célebre asesino dentro de las celdas del manicomio, lo que despierta en ella una chispa de locura que siempre había permanecido latente—, pero los personajes ajenos a esa especie de solipsismo entre hermanos poco a poco se atomizan, como si se perdieran vaporosamente entre la bruma.
Aquella disolución del mundo representado por la Acción Paralela, y del propio Ulrich en sí mismo —y por una suerte de prolongación metafísica y psicológica, en Agathe—, comienza a ser casi total conforme el libro se acerca a su final, o lo que en la edición que hoy conocemos es «el final», ya que es de sobra sabido que Musil nunca terminó formalmente el libro. Y así llegamos a un apartado de páginas bellísimas dentro de la transgresión incestual: un súbito viaje a Italia, la consumación del amor, la vergüenza por fin trascendida, la necesidad de escapar de un mundo que, lo mismo que ellos, se diluye poco a poco en sí mismo, o peor aún: comienza una implosión merced a esa ruina ideológica en la que se precipita Europa durante la primera mitad del siglo XX, y que de alguna metafórica manera, también ellos encarnan con los albores, la cúspide y la decadencia de su propio amor.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

13.02.2015 Dieser Text ist eindeutig für mich, neben Proust eine eingene Galaxie, ein eigenes Sprach- und Erlebnisuniversum. Konnte ich schon die Faszination des ersten Bandes nicht annähernd in Worte fassen so gelingt es mir bei diesem, in weiten Teilen aus Fragmenten bestehenden Band noch weniger. Eine unglaubliche Gedanken und Bildfülle strömt auf den Leser ein. Oft mich und die Zeit fortreißend und dann wieder so fordernd und zäh wie nur denkbar. Meine Lieblingsfigur, schon des ersten Bandes, ist ohne Zweifel General Stumm von Bordwehr, ein Dutzfreund Ulrichs und ein Verehrer Diotimas. Die Gespräche mit seinem Freund Ulrich sind so das Greifbarste in diesem Roman - und dafür mag ich den General. Und dann auch noch Clarisse, deren völliges Abgleiten in den Wahn bizarr genau und in Schritten nachvollziehbar erzählt wird.
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Seite 1358
Was er sagte, hatte Hand und Fuß wenn auch nicht gerade immer an der rechten Stelle (...)

Seite 1715
Die Musik welche in dem dunkelnden Raum die Augen der Menschen wie Lichter anzündete und die Körper wie Rauch durcheinanderblies hatte wieder begonnen (...)

Seite 1753
Aber in unseren Gedichten ist zuviel starre Vernunft, die Worte sind ausgebrannte Begriffe, die Syntax reicht Stock und Seil wie für Blinde, der Sinn kommt vom Boden nicht los, den alle festgetreten haben, die erweckte Seele kann ich solchen Eisenkleidern nicht wandeln.

Das sind jetzt nur Nanopartikel aus dem Buch, davon finden sich auf jeder einzelnen Seite welche!
Vielleicht führe ich diese Besprechung gelegentlich noch weiter - mir fällt bestimmt noch etwas dazu ein....

[Mr. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Musil's continuation of 'The Man Without Qualities' takes us even deeper into the turn of the century continental psyche. Ulrich and Agathe deliberate both the will and legacy of their late father as well as the nature of morality, human sexuality, and perhaps the unconscious. There are extraordinary additions to Musil's elaborate cathedral of ideas and characters, such as the brief visit to the asylum to meet Moosbrugger, the intriguing murderer and psychopath that haunts the imaginations of the elite within the Parallel Campaign. Although the Man Without Qualities is an incomplete work, it remains as rich as any major novel of the 20th century; if only Musil had been able to endow it with the structural strength and form to bring it to a close as his primary literary rivals (Joyce, Proust) had done so brilliantly.