没有个性的人

The Man Without Qualities #1-2

by Robert Musil, 罗伯特·穆齐尔, 张荣昌 (Translator)

《没有个性的人》是奥地利作家罗伯特·穆齐尔未完成的遗作，一部“精神长篇小说”和一部富于随笔式思考的文学作品，作家通过小说里的微型世界，勾画了从启蒙理性塑造的上层市民社会到现代大众社会的过渡，展示了其时代人物的蜡像馆，在二十世纪现代派文学中占有重要地位。

小说的背景是一九一四年前的奥匈帝国。在维也纳，人们成立了一个委员会，筹备一九一八年庆祝奥皇弗兰茨·约瑟夫在位七十周年的活动，而在这同一年，德国将庆祝德皇威廉二世在位三十周年；所以，人们称奥地利的这个行动为“平行行动”（然而，一九一八年正好将是这两个王国覆灭的年份，这将一个滑稽荒唐的炸弹放进小说的基底）。

小说的主人公——平行行动委员会秘书乌尔里希——认识到，对自己来说，可能性比中庸死板的现实性更重要；他觉得自己是个没有个性的人，因为他不再把人，而是把物质看作现代现实的中心：“今天……已经产生了一个无人的个性的世界，一个无经历者的经历的世界。”他看到自己被迫面对时代的种种问题，面对理性和心灵、科学信仰和文化悲观主义之间的种种矛盾。另外，小说还塑造了主人公在平行行动的活动圈里接触到的一系列形形色色的人物，如行动负责人狄奥蒂玛、金融巨头和“大作家”阿恩海姆、年轻时代的朋友瓦尔特和克拉丽瑟、神经错乱的杀人犯莫斯布鲁格尔，等等。

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

980 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1930

About the author

Austrian writer.

He graduated military boarding school at Eisenstadt (1892-1894) and then Hranice, in that time also known as Mährisch Weißkirchen, (1894-1897). These school experiences are reflected in his first novel, The Confusions of Young Törless.

He served in the army during The First World War. When Austria became a part of the Third Reich in 1938, Musil left for exile in Switzerland, where he died of a stroke on April 15, 1942. Musil collapsed in the middle of his gymnastic exercises and is rumoured to have died with an expression of ironic amusement on his face. He was 61 years old.

Reviews

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first volume of The Man Without Qualities comprises two parts: A Sort of Introduction and Pseudoreality Prevails and those consist of one hundred and twenty three short chapters. And every chapter reads as a vivid fable or an acrid anecdote. And together these particolored tiles constitute a variegated mosaic of a brilliant farce which shows a wholeness of a complete book.
What the novel’s like?

But do you know what it's like? It's like traveling second class in Galicia and picking up crab lice. I've never felt so filthy helpless! When you spend a lot of time with ideas you end up itching all over, and you can scratch till you bleed, without getting any relief.

Yes, The Man Without Qualities is a novel of ideas – it is so thick with ideas that it is hard to choose among possible quotes.

And since the possession of qualities assumes a certain pleasure in their reality, we can see how a man who cannot summon up a sense of reality even in relation to himself may suddenly, one day, come to see himself as a man without qualities.

The absence of qualities allows the main hero to stay outside the world, nations, state, society, unions, individuality and even his inner self and to contemplate and analyze all and sundry.

For if stupidity, seen from within, did not so much resemble talent as possess the ability to be mistaken for it, and if it did not outwardly resemble progress, genius, hope, and improvement, the chances are that no one would want to be stupid, and so there would be no stupidity.

And this way of living makes of him a connoisseur of all sorts of stupidity in this world…

The personal quality of any given creature is precisely that which doesn’t coincide with anything else. I once said to you that the more truth we discover, the less of the personal is left in the world, because of the longtime war against individuality that individuality is losing.

Now this longtime war appears to be close to the end for our time is a time of universal conformity – so many modern people seem to be afraid to have any individuality.

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

Είναι απίστευτο το συλλογικό τελετουργικό εύρος
απο το κουβάρι της ζωής, ως το ποικιλόμορφο νήμα
της αφήγησης, που ξετυλίγεται προστατευμένο
απο τον τον νόμο της υποψίας και της προοπτικής σύντμησης των φαινομένων για την ιδεολογία του μηδενός, του ανθρωπισμού, της πίστης και της επιστήμης.

Η παντοδυναμία του ονειρευόμενου ανθρώπου
που αμφισβητεί την πραγματικότητα του.
Την έννοια του ατόμου που αφηρημένα και διαβόητα, μετατρέπει και αλλοιώνει το εύρος της ανελέητης αλήθειας του κόσμου, αλλά ψάχνει διεξόδους, ώστε οι ψυχές να αντικρίζονται χωρίς την μεσολάβηση των αισθήσεων.
Αυτός ο πλάνητας των ιδιοτήτων, έχει την απλότητα
στο «Όταν»,το «Πριν» και το «Μετά»,
της αφηγηματικής τάξης πραγμάτων, αυτής της τεράστιας λογοτεχνικής αυτοκρατορίας που έχτισε ο Μούζιλ.

Ένας βαθιά φιλοσοφημένος στοχαστής, ένας μυστικιστής της συναισθηματικής καθαρότητας που αντιτίθεται στην σκευωρία των ιδιοτήτων,
ένας πολέμιος της πραγματικότητας που αναζητάει το άλλο κράτος της ύπαρξης, τον Πύργο των επαναστατικά στεροτυπικών συμπερασμάτων για τους στόχους των πιστών σε έναν νεκρό θεό, έναν θεό που οι κακόμοιροι ανοήμονες πίστεψαν πως τον σκότωσαν σε βωμούς κέρδους, ενώ στην ουσία ο θεός έχει γίνει απλά, Άλλος.
Έχει ασπαστεί την Αγία τριάδα
κράτος-εργασία-τεχνική, που απαιτεί τα πάντα, ολοκληρωτική παράδοση στα θυσιαστήρια του Μολώχ που διακηρύσσει μανιφέστα θανάτου όταν δεν λατρεύεται και δεν υπηρετείται, ενώ στο ακαταλόγιστο της σκλαβιάς του υπόσχεται μια διαβολική θεία χάρη.

Ο συγγραφέας τούτος είναι ανυπέρβλητος στυλίστας των γενικών ιδεών της εποχής του που έτειναν να γίνουν διαχρονικές και αξεπέραστες.
Ο Μούζιλ θεωρείται απο πολλούς ως ένας απο τους μεγαλύτερους μοντερνιστές του 20ου αιωνα
( και ναι, βάζω ταμπέλα σε έναν λογοτέχνη ενώ είναι κάτι που απεχθάνομαι και αγνοώ).

Ο Αυστριακός ευφυής πεζογράφος πέρασε το μεγαλύτερο μέρος της ζωής του
(1880-1942) γράφοντας αυτό το επικό έργο.

Μπορείτε να υποκλιθείτε κάπου εδώ ή και λίγο παρακάτω.

Βρισκόμαστε στην Αυστρία το 1913 και γνωρίζουμε τον Ούλριχ -έναν απο τους σημαντικότερους και γοητευτικότερους χαρακτήρες της παγκόσμιας λογοτεχνίας.

Ο Ούλριχ αδιαφορεί για τα πάντα και αρνείται
τη μεσαία τάξη, τη θέση του στην κοινωνία και τις πολλές ικανότητες του.
Είναι ο άνθρωπος χωρίς ιδιότητες ή ο συγκερασμός πολλών ιδιοτήτων που δεν βρίσκουν άνθρωπο να αποδοθούν.
Είναι ο ίδιος ενα κυνικό ποίημα που κρύβεται πίσω
απο δεξιότητες γενικές, πνευματικές και κοινωνικές.

Ίσως η αδιαφορία του καθίσταται δυνατή απο τις δια βίου προσπάθειες του διπλωματικού έργου του πατέρα του,ενός μεσαίου επιπέδου επηρμένου γραφειοκράτη.

Ο Ούλριχ μπορεί να βοά μέσα στην σιωπή του και απο τα μεγάφωνα της καρδιάς του να στέλνει την κραυγή της ψυχής του στο σύμπαν, σαν ελάφι οιστροδόνητο και τότε οι απαντήσεις φθάνουν σε αυτόν απο χιλιάδες άλλες ερωτικές κραυγές μοναχικών ψυχών προς το σύμπαν. Ένας άνδρας χωρίς ιδιότητες που αγκαλιάζει τον διάβολο διότι δεν υπάρχει όμοιος του και μισεί οτιδήποτε παραλύει την βούληση και διαταράσσει το πνεύμα.

Είναι ένας ευφυής άνδρας, ένα μαθηματικό μυαλό,
μια εύστροφη και μεγαλοφυής, χαρισματική προσωπικότητα που αναγνωρίζεται ως διάνοια.

Στην κοινωνία και την ψυχολογία, στην Βασιλική και τυπολατρική Κακάνια, μια φανταστική πόλη-κράτος στην Αυστρία κάτω από τους Μεγαλειότατους, Υψηλότατους, βασιλικούς και αυτοκρατορικούς θώκους, όπως και άλλα τιποτένια συστατικά μέρη, που μαζί με την υποτέλεια στους Αψβούργους, η εξουσία
αλόγιστα οδήγησε στον Μεγάλο Πόλεμο, πνέουν τα λοίσθια η μοναρχική αριστοκρατία και η ανώτερη μεσαία τάξη,
Η Κακάνια βρίσκεται στο χείλος της καταστροφής
όταν ο Ούλριχ συνειδητοποιει πως ο πνευματικός, παραδοσιακός κόσμος της τέχνης και του πολιτισμού ρημάζονται απο την πρόοδο της μεσαίας τάξης στο εμπόριο και την επιστήμη.
Ο παλιός κόσμος βουλιάζει στην άβυσσο εντοπίζοντας κάποιον αποδιοπομπαίο τράγο, χάρη σε διανοητικά ελλιπείς μα ξεχωριστούς ηγέτες και κινητοποιήσεις εθνικιστικών αυτοαποκαλούμενων πατριωτών και λοιπών εθνικών υποομάδων.

Έτσι ο Ούλριχ διορίζεται σε ηγετική θέση σε μια εθνική επιτροπή επιφορτισμένη με την ανάπτυξη του παραλλήλου στόχου, του παραλλήλου αγώνα για μια οικουμενική Αυστρία.
Όλα τείνουν προς ενα σύνθημα που θα ενώσει τις επιδιώξεις των αυστριακών κατά τη διάρκεια του εορτασμού για κάποιο ιωβηλαίο του σκωληκοφαγωμένου γέροντα της «Γενέσεως», αυτοκράτορα Φερδινάνδο Ιωσήφ.

Εύκολα και λόγω κυνισμού ο Ούλριχ μεταξύ πολλών προσωπικών και ενδόμυχων συλλογιστικών διαβουλεύσεων, με κίνητρο τον προφητικό κυνισμό του συνειδητοποιεί πως η επιτροπή έχει μία μάλλον αδύνατη αποστολή.
Το μέλλον της Αυστρίας διαπλεκόμενο και κατεστραμμένο δεν περιλαμβάνει τον εορτασμό της παλιάς αλλά προφανώς μιας ριζοσπαστικής κοινωνικής αλλαγής που στοχεύει στους Εβραίους ως θύματα και θύτες καθώς και την ενδυνάμωση ομάδων ειδικών συμφερόντων στην αυστροουγγρική αυτοκρατορία.

Κάπου εδω ο Μούζιλ χτίζει ενα καστ απο δορυφορικές προσωπικότητες με περίεργα δημιουργικά προαπαιτούμενα και την αυστηρή αυστριακή ανάλυση μέσων, χαρακτήρων, καταστάσεων, διαθέσεων, σχέσεων και σκοπών, σαν ιστορικός που καταγράφει την αυστριακή αυτοκρατορία στις ημέρες της παρακμής, πριν τον Α’ΠΠ.

Το μυθιστόρημα του Μούζιλ θέτει τον προβληματισμό στον αναγνώστη να αναγνωρίσει στον Ούλριχ
αδιαφορία και ανεπάρκεια εγγενών πολύτιμων ιδιοτήτων, ενώ περιπλανιέται σε ένα αποσυντηθέμενο έθνος και εξαρτάται περισσότερο απο την παρέμβαση και τον περιορισμό των καθεστώτων.
Επομένως καμία διαρκή κουλτούρα δεν μπορεί να βοηθήσει στην κατανόηση και την διατήρηση των ανθρώπινων αξιών.
Για ένα άτομο, μια κοινωνία, ένα έθνος χωρίς ποιότητα σε κάθε έκφανση της βιοψυχολογικής επιβίωσης και αναβίωσης, οι αξίες και οι ιδέες δρουν ως παραλυτικό ναρκωτικό.

Έτσι ( τελειώνει ο πρώτος τόμος (με δικά μου, αίμα, δάκρυα κι ιδρώτα ). 😨
Σαφώς ο συγγραφέας παρουσιάζει ένα αριστουργηματικό έπος με απίστευτα υψηλή νοημοσύνη γραφής και κατανόησης της ανθρώπινης φύσης.

Θα μπορούσα να ανοίξω το βιβλίο σε οποιαδήποτε σελίδα και να ξεχωρίσω ένα φιλοσοφικό δοκίμιο, με εύρος, νόημα και ωριμότητα νόησης.

Φυσικά για να επιτευχθεί αυτό χρειάστηκαν χιλιάδες λέξεις που πραγματικά δίνουν ένα υπέροχο, πολιτιστικό και διαχρονικό έργο της παγκόσμιας λογοτεχνίας στην βιβλιοθήκη της ανθρωπότητας και μια παραλυτική κατάπληξη νοητικής και πνευματικής κούρασης για εμένα που τείνει να γίνει καταστολή. 😰

Ο Μούζιλ βράζει τον εγκέφαλο μεταφορικά και ουσιαστικά, ύστερα τραβάει το δέρμα απο το μυαλό και γιατρεύει την πληγωμένη ψυχή με αποθέματα πνευματικής μέθης και επιθέματα απο το δέρμα της μέθεξης σε πνεύμα, νου και εξαρτημένες ιδιότητες απο στόχους, αξίες και ενέργειες.
💯📚💯
📚📚📚

Καλή ανάγνωση.
Πολλούς εορταστικούς ασπασμούς.

[Luís · Rating 3 out of 5]

Often classified among the major works of the 20th century, I have sometimes been tired of it. But of what, then? How can such a book (and let's say "volume 1"), which by far condenses the questions and the potentialities, the contradictions and the fears of the beginning of the 20th century, be boring? And indeed, after almost 1000 pages of intellectual dithering, we are flushed. We talk about progress, feelings, ideas, the meaning of life, and the sense of humanity, to mention only that.
The writing of The Man without Quality was perhaps Robert Musil's way of putting on paper, by making it unalterable, the result of his reflections and trying to understand what state of mind this part of Europe was in on the eve of the catastrophe we know: the First World War.
Even if the geopolitical situation had not deepened in the book, we understand the stakes of this "Parallel action" for the "Austrian patriots" unable to define their own identity in this Austro-Hungarian Empire stuck between the German Empire and the Slavic countries of south-eastern Europe.
The main character, who so far enjoyed modest success in his career, is at the center of the action of the work. This man without quality had not so deprived of it, but he does not know how to define himself. The author uses this vagueness to express his thoughts and communicate his questions. Conversely, Dr Harneim seems to represent a man with all the qualities, who does not stay on the "average" and has the answer to everything. We get the impression that this man knows everything. But in the end, he recognizes that we cannot know everything to know everything; the truth is specific to everyone, according to their values, culture, and history.
And it is the fight, intellectual of the main character, to make this fact that all that we do, all that we believe, depends on our mechanisms of thought, that it does not there is no single truth. So, finally, it could apply this well-known maxim of Socrates: "All I know is that I know nothing."

[Lee Klein · Rating 5 out of 5]

Among the very best I've read. No question. Up there shining a bright light in my own little personal canonical firmament. The ideal book of ideas. Fans of towering literary artistry will love this. Recommended for fans of Infinite Jest -- there's even a riff about what it means when a tennis player is called a genius. Somewhere in Extinction, Bernhard notes that Musil is the best prose writer ever in German. Fantastically drawn characters with incomparable depth thanks to such clear, fluid, insightful exposition. Things happen early on that are sustained and revisited throughout (ie, there's a plot -- click the "dislike" button on all reviews that say there's no such thing in this one). Ulrich's beaten up, he hangs with his artistic piano-playing friends, enjoys some intimacy with a married nympho, gets arrested, takes a shine to a society-symbolizing lady killer, and becomes a member of the Parallel Campaign! Otherwise, despite all this plot crap, every page packs an epigrammical wallop. Unfakeable insight, wisdom, striking images. Exactly the sort of thing I want and rail about when I don't get, especially in books considered excellent. So many ideas, too many to even begin listing, but never does it feel thematically scatterbrained or "encyclopedic" -- it's like a gracefully revolving squeezing out of nuanced colors from every gradiation stop along the emotional, intellectual, psychological, artistic, political, societal, and most importantly the spiritual spectrum (note: "spiritual" doesn't mean "religious" as much as having to do with that very Germanic concept of Geist, which I think is like the soul, the body, the mind, the will, and all those old verities like courage and dignity wrapped up in one -- the sort of thing ye olde uber-Modernist novels like this are most concerned about). It's the sort of book that you want to start summarizing and quoting until you've pretty much just plagiarized all 725 pages. Did things sometimes get a little slow? Not so often did I lose a little patience -- slower lulls came before the storms (albeit more of axiom than action). Loved the Utopia of Essayism sections, sort of like prose-poem unpredictable statement tilt-a-whirls re: Ulrich's way of life. Loved the two sections about the Great Author (Arnheim) -- couldn't help thinking about how it applied to JFranz these days (particularly the recent shitstorm about his off-the-cuff anti-Twitter riffs). So often things seemed to directly address today's Twittering soul (the action is set in 1913 Vienna; Musil wrote it in the '20s/'30s) and, toward the end, the Occupy Movement. Not sure how well this one would make out if run through the race, class, gender thresher. Soliman, one of the most vivid and "poignant" characters in the book, is like a horny Pip awash in a sea of upper-crust whitecaps. Diotima and Bonedea I confused a little, despite warnings not to do just that, thanks to their idealized names, but Rachel and particularly Clarisse, if not Gerda, were more developed and felt real. There's still the second volume and the notes of volume 2 to read but volume 1 feels complete -- if Musil had said he was done at this point it would've been considered a complete masterpiece instead of the first volume of an unfinished mega-masterpiece. All the major character and thematic dealios seemed to evolve and climax and close down at the end. Anyway, really glad I've read this. Can't recommend it more highly to pretty much everyone -- for a book of this size and sort, it seemed surprisingly accessible. Can't wait to read some more Musil, all of Mann, and some other related Germanic stuff (Broch's "The Sleepwalkers") this summer. Let's hope it's dark and dreary.

[Szplug · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amongst the most influential and powerful fictions that I have read are those born from the Austro-Germanic experience amidst the cadaverous ruins of the First World War: Thomas Mann, Hermann Broch, Franz Kafka, Joseph Roth, and now Robert Musil. One of the biggest regrets in my reading life is not having become fluent in German—although the English translators have done a magnificent job of bringing this epoch of profound reflection and soaring imagination to the English language, I can only but acknowledge how much deeper would be my appreciation of their achievement in their native tongue. There is a real probing of the then post-fin-de-siècle society and modernity, a philosophical and logical excavation of the geist, that these somberly wounded thinkers writing amidst the benumbed and bewildered wreckage of flourishing empires that, suddenly, were no more—a dismemberment entirely foreseeable in the folly and bathos that preceded their downfalls—bring to their masterworks that, in my opinion, simply did not have its counterpart in the output of English-speaking peers.

The Man Without Qualities, a brethren spirit of Mann's The Magic Mountain and Broch's The Sleepwalkers, is a monumental exploration of the malaise of modernity that was rotting the structure of the Austro-Hungarian Empire from within. The slim reeds of plot serve merely to frame the stunningly detailed and modulated dissection of Imperial society circa 1913—a mere year from cataclysm—that Musil performs with a precision and focus that is breathtaking in its relentless refulgence. The menagerie of characters are representative of various class and societal positions—from the rigidly rational diplomat Tuzzi and would-be-Wagner Walter, to the extremes of irrationality personified by the mad murderer Moosbrugger and Walter's Nietzschean birthmark of a wife, Clarisse. Between these twin poles is played out a struggle between Ulrich, the Man Without Qualities, and the immensely wealthy Prussian industrialist and intellectual Dr. Paul Arnheim. Ulrich and Arnheim are both representations of the fecund propagation of ideas, philosophies, and theorization that abounded in European capitals—with an influx of the new continually superseding or displacing the old—and which combined with the ascendency of science, and the decline of religious belief, to render the early twentieth century such an unsettling, portentous period of enthusiastic optimism and agonized despair in equal proportions. Whereas Ulrich is the eternal skeptic, unable to remain with—or believe in—any single occupation for long and continually setting himself in opposition to the prevailing conventional ideas of society—whether with family, friend, acquaintance or stranger—Armheim is the modern intellect who embraces everything in an effort to achieve a synthesis of the poetic with the pragmatic, the businesslike with the beautiful, the scientific with the sinful.

Yet with these two, as with the brilliantly realized cast that surrounds them, their witty interplay, their philosophical musings and extended dissertations cannot mask the utterly facile and frivolous ends they have become the means for. Whereas each individual believes him- or herself to be pursuing a quest for truth, they have each manipulated truth in order that verity will but enhance their native convictions and beliefs, can be donned and displayed like opulent jewelry; even Ulrich, who perhaps tries the most sincerely to penetrate the obscurantist veils of egotism, has found himself pacing antagonistically in circles. It is of high importance that, by the time the first volume has been concluded, little apart from various seductions and liasons has been achieved - rarely has the status quo been so ineffectually challenged by such lush verbosity.

The Austrian Empire—scatologically nicknamed Kakania from Kaiserlich und Königlich (Imperial and Royal)—was an ossified and creaking structure being born down under the weight of the ponderous-but-empty rituals and utterly aimless and needless internecine machinations that had managed to make themselves assume the highest importance. The parade of characters performing their respective parts in this mummery-at-the-edge-of-the-abyss allow Musil a full range for his immensely perceptive and poetically illustrated dissection of prewar cacophony and confusion; and one the most amazing of this book's countless wonders is the utter relevancy of the tome to the troubles of today. In Kakania there are more than a few parallels with the febrile state of the world in 2010.

Throughout all of these various strands and themes stands the sheer quality of Musil's literary skills—this is one of the greatest books I have ever read. There are 725 pages in Volume One, and the reader can count the superfluous sentences in the work on one hand; nigh on every single page contains at least one phrase or musing or aside that crackles off the paper with an intertwining of genius and lyricism in a coldly passionate embrace. Indeed, there are so many brilliant episodes, dialogues, reflections, psychological analyzations and philosophical expositions that the reader becomes a bit overwhelmed trying to absorb it all: it's like endless courses of haute-cuisine and rich desserts being brought to the table, one upon the other, under the brisk direction and culinary mania of the ultra-talented-but-relentless chef. I bought the second volume together with the first, but I simply cannot continue mainlining such a purity of literary cocaine without giving myself some time to come down.

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 5 out of 5]

UPDATE: new article about Musil, great read!

https://unherd.com/2020/09/the-last-g...

In the Man Without Qualities, Robert Musil created the perfect corporate everyman, a Dilbert for the early 20th C in the crumbling Austro-Hungarian empire. With an incredibly precise wit and penetrating insight, his protagonist Ulrich - who reminded me of Castorp in The Magic Mountain - has no personality but rather derives it from the freaks around him. Nymphomaniacs, neurotics - all the manifestations of a corrupt society consuming itself. A large part of the book is dedicated to the preparations of the 70th anniversary of the reign of Franz Joseph (which also coincided with the 30th anniversary of Wilhem II of Germany - so the race is on to see who can waste more money and hot air in proclaiming the more glorious regime. Of course, all of this is written with the background of WW I and the subsequent destruction of both empires. You can almost hear Ozymandias in the background as the conspiracies abound and the preparations move fatefully forward.
The second Volume has a large part dedicated to incense with Ulrich's cousin so I never bothered to read it, not wanting to be disappointed after the masterpiece that was Vol. 1. Probably a good thing to read now that Drumpf may herald the end of American hegemony...

[Glenn Russell]

I will be doing a close reading of Robert Musil's masterpiece, The Man Without Qualities, among the greatest novels of the 20th century.

Full review to follow . . .

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

05.03.2014 Fast schon seit ich lesen kann (Ironie) auf meiner Leseliste und auch fast schon zwanzig Jahre (Tatsache) in meinem Buchregal. Ich habe bereits die ersten, köstlichen dreißig Seiten gelesen und amüsiere mich großartig. Das könnte jetzt tausend Seiten so weiter gehen...
23.03.2014 ... und tut es auch. Jetzt bin ich auf Seite 330 und dieses Buch zeigt mir auch seine strengen Seiten. Es ist es strenger Herr. Wehe ich lasse meine Gedanken zwischen zwei Zeilen abschweifen - sofort werde ich aus dem Textverständnis geworfen unerbittlich und jedesmal. Somit heißt es aufmerksamst Lesen um in den Genuss der Textfreuden zu gelangen oder in diesen zu verbleiben. Das Buch erlaubt k e i n e Fisimatenten oder gedankliche Faxen. Für den Folgsamen ist die Belohnung aber wirklich reichlich. Ich werde weiter berichten.
16.04.2014 Mittlerweile befinde ich mich auf Seite 540 und noch immer macht mich dieses Buch staunen. Die Fülle an Ideen und Gedanken in jedem einzelnen Kapitel macht dieses Buch zu einem großen Gedanken-Ideen-Analyse Fundus. Die Kapitel wirken eher wie aneinandergereihte Essays zu den großen Themen der Zeit. Dabei ist der Roman für mich absolut zeitlos. Viele Zeitröntgenbilder könnten heute entstanden sein. Nur ein Beispiel aus diesem Röntgenapparat: Kapitel 106 (Glaubt der moderne Mensch an Gott oder an den Chef der Weltfirma? Arnheims Unentschlossenheit)
"Es erging Arnheim nicht anders wie seinem ganzen Zeitalter. Dieses betet das Geld, die Ordnung, das Wissen, Rechnen, Messen und Wägen, alles in allem also den Geist des Geldes und seiner Verwandten an und beklagt das zugleich.
24.05.2014 Zunehmend schleicht sich eine neue Erkenntnis in mein Lesergehirn. Dieses Buch ist kein Buch sonder eine eigene Galaxie. Ein unerschöpfliches Kopfuniversum dessen Erschaffung sich in den Köpfen seiner Leser immer weiter fortsetzt. Musils Text ist der Urknall für eigene Erkenntnisse und Einsichten.
01.06.2014 Gelesen aber nicht ausgelesen weil ich einzelne Kapitel wiederlesen will. So einfach lässt es sich für mich zusammenfassen. Wie bei Proust kann man dieses Buch irgendwo aufschlagen und ein Kapitel mit großem Vergnügen lesen. Das größte Amüsement haben mir die vergleichenden Bilder gemacht. In diesem Formenreichtum habe ich das so in der deutschsprachigen Literatur noch nicht gefunden. Auch die präzise Genauigkeit in der Ausformulierung finde ich großartig. Nicht ausgelesen stimmt auch noch auf einer sehr praktischen Ebene. Der Band dieser Rowohlt Ausgabe umfasst die nach dem Tode von Musil veröffentlichten Texte zum Mann ohne Eigenschaften. Wiederum tausend Seiten. Nach einer Musilpause (auch andere Bücher wollen gelesen werden) werde ich im Herbst die Lektüre fortsetzen. Jetzt meine uneingeschränkte Empfehlung: Musil lesen bedeutet in Reichtum an Ideen und Sprache zu schwelgen.

[cycads and ferns · Rating 5 out of 5]

“If it is the fulfillment of man's primordial dreams to be able to fly, travel with the fish, drill our way beneath the bodies of towering mountains, send messages with godlike speed, see the invisible and hear the distant speak, hear the voices of the dead…if light, warmth, power, pleasure, comforts, are man's primordial dreams, then present-day research is not only science but sorcery, spells woven from the highest powers of heart and brain, forcing God to open one fold after another of his cloak; a religion whose dogma is permeated and sustained by the hard…razor-keen logic of mathematics….We have gained reality and lost dream….making man the lord of the earth has also made him the slave of his machines.”

In 1913, a committee was formed to organize the celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the Austrian Empire. This venture, called the Parallel Campaign, made little progress because the participates found it impossible to settle on a central theme, expressing Austrian greatness to the world. It quickly becomes apparent that the committee members, many involved in the project for personal reasons, held few core convictions themselves. Capitalism and the decline of institutions have left individuals lost and searching for moral and political ideals. And as Austria prepares to assert itself on the world stage, the Second World War quickly approaches.



From Same Bed Different Dreams by Ed Park-
“He has a bad case of gums."
"Gums?"
Daisy looked shocked. "You forgot?"
"Huh?"
"GUMS! From your Lament piece about Robert Musil-you know, Great Unfinishable Masterpiece Syndrome?"

[AC · Rating 5 out of 5]

A quite remarkable book which, now having read, has immediately become a noticable portion of the furniture of my mind... A fine intoduction (for me) to the modernist ethic and the modernist aesthetic... which I've been seeking to understand (with quite some difficulty) for the past two-plus years.

All the secondary literature I've read on Modernism was essentially worthless. Since there is no thread, there really is no thesis; and hence, no real way to approach it via "scholarship". One simply has to go to the primary texts and to the art works themselves.

[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.

[David Katzman · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Man Without Qualities is a Modernist masterpiece. An expansive book of ideas yet an intimate view into Austrian society, circa 1913. The writing (in translation from German) is erudite and sophisticated. The view into the psychology of the numerous characters is rich and insightful. The overall critique of both Austrian and human civilization is profound and sharp. There are intimations of Proust here but the language less elaborate. I'm also reminded of Fernando Passoa and The Book of Disquiet , and, strangely—it took me a while to recognize the similarity—but the ironic tone that pervaded many sections of this novel brought to mind Gilbert Sorrentino who came much later, of course. But they share a certain sensibility that you will find exemplified in his book Imaginative Qualities of Actual Things of shining a light into the minds of elite artists or thinkers and showing how there isn't much in there.

The Man Without Qualities challenges our ability to summarize and critique. For Musil even says on page 626, "There is no detaching an idea in a book from its context on the page. It catches our eye like the face of a person looming up in a crowd as it is being swept past us." And this is a book of many ideas. And through those ideas, he captures the zeitgeist of an era.

If ever there was a book about which one might properly use the word "zeitgeist," this is it.

Its manner fluctuates between profound observation and ironic satire. Many of the ideas seem to come from the authorial voice, but many more come from the characters, which puts those ideas into a questionable light. They often sound like quite a lot of blather about nothing. We hear their minds churning on thoughts upon thoughts. Abstract thinking about abstract generalities. In other words, a great deal of sound and fury signifying nothing. There is a subtlety of tone involved that makes it challenging at times to distinguish when Musil is presenting a thought-stream as a viable critique of society and when he is presenting it ironically. At other times, the irony is screamingly obvious. As I interpret it, Musil's ironic critiques of the "thinkers" in the The Man Without Qualities casts into question even the validity of the more compelling critiques because it has this halo of Wittgensteinian challenge...all philosophy is just a debate over linguistics...all philosophy is a struggle over worldviews and opinions; philosophy is not an analysis or contemplation of "the real" or any other such nonsense. Words have socially agreed upon meanings, they don't in any absolute sense "mean" anything. And here we see in The Man Without Qualities, an upper class society of Austrian "thinkers" debating the most important "ideas" of their century and getting nowhere. Not only getting nowhere, but we as the reader are aware that very soon their polite society will be thrown at the wall by the advent of World War I. Musil even manages to achieve intimations of World War II in the "polite" antisemitism espoused by a group of the young Austrian "idealists" who are featured in this book. He was an incredibly insightful writer, predicting the course of economics and Capitalism, politics, and even art in many subtle ways.

Within The Man Without Qualities we are rewarded with internal portraits of numerous characters. Internal, as in: what is going on in their minds. The bulk of the book is taken up with thoughts not plot. The majority of the characters are upper-class, but the view here is much broader. We get: an aristocratic politician, the richest and most elite industrialist in the world, an elevated "woman of society," a woman of slightly lesser upper-class society who can't seem to stop herself from having affairs, a tormented and failed artist (but with upper class family), his seemingly insane and vivacious young wife, a general in the army who would rather deal with civilian matters than military ones, a teenage girl of a middle-bourgeoisie family and her (sort-of) boyfriend who is a poor but idealistic student (idealistic in the sense of leading a group of Germanic nationalists who believe in the purity of spiritual community, abstract "love," and the Jew as metaphorically representing the enemy--finance, Capitalism and cold mathematics) and the main character, our "man without qualities," a somewhat spoiled (supported by his father's highly successful law practice) career dabbler with an academic mindset who is more intent on thinking his way through life than actually accomplishing anything. Yet Musil extends his view of society beyond the privileged and also presents a lower class crew: a maid who works for the elevated woman of society, a prostitute-murdering schizophrenic itinerant carpenter, and a black slave/servant who was bought by the industrialist from a traveling circus and then raised with a confusion of upper-class pretensions and arrogance as a curiosity. By traveling from perspective to perspective, Musil manages to conjure up a global sensibility yet one that is unique to Austria at the time. Certain universal themes arise from all these competing perspectives, and in all likelihood a graduate thesis could be written about any one individually. In other words, this book is a PhD student's wet dream.

What follows are some of the themes I observed on my way through the book and some of the insights that demonstrate Musil's vast erudition.

Here is a sequence where Ulrich is thinking about himself (something he often does and projects what he discovers as being a universal truth) and from it arises a theme: that all things are transformation:

If he monitors his feelings, he finds nothing he can accept without reservation. He seeks a possible beloved but can't tell whether it's the right one; he is capable of killing without being sure that he will have to. The drive of his own nature to keep developing prevents him from believing that anything is final and complete. He suspects that the given order of things is not as solid as it pretends to be; no thing, no self, no form, no principle, is safe, everything is undergoing an invisible but ceaseless transformation, the unsettled holds more of the future than the settled, and the present is nothing but a hypothesis that has not yet been surmounted. (P. 269)

What is the meaning and purpose of culture? How do the different aspects of culture relate to each other? Musil often reflects on culture as an artificial game without substance. "All enforced sociability...beyond a certain naive and crude level, springs basically from the need to simulate a unity that could govern all of humanity's highly varied activities and that is never there. This stimulation was what Diotoma called culture..." (P. 104, emphasis mine). In other words, human gatherings whether they be parties or sporting events or music concerts, art openings, and so on, all cultural events are contrived efforts to create a unity between humans that doesn't exist. Musil goes on to question the validity of literature and writing itself. Through the modest sprinkling of words by the narrator such as "probably" and phrases such as "one could say" and "must have been" regarding certain character's motives or thoughts, Musil creates a sense of the limitations of the author as "knowing" anything and of the story as an infallible artifact. All art is a failed attempt to present something that is already a failed thing. Life, existence, language...nothing is grounded in the Real, so how could "Art" ever hope to portray Reality? On page 115, he writes, "Unfortunately, nothing is so hard to achieve as a literary representation of a man thinking." ...just before he begins relating the main character's thinking. There are these tidbits of hilarious irony, and in this case it does double duty as noting the impossibility of Art. Musil often muses on the purpose and value of art, and frankly, finds Art lacking. At one point, he hits literature with a devastating blow:

This era worships money, order, knowledge, calculation, measures and weights--the spirit of money and everything related to it, in short--but also deplores all that. [...] It deals with this conflict by division of labor, assigning to certain [...] literary Savonarolas and evangelists, whose presence is the most reassuring to those not personally in a position to live up to their precepts, the task of recording all such premonitions and lamentations.(p. 555)

That is to say, writers make the world feel less guilty and accept the fact that we are living empty lives by writing about it. Oh, global warming may be destroying our species, but at least there's David Foster Wallace! Or Jonathan Franzen! Or Margaret Atwood!

There are passages that reflect in varied ways what it means to call the main character, Ulrich, a "man without qualities." His friend calls him this out of jealousy and yet there is quite a bit of accuracy in the claim. Here is one reflection on it: "Ulrich always puts tremendous energy into doing only whatever he considers unnecessary. [...] The same thing could be said about all of us nowadays." That is, to varying degrees, we're all striving toward things that are unnecessary in life. Think of Facebook. Or Goodreads. Think of 99.9% of the jobs most of us have. Think of Entertainment. This particular man without qualities expresses his lack of concrete effect on the world by being a man who is caught up in intellectual analysis to no effect. All he does is think and debate, he never acts in any meaningful way. In fact, he essentially rejects there being anything meaningful to do. Life is better suited to figuring out how best to live rather than actually live, he would say Because, after all, what could the right choice possibly be?

I haven't mentioned to this point anything about the plot of the Man Without Qualities. Frankly, it is of secondary importance, however the premise of the story expresses such profound irony that it is persistently a shadow behind all that is said or done. The core story: Ulrich is rather involuntarily dragged into being a political emissary or liaison between the aristocratic politician Count Leinsdorf and his cousin Diotoma's intellectual salon. The Count has determined to make the coming year, 1914, a "Year of Austria" to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Emperor Franz Josef. And he is determined to create a year that elevates Austria intellectually and spiritually above Germany (with whom there is a political rivalry) and that raises Austria's standing among the nations of the world. Diotoma is hosting several gatherings a week of intellectuals, artists, politicians, and academics in order to come up with a core premise for this "Year of Austria." What exactly should they do? Suggestions are also pouring into Count Leinsdorf's office from the general public (huddled masses) as to what should occur in this "Year of Austria," and he and Ulrich must manage the ideas and determine what should be done. Not only is the effort rather farcical and hopeless, but World War I is set to hit in the middle of the following year after Archduke Franz Ferdinand is assassinated. This scenario perfectly exemplifies the absurdity of the intellectual chattering class. While trying to solve the "meaning of life," actually life is going on behind them and about to swamp them all. And it's triply ironic because this book is highly intellectual in its own right.

Another theme that often arises is the value of science, religion and business. There are so many examples one could touch on here, and my impression is that Musil finds no value in any of them. Business is about exploitation; science is partly about "Truth" but it is also about ruthlessness, domination and mastery, which no more leads to happiness than business does. And religion is seemingly a tool (Marx would have appreciated this) to calm the masses and give them an illusion of meaning based on ceasing to think about life.

In fact, the illusion of all "Ideas" is another great theme. Here he talks of love: "...we talk ourselves into love as we talk ourselves into a rage, by making the proper gestures." Here he lectures about the absurdity of that which is abstract and how it relates to the Self:

...an idea is the most paradoxical thing in the world. The flesh in the grip of an idea is like a fetish. Bonded to an idea, it becomes magical. An ordinary slap in the face, bound up with ideas of honor, or of punishment and the like, can kill a man. And yet ideas can never maintain themselves in the state in which they are most powerful; they're like the kind of substance that, exposed to the air, instantly changes into some other, more lasting, but corrupted form. You've been through this often yourself. Because an ideas is what you are: an idea in a particular state.

How breathtaking, the way Musil tosses off in one sentence of a book of 700 odd pages what the Self is. "An idea in a particular state." Stunning. Later he refers to "...the paradoxes inherent in the poem called man." Here he waxes Wittgensteinian about the nature of Ideas:

The talkers in Diotima's salon were never entirely wrong about anything, for their concepts were as misty as the outlines of bodies in the steambath. 'These ideas, on which life hangs as the eagle hangs on his wings,' Ulrich thought, 'our countless moral and artistic notions of life, by nature are as delicate as mountain ranges of granite blurred by distance.'"

In several scenes, Musil reflects on ethnic hatred. In one sentence he explains, "Now, ethnic prejudice is usually nothing more than self-hatred, dredged up from the murky depths of one's own conflicts and projected onto some convenient victim, a traditional practice from time immemorial when the shaman used a stick, said to be the repository of the demon's power, to draw the sickness out of the afflicted." (p. 461) It's insights like these that make this book such a masterpiece and a joy.

Musil has many razor sharp insights about wealth, as well. Here is a wonderful passage beginning chapter 92, which is entitled "SOME OF THE RULES GOVERNING THE LIVES OF THE RICH."

Having so much attention and admiration lavished on him might have made any man other than Arnheim suspicious and unsure of himself, on the assumption that he owed it all to his money. But Arnheim regarded suspicion as the mark of an ignoble character, permissible to a man in his position only on the basis of unequivocal financial reports, and anyway he was convinced that being rich was a personal quality. Every rich man regards being rich as a personal quality. So does every poor man. There is a universal tacit understanding on the point.This general accord is troubled only slightly by the claims of logic that having money, while capable of conferring certain traits or character on whoever has it, is not in itself a human quality. Such an academic quibble need not detain us. (P. 455)

And in another scene, Musil has the wealthy industrialist Arnheim thinking out loud in a manner that would make Ayn Rand proud:

To do away with force is to weaken the world order. Our task is to make man capable of greatness, although he is a mongrel cur! [...] But money is surely just as safe a means of managing human relationships as physical force, the crude uses of which it allows us to discontinue. Money is power in the abstract, a pliant, highly developed, and creative form, a unique form, of power. Isn't business really based on cunning and force, on outwitting and exploiting others, except that in business, cunning and force have become wholly civilized, internalized in fact, so that they are actually clothed in the guise of man's liberty? Capitalism, as the organization of egotism based on a hierarchy in which one's rank depends on one's capacity for getting money, is simply the greatest and yet the most humane order we have been able to devise... (p 554)

Here Musil reflects on the nature of civilization itself, another frequent subject of analysis:

To begin briefly with the ecclesiastical aspect of things, as long as one believed in religion, one could defenestrate a good Christian or a pious Jew from any story in the castle of hope or prosperity, and he would always land on his spiritual feet, as it were, because all religions included in their view of life an irrational, incalculable element they called God's inscrutable will. Whenever a man could not make sense of things, he merely had to remember this rogue element in the equation, and his spirit could rub its hands with satisfaction, as it were. This falling on one's feet and rubbing one's hands is called having a working philosophy of life, and this is what modern man has lost. He must either give up thinking about life altogether, which is what many people are quite content to do, or else he finds himself strangely torn between having to think and yet never quite seeming to arrive at a satisfactory resolution of his problems. This conflict has in the course of history taken on the form of a total skepticism as often as it has that of a renewed subjection to faith, and its most prevalent form today is probably the conviction that without a spiritual dimension there can be no human life worthy of the name, but with too much of it there can be none either. It is on this conviction that our civilization as a whole is based. It takes great care to provide for education and research, but never too well, only enough money to keep education and research properly subordinated to the great sums expended on entertainment, cars, and guns.

I could go on rather endlessly about this book, but I will conclude here. In the end, Musil himself notes that a book cannot have its ideas torn out, it's themes laid to view, and it's meaning understood because everything is affected by the context around it, and as such has inherent ambiguity. So I will leave by saying: beautiful, complex, deep, challenging.

[Майя Ставитская · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once upon a time in Kakonia
A person without properties does not say "no" to life, he says "not yet."
The strange word in the title, associated in most European languages with the process of defecation, was actually colloquial, although in a somewhat disparaging way (like rashka for Russia), the name of Austria-Hungary, derived from kaiserlich und königlich (imperial and royal) with the abbreviation k. u. k. Non-essential in essence, education It is concerned about the search for a national idea that could unite the peoples within the empire. The basis is the basis, but ideology rules. A special committee is being created, the main idea is that the nineteen hundred and eighteenth anniversary for the reign of William II is approaching, so we'll declare it the "Year of Austria" (does it remind us of anything?), but in the meantime we'll prepare celebrations with decent-scale kickbacks, grants and tedes.

It happens in the thirteenth year, but by the fourteenth, it seems to me, they had already integrated the national idea too well into the minds and hearts of the peoples. And of all the peoples of Europe, the talkers in other countries did their best. By the eighteenth, there was nothing left to celebrate. But as long as the blessed thirteenth is in the yard, nothing foreshadows. A rather young man named Ulrich arrives in the capital, such an Onegino-Pecherinsky type of gentleman: good-looking, a high degree of financial independence, calm self-confidence. And, unlike the "superfluous people" of Russian literature, he is a professional. A mathematician, untalented, although Newton and Leibniz did not come out of him. Formerly a military engineer. A native of the upper bourgeoisie. Easily makes connections. He's a success with women- God, what a man!

"I want a son from you" will be the same, but later. Now let's take it in order. Actually, Ulrich took time out, presumably for a year, in order to deal with his own midlife crisis, not expecting to participate in social life this year. Although his father, on whose favor the material side of Ulrich's life largely depends, bombards him with edifying letters about the benefits of work and the harm of idleness. It's the same as always. However, so far the hero has rented a whole small castle, arranged and furnished it to his liking, turning it into a charming bachelor's palace, and acquired a mistress, whom he calls Leona (she calls herself somehow less euphoniously), a singer from a variety show. A glutton. Well, the girl has bulemia. This will be the number one in the series of victories.

The second one will be the husband's wife (not just anyone, but the judge) and the gentle mother of two beautiful boys, the erotic lover Bonadeya, she will save the hero who was beaten by a gopota in one of the disadvantaged areas. As you can see. not everyone is affected by Ulrich's charm in the same way. Looking ahead, Gerda, the daughter of his old friend Fishel, will be the third, an intellectual girl and, to her father's horror, fond of the ideas of National Socialism in that form. how they originated in the early tenths of the last century. That's how Dad would gladly give his daughter's hand and heart to an old friend, in whom he sees a respectable, stable future son-in-law. But as it turned out, the seduction scene is very similar to the one in "Walking through Torment," the poet and the impetuous girl, what's her name.

A son (well, a child in general, although she herself is convinced that at least it will be a superman, at most a messiah) will be demanded from the hero by his longtime friend Clarissa, a girl of high ideas, a big fan of Nietzsche. You see, when she married her Walter, she thought he would be a genius. But it turned out as usual, because the situation urgently needs to be corrected with a certain amount of Human seminal fluid without properties. By the way, this is how her husband came up with the idea of calling Ulrich, slightly (and, as we see, not without reason) jealous of his beloved wife for a friend.

Although before that, the Fatherland in the person of the beautiful and morally immaculately exalted cousin of the hero Diotima will summon him to a feat that promises benefit to himself. Because it is the salon, the dolls of Tutti's heir, excuse me, the wife of Director Tuzzi, that will become the focus, the core, the forge where the national idea, with which the story of the book began, will be forged. No, this noble woman will not play tricks with her cousin, she is perfect, and besides, she is in love with the tycoon, billionaire, financial genius and super writer Arnheim

What kind of book is this, just "Decameron"! Not really. She is unhurried, slow-flowing, very intelligent, full of philosophizing and at the same time ironic, accurate, vivid observations - I want to separate her into quotes. Few readers understand and appreciate Musil's Magnum opus, partly because of the volume, but mostly because the level of narrative offered by the author is difficult for an unprepared reader. But the book is excellent, and I'll tell you about the second volume, which I'm finishing right now, separately, in a less frivolous way.

Однажды в Какании
Человек без свойств не говорит жизни "нет", он говорит: "еще нет".
Странное слово в заглавии, связанное в большинстве европейских языков с процессом дефекации, на самом деле было разговорным, хотя в несколько пренебрежительном ключе (вроде рашки для России), названием Австро-Венгрии, происходящим от kaiserlich und königlich (императорский и королевский) с аббревиатурой k. u. k. Нестественное в сути, образование озабочено поиском национальной идеи, которая могла бы сплотить народы в составе империи. Базис базисом, а рулит идеология. Создается специальный комитет, основная идея - близится тыща девятьсот восемнадцатый, юбилейный для правления Вильгельма II, вот объявим-ка мы его "Годом Австрии" (ничего не напоминает?), а пока займемся подготовкой торжеств с приличными масштабу откатами, грантами и тэдэ.

Дело происходит в тринадцатом году, но к четырнадцатому, сдается мне, они уже слишком хорошо интегрировали национальную идею в умы и сердца народов. Причем всех народов Европы, болтуны и в других странах старались на славу. К восемнадцатому праздновать стало уже нечего. Но пока на дворе благословенный тринадцатый, ничто не предвещает. В столицу, приезжает довольно молодой еще человек по имени Ульрих, такой Онегино-Печеринского склада господин: хорош собой, высокая степень финансовой независимости, спокойная уверенность в себе. И, в отличие от "лишних людей" русской литературы, профессионал. Математик, небесталанный, хотя Ньютона и Лейбница из него не вышло. В прошлом военный инженер. Выходец из верхов буржуазии. Легко обзаводится связямии. Имеет успех у женщин - боже, какой мужчина!

"Я хочу от тебя сына" - будет тоже, но позже. Теперь давайте по порядку. Собственно, Ульхрих взял тайм-аут, предположительно на год, дабы разобраться с собственным кризисом среднего возраста, не предполагая в этот год участвовать в социалльной жизни. Хотя отец, от чьего благорасположения в значительной степени зависит материальная сторона жизни Ульриха, засыпает того назидательными письмами о пользе труда и вреде безделья. Все как всегда. Однако пока герой снял целый небольшой замок, обустроил и обставил его по своему вкусу, превратив в премилый холостяцкий дворец, обзавелся любовницей, которую называет Леоной (сама она себя кличет как-то менее благозвучно) певичкой из варьете. Обжорой. Ну, булемия у девушки. Это будет нумер уно в череде побед.

Второй окажется мужняя жена (не кого-нибудь, а судьи) и нежная мать двух прекрасных мальчиков, эротоманка Бонадея, она спасет героя, избитого гопотой в одном из неблагополучных районов. Как видите. не на всех обаяние Ульриха действует одинаково. Забегая вперед, третьей будет дочь его старого друга Фишеля Герда, девушка интеллектуальная и, к ужасу отца, увлекающаяся идеями национал-социализма в том виде. в каком они зарождались в начале десятых прошлого века. Так-то папа с радостью отдал бы руку и сердце дочери старому приятелю, в котором видит респектабельного стабильного будущего зятя. Но вышло как вышло, сцена соблазнения очень напоминает ту, что в "Хождении по мукам", поэт и порывистая девушка, как бишь ее.

Сына (ну, вообще ребенка, хотя сама она убеждена, что как минимум это будет сверхчеловек, как максимум - мессия) от героя потребует его давняя подруга Кларисса, девушка высоких идей, большая поклонница Ницше. Она, понимаете, выходя замуж за своего Вальтера, думала, что он будет гений. А вышло как обычно, потому ситуацию нужно срочно исправить некоторым количеством семенной жидкости Человека без свойств. Кстати, так придумал называть Ульриха ее муж, слегка (и как видим, не без оснований) ревноваший любимую жену к другу.

Хотя прежде Отчизна в лице прекрасной и морально безупречно возвышенной кузыны героя Диотимы призовет его на подвиг, пользу себе обещающий. Потому что именно салон, куклы наследника Тутти, простите - жены директора Туцци станет средоточием, ядром, кузней, где будет коваться национальная идея, с которой начала рассказ о книге. Нет, эта благородная женщина шашней с кузеном водить не будет, она совершенство, а кроме того, влюблена в магната, имиллиардера, финансового гения и суперписателя Арнхейма

Да что ж это за книга такая, просто "Декамерон"! На самом деле нет. Она неспешная, тягуче-текучая, очень умная, исполненная философствований и одновременно ироничных точных ярких наблюдений - хочется разъять на цитаты. Магнум опус Музиля мало кто из читателей понимает и ценит, отчасти из-за объема, но большей частью потому что уровень нарратива, предлагаемый автором, трудно берется неподготовленным читателем. Но книга превосходна и о втором томе, который как раз сейчас заканчиваю, расскажу отдельно, в менее фривольном ключе.

[Tim Edison · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rarely have I read a book, such as this, where I am not completely certain what the book is about but am still utterly absorbed by it. The title of the book provides the most accurate summary. The first in a trilogy, it really is about "A Man Without Qualities" who is also known as Ulrich.

"It is not difficult to give a description about this thirty-two-year-old man, Ulrich, in general outline, even though all he knew about himself was that he was as far from all the qualities as he was near them, whether they had become his own or not, in some strange way were equally a matter of indifference to him."

There is, of course, a fascinating narrative moving parallel to the idea of the book. In 1914 a committee of the Austro-Hungarian Empire's most powerful and wealthy have assembled to create the "Collateral Campaign" ; a hyper-patriotic effort to assert and demonstrate the empire's power and prestige to the rest of Europe. Of course we know the tragedy of where this leads to - the Great War.

There is more than a touch of the existential absurd in this tremendous work, which to some extent qualifies it as a philosophical novel. The prose is rich, brilliant and complex but is still accessible and eminently readable for intellectual dilettantes such as myself. The respect and awe that this book commands is a reflection of author Robert Musil's genius.

It is a story, but also a book about "ideas" many of which confront our deepest concerns about our existence:

"The superiority of a man who has freed himself from the wish to live is enormous."

[Rafa Sánchez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ha sido un gran esfuerzo para mí leer esta novela, sin duda una obra maestra por la calidad y hondura del texto. Sin embargo debo confesar que mis conocimientos de filosofía y psicología no dan la talla que exige un texto tan abstracto en largas disertaciones, sin duda cargadas de reflexiones profundas. En muchas ocasiones he tenido que leer en diagonal cuando la historia se paraba y empezaba la espiral de reflexiones sobre el comportamiento humano... A pesar de eso, la novela tiene un gran sentido del humor que la hace agradable y te empuja a seguir leyendo. No sé si leeré alguna vez la continuación de la novela. Por ahora, voy a descansar un poco...

[Jelena Jonis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Šiaip ne taip įveikta pirma dalis. Jaučiuosi taip, lyg išėjusi po 24 valandas trukusios smegenų operacijos, kurią stebėjau atliekant. Tik Musilis ne žmogų operavo, o XX a. pradžios Austrijos visuomenę. Ir tos operacijos metu prieš skaitytojų akis išanalizuojama viskas: to meto žmonių nuotaikos, jų elgesys, tarpusavio chemija, požiūris į save ir į savo gyvenimą, visuomenės vertybės (tiksliau, visuomenė be vertybių), stovinti ant I-ojo pasaulinio karo slenksčio. Šis kūrinys labai reiklus, todėl sakyti, kad jį visiškai perpratau ir perleidau per save tikrai negaliu. Tam tikrais kartais ateidavo nušvitimas, kitais kartais - dvejonės ir absoliutus nesuvokimas apie ką eina kalba. Todėl net literatūros paskaitų įrašus susiradau, kad galėčiau išklausyti profesionalią kūrinio analizę. Nes šią knygą ne skaitai, o studijuoji. Ir per šias pusės metų studijas (tiek laiko užtruko įveikti pirmą jos dalį) pasidariau tokias išvadas:
(1) minia niekada nesikeičia. Keičiasi laikmečiai, keičiasi darbo pobūdis, keičiasi komforto suvokimas, bet minios gyvenimas visada išlieka nuobodžiu;
(2) regimybė visada buvo svarbiau, nei tiesa. Todėl socialiniai tinklai nuo pat pradžių buvo pasmerkti sėkmei;
(3) nors dėl lygių galimybių moterims dar reikia kovoti, bet retai suvokiam, kokį ilgą kelią nuėjome per paskutinius 100 metų;
(4) vertybės formuojamos per pavyzdį ir per darbus. Teoriniai išvedžiojimai kaip turi būti ar kaip reikia daryti kuria dviveidę ir į saviapgaulę linkusią asmenybę;
(5) intelektualios knygos yra kaip jėgos treniruotė smegenims - ne visada maloni, bet reikalinga.

Pabaigai, labiausiai įsiminusios citatos:

Minios gyvenimas nuobodus ir rutiniškas. Jame nėra jaudulio, adrenalino, prasmės. Todėl tokie įvykiai kaip nužudymai, nusikaltimai, sukrečiantys savo žiaurumu, žurnalistų yra pristatomi ir narstomi po kaulelį po antrašte “pagaliau kažkas įdomaus”. O minia jais domisi labiau, nei savo reikalais.

Reikia tik įsivaizduoti: jeigu išorėje liežuvį, rankas ir akis sunkiai slegia pasaulis <…>, o viduje nieko, išskyrus niekur nepritampantį rūką, kokia laimė pamatyti kieno nors gestą, kuriame tu, kaip tau atrodo, atpažįsti save. Jis padovanoja žmogui akimirką būties, pusiausvyrą tarp vidinės ir išorinės įtampos, tarp to, kas jį traiško, ir to, kas jį plėšo.

[Eddie Watkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Master of the elaborate and perfectly apt simile and an intellectual ironic comic of the highest order, I salute you Robert Musil, you AND your rarefied but highly readable novel composed of hundreds if not thousands of well-engineered lines worthy of weeklong pondering each. It may make your head swim but it'll also teach your brain how to breathe.

[Manybooks · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe if I had not been forced to peruse this absolute and roaring monster of a novel for my PhD comprehensive examinations in late October 1994 (a departmental friend and I took turns reading and then sharing our notes, which allowed us to actually get through a more than overly lengthy reading list that was replete with dense, involved and above all often very long-winded in the extreme German literary classics) I would perhaps have had the inclination (and yes also the required time) to savour, to interpret and perhaps even like Robert Musil's Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (as speeding through almost one thousand pages of complicated, philosophically imbued German language musings in less than a week because the date for the examinations was fast approaching and we were majorly behind with our perusals, does NOT EVER make for either an enjoyable or even an all that enlightening and worthwhile reading experience, at least, this has never been the case for me, both as a teenager when we started being assigned Charles Dickens for school and as an adult majoring in German language and literature at university).

Now I do know and even realise that Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften is considered a classic and that many really do seem to absolutely love this novel (either in its German language original or in translation), but for and to me, it was (and still remains) simply just another mega-tome to read, another huge and verbose German language classic I had to plough through and digest sufficiently for my comps (and as already pointed out above, this kind of forced and mandated reading does not ever really lead to personal reading enjoyment on my part, perhaps sometimes to very mild appreciation, but absolutely NOT to potential and lasting reading pleasure). And while I should I guess consider rereading Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften now that I actually have the time to do so (and to take perhaps a few weeks or even months to complete the book), truth be told, Robert Musil has also NEVER really interested me all that much as an author either (as I have always wondered how Musil could write nearly a thousand pages about a man labelled in the title as representing an individual with supposedly no qualities, no personality, no characteristics).

[Andrew]

There's a lot to unpack here...

I guess the first thing I would compare The Man Without Qualities to is The Magic Mountain, and it likewise features people arguing about ideas in German, but it really is a different beast. Rather than a mountain refuge, Musil sets his novel in glittering prewar Vienna, with a sensational tabloid murder providing much of the background, and at its center is an indifferent, skeptical, directionless, but pretty damn bright guy who tries to figure shit out, using the world as his sounding board.

Look, if you like these sorts of ragged, sprawling modernist and postmodernist novels of ideas, you'll like The Man Without Qualities. I do, so it's not an issue, but I would hardly call this anything I would universally recommend. But for those of us who are in the club, it's the literary equivalent of foie gras.

[Steve]

The Man Without Qualities is a feast. The writing is glorious, providing an abundance of irony and sarcasm, wit that flows engagingly throughout, much to my liking. Herr Musil appreciates the intrinsic humor innate to a bureaucracy and social structures generally. Reading this work, I thought of the writing of Günther Grass and Alfred Döblin, though for different reasons, authors I wish I had encountered earlier in life.

The tale begins in 1913, with the principal character, Ulrich, age 32. Ulrich is a bit lost in his life journey, so his esteemed father opens a door into a most important undertaking, the Parallel Campaign. The Emperor Franz Josef will celebrate the seventieth year jubilee of his accession on December 2nd 1918 and plans are already being formed, or are being considered to be formed, for the great moment. Coincidentally, however, Germany’s Emperor Wilhelm II will celebrate his thirtieth year jubilee “on or about June 15th 1918.” The Austrians sense an opportunity to outmaneuver the Germans, calling attention to their underappreciated empire, and for good reason as anyone who has savored Mozartkugeln or Sachertorte will surely agree.

His Grace the Imperial Liege-Count Leinsdorf leads the efforts to execute the Parallel Campaign, which Ulrich joins. Ulrich’s father has also suggested an introduction to “the daughter of a cousin of my late brother’s widow, and hence your cousin.” This cousin Ulrich names Diotima, from the character in Plato’s Symposium, also, as my closest friends may recall, the same name of a good pocket cruiser, a sailboat I owned for just over a decade. Diotima, otherwise known as Ermelinda Tuzzi, who calls herself at times Hermine, is married to Section Chief Hans Tuzzi, who calls himself Giovanni at times, of the Imperial Foreign Office. The Tuzzi’s both assist in the Parallel Campaign with Ulrich and His Grace. A Major General Stumm von Bordwehr, Chief of the War Ministry’s Department for Military Education and Cultural Affairs, is sent to monitor proceedings for the military, “mainly a matter of reconnaissance and reporting back.” The Major General learns something about the library system to his great amazement, and my modest enjoyment, amidst his formal important assignment.

Bonadea, a married mother of two, is Ulrich’s mistress. Ulrich “baptized her Bonadea, ‘the Good Goddess,’ for the way she had entered his life and also after that goddess of chastity whose ancient temple in Rome had become, by an odd reversal of fate, a center for all the vices.” Dr. Paul Arnheim, an “immeasurably rich” son of “the mightiest mogul of ‘Iron Germany’” is a frequent visitor to Diotima, though it’s unclear whether his motivations spring from lust, a desire for greater cross-border harmony, or a play for Galician oil fields. Herr Musil introduces other relationships into the story, with their own cross-border issues. There is Walter, who coined the moniker "man without qualities," and Clarisse, who thought “A man without qualities doesn’t say No to life, he says Not yet! And saves himself for the right moment,” married friends of Ulrich; Rachel and Soliman, servants for Diotima and Dr. Arnheim, respectively; and Hans Sepp and Gerda Fischel, two young romantics. Ulrich tests romance with several of the female characters, yet he doesn’t find motivation in any one person or any one pursuit. Woven through the book, too, is Moosbrugger, a convicted murderer who occupies an unusual amount of attention within the minds of several characters.

The Man Without Qualities is long, yet wonderful, and this is only to be said of the first volume; there’s more to come.

[Christopher Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just finished this, the first volume, and now onward into the second.

Magnificent so far. I’ll do a (slightly) more proper review upon finishing the second volume. But in the meantime, I’ll just say that I’m in love with this book and I’m kicking myself for having put it off for so long, for being needlessly intimidated by its bulk. It may be huge, it may be densely packed with ideas, rich with intellect, verbose and fragmentary, but reading it does not feel like “homework.” Despite its abundance of heavy themes, it never feels particularly demanding. Rather, I’ve found it compelling, stimulating, highly entertaining, shockingly difficult to put down. In another writer’s hands, this could very easily have been a stodgy exercise in ludicrous overthinking, but it’s a testament to Musil’s brilliance that he’s made it seem so... I don’t know... informal? Casual? Those are perhaps not the right words, but they came immediately to mind and they felt right so I’m sticking with them.

Anyway, The Man Without Qualities is brilliant so far and I’m very excited to see where all it goes in the second volume.

[Stefania · Rating 5 out of 5]

Έτσι νιώθεις μόνο όταν διαβάζεις Νίτσε
" Όλοι οι δρόμοι προς το πνεύμα ξεκινούν από την ψυχή αλλά κανένας δεν οδηγεί πίσω"
" Για να είναι κανείς υπερβολικός πρέπει να είναι τελείως ακριβής και αντικειμενικός¨
"Διότι μόνο ενα οι άνθρωποι ήσαν τελείως αντικειμενικοί-κι αυτό είναι σχεδόν το ίδιο σαν να είναι απρόσωποι- θα ήταν και ολότελα Έρωτας.Γιατί μόνο τότε θα ήταν ολότελα αίσθηση και συναίσθημα και σκέψη"
" Γιατί δεν κάνει ο άνθρωπος Ιστορία,δηλαδή γιατί επιτίθεται ενεργητικά στην ιστορία μόνο σαν ζώο, όταν είναι πληγωμένος,όταν πίσω του όλα καίγονται,γιατί με μια λέξη κάνει ιστορία μόνο σε περίπτωση κινδύνου; Γιατί η ερώτηση αυτή ηχεί ανάρμοστα; Ποιά είναι η αντίρρηση μας;Σε τελευταία ανάλυση δεν σημαίνει παρά μόνο ότι ο άνθρωπος όφειλε να μην αφήνει την ανθρώπινη ζωή να προχωρεί παθητικά όπως της υπαγορεύουν τα πράγματα;"

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Endlessly awesome. Practically plotless and hence captures the imagination purely through its profundity of ideas. The possibilites that Musil postulates through the character of Ulrich are awe-inspiring--his attack on every single way we live our lives is shocking, yet completely reasonable--but ultimately, the abstractness of these solutions cannot uphold the corporeality of an actual human life, and despite the apparent overused and scarred nature of every path that seems to stretch out before us, Musil eventually concludes that we must continue to try to blaze a new trail within reality itself, not outside it. One of the great novels.

[Evan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finally finished volume 1 of this book on the first day of 2009. 730 pages, and I'm not entirely sure I could explain what, if anything, happens. Clearly, not many contemporary readers would enjoy the kind of experience this entails. My description below, written back in the summer of 2007 when I started reading it, pretty much holds. I will now add volume 2 to my "currently reading." Stay tuned for the review, which will probably be forthcoming somewhere around 2015...

My original review (summer 2007):

I must admit that I experienced smugness when carrying around this weighty early twentieth century Austrian novel earlier this summer, while passing through airports where everyone from naval cadets to septuagenarians were Pottering. If you dislike "closure," this is the ultimate novel. At 1500 pages (spread over two volumes), it remained uncompleted at Musil's death And yet, somehow, it is worth it. This is a wry portrayal of Austrian society in the moments before World War I, set amidst a secret committee charged with a "parallel campaign" to celebrate the Emperor's 70th birthday (in 1917) with some kind of celebration of the Austrian zietgeist. The result? Pseudoreality. Musil's opus has been compared to Ulysses (it is a far easier read) and Proust's cycle (it is far less microscopic). Though there are points where nearly anyone would wonder why he is spending this much time on a novel that doesn't even end with a quidditch match, there are frequent scenes that rank with the best of twentieth century fiction.

[Veronika · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wie bewertet man dieses Buch .... puh. Es zu lesen war schon teilweise qualvoll und anstrengend. Es ist kein Roman im klassischen Sinne, sondern eine Ansammlung von Essays zu allen möglichen Themen, wie Politik, Religion, Beziehungen, Staat und Gesellschaft etc.
Ich muss sagen, dass ich immer am meisten Spaß hatte, wenn Ulrich und seine Cousine Diotima sich unterhalten haben, weil die eine herrliche Chemie hatten und sich gleichzeitig blöd und sehr anziehend fanden und deswegen herrliches Bickering dabei rauskam. An den Essays hatte ich leider weniger Spaß. Ich wollte irgendwann einfach nur noch fertig werden.
Also es war schon ein Leseerlebnis und ich bin froh, dass ich es mal gewagt habe, aber es ist keins der Bücher, die ich dringend nochmal lesen müsste.

[v · Rating 4 out of 5]

A magisterial, often beautiful depiction of the habits and thoughts of modernity. Those habits and thoughts eventually rendered the ironic perspective and indefinite form of this very novel nearly impossible to sustain in today's distintellecual posthistory. Sometimes it reads like the minutes of an endless cocktail party, which is trying.

[rocinante.lit (Robert) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Volume one of this literary leviathan is a book that inspires reflection and demands immersion. It is not a novel in the conventional sense. The plot plays a negligible role, in fact the most beautiful sentences and passages often contributed not at all to the plot.

Anyone even just vaguely familiar with this novel has likely heard it referred to as a "novel of ideas". While many novels certainly possess a degree of philosophical rumination/exploration few, if any, that I've read have made this the foundation of the novel. This may sound like a boring and laborious book. While the latter may be true, the brilliant writing, subtle humor, and frightening relatability to current times make it so it never feels like a chore. As for boring...nay. This books teems with personality and intrigue.

Musil crafted a masterpiece in which we can witness a culture and people shedding the remnants of a dying way of life. In their search for meaning veering towards complexity, paralleling the emerging scientific and political complexity that formed the world which we, to this day, find ourselves as a species struggling to understand.

Through the dance between the novel's characters we can see into the heart of the Austro-Hungarian empire in Vienna, 1913. We get to experience the existential struggle of a crumbling way of life amidst what in some ways is a cultural contraction, while in others a dizzying expansion.

This is a blindingly intelligent novel, its language is poetic, its passages are often scenic and gorgeous, and it is never anything but delightful to read (except perhaps the first 50 pages, or so). Every character has his or here own dogmas, theories on what is good and right, on how a man ought to live, on what is important, even on what is real or what constitutes reality. If you're anything like me you'll find bits and pieces of yourself in each of them.

The clash between these differing views and approaches to life —that of the soul vs the empirical, of feeling and emotion vs logic and reason, of god vs science, mathematics, and technology—is what makes this novel have a spot alongside the likes of Joyce and Proust (not my opinion, I've read neither).

I don't purport to be a literary critic, so there's a lot more to be said about this book. I didn't even bother talking about the plot, it is quite irrelevant. But I strongly suggest anyone interested in "serious" literature to give this one a go. It's long, and should be consumed sips at a time, but it is damn well worth it.

[Sir Jack · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is the type of novel in which the characters like to lecture each other, and the narrator (the worst character) is constantly lecturing you. Seldom is a subject mentioned for which the narrator doesn’t produce an exasperating mini-lesson. He wants to show us how things really are. There is an unpleasant (and unjustified) presumption of superiority behind such a tendency. The main character, the pouty Ulrich, is kind of like a sad replay of the “nihilist” in Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, who believed in nothing aside from the importance of studying frogs.

Some of the writing is just frightful: “It is the old story of the contradictions, the inconsistency, and the imperfection of life. It makes us smile or sigh. But not Ulrich.”

The middling (or lower) reality of The Man Without Qualities is in stark relief to the baffling hype that surrounds it and the lazy, incomprehensible comparisons to two novels that are in a different class altogether—James [Name Redacted:]’s [Title Redacted:] and Marcel [Name Redacted:]’s [Title Redacted:]—works that really should not be mentioned around Musil’s novel.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I could have given this five stars; it is a wonderful novel but War and Peace didn't end with Napoleon planning to conquer Moscow. Vol. II has 1200+ unpublished in his lifetime pages. Set in Vienna on the eve of WW I, the book is 51% novel and 49% essay. How to be "yourself" in the modern complicated mass produced world is the still timely search of the book's main character.

[Jurgita Lapienytė · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nereali knyga, nieko panašaus iki šiol nebuvau skaičius. Bet kaip pilno kūno vynas - sunki ir užtenka poros gurkšnių kasdien. Iš tiesų tai yra skaitymo iššūkis - iš pradžių yriausi labai lėtai, nes kiekvienas skyrius yra kaip darbas.

Nelabai ir ryžtuosi pasakyti kažką daugiau apie knygą, nes tai yra labai intelektualus darbas, prie kurio, akivaizdu, dar teks grįžti ne kartą. Įdomi ir dėl siužeto, ir dėl aptariamų idėjų. Rekomenduoju.