Robert Musil

Robert Musil was not very pleasant company. Adolf Frise indexed, in his Pladoyer fur Robert Musil" (1982) the qualities that were associated with Robert Musil by those who knew him.

Cool, proud, uncommunicative, cold, harsh in his judgement, sharp, a military tone of speaking, vain, elegant, polite, well dressed, distant, official, impeccable, an impressive personality though not a sympathetic or congenial one, proud of his time as officer during the First World War, inaccessible, felt unrecognized, kept people far from him and hence fell into isolation, made slighting rather than positive remarks.

These qualities are usually, in his biographies, associated with two other aspects. The poverty he had to deal with for the bigger part of his life, and his attitude towards other authors of his time. Both come, biographers often state, from his earnestly felt lack of recognition as an important figure in German Literature.

Robert Musil was always in dire need of money: always wondering how he and his wife Martha could live through the next day. In his diary there are regularly complaints that they only have little money left to live on. In a diary-fragment he notes: I am (spiritually and moral) exhausted.

This poverty was not new to Musil and his wife. Ever since he decided to dedicate his life to writing, instead of a promising career at the University, he spent his days in poverty. In Berlin and Vienna admirers founded Musil Societies in order to make his work publicly known and thus enabling him to work on, and perhaps even complete, his one great masterpiece The Man Without Qualities. In his later years in Geneva father Robert Lejeune was the one who, through what Musil described as 'begging', found him the financial means to continue writing. The people who donated money were invariably admiring authors, or philanthropists.

In 1930 Robert Musil is desperate: he is going to be 50 years old, and the first parts of The Man Without Qualities are being published. What is bothering him the most is the discrepancy between his immense efforts and the public attention and recognition. He has been working on The Man without Qualities for ten years now; other author publish four or five books in this time, and do not mind writing for the public. In an interview with Oskar Maurus Fontana he states he wishes to give a "Beitrage zur geistigen Bewaltigung der Welt".

The most important reproach to other authors concerns their shallowness. They are not capable, or prepared to be reflexive, that intellectually the time in which they live and about which they should write is far beyond their grasp. Hence their success. This success, in turn, is responsible for the lack of profundity that he reproaches them.
A particularly fine head on a man usually means that he is stupid; particularly deep philosophers are usually shallow thinkers; in literature, talents not much above the average are usually regarded by their contemporaries as geniuses. [Man Without Qualities III, Chapter 14, p. 851]

Thomas Mann is one of those authors. As far as Musil is concerned Mann owes his success to the fact that he is the spokesman of the biased liberal intelligentsia, be it a bit more refined. The person of an intellectual average can relate to the thoughts and words of Mann. When Musil is told that Thomas Mann is, along with others, one of the founders of the Musil Societies, and what these societies do for him he admits he is moved by the gesture of the man whom he has been so unjust to. But the distrust towards successful author remains.

This distrust could be dealt with as envy, were it not that it reflects Musil's poetics. To Musil the writer/poet is a representative for his country. In works of literature, and art in general, what is thought and lived in a country is reflected. German language literature in his time is not equipped for this task. She remains shallow, deals too often with political, aesthetical or ethical fashions, writes only about itself, and thus caters to an irrelevant need.

The disappointment with the lack of recognition and his poverty make Musil a bitter and lonely person. He dies in obscurity in Switzerland, where only a namestone on the cemetery remains of him.
Da? du nicht beruhmt bist, ist naturlich; da? du aber nicht genug Leser zum Leben hast, ist schandlich. That one is not famous is only natural: that one has not enough readers to live is a shame!

II. Childhood

On November 6 Robert Musil is born in Klagenfurt as the child of Alfred and Hermine. His father descends from an old noble Austrian family, the ancestors of his mothers are from Bohemia. His father will eventually reach a high office at the Technical University of Brunn. He receives the title of 'Hofrat' and is ennobled just before the end of the the Habsburg monarchy. Robert, is his fathers wish, shall also make for a good position in society. He must become an officer in the imperial army.

Musil's memories of his early childhood are many nor warm. As a child he was a loner, turned very much into himself, and found it difficult to be a conventional child. His favorite pass time was just to sit outside in the garden gazing at whatever happened to be in his view. Or, so his diaries tell, he stood inside the house staring out the window, at something that happened to have drawn his attention. This image, standing in a house, gazing outside, is on of the few that will reappear in his literary works: the reader meets Ulrich when he has returned to Vienna and stands pondering on his life, his achievements, qualities and lack of qualities.

One of the incidents Musil remembers in his diaries is that once he watched a snail move on a tree leave. His father watched him closely. On the questions of his father about what he thought seeing the snail Robert could not answer; he did not know himself. The father thought that his son had an interest in observation and slowly it occurred to him that his son had to be trained to be a 'naturforscher', a biologist.

The images of his childhood are never sharp. More often they concern a description of a mood, a gesture, still-lives that later will be described in a way that is characteristic for Musil the author:
Ein Kindheitszug war das Bruten in der Melancholie des Zimmers, und vielleicht sollte man sagen, uber einem geliebten Spielzeug.

In his diaries he notes that often he has been compared with his father's father. This because of his willfulness. His grandfather, Mathias Musil, had worked himself up from a modest family to be a doctor in the Imperial Army. One fine day he decided to become a farmer, to raise a cattle, and study the live on the land. He withdrew from the army, and hence a good career and pension. This is not only to say that Musil was energetic and successful, but mostly that through his willfulness, he was difficult to get along with, at least someone not to be taken lightly.

Robert Musil will eventually fulfill both his parents wishes, the army and a scientific career. In 1892 he starts attending the Militar-Unterrealschule in Eisenstadt. This is not a serious career move, a well thought over step, nor does he have an affinity with the military regime, but, as he later confesses, the military academy means that at last he can wear long trousers.. That is, he wants to be regarded as a grown up, taken seriously. For his father there is a more practical reason to enlist him in the military academy. When his son reaches his nineteenth birthday he will have become an officer, and hence have his own salary, and thus have safeguarded his future. His mother wishes her son a more strict upbringing, which she hopes he will receive at the academy.

After the first two years in Eisenstadt, which remain without noticable memories, Robert changes to the Militar-Erziehungs- und Bildungsanstalt in Mahrisch-Wei?kirchen. The regime here is authoritarian, a penitentiary where the pupils are treated as were they convicts. Forty years after his time here the memories of the washrooms, the toilets, the indescribable uniforms they have to wear still frighten Musil. His description of the place is very extreme: "das Arschloch des Teufels" (The Devil's Asshole). He wonders whether his cleanliness that he upholds nowadays is not an over-compensation of his days at Wei?kirchen.

When in 1897 Musil leaves the military academy he, in contrast to his fellow students, is still not sure what he wants from life, although for his parents things are clear: ahead of him lies a brilliant career in the Imperial Army. Later, in his diaries he says:
I was uncertain at that time, I did not now what I wanted, I only knew what I did not want, and that was about all, at that time, what as an author one should know.

Musil is seventeen years old when he leaves Wei?kirchen to attend the Technical Military Academy in Vienna. Even thought this is a direction which he feels is more of a good choice than the previous ones, it is still not entirely his own. It was a choice to accommodate his father's wishes to see both traditions of the family, i.e. the military and technique, combined in his son.

After a few months Musil succeeded in convincing his father that this combination is not ideal for him: he starts attending the Technical Academy of Brunn. At first he thinks that this education is what he has always desired; for the first time he feels he is doing something which seems useful. In 1899 he has his first exams, and in 1901 his second. He passes both with the annotation 'very capable'. In spite of the irony with which he later looks back on this period, it has been a very important one to him. The aura of exactness he finds among technicians, the distrust of the illusory in matters that can also be calculated makes a profound expression on him:
If one possesses a slide-rule, and someone comes with assumptions or emotions, one says: a moment please, first we want to compute probability and the boundaries of errors.

However, in the years 1902 - 1903 Musil gets disillusioned. He notices that engineers do not uphold in their lives the standards of their profession. At that time he works as an assistant in the laboratory of his school. What disappoints him mostly is that after one routine-day after another, nothing remains of which he can say that it has been of use, something that is lasting. The initial fascination with the sacred exactness and sobriety of technique has disappeared. Literature will be his way out of his deadlock.
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III. Poetics
i. Literary ambitions

In 1898 Robert Musil notes on a sheet entitled Monsieur le Vivisecteur ideas on a Conversation Book. It should consist of two parts: the first part will deal with the life of mr. le Vivisecteur told through a series of anecdotes. The second part contains Pages from the Nightbook of msr. le Vivisecteur, in which his thoughts, observations and so on will be displayed. Musil starts his notes on the book with the image of him as a child staring out the window, looking at nothing particular at all, a memory in which all his childhood memories seem to have crystalized themselves. The published diaries of Musil begin with these notes.

After a short period Musil stops working on these notes for two years. Meanwhile he has begun putting down all sorts of psychological-typological notes on a great diversity of observations. In 1902 he intends to resume his notes, but now not only for his literary intentions, but as a diary, with observations, ideas, philosophical, psychological, and also historical contemplations.

If the notes Musil took on msr. le Vivisecteur were somewhat distant and esthetic, his diaries are from now on read, influenced by the discipline he needs for his technical studies, as a pretention-less work- and notebook. It will remain distant, which is one of the characteristic features of most of Musil's writing.
Personal notes I will not, or only seldom, make, and only then when I believe that it will be of philosophical interest to me to remember them.

This increasing detachment of his personality, as he calls it, goes hand in hand with an increasing instability of his intellectual self. He concludes that his first literary efforts combine this detachment with his rational convictions. He states, in his diaries, that now, there is more room in his life for emotional and sensual experiences than he would previously have believed possible.

In the meantime Musil has started reading the classics: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Maeterlinck, d'Anunzio, Dostojewski, but above all Nietzsche. This last one he discovered after having said farewell to the Military Academy. From Nietzsche he learns that thinking of the inner and outer self as being two separate entities is not the proper basic terms to base his thinking upon:
They mean, with profound emotions one reaches deep into the inner self, one approaches the heart of nature. But these emotions are only profound, when with them, hardly noticeable, certain complex groups of thought are excited, which we call profound; an emotion is profound because we consider the accompanying thoughts as profound. But these profound thoughts can nevertheless be far from true, like for instance every metaphysical; if one were to deduct the mixed in thought-experience, the profound emotion remains, and this guarantees nothing for the statement at all, just like a strong faith only proves its strength, and not the truth of faith.

In the writings of Nietzsche the basis of Musil's emotion-psychology is to be found. When in the future he attempts to make clear to himself is experiences, he finds himself entangled in such dilemma as the above. Forty years after his first readings of Nietzsche, while working on the last chapters of the Man Without Qualities, Nietzsches remarks on Private and general morality, on the logic of the dream, suffering and empathy and love and justice provide Ulrich with entries for the discussions he has with his sister Agathe.

Every strongly experienced mood brings naturally with it related experiences: together they mix up thinking. Something is remembered and these memories brings to our consciousness similar situations and their origins. Thus relationships between feelings and thoughts are constructed, when the follow one and another swiftly, as though they were a unity, instead of a complex of thoughts and emotions. In this respect one speaks of moral feelings, of religious feelings as if they were unities when in truth they are floods with a myriad of sources and branches. As often is the case here too the oneness of the word does not guarantee the oneness of the significance.

Musil wonders in his diaries how it is possible that Nietzsche had the influence on his works, when reading him during his childhood he did not understand a third of what Nietzsches words meant. It are Nietzsches relativism and inversion of the words 'depth' and 'surface', Nietzsches antitheses of 'unity of word' against the 'multiplicity ofmeaningg' that take up a central position in Musil's works.

One other problem is how to find a way of storytelling that gives greater credit to his thoughts, and thinking in general, than he has hitherto been used to reading. Nietzsches work has convinced him that literature should convey knowledge and insight. Mere description is not enough:
Literature has not so much the task of what is, but what should be. In other words: Literature conveys symbols

To Musil many authors lack the syntheses of thought and telling. About Dostojewski he says that, although he loves his works, that he misses a precision that is necessary to effectivelyy deal with the problems Dostojewski concerns himself with.
He appeared to me intellectually inaccuratee: I had the impression his formulations were not unequivocal enough! It did not offer enough!

To Musil, style is the crystallization of thought. But how to put ones thoughts into words? How precise, unambiguous can one be? Hermann Broch says the following on Musil's style:
Musil realizes that one can only hide the profound in the only place where it is bearable: on the surface.
ii. Philosophy and Martha

In 1903 Musil starts his philosophy-study in Berlin. He fears that without knowledge or insight he cannot formulate poetic thoughts that can bring him to some understanding of human nature. His subjects are phenomenology and logic and is heavily influenced by what is called "Lebensphilosophie". But even in philosophy Musil will not find the answers, or questions, he is looking for. Just the question what is real and what is insignificant creates confusion which even philosophy cannot solve: doubt only becomes more real.
As opposed to poetry one can at one look at the production of philosophical works in one year have its doubts. Yet, one finds in this endlessness with his sixth sense only a few books that will become important to one. The literature that is produced in natural sciences has the advantage that every book modifies its predecessor, builds on it, makes it obsolete. Only in philosophy one does not know whom to learn from

Despite these misgivings Musil will have some intellectual experiences that will become essential to him, and will serve him while working on his main body of work. The most important are the introduction to the aforementioned "Gestaltpsychologi" and his thesis on the work of Ernst Mach in which he finds a Phenomological explanation of his own stance towards technique.

His main concern is the influence of natural sciences on philosophy, which is becoming more and more apparent (positivism): Mach claims that his posivistic convictions have only been achieved through observation, and thus should find their way into philosophy. Musil sees a discrepancy in this: Mach the Philosopher denies the Necessity-principle, he just sees a functional relation in nature, but Mach the scientist cannot evade this Necessity-principle as a law of nature.

The Young Torless, which was first published in 1906, in a way reflects the feuds Musil was caught between: his search for the balance between the emotional and rational, finding the undefined and undefinable in mankind so to avoid it. A perspective to achieve this is missing, though. He knows, feels, that what is clear and obvious for others will always (also) have a second meaning: he will look at in with different eyes.

In 1908 he finishes his thesis: major philosophy, minors mathematics and physics.

In 1911 "Vereinigungen" are published to little acclaim. His father in the meantime is considering his writership increasingly as a pastime, a hobby, something which will not grant him to live on. Musil does not blame his father for finding him a job at the Wiener Technische Akademie. He accepts the job, but warns his parents
I will accept it, but you should not think I will associate with someone from Viennese society.

Before going off to Vienna in 1910 he and his wife Martha Marcovaldi, will spend three months vacationing in Italy.

He met her in 1907. Of the period 1903-1910 he would later state that it is a period with a negative achieved goals balance. Except of course him meeting Martha;
She is not something I have achieved, that I have won, she is something that I have become and has become me.
iii. The Man Without Qualities

From 1921 until his death Musil works almost daily on The Man Without Qualities. The first two books are published in 1930 and the third book in 1933. It will take almost twenty years for the fourth, unfinished part to be published.

The novel is divided into two separate parts. The first deals with Kakanien, the Austrian-Hungarian empire and kingdom in decline, and takes place in the year 1913. Rumour has it that Germany is preparing a celebration in honour of thirty years of reign of Wilhelm II. That same year The Austrian Emperor will be the ruler of his country for seventy years. This of course has to be celebrated more abundant, more profound than the anniversary in Germany. Austrian nobel's realize this and attempt to organize a celebration that will capture the peoples minds forever, show the greatness of Austria and its emperor. To
make the most of the full weight of a reign of seventy years rich in blessings and sorrows as against one of a mere thirty years.
Everybody that becomes a part of the organizing committee has to think of something that is the most important feature of life, of Austria, of its emporer. But of course everybody thinks of something else as being the most important feature. The irony of all this, in retrospect, is that in the year the celebration has to take place Austria ceases to be an empire, and becomes a republic. The celebration does not develop beyond its preperatory fase.

The second, unfinished part of the book deals with Ulrich and Agathe, brother and sister, who meet again after many years on their fathers funeral. Their relationship appears to be almost incestuous. Ulrich's dealings with the Parallelaktion, as the organization of the celebrations are called, move to the background.

Ulrich is the man without Qualities. All other protagonists are ideologems. Ideas, or ideologies, are bindings that keep together peoples lives, and simplify it, because they reduce the number of reactions possible.
When life is socially bounded and individually only restricted movement is possible, it is easier. A catholic or jew, an officer, a student, a businessmansman, someone with a position, has in every fase of live less reactions to choose from then a free mind: it spares and collects force.

The novel describes the interactions of the different ideologies and the difficult position of the free mind in it. The presence of ideologies or bindings does not offer enough ground to declare the knowledge of mankind to something else than the study of nature. Even in natural sciences the start is a believe, a phantasy, a preconception.

The first paragraph of the novel is a parody. A parody on the precision of technique and science, and on the conventional naration of the realistic novel. It opens with climatological and scientific information on a warm summers day which concludes with:
In one word, which describes the factual accurately, even if it is a bit oldfashioned: it was a beautiful day in August in the year 1913.

The accident that takes place on that day and causes an unpleasant sensation with a woman during her stroll and some pity, looses its awkward meaning after the partner has localized the cause in the breaking path of the car.
She had heard this word often enough, but she did not now what a breaking path could be, and she did not want to know; it sufficed for her that with this explanation this horrible event could be classified as a technical problem, that was not her immediate problem.

These aforementioned passages are characteristic for the tension that is often found in Musil's work: the tangible reality and its partners: cultural conventions, feelings, ideals. There is a fourth party to be mentioned: the "sense op possibility". Ulrichs father, a proffesor in law, holds tight principles:
If one wants to go through an opened door, one must take into account the fact that it has a stable post: this basic rule, by which the professor has always lived, is simply one of the demanding principles of the sense of reality.

This sense of possibility, which stands in opposition to the "sense of reality", leads to a different kind of reasoning:
Thus the sense of posibility may be defined as the capability to think everything that might as well be and take that which is not as more important than that which is not.

This is not just the opposition between father and son, but also between Ulrich and many other personages of The Man Without Qualities.

To be continued .....

IV. Last Years

To the in the first paragraph mentioned qualities the following can be added: Musil detests regulations: not only in literary genres and art and fashion, but also of mechanical world views, of predestined lifes. His way of writing is one of perpetual changes, a renewed reviewing of possibilities, of possible causalities, of possible backgrounds.

His search also stems from discontent. At the end of his life he looks back at the course of it and concentrates on all the moments that his life took an important turn. A central position in these reflections is his choice in favour of his writing as an academically formed author instead of a life dedicated to science, to which his family raised him. Musil lived for the moments that would take life into an newer, higher level (read, for example, The Blackbird)

His 25th diary is called: Efforts to find another being. Elsewhere in his diaries he states that Literature is a
bolder, more logically combined life, the creation or crystallization of possibilities

This thought can be read as one of the motives of The Man Without Qualities. But also in shorter works this plays an important role. One of the Tempered Observations in his Posthumous papers of a living author the conflict between the ideal and the real is central: Black Magic deals with the conditions for the creation of art and kitsch.

Источник:http://www.xs4all.nl/~jikje/New/bio.html

Тем временем:

...
Почтальон в ту неделю зачастил ко мне, а я разделался с мелкими долгами,
купил себе новый костюм и каждое утро просыпался с ощущением, что мир
несказанно прекрасен и сулит ошеломляющие перспективы.
Пока дожидался выхода книги, из любителя я стал превращаться в
профессионала, а это значит, что вся жизнь человека отныне подчинена
работе, и, как только закончена одна вещь, автоматически начинаешь писать
следующую. Раньше я был просто любителем; в октябре, бродя со своей
девушкой среди надгробий на кладбище южного городка, я ощущал себя
профессионалом и, умиляясь на ее переживания и слова, не забывал, однако,
все заметить, чтобы вставить потом в рассказ, который был у меня в работе,
- он назывался "Ледяной дворец" и был напечатан чуть позже. А в Сент-Поле,
где я проводил рождество, я однажды пожертвовал двумя приглашениями на
вечеринки с танцами, остался дома и писал рассказ. В тот вечер друзья три
раза звонили мне и сообщали, до чего было весело: один местный кутила и
выдумщик нарядился верблюдом и вместе с шофером такси, изображавшим заднюю
половину верблюда, по ошибке явился в дом, куда его не приглашали. В
отчаянии от того, что упустил такое зрелище, я весь следующий день пытался
слепить отрывки рассказа в единое целое.
"Господи, до чего же смешно получилось!"
"Где раздобыл шофера такси? Понятия не имею".
"Надо еще знать этого типа, а то и не поймешь, до чего было смешно".
Я вышел из терпения и сказал:
- От вас толку не добьешься. Вот напишу об этом, будет в десять раз
смешнее.
И написал - за двадцать два часа непрерывной работы. Причем написал
"смешно" - мне ведь уши прожужжали, до чего все вышло смешно. "Спину
верблюда" напечатали и до сих пор иногда включают в сборники
юмористических рассказов.
К весне я опять успел вымотаться; пришлось дать себе небольшую
передышку, и за это время у меня начало складываться новое представление о
жизни в Америке...

Фрэнсис Фицджеральд (Francis Fitzgerald)
«Ранний успех»