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The Man Without Qualities: Vol 2

Robert Musil, Eithne Wilkins (translator), Ernst Kaiser (translator)

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630 (55%)

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

735 reviews783 followers

February 24, 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

( Δάσκαλε προσκυνώ)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

best dante-deo humming-closer-no-hesitation-give-m

Luís

1,943 reviews608 followers

March 20, 2023

Hey, hey, hey; harrowing reading, almost fatal at times! A new character is introduced at the beginning of this volume and takes up a lot of space, practically all of the area. She is the sister of a man without qualities. More or less a stranger to him, their reunion marks him deeply. However, this character, far from drawing me, rather bored me, and unfortunately, their discussions and introspections are endlessly a total fixation. I reduced to waiting for small nuggets of brilliant writing, which seemed rarer to me than in the previous volume. I wanted to know the developments of the parallel action and to have news of my favorite characters, Clarisse and General Stumm in particular. These moments occur but seem short and spaced, lost in the thickness of this volume, surpassing the previous one. Another complication: this novel is incomplete, and the more we advance, the more we encounter unfinished sections, sketches, studies, and different versions of the same chapter. Cohesion suffers. It is a pity that the author has not known, after all these years of work, to give a rigid and finished framework to this novel which nevertheless bears the mark of genius. The whole piece was, therefore, for me, both a great discovery and a bitter disappointment.

e-3

Vit Babenco

1,464 reviews3,616 followers

December 29, 2016

“What we still refer to as a personal destiny is being displaced by collective processes that can finally be expressed in statistical terms.”
The main character – the man without qualities – continues to rebel against conformity and uniformity…
“…he had been annoyed countless times by his contemporaries’ capacity for enthusiasms, which almost invariably fasten on the wrong object and so end up destroying even what indifference has let survive.”
And he literally hates social conventionalities and false artificial morality…
“The morality that has been handed down to us is like being sent out on a swaying high wire over an abyss, with no other advice than: ‘Hold yourself as stiff as you can!’”
Some musings become more abstract and viscous while the narration turns more linear. And Robert Musil immerses yet deeper in the contemplation of sexuality, sexual freedom and sexual pathology.
“Nowadays, when a woman’s appearance suggests that of a well-plucked fowl ready for the oven, it is hard to imagine her predecessor’s appearance in all its charm of endlessly titillated desire, which has meanwhile become ridiculous: the long skirt, to all appearances sewn to the floor by the dressmaker and yet miraculously in motion, enclosing other, secret gossamer skirts beneath it, pastel-shaded silk flower petals whose softly fluttering movements suddenly turned into even finer tissues of white, which were the first to touch the body itself with their soft foam.”
The culmination of the Into the Millennium part is a visit to the madhouse and the high social assembly ending up with the foolishly mad yet smashing resolution, both events happen at the same day and there are the apparent parallels between them.
All the additional chapters withdrawn by Robert Musil in galleys are actually an anticlimax and even seem to be somewhat excessive.

Christopher Robinson

173 reviews76 followers

July 18, 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

Five stars, obviously.

read-2021 read-and-kept very-favorite-novels

Michael

57 reviews68 followers

December 16, 2016

Note: Volume II of the newer Pike/Wilkins translation and Volume II of the older Wilkins/Kaiser translation do not cover the same material. This review is for the later.

From the first time I heard it, the title, The Man Without Qualities, struck me as surreptitiously suggestive of some vital meaning that I could only find behind the cover on which it was written. And perhaps it was all of my previous reading experience that then subtly bade me to wean my expectations from this promise. For that experience defensibly says: rare is the book that meets those unjustifiable things called expectations when - based on a mere title - those things are unjustifiably high. And first grade math tells me: 1000+ page books have greater potential disappointment than 500- ones. I owe my present rapture to my Goodreads community for efficiently bleeding dry what reservations might have given unto eternal delay. Thank you.

First, take a quick look around you.

‘You would like to live according to your own ideas,’ he [Ulrich] heard himself say, ‘and you would like to know how that can be done. But an idea is the most paradoxical thing in the world. The flesh combines with ideas like a fetish. It becomes magical when there’s an idea in it. An ordinary box on the ears may, by association with the ideas of honour, punishment, and the like, become a matter of life and death. And yet ideas can never conserve themselves in the state in which they are strongest. They are like those substances that when exposed to the air instantly transform themselves into another, more permanent, but corrupted form of existence. You have been through it often. For you are an idea yourself, one in a particular state. You are touched by a breath of something, and it’s like when the quivering of strings suddenly produces a note. And then there’s something there in front of you like a mirage, and the tangle of your soul takes on shape, becoming an unending cavalcade, and all the beauties of the world seem to stand along its road. Such things are often brought about by one single idea. But after a while it comes to resemble all the other ideas that you have had before, subordinating itself to them and becoming part of your outlook and your character, your principles and your moods. By then it has lost its wings and taken on an unmysterious solidity.’

Now, pick up your jaw and take a brief look around once more. This connection that can be made between words and your own immediate reality, that can change what you see by dilating wide that mind-eye that is so snidely audacious as to believe it does see and understand reality, so that it sees that this seeing and understanding is in no way so fixed into these proportions, this connection, that Musil is a master of, should define what is worth reading. If you read only to escape reality, you might as well escape this review right now. Musil is not for you. (Even though, for you, he most urgently is.)

In my review of Volume One, I heed the compulsion to compare the value of that volume/this book with Ulysses and Leaves of Grass. Perhaps part of me was trying to pick a fight the many champions of Joyce and Whitman. Perhaps I was hoping to be defeated in such a fight - to be learned of what I was missing. Perhaps it was only my feeble protest against the ‘they’ that say I must read those books, by aligning myself with the ‘they’ telling you to read this one (pst, read this one), and then straying a bit further in suggesting you might read this one instead. But however incomplete my understanding of this urge was and is, what I recognize in Musil that I do not in those to whom my whim chose to compare him, is that he writes what is worth writing about. He has something to say about reality, even if it is only the notion, ‘stop what you’re doing until you figure out what is worth doing.’ “Active passivism,” is what Ulrich calls it when cornered by Clarisse, who later demands there should be a Year of Ulrich, just as a little voice in my head is demanding from my reading attention a Year of Musil.

What is worth doing? Figuring out what to do? And what is worth reading? As many pretty books as possible or the few that will change your life by declawing some of the certainty from the world you see? Let me be so presumptuous as to tell you that this is the book you sift through all those thousands of pretty others to find. It is, at least, for me. And now I find myself with the bitter-sweet, betting-man’s certainty that I will never read a better book. My instinct recognizes itself in Musil (and this is perhaps the joy of reading): Question everything yourself. Do not for a second believe that any human born into this world before you or since has or has had it figured out. Don’t be so quick to assume so-and-so, not to mention you yourself, are the exception to those many you do see susceptible to their inner sheep, even if what they are following is not so obviously the herd as it could seem.

Imagine reading something that makes one nearly spout out (following some profane exclamation) such nonsensical things as, ‘he is some raconteuring reincarnation of the Buddha,’ (to whom it perhaps belongs the earliest attributing of the concept ‘question and find out everything for yourself’). Reading Musil makes you realize that a near infinite variety of such and exceedingly nonsensical things are not only widely said but widely accepted and have been throughout all recorded time, and we are, from the moment we are born, swept in the swirling current of this mud river. Imagine reading a narrative set exactly 100 years ago, written nearly that long ago, that combines the ancient wisdom of eastern philosophy with the latest proclamations of literary theory, but busting these from the respective ores of aphorism and hypothesis, so as to present them in that clear shining jewel our western mind finds so very difficult to resist: The novel.

Joyce said, “I’ve put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that’s the only way of ensuring one’s immortality.” I say, therein lies both Joyce’s brilliance and ignorance. To recognize that all it takes for generations upon generations to be enamored with something is to beset them with enough puzzle for puzzles sake, enough tangential and sputtering ambiguity, to give them so much structure with so little meaning that any single reader is all but forced to fill in her or his own, thus drawing the conversation (if that is the word) in so many different and contending directions that it will never end, is to have a certain and brilliant understanding of the human condition. To then pull this off is a stunning achievement. But to confuse such an achievement for immortality is a blunder of understanding the human condition that cannot be overemphasized. Joyce may have died knowing his achievement - and what comfort that must have been for him. But it was delusion. Joyce doesn’t know he isn’t really immortal; he doesn’t know how successful his works are today; he doesn’t know that for some, trading one’s sight of reality for the comfort that is the delusion of status is not by any math worth it. Because Joyce is dead. He doesn’t know anything. He didn’t ensure his immortality; he ensured his own delusion by realizing his ability to set his own status in motion in a world that shares the delusion that status is soul. But the light that yet shines is of a star that has already died.

The Collateral Campaign, as it is called in this translation, is beset in a similar delusion. It quite consciously is making a concerted effort, gathering some of the world’s greatest minds, with the idea that from such a formula, an idea can be synthesized that when applied to the world (status) will transcend one and all (immortality). But as Ulrich continually predicts, it doesn’t matter who, how brilliant, how many, from what fields, they are, the effort is doomed to fail. The one mind this campaign could profit from - and ironically has in its company - knows the futility of its own participation. Ulrich's contribution would begin with the immediate dissolution of their misconstrued efforts. For he sees quite definitely that idealism is the imposition of confusion in the name of order upon reality, whereby reality then, by something beyond duty and beyond definition, invariably makes the correction. It shakes off the delicate reins these human hands put upon it, as if to teach us such pursuits are silly unto tragedy. But as ubiquitously and continuously as this lesson is taught, it seems we don’t want to learn that reality itself is the only worthy pursuit, and to impose upon it whatever our pathetic judgement deems to be good, no matter how flawless the execution, is always a self-injurious and self-deluding endeavor. Welcome to humanity!

To Musil this delusion that made Joyce think Homer and Shakespeare were gods and caused him to endeavor to place himself among them is but another quality to be left by the wayside. If I have even the slightest power to serve Musil a positive shift in that posthumous renown that Joyce abuses the term immortality with, I would posit to any who might heed that where Joyce is content, even eager, to place himself like a barnacle on the backs of falsely assumed immortals - and by such tenuous and trivial means as dot-connecting - Musil, by doing nothing more than heeding his own passion, is, among other things, challenging Shakespeare in the game of his own preferred swordplay. Leaving aside the differences in times and style, I will claim that Musil’s Clarisse is a more vivid and poetic depiction of human tragedy than any among the dying young in Shakespeare. For, even if she would physically survive this uncompleted masterpiece, what is at stake in Clarisse is no less than life itself. It is simply that the boogyman here is not so literal, simple and visible as in the Bard’s world. It is more the ever-seeping, slow-working, and all but imperceptible digestive juices of domestication, that by which one is tricked into a world where no one is really living. It is the ubiquitous horror of realizing that one’s life is not just diverging but divergent from the beautiful ideas one came to keep for it on some audacious alter above mere expectation, so that we, like Clarisse, mistake it for eventuality. For it is this subtly enemy - the same who haunts Richard Yate’s brilliant Revolutionary Road - that we much more urgently need to become aware. Because it is he who will evoke our own tragedy. In a quote too disruptively long and beautiful to insert here, Musil’s narrator warns us not to forgo purifying ourselves against reality - which quite germanely equates to shedding our qualities.

You might (you should) ask how I can be so sure that Musil isn’t just as delusional as I claim Joyce to be. The answer is that my certainty should mean little to nothing to you. Because all you or I have to do is listen to Gautama Buddha when he tells us to find out for ourselves. Only then might we know that:

“…my instinct is right and the work worth doing, because of its saturation in the conviction that the sub specie aeternitatis [under the aspect of eternity] vision is the only excuse for remaining alive.”
–Samuel Beckett

leave-your-lover-and-read murder-weapons quit-school-and-read

A. Raca

739 reviews152 followers

March 4, 2021

"Ağaç ormanda mücadele eder ve ormanın himayesindeyken kendini öylesine silik hisseder ki bu, hassas insanların günümüzde kitledeki karanlık sıcaklığı, onun tahrik kuvvetini ve bilinçdışı dayanışmasının moleküler seviyede görünmez olaylarını duyuşundan farksızdır; bu olaylar hassas insanlara, aldıkları her nefeste, ne en büyük ne de en küçük varlıkların yalnız olduğunu hatırlatır."

Ulrich'in Paralel Faaliyet'te işleri daha karmaşıklaşıyor, herkes işine ciddiyetle yaklaşırken aslında hiçbir şey yapılamıyor.

⭐

George

128 reviews12 followers

January 21, 2020

Θα εναποθέσω κάποιες σκόρπιες σκέψεις για αυτό το βιβλίο.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enjoy!!

Sinem A.

450 reviews248 followers

September 9, 2015

Hayattaki her şeyden bahsedebilmek, hepsini böyle bi kurgu içinde biraraya getirmek ve bunu yaparken mikroskobik detayların ince derinliklerini ilmek olarak kullanabilmek... keşke bitirebilseymiş, kitap hakkında hissettiğim tek kötü şey bu; yarım kalıp insanı da havada bırakma hali...

Wes Allen

51 reviews51 followers

January 13, 2019

Review of Volumes I and II

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

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

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

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

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

worlds-longest-novels

Irena

398 reviews85 followers

May 14, 2020

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lee Klein

812 reviews878 followers

May 5, 2012

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

put-down-for-now

Stephen P(who no longer can participate due to illness)

283 reviews367 followers

September 19, 2013

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

Josh Friedlander

731 reviews107 followers

December 8, 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

mitteleuropa modern-classics modernist

Red

463 reviews

March 28, 2015

divine madness

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

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

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

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

Steve

380 reviews1 follower

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August 28, 2022

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stefania

180 reviews32 followers

April 6, 2017

Ο άνθρωπος χωρίς ιδιότητες , ο Ζαρατούστρα του Μούζιλ!

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Goatboy

193 reviews64 followers

September 2, 2020

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

272 reviews27 followers

June 17, 2022

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

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Jelena Jonis

151 reviews13 followers

November 29, 2020

Sveikinu save pabaigus šią knygą! Jeigu vieniems skaitytojams Tolstojaus "Karas ir taika" yra metų pasiekimas, tai man tokiu pasiekimu tapo "Žmogus be savybių". Pradėjusi skaityti 2 dalį tikrai tikėjausi, kad Musilį esu daugiau mažiau perpratusi ir šią įveiksiu lengviau. Klydau. Nors pačios temos, lyginant su pirmąja knygos dalimi, man asmeniškai buvo aktualesnės, filosofiniai ir moraliniai išvedžiojimai reikalavo LABAI daug susikaupimo ir jėgų. Po tokių knygų tampi labai reiklus literatūrai - daugelis kūrinių tiesiog atrodo prėski ir prasti, ir tai tikrai yra vienintelis šios knygos trūkumas.

Keli suvokimai, susiformavę beskaitant:
(1) Teoriniai išvedžiojimai apie "rasės kilnumą", skirtumą tarp gero ir blogo žmogaus, santykį tarp moralės ir jausmų buvo įmanomi tik aukštuose, retai sunkiai dirbančių žmonių, sluoksniuose. Didelis tuščiažodžiavimas ir poreikis kitus mokyti kaip gyventi jų gyvenimą būdingas tiems, kieno gyvenimas iš esmės labai nuobodus. Kažkuo juk jį reikia užpildyti. Mūsų laikais pasikeitė tik temos ir nuomonės formavimo mastas, bet ne pats principas.
(2) Prieš 100 metų žmonės aklai tikėjo, kad moteris yra paprastesnė ir kvailesnė už vyrą, todėl negali būti savarankiška (ypač teisine prasme). Kuo vis dar aklai tikime mes?
(3) Netiksliai suformuluota mintis, pagauta minios, neretai sukelia baisias pasekmes. Savybė kvestionuoti ir tikrinti informaciją, ypač mūsų informacijos visuomenės laikais, yra kritiškai svarbi. Žmonių be šių savybių vis dar labai daug.

Ir pabaigai, keli knygos fragmentai:
- Aš tau jau seniai sakau - kažkas tvyro ore.
Tada Ulrichui parūpo, kas gi tame ore tvyro.
- Nagi pasakyk, ko gi tam ministrui reikia?! - pareikalavo jis.
- Jis to ir pats nežino - ramiai pasakė Štumas. - Jo ekscelencija jaučia: dabar metas. Senasis Leinsdorfas taip pat jaučia: dabar metas. Generalinio štabo viršininkas irgi jaučia: dabar metas. Jeigu tai jaučia daugelis, čia gali būti kažkas tikra.
- Tačiau kam metas? - neatlyžo Ulrichas.
- To nebūtina žinoti! - mokė jį generolas. - Tai, kaip sakoma, absoliutūs įspūdžiai.

--
Kiekvieną kartą, kai kokia nors dalinė tiesa imama laikyti vienintele teisinga, tai blogai baigiasi. Bet, kita vertus, vargu ar galima prieiti prie tokios dalinės tiesos jos iš pradžių nepervertinant.

Jesse

85 reviews

August 21, 2012

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

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Sunny

755 reviews36 followers

July 26, 2011

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

philosophy

David

1,399 reviews7 followers

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July 30, 2018

I read the whole sequence on the recommendation of Jeff Bursey. Probably a good 20 years ago now.

Маx Nestelieiev

Author 22 books162 followers

April 21, 2018

продовжую читати це австрійське занудство. читаю винятково заради Логвиненка, бо він був найкращий. поки що найцікавіше в романі - передмова Дмитра Затонського))

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Özgür ÇIRAK

4 reviews

May 26, 2020

Robert Musil'in "Niteliksiz Adam"ını bitirdim. Yaklaşık bir aya yayılan bir okuma oldu. Musil kitabın üçüncü cildini bitiremeden, neredeyse açlıktan ölmüş. Düzenlenmemiş, fragmanlar halindeki üçüncü cildin Türkçe çevirisi yok. Bu sebeple "Niteliksiz Adam" yarım kalan bir okuma serüveni. Kitabı bitirdikten sonra kitabın birinci cildindeki önsözü bir daha okudum. Musil için edebiyatta önemli olan, söz söylemek. Olayı, kurguyu, karakteri söylenecek söz biçimlendiriyor. Roman "söylem" açısından tıka basa dolu. Antikalarla, sanat eserleriyle, gösterişli tablolarla insanın aklını başından alan bir saraya benziyor kitap. Viyana'daki Schönbrunn Sarayı gibi. Başlarda dolaşmak keyifli ama bu gezinti uzadıkça türlü antika, sanat eseri, tek tek bakmaya doyamayacağınız o kadar nesne bir araya gelince üstüne üstüne geliyor insanın. Niteliksiz Adam'da da böyle bir söylem bombardımanı var. Söy söylemek mi hikaye anlatmak mı? Saroyan ve Musil okumaları arka arkaya gelince, iki yaklaşımın da ne yöne düştüğünü karşılaştırmalı anlayabiliyorsunuz. Musil otuz küsur yılını vermiş "Niteliksiz Adam"a. 🍀 Üç eksen var romanda. Birincisi Habsburg Hanedanlığı'nın yıkılması, ikincisi vahşet çağına yaklaşırken insanın var oluşu ve üçüncüsü de çağın ürettiği felsefi yaklaşımlar. Bu üç ayak üzerinden romandaki her karakter Habsburg Hanedanlığı'nın ve insanın çöküşünden ne kadar sorumluysa o kadar rollerini oynuyorlar. Her karakteri ince ince düşünülmüş, büyük çaba çok büyük bir emek var. Bazen metni anlayabilmek için metnin sesini duymayı bilmek gerekiyor. Böyle olmayınca "hımmm bu kitap bende hayal kırıklığı yarattı, beğenmedim" sığlığında yaklaşımlar oluyor. Belli ki Niteliksiz Adam'ın hakkını verebilmem için kim bilir kaç fırın ekmek yemem gerekecek. Edebiyat güzel şey. İyi okumalar 🍀😊 #robertmusil #niteliksizadam #kazımtaşkentklasikyapıtlardizisi #zorbakitabevikafe #neokudum #neokusam #bookstagram #instagram #dünyaedebiyatı #almancaedebiyat #roman #kitap #kitaplık

Nik Maack

644 reviews19 followers

November 29, 2021

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

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

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

Victoria

115 reviews12 followers

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February 22, 2015

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lisa

409 reviews14 followers

October 22, 2017

On second read, this volume is much less interesting and enjoyable than the first. Musil's wonderful sarcasm and almost bitter humor are nearly absent and he grapples with "big questions" with much less grace.

fiction

Ted

1 review1 follower

September 26, 2007

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

Torsten

257 reviews13 followers

May 30, 2017

სამწუხაროა, თუმცა , შესაძლოა სიმბოლურიც, რომ რომანი დაუმთავრებელია და მაინც დიდი ინტერესით ველოდი ნარატივში პირველი მსოფლიო ომის შემოჭრას. ავტორმა ყველაფერი შეამზადა "დიდი სულიერი მოვლენისათვის", რომელზეც ყველა საუბრობდა და რომლის არსიც ყველასთვის ბუნდოვანი იყო. ეს ბუნდოვანება და სულიერი სიბერწე კი მასობრივმა ხოცვა-ჟლეტამ ჩაანაცვლა. მუზილის ოსტატობა და იმ ამოცანის, თუ როგორ მივიდა ევროპა ომამდე, ჩინებული გადაჭრა სწორედ იმაში მჟღავნდება, რომ მკითხველიც ფურცლიდან ფურცლამდე იმსჭვალება აზრით - რაღაც უნდა შეიცვალოს, ამ ქაოსში რაღაც ხელჩასაჭიდი , ან ფეხმოსაკიდი საყრდენი უნდა გაჩნდეს და იყოს თუნდაც ამორალური, თუნდაც ბარბაროსული, რადგან მორალური და ამორალურიც ამ ეპოქაში მრავალი სახისაა და ბუნდოვანია. "ზარატუსტრაში" უკანასკნელი ადამიანის შესახებ წერს ნიცშე : იგი კითხულობს რა არის სიყვარული? რა არის ცხოვრება? რა არის სიმძიმე ? და თვალებს აფახურებს და მისი მოდგმა შეუმუსრავია, როგორც მიწის რწყილისა. ამ ყველაფერს კი პასუხი უნდა გაეცეს. აქვს ეპოქას მთლიანი, ობიექტური, "ჭეშმარიტი " პასუხი?
"ნუთუ ადამიანს მხოლოდ ინსტიქტები წარმართავს, მხოლოდ იმას აკეთებს, გრძნობს და ფიქრობს კიდეც, რისკენაც მოთხოვნილების არაცნობიერი ნაკადი და სიამოვნების საამო ბრიზი მიაქანებს, როგორც დღეს არის მიჩნეული? იქნებ მაინც უფრო გონება ან ნებელობა წარმართავს, როგორც ასევე დღეს არის მიჩნეული? თუ რაღაც კონკრეტული, მაგალითად სექსუალური, ემოციები მართავს, როგორც დღეს არის მიჩნეული? ან იქნებ სექსუალური საწყისი კი არა, ეკონომიკური პირობების ფსიქოლოგიური ზემოქმედება განსაზღვრავს, როგორც ასევე დღეს არის მიჩნეული? " კანტი, ფროიდი , მარქსი ? და ამ გარემოში , ამ მცირე და ახალ მამათა გასანადგურებლად, ევროპა თავს იფეთქებს. დიდი მამა , რომელიც მკვდარია იარაღით ხელში ბრუნდება, ან უბრალოდ, როგორც ასევე ნიცშე აღნიშნავს, ღმერთი მოკვდა და მისი მაგინებლებიც თან გადაჰყვნენ მას.
ინტელექტუალური, სულიერი და ფიზიკური სუიციდის ჩინებული ტილო.

Şehriban Kaya

378 reviews16 followers

February 22, 2019

Ulrich'in Paralel faaliyetteki rolü ve ilişkilerinin gittikçe karmaşıklaştığına tanıklığımız sürüyor. Bu arada elbette Moonsburger idamı beklerken onun suçu işlerken içinde bulunduğu ruh hali üzerinden hukuk tartışmaları da sürüyor Paralel Faaliyet'in ne olduğuna dair kimsenin pek fikri olmaması gerçeği de :))
prusyalı milyoner Arnheim'in Diotima'ya aşkı, uşağının Diotima'nın hizmetçisiyle aşk ilişkisi, Ulrich'in Diotima'yla ve arkadaşı Walter'ın eşi Clarisse'yle olan karmaşık duygusal ilişkisi ile beraber Gerda'yla flört edişi de devam ediyor bir yandan. Yani son derece karmaşık çok katmanlı ama bir o kadar da yavaş, ilerlemeyen bir havası var kitabın. ikinci cilt bitti sırada üç ve dört var daha.

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Ratings & Reviews for

The Man Without Qualities: Vol 2

Robert Musil, Eithne Wilkins (translator), Ernst Kaiser (translator)

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