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A review by screen_memory
The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil
5.0
My second read-through of the unparalleled novel without end (a remark both on its length and the fact that Musil died before its completion - if such a thing were possible), The Man Without Qualities - undeniably my favorite novel and one of my most significant literary influences.
Musil's style is like no other; in some instances florid, in others exacting. His writing is discursive and heavily essayistic - many passages and certainly entire chapters could be cut from the book and stand alone as works of philosophy or theory. While the prose is not uncertain of itself, it, in some way, reflects the push-pull of the Vienna Circle's logical positivism with metaphysics; with what can be deduced with mathematical/logical certainty, and what of the innumerable aspects of the human experience and of the world remain incapable of being so much as touched by a positivist analysis or capable of being explained by science (a chapter in which Ulrich does nothing but work through an exhaustive analysis of emotions spanning some 20-30 pages only to arrive at an indeterminate conclusion as to their origin perhaps most heavily illustrates this).
Additionally, one can intuit a sort of Hegelian model in the double structure of many if not all of the novel's ideas which often if not always become negated by their opposite, although there is no synthesis to be seen. It stands, then, that The Man Without Qualities, to some degree, could be viewed as a record of a Europe in intellectual turmoil; a Europe with no evident sense of direction forward; a Europe incapable of reconciling itself with moral relativism (a concept which is explicitly embodied by the murderer Moosbrugger).
This lack of resolution underpins the entire novel. Much like the novel did not nor could be brought to a definitive end, neither do any of the concepts or ideas presented within the novel ever get brought to a substantial conclusion.
The plot itself budges not an inch forward throughout all of the 1,200+ pages of the three published volumes. The Parallel Campaign as its called, of which much of Austria's state officials and intelligentsia are a part, is formed to discover one grand idea to unify Austria, but while their mission statements might change (one of which calls for action now - an absurd demand given that what action must come next never becomes any more clear), the futility of the campaign's premise does not.
Indeed, the title itself, The Man Without Qualities, also the nickname of the main character, Ulrich, is ironic; Ulrich possesses numerous qualities, so many that he is compared to a chromometer, a device that displays all colors so quickly that they inevitably merge into the unified absence of color, an unwavering oscillating white. He is something of a mathematician (though he gives up his practice for years), a gymnast, a womanizer, an intellectual, and so on, but none of these qualities lend themselves to anything greater than some indeterminate patchwork of a person; a man who stands for nothing and accomplishes little; the negation of a man; a man without qualities.
This book marked an ideational/artistic rebirth for me; so important and vital has this single novel become to my own literary practice and engagement. Musil has defined the benchmark for the novel par excellence in my mind. He is widely under-read, however - almost criminally so. You will not often see Musil mentioned alongside other modernists like the fart-fucking Joyce, although the titanic scope of his novel, its language and style so incredibly unlike the flatulent language of such annoyances as Ulysses, is perhaps comparable only to Proust's.
A book so rich and dense with ideas is naturally capable of gradually unraveling by degrees with each reading (as many undiscovered or forgotten ideas and their intersections, or details, were re/discovered through this last reading), as I suppose any sublime novel is capable of, and so, inspired by an ironic remark by Ulrich's sister that, rather than hailing in an Austrian Year, they should hail in an Ulrich Year, I have decided to seek to continue a tradition of re-reading this novel every August as representative less of my birth month than my figurative rebirth following my first reading of TMWQ. Therefore, though it sounds as idiotic as it is a matter of much seriousness, the next of hopefully many Augusts to follow will see to my celebration of the anniversary of Ulrich Month.
Musil's style is like no other; in some instances florid, in others exacting. His writing is discursive and heavily essayistic - many passages and certainly entire chapters could be cut from the book and stand alone as works of philosophy or theory. While the prose is not uncertain of itself, it, in some way, reflects the push-pull of the Vienna Circle's logical positivism with metaphysics; with what can be deduced with mathematical/logical certainty, and what of the innumerable aspects of the human experience and of the world remain incapable of being so much as touched by a positivist analysis or capable of being explained by science (a chapter in which Ulrich does nothing but work through an exhaustive analysis of emotions spanning some 20-30 pages only to arrive at an indeterminate conclusion as to their origin perhaps most heavily illustrates this).
Additionally, one can intuit a sort of Hegelian model in the double structure of many if not all of the novel's ideas which often if not always become negated by their opposite, although there is no synthesis to be seen. It stands, then, that The Man Without Qualities, to some degree, could be viewed as a record of a Europe in intellectual turmoil; a Europe with no evident sense of direction forward; a Europe incapable of reconciling itself with moral relativism (a concept which is explicitly embodied by the murderer Moosbrugger).
This lack of resolution underpins the entire novel. Much like the novel did not nor could be brought to a definitive end, neither do any of the concepts or ideas presented within the novel ever get brought to a substantial conclusion.
The plot itself budges not an inch forward throughout all of the 1,200+ pages of the three published volumes. The Parallel Campaign as its called, of which much of Austria's state officials and intelligentsia are a part, is formed to discover one grand idea to unify Austria, but while their mission statements might change (one of which calls for action now - an absurd demand given that what action must come next never becomes any more clear), the futility of the campaign's premise does not.
Indeed, the title itself, The Man Without Qualities, also the nickname of the main character, Ulrich, is ironic; Ulrich possesses numerous qualities, so many that he is compared to a chromometer, a device that displays all colors so quickly that they inevitably merge into the unified absence of color, an unwavering oscillating white. He is something of a mathematician (though he gives up his practice for years), a gymnast, a womanizer, an intellectual, and so on, but none of these qualities lend themselves to anything greater than some indeterminate patchwork of a person; a man who stands for nothing and accomplishes little; the negation of a man; a man without qualities.
This book marked an ideational/artistic rebirth for me; so important and vital has this single novel become to my own literary practice and engagement. Musil has defined the benchmark for the novel par excellence in my mind. He is widely under-read, however - almost criminally so. You will not often see Musil mentioned alongside other modernists like the fart-fucking Joyce, although the titanic scope of his novel, its language and style so incredibly unlike the flatulent language of such annoyances as Ulysses, is perhaps comparable only to Proust's.
A book so rich and dense with ideas is naturally capable of gradually unraveling by degrees with each reading (as many undiscovered or forgotten ideas and their intersections, or details, were re/discovered through this last reading), as I suppose any sublime novel is capable of, and so, inspired by an ironic remark by Ulrich's sister that, rather than hailing in an Austrian Year, they should hail in an Ulrich Year, I have decided to seek to continue a tradition of re-reading this novel every August as representative less of my birth month than my figurative rebirth following my first reading of TMWQ. Therefore, though it sounds as idiotic as it is a matter of much seriousness, the next of hopefully many Augusts to follow will see to my celebration of the anniversary of Ulrich Month.