The Musil Diaries: Robert Musil, 1899-1942

by Robert Musil, Philip Payne, Mark Jay Mirsky

The Diaries of Robert Musil are a secret look into the life and mind of a writer whose fiction embodies one of the twentieth century's daring leaps of consciousness. Ranked with Franz Kafka, Marcel Proust, and James Joyce in the pantheon of European modernists, Musil attempted to apply the precision of his scientific training to the utmost bounds of the imagination. In a series of notebooks kept through most of his literary career, Musil reflected, often through stunning epigrams, on his childhood, his erotic life, his methods of creative thought and his fellow writers. An indispensable guide to his fiction, essays and plays, the pages of the diaries provide a skeleton key for his complex unfinished masterpiece The Man Without Qualities. Known for extreme personal reticence among his contemporaries, Musil in the diaries (which were never intended for publication), speaks nakedly of himself and the chaotic events he lived through.This selection from the diaries is based on the exhaustive 1976 German edition prepared by Adolf Frisé. Most of its sketches, anecdotes and personal reflections have been translated into English. An acute political and cultural observer, Musil recorded in these pages his experiences of Berlin at the outbreak of World War I and service in the Austrian army on the Italian Front. The last notebooks chronicle Hitler's rise to power and Musil's exile in Switzerland. The diaries are valuable in a number of as a first-hand historical document of life in twentieth century central Europe, as a kind of unwitting autobiography of a great novelist, and as a writer's workbook that details the moods of artistic adventure.In the diaries Robert Musil challenged himself to think about a reality beyond the world that could be apprehended by logic, to entertain the possibilities of forbidden eroticism, to imagine the hidden mystical life of Fascist Europe, and to turn the question of sexual gender into the puzzle of identity.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Diary, Literature, Memoir, Biography Memoir, German Literature

624 pages, Hardcover

Published November 26, 1998

About the author

Austrian writer.

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

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

Reviews

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 3 out of 5]

Always be wary when you read reviews that start off with something like, "For the [so-and-so] completist".
This work is for the Robert Musil completist. So there. I warned you. Until recently, I would've thought myself a Robert Musil completist. "The Man Without Qualities" is one of the greatest works of wonderfully incomplete fiction ever not finished! I love that grand work. Musil's other work isn't as good, but, who cares?
You can like a writer to a superlative degree, but does that mean you have to actually give so much of a shit that you want to spend 3 yrs occasionally slogging through his untidy diaries?
God, no. Do not misunderstand. There are neat bits in this collection. Musil wrote long-winded private passages on all kinds of aesthetic ideas, characterizations, and some day-to-day banalities. Overall, though, I wouldn't suggest seeking this out. It's mildly annoying in its choppiness and probably only useful to people getting graduate degrees in studying Musil, which I highly recommend against doing. Be a plumber. Read Musil's fiction. You'll be fine.

[Javier · Rating 5 out of 5]

Impresionante. Virtuosismo técnico-lingüístico, si se puede llamar así

[Marc Lamot · Rating 1 out of 5]

Absolutely uninteresting. Musil is clearly a writer who doesn't resonate with me.

[Kaya Tokmakçıoğlu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robert Musil'in modernist edebiyata yön veren, bitmemiş romanı "Niteliksiz Adam" pek çok edebiyat eleştirmeni tarafından yazarın Proust ve Joyce ile anılmasına yol açmıştı. 1929-1941 yılları arasına odaklanan günlüğünün "ikinci" parçası Türkçede ve söz konusu romanın yazım sürecine geniş bir yer veriyor. Bu açıdan önemli. Öte yandan, iki dünya savaşı arası ve savaşın ilk yıllarındaki Orta Avrupa’yı birinci elden resmetmesi açısından da önemli. Defterler Musil'in sınıfsal olarak net bir biçimde burjuvazinin (yer yer aristokrasi de eşlik eder) yanında olduğunu, ancak Hitler'in "Anschluss"u ile birlikte hazin bir ruh haline büründüğünü gösteriyor. Pek çok burjuva aydını anımsatacak pasajlar, savaşı bireysel olarak göğüslemeye çalışan aydınların sefaletini de ortaya koyuyor.

[Juan Manuel Charry Urueña · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robert Musil es una obra inconclusa, un deseo de no ser alcanzado, sino hasta después de su muerte.

Reflexiones que que su lectura me suscitó: Si se mira la naturaleza parecería importar poco la individualidad. El siglo XXI debería producir un hombre enorme, pero parece que producirá fragmentos epicúreos. ¿Puede la Corte Constitucional ser relativista aún aceptando el derecho natural? Justicia, tercerización de la venganza. Ecología, desbalance de la naturaleza a favor del hombre. Quema de libros, emancipación, Quijote (suprime a otros). Europa de siglo XX, dos intentos alemanes y el resto propaganda en su contra, lo que querían los alemanes lo tomaron los Estados Unidos. ¿Cómo y por qué se elige una ideología? Peinados, indumentarias, buscando diferenciarse, son los sintomas de una sociedad sin personalidad. Censo de la vida. ¿Cervantes sabría la clase de obra que escribió? El mundo cambio ideologías por dinero. Más apego al dinero que a la vida.

[Juan Manuel Charry Urueña · Rating 4 out of 5]

El libro me suscitó las siguientes ideas: ¿Habrá una recopilación de cartas de suicidas? Capitalismo, cantantes y actores, vendedores de emociones. Capitalismo, el ánimo de lucro no deja ver otras intenciones, .... Ya no hay noble sino títulos académicos, no se heredan se logran, efecto de la democracia. Los gobernantes quedan reducidos a pobres actores con el simple libreto de las encuestas. Decadencia, desorden e incoherencia.

[Merve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robert Musil'in Ahmet Cemal çevirisinden Niteliksiz Adam'ını okumadan önce Günlüklerini okumak istedim. Hem bir yazarın yaratım sürecini hislerini duygularını paylaştığı günlüklerini okumayı sevdiğimden hem de niteliksiz adamı yazarken ne hissettiğini öğrenmek istediğimden günlüklere ayrı bir merakım var. Önceden etik bir bakış açısından bir yazarın günlüklerinin mektuplarının yanyanlanması ne kadar doğru diye soruyordum kendime ama sanırım o haylaz, bitmek bilmez öğrenme merakıma yenik düştüm(:
Bir yazarın yazma süreci yaratım dönemi hakkında bilgi almak için günceler engin bir bilgi kaynağı oluşturuyor. Tarihsel dönem edebiyat ve çevresi gibi çeşitli toplumsal veçheler hakkında da çok şey öğretebiliyor. Genelde yazarların yayımlanmış güncesini okumayı seviyorum ama Musil'inki biraz ağır geldi. Bakalım kasımda beni Niteliksiz Adam nasıl karşılayacak (:

[Ignisalge · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderful little book which I discovered just last month. These notebooks constitute 2/5 of what Musil actually wrote, but the careful selection of the material is nothing short of incredible. While not everything contained in it is of immediate interest, it's my most sincere belief that one could label this as an "Intellectual, pseudo autobiography" by one of the most remarkable thinker of the 20th century. Impossible to agree with Musil on all of his musings, but that seems to me of little importance now.

I wanted to highlight a particular notebook, that details one of the key preoccupations of Musil with TMw/oQ, that of the "other" condition. I highly recommend it!

[Carlo Mayer]

Finiti

[Carlo Mayer]

Finiti