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The man Without Qualities, Vol. 1
Past annual reads
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The Man Without Qualities, Vol 1 Jan through April
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I just got my 2 volume set of the book delivered, so I’m excited to get into it: hoping its one of those surprisingly good modernist novels (I actually really liked Book of disquiet!), and not one of the ones I find to be boring and pedantic (Jahrestage- I might be talking about you lol). Musil actually does have another book on the list! It’s called Young Törless and is one of the books I read the first year I started the list, and is semi-famous as an LGBTQ classic. It takes place in an Austrian military boys school, and I really loved it- so I’m really hoping this one is enjoyable too.
1. Prequestions? Have you read anything else by this author?I read The Confusions of Young Törless, also on the list
Are you looking forward to reading this?
I am. Especially since I don't have to take it on alone. Ha, the Book of Disquiet is one of my favorite books ever!
I am hoping to do much better with the Annual Read this year. The two weeks I will spend in managed isolation on my return to New Zealand at the beginning of February should help me kick start it!
Mod
I'm not sure if I'm looking forward to this or not. I thought Pessoa's book was kind of a slog, though there were individual moments of it that I appreciated. So, if Musil's book is comparable, then this may be a tough read.On the other hand, I've had this on my shelves for a while now, and I'm eager to give it a try. Knowing there's a few of us helps a lot.
The earliest I'll be able to start is toward the end of January, but the first of February is a more probably date.
I am looking forward to this. Just from the blurb I think it sounds challenging but very interesting. I bought it on the Kindle, so I have the whole thing in one volume and can't see how massive it is. XD I am currently reading Infinite Jest, and I might try to get through that before I start this. One non-realist, unconventional structure project at a time. But I also think that I will be very busy with the two BotMs in February, and then there's the quarterly read... So I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed before I've even started. Guess I should just start reading and see how I get on!
1. I have not read anything else but am intrigued by what the others have said regarding Torless
Personally not looking forward to this as I dislike incomplete works that are put together by other people posthumously
Personally not looking forward to this as I dislike incomplete works that are put together by other people posthumously
Mod
So, does it mean that this section for January to April only covers the first part, which is merely 100 pages?
Mod
Patrick, I am not sure, but you are free to read at what every rate you want. If you finish the annual book in a few months instead of 12, that is okay. I haven't looked at length at my copy because it is on Kindle. Does anyone have a better answer for Patrick?
My recent English translation has just about 90 pages or so for the "A Sort of Introduction", then ~750 for "Pseudoreality Prevails". That's Volume IVolume II has about 1150 pages for "Into the Millennium", and then ~500 more for "From the Posthumous Papers".
I don't know if it makes any difference, but my Volume I is hardcover and Volume II softcover.
My two English volumes by Vintage mirror Bryan’s...with Volume I having Part 1 being 80 pages (A Sort of an Introduction) and Part 2 being the rest of the volume going up to page 725 (Pseudoreality Prevails). Volume 2 goes from page 729 to 1774. Therefore I am aiming to read Part 1 and Part 2 by the end of April or so in order to be able to make it through the second volume’s 1000 pages before the end of the year. So far it is not difficult reading but I suspect it might get more demanding as it goes along. And of course, I am reading English. If I was reading French it would take me until 2026 at least.
I am using Serbian translation (translated from German).The whole book is divided into Book I, containing First part (around 80 pages divided into 19 chapters) and Second part (ending in page 659, starting from chapter 20 to chapter 123).
Book II contains Third part (pages 675-1203 and chapters start with 1 to 58) and there is also Addition (pages 1203-1221 with two not numerated chapters).
I haven't started yet...
Mod
Finished volume 1 yesterday, and hoping to be done part 2 by the end of the month (will comment on it much later in the year though). So far am liking it, but it doesn’t grab me as much as his other list book Young Torless did (maybe because that one had a more focused story, and the scope and contents between parts 1 and 2 shifts a lot). As for the questions:1. Like I said, I am engaged but less impressed with this one than his other list book so far. It’s probably a 3 star for me right now, but we’ll see how the other parts go. I am looking forward to how successfully it shifts into part 2, and how engaged I feel by it.
2. It’s an appropriate title because he seems to somewhat of a layabout, and largely vacuous and only participating in seemingly lofty thing for his own benefit. I suppose this allows him to be a vessel for exploring the less apathetic characters and the era of patriotism and nationalistic downfall the book encompasses. For that reason I don’t mind his lack of qualities. He doesn’t seem to have matured or progressed so far, and doesn’t feel pressure to due to his ability to seem to care about the grand “Year of Austria” plans and being from a well-connected family with status.
3. Is there any plot? Yeah, kind of. There is a lot of planning these Austrian anniversary celebrations with his cousin Diotima and other competing interests (like old world aristocracy patriotism and parade versus upstart capitalist looking to turn a profit on public interest). The way it starts and unfolds is plot. Apparently the next part is about Ulrich and his sister, don’t know what the plot will be like.
4. The structure is small almost vignette chapters- often from Ulrich’s POV, but not entirely. In a kind of whiplash switch out, it also spends time with Moosbrugger (fun name), a murderer and a rapist (not fun).
5. So far it seems to have explored themes of patriotism and nationalism and its follies (even with good intent), the ease at which this good intent is distorted for profit or extremism, the decay of once glorious things, the hollowness of the lives of people who benefit from these systems, conflict, desire, etc. The “campaign” committee symbolizes all of this really. Moosbrugger seems to represent the creeping up horrors for polite European society with WWI on the horizon.
6. I liked the part where it essentially says “Ulrich’s father insisted he spoke to Count Leinsdorf first and not go meet his cousin. Naturally, Ulrich decided that he must seek out his cousin Diotima first”. Big mood on not wanting to listen to your dad’s advice directly, but also seems to summarize Ulrich’s character well in that he doesn’t care enough about anything to follow advice, decorum, people’s wishes etc.
Picked up my Kindle last night to read my chapter a day of this book and I was confronted by a beautiful woman called Diotima which totally scrambled my brain as I was thinking but she is from Hyperion not this book LOL.
Apparently she is actually moonlighting in both books to confuse unwary readers.
Apparently she is actually moonlighting in both books to confuse unwary readers.
Ha! I meant to put a comment on that too and then forgot. She's a busy lady...and has gotten steady work since her debut in Plato's Symposium lol.
Girl Power - a girls gotta earn a living LOL
I haven’t gotten to her yet. Something to look forward to after her appearance in Hyperion.
1. How did you find the book, were you engaged? Are you looking forward to continuing on to the second volume?I am enjoying it so far, and looking forward to the rest.
2. What do you think of the protagonist Ulrich? Is he a man without qualities. Is he maturing and making progress? If not, why?
Ulrich lacks direction and moral character. He is "shallow" and is a passive observer of his environment. He seems apathetic and indifferent to life. At this point of the book he really does seem like a "man without qualities". He is in the process of searching for that missing meaning of life and of the world and to find an appropriate application for his abilities. I am not seeing any significant progress toward maturity, so far. Perhaps this will occur later on in the book.
3. Is there any plot?
It seems like there is a plot, so far. As this is an unfinished work, I don't know where it will be going.
4. Discuss the structure.
The book is more of a novel told in "pieces" rather than one in the traditional sense.
5. What main ideas—themes—does the author explore? (Consider the title, often a clue to a theme.) Does the author use symbols to reinforce the main ideas?
Major themes include morality, spirituality and soul, search for meaning and order; possibility vs. reality.
After you finish Volume 1, 1. How did you find the book, were you engaged? Are you looking forward to continuing on to the second volume?
Strangely, I would become engaged when reading and the minute I put it down I did not want to pick it up again. It was as if each reading was a new beginning to the process of reading the book. Nothing about the book made me want to read more however.
2. What do you think of the protagonist Ulrich? Is he a man without qualities. Is he maturing and making progress? If not, why?
He is an interesting main character in that his key attributes seem to only appear in relationship to another character. He is considered smart and analytic but largely we see that when he is debating with one of the others. The female characters find him attractive with most of them at least considering that they may love him or at least lust for him. Ulrich has just started his year off to find himself when we meet him and at the end of volume one he is 6 months into that year. In that time it doesn't appear as if he has made much progress. He is quick to dismiss other people's foundational theories but does not actively have theories that stay in place, but instead shift according to his whims, moods and the people he is surrounded by.
3. Is there any plot?
Yes, as Diane said, so far there is a plot although it isn't exactly a page turner.
4. Discuss the structure.
Each chapter is a bit of a stand alone. Each focuses on a different character, a different meeting of the Parallel Committee or a different theme. Some of the chapters are purely theoretical discussions and some are much more plot based, with pieces of action or character engagement. The overall structure appears to be in service to the theme of the disillusionment and slow destruction of the old guard society before WWI. I, as a reader, am surrounded by and immersed in this theme rather than it being slowly revealed to me. In this way, the structure is a bit of a drowning.
5. What main ideas—themes—does the author explore? (Consider the title, often a clue to a theme.) Does the author use symbols to reinforce the main ideas?
The qualities of a gentleman in 1914 are held in question. There are discussions around loyalty to friends, loyalty to political beliefs, loyalty to the emperor, loyalty to one's family or husband, loyalty to one's national / ethnic people. There are discussions around change, how to move forward when all that is debased is rushing ahead and all that may have been considered good at one time is rotting under capitalistic pressures and political fractions. The question of female independence has not been openly discussed yet but it is nevertheless a theme as many of our main characters are powerful women, either through their ability to read their husband's mind and fight against the lean toward being common (Clarisse) or Frau Tuzzi/ Diotima with her salons and her desire to love without restraint which she restrains. And lastly, I thought the seduction of Greda was quite unique for the time. She both manages to seduce and to save herself from seduction.
Another theme is the nature of potential....which is sometimes like a bomb about to go off and sometimes is the gifts of each of the characters.
6. What passages strike you as insightful, even profound? Perhaps a bit of dialog that's funny or poignant or that encapsulates a character? Maybe there's a particular comment that states the book's thematic concerns?
"...a tendency toward allegory if this is understood as an intellectual device to make everything mean more than it has any honest claim to mean."
"...order, once it reaches a certain stage, calls for bloodshed".
also, this one captures the sarcasm inherent throughout the book:
"A man is vain when he prides himself on having seen the moon rise over Asia on his left while on his right Europe fades away in the sunset - this is how he once described to me his crossing of the Sea of Marmara. The moon probably rises far more beautifully behind the flowerpot on the windowsill of a lovesick young girl than it does over Asia."
Mod
1. How did you find the book, were you engaged? Are you looking forward to continuing on to the second volume? I don't think I was engaged as I was able to keep starting and stopping the reading. I will continue on, it isn't painful to read, at least.
2. What do you think of the protagonist Ulrich? Is he a man without qualities. Is he maturing and making progress? If not, why? I think most of us our without qualities. We're just people getting through life. I think he is the everyday man.
3. Is there any plot? I don't think so. It has a lot of existential themes and called a "book of ideas".
4. Discuss the structure. The novel is told in the third-person omniscient point of view.
5. What main ideas—themes—does the author explore? (Consider the title, often a clue to a theme.) Does the author use symbols to reinforce the main ideas? The first volume is an introduction to the main character. He is a young man in the beginning of his career years. I think it is quite normal for this age man to be looking for fulfillment in career and life. The man Ulrich is disappointed in life. He is soldier (disappointed), mathematician (unsatisfied), seducer, skeptic. (all of which portends disappointment (in my opinion)
6. What passages strike you as insightful, even profound? Perhaps a bit of dialog that's funny or poignant or that encapsulates a character? Maybe there's a particular comment that states the book's thematic concerns?
Other characters:
Moosbrugger, who is condemned for his murder of a prostitute.
Bonadea, Ulrich's mistress
Walter (his friend)
Clarisse: Walter's neurotic wife, whose refusal to go along with commonplace existence leads to Walter's insanity.
So it really is a intro to these characters.
I am now 34% done on the Kindle so I am guessing I am at the right point for this discussion.
I am finding it a real struggle to pick up this book but once I start reading it is not as bad as I thought.
I don't feel connected to any of the characters which makes putting the book down easy and picking it up difficult.
Passages I have highlighted so far:
"Her feeling for what was correct, still on the alert as it had been at school, still adept at remembering its lessons and at bringing things together in amicable unity, simply by extension, turned into a form of intellect in itself, and the Tuzzi house won a recognised position."
"Civilisation, then, meant everything that her mind could not control. Including for a long time now, and first of all, her husband."
"In her misery she read a great deal, and discovered that she had lost something she had previously not really known she had: a soul."
"Walter did not have a man's legs, neither the strong muscular kind nor the skinny sinewy kind, but the legs of a girl:"
"Ulrich took it as a matter of course that a man who has intellect has all kinds of intellect, so that intellect is more original than qualities."
"It is not advisable to feel kinship with an obvious lunatic"
"At night a man has only his nightshirt on, and right underneath that is his character."
"The certify as insane only those persons they cannot cure - which is a modest exaggeration, since they cannot cure the others either."
"The mind of this woman, who would have been so beautiful without her mind."
"There are many things in the world, incidentally, that taken singly mean something quite different to people from what they mean in the mass."
"Not that she had come to complain about anti-semitism, she added, which was a sign of the times, one simply had to resign oneself to it."
I am finding it a real struggle to pick up this book but once I start reading it is not as bad as I thought.
I don't feel connected to any of the characters which makes putting the book down easy and picking it up difficult.
Passages I have highlighted so far:
"Her feeling for what was correct, still on the alert as it had been at school, still adept at remembering its lessons and at bringing things together in amicable unity, simply by extension, turned into a form of intellect in itself, and the Tuzzi house won a recognised position."
"Civilisation, then, meant everything that her mind could not control. Including for a long time now, and first of all, her husband."
"In her misery she read a great deal, and discovered that she had lost something she had previously not really known she had: a soul."
"Walter did not have a man's legs, neither the strong muscular kind nor the skinny sinewy kind, but the legs of a girl:"
"Ulrich took it as a matter of course that a man who has intellect has all kinds of intellect, so that intellect is more original than qualities."
"It is not advisable to feel kinship with an obvious lunatic"
"At night a man has only his nightshirt on, and right underneath that is his character."
"The certify as insane only those persons they cannot cure - which is a modest exaggeration, since they cannot cure the others either."
"The mind of this woman, who would have been so beautiful without her mind."
"There are many things in the world, incidentally, that taken singly mean something quite different to people from what they mean in the mass."
"Not that she had come to complain about anti-semitism, she added, which was a sign of the times, one simply had to resign oneself to it."
Mod
No, I haven't read anything else. However, this is my second start for this novel. I started reading it more than 10 years ago, realizing half-way through Tome 1 that it was actually... Tome 1 and I hadn't bought Tome 2. I was interested to find out what happened throughout the rest of the story.
1. How did you find the book, were you engaged? Are you looking forward to continuing on to the second volume?
As I said, that was my second read of the first volume, so it wasn't hard to be engaged, it was familiar territory.
2. What do you think of the protagonist Ulrich? Is he a man without qualities. Is he maturing and making progress? If not, why?
He is a pure intellectual, tantamount to a philosopher. From a good family, without really needing to work for a living, he engages in his intellectual pursuits with abandon and nonchalance, and gets a guernsey in becoming a secretary for the Action aimed at organizing a "Year of Austria". He has not matured yet, as he is only starting to investigate a long suite of ideas (to be developed further into the next volumes).
3. Is there any plot?
At this stage of the novel, not exactly. This first volume is just an introduction to the characters and the situation in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (aka Cacania) in 1913.
4. Discuss the structure.
Rather chronological, focusing on each of the characters and situations.
5. What main ideas—themes—does the author explore? (Consider the title, often a clue to a theme.) Does the author use symbols to reinforce the main ideas?
In addition to some of the comments mentioned above, I will touch on the use of "Cacania" (or Cacanie in my French edition) to refer to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The institutions of the Empire were referred to as "kaiserlich und königlich" or k.u.k/k.k. . In German, k.k. is pronounced "kaka" which, in several languages including German and French, is a childish way to refer to s**t. Therefore, the concept of Cacania illustrates what Musil thought of the state of affairs of the Empire on the eve of the Great War, a useless organic body in a state of decomposition.
Thanks for that snippet, Patrick. I need to get back to this book. I enjoy it when I do.
1. I’d not read anything by this author before and was quite intimidated by the length. But upon starting the novel I was pleasantly surprised, I enjoyed the essay style that made it really easy to pop in and out of this book. But now I’m a third of the way through the format has started to wear on me a bit, the essays/chapters are often drawn out and long-winded and I’m often left not quite sure what the author wanted me to take away from most of them.2. I don’t make much of Ulrich at the moment, he’s not actually in the book very much and when he is, he doesn’t have too much of interest to say. I’m not seeing much in the way of character development or maturity coming through yet. It’s the other characters that stick in my mind more than Ulrich when I come away from the book: Diotima, Rachel, Clarisse and Moosbrugger.
3. The plot so far seems to be around the planning of the Parallel Campaign, intercepted with the dealings of the Moosbrugger case and some chapters around Ulrich’s social life.
5. Others have mentioned the main themes above, but honestly, if I had to explain at this point what the book is about I would struggle. There are a lot of words in this book but it feels lacking in substance to me. A book without qualities perhaps, much after our Ulrich’s heart.
6. I particularly liked Ulrich’s first attempt to become a man of qualities at the start of the book, without knowing what makes a man of qualities and for lack of role models he decided to follow in the footsteps of Napoleon, join the army and attempt to become a tyrant until it lost its charm. “He had expected to find himself on a stage of world-shaking adventures with himself the hero, but now saw nothing but a drunken young man shouting on a wide, empty square, answered only by the paving stones.”
Couple of other quotes I noted:
“He felt at times as though he had been born with a talent for which there was at present no objective.”
“A chapter that may be skipped by anyone not particularly impressed by thinking as an occupation.”
Despite not really getting many take-aways from it, the book is actually fairly easy to read and I tend to enjoy the chapters as I slowly chip away at them. So I am looking forward to continuing on.
1. I have finished the book with a day to spare! As I read a Kindle version I am a bit vague about the 3 sections so may have answers that don't refer to the right part. I had not really heard of Robert Musil before I started. I was pleased not to be reading a Chinese Classic and hoped I would enjoy it. I had the same experience as others have noted: quite enjoyed it when I read some, but with no strong desire to get back to it and kept putting it off month by month so that I had most of it to read in December if I was going to finish. I think that made my enjoyment and appreciation of it greater, because I did not lose interest.2. Ulrich is a charming thirty-two year old serial seducer who has had a stint in the military, which he left after an inappropriate seduction; studied engineering, which he found sterile and finally settled on mathematics, but his studies have ground to a halt. He decides to take a year's sabbatical to find out whether he has any qualities. He is presumably living off his father, from whom he is estranged. But his father gets him a job as the honorary secretary of the "Parallel Campaign", an investigation into how best to celebrate Franz Joseph's 70 year reign, which is to take place in 5 years' time. The parallel to a similar celebration in Germany of the Kaiser's 30 year reign. Ulrich is very good at expousing various views on idealism, peace, morality, the role of science and myriad other ideas, with which he lectures his friends, and most peculiarly his lovers. Musil is satirising the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which he calls Kakania, in his various characters which make up the committee. Ulrich is very happy to pontificate about all these weighty themes but he remains aloof and unchanged.
3. There is quite a list of characters and they do interact as the novel progresses but there isn't a great deal of action.
4. The chapters are short and are often in the form of an essay. Some of the titles are intriguing or amusing, often they contain really satirical or funny pieces, but just as often they have Ulrich reflecting on the issues that other characters face. It is an unusual format.
5. There are so many ideas it is quite difficult to do them justice, but one important theme is whether scientific methods are moral.
6. So many! describing Gerda "she was one of those charming purposeful young women of our time who would instantly become a bus driver if some higher purpose called for it"
"Such an effort to influence public opinion seemed to him as uncouth and timid as offering to pay for a woman's love when it could be had so much more cheaply just by stimulating her imagination"
"And now here she was, armed for the future with a new slogan: active passivism, of which a person had to be capable if need be - a phrase that clearly smacked of a man without qualities"
"Speaking to another person, whose presence was a link to the rest of the world, Arnheim would never have let himself go so recklessly; but bent over a sheet of paper that was ready to reflect his views, he joyfully abandoned himself to a metaphoric expression of his convictions, only a small portion of which had any basis in fact, while the greater part was a billowing cloud of words - whose sole - and incidentally not inconsiderable - claim to reality was that it always arose spontaneously in the same place".
Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities defies easy summary, for it is not a novel in the realist tradition, with a clear beginning, middle, and end. In addition, Musil had written and published the novel in pieces over several years, and he left the novel unfinished at his death in 1942. In 1938, Musil had withdrawn at minimum twenty chapters from the galleys of the second volume, and those chapters, in addition to more than three hundred pages of notes, character sketches, and narrative drafts, were published posthumously, in 1943.
Musil’s novel plays loosely with conventional literary structure. The Man Without Qualities eschews plot and action in favor of an essayistic structure in which the central characters dart in and out of various situations set in Vienna, Austria, against the backdrop of the year just before the outbreak of World War I.
Volume 1
Part I, titled A Sort of Introduction, is an introduction to the protagonist, a 32-year-old mathematician named Ulrich who is in search of a sense of life and reality but fails to find it. His ambivalence towards morals and indifference to life has brought him to the state of being "a man without qualities", depending on the outer world to form his character. A kind of keenly analytical passivity is his most typical attitude.
1. Prequestions? Have you read anything else by this author? I don't think he has written any other novel, but maybe? Yes he has. Are you looking forward to reading this? I can say right now. I am not, because it is sounding like another Book of Disquiet. So I for one am dreading it.
After you finish Volume 1,
1. How did you find the book, were you engaged? Are you looking forward to continuing on to the second volume?
2. What do you think of the protagonist Ulrich? Is he a man without qualities. Is he maturing and making progress? If not, why?
3. Is there any plot?
4. Discuss the structure.
5. What main ideas—themes—does the author explore? (Consider the title, often a clue to a theme.) Does the author use symbols to reinforce the main ideas?
6. What passages strike you as insightful, even profound? Perhaps a bit of dialog that's funny or poignant or that encapsulates a character? Maybe there's a particular comment that states the book's thematic concerns?