Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Collection
Publication
Milano, Mondadori
Description
"Musil belongs in the company of Joyce, Proust, Kafka, and Svevo. . . . (This translation) is a literay and intellectual event of singular importance."--New Republic.
User reviews
LibraryThing member dan4gabriel
This book was aptly described as one of the best three books of the last century.It took me almost a year to read, about a hour a day, the two volumes and posthumous papers, copious note-taking and ample reflecting. Of course a breezier approach is possible, but if one tries to read it as slowly as
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the author has wrote it, the paragraphs release a bouquet that's as a Mouton Rotschild 82. I would say energetically that this masterpiece builds character... Literature at its most educative and thought-provoking. Its ambitious scope spans from politics to economics, science to art, morality to justice. Musil was probably too much a philosopher to decide on writing and too much of a writer to decide on philosophy. The architecture of his project would probably have reached the dimensions of a modern operating system, like the 45 million lines of code in Windows XP if death wouldn't have stopped him in 1942. The posthumous papers are also highly interesting and would have made for more distilled quiet Kant-Clausewitz-Mill sagesse. There is no facil classification of the book, as his experience as scholar, his science background, military experience-first as decorated officer then as military advisor-all catalyze the whole and then there are the synergy benefits of the combined ensemble. There is no apology for complexity. The style is of a teutonic Socrates who approaches topics and sends his Mann ohne Eigenschaften, Ulrich, to relativize their moral basis, to criticize the diaphanously shallow bourgeoisie, the decadent empire, the sclerotic monarchy, the empirically stultified military, the epistemiologically cavalier scientists, the "precieuses" ladies of the Viennese salons. Ulrich is probably actually the man who is so acutely aware of the bias and corruption in the proclaimed morality that he is resigned to the stronghold of his own power, intellectual integrity. His author nominated for a Nobel, the book remains a monolithical foundation for any durable library and will give perenially its reader that sensation of elegant joy that time and age are powerless to take away. Show Less
LibraryThing member aarhusian
"Into the Millennium" continues the story of the ill-fated Collateral Campaign being prepared to celebrate the 70th year of Emperor Franz Joseph's K.-und-K. reign, the tiresome lovers behind this Viennese abomination, the debate over the fate of the convicted sex murderer Moosbrugger etc, while
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introducing a new story of the reunion of the hero Ulrich and his twin sister Agathe. The consummate Viennese siblings fall deeply in love with their other, better halves, a relationship which frees them from their contemporaries to live in an insular world of suspended action. With Volume II, the fate of the novel surpasses the fate of its contents. Included is Burton Pike's translation of alternative text, some of which Musil withdrew in galleys, and related drafts, comprising more than 700 pages. The Viennese bookseller who sold me the Volume thought it was clear why Musil could never finish his masterpiece: "He was completely lost." Rather, Musil's interest in tying up the plot lines falls victim to his experimental, philosophical method. The novel becomes more theoretical and probing as it progresses. One senses Musil is concentrating more on the underlying motives of his characters and using them to experiment on his own understanding of human nature, and less on contriving a story which can be communicated to his readers. The dénouement of the incest theme, so prominent a part of "Into the Millennium", remains out of reach. After having explored it from every conceivable angle, Musil doesn't pursue the darker outcomes. Ultimately, Musil's interests are not gothic or romantic, but spiritual, experimental and determinedly open-ended. Suspension provides a fitting conclusion to his magnum opus. Show Less
LibraryThing member Ballardion
By far, the best book I have read in the last ten years. The long-ish preamble is actually quite literarily hypnotic. I don't mind the slow pace of the book, but those interested in the brisk read should give this one a pass.
LibraryThing member HadriantheBlind
The quintessential 'ideas' novel, where twenty page long discourses on the meaning of love can happen after 'I love you'. It's thick and interlaced with meaning, and it works just fine that way.
This edition had several hundred pages of notes and earlier drafts, which were also fascinating.
This edition had several hundred pages of notes and earlier drafts, which were also fascinating.
LibraryThing member V.V.Harding
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
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.
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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.
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LibraryThing member lschiff
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.
Language
Original language
German
Original publication date
1933
1956 (French: Jaccottet)
1987 (English: Wortsman)
ISBN
8804419725 / 9788804419723
Local notes
Meridiani
Other editions
The man without qualities, II by Robert Musil (Paper Book)