“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!”
Hello everyone, 1
In this video I will tell you everything about Robert Musil’s unfinished masterpiece, The
Man Without Qualities.
It’s one of the most important novels of the 20th century.
First, I will summarise and then discuss the themes and compare this to Kafka’s and Proust’s
writing.
The Man Without Qualities is a novel everyone has heard of but very few people have read
it.
Its catchy title is on par with One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
or In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust.
When I heard the title, I was immediately intrigued and for a moment I paused to reflect
on my own qualities.
Nothing to declare.
Robert Musil started writing the Man Without Qualities in 1921 and published the first
volume 9 years later in 1930 and the second volume in 1933 and the last part in 1943 after
his death.
Musil died in 1942 without being able to finish it.
2 It’s a novel of ideas so there is little
action.
And it has no clear conflict, except a philosophical or psychological one.
A man examining his own life, following Socrates’s advice that an unexamined life is not worth
living.
You are meant to find and display your qualities or virtues.
The novel has three parts.
In Part 1, which is called, “A Sort of Introduction” we meet the main protagonist, Ulrich, a 32
year old mathematician, living in Vienna in the last days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
His search for a meaningful purpose in life through love and in maths has yielded to well…nothing.
Why?
Well, Ulrich no longer believes in god so he sees humanity as nothing but a handful
of dust.
For him religious narrative of human qualities no longer provide the answer.
But also the humanist view that humans are god and sacred also feels outdated for him.
As a mathematician, perhaps in some way similar to Cantor, he saw the infinite size of the
universe and humans nothing but a tiny dot, so insignificant that made all the personal
and political strives meaningless.
What does he do about his existential crisis?
He is resigned, indifferent, characterless and passive so he has turned into a man without
qualities.
But more precisely he has become obsessively self-reflective, always looking and weighing
himself and ideas in the mirror.
Again Socrates is like his father telling him to look at himself.
He is keen on the outside world to help him shape his essential character.
He’s like a peeled off onion so to speak.
But the people around him aren’t inspiring either.
There is one person who intrigues him the most.
Moosburger, a murderer on trial.
He questions whether one can be responsible for their action or inaction.
When Moosburger is asked why he dropped the knife and washed his hands after murdering
the woman?
He says, it was Sunday, similar to Meursault in Albert Camus’s the Stranger who answers
the question why he murdered the victim, he says it was sunny.
In a way Ulrich’s fascination with Moosburger reflects his own inability to make a moral
decision or do anything, as if he feels his hands are tied by society’s moral and judgemental
values.
This is very similar to Kierkegaard’s idea that our freedom of moral choices makes us
paralysed and dizzy.
According to Ulrich, in science and mathematics there is no morality.
Plus 5 or minus 5 have the same value in a mathematical equation.
So societal morality is someone’s morality.
It has no basis in the objective science.
This makes him to be indifferent to all moral values.
What’s the point anyway.
In part two titled “Pseudoreality Prevails” Ulrich witnesses the futile efforts of the
Austro-Hungarian elites desperately and quite optimistically trying to show their might
and influence against the might of the Germans in the north-west.
There is a lot of talk but little action, if there are any actions, they’re mostly
in self-interest of those involved.
In this part Musil wanted to satirise the foolishness of those involved in project that
was doomed to fail.
The irony of a planned celebration of the Austro-Hungarian empire turning into a funeral
at the end as the it collapses.
Here Ulrich appears a bit self-righteous and pompous and a hypocrite for criticising others
while he himself does pretty much nothing, and unable to decide anything.
It’s like four people inside a room talk about everything from history to politics
to romance but don’t do much.
Modern man is a talker not a doer.
In Part 3 of the novel, called, “Into the Millennium (the Criminals)” we meet Agathe,
Ulrich’s sister and they become quite close to each other to even call them as soulmates
or Siamese twins, a hint of romantic affection.
Agathe fantasises about killing her husband and Ulrich has no strong opinion about it
either way.
The last scene is when Agathe leaves a gathering.
Ulrich assumes she has abandoned him.
This abrupt end tells us that it was not finished.
If I have to summarise the novel in one sentence, it would be this.
It’s a novel about a man who strips himself of all qualities and stares at a mirror for
2,000 pages.
A novel in which nothing happens, but tells us so much about the modern condition we find
ourselves.
It’s not a novel.
It’s a mirror.
For us all.
3 If you skin human, take of their clothes as
culture, history, language, religion, social status, gender what you find is a cold and
injured person.
and the core is doesn't exist.
A feeling of impasse as all beliefs and moral values have lost meaning for him but at the
same time he can’t formulate something else a way of freedom or release from a society
that imposes everything on him.
A feeling of emptiness.
The feeling of no purpose and no satisfactory answer.
Ulrich has chosen resignation and indifference.
Not confronting it but just ignoring it.
A sense of nihilism as if what’s the point of it really.
What’s the point of being morally good or changing the world?
Here is a quote: “A politician who climbs high over the bodies of the slain is described
as vile or great according to the degree of his success.”
Killing one man, you go to jail, but if you kill millions you’re a hero.
History is littered with heroes who were murders.
Despite his existential impasse, Ulrich never drinks or takes drugs.
But he is self-righteous as if he knows better than others.
Perhaps that’s his drug and alcohol.
He feels Socrates’s self-examination has condemned him to always judging himself and
others.
Here is a quote: “Philosophers are despots who have no armies to command, so they subject
the world to their tyranny by locking it up in a system of thought,”
4 Kafka, Musil and Proust captured the mood
of early 20th century people, at a loss of direction after Darwin, Nietzsche, Freud and
Einstein questioned the status quo with their theories and discoveries.
Intellectuals and thinkers were feeling a sense of bewilderment.
When tradition and machine or automation collide.
Old thoughts linger while new tools emerge.
The death of empires and religions, and the beginning of nations and nationalism.
Kafka’s writing focused on the alienation of modern humans by dogmatic institutions
and regimes that had replaced the dogmatic religious institutions.
How regimes tame, control and abuse us without us really knowing or being able to question
it.
We have become a cog in the machine so to speak.
We are constantly shaped and disciplined to work harder, to be a better citizen and do
our homework every day.
Proust aimed his writing not at the system, but at Time as a cruel enemy that ages you
and changes you without you realising it most of the time.
So his battle was mostly internal.
A man and his battle with time and how to remain immortal.
Musil’s protagonist stares at the mirror to reflect at himself.
He’s mostly happy in his head, with his thoughts while mostly laughing at others.
The outside world is sort of amusing for him.
He sees those around as a bunch fools who take everything so seriously but do nothing
really.
He kind of laughs at them.
But he himself does nothing either, which is ironic.
Musil’s man in essence has no other qualities except being ironic.
Kafka feels sorry for himself, his bad luck, feels a powerless insignificant insect and
blames everything on the arbitrariness of the system for creating a rational nightmare
for him.
While Musil says so what if we are dehumanized.
When were we human?
He thinks we are mostly blind anyway.
Proust, thinks there is no purpose or meaning in life, except art and artistic creation.
Faced with modern condition, Kafka is angry and has no refuge, Musil is indifferent and
take refuge in his ideas while laughing at others and Proust is an optimist and takes
refuge in art.
5 I read the English translation by Sophie Wilkins
and Burton Pike.
It took me a while to realize that there is no story being told here, but ideas and philosophical
discussions.
It’s like someone waking up in the 20th century and trying to make sense of his existence
in a very volatile and fluid world that is buzzing with ideas.
As if everyone is chipping in on the kind of world they want to create.
Napoleon a century earlier had created this myth that modern man can achieve anything.
So anything is possible.
I think indirectly, Napoleon is the father of self-help industry.
But in this novel, Ulrich is perhaps the only man who isn’t interested in this world building
idea, instead he is resigned to his fate.
Moosburger’s story is more of a plot of the whole novel.
Ulrich is in battle with his existence, while Moosburger is in battle with society through
its legal system.
I found the chapter titles quite handy in holding my attention while reading.
I also found Part 3 more intriguing from a narrative point of view.
Parts 1 and 2 are preambles and Part 3 is the meat, but we never really get to the main
course as Musil died before he could finish it.
His sister leaves without him.
He feels abandoned.
I think in a way Musil had predicted the rise of another fellow Austrian, Adolf who went
the other way, who wanted to change the world, the history and create a world based on his
own image, with disastrous consequences.
Hitler was 20th century Napoleon.
The Man Without Qualities is a monumental piece of fiction, so big, so ambitious and
so grand that it defeated Musil himself.
It’s one of those projects that supersedes you and unfortunately Robert Musil never managed
to tame the beast he had unleashed.
It’s a mirror you have to be really brave to look at.
Thank you for watching.