Robert Musil's "The Man Without Qualities"

Harvard literary scholar Susanne Klingenstein discusses Robert Musil's "The Man Without Qualities" as part of the Goethe-Institut Boston's "What is German?" seminar.

Musil's doorstop of a novel emMan without Qualities/em, is a monument to the forces that caused the disintegration of the Habsburg empire. We can summarize these forces as "modernism". Musil (1880-1942), like so many Viennese writers of his time, tried to pin them down in a philosophical work of art. His novel centers on a mathematician who tries to determine the meaning of his life. Nevertheless, the first part is quite readable and enjoyable despite some heavy lifting. However, poor Musil died after 20 years of labor and 1700 pages, leaving the rest of his work unfinished. This lecture discusses the first part of Musil's novel.

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