The Man Without Qualities, Volume 2

by Robert Musil

  Later: “Illness itself can be a stimulus to life, but one has to be healthy enough for this stimulus.”

  Decadence is for instance the agitated perspective that Wagnerian art compels, “which forces one to change one’s position in regard to it at every moment.” That is directed squarely at Ulrich, who sees in this changing of positions the energy of the future.

  But then she disconcerts him with things that he believes too: “What characterizes all literary decadence? That life no longer dwells in the whole. The word becomes sovereign and jumps out of the sentence, the sentence reaches out and obscures the sense of the page, the page takes on life at the expense of the whole—the whole is no longer a whole. That’s the sign of eveiy decadent style:… Anarchy of the atoms, dispersion of the will… life pushed back into the smallest structures… the remainder poor in vitality” (Voluntarism. A direct power against what is soft, boyish in Ulrich.)

  Prophetic: “… that in cultures in decline, that everywhere where the power of decision falls into the hands of the masses, what is genuine becomes superfluous, disadvantageous, ignored. Only the actor still evokes great enthusiasm. This means that the golden age for the actor is dawning.” Talma: What is supposed to affect one as true can be not true.

  Against Walter: “The healthy organism does not fight off illness with reasons—one does not contradict a disease—but with inhibition, mistrust, peevishness, disgust,… as if there were a great danger slinking around in it.”

  Against Ulrich: “Innocence among oppositions … this is almost a definition of modernity. Biologically, modern man represents a contradiction of values, he sits between two stools, in the same breath he says yes and no … All of us have, against our knowledge, against our will, values, statements, formulas, and moralities of opposing Uneages within us—physiologically regarded, we are false… a diagnostic of the modern soul—where would it begin? With a decisive incision into this contradictoriness of instinct…”

  “Everything that is good makes me fruitful. I have no other gratitude …”

  Clarisse

  Nietzsche asks: Is there a pessimism of strength? An intellectual preference for the hardness, the horrible, evil, problematic aspects of existence? (from fullness of existence) Ulrich and Clarisse come together in this intellectual preference. It separates Clarisse from Walter. So that here the problem of adultery starts right off with the intellect. “Depth of the anti-moral propensity.”

  The desire for the terrible as the worthy foe is one of the forebodings that seize her as she reads Nietzsche. Predisposition to her falling sick.

  Nietzsche regards dialectic, the contentedness of the theoretically oriented person, as signs of decline, science as a delicate self-defense against truth, an evasion. Here Ulrich distances himself from Nietzsche, for he is enthusiastic about this theoretical person. Indeed, otherwise one would arrive at an imbecilic idolatry of life; but Ulrich runs aground with the ultimate ataraxia [stoical indifference] of the theoretically oriented person.

  This could already be initiated in [Part] I and determine the situation in which he encounters Agathe.

  What fascinates him so about Nietzsche, and fascinates Clarisse as well, is Nietzsche’s intervention on behalf of the artistic person. He writes for artists who have the ancillary disposition of analytic and retrospective capacities, an exceptional kind of artist—therefore really for Ulrich. That Nietzsche says he really does not want to appeal to this kind of artist (but apparently to ones who are less divided) is something Ulrich passes over; that is something which youth reserves to itself as an achievement that it will reveal.

  Is madness perhaps not necessarily the symptom of the degeneration, the decay, of a superannuated civilization? Are there perhaps … neuroses of health? Of the youth and youthfulness of the Volk? What does the synthesis of god and he-goat in the satyr show? From what experience of the self, in response to what impulse, was the Greek led to imagine the Dionysian enthusiast and primal man as a satyr? And concerning the origin of the chorus in tragedy: were there perhaps in those centuries in which the Greek body blossomed, and the Greek soul overflowed with life, endemic transports? Visions and hallucinations that imparted themselves to entire communities, whole gatherings of cults? What if the Greeks, precisely in the abundance of their youth, had the will to the tragic and were pessimists? What if it was precisely madness, to employ a term of Plato’s, that brought the greatest blessings to Hellas? And if, on the other hand and inversely, what if it was precisely in the periods of their dissolution and weakness that the Greeks became increasingly optimistic, more superficial, more theatrical, also, according to the logic and logicizing of the world, more ardent—that is to say, at once more cheerful and more scientific?

  In the Preface addressed to Richard Wagner[Musil is referring to Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy], art—and not morality—is already posited as the real metaphysical activity of mankind; in the book itself, the pertinent sentence that the existence of the world is justified only as an aesthetic phenomenon recurs several times.

  … betrays a spirit that will at some point, at whatever risk, set itself against the moral explication of existence.

  The World of Ideas in Clarisse’s Insanity 1

  Life is motion. Therefore never-ending. After death, life again dissolves into motion.

  Since the motion is never-ending, nothing remains unrevenged. To break out of this chain, the mind must dissolve into harmony before it dies and enters cosmic space. That is the idea of Nirvana, which therefore, accordingly, also issues “unrevenged” from the feeling of guilt; the longing for harmony is the desire to emerge from this condition.

  Do you believe in the migration of souls, hell, purgatory? she exclaims. Perhaps some individuals have attained Nirvana in their earthly life, but then they were the final links in a long chain of people—”in their person the ring closed” (Wagner’s magic world again comes to life). But everyone else runs around laden with guilt and shame, tortured, reviled, from the first day of their lives onward, sacrifices to a crime committed before their birth.

  But there is justice. What we call injustice is only the path to eternal justice.

  The earth cannot perish before Nirvana has been attained.

  She also explains it mathematically: births and deaths balance each other (everyone who is born dies, a tremendous discovery!), therefore the souls of modern people are the souls of ancient people. There are no free souls!

  Even Darwinism agrees with this: in human beings, animal instincts are in many people reincarnated animal faces. They are still burdened with the animal soul.

  Liquidation…

  Ideas become clearer and more banal. Clearing, boring sky. Only a deep sadness remains.

  The World of Ideas in Clarisse’s Insanity 2

  King Ludwig was lying facing her already in Venice.

  This is associated with the idea: Between Wagner and Nietzsche stood the snake. This snake is Ludwig, the “feminine king,” who loves the artist and in doing so robs him of his only dignity. Evidently the reflex of her resistance against her sexual role as a woman for Walter; the same thing disappointed her in Ulrich, and in the Greek it struck her so strongly that he was free of it. Therefore a single line of action. Even in Munich, Walter and Ulrich appeared to her in their “sinful shapes.”

  Nietzsche, the great friend, turned away horrified from this ignominy, and from that time on had to follow his solitary path alone. Here she identifies herself with Nietzsche.

  What was done to him and to her is “a sin against the holy spirit/’ It must be “reconciled by a human sacrifice.” Nietzsche’s death—a second Christ.

  Yet neither Christ nor Nietzsche could redeem mankind from evil: “People remain people.”

  “Destiny hovers over us, a second reality,” is how she expressed her impotence simultaneously with the thought that in spite of her predecessors she had to suffer.

  In between, the thought crosses her mind: “Between Nietzsche and Wagner s
tood Jewry!”

  The thought later goes on: There are two realities!

  “One” is called: “The way I see it”—

  The “Other”: “The way I don’t see it.”

  They are the same ideas as before, but they no longer have the components of manic redemption.

  The World of Ideas in Clarisse’s Insanity 3

  In the clinic in Munich she sees a fat blond woman with a masculine voice, a Polish woman. Immediately the thought “Overwoman” springs to her mind. She thinks it over. This person before her is a primitive example. She thinks of Semiramis, Catherine the Great, Elizabeth of Austria. She is helpless because she has no books.

  Such women have superhuman strength.

  Her thoughts veer off: even before Nietzsche there were Overmen, she discovers: Napoleon, Jesus Christ. Suddenly she thinks: Christ was ignorant. Like her. That’s why in our reckoning of time, our epoch, he is one of the most mysterious figures. For she is locked up.

  The World of Ideas in Clarisse’s Insanity 4

  Sometimes she slips into confused cursing. Men today are horrible idiots, cowards, weaklings, with no backbone, without courage, bravery, or stamina.

  They are either brutal or soft. They have lost the skill of using the whip with dehcacy. Their dress is unaesthetic. Their manner of thinking cowarUy, stupid. Their eyes blue or black (Ulrich and Walter).

  If from time to time one comes across a man of chivalric appearance, with steely muscles—he is certainly abnormal, therefore no man either.

  Suddenly she realizes: The woman puts on the secret trousers. That’s why. She becomes only half natural. She no longer understands how to be a mother. She longs for motherhood. Divine pregnancy is a reminder of Nietzsche. Longingly she imagines the degenerate women on whose physical beauty the “sucking pulls.” She would like to feel it.

  Later these two words occur again, in another context in which no one understands them. Helplessness of the expression.

  Menwomen and womenmen.

  ***

  Délire à deux: It’s a question of two people, one of whom is insane and the other predisposed to insanity. The former usually has some talent, the latter not a great deal of intelligence. Through constant contact, by being constantly bombarded with confused and inchoate ideas, the predisposed person ends up acting like his companion, and gradually the same madness shows up in him. A dependent relationship establishes itself between the two unfortunates; one is the echo of the other:

  The impact of confused and inchoate ideas—is not only a danger for the inferior person. Cf. enjoyment of Expressionism and poetry in general.

  Being together with Clarisse in Italy often makes Ulrich feel like a hot-air balloon that can be released at any moment. He lives through the essence of Expressionism. He, who is so precise, writes such poems. At that time poetry had not got to that point.

  Happiness is madness, the not-communicable!

  LATE 1920s

  Ulrich wanted to see Meingast once more; this eagle, who had floated down from Zarathustras mountains into the domestic life of Walter and Clarisse, made him curious. Following a sudden inspiration, he invited Schmeisser to go with him; he hoped to summon up in his adversary reasons to soften the latter’s opposition to him through the impression made by his friends. He said nothing to Agathe about the expedition; he knew she would not come along.

  Meingast had now been whiling away a considerable amount of time with his admirers and adherents Walter and Clarisse, part of whose home consisted of a separate, empty room whose windows looked out on the narrow side of the house. Somewhere the couple had dug up an iron bedstead; a kitchen stool and a tin pail served as bath, and aside from these objects the only other thing in the room, which had no curtains, was an empty dish cupboard, in which there were some books, and a small table of unpainted soft wood. Meingast sat at this table and wrote. That was enough to lend the room, even when he was not in it and Clarisse or Walter glanced in in passing, that ineffable quality of an old cast-off glove that has been worn on a noble and energetic hand. But now, as Meingast was sitting in the room writing, he knew (moreover) that Clarisse was standing beneath his window. Working in such a situation was splendid. Meingast’s will formed words on the paper, abandoned them, flowed over the windowsill, and arrived at Clarisse, who, wrapped in the “invisible cloak of an electric northern light,” was staring obsessively and absently before her. Meingast did not love Clarisse, but this ambitious pupil whom he paralyzed gave him pleasure. Meingast’s pen was driven across the paper by a mysterious power; the nostrils of his sharp, narrow nose quivered like a stallion’s, and his beautiful dark eyes glowed. What he had begun under these conditions was one of the most important sections of his new book; but one ought not call this book a book: it was a call, a command, a mobilization order for New People. When Meingast heard a strange male voice beside Clarisse, he interrupted himself and went down.

  Ulrich had seen Clarisse right away as he and Schmeisser turned in at the garden gate. She was standing by the fence beside the vegetable garden, with her back to the house, quite stiffly and gazing into the distance, blind to the new arrivals. It did not seem that she was aware of her (frozen) position; her attitude seemed more the involuntary copy of significant ideas with which she was inwardly preoccupied. And so it was. She was thinking: —This time Meingast is transforming himself in our house. He had come to them without saying a word about it, but Clarisse knew that his life contained several of the most remarkable transformations, and was certain that the work he had begun here had something to do with this. The memory of an Indian god, who before every purification settles down somewhere, mingled in Clarisse’s mind with the memory that insects choose a specific spot to change into a chrysalis and the memory of the fragrance of espaliered peaches ripening against the sunny wall of a house; the logical result was that Clarisse was standing in the burning sunshine beneath the window of the shadowy cave into which the prophet had withdrawn. The day before, he had explained to her and Walter that Knecht signified [The English cognate is “knight,” but knecht now means ‘farmhand’, ‘laborer’], according to its original meaning, youth, boy, page, a man capable of bearing arms, hero; and Clarisse said: —I am his Knecht! She didn’t need any words, she merely stood fast, motionless, her face blinded, against the arrows of the sun.

  When Ulrich called out to her she turned slowly toward the unexpected voice, and he immediately discovered that she was disappointed at his coming. There was no longer any mention of her telling him her childhood stories; she had completely forgotten that. Her eyes, which before he went on his trip had always snatched love for him from the very sight of him, observed him now with that insultingly purposeless indifference that is like an extinguished mountain range after one has seen it in the sunlight. Indeed, this is a petty and also quite common experience, this extinction of light in the eyes when they no longer want anything from what they are looking at; but it is like a small hole in the veil of life through which nothingness gazes / but it has something of the absolute coldness that is concealed beneath the warm blankets of life, in the absence of the sympathy of empty space.

  As Meingast was on his way down, Walter joined him, and it was decided, without making many inquiries of the guests, that they would all walk together to the hill with the pine trees that lay halfway between the house and the edge of the woods. When they reached it, Meingast was charmed. The treetops hovered on their coral-colored trunks as dark-green islands in the burning blue ocean of the sky: hard, insistent colors created room and respect for themselves alongside each other; ideas that are as impossible in words as islands on coral trunks, which one does not trust oneself to think without a cowardly smile, were visible and real. Meingast pointed upward with his finger and spoke with Nietzsche: —A yes, a no; a straight line: formula of my happiness! Clarisse, who had thrown herself down on her back, understood him instantly and answered, with her eyes in the blueness, holding the words firmly between her teeth like a ch
aracter in the last act where there is a lot of disjointed talking anyway: —Light-showers of the south! Cheerful cruelty! Destiny hovering over one! What need was there to paste sentences together when nature was like an echoing stage; she knew that Meingast would understand her! Walter understood her too. But as always he also understood something more. He saw the feminine softness of his wife lying in the feminine softness of the landscape; for all around, meadows sloped to the valley in soft billows, and aside from the group of pines, a small quarry was the only heroic thing in the midst of a good-natured corporeality that moved him to tears because Clarisse saw nothing of it and knew nothing about herself but had of course chosen just the one place where the landscape was in weighty contradiction to itself. Walter was jealous of Meingast, but he was not jealous in the ordinary way; he was as proud as Clarisse was of their new old friend, who had, after all, returned laden with fame as, in a way, her own messenger whom she had sent out into the world. Ulrich noticed that in this brief time Meingast had acquired enormous influence over Clarisse, and that jealousy of Meingast tortured Walter far more than had his previous jealousy of him, Ulrich, for Walter felt Meingast’s superiority, while he had never felt Ulrich’s, except physically. At any rate, these three people seemed to be deeply entangled in their affairs; they had already been talking to each other for days, and their guests were as little able to catch up with them as with people who have gone into a jungle. Then too, Meingast did not seem to attach any importance to orienting the newcomers, for without any consideration he went on talking at the point where the discussion might have been broken off hours or days ago.

  —Music—he declared—music is a supra-spiritual phenomenon. Not the bandmasters or nickelodeon music, of course, which rules the theater; and also not the music of the erotics, upon which a lightning-bright explication followed as to who such an erotic person was, in a great zigzag from the beginnings of art to the present; but absolute music. Absolute music is suddenly, like a rainbow, from one end to the other, in the world; it is radiantly vaulted, without advance notice; a world on whirring wings, a world of ice, which hovers like a hailstorm in the other world.