The Man Without Qualities

by Robert Musil

  “You got that from Arnheim!”

  “Could be. I don’t know. One’s mind gets so complicated nowadays,” the General complained sincerely.

  “And where do I come in?”

  “Well, you see, I was thinking, here you are, a former army officer . . .”

  “Never mind. But what has this to do with being, or not being, a ‘man of action’?” Ulrich asked, affronted.

  “Man of action?” the General echoed, mystified.

  “You began everything by saying I wasn’t a man of action.”

  “Oh, that. That’s got nothing at all to do with it; I just happened to start with it. I mean, Arnheim doesn’t exactly think of you as a man of action; he once said so. You have nothing to do, he says, and that puts ideas into your head. Or words to that effect.”

  “Idle ideas, you mean? Ideas that can’t be ‘introduced in spheres of power’? Ideas for their own sake? In short, true and independent ideas! Is that it? Or possibly the ideas of an ‘unworldly aesthete’?”

  “Well,” Stumm von Bordwehr agreed diplomatically, “something like that.”

  “Like what? What do you think is more dangerous to the life of the mind—dreams or oil fields? There’s no need to stuff your mouth with bread; stop it! I couldn’t care less what Arnheim thinks of me. But you started off by saying, ‘Arnheim, for one.’ So who else is there who doesn’t see me as enough of a man of action?”

  “Well, you know,” Stumm affirmed, “quite a few. I told you that ‘Action!’ is now the great rallying cry.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t really know either. Old man Leinsdorf said: ‘Something has to be done!’ That’s how it started.”

  “And Diotima?”

  “Diotima calls it a New Spirit. So now lots of people on the Council are saying that. I wonder if you know what it’s like, that dizzy feeling in your stomach when a beautiful woman has such a head on her shoulders?”

  “I’ll take your word for it,” Ulrich conceded, refusing to let Stumm wriggle out of it. “But now I’d like to hear what Diotima has to say about this New Spirit.”

  “It’s what people are saying,” Stumm answered. “The people on the Council are saying that the times are getting a New Spirit. Not right away, but in a few years; unless something unexpected happens sooner. And this New Spirit won’t have many ideas in it. Nor is it a time for feelings. Ideas and feelings—they’re more for people who have nothing to do. In short, it’s a spirit of action, that’s really all I know about it. But it has sometimes occurred to me,” the General added pensively, “to wonder if, in the end, that isn’t simply the military spirit?”

  “An action has to make sense!” Ulrich claimed, and in all seriousness, far beyond this jesters’ motley conversation, his conscience reminded him of the first conversation he had had on that subject with Agathe, on the Swedish rampart.

  But the General agreed. “That’s what I just said. If someone doesn’t have anything to do, and doesn’t know what to do with himself, he becomes energetic. Then he starts boozing, bawling, brawling, and bullying man and beast. On the other hand, you’ll have to admit that someone who knows exactly what he wants can be an intriguer. Just look at any of our youngsters on the General Staff, silently pressing his lips together and making a face like Moltke: In ten years he’ll have a general’s paunch under his tunic buttons—not a benign one, like mine, but a bellyful of poison. So it’s hard to decide how much sense any action can make.” He thought it over, and added: “If you know how to get hold of it, there’s a great deal to be learned in the army—I’m more and more convinced of it as time goes on—but don’t you think the simplest thing would be if we could still find the Great Idea?”

  “No,” Ulrich retorted. “That was nonsense.”

  “All right, but in that case there’s really nothing left but action.” Stumm sighed. “It’s almost what I’ve been saying myself. Do you remember, by the way, my warning you once that all these excessive ideas only end up in homicide? That’s what we’ve got to prevent! But,” he wheedled, “what we need is someone to take over the leadership.”

  “And what part have you had the kindness to assign to me in the matter?” Ulrich asked, yawning openly.

  “Very well, I’m leaving,” Stumm assured him. “But now that we’ve had this heart-to-heart talk, if you wanted to be a true comrade there is something important you could do. Things are not going too well between Diotima and Arnheim.”

  “You don’t say!” His host showed some small signs of life.

  “You’ll see for yourself; no need to take it from me. Besides, she confides in you more than in me.”

  “She confides in you? Since when?”

  “She seems to have got used to me a little,” the General said proudly.

  “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks. And you ought to look in on Leinsdorf again soon. On account of his antipathy to the Prussians.”

  “I won’t do it.”

  “Now look, I know you don’t like Arnheim. But you’ll have to do it anyway.”

  “That’s not why. I have no intention of going back to Leinsdorf.”

  “But why not? He’s such a fine old gentleman. Arrogant, and I can’t stand him, but he’s been splendid to you.”

  “I’m getting out of this whole affair.”

  “But Leinsdorf won’t let you go. Nor Diotima either. And I certainly won’t! You wouldn’t leave me all alone . . .?”

  “I’m fed up with the whole stupid business.”

  “You are, as always, supremely right. But what isn’t stupid? Look, without you, I’m pretty dumb. So will you go to Leinsdorf for my sake?”

  “But what’s this about Diotima and Arnheim?”

  “I won’t tell you; otherwise you won’t go to Diotima either!” Suddenly the General had an inspiration. “If you like, Leinsdorf can get you an assistant to take care of whatever you don’t like. Or I can get you one from the War Ministry. Pull out as far as you like, but keep a guiding hand over me!”

  “Let me get some sleep first,” Ulrich pleaded.

  “I won’t go till you promise.”

  “All right, I’ll sleep on it,” Ulrich conceded. “Don’t forget to put the bread of military science back in your bag.”

  137

  WHAT’S NEW WITH WALTER AND CLARISSE. A SHOWMAN AND HIS SPECTATORS

  Toward evening his restlessness drove Ulrich to go out to Walter and Clarisse’s. On the way he tried to remember Clarisse’s letter, which he had either stowed away irretrievably in his luggage or lost, but he could recall nothing in detail except for a final sentence, “I hope you’ll be coming back soon,” and his general impression that he would really have to talk with Walter, a feeling tinged not only with regret and uneasiness but also with a certain malice. It was this fleeting and involuntary feeling, of no significance, that he now dwelled on instead of brushing it aside, feeling rather like someone with vertigo who finds relief by getting himself down as low as he can.

  When he turned the corner to the house, he saw Clarisse standing in the sun by the side wall where the espaliered peach tree was. She had her hands behind her and was leaning back against the yielding branches, gazing into the distance, oblivious to his approach. There was something self-forgetful and rigid in her attitude, but also something faintly theatrical, apparent only to the friend who knew her ways so well; she looked as if she were acting out a part in the significant drama of her own ideas and one of those ideas had taken hold of her, refusing to let go. He remembered her saying to him: “I want the child from you!” The words did not affect him as disagreeably now as they had at the time; he called out to her softly and waited.

  But Clarisse was thinking: “This time Meingast is going through his transformation in our house.” He had undergone several rather remarkable transformations in his lifetime, and without reacting to Walter’s lengthy answer to his letter, he had, one day, turned the announcement of his coming into reality. Clar
isse was convinced that the work he then immediately plunged into in their house had to do with a transformation. The thought of some Indian god who takes up his abode somewhere before each new purification mingled in her mind with the memory of creatures that choose a specific place to change into a pupa, and from this notion, which struck her as tremendously healthy and down-to-earth, she went on to take in the sensuous fragrance of peaches ripening on a sunny wall. The logical result of all this was that she was standing under the window in the glow of the sinking sun, while the prophet had withdrawn into the shadowy cavern behind it. The day before, he had explained to her and Walter that in its original sense “knight” had meant boy, servant, squire, man-at-arms, and hero. Now she said to herself, “I am his knight!” and served him and safeguarded his labors: There was no need to say a word; she simply stood still, dazzled, and faced down the rays of the sun.

  When Ulrich spoke to her she slowly turned her face toward the unexpected voice, and he discovered that something had changed. The eyes that looked toward him contained a chill such as the colors of a landscape radiate after the dying of day, and he instantly realized: She no longer wants anything from you! There was no trace anymore in her look of how she had wanted to “force him out of his block of stone,” of his having been a great devil or god, of wanting to escape with him through the hole in the music, of wanting to kill him if he would not love her. Not that he cared; it was doubtless a quite ordinary little experience, this extinguished glow of self-interest in a gaze; still, it was like a small rent in the veil of life through which the indifferent void stares out, and it laid the basis for much that was to happen later.

  Ulrich was told that Meingast was there, and understood.

  They went quietly into the house to fetch Walter, and the three of them just as quietly came back out of doors again so as not to disturb the great man working. Through an open door Ulrich twice caught a glimpse of Meingast’s back. Meingast was housed in an empty room detached from the rest of the apartment but belonging to it; Clarisse and Walter had dug up an iron bedstead somewhere for him; a kitchen stool and a tin basin served as a washstand and bath, and in addition to these the room, with its uncurtained window, held only an old kitchen cupboard containing books, and a small, unpainted deal table. Meingast sat at this table writing, and did not turn his head when they passed his door. All this Ulrich either saw for himself or found out from his friends, who had no scruples about providing much more primitive accommodations for the Master than they had themselves; on the contrary, for some reason, they seemed to take pride in his being content with it. It was touching, and it made things easy for them. Walter declared that if one went into this room in Meingast’s absence one felt the indescribable aura of a threadbare old glove that had been worn on a noble and forceful hand.

  And in fact Meingast greatly enjoyed working in these surroundings, whose spartan simplicity flattered him. It made him feel his will forming the words on paper. And when in addition Clarisse was standing under his window, as she had been just then, or on the landing, or even if she was merely sitting in her room—“wrapped in the cloak of invisible northern lights,” as she had confided to him—his pleasure was enhanced by this ambitious disciple on whom he had such a paralyzing effect. Then ideas simply flowed from his pen, and his huge dark eyes above the sharp, quivering nose began to glow. What he intended to complete under these circumstances would be one of the most important sections of his new book, and one ought to be allowed to call it not a book but a call to arms for the spirit of a new breed of men! When he heard an unfamiliar male voice coming from where Clarisse was standing, he had broken off and cautiously peered out; he did not recognize Ulrich, though he dimly remembered him, but he found no reason in the footsteps coming up the stairs to shut his door or turn his head from his work. He wore a heavy wool cardigan under his jacket, showing his imperviousness to weather and people.

  Ulrich was taken out for a walk and treated to ecstatic praise of the Master, who was meanwhile devoting himself to his work.

  Walter said: “Being friends with a man like Meingast makes one realize how much one has suffered from antipathy to others! Associating with him, one feels . . . let me put it this way: everything seems painted in pure colors, without any grays at all!”

  Clarisse said: “Being with him, one feels one has a destiny. There one stands, entirely oneself, fully illuminated.”

  Walter added: “Today everything splits into hundreds of layers and becomes opaque and blurred—his mind is like glass!”

  Ulrich’s reply to them was: “There are always scapegoats and bellwethers; and then there are sheep who need them!”

  Walter flung back at him: “It was to be expected that such a man wouldn’t suit you!”

  Clarisse cried out: “You once maintained that no one can live by ideas, remember? Well, Meingast can!”

  Walter said more soberly: “Not that I always see eye-to-eye with him, of course . . .”

  Clarisse broke in: “Listening to him, one feels shudders of light inside.”

  Ulrich retorted: “A particularly fine head on a man usually means that he’s stupid; particularly deep philosophers are usually shallow thinkers; in literature, talents not much above average are usually regarded by their contemporaries as geniuses.”

  What a curious phenomenon admiration is! In the life of individuals it occurs only in spasms, but it is firmly institutionalized in collective life. Walter would actually have found it more satisfying if he himself could have occupied Meingast’s place in his own and Clarisse’s esteem, and could not at all understand why this was not so; and yet there was a certain slight advantage in it too. The emotion he was spared in this way was likewise credited to Meingast’s account, as when one adopts someone else’s child as one’s own. On the other hand, it was for this very reason that his admiration for Meingast was not really a pure and wholesome feeling, as Walter himself realized; it was rather an overcharged need to surrender himself to believing in him. There was something assiduous in this admiration; it was a “keyboard emotion,” raging without real conviction. Ulrich sensed this too. One of the elementary needs for passion, which life today breaks into fragments and jumbles to the point where they are unrecognizable, was here seeking a way back, for Walter praised Meingast with the ferocity of a theater audience that applauds far beyond the limits of its real opinion the commonplaces that are designed to arouse its need to applaud. He praised him out of one of those desperate urges to admire, which normally find their outlet in festivals and celebrations, in great contemporaries or ideas and the honors bestowed on them, in situations where everyone involved joins in without anybody really knowing for whom or for what, while being inwardly prepared to be twice as mean as usual the next day in order to have nothing to reproach oneself for. This was how Ulrich thought about his friends, and he kept them on their toes by aiming barbed remarks at Meingast from time to time; for like everyone who knows better, he had been annoyed countless times by his contemporaries’ capacity for enthusiasms, which almost invariably fasten on the wrong object and so end up destroying even what indifference has let survive.

  Dusk had already fallen by the time they had returned, still talking, to the house.

  “This Meingast lives on our current confusion of intuition and faith,” Ulrich finally said. “Almost everything that isn’t science can only be intuited, and for that you need passion and prudence. So a methodology for dealing with what we don’t know is almost the same as a methodology for life. But you two ‘believe’ the minute someone like Meingast comes along! And so does everyone. But this ‘belief is almost as much of a disaster as if you decided to plump your esteemed bodies down on a basket of eggs to hatch their unknown contents!”

  They were standing at the foot of the stairs. And suddenly Ulrich realized why he had come here and was talking with them the way he used to. It did not surprise him when Walter answered:

  “And the world is supposed to stand still until you’ve worked
out your methodology?”

  They evidently did not take him seriously because they did not realize how desolate this area of faith was that stretches between the certainty of knowledge and the mists of intuition! Old ideas swarmed in his head, crowding so thickly they almost suffocated thought. But now he knew that it was no longer necessary to start all over again, like a carpet weaver whose mind has been blinded by a dream, and that this was the only reason he was here again. Everything had become so much simpler lately. The last two weeks had annulled everything that had gone before and had tied up the lines of his inner motions with a powerful knot.

  Walter was expecting Ulrich to give him an answer that he could resent. He wanted to pay him back with interest! He had made up his mind to tell Ulrich that people like Meingast were saviors. “Salvation, after all, means the same thing as making one whole,” he thought. And: “Saviors may be wrong, but they make us whole again!” he intended to say. And he was going to add: “I don’t suppose you have any idea what that means?” The resentment he felt toward Ulrich was like what he felt when he had to go to the dentist.

  But Ulrich merely asked him distractedly just what Meingast had actually been writing and doing in the past few years.

  “You see!” Walter said, disappointed. “You see, you don’t even know that much, but you disparage him!”

  “Well,” Ulrich said lightly, “I don’t have to know; a few lines are sufficient!” He set his foot on the stairs. But Clarisse held him by the jacket and whispered: “Meingast isn’t even his real name!”

  “Of course it isn’t; but is that a secret?”

  “He turned into Meingast once, and now that he’s here with us he’s changing again!” Clarisse whispered intensely and mysteriously, and this whisper had something in common with a blowtorch. Walter flung himself on it to put it out. “Clarisse!” he implored her. “Clarisse, stop this nonsense!”

  Clarisse kept quiet and smiled. Ulrich went ahead up the stairs; he wanted at long last to see this messenger who had descended upon Walter and Clarisse’s domestic life from Zarathustra’s mountains. By the time they got upstairs, Walter was in a temper not only at him but at Meingast as well.