The Man Without Qualities

by Robert Musil

  Ulrich took the liberty of pointing out that the people so favored by His Grace’s sympathetic interest would be more than likely to turn down his suggestion.

  “Oh, of course they won’t want to!” the Count said. “But they would have to be forced to for their own good. It would amount to a world mission for the Empire, and it’s not a question of whether they want to or not. You see, many people at the beginning have had to be made to do what’s best for them. But think, too, what it would mean if we ended up allied with a grateful Jewish State instead of with the Germans and Prussia! Seeing that our Trieste happens to be the Hamburg of the Mediterranean, as it were, apart from the fact that it would make us diplomatically invincible to have not only the Pope on our side but the Jews as well!”

  Abruptly, he added: “You must remember that I have to concern myself with problems of the currency, too, these days.” And again he smiled in that strangely sad, absentminded way.

  It was astonishing that His Grace, who had repeatedly sent out urgent calls for Ulrich, did not discuss the problems of the day now that he had finally come, but lavished his ideas on him. Apparently ideas had come to him in abundance while he had had to do without his confidant, ideas as restless as bees that stream out for miles but are sure to return in their own good time, laden with honey.

  “You might perhaps object,” Count Leinsdorf resumed, although Ulrich had not said anything, “that I have on earlier occasions often expressed a decidedly low opinion of the financial world. I don’t deny it: too much is too much, and we have too much finance in modern life. But that’s precisely why we must deal with it! Look, culture has not been pulling its weight alongside capital—there you have the whole secret of developments since 1861. And that’s why we must concern ourselves with capital.”

  His Grace made an almost imperceptible pause, just long enough to let his listener know that now he was coming to the secret of capital, but then went on in his gloomily confidential tone:

  “You see, what’s most important in a culture is what it forbids people: whatever doesn’t belong is out. For instance, a well-bred man will never eat gravy with his knife, only God knows why; they don’t teach you these things in school. That’s so-called tact, it’s based on a privileged class for culture to look up to, a cultural model; in short, if I may say so, an aristocracy. Granted that our aristocracy has not always lived up to that ideal. That’s exactly the point, the downright revolutionary experiment, of our 1861 Constitution: Capital and culture were meant to make common cause with the aristocracy. Have they done so? Were they up to taking advantage of the great opportunity His Majesty had so graciously made available to them? I’m sure you’d never claim that the results of your cousin’s great efforts that we see every week are in keeping with such hopes.” His voice grew more animated as he exclaimed: “You know, it’s really most interesting, what sorts of things claim to be ‘mind’ these days! I was telling His Eminence the Cardinal about it recently, when we were out hunting in Mürzsteg—no, it was Mürzbruck, at the Hostnitz girl’s wedding—and he laughed and clapped his hands together: ‘Something new every year,’ he said. ‘Now you can see how modest we are; we’ve been telling people the same old thing for almost two thousand years.’ And that’s so true. The main thing about faith is that it keeps believing the same old thing, even if it’s heresy to say so. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I always go out hunting because my predecessor in the days of Leopold von Babanberg did too. But I never kill,’ he said—he happens to be known for never firing a shot on the hunt—‘because it goes against my grain, something tells me it’s not in keeping with my cloth. I can talk about this to you, old friend, because we were boys in dancing class together. But I’d never stand up in public and say: “You shall not shoot while hunting!” Good Lord, who knows whether that would be true, and besides, it’s no part of the Church’s teaching. But the people who meet at your friend’s house make a public issue of things like that the minute it occurs to them! There you have what’s called “intelligence” nowadays!’ It’s easy for him to laugh,” Count Leinsdorf went on, speaking for himself again. “He holds that job in perpetuity, but we laymen have the hard task of finding the right path amid perpetual change. I told him as much. I asked him: ‘Why did God let literature and painting and all that come into the world anyway, when they’re really such a bore?’ And he came up with a very interesting explanation. ‘You’ve heard about psychoanalysis, haven’t you?’ he asked me. I didn’t know quite what I was supposed to say. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘you’ll probably say it’s just a lot of filth. We won’t argue about it, it’s what everyone says; and yet they all run to these newfangled doctors more than to our Catholic confessional. Take it from me, they rush to them in droves because the flesh is weak! They let their secret sins be discussed because they enjoy it, and if they disparage it, take it from me, we always pick holes in the things we mean to buy! But I could also prove to you that what their atheistic doctors imagine they invented is nothing but what the Church has been doing from the beginning: exorcising the Devil and healing the possessed. It’s identical step for step with the ritual of exorcism, for instance, when they try with their own methods to make the person who’s possessed talk about what’s inside him; according to Church teaching, that’s precisely the turning point, where the Devil is getting ready to break out! We merely missed adapting ourselves in time to changing conditions by talking of psychosis, the unconscious, and all that current claptrap instead of filth and the Devil.’ Isn’t that interesting?” Count Leinsdorf asked. “But what comes next may be even more so. ‘Never mind the weakness of the flesh,’ the Cardinal said. ‘What we need to talk about is that the spirit is weak too. And that’s where the Church has kept its wits and not let anything slip by. People aren’t nearly so scared of the Devil in the flesh, even if they make a great show of fighting him, as they are of the illumination that comes from the spirit. You never studied theology,’ he said to me, ‘but at least you respect it, and that’s more than a secular philosopher in his blindness ever does. Let me tell you, theology is so difficult that a man can devote himself to studying it and nothing else for fifteen years before he realizes that he hasn’t really understood a word of it! If people knew how difficult it is, none of them would have any faith at all; they’d only run us down! They’d run us down exactly the way they run people down—you understand?’ he said slyly,’—who are writing their books and painting their pictures and trotting out their theories. And today we’re only too glad to let them have plenty of rope to hang themselves with, because, let me tell you, the more earnestly one of those fellows sets about it, the less he’s a mere entertainer, or working for his own pocket; the more, in other words, he serves God in his mistaken way, the more he bores people, and the more they run him down. “That’s not what life is like!” they say. But we know very well what it’s like, and we’ll show them too, and because we can also wait, you may yet live to see them come running back to us, full of fury about the time they wasted on all that clever talk. You can see it happening in our own families, even now. And in our fathers’ day, God knows, they thought they were going to turn heaven itself into a university.’

  “I wouldn’t go so far,” Count Leinsdorf rounded out this part of his discourse to start on a new topic, “as to say he meant all that literally. The Hostnitzes in Mürzbruck happen to have a celebrated Rhine wine that General Marmont left behind and forgot in 1805 because he had to march on Vienna in such a hurry, and they brought some of it out for the wedding. But in the main I’m sure the Cardinal was right on target. So if I ask myself now what to make of it, all I can say is, I’m sure it’s true, but it doesn’t work. I mean, there can be no doubt that the people we brought in because we were told they represent the spirit of the times have nothing to do with real life, and the Church can well afford to wait them out. But we civilian politicians can’t wait; we must squeeze what good we can out of life as we find it. After all, man doesn’t live by bread alone, but by the
soul as well. The soul is that which enables him to digest his bread, so to speak. And that’s why it’s necessary. . .” Count Leinsdorf was of the opinion that politics should be a spur to the soul. “In short, something has to happen,” he said, “that’s what the times demand. Everyone has that feeling, as it were, not just the politically minded. The times have a sort of interim character that nobody can stand indefinitely.” He had the idea that the trembling balance of ideas upon which the no less trembling balance of power in Europe rested must be given a push.

  “It hardly matters what kind of push,” he assured Ulrich, who made a show of being stunned by His Grace’s having turned, in the period since they had last seen each other, into a veritable revolutionary.

  “Well, why not?” Count Leinsdorf retorted, flattered. “His Eminence of course also thought that it might be a small step in the right direction if His Majesty could be persuaded to replace the present Minister of the Interior, but such petty reforms don’t do the trick in the long run, however necessary they may be. Do you know that as I mull this over I actually find my thoughts turning to the Socialists?” He gave his interlocutor time to recover from the amazement he assumed this was bound to cause, and then continued firmly: “You can take it from me, real socialism wouldn’t be nearly as terrible as people seem to think. You may perhaps object that the Socialists are republicans; that’s true, you simply can’t listen when they’re talking, but if you consider them in terms of practical politics, you might well reach the conclusion that a social-democratic republic with a strong ruler at the helm would not be an impossible solution at all. For my own part, I’m convinced that if we were to go just a little way to meet them, they’d be glad to give up the idea of using brute force and they’d recoil from the rest of their objectionable principles. As it is, they’re already inclined to modify their notion of the class struggle and their hostility to private property. And there really are people among them who still place country before party, as compared with the middle-class parties who’ve gone radical since the last elections in putting their conflicting national-minority interests above everything else. Which brings us to the Emperor.” He lowered his voice confidentially. “As I’ve said already, we must learn to think in economic terms. The one-sided policy of encouraging national minorities has led the Empire into the desert. Now, to the Emperor, all this Czech-Polish-German-Italian ranting about autonomy . . . I don’t know how to put it: let’s just say His Majesty couldn’t care less. What His Majesty does care about, deeply, is our getting the defense budget through without any cuts so that the Empire may be strong, and apart from that he feels a hearty distaste for all the pretensions of the middle-class idea-mongers, a distaste he probably acquired in 1848. But these two priorities simply make His Majesty the First Socialist in the land, as it were. You can now see, I think, the magnificent vista I was speaking of? Which leaves only the problem of religiosity, in which there is still an unbridgeable gap between opposing camps, and that’s something I’d have to talk over with His Eminence again.”

  His Grace fell silent, absorbed in his conviction that history, in particular that of his own country, bogged down as it was in fruitless nationalist dissensions, would shortly be called upon to take a step into the future—whereby he perceived the spirit of history as being more or less two-legged, but otherwise a philosophical necessity. Hence it was understandable that he surfaced suddenly with sore eyes, like a diver who had gone too far down. “In any case, we must get ready to do our duty!” he said.

  “But where does our duty lie, Your Grace?”

  “Why, in doing our duty, of course! It’s the only thing we can always do! But to change the subject. . .” It was only now that Count Leinsdorf seemed to remember the pile of newspapers and files on which his fist rested. “Look here, what the people want today is a strong hand. But today a strong hand needs fine words, or the people won’t put up with it. And you, and I mean you personally, are eminently qualified in this respect. What you said, for instance, the last time we all met at your cousin’s before you left town, was that what we actually need—if you recall—is a central committee for eternal happiness, to bring it in step with our earthly precision in ratiocination. . . . Well, it wouldn’t work out quite so easily, but His Eminence laughed heartily when I told him about it; actually, I rubbed it in a bit, as they say, and even though he’s always making fun of everything, I can tell pretty well whether his laugh comes from the spleen or from the heart. The fact is, my dear man, we simply can’t do without you.. . .”

  While all of Count Leinsdorf’s other pronouncements that day had had the character of complicated dreams, the wish he now expressed—that Ulrich should give up “definitively, at least for now,” any idea of resigning his post as Honorary Secretary of the Parallel Campaign—was so definite and so pointedly fledged, and his hand had come down on Ulrich’s arm with such an effect of a surprise maneuver, that Ulrich almost had the not entirely pleasing impression that all the elaborate harangues he had been listening to had only been calculated, far more slyly than he had anticipated, to put him off his guard. At this moment he was quite annoyed with Clarisse, who had got him into this fix. But since he had appealed on her behalf to Count Leinsdorf’s kindness the very first time there had been an opening in the conversation, and the request had been granted instantly by the obliging high official, who wanted only to go on talking without interruption, he had no choice now but reluctantly to square the account.

  “I’ve heard from Tuzzi,” Count Leinsdorf said, pleased with his success, “that you might decide on a man from his office to take the routine business off your hands. ‘Splendid,’ I told him, ‘if he stays on.’ After all, his man has taken his oath of office, which we’ll give you too, and my own secretary, whom I’d gladly have put at your disposal, is unfortunately an idiot. All you perhaps shouldn’t let him see is the strictly confidential stuff, because he’s Tuzzi’s man, and that has certain drawbacks; but otherwise, do arrange matters to suit your own convenience,” His Grace said, concluding this successful interview with the utmost cordiality.

  144

  CAST ALL THOU HAST INTO THE FIRE, EVEN UNTO THY SHOES

  During this time and from the moment she had stayed behind alone, Agathe had been living in a state of utter release from all ties to the world, in a sweetly wistful suspension of will; a condition that was like a great height, where only the wide blue sky is to be seen. Once a day she treated herself to a short stroll in town; at home, she read, attended to her affairs, and experienced this mild, trivial business of living with grateful enjoyment. Nothing troubled her state: no clinging to the past, no straining for the future; if her eye lit upon some nearby object, it was like coaxing a baby lamb to her: either it came gently closer or it took no notice of her at all—but at no time did her mind deliberately take hold of it with that motion of inner grasping which gives to every act of cold understanding a certain violence as well as a certain futility, for it drives away the joy that is in things. In this fashion everything around her seemed far more intelligible to Agathe than ordinarily, but in the main she was still preoccupied with her conversations with her brother. In keeping with the peculiarity of her unusually exact memory, which did not distort its material with any bias or prejudice, there rose up in her mind more or less at random the living words, the subtle surprises of cadence and gestures, in these conversations, much as they were before she had quite understood them and realized where they were tending. Nevertheless, it all held the utmost significance for her; her memory, so often dominated by remorse, was now suffused with a quiet devotion, and the time just past clung like a caress to the warmth of her body, instead of drifting off as it usually did into the frost and darkness that awaits life lived in vain.

  And so, veiled in an invisible light, Agathe also dealt with the lawyers, notaries, brokers, and agents she now had to see. No one refused her; everyone was glad to oblige the attractive young woman—whose father’s name was sufficient recommendation
—in every way. She conducted herself with as much self-assurance as detachment; she was sure of what she wanted, but it was detached from herself, as it were, and the experience she had acquired in life—also something that can be seen as detached from the personality—went on working in pursuit of that purpose like a shrewd laborer calmly taking advantage for his commission of whatever opportunities presented themselves. That she was engaged in preparing a felony—the significance of her action that would have been strikingly apparent to an outsider—simply did not enter her state of mind during this time. The unity of her conscience excluded it. The pure light of this conscience outshone this dark point, which nevertheless, like the core of a flame, formed its center. Agathe herself did not know how to express it; by virtue of her intention she found herself in a state that was a world away from this same ugly intention.

  On the morning after her brother had left, Agathe was already considering her appearance with great care: it had begun by accident with her face, when her gaze had landed on it and not come back out of the mirror. She was held fast, much as one who sometimes has absolutely no desire to walk keeps walking a hundred steps, and then another hundred, all the way toward something one catches sight of only at the end, at which point one definitely intends to turn back and yet does not. In this way she was held captive, without vanity, by this landscape of her self, which confronted her behind the shimmer of glass. She looked at her hair, still like bright velvet; she opened the collar of her reflection’s dress and slipped the dress off its shoulders; then she undressed the image altogether and studied it down to the rosy nails, to where the body tapers off into fingers and toes and hardly belongs to itself anymore. Everything was still like the sparkling day approaching its zenith: ascendant, pure, exact, and infused with that forenoon growth that manifests itself in a human being or a young animal as ineffably as in a bouncing ball that has not yet reached its highest point in the air, but is just about to. “Perhaps it is passing through that point this very moment,” Agathe thought. The idea frightened her. Still, she was only twenty-seven; it might take a while yet. Her body, as untouched by athletic coaches and masseurs as it was by childbearing and maternal toil, had been formed by nothing but its own growth. If it could have been set down naked in one of those grand and lonely landscapes that mountain ranges form on the side turned toward the sky, the vast, infertile, billowing swell of such heights would have borne it upward like some pagan goddess. In a nature of this kind, noon does not pour down exhalations of light and heat; it merely seems for a while longer to rise above its zenith and then to pass imperceptibly into the sinking, floating beauty of the afternoon. From the mirror came the eerie sense of that undefinable hour.