Robert Musil
FRIENDS OF HIS YOUTH
(EDITORS' NOTE
:- The Austrian writer Robert Musil
(1880-
1942) has long been recognized on the Continent as one of the great
figures in modern German literature. The section that follows is
from his most important book,
The Man Without Quali.ties,
a work
of fiction which in scope and aim deserves comparison with Proust
and
Joyce. The translation is by Eithne Wilkins and George Kaiser.
The scene is Vienna, the time 1913.)
Since his return Ulrich had several times gone to visit his
friends Walter and Clarisse, whom he had not seen for some years,
for in spite of the fact that it was summer these two had not gone
away. Every time when he arrived they were playing the piano. They
took it as a matter of course not to notice him until they had got
to the end. This time it was Beethoven's
Hymn to Joy;
the millions
sank,
as NietZBche describes it, into the dust in awe, the hostile
frontiers dissolved, the gospel of universal harmony reconciled and
united those who had been separated. The two of them had forgot–
ten how to walk and talk and were about to soar up, dancing, into
the ether. Their faces were flushed, their bodies hunched, and their
heads bobbed and jerked up and down, while splayed claws battered
at the rearing bulk of sound. Something immeasurable was happen–
ing.
A dimly outlined balloon filled with hot emotion was being
blown up to bursting-point, and from the excited fingertips, from
the nervous wrinkling of the foreheads and the twitchings of the
bodies, ever more and more feeling radiated into the monstrous
private upheaval. How often, one wondered, had all
this
happened
before?
Ulrich had never been able to stand the sight of this always
open
piano with its bared teeth, this big-mouthed,short-legged idol
