BOO KS
99
and not fall for the high-pressure methods which are often employed
to sell these rediscoveries as if they were the rare, exceptional case of
the forgotten man of genius, which they are not.
These rambling reflections occurred to me while reading a compar–
atively unknown Austrian writer, Robert Musil, who has recently been
rediscovered in the English-speaking world in connection with the partial
translation of his major work, a novel called
The Man Without Quali–
ties.
The rediscovery was launched, a few years ago, by a front-page
review in the London
Times Literary Supplement
in which Musil was
hailed as "the most important novelist writing in German in this half–
century" and in which it was claimed that "only two modern novelists
compare with him in range and intelligence-Proust and Joyce." For
once, I found myself on the side of
The New Yorker
where Mr. Anthony
West debunked the pretentious English review and expressed his own
exasperation with the publication of this work by calling it "one of
those mysterious literary events for which logic provides no explana–
tion." I sympathize with Mr. West though I don't share his critical
estimate of Musil; but I can see why he, and other readers, might be–
come exasperated with the work and its critical apostles.
On the basis of the English translation alone, it is indeed hard to
see what the work stands for or why it stands for anything. The trans–
lation consists of less than one-half of the
first
volume of the German
original, which is more than a thousand pages long. The total work
comprises
three
volumes, the third being unfinished. Moreover, while I
have a high regard for the art of translation and think that the present
translators handled an extremely difficult assignment remarkably well,
their selection is inexcusable. They have simply translated 72 sections
of the first volume running consecutively. Thus the book ends nowhere;
nor does it contain some of the most important chapters (e.g., section
116 or the incest theme of the second volume) giving an idea where
the work as a whole is going. In short, if the English edition was meant
to rediscover the greatness of Musil in a foreign clime, say, as the French
symbolists once rediscovered the greatness of Poe, this edition is most
poorly designed to launch and support such a project.
More importantly, comparing Musil with Proust and Joyce, or
calling him, as an American reviewer did, "a sort of day-light Kafka,"
is critical nonsense-though these comparisons, as I remember, were al–
ready made by German critics. For Musil is not so unknown as it may
appear from the novelty of this publication in the English-speaking
world. During the '20s, his name was familiar as part of a very active
and productive literary circle in Vienna. His books, even the first volume
