106
PARTISAN REVIEW
ence, to which the precise logic of the sciences is not (or, not yet)
applicable and to which we seem to have access only through the purely
subjective, emotional expression and symbolism of the poets. Musil be–
came obsessed with this dilemma, this "two-facedness of life," this "am–
biguity of the world," this "pre-established disharmony"; and his work
may be seen as a prolonged attempt to come to terms with this experience
and to find a way out of this dilemma. (None of this is in the English
edition. )
The posing of the dilemma, I think, is interesting in its own right,
and Musil's wrestling with it always exciting; but the dilemma also ex–
plains some aspects of his work generally neglected by critics who are now
rediscovering him. Beginning with the second volume, a major theme of
the work is the incestuous relation between Ulrich and his sister; at the
end, they have apparently become lovers. Now this love affair seems to
convey one manifestation of the intellectual's dilemma, what Musil
calls the "dual sexuality of the
soul,"
and to suggest a possible solution.
It
seems as if the split in Ulrich can be healed only through love of his
sister who is, narcissistically, an extension of himself; brother and sister
thus represent the two halves, the logic of the intellect and the logic of
the soul, which they cannot reconcile within their own selves, but only
through sexual union with each other.
More important, perhaps, than the theme of incest is the light which
this dilemma throws upon Musil's conception of the novel as a whole.
He never thought of it as a novel in the traditional sense of the word;
and this he undoubtedly has in common with Proust, J oyce, or Mann.
The three volumes represent the end of the novel as much as the end
of the era in which the novel flourished as a great form of art.
In
its
stead, Musil proposed the notion of "essayism"-perhaps adapted after
Baudelaire's "dandyism"-as a form of literature and as a way of life.
The essay, according to this view, takcs a position halfway between the
concept of objective truth developed in the sciences and the subjective,
emotional symbolism expressed in poetry; instead of the rigid, logical
procedure of the former, and instead of the diffuse, non-scientific sym–
bolism of the latter, essayism is meant as a technique
which
would com–
bine, or steer a middle course between, both objective and subjective •
criteria and perspectives.
It is not quite clear to me how this is meant-except that an essay
usually does combine objective and subjective elements and thus occupie<
a position halfway between scientific truth and poetry; but it is per–
fectly clear that Musil aimed at such an "in between" position in his own
work (which explains why so much of it reads more like an essay
than
