648
PARTISAN REVIEW
quire ideas as Ulrich acquired furniture. Here too there is a be–
wildering array of choices. Nothing is certain any longer, to be taken
for granted. In one of the most hilarious passages in the novel, Gen–
eral Stumm recounts how he tried to put some order into this
ideological chaos. Good staff officer that he is, he employs a small
platoon of subordinates to draw up a battle plan of ideas. Dominant
ideas are shown as advancing armies, there are strategic hillocks of
concepts, skirmishes are fought between categorial regiments.
Despite these efforts, entered on the map with multicolored pencils
(as Stumm learned to do in staff college), an order fails to material–
ize. The lines between the ideational armies keep shifting, the in–
tellectual generals keep stealing weapons from their opponents and
use them to attack their own rear, important categories suddenly
disappear, and so on. The general has a deep respect for the life of
the mind, but he cannot suppress the mounting suspicion that
perhaps the entire battlefield is a sham. He is not so much bothered
by the fact that everyone in Diotima's
salon
tells him something dif–
ferent. But, as he explains to Ulrich (who used to be an officer and
must therefore have some sense of order), he is troubled by the feel–
ing that the longer he listens to these intellectuals the more they all
sound alike. It follows that, in the end, the choice of ideas and
moralities is as random as the choice of decorating styles.
The social world allows the individual to choose different ca–
reers. Thus Ulrich is, in succession, an officer, a mathematician,
and a religio-psychological experimenter. With each possible career
go specific roles-and, of course, specific ideas and moralities. Need–
less to say, this Musilian insight could be vastly elaborated with the
use of categories derived from social psychology and the sociology of
knowledge. A perfect case of such an analysis of plural roles, with all
the appropriate ideational and moral attachments, would be the case
of Bonadea, with whom Ulrich has an affair early in the novel.
Bonadea is both
une brave bourgeoise,
proper wife and mother, and a
wildly roaming nymphomaniac. Somehow she manages to keep both
of these discrete social worlds going and segregated from each other.
She does feel some unease about this (manifested in very boring self–
accusations after each time she has gone to bed with Ulrich), and she
has the "utopian" fantasy that somehow, someday, she will integrate
the discrepant sides of her being into some sort of "whole." She
believes (mistakenly, it turns out) that Diotima commands this
"mystery of wholeness," and, in quest of salvation from herself, she
insinuates herself into the patriotic project. But then, to her great
