BOOKS
165
THROUGH THE LOOKING
GLASS
POSTHUMOUS PAPERS OF A LIVING AUTHOR. By Robert
Musil. Translated by Peter Wortsman. Eridanos Press. $21.00.
In the foreword
to
this fascinating collection of' prose pieces, es–
says, and short stories, Robert Musil faces the question of'his book's potential
merit given the oddities and minutiae with which it is filled:
To publish nothing but little tales and observations amidst a thunder–
ing, groaning world; to speak of incidentals when there al-e so man y
vital issues; to vent one's anger at phenomena that lie far off the
beaten track: this may doubtless appear as weakness to some.... But
then a certain diffel-e nce in size has always existed - between the
weight of poetic utterances and the six thousand, two-hundred million
cubic-foot mass of earth that zooms through space untouched by po–
etry.
This is the challenge of both Musil and his
Posthumous Papers .
Instead
ofconstructing elaborate arguments as to the purpose and intent of his or the
book's existence, his dry, sardonic wit chooses
to
simply point out the imbal–
ance between any such aspirations and the reality at hand. At the same time,
what on the surface may sound like defeatism or false humility is, in fact, a
profound faith in the ability of reason to observe and to know, to weigh and
to judge, no matter how unreasonable the German political climate must have
seemed to Musil when he first published the volume in 1936. Dedicated to
closely observed details and the consciousness necessary to sift them, his is
an aesthetic of refined degrees, honed and exacting, one in which less is truly
more, no matter the necessity he seems
to
feci
in seeing an object or idea
from every possible angle until the vision hi s work embodies ends up as
prismatic as it is encyclopedic.
Born in Klagenfurt, Austria in 1880, Musil is best known for his mon–
umental novel ,
1'11(> Man Withoul Qualities,
as well as the shorter
Young
Torless.
Trained as a mathematician, engineer, and philosopher, he chose
to
pass up a potentially successful career in any of'these fields in order
to
pur–
sue a life in writing accomplished between stints working as a librarian, pub–
lisher, and civil servant while living in Vienna and Berlin. In 1938, Musil left
Austria for Switzerland and permanent exile, his keen awareness no doubt
warning him of the cataclysm
to
follow, though his sudden death in Geneva in
