In other respects, however, the novel arises from a historical and cultural moment specific to Vienna. Consistently with this, the city figures in some respects as an idea or a state of mind more than a geographically specific place. Like many modernist writers, Musil prioritizes the inner world over the outer, and most of the novel is dedicated to searching intellectual and psychological analyses of its characters and their world. Opening in the summer of 1913, it depicts the Habsburg Empire and the long, liberal nineteenth century on the eve of their collapse. "These essays are crucial in understanding a writer and critic whose lifelong task was an attempt to resolve the dichotomy between the precision of scientific form and the soul-the matter of life and art.Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities is an unfinished novel written in Vienna between the wars. He has a range and a striking capacity every bit as great as that of Mann, Joyce, or Beckett."- Boston Review
"Musil is one of the few great moderns, one of the handful who ventured to confront the issues that shape and define our time. amount to a literary event for the reader of English comparable to Constance Garnett’s massive translation of Chekhov’s stories."-Joseph Coates, Chicago Tribune "Now we have these thirty-one invaluable and entertaining pieces, from an article on ’The Obscene and Pathological in Art’ to the equally provocative talk ’On Stupidity,’ which, with a new translation of The Man without Qualities forthcoming. A new two-volume translation by Burton Pike and Sophie Wilkins of The Man without Qualities is forthcoming from Alfred A. His first novel, Young Törless, is available in English. Robert Musil was born in 1880 and died in 1942. Writing to find his way in a world where moral systems everywhere were seemingly in decay, Musil strives to reconcile the ongoing conflict between functional relativism and the passionate search for ethical values. Offering a perspective on modern society and intellectual life, they are concerned with the crisis of modern culture as it manifests itself in science and mathematics, capitalism and nationalism, the changing roles of women and writers, and more.
"We do not have too much intellect and too little soul, but too little precision in matters of the soul."-Robert Musilīest known as author of the novel The Man without Qualities, Robert Musil wrote these essays in Vienna and Berlin between 19.
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