The Man Without Qualities, Volume 2

by Robert Musil

  And Ulrich cheerfully continued his thought aloud: “Apparently the moment his wife’s patriotic campaign became the object of pub-he teasing, Tuzzi completely regained control over his lost mental faculties, as befits a high official. It must have been then at the latest that he recognized all over again that more things are going on in the lap of world history than would find room in a woman’s lap, and your Congress for World Peace, which turned up like a foundling, will have woken him with a start!” With coarse satisfaction, Ulrich depicted to himself the murky, ghost-ridden state that must have come first, and then this awakening, which perhaps did not even have to be associated with a feeling of awakening; for the moment the souls of Arnheim and Diotima, wandering around in veils, started to touch down in reality, Tuzzi, freed from every haunting spirit, again found himself in that realm of necessity in which he had spent almost his entire life. “So now he’s getting rid of all those friends of his wife’s who are saving the world and uplifting the Fatherland? They always were a thorn in his side!” Ulrich exclaimed with great satisfaction, and turned queryingly to his companion.

  Stumm, portly and lost in thought, was still standing in the doorway. “So far as I know, he told his wife that she owed it to him and his position, especially under these changed conditions, to bring the Parallel Campaign to an honorable conclusion. She would get a decoration. But she had to entrust herself to the protection and insights of the ministry he had selected for that purpose,” he reported conscientiously.

  “And so he’s made peace with you—I mean, with the Ministry of War and Arnheim?”

  “It looks that way. Because of the Peace Congress, he seems to have argued with the government for support of the rapid modernization of our artillery, and with the Minister of War concerning the political consequences. It is said that he wants to push the necessary laws through Parliament with the help of the German parties, and for that reason is now counseling a German line in domestic politics. Diotima told me that herself.”

  “Wait a minute!” Ulrich interrupted. “German line? I’ve forgotten everything!”

  “Quite simple! He always said that everything German was a misfortune for us; and now he’s saying the opposite.”

  Ulrich objected that Section Chief Tuzzi never expressed himself so unambiguously.

  “But he does to his wife,” Stumm replied. “And between her and me there’s a kind of bond ordained by fate.”

  “Well, how do things stand between her and Arnheim?” asked Ulrich, who was at the moment more interested in Diotima than in the concerns of the government. “He no longer needs her; and I suppose that’s making his soul suffer!”

  Stumm shook his head. “That’s apparently not so simple either!” he declared with a sigh.

  Up to now he had answered Ulrich’s questions conscientiously but without emotion, and perhaps for that very reason relatively sensibly. But since the mention of Diotima and Arnheim, he looked as if he wanted to come out with a quite different story, which seemed to him more important than Tuzzi’s finding himself. “You might have long thought that Arnheim had had enough of her,” he now began. “But they’re Great Souls! It may be that you can understand something about such souls, but they are them! You can’t say, was there something between them or was there nothing between them? Today they still talk the way they used to, except that you have the feeling: now there definitely isn’t anything between them: They’re always talking in what you might call last words’!”

  Ulrich, remembering what Bonadea, the practitioner of love, had told him about its theoretician, Diotima, held up to Stumm’s own, more measured statement that Diotima was a manual of love. The General smiled thoughtfully at this. “Perhaps we aren’t judging it from a broad enough perspective,” he generalized discreetly. “Let me preface this by saying that before her I never heard a woman talk that way; and when she starts talking, it’s like having ice bags all over me. Besides, she’s doing this less often now; but when it occurs to her even today she speaks, for instance, of this World Peace Congress as a ‘pan-erotic human experience,’ and then I feel myself all of a sudden unmanned by her cleverness. But”—and he intensified the significance of his words by a brief pause—”there must be something in it—some need, some so-called characteristic of the age— because even in the War Ministry they’re beginning to talk that way now. Since this Congress has turned up, you can hear officers of the General Staff talking about love of peace and love of mankind the way they talk about the Model 7 machine gun or the Model 82 medical supply wagon! It’s absolutely nauseating!”

  “Is that why you called yourself a disappointed specialist in love just now?” Ulrich interjected.

  “Yes, my friend. You have to excuse me: I couldn’t stand hearing you talk so one-sidedly! But officially I derive great profit from all these things.”

  “And you no longer have any enthusiasm for the Parallel Campaign, for the celebration of great ideas, and such things?” Ulrich probed out of curiosity.

  “Even such an experienced woman as your cousin has had enough of culture,” the General replied. “I mean culture for its own sake. Besides, even the greatest idea can’t stop your ears from getting boxed!”

  “But it can cause someone else’s getting his ears boxed next time.”

  “That’s right,” Stumm conceded. “But only if you use the spirit/or something, not if you serve it selflessly!” Then he looked up at Ulrich, curious to enjoy along with him the effect of his next words, and lowering his voice expectantly, certain of success, he added: “But even if I would like to, I can’t anymore: I’ve been removed!”

  “I’m impressed!” Ulrich exclaimed, instinctively acknowledging the insight of the military authorities. But then he followed another sudden idea and said quickly: “Tuzzi got you into this mess!”

  “Not a bit of it!” Stumm protested, sure of himself.

  Up to this point the conversation had taken place in the vicinity of the door, and besides the two men there was a third participant who was waiting for them to finish, staring straight ahead so motionlessly that for him the world stopped between the ears of two pairs of horses. Only his fists in their white cotton gloves, through which the reins ran, surreptitiously moved in irregular, soothing rhythms, because the horses, not quite so accessible to military discipline as people, were getting more and more bored with waiting, and were pulling impatiently at their harnesses. At last the General commanded this man to take the carriage to the gate and exercise the horses there until he got in; he then invited Ulrich to walk through the garden on foot, so that he could fill him in properly about what had gone on, without being overheard.

  But Ulrich thought he saw vividly what it was all about, and at first didn’t let Stumm get a word in. “It makes no difference whether Tuzzi took you out of the game or not,” he said, “for in this matter you are, if you will excuse me, only a minor figure. What’s important is that almost at the very moment when he began to get suspicious on account of the Congress and began to face a difficult and onerous test, he simplified his political as well as his personal situation the quickest way he could. He went to work like a sea captain who hears of a big storm coming and doesn’t let himself be influenced by the still-dreaming ocean. Tuzzi has now allied himself with what repelled him before—Arnheim, your military policies, the German line—and he would also have allied himself with the efforts of his wife if, in the circumstances, it had not been more useful to wreck them. I don’t know how I should put it. Is it that life becomes easy if one doesn’t bother with emotions but merely keeps to one’s goal; or is it a murderous enjoyment to calculate with the emotions instead of suffering from them? It seems to me I know what the devil felt when he threw a fistful of salt into life’s ambrosia!”

  The General was all fired up. “But that’s what I told you at the beginning!” he exclaimed. “I only happened to be talking about lies, but genuine malice is, in all its forms, an extraordinarily exciting thing! Even Leinsdorf, for instance, has r
ediscovered a predilection for realpolitik and says: Realpolitik is the opposite of what you would like to do!”

  Ulrich went on: “What makes the difference is that before, Tuzzi was always confused by what Diotima and Arnheim were talking about together; but now it can only make him happy, because the loquacity of people who aren’t able to seal off their feelings always gives a third person all sorts of footholds. He no longer needs to listen to it with his inner ear, which he was never good at, but only with the outer, and that’s roughly the difference between swallowing a disgusting snake or beating it to death!”

  “What?” Stumm asked.

  “Swallowing it or beating it to death!”

  “No, that bit about the ears!”

  “I meant to say: it was fortunate for him that he retreated from the inward side of feeling to the outward side. But perhaps that might still not make sense to you; it’s just an idea I have.”

  “No, you put it very well!” Stumm protested. “But why are we using others as examples? Diotima and Arnheim are Great Souls, and for that reason alone it’ll never work right!” They were strolling along a path but had not got very far; the General stopped. “And what happened to me isn’t just an army story!” he informed his admired friend.

  Ulrich realized he hadn’t given him a chance to speak, and apologized. “So you didn’t fall on account of Tuzzi?” he asked politely.

  “A general may perhaps stumble over a civilian minister, but not over a civilian section chief,” Stumm reported proudly and matter-of-factly. “I believe I stumbled over an idea!” And he began to tell his story.

  52

  TO HER DISPLEASURE, AGATHE IS

  CONFRONTED WITH A HISTORICAL

  SYNOPSIS OF THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE EMOTIONS

  Agathe, meanwhile, had come upon a new group of pages, in which her brother’s notes continued in a quite different manner. It appeared that he had suddenly made up his mind to ascertain what an emotion was, and to do this conceptually and in a dry fashion. He also must have called up all manner of things from his memory, or read them specifically for this purpose, for the papers were covered with notes relating in part to the history and in part to the analysis of the concept of the emotions; altogether, it formed a collection of fragments whose inner coherence was not immediately apparent.

  Agathe first found a hint about what had moved him to do this in the phrase “a matter of emotion!” which was written in the margin at the beginning; for she now remembered the conversation, with its profound oscillations that bared the foundations of the soul, which she and her brother had had on this subject in their cousin’s house. And she could see that if one wanted to find out what a matter of emotions was, one had to ask oneself, whether one liked it or not, what emotion was.

  This served her as a guide, for the entries began by saying that everything that happens among people has its origin either in feelings or in the privation of feelings; but without regard to that, an answer to the question of what an emotion was could not be gained with certainty from the entire immense literature that had grappled with the issue, for even the most recent accomplishments, which Ulrich really did think were advances, called for an act of trust of no small degree. As far as Agathe could see, he had not taken psychoanalysis into account, and this surprised her at first, for like all people stimulated by literature, she had heard it spoken of more than other lands of psychology. Ulrich said he was leaving it out not because he didn’t recognize the considerable merits of this significant theory, which was full of new concepts and had been the first to teach how many things could be brought together that in all earlier periods had been anarchic private experience, but because its method was not really appropriate to his present purpose in a way that would be worthy of its quite demanding self-awareness. He laid out as his task, first, to compare the existing major answers to the question of what emotion is, and went on to note that on the whole, only three answers could be ascertained, none of which stood out so clearly as to entirely negate the others.

  Then followed sketches that were meant to work this out: “The oldest but today still quite prevalent way of representing feeling proceeds from the conviction that clear distinctions can be made among the state of feeling, its causes, and its effects. This method understands by the emotions a variety of inner experiences that are fundamentally distinct from other lands—and these are, according to this view, sensation, thinking, and willing. This view is popular and has long been traditional, and it is natural for it to regard emotion as a state. This is not necessary, but it comes about under the vague impression of the perception that at every moment of an emotion, and in the middle of its dynamic changes, we can not only distinguish that we are feeling but also experience, as something apparently static, that we are persisting in a state of feeling.

  “The more modern way of representing emotion, on the other hand, proceeds from the observation that it is most intimately associated with action and expression; and it follows both that this view is inclined to consider emotion as a process and that it does not direct its attention to emotion alone but sees it as a whole, together with its origin and forms of expression. This approach originated in physiology and biology, and its efforts were first directed at a physiological explanation of spiritual processes or, more emphatically, at the physical totality in which spiritual manifestations are also involved. The results of this can be summarized as the second main answer to the problem of the nature of emotion.

  “But directing the thirst for knowledge toward the whole instead of its constituent elements, and toward reality instead of a preconceived notion, also distinguishes the more recent psychological investigations of emotion from the older kinds, except that its aims and leading ideas are naturally derived from its own discipline. This leads these recent investigations to yield a third answer to the problem of what emotion is, an answer that builds on the others as well as standing on its own. This third answer, however, is no longer in any way part of a retrospective view, because it marks the beginning of insight into the concept formation currently under way or regarded as possible.

  “I wish to add, since I mentioned earlier the question of whether emotion is a state or a process, that this question actually plays just about no role at all in the developments I have outlined, unless it be that of a weakness common to all views, which is perhaps not entirely unfounded. If I imagine an emotion, as seems natural in the older manner, as something constant that has an effect both inwardly and outwardly, and also receives input from both directions, then I am obviously faced with not just one emotion but an indeterminate number of alternating emotions. For these subcategories of emotion, language rarely has a plural at its disposal: it knows no envies, angers, or spites. For language these are internal variations of an emotion, or emotion in various stages of development; but without question a sequence of stages points just as much toward a process as does a sequence of emotions. If, on the other hand—which would accord with this and also seem to be closer to the contemporary view—one believes that one is looking at a process, then the doubt as to what emotion ‘really* is, and where something stops belonging to itself and becomes part of its causes, consequences, or accompanying circumstances, is not to be solved so easily. In a later place I shall come back to this, for such a divided answer customarily indicates a fault in the way the question is put; and it will, I think, become clear that the question of whether emotion is a state or a process is really an illusory one, behind which another question is lurking. For the sake of this possibility, about which I can’t make up my mind, I will let this question stand.”

  “I will now continue following the original doctrine of emotion, which distinguishes four major actions or basic states of the soul. It goes back to classical antiquity and is presumably a dignified remnant of antiquity’s belief that the world consists of the four elements earth, air, fire, and water. In any event, one often hears mention even today of four particular classes of elements of consciousness that cannot be
reduced to each other, and in the class of ‘emotion the two feelings pleasure* and lack of pleasure’ usually occupy a privileged position; for they are supposed to be either the only ones, or at least the only ones involving emotions that are not in any way alloyed with anything else. In truth they are perhaps not emotions at all but only a coloration and shading of feelings in which have been preserved the original distinction between attraction and flight, and probably also the opposition between succeeding and failing, and other contrasts of the originally so symmetrical conduct of life as well. life, when it succeeds, is pleasurable: Aristotle said it long before Nietzsche and our time. Kant, too, said that pleasure is the feeling of furthering life, pain that of hindering it. And Spinoza called pleasure the ‘transition in man from lesser to greater perfection.’ Pleasure has always had this somewhat exaggerated reputation of being an ultimate explanation (not least on the part of those who have suspected it of deception!).

  “But it can really arouse laughter in the case of thinkers who are not quite major and yet are suspiciously passionate. Here let me cite from a contemporary manual a lovely passage of which I would not like to lose a single word: What appears to be more different in kind than, for example, joy over an elegant solution to a mathematical problem and joy over a good lunch! And yet both are, as pure emotion, one and the same, namely pleasure!’ Also let me add a passage from a court decision that was actually handed down just a few days ago: The purpose of compensation is to bestow upon the injured party the possibility of acquiring the feelings of pleasure corresponding to his usual circumstances, which balance the absence of pleasure caused by the injury and its consequences. Applied to the present case, it already follows from the limited choice of feelings of pleasure that correspond to the age of two and a quarter years, and the ease of providing means for them, that the compensation sought is too high.’ The penetrating clarity expressed in both these examples permits the respectful observation that pleasure and the absence of pleasure will long remain as the hee and the haw of the doctrine of feeling.”