The Man Without Qualities, Volume 2

by Robert Musil

  “Both.”

  “Both? Why both?”

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  Stumm was taken aback but, after thinking it over, said: “You put that brilliantly! The people love an officer as long as they aren’t stirred up; and he gets to know the people: the people couldn’t care less about geniuses! But by the time he gets to be a general he has to be a specialist, and if he himself is a specialist genius he then falls into the category that there’s no such thing as genius. So he never gets, as I would say if I spelled it out, to the point where the use of this wishy-washy term would be appropriate. Do you know, by the way, that I recently heard something really clever? I was at your cousin’s, in the most intimate circle, although Arnheim is away, and we were discussing intellectual questions. Then someone pokes me in the ribs and explains Arnheim to me in a whisper: ‘He’s what you call a genius,’ he said. ‘More than all the others. A universal specialist!’ Why don’t you say anything?” Ulrich found nothing to say. “The possibilities inherent in this point of view surprised me. Besides, you yourself happen to be such a kind of universal specialist. That’s why you shouldn’t neglect Arnheim so; because ultimately the Parallel Campaign might get its saving idea from him, and that could be dangerous! I would really much prefer that it came from you.”

  And although Stumm had (finally) spoken far more than Ulrich, he took his leave with the words: “As always, it’s a pleasure talking with you, because you understand all these things de facto much better than everyone else!”

  50

  GENIUS AS A PROBLEM

  Ulrich had related this conversation to his sister.

  But even before that he had been speaking of difficulties connected with the notion of genius. What enticed him to do this? He had no intention of claiming to be a genius himself, or of politely inquiring about the conditions that would enable a person to become one. On the contrary, he was convinced that the powerful, exhausted ambition in his time for the vocation of genius was the expression not of intellectual or spiritual greatness but merely of an incongruity. But as all contemporary questions about life become impossibly entangled in an impenetrable thicket, so do the questions surrounding the idea of genius, which in part enticed one’s thoughts to penetrate it and in part left them hung up on the difficulties.

  After he finished his report, Ulrich had immediately come back to this. Of course, whatever has genius must be significant; for genius is the significant accomplishment that originates under particularly distinctive conditions. But “significant” is not only the lesser but also the more general category. So the first thing was to inquire into this notion again. The words “significant” and “significance” themselves, like all terms that are much used, have different meanings. On the one hand, they are connected with the concepts of thinking and knowing. To say that something signifies or has this significance means that it points to, gives to understand, indicates, or can represent in specific cases, or simply generally, that it is the same as something else, or falls under the same heading and can be known and comprehended as the other. That is, of course, a relationship accessible to reason and involving the nature of reason; and in this manner anything and everything can signify something, as it can also be signified. On die other hand, the term “signifying something” is used as well in the sense of something having significance or being of significance. In this sense, too, nothing is excluded. Not only a thought can be significant, but also an act, a work, a personality, a position, a virtue, and even an individual quality of mind. The distinction between this and the other kind of signifying is that a particular rank and value is ascribed to what is significant. That something is significant means in this sense that it is more significant than other things, or simply that it is unusually significant. What decides this? The ascription gives one to understand that it belongs to a hierarchy, an order of mental powers that is aspired to, even should the attainable measure of order be in many things as undependable as it is strict in others. Does this hierarchy exist?

  It is the human spirit itself: named not as a natural concept but as the objective spirit.

  Agathe asked what this included; it is a notion that people more scientifically trained than she threw around so much that she ducked.

  Ulrich nearly emulated her. He found the word used far too much. At that period it was used so often in scientific and pseudoscientific arguments that it simply revolved around itself. “For heavens sake! You’re becoming profound!” he retorted. The expression had inadvertendy slipped from his own lips.

  Ordinarily, one understands by “objective spirit” the works of the spirit, the relatively constant share it deposits in the world through the most various signs, in opposition to the subjective spirit as individual quality and individual experience; or one understood by it, and this could not be entirely separated from the first kind, the viable spirit, verifiable, constant in value, in opposition to the inspirations of mood and error. This touched two oppositions whose significance for Ulrich’s life had certainly not been simply didactic but—and this he was well aware of and had expressed often enough—had become extremely alluring and worrisome. So what he meant had elements of both.

  Perhaps he could also have said to his sister that by “objective spirit” one understands everything that man has thought, dreamed, and desired; but, to do so means not looking at it as components of a spiritual, historical, or other temporal-actual development, and certainly not as something spiritual-suprasensory either, but exclusively as itself, according to its own characteristic content and inner coherence. He could also have said, which appeared to contradict this but in the end came to the same thing, that it should be looked at with the reservation of all the contexts and orderings of which it is at all capable. For what something signifies or is in and of itself he equated with die result that coalesces out of the significances that could accrue to it under all possible conditions.

  But one merely needs to put this differently, simply saying that in and of itself, something would be precisely what it never is in and of itself, but rather is in relation to its circumstances; and likewise that its significance is everything that it could signify; so one merely has to turn the expression on its head for the scruple connected with it to immediately become obvious. For of course the usual procedure, on the contrary, is to assume, even if only from a usage of language, that what something is in and of itself, or what it signifies, forms the origin and nucleus of everything that can be expressed about it in mutable relationships. So it was a particular conception of the nature of the notion and of signifying by which Ulrich had let himself be guided; and particularly because it is not unfamiliar, it might also be stated something like this: Whatever may be understood under the nature of the concept of a logical theory is in application, as a concept of something, nothing but the counter-value and the stored-up readiness for all possible true statements about that something. This principle, which inverts the procedure of logic, is “empirical,” that is, it reminds one, if one were to apply an already coined name to it, of that familiar line of philosophical thought, without, however, being meant in precisely the same sense. Ought Ulrich now to have explained to his companion what empiricism was in its earlier form and what it had become in its more modest, and perhaps improved, modern version? As often happens when an idea gains in correctness, the more finely honed process of thinking renounces false answers but also some more profound questions as well.

  What was baptized as empiricism in philosophical language was a doctrine that arbitrarily declared the really astonishing presence and unchangeable sway of laws in nature and in the rules of the intellect to be a deceptive view that originated in habituation to the frequent repetition of the same experiences. The approximate classical formula for this was:

  Whatever repeats itself often enough seems to have to be so; and in this exaggerated form, which the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries bestowed upon it, this formula was a repercussion of the long antecedent theol
ogical speculation: that is, of the faith placed in God, of being able to explain His works with the aid of whatever one takes into one’s head. Notions and ideas demonstrate, when they are dominant, the same inch-nation to let themselves be worshiped and to broadcast capricious judgments as people do; and that probably led, when empiricism was established in modern times, to the admixture of a rather superficial opposition to totally convinced rationalism, which then, when it came to power itself, bore some of the responsibility for a shallow materialistic nature and societal mentality that at times has become almost popular. Ulrich smiled when he thought of an example, but did not say why. For it was not reluctantly that one reproached empiricism, which was all too simpleminded and confined to its rules, that according to it the sun rises in the east and sets in the west for no other reason than that up till now it always has. And were he to betray this to his sister and ask her what she thought of it, she would probably answer arbitrarily, without bothering about the arguments and counterarguments, that the sun might one day do it differently. This was why he smiled as he thought of this example; for the relationship between youth and empiricism seemed to him profoundly natural, and youth’s inclination to want to experience everything itself, and to expect the most surprising discoveries, moved him to see this as the philosophy appropriate to youth. But from the assertion that awaiting the rising of the sun in the east every day merely has the security of a habit, it is only a step to asserting that all human knowledge is felt only subjectively and at a particular time, or is indeed the presumption of a class or race, all of which has gradually become evident in European intellectual history. Apparently one should also add that approximately since the days of our great-grandfather’s, a new kind of individuality has made its appearance: this is the type of the empirical man or empiricist, of the person of experience who has become such a familiar open question, the person who knows how to make from a hundred of his own experiences a thousand new ones, which, however, always remain within the same circle of experience, and who has by this means created the gigantic, profitable-in-appearance monotony of the technical age. Empiricism as a philosophy might be taken as the philosophical children’s disease of this type of person.

  Sketches for a Continuation of the “Galley Chapters”

  1938 and Later

  59

  NIGHT TALK

  In his room he had lit one lamp after the other, as if the stimulating excess of illumination would make the words come more easily, and for a long time he wrote zealously. But after he had accomplished the most important part, he was overcome by the awareness that Agathe had not yet returned, and this became more and more disturbing. Ulrich did not know that she was with Lindner, nor did he know about these visits at all; but since that secret and his diaries were the only things they concealed from each other, he could surmise and also almost understand what she was doing. He did not take it more seriously than it deserved, and was more astonished at it than jealous; then too, he ascribed responsibility for it to his own lack of resolution, insofar as she pursued ways of her own that he could not approve of. It nevertheless inhibited him more and more, and diminished the readiness for belief that was weaving his thoughts together, that in this hour of collectedness he did not even know where she was or why she was late. He decided to interrupt his work and go out, to escape the enervating influence of waiting, but with the intention of soon returning to his labors. As he left the house it occurred to him that going to the theater not only would be the greatest diversion, but would also stimulate him; and so he went, although he was not dressed for it. He chose an inconspicuous seat and at first felt the great pleasure of coming into a performance that was already energetically under way. It justified his coming, for this dynamic mirroring of emotions familiar a hundred times over, by which the theater is accustomed to live under the pretext that this gives it meaning, reminded Ulrich of the value of the task he had left at home and renewed his desire to come to the end of the road that, proceeding from the origin of the emotions, ultimately had to lead to their significance. When he again directed his attention to the goings-on onstage, it occurred to him that most of the actors busily occupied up there, beautifully if meaninglessly imitating passions, bore titles such as Privy Councillor or Professor, for Ulrich was in the Hoftheater, and this raised everything to the level of state comedy. So although he left the theater before the end of the play, he nevertheless returned home with his spirits refreshed.

  He again turned on all the lights in his room, and it gave him pleasure to listen to himself writing in the porous stillness of the night. This time, when he had entered the house, all sorts of fleeting signs barely assimilated by his consciousness told him that Agathe had returned; but when he subsequently thought of it and everything was without a sound, he was afraid to look around him. Thus the night became late. He had been once more in the garden, which lay in complete darkness, as inhospitable, indeed as mortally hostile, as deep black ocean; nevertheless, he had groped his way to a bench and persevered there for quite a while. It was difficult, even under these circumstances, to believe that what he was writing was important. But when he was again sitting in the light, he set to work to write to the end, as far as his plan extended this time. He didn’t have far to go, but had hardly begun when a soft noise interrupted him. For Agathe, who had been in his room while he was at the theater and had repeated this secret visit while he was in the garden, slipping out upon his return, hesitated a short while outside the door and now softly turned the knob.

  ***

  Agathe’s entrance: she is wearing the historical lounging attire, etc. Lets her hand glide over his head, sits with crossed legs on the sofa.

  Or: wrapper. Perhaps better. Describe it? Not transparent; on the contrary, heavy material. She was enveloped in a wrapper of old velvet material that reached to her ankles and looked like a completely darkened picture that had once been painted on a gold ground. Like a magician’s cape. Her ankles bare, the span of her foot as bare as her hand. Her slippers were of violet silk the color of spindle-tree fruit hanging on its bush in autumn. A collar of some soft weave, whose color hovered between ivory, milk, and dull gilt silver.

  She had never worn this wrapper before; Ulrich did not recall it.

  Ibidem. When he is near her, Ulrich feels the flowing back into emotion of what is outside and what inside, and the vigorous action of the emotion. Also the sexual propensity, which belongs to a different sphere.

  The woman who becomes a guiding image in a different aspect and the woman who is the fulfillment of desire as examples of conceptions of different levels that in life exist side by side.

  She settles down on the sofa. Her torso comfortably supported and her legs drawn up beneath her so that only her foot peeks out beneath the hem that forms a wheel. Later she briskly changes position, but at the beginning her posture was thoughtful and her face serious.

  “I’ve read it!” she informed her brother, like a chess player who, after a short pause for reflection, makes his first move.

  “It seems to me you shouldn’t have,” he responded in the same manner.

  Agathe burst out laughing. “It was disloyal of you to conceal it from me,” she asserted boldly.

  If the description of the dress stays, don’t have the laughing right after it—

  Ulrich listened to her voice and contemplated her beauty. “These reflections make me understand more about myself than many years were able to previously,” he said quite calmly.

  “And they have nothing to do with me?”

  “Yes, it concerns you as well!”

  “But why then are you doing it secretly? Why haven’t you ever told me about it?

  “Why are you secretly visiting that man of tears Lindner?”

  “Also to understand myself better. And anyway, he weeps tears of anger.”

  “Were you there today?”

  “Yes.” Agathe looked steadily at her brother and noticed the resentment in his eyes.

  H
e strove to control himself and responded as tersely as possible: “I don’t like your doing that.”

  “I don’t Uke doing it myself,” Agathe said, continuing after a brief pause: “But I like what you write. The beginning and the end, and what’s in between too. I didn’t understand everything, but I read it all. I think you could explain a lot of things to me, and because I’m afraid of straining myself, I’ll believe a lot without any explanation at all.”

  (Post datum. This is really an example of an inner form of cheerfulness as distinct from outer.)

  She laughed again, and it pealed softly. She seemed to be laughing over nothing and only from joy; and although Ulrich could be quite sensitive to people’s laughter when it was aroused by something, for then it sometimes seemed to him just as humdrum an occurrence as sneezing, it immediately enticed him into an impossible task, that of adequately describing this pleasant, unmotivated sound. If, into the bargain, one threw in a little poetic commonplace, the impression could then be compared with that of a small, low-tuned silver bell: a dark bass tone submerged in a soft overflowing sparkle. But while Ulrich was listening to these cheerful sounds spreading out in the quiet room, his eyes also thought they were seeing all its lamps burning that much more quietly / as brightly. Precisely the simplest sensory impressions that populate the world occasionally have surprises in store when it comes to describing them, as if they came from another world.

  Influenced by this weakness, Ulrich suddenly felt a confession on his tongue about which he himself had not thought for goodness knew how long. “I once made a devilish bet with our big cousin Tzi, which I will never write down and which I don’t think I ever told you about,” he began to confess. “He suspected that I would write books, and, as it seems to me, he considered books that did not praise his politics to be deleterious and those that did superfluous, aside from the historical literature and memoirs a diplomat customarily employs. But I swore to him that I would kill myself before I succumbed to the temptation of writing a book; and I really meant it. For what I was able to write would do nothing more than prove that one is able to live differently in some specific fashion; but that I should write a book about it would at the very least be the counterproof that I’m not able to live in that fashion. I didn’t expect it would turn out differently.”