Robert Musil: "Attempts to Find Another Human Being": Review of "The World as Metaphor" in Musil-Forum

Monday, September 23, 2013

Review of "The World as Metaphor" in Musil-Forum

Todd Ceseratto has written a review of my book for the new Musil-Forum:
https://docs.google.com/file/d/1Q8nOq-VV0OAaWN1KLy_wJXmAxT5op2S4bJ3SJVUk1RviJhQqwvOO4n1yAoAT/edit?usp=sharing
Unfortunately for most of you interested readers it is in German. Jim Walker, the book's editor, has translated this passage for you non-German speakers: "The World as Metaphor offers . . . a worthy contribution to international Musil research. Grill obtains with it the rare status of a researcher who at one and the same time explains a thesis and carries it out in her own writing. For her painstaking work in the archive the study earns the particular praise and interest of those who want to concern themselves more deeply with the canonical works of modernism such as The Man without Qualities." In full disclosure I have to admit that there was a parenthesis where the ellipses is which contained a wee "despite this and that," but that is what ellipses are for, no? Keep 'em coming! I am strong and hearty and can bear all sorts of pricks, prods, reservations and calumnies!

No comments:

Post a Comment

Attempts to Find Another Human Being

Around 1923 Musil planned to publish a collection of his essays under the title, "Versuche einen anderen Menschen zu finden" (Attempts to Find Another Human Being). In his notebooks he wrote:

"In fact, this could be the title for everything that I have ever written. I can think of no other excuse for spending one's whole life at a writing desk to become a beggar. [...] I can only imagine another duty with great difficulty. I have always been a writer, always pursued writing.
It has come to pass in my life that people have scolded me for it and have called me a sick human being, an intellectual, an unmoral human being, a scientist, in short, everything that I am not, and only with resistance, under the pressure of a few, people have become accustomed to thinking of me as what I believe myself to be, and want to be: a writer."