Robert Musil: "Attempts to Find Another Human Being": International Robert Musil Society Web Page

Friday, September 16, 2011

International Robert Musil Society Web Page

This is a link to the web page of the Internationale Robert Musil Gesellschaft in Klagenfurt, Austria: <http://www.musilgesellschaft.at/>
Very soon the site will be fully translated into English and interested people in the United States will easily be able to become members of the society and also to order their own copy of the Klagenfurt Edition (a searchable DVD of Musil's literary and biographical remains with extensive commentary). It can also be done now, if you cannot wait, by contacting me.

1 comment:

UnknownAugust 31, 2020 at 1:08 AM
I seem to have read that Robert Musil was supported in living by The Musil Society. I infer from this that he did not live at a very high level of income (am I correct here?), I find it repugnant that a thinker/writer whose work is of lasting value to world civilization should earn very much less than persons who earn their living by butting their head against small spherical objects (aka socccer balls), etc.
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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."