Robert Musil's "The Man Without Qualities"

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GBH Forum Network

GBH Forum Network

10 жыл бұрын

Harvard literary scholar Susanne Klingenstein discusses Robert Musil's "The Man Without Qualities" as part of the Goethe-Institut Boston's "What is German?" seminar.
Musil's doorstop of a novel emMan without Qualities/em, is a monument to the forces that caused the disintegration of the Habsburg empire. We can summarize these forces as "modernism". Musil (1880-1942), like so many Viennese writers of his time, tried to pin them down in a philosophical work of art. His novel centers on a mathematician who tries to determine the meaning of his life. Nevertheless, the first part is quite readable and enjoyable despite some heavy lifting. However, poor Musil died after 20 years of labor and 1700 pages, leaving the rest of his work unfinished. This lecture discusses the first part of Musil's novel.

Пікірлер: 31
@aaronmoore1171
@aaronmoore1171 3 жыл бұрын
That is wild to hear her initial experiences of coldness from the book and subsequent appreciation as she reads only small bit at a time. This was the last book I picked up where I started it and literally could not put it down. I read until the sun came up that evening. I've probably done that 8 times max in my life, and finished the book the in 2 months. I know what she means about the coldness though, I mean it's in the title, right? The clarity that comes from a recognized and reasoned withdrawal from personal relationship with the world or something...his sentences and the unending plateau of mental clarity and acuity was absolutely transcendent. I felt I was walking almost with that they call darshan..
@donaldfransson2827
@donaldfransson2827 5 жыл бұрын
Thank You, Dear Susanne Klingenstein - for a wonderful lecture about a great novel, great art. From Donald Fransson, Sweden.
@LiteraryScholarInSearchOfLoot
@LiteraryScholarInSearchOfLoot 3 жыл бұрын
One of the best lectures I've ever listened to, and I'm a literary studies grad so I've seen/heard a lot of them in my life. A great scholar and a great book, thank you!
@essenko
@essenko 2 жыл бұрын
That was great ! I feel so alone nobody around me reads and will never read that book ... glad to hear people so greatly talking about it !
@abooswalehmosafeer173
@abooswalehmosafeer173 7 жыл бұрын
I enjoyed this talk; very clear informative, I have started man without qualities and this discourse will certainly assist me through.
@lukaskaltenmaier3808
@lukaskaltenmaier3808 5 жыл бұрын
Very grateful for this. Dankeschön
@christophbader3713
@christophbader3713 3 жыл бұрын
Just such a wonderful lecture!
@mtother1101
@mtother1101 9 жыл бұрын
Very helpful, many thanks
@luis-rv6de
@luis-rv6de 5 жыл бұрын
I was looking for the royal concept. I wasn't disappointed
@hissanb7180
@hissanb7180 6 жыл бұрын
How wonderful. Is this part of a series and is it available online? Would love to listen to the entire course.
@anafarinha6835
@anafarinha6835 5 жыл бұрын
A leitura desta obra deixou-me sem fôlego! Interpreto a Acção Paralela, não apenas como uma manifestação do Espírito do Povo, mas como identificação deste com o Espírito Universal. A todo este movimento da Acção Paralela, Musil confere uma dimensão satírica. É impossível estabelecer limites filosóficos para esta obra, mas, arrisco ver aqui o confronto de dois filósofos: Hegel e Nietzsche.
@ratherrapid
@ratherrapid Жыл бұрын
Glad to have listened to this excellent lecture on the book! John Telfer gives a brilliantly recited English rendition of the Sophie Wilkins translation in the Audio Book available at Amazon. The Wilkin's translation reminds me of the Walter Arndt translation of Goethe's Faust--were Musil /Goethe really this good or do we credit the translator for this extraordinary writing?
@mustafakandan2103
@mustafakandan2103 2 жыл бұрын
So far I have only read this book in English translation. My impression is that Musil was a most stimulating writer, but of less than perfect literary skills. I think this is probably due to his work not translating well in to English. Although I am by no means fluent in German, I feel I need to read the original to make full justice to this book.
@Kruemel93
@Kruemel93 7 жыл бұрын
Im german and i have to listen to a lecture in english just because theres no german online lecture... dafuq... xD
@christophbader3713
@christophbader3713 3 жыл бұрын
Still, there is none. I do not understand.
@badallmann
@badallmann 3 жыл бұрын
ich bin Norweger und lerne Deutsch weil einige Deutsche nicht Englisch sprechen lmao
@jtabendland
@jtabendland 3 жыл бұрын
@@badallmann bei Fragen zum Deutschen oder zum Mann ohne Eigenschaften, jederzeit gerne (sofern ich helfen kann). Ich lese das Buch komplett vor auf meinem Kanal, und ich kann auch einigermaßen gut englisch sprechen 🤩 Ehrlich, meld dich, you're welcome (keine Angst ich stehe nur auf Frauen)
@sattarabus
@sattarabus 4 жыл бұрын
Susanne could have probed some of the audience to elicit the donnée of the novel. Since it is a prolix novel without any plot or finale, what motivates the scholar or the reader to read on? Is it the singular quiddity of the form---lushness of diction, poetry, sensuousness, rich evocation, the abrupt swerve in style----that justifies its readability? I wish she had addressed some of these issues.
@Lahouari780
@Lahouari780 Жыл бұрын
15:34 the possiblity of application has been lost to him and he now looking for a possibility of doing somethong with who he is but it has to be favoted by the time. He takes a break from life for his research ad he looks for a field of action (worthy of his qualities). Paradoxicly, Ulrich opts out of active life and embarks of a contemplative life with the purpose of finding something to do.
@Lahouari780
@Lahouari780 Жыл бұрын
22:15 Ulrich concludes that only action that is propelled by one's drive, action that is totally in accord with ones desires it means that you act and receive satisfaction from action at the same time can be considered as action. Moosbrugger is the ultimate man of action. A total action becomes pure self expression and if you expressing if you are acting only in accordance with your desires and you derive you satisfaction form the action it means itself it leans you out there all alone (out of the society like Moosbrugger). It's a solipsistic way of functioning, at that point the human beaing cases to exist as a social being, as it's own political and becomes pure self. In the ultimate chapter of the first volume (right after his definition of total action), Ulrich receive the that his father died. He is a lawyer and law exist only to regulate interactions of humans with each other, it is nothing it is not social, lax defines the rights of one person end and the rights of another begin and Ulrich arrive at a definition of self that is in outright opposition as the self as define by law. And at this point, Musil pops off with something else :Ulrich is visited by Clarisse a variant of Moosbrugger, who has the crazy idea that the child she conceives with Ulrich would be the one to redeem, you lose a self to gain a self. Musil at the vers end of the book, staggers his idea about what is it if you challenged to realize yourself throught action and can you really do it and there is all the alternative of it (Arheinheim, Moosbrugger, Clarisse and the theological idea of redeem the world) The novel end at a point of total disorientation, social disorientation, Ulrich says no to his reintegration into the action of socio-economic life (Arhenheim), Hesse attractifs to a definition of the self as acting in accordance to one's drive and he loses his father, his Last tie to stable and social world and he gains what he really wanted : positive freedom, he had yet negative freedom. At the end of the book, Ulrich is at the point of a total and positive freedom but in human terms, there's a tremendous cost associated with it wich is that Ulrich is completly alone and in the next section of the book his job would have been to fill that freedom by content (and Musil couldn't do it).
@Lahouari780
@Lahouari780 Жыл бұрын
37:07 in the countryside, where everything is monotonous, you can be a fully realized individual and you have a one-to-one relationship with the things you experience but in the city where so much is happening, you are now missing the faculty of pulling the things that happening to you all the time into a meaningful whole, you lacking the capacity to make meaning out of multiplicity : that is the problem of the novel. In the beginning, when Moosbrugger is thrown into the city, he is completly disoriented and he sees someone faint and everybody comes toward him. Ulrich argues that your power is enlarged by being in the city, but that means being lebrated from the linearity of the street. We don't know how that powers much. He says that he would not be exchanging the life of multiplicity backed for the life of linearity. - Law of life was that it has a narrative order : it would be that you will be able to reproduce the multiplicity of life in a simple sequence (that is the job of the novelist, this an implicit critique of Thomas Mann). He says later in the paragraph that it's no longer possible (Ulrich has lost this epic primitivism) which is why he narrates the book in the way he does : no more narrative thread, it has spread out into a huge fabric.
@Lahouari780
@Lahouari780 Жыл бұрын
1:25:20 Ulrich sees reality as being constructed of a multiplicity of realities and what he would had to do would be to asserts his power over reality and to make it mean something to himself but he can't because he's fascinated by ever-smaller realities that certain element take on : - The closer my perception become, the less will i be able to say that this is in fact a coat because i would be absorbed in the construction of this fabric, of this hair. Life is like a bridge. You have the two pillar that uphold a bridge those pillars are very concrete but you have to walk over that bridge. The connections between the two pillars does not exist and this is how language works. Language exerts power by narrating, it sumarizes by doing violence, and over this bridge of language you walk in security. Beyond the reality of that you see and which you need to organized, you need to make sense of it by assigning language to it : you exerts power by narrating, by giving it names. Beyond that, it is another world and you see it shine throught, and the two world are not separated anyway that was the issue in Törless - he had the world of pssibilities with Basini, the sexual excitement of Basini was for him to get a glimpse of the other possibilities of being which cannot be in this world.
@abooswalehmosafeer173
@abooswalehmosafeer173 7 жыл бұрын
all the desires under the sun but not the slightest impulse or charge of Will to seal the deal of Destiny....tragedy
@arturogc9829
@arturogc9829 7 жыл бұрын
Robert musil beef ya loco
@gabbyberny1486
@gabbyberny1486 3 жыл бұрын
Joyless negativity Good description
@philotimoc904
@philotimoc904 Жыл бұрын
bookmark 22:55
@leeparsifal672
@leeparsifal672 8 жыл бұрын
While listening to her description of Dr. Paul Arnheim I kept thinking of Donald Trump and the self-confidence behind the idea that a wall between Mexico and the US will solve so many problems : immigration, crime, drugs.
@peterwilhelm1888
@peterwilhelm1888 7 жыл бұрын
What is "Qualities"? "Eigenschaften" sind "Attribute" Ist der Titel jetzt: "Der Mann ohne Qualitäten"?
@abcdefgh1234432
@abcdefgh1234432 6 жыл бұрын
Nein, Attributes sind zugewiesene Eigenschaften, das würde hier nicht passen.
@redschonewille
@redschonewille 9 жыл бұрын
Mixed feelings. If you had continued reading you had different opinions.
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