Etc., etc. Musil.

My neighbor upstairs has taken to singing. She growls arpeggios for hours on end. Or that's what I think it is. I'm not one to delay revenge, so I play Spacemen 3 and Suicide on max volume. My ears respond, chirp, chirp and that's fine. I don't know her name but maybe she is called Kreetta and she is probably a student of engineering and most likely she was born in Lahti. There's something of a blizzard outside as I drag myself off to Bristol. R & I have already discussed the spirit of Kakania and now we are done with the attempts and failures of Ulrich at becoming a Great man. Being an admirer of Napoleon (for being a tyrant) he joins the army. But the position of a simple army officer did not promise eternal greatness. After an unhappy concurrence with a financier (and some lady) he ends up drunk on a desolated square, accompanied by "the paving stones". So after that he tries out engineering. The engineer is the emblematic Hard Mind thrusting reality in accordance with his tools, right? Hard-boiled no-nonsense forcing of nature into some shape or other, depending on what sort of things we fancy. But the engineer has one fault. He does not use the tools on himself, he doesn't apply his method on himself, and therefor Ulrich has to look elsewhere for the realization of heroic deeds. The essence of matemathics, however, is exactly what Ulrich is after; for him, science is the rebuke of silly people with a stern belief in goodness who are only too intent on keeping their paltry lives unchanged. Science, man, what a great thing. "To be efficient, one cannot be hungry and dreamy but must eat steak and keep moving." Ulrich does not want to be a dreamer, science promises Reality. For all his lofty thoughts about rigor and exactness, Ulrich's motives for turning to science appear very self-centered, moralistic and, well, comic. So, that's for now.

PS: In my village, "paying Ulrik a visit" is an euphemism for puking. I wonder how regional that expression is.