R & I have gotten into the Musil rhytm very successfully. We meet up one or two times a week, working our ways into the book without it becoming too laborious.
A new character is introduced: Moosebrugger. He's a killer & there's something about him (his "dimly discernible principles") that makes Ulrich curious. Moosebrugger has killed several women. Let me spare you the details. He's a poor carpenter, a journeyman who regards himself as an isolated universe, unable to connect with anyone. Women "are conspiring". In the trial, Moosebrugger tries to appear sane and principled, as an anarchist, a political criminal. Ulrich reads about him in the newspapers, and he shows up at the last day of the trial, listening to the judge pleading a death sentence. Musil's - or is it someone else's? - analysis of Moosebrugger's unnatural sexuality has the ring of Bad Psychoanalysis:
"[His] poverty was such that he never dared speak to a girl. Girls were something he could always only look at, even later on when he became an apprentice and then when he was a travelling journeyman. One only need imagine what it must mean when something one craves as naturally as bread or water can only be looked at. After a while one desires it unnaturally. [...] So it is understandable that Moosebrugger justified himself even after the first time he killed a girl by saying that he was constantly haunted by spirits calling to him day and night."
Is this Ulrich's interpretation? This is the reason why Musil is quite difficult. There has been several sections in which I have had some issues with understanding whose perspective it is that we are presented with. But be that is it may. In this chapter, Musil proves to be very insightful regarding the ways juridical & psychiatric discourses are used for different purposes, and that we need to look at the purpose to understand the content. His depiction of cold-blooded journalists who seek contradictions in Moosebrugger's good-natured physical appearance, while being blind to the contradictions in their own whereabouts, is also very intriguing.
By means of a letter from Ulrich's father, the next chapter introduces a major strand of the book. Quite a few stern exhortations are directed at poor Uli by his father (who is, we remember, a conscientious lawyer). He has not advanced in his career as his father has hoped."Just as little can I suspect, after the experience of a hardworking life, that a man rely on himself alone and neglect the academic and social connections that provide the support by means of which alone the individual's work prospers as part of a fruitful and beneficial whole." A sermon as good as any, to be sure! So there better be some changes from now one. Papa has spoken to his friend, "my old and trusted friend and patron, the former President of the Treasury and present Chairman of the Imperial Family Court Division, Office of the Court Chamberlain, His Excellency Count Stallburg". (Dammit why don't I have friends like that?) Ulrich will (his father is sure) talk to Mr. Stallburg about the Jubilee of Franz Josef in 1918 (celebrated just because Germany has a jubilee for their emperor, too). Ulrich will most probably be granted a place on the planning committee. What else?
"From your sister I hear only that she is in good health. She has a fine, capable husband, although she will never admit that she is satisfied with her lot and feels happy in it."
No comments:
Post a Comment