We haven't been very industrious in our Musil reading habits, R & I, but the project has not been forgotten.
In chapter 34, Ulrich ventures out on a walk. He is pained by reflection. Thinking is dangerous, but drifting with the flow is dangerous, too. Either way: Ulrich sees the pitfalls of degeneration and feebleness wherever he turns. "People are not much concerned, inwardly, with the life they lead." While young, we tend to bemoan being thrown into a world of prefabrications and customs. Most people, Ulrich muses, take the world for granted. All this permanence, order and endurance, beside which we feel like "mere mist", that surround us, even though we have no clue whatsoever as to how we ended up leading this life - thinks Ulrich. We don't even realize it: "they adopt the man who has come to them, whose life has merged with their own, whose experiences now seem to be the expression of their own qualities, and whose fate is their own reward or misfortune." We remember: the men of reality versus the men of possibility. Ulrich here describes persons for whom every aspect of possibility is closed down. There is only necessity - and chance. He stops walking when he recognizes a few houses the construction of which had to do with a rebellious past. Now these houses seem to him like "aunts in outmoded hats, quite proper and irrelevant and anything but exciting." The themes raised in this chapter, the rebellion of youth & the settling down to an orderly life, are important ones for Musil. In A man without qualities, he connects these things to societal movements, class differences and ideology - in that sense, there are no "psychological truths" delivered here. At least so it seems to me up to this point.
Bank director Leo Fischel is a new character introduced to us in chapter 35. He, too, has received a letter from his Grace, count Leinsdorf. Were it not for his "sound business sense" he might have sent him a reply. But Fischel is not very interested in patriotism. He lives for stocks and bonds. As the following chapter states the matter: we are not prone to pass judgement on things that lie outside of our field of expertise. But on the other hand, one might not know after all (except, of course, with stocks and bonds) and one does not want to miss out on something important. Fischel meets Ulrich on the street. The letter from Leinsdorf worried him because of one thing that reappeared in the text: "The Truth". Ulrich is sceptical about the truth and starts talking to Fischel the bank manager about the weird ways in which historical events evolve and how the real cause of an event rarely is what we take it to be. But Fischel is in no mood for philosophy: he is in a hurry, late for a meeting.
Chapter 37 reveals the extent to which Leinsdorf has attempted to engage different societal groups in his campaigne. Not only has Fischel, a simple manager with a wife from high society, received a letter of invitation, but so has the general manager at the bank and even the executives of the National Bank. The campaign excites executives alienated from the day-to-day business of banking as well as former government officials "with no taste for the limelight" who like the idea of a campaign aimed against Germany. Why were they eager to believe in Leinsdorf's ability to promote "vitality"? Musil makes an ironical, but important remark about how those who take part in high circles have to be loyal and, unlike the sneaky bourgeoisie, have to act like they think. But: this only mean that they should not think at all - they merely act. This is, once again, a theme explored in many chapters. Ulrich envies high society for its lack of reflection and its appearance of determination. As we've seen, he has tried to reach a stage of resolution, but he failed. Leinsdorf, on the other hand, epitomizes the non-thinking aristocracy that somehow sets things in movement even though he does not do anything himself. He is an enzyme, a catalyst.
Chapter 37: It was a journalist writing a bunch of articles on the campaign to prove that he had Contacts that set the whole process in motion. The journalist coined the notion of "the year of Austria". Leinsdorf was apalled at first but then he thought about the lesson of Bismarck: Realpolitik, utilizing this & that party, disavowing one's statements or confirming them "as circumstances might dictate". The idea of a "Year of Austria" matches the Man of the times; a person who cannot stay in one place for too long, who drifts from one thing to the other, "understand it however you like". For this "common man", men without money ("unpleasant cranks!") truth is private. That makes them dangerous, I think, in the eyes of Leinsdorf, the man who prefers not to think. This private "man-within-the-man", Musil seems to say, has a very conventional idea of truth, applauding concepts of the world that latch on to the most banal forms of society; a spittoon that can be shut with a single latch; Oehl's system of shorthand; simplification of the administrative apparatus. It might seem that this is the age of self-expression, but what do we do? Scrambling an obscure pamphlet or article together, being praised as the new Newton by a handful of eager readers. "This custom of picking the points out of each other's fur is widespread and a great comfort..." Given this state of things, Leinsdorf's campaign was received as a gift from above. But one thing surprises Leinsdorf. It is not only patriotism that people praise. They actually want to change the world! That, to him, is absurd.
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