48 Essays 1911- 1914

[On the Essay] 19141

This is probably Mllsiis most important statement of /tis conception of tile nature of the essay as an intennediate and mediating form of discourse be­tween morality and life and between science and art. Musil's approac/t to this problem is wll/sual in tllat lie was a writer wl,o was also higlily tmined as a mathematician alld scientist alld deeply read in philosophy, and the form of the essay offered a congenial place in which he could brillg these areas and problems togetlwr and cOllfrollt tl,em .

For me, ethics and aesthetics are associated with the word essay. It is said to come from "weighing.." and is mostly used by scholars only

to characterize the smaller excrescences, those not written with full com­mitment, of their life 's work; it is also called "attempt." I can also make use u{ it ill dlis fll((t;!, ' St:II:>t:!, (u wliit:lL, liuwt!vt!c, 1 wuulJ likt:! (U give iI Ji{{cn:nt content.

Is the essay something left over in an area where one can work pre­cisely .... Or: the strictest form attainable in an area where one cannot work pra:isely.

I will seek to demonstrate the second case. Description of the field: on one side lies the domain of epistemology, the

science of knowledge. On the other side, the domain of life and art. At the outset it cannot be put any more exactly; for this reason we must ask how the domain of knowledge is circumscribed. For our purposes it is not best to say that it excludes subja:tivity completely; "completely" goes too far. For a certain cold, rational subja:tivity is preserved, but there are spontaneous and accidental factors as well. We might better say: Its results are objective. It is dominated by the criterion of truth. This is an objective criterion; it lies in the nature of the field. There are mathematical and logical truths. There are facts and a combining of facts that are generally valid. That are system~ atic or in accord with laws. In both ruses-and at the same time this is the least of the claims we make for them- they admit a far-reaching spiritual order.

And there are areas that do not admit of such an order. Try detaching from writers' books the characters they have channed into them, and apply­ing to this fictional society the moral laws of human society. One will find that every book-person consists of several people, that he is simultaneously good and reprehensible, that he has no character, is not consistent, does not act causally; in short, that there is no way one can order and classify the

[On the EssayJ 49

moral forces that move him. One can indicate for this person no other path than the accidental path determined by the action of the book. The question whether Torless was right or wrong to torture Basini, whether, further, his indifference to this question is to be taken as a sign of right or wrong, simply cannot be answered. The question why it does not even arise could be answered only in a genuine essay.-As people belonging to a moral circle, with duties, obligations, and intentions, we read a poem and, as we read, all this changes a little in a fashion that can be pinned down almost only by feelings, which quickly dissipate.-50mething similar may be said of those experiences we undergo in unusual moments such as those of love, of an anger out of the ordinary, or of any unaccustomed relation to people and things.

The essay lies between these two areas. It takes its form and method from science, its matter from art. {The expression "from life" is not correct, because it encompasses the matter of laws as well. What in life is analogous to art is what was meant above by the "area of life."} The essay seeks to establish an order. It presents not characters but a connection of thoughts, that is, a logical connection, and it proceeds from facts, like the natural sci­ences, to which the essay imparts an order. Except that these facts are not generally observable, and also their connections are in many cases only a Singularity. There is no total solution, but only a series of particular ones. But the essay does present evidence, and investigates.

Maet[erlinckl' once said: Instead of a truth the essay gives three good probabilities. We will later raise the question when such a probability is to be called "good." But for the moment we 'NOuld like to ask once again how there can be areas in which it is not truth that dominates, and in which prob­ability is something more than an approach to truth.

It must lie in the nature of the objects. That which is logical in an ex­tended sense remains the same. Heretofore, to be sure, the distinction had been sought in such an extended sense of the function. Intuitive knowing was placed in opposition to the ordinary kind, and the attempt was made to derive fro m intuitive knowing the dignity of mystical knowledge. There is also intuition in the purely rational sphere. Beyond Ihis, this conception is applied scientifically to .... But the mystical function is not this intuition, hut a far more encompassing and conceptually less pure one. Man not only thinks, he feels, desires, senses, acts. Just as there are purely automatic ac­tions without the participation of thought, so there are also purely rational ideas without the participation of the feelings or the will. And there are olhers as well. When a thought seizes us, bowls us over, etc., it does in the area of feelings what a revolutionary insight docs in the purely rational area. The depth of its effect is a sign of how great masses of feeling are em-

50 Essays 1911- 1914

pathetically involved. Masses: for here it is not a question of feel ings in the narrower sense of the tenn, but of basic feelings, dispositions of feeling, out of which individuality is composed. This is still a largely uninvestigated area. But one can assume that one factor here is the general emotional makeup of the individual, what has been called temperament, reactivity, stimulatability, etc.; a relatively stable state. Another factor is the personal experiences, including mental oncs. These arc preserved in a series of com­plexes interwoven with trains of thought. Depression is a so-called emo­tional disorder, but it consolidates its dominance with the aid of connected ideas which it colors. Philosophical pessimism, stoicism, Epicurean wisdom, are by no means simply rational structures, but also experiences. Now a rational course of thought Gm be true or false, as can an affective one, but aside from that it "speaks to us" or doesn't speak to us. And there are trains of thought that really work only through the mode of feelings. For a person who has no car fo r them they arc completely confusing and incomprehen­sible. But here it is nevertheless visibly a matter of an entirely legitimate means of understanding, e..-en if it is not of binding gene.;;1 v;,Hdity. The number of such ways of reaching understanding among people is moreover greater than assumed (chimpanzee couples, effect of a leader through cha­risma, etc.). Even the individual person has the experience that the same thought can be dead for him at one time, a mere series of words, alive at another.

This sudden coming alive of an idea, this lightninglike reforging of a great complex of feeli ng (most penetratingly imaged in Sauls becoming Paul) by means of the idea, so that one suddenly understands the world and oneself differently: this is intuitive knowledge in the mystical sense.

On a smaller scale it is the constant movement of essayistic thought. Feelings, ideas, complexes of will are involved in it. These are not excep­tional functions, but on the contrary normal ones. But the thread of an idea tears the other functions out of their situation, and their rearrangement­even if it is only virtual-conditions the understanding, the resonance, the second dimension of the idea.

Since the difference does not lie in the fu nction, it can only be grounded in the nature of the field. We know how much more limited the circle of our knowledge is than that of our interests.

We now exclude mystical interests because their object is metaphysical and because they claim superior knowledge, while we claim for the essay only the reshaping of what is human.

Maeterlinck. Emerson, Nietzsche, in part Epicurus, the Stoics: leaving aside the transcendental, the mystics, but also Dilthey, Taine, and nomothetic

Literary CI!fOl/ide 51

historical research, all belong in the circle of the essay. Here lies the human branch of religion.

We are confronting a new division of intellectual activity. That which is directed at knowledge, and that which is di rected at a transfol1l1ation o f man. Complexes of feeling struggle for dominance. Leading ideas of centuries or generations. New kinds of relationships among people are showing up.

Now of course a ra tional reworking of the various results is valuable. At least a systematic ordering. It is Simply that it must struggle with difficulties that am never be entirely overcome because of the ambigui ty of expression. History of the spiritual movement.

Postscripts: Here Hegel's triple scheme of the rise of the concept is deter~ minant. Rathenau is the example of the degeneration of an essayist into a philoslophicalJ dilettante. A furt her boundary area of essayism is poli tical writing in the daily press. It is exploitative without increasing the resources. Schleiennacher, Schelling, Hegel, Lassalle. 8

~. ,.,. . .... . ... . I ne laCK at systematic mmlOng aetermtnes that people wnte poetry and live like swine. Detennines Romanticism, Expres~ sionism, eccentrici ty. Speaking past one another.

Literary Chronicle 19141

Musil sl/Ows himself bemused at the impulse to write; as always in these essays, Ilis irollic rumillation is directed at himself as well as others. Ullder­/yiflg it is Iris serious concern witli establislring a proper relationship be­tween the difficult problems of aesthetics and specialiUltion 011 tile one hand, alld people's everyday lives 011 the otlrer.

People who write. If one were to express in miles of line lengths o r pounds of paper everything published every yea r just in Germany, one would im­mediately see that one was dealing with one of the most peculiar of social

The University of Chicago Press gratefully acknowledges the contribution of Inter Nationes toward the publication of this book.

Originally published in volumes Sand 9 of Musil's Gesammelte Werke edited by Adolf Fri~. Copyright C 1978 by Rowohh Verlag Gmbh Reinbek b<:i Hamburg.

The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, LId., London C 1990 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Pul>lished 1990 Paperback edition 1994 Primed in the United States of America 99 98 97 543

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Musil, Robert, 1 880~1942,

[Selcctions. English. 1990] Precision and soul: essays Bnd addresses I Robert Musil;

edited and translated by Burton Pike and David S. Luft. p. em.

Translation of selections from v. 8- 9 of Gesammehe Werke in neun Biinden.

ISBN 0-226-55408-2 (doth) ISBN 0-226-55409·0 (paper) 1. Musil, Robert, 1880-1942-Transbtions, English. I. Pike,

Bun on. II . Luft, David S. III. Title. PT2625.USA25 1990 833'.912-dc20 90-10828

CIP

@Thepaperused in this publication mC'Cts the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Scienccs--Permanencc of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.4S-1984.