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Robert Musil

A sort of introduction

This the only site on the Austrian writer Robert Musil (1880 - 1942). Despite the fact that he is one of the most important writers of this centurty (in Germany Musil has been voted 'Most Important Writer' of this century), there are still more people that have his novel "The Man Without Qualities" on their book-shelves than that have actually read the book.

This site tries to give some background information on the life and works of Robert Musil. This can, among others, be found in a concise biography, essays on his literary works and selections from his diaries.

Characteristic for the works of Musil is his irony, the exactness of a mathematician (which he was) the ever changing points of view, the influx of the modern age and technique upon the modern day man. A conscientious use of language to express his thoughts (in his diaries he called himself monsieur le Vivisecteur) are coupled with a encyclopedic knowledge of culture and criticism thereof and a psychological mystique.

In The Man Without Qualities he tries to portray a modern man who has to live in and cope with a changing world. In contrast to former generations, the modern-day-man cannot afford himself, or be described in terms of 'qualities', as Musil calls it, for all the known certainties have been replaced by a greater diversity; there is no longer a single point one can focus on. The German word 'Eigenschaften' is less ambiguous: it literally means 'characteristics'.

In Young Törleß a story of passion and cruelty of youth situated in a military academy is told. A story in which, as critics later stated, the rise of fascism was already present.

Posthumous papers of a Living Author is a collection of contemplations and short stories, and drafts, he wrote between 1922 and 1935, when he was not working on his largest work of fiction.

On this site you can find a concise biography in four chapters, a timetable, pictures, essays on the work of Musil, a bibliography, and of course some excerpts from his major literary works.

Also, excerpts from his diaries can be found on these pages. His diaries form a sort of intellectual playground, in which Musil kept track of all his thoughts, feelings, and literary ideas. The excerpts taken from his diaries reflect his development as a person and as a writer.

Also you can search these pages on subjects related to Musil and his works. Click on the little question mark that is on the bottom of each page. If you have any comments, or texts you think I should include: please send them.

Clicking on any of the Texts links throughout the site will take you to a randomly selected excerpt from one of Musil's novels.

Enjoy.


About this site

What's new
April 2000. Became a member of Barnes and Nobles affiliate program. Added a Buy this Book link to the available titles. This will take you to the appropriate page at Barnes and Nobles.
Februari 2000. Added some new covers. Added Hovering Life essay. Enhanced the Homepage
May 1999. Added Keyboard Navigation. The underlined letters indicate the 'hotkeys.
April 1999. Added the three essays taken from the New York Book Review
April 1999. Removed/updated the last "dead links".
March 1999. Finished updating the pages to the new layout. They are placed in a directory called "NG": Next Generation :-)
March 1999. Publication of the new layout.
February 1999. Added the Fragen nach Musil essay by Adolf Frise.
January 1999. Started working on the new layout, which is only accesible to 4.x browswers.
October 1998. Enhanced the guestbook. You can now state your favourite book.
June 1998. Added the diary section. Translated the German text into English.
January 1998. Added some JavaScript, mainly for the mouseover-button effects.
October 1997. Added the WebTracker page-hit counters. 6324 visitors so far.
September 1997. Added the guestbook.
October 1997. English version up and running.
1 June 1997. First publication, in Dutch.

This Musil site has been online for a few years now. I have been getting a lot of positive response from a lot of people. Sometimes I get engaged in some intellectual discussion with people who somehow think I am an authority on the works of Musil. Some of this feedback goes back into the site. There are a few remarks that have, through the years, found its way into the site. I must apologize to those of you who have pointed out some very valuable errors, omissions, viewpoints, essays, critics, etc. I did not include you in the copyrights, or give thanks in some other way. From now on I will, on this spot, name the people that help me improve the site, point out errors to me, sent me pictures of covers, etc. This is my thank you. Maybe you can even search for your name.

This site came into being because of an interest in HTML and a love for the works of Robert Musil: it was a perfect match. Also there wasn't any information available on Musil at all. I decided to do something about this. Two years ago a first, rather clumsy site was published. It was the first site on Musil, and has remained so until early 1999, when a French site was launched.

There aren't many good literature sites, and generally they look either basic or just plain terrible. I decided to keep the site's layout basic, navigation clear and still make it look good. That it should have contents which is diverse and well- structured goes without saying. According to the response I get I have succeeded.

I wanted these pages to be viewable by most browsers: Internet Explorer, Netscape, Opera, etc. The point is, as you may know, that these browsers are not very compatible, and that some do not support standards that have been set by the W3C, or have different interpretations thereof.

One noticable difference between Internet Explorer and Netscape is the rendering of CSS-defined font-colors and -weight. IE somehow seems to enlarge the font, and the color I have definde in the stylesheet for Links (#cc0033) is rendered purple-ish in IE, and darker red in Netscape. Enlarging the font-weight also means that absolute positioning, as I have done here, is endangered: some layers are a bit wider in IE than in Netscape. I am not going to account for these kind of differences: if you don't like the look of this site using IE, turn to Netscape. Everything you hear about IE being a better browser for dynamic web-sites is not true: it may sometimes be easier to achieve certain effects, but the same things can be done in Netscape.

For a year or so the layout remained basically the same, and not very dynamic. On other projects I have experimented with dhtml, css, etc. Until I recently came upon a great dhtml-site which gave me a few good ideas to create the pages you are now looking at.

From now on I will keep you informed of what is new and/or changed. Above is a brief summary of the genesis of the site.


Mouse Navigation

Every item you see on these pages is 'clickable' except for the white text-area. You can make it scroll with the red arrows to the right of it. Hyperlinks within this text area are colored red.

Left of the text-area are the chapters. The red-colored chapters are accompanied by a red arrow, indicating the chapter you are now viewing. This red arrow also functions as the 'Back' button. Click this to be transported to the previous page you were viewing.

Atop the text-area are the paragraphs into which the chapters are devided. Click here to view them.

Bottom right of the text-area are 3 Icons: F, ? and E. They stand for Feedack, Search/Help and Email.

For every link a 'Tooltip' has been conceived. It is displayed Bottom rigth of the text-area.


Keyboard Navigation

To the left and above the white text-field are navigational links. Left are the chapters and on top the paragraphs into which each chapter is devided.

One cannot only get to these paragraphs and chapters by clicking the mouse button when the cursor hovers over them, but I have also built in keyboard navigation. The underlined letters indicate the 'hotlinks'. Navigation between the paragraphs can also be done by pressing the keys 1 - 4.

Here is a list of the most common hotkeys.


Is being reworked. Try this link.