In an interview on the European Civil War, 1914-1945

There’s a different feel to Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities.

This is the beginning of the arc. It’s set in 1914 and a very different book. Along with Ulysses and A La Recherche du Temps Perdu, some say it’s one of the three great books of the 20^th century. It describes events in Vienna in 1914: a group of people prepares for the 70^th anniversary of Emperor Franz Josef and the 30^th anniversary of Emperor Wilhelm II. Hence it was called The Parallel Action.

The main protagonist, Ulrich, struggles to reconcile the enlightenment spirit of rationality within him and the Nietzschean urge for mysticism and spirit. He fails. But he does have an affair with his sister in the process. And numerous discussions between numerous characters, all representing parts of the declining Habsburg Empire. It’s a fantastic illustration of decline and the philosophical conflict of modernity.

Viennese life was dominated by this conflict, and the passion with which people engaged in it was extreme. The Wittgensteins were a good example. Karl Wittgenstein became fabulously wealthy and controlled most of the Habsburg steel industry. His sons were incredibly talented, sensitive men. Three of them killed themselves because they couldn’t handle their father’s materialistic inclinations. Like many at the time, they got caught up in a fight between spirit and body. It was a rather melodramatic fad. Young men thought they had to emulate Otto Weininger, the young misogynistic author whose premature suicide in 1903 probably triggered this period of self-destruction.