Modernism, Fiction and Mathematics by Engelhardt Nina

Author:Engelhardt, Nina
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

3

MATHEMATICS, EPISTEMOLOGY, ETHICS: ROBERT MUSIL, THE MAN WITHOUT QUALITIES

‘Musil?!! In a talk, I called his approach “rational writing”, writing from reason. It is the opposite of my own abilities.’1 Hermann Broch’s forceful attempt to distinguish his own literary projects from The Man without Qualities by fellow Austrian author Robert Musil only draws the more attention to similarities between their works. Musil, having read an abstract of Broch’s The Sleepwalkers, expressed concern that such overlaps could be extensive.2 And indeed, like Broch’s The Sleepwalkers trilogy – and Pynchon’s much later Against the Day – Musil’s work explores the development of European society towards the First World War, the disintegration of traditional values and Enlightenment beliefs, and, not least, the role of mathematics in these processes. Like Pynchon and Broch, Musil sets The Man without Qualities against the historical and mathematical developments of the 1880s to 1920s and beyond, but, unlike these works, its actual plot spans only one year. It approaches the First World War, yet, though overshadowed by the imminent catastrophe, never arrives at its outbreak in August 1914. The period is thus condensed into one year, and similarly the setting in the state Kakania, a name based on an abbreviation for the monarchy of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, illustrates a wider situation in modern Europe: ‘On the pretext of describing the last year in the life of Austria, it raises questions about the meaning of modern man’s existence and responds to these in a completely novel way, which is light and ironic but also philosophically deep’, Musil sets out his project in an autobiographical sketch.3 In a further step of condensation, The Man without Qualities introduces mathematics as ‘the new method of thought itself, the mind itself, the very wellspring of the times and the primal source of an incredible transformation’ (MwQ 35). As in Broch’s trilogy then, The Man without Qualities accords maths a privileged position in understanding modern existence. The two Austrian works differ in more than their writing styles, however, and this chapter examines further relations of maths and modernist literature when arguing that, for Musil, maths becomes a model not only of exactitude but also of vagueness and that in this paradoxical double-function it serves to inspire the critical trust needed to adapt epistemology, ethics and aesthetics to a time of profound change.

The assertion in The Man without Qualities that mathematics should be considered as the source of modern times and the method of thought can appear rather surprising. Although the protagonist, Ulrich, works as a mathematician before he embarks on a year-long holiday from life, only modest space is dedicated to direct engagement with maths in Musil’s enormous text that, designed as two books consisting of two parts each, remains a fragment. Both parts of book 1, ‘A Sort of Introduction’ and ‘Pseudoreality Prevails’, were published in 1930, and the first part of book 2 appeared in 1932 as ‘Into the Millennium [The Criminals]’. A further twenty chapters were submitted to the printer but withdrawn

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.