Literature
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Robert Musil (1880 – 1942) |
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Robert Musil was born in Klagenfurt, capital of Carinthia. After completing his studies and working for sometime in Berlin he settled in Vienna and became a journalist and writer. During World War I he was busy as a war correspondent at the beginning of World War II he managed to emigrate to Switzerland as he feared for his Jewish wife. His first novel 'Die Verwirrungen des Zögling Törleß' (Confusions of Young Torless) was published in 1906 and hauntingly describes the experiences of a sensitive boy in an exclusive military school with all its repression and brutallity. It was immensely popular. His later publications did not rise to the same popularity.
His major work 'Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften' (Man without
qualities), an impressive piece of prose which was published
in three installments, the third as posthumous fragment. 'Der
Mann ohne Eigenschaften' is concerned with the downfall of an
imagined empire called 'Kakanien' which rather resembles the
Habsburg monarchy and symbolizes world oder itself. The prose
is dark and haunting, ironic and utopian at the same time. |
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