The novel seems increasingly to be reading itself, with Ulrich’s hesitations standing in for his author’s. The unpublished fragments tail into contradiction, pensiveness, and, finally, inchoate notes.
The Man Without Qualities sails off between irreconcilable destinies. Is it an unsalvageable ruin, sidelined by history and circumstance, scarred by authorial indecisiveness? (“Volume One closes at the high point of an arch,” Musil said. “On the other side it has no support.”) Or a triumphant, unforecloseable experiment, an unprecedented escape act out of human history and the limitations of artistic form, into pure possibility? (Musil also referred to the book, not without vanity, as “a bridge into space.”) Choose as you prefer.
JONATHAN LETHEM
CONTENTS
PART I: A SORT OF INTRODUCTION
1 From which, remarkably enough, nothing develops
2 House and home of the man without qualities
3 Even a man without qualities has a father with qualities
4 If there is a sense of reality, there must also be a sense of possibility
5 Ulrich
6 Leona, or a change in viewpoint
7 In a weak moment Ulrich acquires a new mistress
8 Kakania
9 The first of three attempts to become a great man
10 The second attempt. Notes toward a morality for the man without qualities
11 The most important attempt of all
12 The lady whose love Ulrich won after a conversation about sports and mysticism
13 A racehorse of genius crystallizes the recognition of being a man without qualities
14 Boyhood friends
15 Cultural revolution
16 A mysterious malady of the times
17 Effect of a man without qualities on a man with qualities
18 Moosbrugger
19 A letter of admonition and a chance to acquire qualities. Rivalry of two accessions to the throne
PART II: PSEUDOREALITY PREVAILS
20 A touch of reality. In spite of the absence of qualities, Ulrich takes resolute and spirited action
21 The real invention of the Parallel Campaign by Count Leinsdorf
22 The Parallel Campaign, in the form of an influential lady of ineffable spiritual grace, stands ready to devour Ulrich
23 A great man’s initial intervention
24 Capital and culture. Diotima’s friendship with Count Leinsdorf, and the office of bringing distinguished visitors into accord with the soul
25 Sufferings of a married soul
26 The union of soul and economics. The man who can accomplish this wants to enjoy the baroque charm of Old Austrian culture. And so an idea for the Parallel Campaign is born
27 Nature and substance of a great idea
28 A chapter that may be skipped by anyone not particularly impressed by thinking as an occupation
29 Explanation and disruptions of a normal state of awareness
30 Ulrich hears voices
31 Whose side are you on?
32 The forgotten, highly relevant story of the major’s wife
33 Breaking with Bonadea
34 A hot flash and chilled walls
35 Bank Director Leo Fischel and the Principle of Insufficient Cause
36 Thanks to the above-mentioned Principle the Parallel Campaign becomes a tangible reality before anyone knows what it is
37 By launching the slogan “Year of Austria,” a journalist makes a lot of trouble for Count Leinsdorf, who issues a frantic call for Ulrich
38 Clarisse and her demons
39 A man without qualities consists of qualities without a man
40 A man with all the qualities, but he is indifferent to them. A prince of intellect is arrested, and the Parallel Campaign gets its Honorary Secretary
41 Rachel and Diotima
42 The great session
43 Ulrich meets the great man for the first time. Nothing irrational happens in world history, but Diotima claims that the True Austria is the whole world
44 Continuation and conclusion of the great session. Ulrich takes a liking to Rachel, and Rachel to Soliman. The Parallel Campaign gets organized
45 Silent encounter of two mountain peaks
46 Ideals and morality are the best means for filling that big hole called soul
47 What all others are separately, Arnheim is rolled into one
48 The three causes of Arnheim’s fame and the Mystery of the Whole
49 Antagonism sprouts between the old and the new diplomacy
50 Further developments. Section Chief Tuzzi decides to inform himself about Arnheim
51 The House of Fischel
52 Section Chief Tuzzi finds a blind spot in the workings of his ministry
53 Moosbrugger is moved to another prison
54 In conversation with Walter and Clarisse, Ulrich turns out to be reactionary
55 Soliman and Arnheim
56 The Parallel Campaign committees seethe with activity. Clarisse writes to His Grace proposing a Nietzsche Year
57 Great upsurge. Diotima discovers the strange ways of great ideas
58 Qualms about the Parallel Campaign. But in the history of mankind there is no voluntary turning back
59 Moosbrugger reflects
60 Excursion into the realm of logic and morals
61 The ideal of the three treatises, or the utopia of exact living
62 The earth too, but especially Ulrich, pays homage to the utopia of essayism
63 Bonadea has a vision
64 General Stumm von Bordwehr visits Diotima
65 From the conversations between Arnheim and Diotima
66 All is not well between Ulrich and Arnheim
67 Diotima and Ulrich
68 A digression: Must people be in accord with their bodies?
69 Diotima and Ulrich, continued
70 Clarisse visits Ulrich to tell him a story
71 The committee to draft guidelines for His Majesty’s Seventieth Jubilee Celebration opens its first session
72 Science smiling into its beard, or a first full-dress encounter with Evil
73 Leo Fischel’s daughter Gerda
74 The fourth century B.C. versus the year 1797. Ulrich receives another letter from his father
75 General Stumm von Bordwehr considers visits to Diotima as a delightful change from his usual run of duty
76 Count Leinsdorf has his doubts
77 Arnheim as the darling of the press
78 Diotima’s metamorphoses
79 Soliman in love
80 Getting to know General Stumm, who turns up unaccountably at the Council
81 Count Leinsdorf’s views of realpolitik. Ulrich fosters organizations
82 Clarisse calls for an Ulrich Year
83 Pseudoreality prevails; or, Why don’t we make history up as we go along?
84 Assertion that ordinary life, too, is utopian
85 General Stumm tries to bring some order into the civilian mind
86 The industrial potentate and the merger of Soul with Business. Also, All roads to the mind start from the soul, but none lead back again
87 Moosbrugger dances
88 On being involved with matters of consequence
89 One must move with the times
90 Dethroning the ideocracy
91 Speculations on the intellectual bull and bear market
92 Some of the rules governing the lives of the rich
93 Even through physical culture it is hard to get a hold on the civilian mind
94 Diotima’s nights
95 The Great Man of Letters: rear view
96 The Great Man of Letters: front view
97 Clarisse’s mysterious powers and missions
98 From a country that came to grief because of a defect in language
99 Of the middling intelligence and its fruitful counterpart, the halfwit; the resemblance between two eras; lovable Aunt Jane; and the disorder called Modern Times
100 General Stumm invades the State Library and learns about the world of books, the librarians guarding it, and intellectual order
101 Cousins in conflict
102 Love and war among the Fischels
103 The temptation
104 Rachel and Soliman on the warpath
105 Love on the highest level is no joke
106 Does modern man believe in God or in the Head of the Worldwide Corporation? Arnheim wavering
107 Count Leinsdorf achieves an unexpected political success
108 The unredeemed nationalities and General Stumm’s reflections about the terminology of redemption
109 Bonadea, Kakania; systems of happiness and balance
110 Moosbrugger dissolved and preserved
111 To the legal mind, insanity is an all-or-nothing proposition
112 Arnheim sets his father, Samuel, among the gods and decides to get Ulrich into his power. Soliman wants to find out more about his own royal father
113 Ulrich chats with Hans Sepp and Gerda in the jargon of the frontier between the superrational and the subrational
114 Things are coming to a boil. Arnheim is gracious to General Stumm. Diotima prepares to move off into infinity. Ulrich daydreams about living one’s life as one reads a book
115 The tip of your breast is like a poppy leaf
116 The two Trees of Life and a proposal to establish a General Secretariat for Precision and Soul
117 A dark day for Rachel
118 So kill him!
119 A countermine and a seduction
120 The Parallel Campaign causes a stir
121 Talking man-to-man
122 Going home
123 The turning point
PART III: INTO THE MILLENNIUM (THE CRIMINALS)
124 The forgotten sister
125 Confidences
126 Start of a new day in a house of mourning
127 Old acquaintance
128 They do wrong
129 The old gentleman is finally left in peace
130 A letter from Clarisse arrives
131 A family of two
132 Agathe when she can’t talk to Ulrich
133 Further course of the excursion to the Swedish Ramparts. The morality of the Next Step
134 Holy discourse: Beginning
135 Holy discourse: Erratic progress
136 Ulrich returns and learns from the General what he has missed
137 What’s new with Walter and Clarisse. A showman and his spectators
138 The testament
139 Reunion with Diotima’s diplomatic husband
140 Diotima has changed the books she reads
141 Problems of a moralist with a letter to write
142 Onward to Moosbrugger
143 Count Leinsdorf has qualms about “capital and culture”
144 Cast all thou has into the fire, even unto thy shoes
145 From Koniatowski’s critique of Danielli’s theorem to the Fall of Man. From the Fall of Man to the emotional riddle posed by a man’s sister
146 Bonadea; or, The relapse
147 Agathe actually arrives
148 The Siamese twins
149 Spring in the vegetable garden
150 Agathe is quickly discovered as a social asset by General Stumm
151 Too much gaiety
152 Professor Hagauer takes pen in hand
153 Ulrich and Agathe look for a reason after the fact
154 Agathe wants to commit suicide and makes a gentleman’s acquaintance
155 The General meanwhile takes Ulrich and Clarisse to the madhouse
156 The lunatics greet Clarisse
157 A great event is in the making. Count Leinsdorf and the Inn River
158 A great event is in the making.
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