![]() It is unfinished: Musil died in 1942 and, to quote Wikipedia: ![]() ![]() It is translated from 1930s German and a) all translation are imperfect and fail to capture the nuances (and pleasures) of the original (as every translator of Kafka unfailingly points out, much to the English reader’s frustration), and b) it must be in a style and phraseology which is nearly 100 years old.Ģ. Musil’s masterpiece ought to be a difficult read for at least four reasons:ġ. ( The Man Without Qualities, Volume One, chapter 8) Four problems We travel in it day and night, and do everything else in it too: shaving, eating, making love, reading books, carrying out our professional duties, as though the four walls were standing still and the uncanny thing about it is merely that the walls are travelling without our noticing it, throwing their rails out ahead like long, gropingly curving antennae, without our knowing where it is all going… ![]()
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