Musil MWQ notes

Here are my notes. Please forgive the typos - notes are notes. Where I thought a word would be particularly useful for a word search I tended to make sure I typed it correctly.

Robert Musil’s Man Without Qualities, (London: Secker & Warburg, 1953).

Notes:

VOL 1

30) Happiness, achievement, energy
33) mistrust, of everyone (24 too)
27) Europa on bull’s back
40) we’ve gained reality, lost the dream
mathematics
41) those bad at maths see the products of maths as bad
Ulrich loved maths because of those who could not endure it
Jacob’s ladder
46) pushing up the ladder, not working at task

47) genius = cunning
48) life lived in the interim

61) L1/3 experimental ideas of youth
85) law’s story
101) silliness of debate confirms his prejudice
104) Diotima
107) Paradox for own sake = juvenile
and that itself must be found wanting

113) imperative of trade over religion

119) Tuzzi is utilitarian and a rationalist.
119-120) exercise, regularity, achievement
163) the ‘dot’ of one’s concerns
201) History = order in chaos
182) excellent constitution – quote L4/5 – ‘well ordered state’
“the fact is, living permanently in a well ordered state has an out and out spectral aspect: one cannot step into the street or drink a glass of water or get into a tram without touching the perfectly balanced levers of a gigantic apparatus of laws and relations. Setting them in motion or letting them maintain one in the peace and quiet of one’s existence. One knows hardly any of these levers, which extend deep into the inner workings and on the other side are lost in a network the entire constitution of which has never been disentangled by any living being. Hence one denies their existence, just as the common man denies the existence of the air, insisting that it is mere emptiness, but it seems that precisely this is what lends life a certain spectral quality – the fact that everything that is denied reality, everything that is colourless, odourless, tasteless, imponderable and non-moral, like water, space, money and the passing of time, is in reality what is most important.”
184) State as an hotel.
207) Homey style thinking L40
216-7) Soul love
222) 1848 – middle class became independent of aristocracy
227) only criminals damage others without the use of philosophy
233) writers of mechanical world = Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert, the Freud, Dostoievski, Strindberg
233) Liberalism = watered down life, a loss of the greatness of the past (Arnheim talking)
234) Monarchy needs great tasks
227) Time: L45, (‘could hear the grass of time growing’) cf p240 L1/2 (sitting at the ‘whirring loom of time’) Goethe quote.
240) domestic disharmony
241) liberalism gives way to racial theories
246) Rosegger [?]
249) Voltaire – people use words to conceal thought, and thoughts to conceal their acts of injustice.
253) the ‘simple things’ in life
253-4) 5000 yrs old letters = human being behaviour – lets try anew
254) desire for knowledge = disease of Dostoyevski (Robert)
255) galloping knowledge/perception change
256) Austrian natural philosophy of muddling through [note I read of this recently as an English character]
257) no whole man, rather human floating in culture medium
258) all we think is either sympathy or antipathy, too much reason
258) too much science / reason = unbridled excess of the sheer fantastic
247) the file on a single individual
265) Bureaucratic growth and success = memos
269) How to deal with status
271) Tolstoy, Berta Suttner
275) no-one is satisfied with self or others
276) the old days better
279) Moosebrugger: contraction of self in society - uneducated v educated
280) Moosebrugger: ‘Right is the law’ – social v personal laws
283-4) Moosebrugger’s insanity
287-8) Law and psychiatry
291) Science library = small, library of life = huge and irrational
290) justice and efficiency can kill
292) excessive morality = unclear, use moral action sparingly, and ‘de-moralize’.
The person both precise and indefinite = cold-blooded, but indefinite

293) change incompatible with morality
296) living hypothetically
299) moderation should not be done to excess
300) philosophers are violent
314) specialization
being bound by nothing

313) life = excitement but little sense
323) demands for social reform
332) colthes
333) Ulrich’s scientificism
338) love/lust
356) pandering to expectations of genius etc
355) too much genius
360) empiricism as evil
355) surfeit of greatness’genius
343) don’t want our want fulfilled
desire to destroy perfection (p361)
361) heart cut out of scientific thinking
362) Truth – the problem
363) Mind gets few of its demands.

VOL 2

10) anti Semitism/pro symbolism
-capitalism
-rationalism
-science
24) youth focuses on the exotic cf older find virtue in simple good
25) Plato works for newspapers
26) Prophets and charlatans use the same phrases no busy person has time to track down
33) A satisfied person spreads the power of love
35) detachment of music from events comes out of id class inflated self importance.
36) ‘ironical’
52) associations as highwaymen,
Practical politics not to be based on the power of ideas, but to be determined by practical needs.
53) Hennenstein and Turckheim said it would turn out a mess.
66) thought is a matter for experts
68-70) History = muddling through
73) Proud as a Spaniard
73) Living the history of ideas instead of the history of the world
75 Live as literature
84) paradox – an author must have many like minded readers to be considered of unusual mind
85) seeking unity (in love) not pairs of opposites
85) military ordering of ideas
86) ideas = louse = itching
90) military = science = mind/ideas
90) beauty
96) the fate of an idea – destroyed then a mere aphorism
96) moral system = how always to be right
96) devotion = how to get on = masculine virtue
100) unfocussed love
119) youth of the day want spontaneous action
120 ultra-experience
123) an age that produces intellectuals not poets
119) Out with impressionism = effeminate
124) attack on objectivity and balance by youth
124) Heine
127) 20c women shed clothes like peeled babanas
137) Pre 1848 ideas
138) those spitting boys who are growing up only use thought and feelings to mislead
139) exaggerated urge to write, talk in streets
141) Musil’s style – L12-13
Wealth a personal attribute
149) no-one is purely rationalist and utilitarian (civil servant) = cold = withered soul
151) character at L1/3
152) sugared water as sleep tonic
154) superman of letters is successor to the prince of letters
155) large scale industry of the mind,
understood by more people therefore greater
158) new language of supply and demand

Greatness by advertising it as so
159) horror at advertising etc
Goethe = first superman of letters
160) more sympathy for great man doing wrong than the lesser doing right
160) Heine in Reisebilder re Napoleon
161) Slow intrigue is the product of pithy analytic mind cf intuition – Heine (ie only the intuitive can leap, like Napoleon)
164) magical thinking by association of events in trauma/ powerlessness
p130+) dog baying to the moon
143) many rich think like socialists
117) potato significance, chairs for football and tennis
109) cool reasonableness of money
93) age of physical culture
92) ‘nanking trousers
86) unity of an idea, but can’t do it
83) inventory of ideas
178) the ‘non-book’ attracts high society
‘work to rule’ brings all to standstill
dynasties against social innovations
184) active spirit – brains to rule brawn
188) if life stupendous, then not easy
(there is always in Musil a sense of the greatness of life)
188) why did any of them live?
189) between 1840s and 60s style of life different in a way no-one remembers
190) now only race horses have genius
190) people talk in vague concepts = The New Age (in all ages)
But it’s the other half of people who drive change
[oh, I am keyed in, I wrote the same thing today, and cf democracy book, The wisdom of Crowds]
191) when asked for exact statement of the opinionated, they fudge
190) New Age = excuse for bad thinking
197) We are convinced ours is the best ordered era
178) work to rule = standstill
198) Equates high order with need for laying down life
202) Asia on rise, Euro on wane
204) Ulrich in opposition to everything, out of joint with his environment
205) Arnheim no fixed opinion, Ulrich always in opposition (also 212)
206) Unity v opposition etc
208) Ulrich’s bad reputation with too many women
209) [Donnie Darko] – cause and god absolute rubbish
209) Ulrich and crime
210) Law of personality
214) modern music, unsatisfying but exciting
213) love is for the objective
216) proto nazi talk, Stefan George [????]
217) nationalized unity of egos
221) ideas, love, fellowship then WWI = love is the ideal of the anti-semites
222) more philosophy of the young
224) Ulrich – there is no whole progress, but old meaning remains
Past ages must have had good things too
227) Current education skimmed a mass of new knowledge that could not be fitted into old dominant or classical outlook. = feeling of inadequacy re education
228) the problem with statistics, what is progress anyhow?
229) All striving leads to mediocre result

232) The average of ideas prevails.
232-3) The young follw the irrations
243) The carnal world seizes Rachel
244) Anger Burns to ash

246) Limitation of fulfillment is best (per Arnheim)
Merchant respects kingship, clergy, aristocracy as pillars of the irrational.
Thus appreciate the ‘legitimate’ representation of these.
246) Free souls act with tradition
247) Desire goes with intellectual culture, impoverishes the soul
247 and 250) Souls unite, but physical desire = bad
249) Mystical understanding – words not enough
251) Funny idea re money and morality
252) to build on rock re humans means building with base emotions, egoisms, tus religion = violence
Requirements for society ( ie what institutions required) = Benthams
253) Money = force (clever system)
Millenium = businessman = rational, but also irrational too must be catered for

254) Work = rational, leisure = irrational
254) the intellectual as jobber of absolution – no ‘meaning’ in life of social rules.
259) germany as the euro ‘other’
258) germany the first country to be caught up in the new era

258 the ‘other’ in other words
258 attempt to concentrate displeasure onto specific entities si oldest psychotechnical apparatus
259 eg xian blames jew
259 also projects the good into pleasure images
259 people kill or like each other never quite knowing how seriously they are doing it
259 hope we get back to ancient daemons- they worked better
260 people bored with the kakanian story’ looking elsewhere for a better / new one
260 simple decisions become enmeshed in historical debate inc colonisation of lower a4ps’ battles in counter reformation
261 agitation = virus
261 govt always had a minority in is sights
261 a supreme circle of oppressors seeing themselves outrageously hoaxed and pestered by the oppressed
267 indignant intellectual class, never satisfied
268 civilian mind lacks solid view of the world
269 order in army creates need fr bloodshed
271 happiness
272 individual’s pleasure factory affected by a complex moral credit system
273 fashion - she absorbed the tyranny of the world undiluted
275 clothes as strange tubes and excresences
276 we live between the miniscule and the universal scale, artfully inventing secure ideas. Ditto society.
277 revolution comes from the decline in cohesiveness, not accumulation of unwholesome conditions = loss of credit
277 rush of daily stimuli makes us ineffectual
278 locked up in work, and after seek out entertainment that did not entertain
278 cultivated persons also lacked the privilege of the deceit of obsessive love, they are adrift, no unifying law. They see the credit running out, and throw themselves on every new idea.
278-9 turn to ethnic nationalism
279 euro has 2000 years edu in altruism
279 the crucified one
287 and / or in the law
288 good old question of the freedom off the will
290 social thought produces anomolous result - greater punishment for the least sane
291 looks back, of course, to Roman antecedents.
291 social view criticised as materialist.
293 Ulrich with his first classs mind not able to recognise opportunities for social advancement and money.
294 think in order to act, act in order to think
296 intuition
296 aristocracy extracted from their murders the virtue of ourage, but what virtue is to be extracted from counting up money?
297 veneration for the irrational comes from his veneration for the aristocracy.
299 what measure of beastliness is permissible to create greatness?
300 intuition was fashionable among those who could not justify their actions by reason
300 the primal power of the father, and the complicated son
301 the strata of thought
302 the passion of a man irritatedd to the point of jealoousy byy another man’s personality - = hostile encounter of two brothers who have not recognised each other.
303 ulrich the unpossessive, unambitious inellect confuses the capitalist.
304 ambiguous charm in ulrich = soul remaining - this an intuitive thought.
306 in love with being in love.
307 german fear of slavonification of of austria
307 a country of borrowings - there is no austrian myth - teh only salvation for austria is amalgamation with germany
312 Child nature should not allow itself to be made a slave of the world, ‘utilitarianised’. Seek to destroy bourgeois values.
313 ego knowledge vs selflessness - ego knowledge = iciness
314 some underlying cohesion of humanity, as yet unknown
314 ie: a spiritual law of of communal awareness overshadowed by egoism
315 gothic ego in place of naturalistic one, numinous in place of phenomenal, transcendant over sensual. The Germanic experience.
316 ulrich says that they were talking about love, as reversal of all earthly relations
319 - 320 they seek unpossessive love, not a capitalism of the heart
320 when they kissed they flet millenia gaze down upon them
324) everyone writes these days, no-one reads
329 for last two generations the end of the soul has been in sight.
330 now no morals, values or experiences
331 germany has gone further down the track than other countries, cold figures and brute sstrength - need to deliver the german sapirit from rationalism
3312 we act best by feeling - eg at billliards
332 all man’s greatness lies in the irrational
335 long running war against individuality going on by rationalism, but maybe when it personality has gone we will enter a new realm
330 the perfect angel painting
336 holidays silly!
339 any emotion that is not limitless is of no value
354 everywhere business is out of touch with age old culture, most of all in germany
355 america is perhaps worst of all, but it is naive, whereas we are coscious of sin
360 one should live the history of ideas? instead of the history of the world? so that one can live as a figue in a book? these attitudes bring a ruthless passion to bear on reality
361 Ulrich in permanant state of preparing for life, but had run out of oil - sees life as a problem to be worked out.
359-361 two sides to ulrich - power and love, love as trust and abandonment. But in ulrich love undeveloped.
362 METAPHOR and truth.
364 liberal ideas in russua led to radicalism
379 nietzsche, nietzsche, nietzsche
380 ‘(The ready-for-use or ‘applied, philosophy and poetry of most people who are neither creative, nor, on the other hand, unsusceptible to ideas consists in just such shimmering coalescences of another man’s great thought with their own small private modification of it.)
381 each of us could do somethin that only he could do
382 what you want is to reproduce yourself in a child instead of achieving something yourself
383 [musil often uses this device:] [Musil gives Clarisse strange thoughts and says:] these things did not seem entirely clear to her when having a series of intuitive thoughts and ideas that are often somewhat askew, bbut upon which these people base their beliefs and actions
384 overvaluing detail, as is the modern superstition of empiricism ending in barbarian degeneration, destrys the ego, produces the man without qualities
383 ulrich coming home with the latest news of the spirit of precision, of speed, of steel
388 the emotions artificially induced by a play
389 Nietzsche and Christ perished for their half-heartedness - kill Ulrich
392 musil gives his characters little day to day delusions
396 - 398 the thoughts of the sedduction
399 entry into another body is a continuation of the child’s liking for secret, even vicious hiding places.
406 crowd behaviour, the communal emotion
407 Walter thinks of Clarisse as mad, that she may make him mad, and then that ‘Between my hands her darling hands have frozen into a Grotesque mask.’

407 in reaction to the mob - i once said that when a great many people are in favour of something then something sensible would come of it. Of course there are exceptions to the rule.
409 military controlof the crowd
410 limited people’s rule new here.
410 how pleasant the mob is even when it is trying to make itself unpleasant!
411 certain condition of life that allows one to do anything, such as order shooting, as long as he that possesses that quality does not mind what life does to him. Whereas the solitary and intense individual unnerves the others
413 revolutions - the man of intellect comes off worst.
414 ulrich becomes an action man
415 opposition always changes its tune when it gets power.
416 Is it not a thousand times more important to come to gips with life than to write?
417 ideas and history, politics ideally as means of pervading the sphere with ideas.
417 arnheim baulks at the idea there is no reality value to our actions, aka Leinsdorf ‘provisionally definitive’.
the adddiction of talking
rulers should experiment and report results
418) we live experimentally
We live with no guiding idea
people used to live deductively
419) madness abolished so no sincerity in what we do
Ulrich’s idea of business.
421) decision and action have been divorced, hence neither is responsible.
421 in business, and elsewhere, business and action divorced - this is a key problem
423 once people make a conession to capitalism they become its most brilliant propnents
424 offer of job to ulrich by arnheim was to corrpt ulrich, because aA had thought that U hmight have been capable of achieving something A could not. A had been afraid of U’s wit.
424 the solidity of wesern civilisationa nd its wonderful network of forces and inhibitions
428 ulrich squirms under touch
430 the age of individualism has come to an end (this after a discussion of film)
431 Schiller, The robbers, the supressed introduction?
‘you would embrace the devil himself as. be3ing the one man without a peer.’
431 business requires restlessnes
432 business and finance are coming to power and one does wonder sometimes what we are going to do with this power
433 photographs showing the promise of the little boy
434 why did this promise work for so many others?
430 the age of great personalites is over
431 schiller, the robbers, suppressed introduction, you would embrace the devil himslef for being the one man without a peer
432 business and finance are coming to power and i do sometimes wonder
what what we are going to do with this power
433 the hopes for the boy in the photo invisible at the time, could easily have become reality, but he escaped sme frightful danger by the skin of his teeth.
434 ulrich wonders if he does nnot fiter life suffiently so as to be like ohers and avoid the contradictions.
435 living in the country = monotonous cndition of the soul o simplicity
cf the abstract nature of town life witth is thousands of experiences that can’t be made to interrelate, and tends to the abstract ‘in the notorious way we may know’.
436 the law of life is narrative order
people,are content with this and abhor all cogitation that reaches beyoond this

437 one must neever lose sight of the unertainty of the knowledge upon which we build our reality
437 the prostitute
439 ulrich laacks inner unity, envies even that of a madman
439 anagnorisis (dict)
439 unity of soul = moosebrugger’s madness
moosebrugger a rampant metaphor of order
442 My fatherhas died ‘Congratulations’
443 the house as a stage - life as a drama [cf ulrich at p 438, 436-7
446 one has to chisel oneself out from a block of stone, and we have to force each other to do it.
448 clarisse transcends the mundane - everything turns into music’ colour a nd rhythm..
450 heart wildly bouncing
453 for ulrich the concept f the world had nomeaning, but ulrich’s self scrutiny was high stilll

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

VOLUME 3
ix - the ideal lover is the other half of the seeker, and the idea is not to possess that person but to become one with them, and so become whole.
- union of things is a central core of his work. becoming one with the ‘other’. x - ‘i am in love, but i do not know with whom’
- maeterlinck
x - to live in ecstacy is the goal, but it mst sstand up to the light of day
xi - through rationalism to god?
xi - this book concerned with borderlines
5 ulrich is 32
10 ulrich meets his sister without qualities!
13 their exactitude made his rather romantic atachment to exactitude look a little shady - but they haven’t a trace of soul about them - finallyit is they who put the new ideas into practice, but only after those ideas have faded away
19 ‘let’s assume that a woman whm we care about has been raped. Within the framework of a heroic system of ideas the consequence would inevitably be vengeance or suicide. In a cynical-empirical system, we should expect her to shake it off like a hen. And what would really happen today wqwould doubtless be a compromise. but this lack of a touchstone within ourselves is more sordid than all the rest of it.’
24 his feudal friends’ much admired way of life
25 the play of the only child
26 vampirism, devouring the object of desire. ulrich wanting to be a girl.
28 the trader who understood nothing of the contract stood there like reflex track in the collective human brain, something that does not develop a consciousness of ts own. - the merchant of mourning
29 the journalist at work shaping and moulding the story of the life, the ‘important’, and the death.
30 ulrich was ssailed by the uncertainty of one living among others but wanting something different from what they want.
34 ulrichs father railed against the ’social school of thought’
35 a quaint old man who had alwways subordinated himslef to the heirarchies of this world, but harboured a multitude of rebellious impulses
36 to fathers it always looks like their sons are giving themselves unpardonable liberties
38 battle between a romantic impulse and the need to preserve the integrity of the product of one’s reason.
40 life never quite seems the proper fit
40 In sharing memories do memories sometimes coalesce?
I’ve spent my whole life being afraid i might be the only person not to understand that sort of thing
41 i’ve always found it hard to learn things and i have never really known what anything was about.
53 music alone = aestheticism = weakness
55 the man of genius has the obligation to attack
60 Biedemeier furniture. Rational and pure cf Baroque ostentation
Biedermeier
58 colllective ego = collective eggoist
64 ulrich doess not want to persue maths beccause any innovation he makes would only put him 10 years ahead of the field at best
64 ass ones ideas change so old ideas tha looked bad now look ood, so really one ccan choose any sert of ideas to be enthusiast about, and eveerything contriburtes to an unfathomable evolution
agatha says this was once called god working in mysterioous ways - conent talk.
65 ideas come intot he world in two half true halves, and putting them toeher meant we do not work in a solitary and solemn way
65 super lucid moment
66 walking about own o fill hmself up with something
68 to be entiely in harmonny with oneself - try it?
69 her mind throbbing like the hea rt of someone who has just excaped a danger unseen until the moment when it was past.
71 at school it woud have seemed to her absurd to rebel in any way against the estalished system, which had no real relevane to herself andd whch was cle arly part of a world constructed according to the ideas of fathers and eachers.
72 what did she believe in? she felt she was destined to experience somethig extraordinary something of a different order.

Posturings of laove by men as sincere as cermonial masks of africans
73 love just posturing
Strindberggian war of teh sexes, woman uses guile andd weakness to ensnare man.
74 he was a man who did good without having any real good in him
80 [Adler: man is a compensatory animal]
81 contrary to laws of nature for good to come from great evil. only an 8 year old aesthete could think othrwise.
82 life - everything over so soon and it is probably all for notthing
83 ulrich’s life of unsatisfied yearning, Agatha’s life without will to live
86 success is the moral of our age
the wrld that men have made

Musil ponders his scientific education, always feeling his knowledge is incomplete.
87 our age cares nothing for ideas and wants only action., and all this actin comes to nothing.
93 I may do as i like, but i don’t even want to.
95 morals cf natural law
96 morals not absolutes, but depend on onext. moral people dreary.
obscure memory of an ancient whole is stirred by words
94 morals contradict each other.
98 the touch of another resisted because of the rubble of mistrust and resentment that has accumlated by Ulrich’s age.
100 te experiene of the saint - access to strength, heart roundless, spirit formless
101 the german way of expressing the burning rapture of things is to gaze form on high with vacancy of expression, nature enjoyment.
102 transcendene of he mystics
103 but what was the messge given to those experiencig tanscendence?
M wishes this experience was given to someone in the exact sciences

104 .the convent, the power of good leeches out as a poiason when it is shut up in a solid form - officers, the mainstay of crown and alter the worst towwards them. Emotions will not edure being tied down.
106-7 agathe loses her attachment to the wrld with death of fist husband. she always mistrusted reality anyow. Her repressiion manifested itself in the new man, unsuited to her.
106 two kinds of people in love - those who are blinded, and those who see the world anew.
108 eurpeans refrain from indulging in extreme acton - but is this repression bad?
112 transcendence again - or hyper perception
117 mysiticism treated in the church like enterprise is treated in bureaucrcy
116 flying like Icarus
121 all the ordinances of morality are concesions to a society oof savages
122 society splitting into maths and mysticism - one day we will e more intelligent and more mystical
132 ideas and feelings out of vogue, action is in.
137 In literature talents a llittle above average are the one lablled geniuses, in philosphy the shallow thinkers are the greatest
136 writing of a spirit of a new masculinity
137 there are scapegoats and virtue hounds
138 ulrich annoyed by his friends capacity for enhusiasm, which fastened on the wrong object
146 there are many people who prefer crazy ideas to difficult ones
138 - 144 the flasher, and the philosopher, meingast
148 sex = the superficial goatish gambollings of our age.
151 Nietzsche ‘one must obey someouter rules for inner freedom
152 Agathe tempts Ulrich with the irrational sayshedoes not value his reason
!54 Altering the will
For the young truth is exciting, for the old it stiffens them
In the highest state there is no good and evil only faith and doubt
155 Agathe was about to embark on a course of intuition, not truth.
157 Ulrich obeys Europeam empiricism that it will all come out in the wash to his cost
165 unity with the world via enhanced redeptivity
167 Clemenceau and disraeli wrote plays or novels
172 it is a healthy sign if we now renounce the search for the buried entrance to the soul, and strive rather to come to terms with life as it is.
172-3 history’s great changes of mood , from humanitarianism to cruelty, passion to indifference, etc.
175 between two people where a certain level of feeling has been reached such that any sort of falsehood becomes impossible, and they practically can’t speak to each other.
175 nice para re intimacy
179 emotions without distraction destroy us
183 evil iss enacted with passion and emotion whereaas good is pitiful and with poverty of emotion
183 moral people are bores
184 action in life is taken by people good in a bad way, and those bad in a good way.

185 good and bad lose meaning when compared with spontaneous pleasure
187 Europe in decline

182 to 190 Why we do nothing in the face of a moral dilema
205 multi cultures, italians, trieste.
207 rise of the middle class, hatred of bureaucracy for aristocracy, jewish namess given to them as revenge on aristocracy.
210 opposed to assimilation of jews like the english aristocracy praactices
prefers multiculturalism
211 ideas as restless as bees
jewish state
216 socialism, intelligensia, crown
217 pronouncements had the character of compllicated’ dreams
2217 all his elaborate pronouncements just to put him off his guard [this has an awfully VLA ring about it]
s222 the solidity of the identity of the married woman
224agathe desires some form of nothingness
225 agathe flirts with poison
225 two modes of thought simultaneous, the rational and irrational ‘The laws governing these two bear roughly the saame relationship to each other as the laws of the timbwer yard do to the d’dark interlacing laws of the forest with all their mysterious workings and rustlings.’
226 agathe - ‘I am in loovve but i dont know with whom’
227 the deception of the simple good life, always lacking something.
228 agathe - unity of conscience and senses

232 caast thyseelf into the fire, after casting all one has there too.

236 going into the country is rousseauism
237 art should make us feel, move us, entertain us, and give us a whiff of noble thoughs.
239 feeling
tram = wheeled mobile hut
240 life pours away into drab details, giving it context and meaningess meaning
240 to give life meaning one needs to live a permanent state

240 this feeling of having done something silly and exposed oneself to agathe just might be a reaction to feelings that had not yet taken shape
241 Saul v Paul

246 the truth of the world, is that it is like falling out of loove, the delusion is greater than the reality, which is pretty ordinary indeed.
249 these days love = sex
255 marriage, sex, passionate love and self help books
274 agathe is ulrich’s self love, which he hitherto lacked.
288 what we need is illusion {clarisse}
288 Meingast the master (hitler) - all one needs is will power = a kind of indulgent belief in the self
291 can you imagine esus as the manager of a coal mine?
292 He took a high tone with him, as weak, downtrodden people will do whenever they getr a chance to work off their bad temper on someone.’
293 we make a small compact with death whe we listen to Tristan
302 meingast homosexual
308 For many pages Clarisse has been under impression of everything as aa pattern, as signs., and at 308 to 9 Clarisse and Walter reach a point of rapidly shifting psychological closeness, of a type not unrelated to musil’s theme of transcendence, here related to the understanding of the creative type.
310 that feeling of every dweller on earth who feels impelled to communicate somethin
308 - 10 - an intuitive reciprocation of feelings transcending the self, findd a home in others.
314 philosophy - man is good. a european idea, said by the poet Feuermaul.
314 competition between salons
318 ‘despite all the manoeuvres of her rivals she still held her gentle sway’

321 nowa days when a womans appearancce is reminiscent of an efficiently plucked fowl ready to be popped into the pot…!
321 in praisse of long dresses
324 sooner or later there will be an era of unassuming sexual comradeship, when a boy and a girl will stand, reconciled and uncomprehending, gazin at an anciet heap of broken colckwork springs that was once what made Man and Woman tick.
325 important para re love - read this again and again.

326 ‘two-in-oneness ‘
327 homage to the girl child per dante and ibn al arabi
355 the face was not as though carved from wood, but had hardened from the daily bombardment of small annoyances.
361 and 358 will power the precondition for life
370 will power, will power, will power

modern interest in physicall culture
373 the salon as a political party
372 everyone arming to the teeth
391 dict; litotes
393 journalism springs fromliberalism?
401 the expectation of ssuccess is the primary sexual atttraction that a man has.
401 hugger-mugger
403 ethos = eternal verity neither eternal nor true, valid for a time so that society has something to diverge from

402 ‘man is good’ is an ethos
405 Rousseau-ian opinions as to the inborn goodness of man
406 the ’spirit’ governed by money
407 nowadays everyone is so extreme in their opinions
409 the two principles; first humainty is good 2 humanity is corrupt and must be subdued.
410 these contradictions at 409 reconciled
413 Ulrich enjoying the prospect of the girl who wants to be finished with him

414 those of limited mental capacity create ‘and’ relationships and conepts, cf more elaborate abstract forms. .the world is full of such simplistic thinking.

415 dict; sixteen quarterings L 1,2
415 Catholic view of human dignity preventts eugenic approach
416 human rights and other foreign revolutionary stuff
417 people so disapointing to his highness, eg rush from one superstition to another, from one ccause to another
417 Bremshuber’s racist policies
419 if the father is poor the sons love money, if the father has money the sons love mankind
419 the people should love each other and the government needs a strong hand to make them do it
420 the masses are illogical - they make use of logic ony as a trapping
421 the history of truth and of feeling are interelated, but the history of feeling is more obscure.
421 ideas about man in the middle ages were full of belief in man’s reason and will
426 everything is moral except for morality
426 the problem of morality
427 eremetic love - dict
430 morality is imagination
430 imagination is not arbitrary
431 the surprise comment from ‘where life grows inmagical stillness’
434 two sides in he debate - one that humankind is basically nice, and the otther the opposie.
436 scapegoats exist both for love and hate.
438 the final resolution, one can die for ones own ideas but to kill another for ideas not their own is a murderer.

440 moral imagination = feeling
442 feelings are all wild and loose
443 a quest for feeling