Organized Violence/Violating Order: Robert Musil's Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleß

Abstract

Philosophical is a phrase used by David Luft to characterize a general tendency in German novel of early twentieth century (18-22). In an era of crisis in traditional bourgeois culture, systematic metaphysics no longer seemed possible, and novel also moved away from story and immediate aesthetic totality in direction of essayism, interpretation, and fragmented form. The result was a series of novels that crossed traditional boundaries between philosophy and fiction: the novel became vehicle for continuation of metaphysics by other means: what was perceived elsewhere as end of novel was defined by these German writers as characteristic fulfillment of form (18). One thinks of long debates between Naphta and Settembrini in Thomas Mann's Der Zauberberg (1924), essays on Western civilization in Hermann Broch's Die Schlafwandler (1931), and rich discursiveness of Robert Musil's own masterpiece, Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (1930-33), as typical examples of philosophical essayism in twentieth century fiction.' The philosophical tendency of Musil's fiction is already apparent