An Unreliable Synopsis: Notes Toward a Contextual Reading of Robert Musil and Walter Benjamin

Abstract

This essay proposes a contextual analysis of Walter Benjamin and Robert Musil and is organized in two parts. The first part shows that the two writers were interested in the French anthropologist Lévy-Bruhl's theories about primitive mentality and argues that, for both of them, this theme belongs to a more complex strategy of going beyond Kantian gnoseology. The elaboration of a theory of intense experience (Erfahrung) in Musil and Benjamin connects the first with the second part of the essay. This, on the basis of Passagen-Werk and The Man without Qualities, explores the potential of a contextual reading around the theme of the flâneur.

Keywords:

• anthropology
• Walter Benjamin
• flâneur
• Lucien Lévy-Bruhl
• Robert Musil

Notes

Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2004), Vol. 3, 103. Throughout this article, where possible, existing English-language translations have been used. Other translations are my own. Robert Musil, The Man without Qualities, trans. Sophie Wilkins and Burton Pike (London: Picador, 1995); Precision and Soul. Essays and Addresses, ed. and trans. Burton Pike and David S. Luft (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1990); Diaries 1899–1941, selected, trans., and with a preface by Philip Payne, ed. and with an introduction by Mark Mirsky (New York: Basic Book, 1999); The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge, MA/London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002).

Benjamin, Selected Writings, I, 102.

See Axel Honneth, “A Communicative Disclosure of the Past: On the Relation Between Anthropology and Philosophy of History in Walter Benjamin,” in The Actuality of Walter Benjamin, ed. Laura Marcus, Lynda Nead (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1998), 120.

See Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, Les fonctions mentales dans les sociétés inférieures (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1951), 430: “On reconnaît ici la période “préanimiste” de M. Marrett, sur laquelle M. Durkheim et Mauss ont également insisté”; as regards Marrett, Lévy-Bruhl refers to the essay “Preanimistic Religion,” Folk-Lore 9 (1900): 162–82.

It should be noted that Lévy-Bruhl's name does not appear in the first volume of Gesammelte Briefe, which contains the correspondence from 1910 to 1918. It is reasonable to suppose that, at that time, Benjamin had at least a general knowledge of anthropological literature: during the summer semester he spent in Monaco in 1916, Benjamin attended, and was deeply impressed by, the Americanist Walter Lehmann's course on Mexican culture and Maya and Aztec religion.

On this Sammelreferat see Günther Karl Pressler, Vom mimetischen Ursprung der Sprache. Walter Benjamins Sammelreferat “Probleme der Sprachsoziologie” im Kontext seiner Sprachphilosophie (Frankfurt am Main [et alibi]: Peter Lang, 1992).

Benjamin, Selected Writings, III, 70.

Ibid., III, 70.

See Andrea Gnam, Die Bewältigung der Geschwindigkeit. Robert Musils Roman “Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften” und Walter Benjamins Spätwerk (München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1999); Michael Makropoulos, “Modernität als Indifferenz? Ein Versuch zu Walter Benjamins Urteil über Robert Musils «Mann ohne Eigenschaften», Konkursbuch. Zeitschrift für Vernunftkritik 19 (1987): 147–57; see also Eckart Goebel, Konstellation und Existenz. Kritik der Geschichte um 1930: Studien zu Heidegger, Benjamin, Jahnn und Musil (Tübingen: Stauffenberg Verlag, 1995); Susan Nurmi-Schomers, Visionen dichterischen ‘Mündigwerdens’. Poetologische Perspektiven auf Robert Musil, Rainer Maria Rilke und Walter Benjamin (Tübingen: Niemayr, 2008), particularly 315–33; Ulrich Johannes Beil, “Alterität, Aura, Präsenz. Mediale Konstellationen bei Hofmannstahl, Musil und Benjamin,” Medien, Technik, Wissenschaft. Wissenschaftübertragung bei Robert Musil und in seiner Zeit, ed. Ulrich Johnnes Beil, Michael Gamper, and Karl Wagner (Zürich: Chronos, 2011), 95–118.

See The Correspondence of Walter Benjamin and Gerschom Scholem, 1932–1940, trans. Gary Smith and Andre Lefevre, introduction by Anson Rabinbach (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 52: “If you want to read the Musil, you may keep it, though only for the time being. I have lost my taste for it and have taken leave of the author, having come to the conclusion that he is far too clever for his own good.”

Cf. Ferruccio Masini, “Musil ovvero l’ironia della ragione,” Il travaglio del disumano. Per una fenomenologia del nichilismo (Napoli: Bibliopolis, 1982), 176; see also Alexander Honold, Die Stadt und der Krieg. Raum- und Zeitkonstruktion in Robert Musils Roman «Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften» (München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1995), 19–20, 25–29.

Musil, Precision and Soul, 196-97.

On Musil and Lévy-Bruhl see Florence Vatan, Robert Musil et la question anthropologique, preface by Jacques Bouveresse (Paris: PUF, 2000), 73–81; Ritchie Robertson, “Musil and the “primitive mentality”, Robert Musil and the Literary Landscape of His Time, ed. Hannah Hickmann (Salford: University of Salford, 1991), 13–33; Genese Grill, “The «Other» Musil: Robert Musil and Mysticism,” A Companion to the Works of Robert Musil, ed. Philip Payne, Graham Bartram, and Galin Tihanov (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2007), 333–54; Nicola Gess, “Expeditionen in Mann ohne Eigenschaften. Zum Primitivismus bei Robert Musil,” Musil-Forum. Studien zur Literaratur der klassischen Moderne 31 (2009–2010): 5–22; Brigitte Weingart, “Verbindungen, Vorverbindungen. Zur Poetik der «Partizipation» (Lévy-Bruhl) bei Musil”; Marcus Hahn, “Zusammenfließende Eichhörnchen. Über Lucien Lévy-Bruhl und die Ethnologie-Rezeption Robert Musils,” Medien, Technik, Wissenschaft, 19–46, 47–72.

Cf. Robert Musil, “Kulturchronik aus der Begabungs- und Vererbungsforschung,” Gesammelte Werke. II. Prosa und Stücke, Kleine Prosa, Aphorismen, Autobiographisches, Essays und Reden, Kritik (Hamburg: Rohwolt, 2000), 1701–02; Musil refers particularly to Erich Rudolf Jaensch, “Über den Aufbau der Wahrnehmungswelt und ihre Struktur im Jugendalter,” Zeitschrift für Psychologie 91 (1923): 83–87; 88–144; on Jaensch see Mitchell G. Ash, Gestalt Psychology in German Culture, 1890–1967. Holism and the Quest for Objectivity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 312ff., and the essays collected in Psychologie im Nationalsocialismus, ed. Carl Friedrich Graumann (Berlin, Heidelberg, New York, Tokyo: Springer Verlag, 1985); on Musil and Jaensch, see Vatan, Robert Musil et la question anthropologique, 221–22, and Gnam, Die Bewältigung der Geschwindigkeit, 64–69.

Musil, The Man without Qualities, 608–09.

Benjamin, Selected Writings, II.1, 208.

See Olivier-Gilbert Leroy, La raison primitive. Essaie de réfutation de la théorie du prélogisme (Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 1927), on which cf. Benjamin, Selected Writings, III, 71–73.

Musil, Precision and Soul, 131.

Benjamin, Arcades Project, 456–57.

See, e.g., Patricia Lavelle, Religion et histoire: sur le concept d’expérience chez Walter Benjamin (Paris: Cerf, 2008); Markus Ophälder, Costruire l’esperienza. Saggio su Walter Benjamin (Bologna: Clueb, 2001); Howard Caygill. Walter Benjamin: the Colour of Experience (London: Routledge, 1997); Werner Graf, Erfahrungskonstruktion: eine Interpretation von Robert Musils Roman “Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften” (Berlin: V. Spiess, 1981); Kordula Glander, ‘Leben, wie man liest’. Strukturen der Erfharung erzählter Wirklichkeit in Robert Musils Roman “Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften” (St. Ingbert: Röhrig Universitätsverlag, 2004).

Cf. Benjamin, Selected Writings, II.1, 209; see Ferrruccio Masini, “Il palinsesto magico,” La via eccentrica (Casale Monferrato: Marietti, 1986), 185–97; and Margaret Cohen, Profane Illumination. Walter Benjamin and the Paris of Surrealist Revolution (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1993).

Musil, Precision and Soul, 130.

For an analysis of the relationship between Musil and Spengler see Jacques Bouveresse, “Musil ou L’Anti-Spengler,” La voix de l’âme et les chemins de l’esprit. Dix études sur Robert Musil (Paris: Seuil, 2001), 147–71; Barbara Neymeyr, Utopie und Experiment. Zur Literaturtheorie, Anthropologie und Kulturkritik in Musils Essays (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2009), 189–216; Carlo Salzani, Crisi e possibilità: Robert Musil e il tramonto dell’Occidente (Bern [et alibi]: Lang, 2010). Musil read very carefully Klages's Vom kosmogonischen Eros, as testify his notes in Notebook 21, for which cf. Robert Musil, Tagebücher, ed. Alfred Frisé (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rohwolt, 1983), I, 615–24. On Felix Krüger with reference to Musil, see Vatan, Robert Musil et la question anthropologique, 216–23.

Musil, Precision and Soul, 198.

Musil, The Man without Qualities, 689.

See Stefan Jonsson, Subject without Nation: Robert Musil and the History of Modern Identity (London and Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000), 64; for further information on both Musil and Benjamin see Honold, Die Stadt und der Krieg, 51–71.

Benjamin, Arcades Project, 10.

Ibid., 417.

Jonsson, Subject without Nation, 137.

Musil, The Man without Qualities, 706.

Musil, The Man without Qualities, 706.

Ibid., 706. Cf. Robert Musil, Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften, ed. Adolf Frisé, 2 Bände (Rowohlt: Reinbek bei Hamburg, 2006), I, 647: “Die Häuser bildeten hoch und geschlossen den soderbaren, oben offenen Raum Straße….”

Benjamin, Arcades Project, 416.

Musil, The Man without Qualities, 734.

Ibid., 347.

Benjamin, Arcades Project, 420.

Ibid., 446.

Cf. Jonsson, Subject without Nation, 175–216.

Cf. the reflections developed by Otto Rank, Freud's disciple, in his essay on Doppelgänger published in 1914 in “Imago.” See also Victor I. Stoichita, A Short History of the Shadow (London: Reaktion Books, 1997).

I am referring to Jean Starobinski's wonderful essay Portait de l’artiste en saltimbanque (Paris: Flammarion, 1983).

Such analysis would require an attentive investigation of the flâneur motif, whose strategic value is confirmed by its presence at crucial points in the novel: see at least the long passage in the eighth chapter of the third part, which marks the moment when Ulrich suddenly (plötzlich) decides to make Agathe part of a more personal sphere: cf. Musil, The Man without Qualities, 785–86.

Ibid., 706.

Benjamin, The Arcades Project, 83.

Ibid., 429. On the relationship between Benjamin and the city, see at least Graeme Gilloch, Myth and Metropolis. Walter Benjamin and the City (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996); Winfried Menninghaus, Schwellenkunde. Walter Benjamins Passage des Mythos (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1986); Pierre Missac, Passage de Walter Benjamin (Paris: Seuil, 1987); Susan Buck-Morss, The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989); Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project, ed. Beatrice Hanssen (London, New York: Continuum, 2006).

Musil, The Man without Qualities, 688–89.

See Daniel Pick, Faces of Degeneration: A European Disorder, c. 1848–c. 1918 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). On the chthonic and Luciferian aspect of urban space, see David L. Pike, Metropolis on the Styx. The Underworld of Modern Urban Culture, 1800–2001 (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 2007), and, with particular reference to Benjamin, Passage through Hell. Modernist Descents, Medieval Underworlds (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 1997), chap. five; The Representation of Hell: Benjamin's Descent into the City of Light, 203–47; see also Rosalind William, Notes on the Underground. An Essay on Technology, Society, and the Imagination, New edition with a new afterword by the author (Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT Press, 2008).

Cf. Musil, Tagebücher, I, 9: “Als Sie im Morgendämmern aufwachten griffen Sie sich an den Kopf, wie wenn Sie eine lange bange Fahrt gemacht hätten durch Gegenden aus denen noch kein Mensch heil → degenerierende Gefahr ← zurückkehrte. →?! ← Ihre ganze Lebensansicht und Anempfindungen wurde vor die Stirn gestossen,” which I have transcribed including diacritical marks.

Jonsson, Subject without Nation, 75.

Musil, Diaries, 2.

Cf. Musil, Tagebücher, I, 8.

Musil, Tagebücher, I, 8.

Benjamin, Arcades Project, 449 and 453.

Ibid., 334.

See Heinrich Puppe, Muße und Müßiggang in Robert Musils Roman “Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften” (St. Ingbert: Röhrig Universitätsverlag, 1991). Ulrich's Socratic attitude has been analyzed by Daniel J. Brooks, Musil's Socratic Discourse in Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften: A Comparative Study of Ulrich and Socrates (New York [et alibi]: Peter Lang, 1989).

Ibid., I, 10.

Musil, The Confusions of Young Törless, 1.

Benjamin, Selected Writings, II.2, 731–32.

Jonsson, Subject without Nation, 75.

The reference is obviously to the Konstellation des Erwachens, which Benjamin mentions in opposition to Louis Aragon's ideas in the Konvolut N of his Passagen-Werk: cf. Benjamin, Arcades Project, 458: “Delimitation of the tendency of this project with respect to Aragon: whereas Aragon persists within the realm of dream, here the concern is to find the constellation of awakening. While in Aragon there remains an impressionistic element, namely the “mythology” (and this impressionism must be held responsible for the many vague philosophemes in his book), here it is a question of the dissolution of “mythology” into the space of history. That, of course, can happen only through the awakening of a not-yet-conscious knowledge of what has been.”

Benjamin, Selected Writings, II.2, 731: “Our childhood anthologies used to contain the fable of the old man, who, on his deathbed, fooled his sons into believing that there was treasure buried in the vineyard. They would only have to dig. They dug, but found no treasure.”

Musil, Precision and Soul, 116–17.

Ibid., 117. For an overview see at least Honold, Die Stadt und der Krieg, and Terror und Erlösung. Robert Musil und der Gewaltdiskurs der Zwischenkriegszeit, ed. Hans Feger, Hans-Georg Pott, and Norbert Christian Wolf (München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2009).

Of the vast bibliography on the topic, see: Birgit Nübel, Robert Musil—Essayismus als Selbstreflexion der Moderne (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2006); C. Pfeiffer, Aphorismus und Romanstruktur. Zu Robert Musils «Der Mann ohne Eigenschften» (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag, 1990); Loredana Martini, Der Dichter als Fragmentist. Geschichte und Geschichten in Robert Musils Roman Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (Bern [et alibi]: Peter Lang, 2002); Delf Schöttker, Konstruktiver Fragmentarismus. Form und Rezeption der Schriften Walter Benjamins (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1999).

See Stefan Jonsson, “The Citizen of Kakania,” New Left Review 27 (2004): 131–41, 140: “there is in German culture only one other project to which it [The Man without Qualities] can be compared, Benjamin's Arcade Project.”

“On the contrary, my attempt could be defined rather as constructive and synthetic,” wrote Musil to Johannes von Allesch in a letter dated March 15, 1941, comparing his work to that of Joyce, Mann, and Proust; cf. Robert Musil, Briefe 1901–1902, ed. Adolf Frisé (Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1981), 504. More than once Benjamin refers to the highly constructive and synthetic quality of Passagen-Werk as directly connected to Goethe: cf. Benjamin, Arcades Project, 474: “The dialectical image is that form of historical object which satisfies Goethe's requirement for the object of analysis: to exhibit a genuine synthesis. It is the primal phenomenon of history”; already to be found in First Sketches: “Formula: construction out of facts. Construction with the complete elimination of theory. What only Goethe in his morphological writings has attempted” (ibid., 864).

See Musil, Diaries, 432: “Long before the dictators, our times brought forth spiritual veneration of dictators. Stefan George, for instance. Then Kraus and Freud, Adler and Jung as well. Add to these, Klages and Heidegger.” On Benjamin's criticism of Klages, Spengler, Jünger, and Heidegger, see at least John McCole, Walter Benjamin and the Antinomies of Tradition (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993); Georg Dörr, Muttermythos und Herrschaftsmythos. Zur Dialektik der Aufklärung um die Jahrhundertwende bei den Kosmikern, Stefan George und in der Frankfurter Schule (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2007), 104–84; Giovanni Gurisatti, Costellazioni. Storia, arte e tecnica in Walter Benjamin (Macerata: Quodlibet, 2010) 183–226; Alessandro Ottaviani, “La forma come esperimento o come destino,” Aisthesis. Pratiche, linguaggi e saperi dell’estetico 4.2 (2011): 297–334, http://www.aisthesisonline.it/2011/2–2011/la-forma-come-esperimento-o-come-destino.