4 - Aesthetic Readings

Summary

Das Problem: wie komme ich zum Erzählen, ist sowohl mein stilistisches wie das Lebensproblem der Hauptfigur, und die Lösung ist natürlich nicht einfach.

(B I, 498)

WHEREAS EXISTENTIALIST VIEWS in Musil criticism in the postwar period cultivated an understanding of the position of the individual, social criticism adopted history as “first philosophy” in assaying conceptions of social truth. Neither view, however, could be said to have addressed adequately the question of the function of art in society. Nor did these views throw light on the special circumstances in which art is produced. These questions were taken up in aesthetic approaches, which now constitute one of the most popular pathways to understanding Musil's novel. In the early postwar period, aesthetically based inquiry found common ground with existential critique, since the artist's struggle to respond to the world was understood to relate to the more general problem of how the individual might meet the demands of increasingly problematic social life. Gerhart Baumann's two essays of 1953 and 1960 and his full-length study of 1960, all of which investigated stylistic features and the shifts in perspective that lie behind the narration of Musil's novel, were based on the conviction that art could illuminate the problems of life in this way. By the late fifties and early sixties, however, the question of the artist's exemplary individual existence had become secondary, as aesthetic criticism was increasingly drawn to formal questions of style and text type.