Precision and Soul: Essays and Addresses (Hardcover)

by Robert Musil (Author), Burton Pike (Translator), David S. Luft (Translator) "There is something undeniably boring about ordering thoughts long familiar to reasonably clever people for the sake of some external purpose..." (more)
Key Phrases: New Aesthetic, National Socialist, Greek Man (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

"We do not have too much intellect and too little soul, but too little precision in matters of the soul."—Robert Musil

Best known as author of the novel The Man without Qualities, Robert Musil wrote these essays in Vienna and Berlin between 1911 and 1937. Offering a perspective on modern society and intellectual life, they are concerned with the crisis of modern culture as it manifests itself in science and mathematics, capitalism and nationalism, the changing roles of women and writers, and more. Writing to find his way in a world where moral systems everywhere were seemingly in decay, Musil strives to reconcile the ongoing conflict between functional relativism and the passionate search for ethical values.

Robert Musil was born in 1880 and died in 1942. His first novel, Young Törless, is available in English. A new two-volume translation by Burton Pike and Sophie Wilkins of The Man without Qualities is forthcoming from Alfred A. Knopf.

"Now we have these thirty-one invaluable and entertaining pieces, from an article on 'The Obscene and Pathological in Art' to the equally provocative talk 'On Stupidity,' which, with a new translation of The Man without Qualities forthcoming . . . amount to a literary event for the reader of English comparable to Constance Garnett's massive translation of Chekhov's stories."—Joseph Coates, Chicago Tribune

"Musil is one of the few great moderns, one of the handful who ventured to confront the issues that shape and define our time. . . . He has a range and a striking capacity every bit as great as that of Mann, Joyce, or Beckett."—Boston Review

"These essays are crucial in understanding a writer and critic whose lifelong task was an attempt to resolve the dichotomy between the precision of scientific form and the soul—the matter of life and art."—Choice

Language Notes
Text: English (translation)
Original Language: German

Product Details

• Hardcover: 329 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press (December 15, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226554082
• ISBN-13: 978-0226554082
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #774,977 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you like Tolstoy you will like Musil, January 30, 2005

By	William Kasehoff (Kentucky in the woods) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Precision and Soul: Essays and Addresses (Paperback)

To anyone that is on the brink of reading Musil for the first time: DO IT! It is very rewarding...These essays are very well written in a clear and simple language (which covers difficult subject matters) and are well translated in this collection.

Anyone who has read "War and Peace" and appreciated it will most definitely be drawn in by Musil's obvious ultimate goal of explaining everything. In his long masterpiece, "The Man Without Qualities," Musil included several essayistic sections in the same manner that Tolstoy did with "War and Peace." Critics dismissed the structure of Tolstoy's famous classic, claiming that his philosophizing and the more polemical sections have no place within "the novel."

This is, in my opinion, an extremely lame stance to take and should raise the question: What is the purpose and goal of such a person who makes such claims? This is the critic in the worst sense of the word.

Musil and Tolstoy obviously concerned with the larger issues that have tormented all great Western thinkers of the past millenia. If these larger issues interest you as well and you are looking for some bold attempts at achieving "a coverage of everything," Musil is the author for you. If, on the other hand, you prefer writers like Nabokov, Proust, and Joyce (all writers that were DEFINITELY more concerned with style than anything else), than maybe you will be unimpressed by Musil's incredible attempt to actually say something.

Don't get me wrong: Proust, Joyce, and Nabokov are all writers that "had something to say," but give me a break...they are the writer's writers more than anything else. Not that Musil and Tolstoy were not great stylists (both were revolutionary innovators), but the essayism so apparent in their works would be deemed "unacceptable" only by snobbish and useless critics who are much more concerned with their own ego than actually humbling themselves before a great author (because no author is great anymore, according to them, the only great ones).

With all of this said, forgive me for deviating from a discussion of this particular book, which is an excellent body of essays by Musil that shed light on his overall thinking. For those that have not read "The Man Without Qualities," this book could serve as a quicker way to "check him out" and get an idea of what he his about before embarking on his major work. For those that have read it, these essays will provide very useful additional insight into this GREAT and very complex mind.

5 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars An author over-promoted from obscurity., April 11, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Precision and Soul: Essays and Addresses (Paperback)

Readers will save themselves much unrewarding labor by disregarding both "Precision and soul" and, I daresay, the highly-touted "Man Without Qualities," reading instead his first work "Young Torless" and the stories collected under "Five Women." Musil's derivative philosophical and psychological preoccupations invite inevitable comparisons with Nietzsche and Freud, both of whose work is vastly more durable and fruitful. Despite the powerfully bracing, if not occasionally repellent, astringency of his style, Musil's work subsequent to "Five Women" falls considerably short of his enormous and difficult ambitions which preoccupied his later labors; and, what's more, such a gaping failure of world-historical pretension tends to pollute enjoyments one might otherwise have had in reading it.

2 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars An author over-promoted from obscurity., April 11, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Precision and Soul: Essays and Addresses (Paperback)

Readers will save themselves much unrewarding labor by disregarding both "Precision and soul" and, I daresay, the highly-touted "Man Without Qualities," reading instead his first work "Young Torless" and the stories collected under "Five Women." Musil's derivative philosophical and psychological preoccupations invite inevitable comparisons with Nietzsche and Freud, both of whose work is vastly more durable and fruitful. Despite the powerfully bracing, if not occasionally repellent, astringency of his style, Musil's work subsequent to "Five Women" falls considerably short of the enormous and difficult ambitions which preoccupied his maturity; and, what's more, such a gaping failure of world-historical pretension tends to pollute enjoyments one might otherwise have had in reading it. Read something by one whose enormous abilities are truly equal to ungodly ambitions -- read Proust.