#FREEMOOSBRUGGER

As a mathematician Ulrich is, so Thomas Sebastian claims, "so well informed that the reader is forced to take several crash courses in scientific theory to appreciate the author's relentless appropriation of scientific ideas". Sebastian's example, "Ulrich's familiarity" with "the law of large numbers" which demonstrates the author's declared intent to make him "a man equipped with the most advanced knowledge of his time" is rather unhappily chosen, considering that the law of large numbers was described by Simeon Poisson in 1835, thus hardly constituting an instance of the most advanced knowledge in 1913. Yet, we learn that Ulrich's knowledge is indeed up to date when he is concerned with contemporary questions regarding the foundations of maths: "He was one of those mathematicians called logicians, for whom nothing was ever "correct" and who were working out a new foundational theory". Ulrich's orientations suggests that it is not a specific mathematical law but rather the philosophy of maths that is at the core of his appropriation of scientific ideas, and this indirect employment makes a crash course in scientific theory even more necessary. ...As a logician wanting to determine the foundations of maths, Ulrich advocates going back to the ancient Greek roots of logic before considering truth in maths. Accordingly, his response to Stastil's question about Kneppler's deduction is a shrug. The fact that mathematicians can have disparate opinions or none at all questions the possibility of truth in general, and the foundational queries in maths mirror doubts that animate what we could call "foundational research" in Kakania: only sure that it is not the country it used to be, Kakania sets up the Parallel campaign, a group with the aim to determine the essential being of Austrian culture. The campaign is to define the country's innermost character and exhibit Kakania's unified nature in a celebration planned to make 1918 "a jubilee year for our Emperor of Peace". The jubilee year is then expected to free a unifying force and enable the modern world to find its true being, but the futility of the campaign is immediately obvious to readers: the year 1918 was hardly one of celebrating any "Emperor of Peace", and equally evidently The Man Without Qualities does not achieve unity - it remains a fragment.

The essence of the novel, Törless' relationship with the unfortunate Basini, who his caught stealing and subjected to torture by Reiting and Beineberg, is closely related to all the themes: political, maternal, military, religious and sexual. Both Božena and Basini, who represent the Slavic and Italian minorities who are dominated by the Austrians, are contrasted to the Germanic ethos of Törless and his friends, and compared to each other. ...Like the army, the cloistered atmosphere of the school provides no acceptable outlet for the boys' sexual desires - 'seething, passionate, naked and loaded with destruction' - and they are inevitably forced into whoring and homosexuality. Basini, who is both weak and effeminate, with 'a chaste, slender willingness, like that of a young girl', is the perfect sexual victim. His weakness stimulates the sadistic impulses that spring from repressed sexuality and from the military ethos of brutality and power. Basini, who provides the same fascination as a naked woman, becomes the personification of the flagellants and martyrs when he is tortured and bloody. His "sacrifice" is supposed to have a "purifying effect", but his religious passion aggravates the torturers' sexual guilt at the same time that it stimulates their sexual excitement.

The Man Without Qualities just so happens to have a distinctive texture. Musil’s prose is a pile of ballet slipper–colored tulle. It is over-ripe fruit, sugar congealing at its center.

truck freak - ulrich

ordinary man by mika reminded me of man without qualities. and also love song of j. alfred prufrock. and franz kafka in general. i think we have enough material for a mind map come help me with this red yarn