1.
The final entry of Robert Musil’s diaries was found in 1980, stitched inside the lining of a coat belonging to Marthe Musil. Here it is, in its translated entirety by Philip Payne.
2.
“I love something” contains as much of the subjectivity of the “I” as of the objectivity of the “something”!” Musil writes. In this particular intensity, I suspect love and hate are allied.
I hate something contains this subjectivity as well. Objective hatred is often established (and represented) in carceral systems, but we confuse the fact of the system for the fate of the feeling.
3.
Reading Herve Guibert’s journals, The Mausoleum of Lovers, and discovering that he read Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities in tandem with Musil’s Notebooks. He dialogues between them.
"(The Man Without Qualities: the dream of the great work.)"
But he also adds context that the endnotes in Musil’s translated notebooks does not include, particularly Martha’s role in censoring the last entry:
"The pages of Musil's journal cut out by his wife, Martha, because they concerned their intimacy, and that are found again by chance after her death by unstitching the sleeve of the coat she had bequeathed to the costume museum."
4.
More from Musil’s diaries: the armchair analogy.
It is said that a thing is the sum of its qualities, or some such statement. But there are instances of relationships that contradict this. Perhaps in all things that pertain to sympathy.
I have had an old armchair for years. I cut a notch into its armrest, or I rip one of its cushions. In other words I take something away from it. And yet it doesn't seem new to me at all; rather it only really becomes that which I feel my old armchair to be, when I take something away from it.
This often happens with love as well.
5.
Currently fascinated by translator Genese Grill’s blog on Musil, which I cannot stop reading—and which is also the source for the sketch of Robert Musil by his wife, Marthe.