2 - From Social Criticism to Cultural Critique

Summary

Selbst der Sternenhimmel ist eine soziale

Erfahrung, ein Gebilde der gemeinsamen

Fantasie unsrer Gattung Menschen, und

ändert sich, wenn man aus ihrem Kreis

austritt.

(MoE, 1720)

Aber dieses groteske Österreich ist nichts anderes als ein besonderer deutlicher Fall

der modernen Welt.

(TB I, 354)

SOCIAL QUESTION HAVE never been far from scholarship on Musil's novel, even where other approaches have held sway. Identifying the moment when social criticism became a popular, and for some time even a dominant, point of departure in approaches to the novel is therefore a matter of some conjecture. Nevertheless, such a moment could be said to have occurred with the appearance of Helmut Arntzen's doctoral dissertation in book form in 1960. Arntzen's book, which announced a new approach to understanding Musil's novel under the title of Satirischer Stil, has been of general significance for Musil scholarship, but it was especially important for social criticism of the novel. Although the presence of satirical elements in Musil's portrait of the Austrian state, which Musil gave the name “Kakania,” had struck many earlier commentators, Arntzen was the first to see in Musil's use of satire a major — if not the major — stylistic category at work in the novel. Arntzen's analysis, however, was not restricted to an enumeration of stylistic features. Crucial was his analysis of the historical emergence of satire, which he linked to the underlying moral intention of the novel since its beginnings in the eighteenth century.