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unusual facts about Robert Musil



Brigitta Westphal

Robert Musil's novel "The Man Without Qualities" became a key source of inspiration for the painter, out of which two cycles with 14 oil pictures each developed.

Café Museum

Regular guests of the Café in the early twentieth century included: Peter Altenberg, Alban Berg, Hermann Broch, Elias Canetti, Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, Karl Kraus, Franz Lehár, Robert Musil, Leo Perutz, Joseph Roth, Roda Roda, Egon Schiele, Georg Trakl, Otto Wagner and Franz Werfel.

Dreyse needle gun

Prominent Austrians frequently betray a subtle and often humorous obsession with the Prussian Needle gun in Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities.

Evelyn Juers

Their story is crossed by others from their circle, Heinrich's brother Thomas Mann, his sister Carla, friends Bertolt Brecht, Alfred Döblin, Joseph Roth and Kurt Tucholsky, and beyond them, the writers Egon Kisch and Else Lasker-Schüler, James Joyce, Franz Kafka, Robert Musil, Virginia Woolf and Nettie Palmer among others.

Imperial and Royal

A discussion of Kakania became a highlight of the first volume of Robert Musil's novel The Man Without Qualities (1930).

Mark Jay Mirsky

Mirsky has also edited, and wrote the introduction for, Diaries: Robert Musil 1899-1942, and published several works and articles in The Partisan Review, New Directions Annual, The Boston Sunday Globe, and The New York Times Book Review.

Philippe Jaccottet

He has translated numerous authors and poets into French, including Goethe, Hölderlin, Mann, Mandelstam, Góngora, Leopardi, Musil, Rilke, Homer and Ungaretti.

Tom Nairn

His original source for the term is the nickname 'Kakania' that Robert Musil uses for the dual Austro-Hungarian monarchy in The Man Without Qualities.


see also

The Man Without Qualities

B. Pike, Robert Musil: An Introduction to His Work, Kennikat Press, 1961, reissued 1972.