[pt] Entre 1911 e 1937, o escritor austríaco Robert Musil publicou ensaios com regularidade em algumas das principais revistas e jornais literários em língua alemã. A análise desse conjunto de textos permite reconhecer na trajetória do escritor não apenas a transformação do seu pensamento, mas também a dilatação da ideia do ensaio, de um modelo literário, para ensaísmo, um paradigma para ação. Esse processo ganha corpo nos anos 1920, quando começa a escrever O Homem sem Qualidades, no qual os impasses da modernidade são encenados através personagens, enredos circunstâncias. Não há, contudo, uma saída, uma solução. Levar a sério a postura ensaística significa, afinal, viver em acordo com essa incompletude. Musil, o autor que um dia esteve entre os mais promissores de sua geração, morre esquecido no exílio, escrevendo diariamente um livro que não poderia ter fim. Combinando a leitura da experiência biográfica com a ideia de aspiração, a ideia da tese é propor o fracasso como uma chave de leitura da obra de ensaística do escritor. / [en] Between 1911 and 1937 Musil regularly published essays in some of the leading magazines and literary journals in German. The analysis of this set of texts allows us to recognize in the path of the writer not only the transformation of his thought but the expansion of the idea of the essay from a literary model to a paradigm for action. This process matured in the 1920s, when he began to write The Man without Qualities, in which the impasses of modernity are staged through characters, tangled in particular circumstances. There is, however, no way out, no solution. Taking the essay position seriously means, after all, living in accordance with this incompleteness. Musil, the author who was once among the most promising of his generation, dies forgotten in exile, writing a book that could never have an end. Combining the reading of the biographical experience with the idea of aspiration, the idea of the thesis is to propose the failure as a key of reading of the essayist work of the writer.

Key Words: Comparatistics, Intertextuality, Essayism, Esem, Milan Kundera, Ričardas Gavelis, Laughter, Kitsch, Vulgarity, Carnevalism, Thanatos, Sexuality This comparativist thesis discusses the intelectual novel of the end of the 20th century. The study objects chosen for this paper were the works of Ričardas Gavelis and Milan Kundera. Due to the differences in the poetics of the works, it was chosen to analyze four works of each writer's large prose. In the case of Gavelis they are as follows: Vilnius Poker (Vilniaus pokeris, novel, 1989), Vilnius Jazz (Vilniaus džiazas, novel, 1993), The Last Generation of People on Earth (Paskutinioji Žemės žmonių karta, novel, 1995) and Six Ways of Suicide (Septyni savižudybės būdai, novel, 1999). From Kundera's works we picked out The Farewell Party (Valčík na rozloučenou, novel,1972), The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (Knihou smíchu a zapomnění, novel, 1978), The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Nesnesitelnou lehkostí bytí, novel, 1984) a Immortality (Nesmrtelnost in french, 1990, in czech 1993). One of the main aims of this study is to introduce the Czech reader to Ričardas Gavelis: one of the most important and influential writers of Lithuanian literature of the late 20th century. The works of this writer are not yet properly evaluated even in his native...