This work explores a fascinating and disturbing literary trope found in select German Expressionist prose in the years 1910-1920. Key Expressionist-era authors, including Georg Heym, Robert Musil, Egmont Colerus and Franz Kafka employed Antarctic and ice metaphors in their poetry and prose to exemplify inner feelings of displacement resulting from modernity. Expressionist discontent, as well as the “Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration” that occurred from 1895 to 1922, led to the creation of polar dystopias in some literature. These dystopias explored abstract interpretations of the South Pole, not as a place of excitement and adventure, but rather as a journey into philosophical inner ice in the era of Modernism. Heym, Musil and Colerus did not invent the disturbing Antarctic allegory, but rather returned to an established literary tradition in a time of polar “pulp” fiction. This thesis first examines the South Pole as a place of emptying, shown in Georg Heym's 1911 fragment “Das Tagebuch Shakletons” (“Shakleton's Diaries”). In other works, such as Heym's 1911 novella “Die Südpolfahrer” (“Travelers to the South Pole”), the South Pole is portrayed as a blank slate. Two Austrian works show the idea of the South Pole as a refuge: Robert Musil’s 1911 Das Land über den Südpol (“The Land over the South Pole”) and Egmont Colerus’ 1915 novel Antarktis. These works exemplify and interpret the modern soul’s tepid “temperature,” something sharply criticized by Expressionists. These authors and poets longed to see an improved world and expressed discontent by portraying imperialist “heroes” of their time as mere specks lost in the sea of modernity. In the literature of Heym, Musil, Colerus and Kafka, a bleak Antarctic world mirrors the authors’ views on their “dying” society and the European “symptom” that resulted in suffocating mediocrity. Self-fulfillment becomes a static or moving point on the horizon that will never be realized by either the explorer or the freezing bourgeois soul.

This work explores a fascinating and disturbing literary trope found in select German Expressionist prose in the years 1910-1920. Key Expressionist-era authors, including Georg Heym, Robert Musil, Egmont Colerus and Franz Kafka employed Antarctic and ice metaphors in their poetry and prose to exemplify inner feelings of displacement resulting from modernity. Expressionist discontent, as well as the “Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration” that occurred from 1895 to 1922, led to the creation of polar dystopias in some literature. These dystopias explored abstract interpretations of the South Pole, not as a place of excitement and adventure, but rather as a journey into philosophical inner ice in the era of Modernism. Heym, Musil and Colerus did not invent the disturbing Antarctic allegory, but rather returned to an established literary tradition in a time of polar “pulp” fiction.This thesis first examines the South Pole as a place of emptying, shown in Georg Heym's 1911 fragment “Das Tagebuch Shakletons” (“Shakleton's Diaries”). In other works, such as Heym's 1911 novella “Die Südpolfahrer” (“Travelers to the South Pole”), the South Pole is portrayed as a blank slate. Two Austrian works show the idea of the South Pole as a refuge: Robert Musil’s 1911 Das Land über den Südpol (“The Land over the South Pole”) and Egmont Colerus’ 1915 novel Antarktis. These works exemplify and interpret the modern soul’s tepid “temperature,” something sharply criticized by Expressionists. These authors and poets longed to see an improved world and expressed discontent by portraying imperialist “heroes” of their time as mere specks lost in the sea of modernity. In the literature of Heym, Musil, Colerus and Kafka, a bleak Antarctic world mirrors the authors’ views on their “dying” society and the European “symptom” that resulted in suffocating mediocrity. Self-fulfillment becomes a static or moving point on the horizon that will never be realized by either the explorer or the freezing bourgeois soul.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2007. / Title from first page of PDF file (viewed June 26, 2007). Available via ProQuest Digital Dissertations. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 357-368).

Univ., Habil.-Schr.-2000--Freiburg i. Br., 1999. / Literaturverz. S. 421 - 436.

[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.

Au chapitre 4 de "L' Homme sans qualités", Musil présente son personnage principal, Ulrich, comme doué d'un sens du possible, qu'il définit ainsi : "L'homme qui en est doué, par exemple, ne dira pas : ici s'est produite, va se produire, doit se produire telle ou telle chose; mais il imaginera : ici pourrait, devrait se produire telle ou telle chose; et quand on lui dit d'une chose qu'elle est comme elle est, il pense qu’elle pourrait aussi bien être autre. Ainsi pourrait-on définir simplement le sens du possible comme la faculté de penser tout ce qui pourrait être "aussi bien", et de ne pas accorder plus d'importance à ce qui est qu'à ce qui n'est pas » (L''Homme sans qualités, §4). De manière générale, nous examinons ce sens du possible, dans ses différentes mises en œuvre, à l'aune des remarques conceptuelles de Wittgenstein sur la possibilité. Dans le domaine théorique, l'interprétation de la thèse de Musil sur Mach permet de montrer que, par comparaison avec la démarche scientifique, le sens du possible est la capacité à penser non seulement toutes les possibilités réelles mais aussi toutes les possibilités concevables, et ce par opposition à l'induction et à la recherche de causes. Dans le domaine de la conduite de la vie, la lecture philosophique d'un roman de Musil permet de montrer que le sens du possible est non pas la solution mais l'expression du problème de la vie juste (« comment dois-je vivre ?"). Enfin, dans une dernière partie, on rapporte le sens du possible au développement d'utopies, c'est-à-dire des vies et des hommes concevables mais pas nécessairement possibles en vertu de la réalité. / In the fourth chapter of "The Man without qualities", Robert Musil presents his main character, Ulrich, as endowed with a « sense of possibility» : "Whoever has it does not say, for instance : Here this or that has happened, will happen, must happen; but he invents : here this or that might, could or ought to happen. If he is told that something is the way it is, he will think : well, it could probably just as well be otherwise. So the sense of possibility could be defined outright as the ability to conceive of everything there might be just as well, and to attach no more importance to what it is than to what is not." (The Man without qualities, §4). ln a general way, on studies this sense of possibility, in its various applications, in relation with Wittgenstein's conceptual remarks. ln the theoretical field, the Interpretation of Musil's PhD on Mach allows to think that, by comparison with the scientific method, the sense of possibility is the ability to think not only all the real possibilities, but also the conceivable possibilities, by contrast with induction and research of causes. ln the field of the conduct of lite, the philosophical reading of the novel allows to think that the sense of possibility is not the solution but the expression of the problem of the right life. Finally, in the last part, one relates the sense of possibility to the development of utopias, of men and lifes conceivable but not necessarily possible by virtue of reality.

TITLE: The Motive of "Forbidden" Love in Work of Robert Musil SUMMARY: The thesis deals with the problems of adolescence of a young boarder in a boarding school. The objective of the thesis was to analyze the novel of Robert Musil "The Confusions of Young Törless" in context of behaviour models and the role of sensuality in the development of adolescent personality from the viewpoint of rational reasoning of own thinking processes. The analysis stresses the importance of the motive of young man's solitude, furthermore the motive of violence, the role of sensual cognition in adolescence as well as the role of these factors during determination of preferred relationships that might, however, come into contrast with the contemporary taboos and become "forbidden". "The Confusions" of the main character may so be structured and interpreted on several levels. KEYWORDS: Robert Musil, The Confusions of Young Törless, adolescence, sexuality, solitude, violence, visual cognition, love

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(English) is thesis is concerned with the opening section"A Sort of Introduction" of Robert Musil's e Man Without Qualities. It follows the plot developed throughout the evolution of the main character Ulrich, and his gradual realization that he is a "man without qualities" and that he needs to "take a break from life," as the discovery of a starting position for his life experiment. Closer reading is given to the "other condition" that Ulrich discovers in his nightly adventure. e idea of mystical unification touches on the central theme of love and eroticism, which are in various aspects, characterized by both Leona and Bonadea. Broadly understood the concept of unification, as a form of unfulfilled need, transforms into a "projection surface" on which we can see the suppressed inclinations of individuals and society, leading among other things to the rehabilitation of the philosophical construct of "Genius", the search for a type of "strong individual",that will be able to withstand the demands of the"new era;"- reflected in this section by Clarisse and Walter. Along with this "story" level of the text, I follow in a few subchapters what we may call the"imaginative"level,that is,the collection of themes that show the"internal" perspective of storytelling. For example, the motive of a window being...