Chapter 17 begins by explaining how Walter is able to justify his "artist's block" by taking "refuge" in the idea "that the Europe in which he was forced to live was hopelessly decadent." As a result, "instead of his feeling bad and unable to work, it was now the times that were sick, while he was fine."
But his relationship with Clarisse is not fine, and that is revealed in the way she plays the piano:
Clarisse's playing was hard and colorless, prompted by stirrings in her that he did not share, and that frightened him as they reached him when their bodies glowed till the soul burned through. Something indefinable then tore itself loose inside her and threatened to fly away with her spirit. It came out of some secret hollow in her being that had to be anxiously kept shut up tight.Walter has decided the Ulrich is a bad influence on Clarisse, and a dialogue ensues between he and his wife in which Clarisse argues Ulrich's case while Walter attacks it. He begins by saying that "the strength you marvel at in him [Ulrich] is pure emptiness." He concludes:
What he [Ulrich] thinks of anything will always depend on some possible context --- nothing is, to him, what it is; everything is subject to change, in flux, part of a whole, of an infinite number of wholes presumably adding up to an superwhole that, however, he knows nothing about. . . he never cares what something is, only 'how' it is . . ."Such a man," Walter declares, "is not really a human being!"
"That's what he says himself!" Clarisse responds and then sums up Ulrich's thinking.
. . . today everything is coming apart. Everything has come a standstill, he says, not just him. . . . He says things have become more complicated meanwhile. Just as we swim in water, we also swim in a sea of fire, a storm of electricity, a firmament of magnetism, a swamp of warmth, and so on. It's just that we can't feel it. All that finally remains is formulas."The human brain has happily split things apart," Walter laments, "but things have split the human heart too." He concludes that "the man is a danger for you!" and states his own case.
. . . what every one needs today more than anything else is simplicity, closeness to the earth, health---and yes, . . . a child as well, because a child keeps us anchored to the ground. . . I promise you I have the courage when I come home, simply to have a cup of coffee with you, listen to the birds, take a little walk, chat with a neighbor, and let the day fade out quietly: that's human life!
* * *
In the next chapter Musil introduces us to Moosbrugger, who "had killed a woman, a prostitute of the lowest type, in a horrifying manner." Ulrich is preoccupied with Moosbrugger's case, perhaps because Moosbrugger "did not deny what he had done, but simply wanted his deeds understood as the mishaps of an important philosophy of life." He "even wanted the killing to be regarded as a political crime."... even a much cleverer man could not have expressed the strange, shadowy reasoning of his mind. They rose directly out of the confused isolation of his life, and while all other lives exist in hundreds of ways . . . his own true life existed only for him. It was a vapor, always losing and changing shape."A vapor, always losing and changing shape": the same might be said of Ulrich.
Ulrich is present at Moosbrugger's trial and is struck by one of his random thoughts: "if mankind could dream as a whole, that dream would be Moosbrugger."
* * *
Chapter 17 consists entirely of a letter Ulrich receives from his father encouraging him to "present yourself to Count Stallburg, who intends to place you on the Planning Committee" for a celebration campaign of 1918 as "a jubilee year for our Emperor" At this point Part I, "A Sort of Introduction," ends, and Part II, "Pseudoreality Prevails," begins.Ulrich, the man without qualities, has a purpose thrust upon him by his father.
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