It is a fine novel though for me the indispensable book about the end of the empire is ‘The Radetsky March’ by Joseph Roth. A wonderful elegy on family and loss.
Funnily enough I finally got around to ‘The Radetsky March’ by Roth a couple of years ago, having read a lot of his non-fiction/journalism. (Roth is one of the very few people whose journalism is still interesting and readable 100 years later).
I also read the first value of ‘The Man Without Qualities’ a few years a go. The Parallel Campaign is very funny. It reminded me of the vast, empty nonsense of the Millennium Dome. Of course, ‘The Good Solider Sjek’ is essential – and hilarious – reading when it comes to that that time and place, and I recently read a biography of Wittgenstein that taught me a little. Then there’s the guy who wrote the short story on which some parts of ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ is very loosely based (according to the scriptwriter), and of course Rilke emerged from the AH empire around this time. That little lot should keep y’all busy for a few weeks.
Anyway, I wish I could get paid (are Unherd writers paid?) to write about all the books I have read. I would be set up for life!
Thanks. Surely this book should be taught in schools as it manages to be extremely entertaining while carrying a serious message and teaching a bit of history. Even 15 or 16 year old boys could get into it.
Sadly, I don’t suppose anybody in our educational infrastructure has even heard of it.
You should check out “The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin” – it is a bit more depressing because it is Russian. I once visited Tirana (Albania) for a weekend (don’t go). Someone had painted Svejk in a telephone (?) control box . That made the trip worth it.
Readers, don’t let Jeremy Smith put you off going to Albania. I was there last year. Tirana itself is a bit melancholy – though even there, they were brightening up the streets and adding water features to the main square, and the cafe culture was very lively. But the mountain landscapes are as stunning as any in Europe, Berat is one of the world’s most picturesque small towns, the castles are imposing, the surviving medieval churches have glorious frescoes, the Ottoman-era mosques are cute, the classical ruins are evocative, the food’s lovely and living costs are cheap. I’d say go now before it becomes like everywhere else.
Yes, many people share your preference, but I didn’t think so myself; the setting of Gjirokaster straggling up the hillside is quite amazing, but the architectural heritage there is less coherently preserved. The old parts of Berat are more homogeneous. Still, they’re both extraordinary places!
I was quite taken by the Stalinist-era grandeur of central Tirana. The suburbs are depressing.
Since we’re on the topic another writer of that era deserves a mention- Gregor Von Rezzori- a brilliant observer of the rise of fascism and the collapsing world of the ancien regime.
Radetsky March is indeed tremendous. I’ve not read Man Without Qualities, but I did admire Musil’s chilling earlier (and much shorter) novel Young Torless, a few years back.
“I wish I could get paid (are Unherd writers paid?) to write about all the books I have read. I would be set up for life!” Unherd actually does need a proper cultural correspondent, I’d say. You get occasional pieces by writers who usually focus on politics, but there should be a regular slot on literature – and the arts in general.
“Then there’s the guy who wrote the short story on which some parts of ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ is very loosely based (according to the scriptwriter)”
That would be Dream Story by Arthur Schnitzler, and yes, Eyes Wide Shut is based on that novella.
Alan Girling
3 years ago
“Musil shows us that the world is too complex to be completely understood or mastered, and that it is foolish to pretend otherwise.” This seems to me to be the essence of conservative thinking, along with the obvious desire to ‘conserve’. Because one reason to conserve is our inevitable ignorance of the consequences of change. One might say the motivation is merely fear of the unknown, which prevents needed reform or improvement. Yes, true to some extent. But it also contains a wise humility, an understanding of natural limitations, that change based on philosophies that claim to ‘know’ the good from the bad, and exactly what the results will be if implemented, is doomed to failure. In other words, any change that comes from our natural liberal impulses should always be rooted in a respect for what already is.
All true. And all of this was lost on the intolerant middle-class radicals who drove the French Revolution forward and off the rails, creating the disastrous train-wreck that we know as the ‘Terror’.
Have you read War and Peace? Tolstoy argues at great length, through the Russian general Kutuzov, for this philosophy of the nigh-impossibility of meaningful individual control over events.
No I haven’t, thanks. Sounds very Tolstoy to communicate ideas like that.
Jeremy Smith
3 years ago
I haven’t read the book so I can not comment on it but I would like to point out that there is a new school of history that questions the (100 year old) position that the AH Empire was doomed. Despite ethnic conflicts (overwhelmingly peaceful) by most metric of human and economic development index the AH was performing quite well. It took a catastrophic war that destroyed the empire in the end. It destroyed Russia and broke Germany and France. I would guess (and it is just a guess) that if UK had suffered the same casualty rate as France it would have broken UK too.
Had the empire not annexed former Ottoman territories in the Balkans it would have been more inherently stable. The looming issue before 1914 was Czech pressure for a tripartite imperial model, anathema to the Hungarians.
True, but Germans/Austrians wanted that – if I remember my history correctly. Franz Ferdinand wanted to give more rights to Czech (Slavs). And since the Czech elite was highly Germanized… Serbian expansionism in Bosnia would have been unacceptable to Muslims and Croats. Serbia also tried to annex Northern Albania to get access to the Adriatic. Austria and Italy opposed that move.
Granting the Czechs equality would probably have meant a showdown with Budapest. Franz Ferdinand famously hated the Hungarians and looked to reduce them. Had he survived that issue would have defined his career.
E. E.
3 years ago
I did read Musil’s magnum opus a number of years ago – in its entirety! I was immensely impressed, and parts of the novel were so brilliant I still remember them (this is remarkable because I have a terrible memory). However, I did find it quite tedious at times, though I think it’s well worth the effort. Robert Musil is more of a literary philosopher than a novelist. He took literature so seriously he broke off relations with Elias Canetti because the latter had dared to send a letter to Thomas Mann – in Musil’s view, Thomas Mann was too lightweight an author to spend time on! I cannot imagine how anyone in the cabinet would find the time to read this novel, let alone to enjoy it.
I can offer my own recommendations when it comes to world-on-the-eve-of-catastrophe books. The Good Soldier Svejk has already been mentioned, and it is an excellent choice (curiously, that novel was never completed either). I can also recommend: 1. The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig (it’s not a novel, but there it is). 2. The Memoirs of Elias Canetti (also not a novel, but the final volume deals with the years leading up to WWII). 3. The Leopard by Lampedusa (this one is more of a novel about the loss of one’s world and traditions, but it is no less pertinent).
Val Cox
3 years ago
“You might even have to put it on the nanny’s luggage allowance” WTAF
It is a fine novel though for me the indispensable book about the end of the empire is ‘The Radetsky March’ by Joseph Roth. A wonderful elegy on family and loss.
Funnily enough I finally got around to ‘The Radetsky March’ by Roth a couple of years ago, having read a lot of his non-fiction/journalism. (Roth is one of the very few people whose journalism is still interesting and readable 100 years later).
I also read the first value of ‘The Man Without Qualities’ a few years a go. The Parallel Campaign is very funny. It reminded me of the vast, empty nonsense of the Millennium Dome. Of course, ‘The Good Solider Sjek’ is essential – and hilarious – reading when it comes to that that time and place, and I recently read a biography of Wittgenstein that taught me a little. Then there’s the guy who wrote the short story on which some parts of ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ is very loosely based (according to the scriptwriter), and of course Rilke emerged from the AH empire around this time. That little lot should keep y’all busy for a few weeks.
Anyway, I wish I could get paid (are Unherd writers paid?) to write about all the books I have read. I would be set up for life!
Good Soldier Svejk ???
Sadly only one uptick! You deserve 10.
Thanks. Surely this book should be taught in schools as it manages to be extremely entertaining while carrying a serious message and teaching a bit of history. Even 15 or 16 year old boys could get into it.
Sadly, I don’t suppose anybody in our educational infrastructure has even heard of it.
You should check out “The Life and Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin” – it is a bit more depressing because it is Russian.
I once visited Tirana (Albania) for a weekend (don’t go). Someone had painted Svejk in a telephone (?) control box . That made the trip worth it.
Readers, don’t let Jeremy Smith put you off going to Albania. I was there last year. Tirana itself is a bit melancholy – though even there, they were brightening up the streets and adding water features to the main square, and the cafe culture was very lively. But the mountain landscapes are as stunning as any in Europe, Berat is one of the world’s most picturesque small towns, the castles are imposing, the surviving medieval churches have glorious frescoes, the Ottoman-era mosques are cute, the classical ruins are evocative, the food’s lovely and living costs are cheap. I’d say go now before it becomes like everywhere else.
Mosques everywhere? I’m going to Cornwall now before it becomes like Albania.
I said Tirana as in the city, not Albania as in the countryside.
Gjirokastra is better than Berat (visited both btw)
Yes, many people share your preference, but I didn’t think so myself; the setting of Gjirokaster straggling up the hillside is quite amazing, but the architectural heritage there is less coherently preserved. The old parts of Berat are more homogeneous. Still, they’re both extraordinary places!
I was quite taken by the Stalinist-era grandeur of central Tirana. The suburbs are depressing.
Since we’re on the topic another writer of that era deserves a mention- Gregor Von Rezzori- a brilliant observer of the rise of fascism and the collapsing world of the ancien regime.
Radetsky March is indeed tremendous. I’ve not read Man Without Qualities, but I did admire Musil’s chilling earlier (and much shorter) novel Young Torless, a few years back.
“I wish I could get paid (are Unherd writers paid?) to write about all the books I have read. I would be set up for life!” Unherd actually does need a proper cultural correspondent, I’d say. You get occasional pieces by writers who usually focus on politics, but there should be a regular slot on literature – and the arts in general.
Maybe we can both apply?
“Then there’s the guy who wrote the short story on which some parts of ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ is very loosely based (according to the scriptwriter)”
That would be Dream Story by Arthur Schnitzler, and yes, Eyes Wide Shut is based on that novella.
“Musil shows us that the world is too complex to be completely understood or mastered, and that it is foolish to pretend otherwise.” This seems to me to be the essence of conservative thinking, along with the obvious desire to ‘conserve’. Because one reason to conserve is our inevitable ignorance of the consequences of change. One might say the motivation is merely fear of the unknown, which prevents needed reform or improvement. Yes, true to some extent. But it also contains a wise humility, an understanding of natural limitations, that change based on philosophies that claim to ‘know’ the good from the bad, and exactly what the results will be if implemented, is doomed to failure. In other words, any change that comes from our natural liberal impulses should always be rooted in a respect for what already is.
All true. And all of this was lost on the intolerant middle-class radicals who drove the French Revolution forward and off the rails, creating the disastrous train-wreck that we know as the ‘Terror’.
Have you read War and Peace? Tolstoy argues at great length, through the Russian general Kutuzov, for this philosophy of the nigh-impossibility of meaningful individual control over events.
No I haven’t, thanks. Sounds very Tolstoy to communicate ideas like that.
I haven’t read the book so I can not comment on it but I would like to point out that there is a new school of history that questions the (100 year old) position that the AH Empire was doomed.
Despite ethnic conflicts (overwhelmingly peaceful) by most metric of human and economic development index the AH was performing quite well. It took a catastrophic war that destroyed the empire in the end. It destroyed Russia and broke Germany and France.
I would guess (and it is just a guess) that if UK had suffered the same casualty rate as France it would have broken UK too.
Had the empire not annexed former Ottoman territories in the Balkans it would have been more inherently stable. The looming issue before 1914 was Czech pressure for a tripartite imperial model, anathema to the Hungarians.
True, but Germans/Austrians wanted that – if I remember my history correctly. Franz Ferdinand wanted to give more rights to Czech (Slavs). And since the Czech elite was highly Germanized…
Serbian expansionism in Bosnia would have been unacceptable to Muslims and Croats. Serbia also tried to annex Northern Albania to get access to the Adriatic. Austria and Italy opposed that move.
Granting the Czechs equality would probably have meant a showdown with Budapest. Franz Ferdinand famously hated the Hungarians and looked to reduce them. Had he survived that issue would have defined his career.
I did read Musil’s magnum opus a number of years ago – in its entirety! I was immensely impressed, and parts of the novel were so brilliant I still remember them (this is remarkable because I have a terrible memory). However, I did find it quite tedious at times, though I think it’s well worth the effort. Robert Musil is more of a literary philosopher than a novelist. He took literature so seriously he broke off relations with Elias Canetti because the latter had dared to send a letter to Thomas Mann – in Musil’s view, Thomas Mann was too lightweight an author to spend time on! I cannot imagine how anyone in the cabinet would find the time to read this novel, let alone to enjoy it.
I can offer my own recommendations when it comes to world-on-the-eve-of-catastrophe books. The Good Soldier Svejk has already been mentioned, and it is an excellent choice (curiously, that novel was never completed either). I can also recommend:
1. The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig (it’s not a novel, but there it is).
2. The Memoirs of Elias Canetti (also not a novel, but the final volume deals with the years leading up to WWII).
3. The Leopard by Lampedusa (this one is more of a novel about the loss of one’s world and traditions, but it is no less pertinent).
“You might even have to put it on the nanny’s luggage allowance” WTAF